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give at least a taste of the variety, creativity, and joy of the Sherlockian community the world over. If you are not yet a member of a Sherlockian society, I urge you to join. You will not regret the friends you will make, or the way that the activities and companionship will bring the Canon to life. And, should you be interested in a more detailed history of Sherlockian societies, Sherlockian.net offers an engaging summary.CHICAGO – Scott Carroll might be in the market for a new car, but at least he got back his old gig in the Chicago White Sox's bullpen.
The right-hander was called up to the major leagues Wednesday to assist a bullpen that is low on resources despite September roster additions. Monday’s 14-inning game, combined with Tuesday’s blowout loss, prompted the White Sox to add another arm.
And don’t be surprised if Carroll uses that arm to pitch in a game one moment and then to thumb a ride home the next, since his car was stolen in Chicago this summer.
Carroll admitted that he parked his car on the streets of Chicago after he was sent down to Triple-A Charlotte in early August. His hope was that he would be recalled to the White Sox when rosters initially expanded in September, so he left his car behind figuring he could pick it up later.
He received a double-whammy, though, when he was not only left off the call-up list, but then couldn’t find his car when he came to pick it up.
“[It was] stolen near Wicker Park off of Damen Avenue, so if anyone knows of a Cadillac Escalade driving around there, that would help out,” Carroll said. “I was gone in Charlotte the whole time, and it was stolen while I was gone. I came back to get my stuff and drive back home, and it was gone.”
He went as far as to give out the Missouri license plate number: UE6K0S.
Carroll said he even called tow yards, but nobody had any record of picking up his car.
“I was absolutely anticipating I was coming back,” he said. “I was disappointed to hear I wasn’t the first wave of people to be called up. But it’s part of the business, and obviously I’m glad to be back and help the team out any way I can.”
Carroll last pitched Sept. 3, when he went 3⅔ innings for Charlotte and said he could pitch as many as four or five innings immediately despite not seeing game action in nearly two weeks.Who runs the film studio? Who gets the keys to the TV kingdom? And will a Murdoch be in line for Bob Iger’s throne?
There are more questions than answers as the possibility of Disney acquiring the 20th Century Fox studio and other significant assets from 21st Century Fox appears to be gaining steam. CNBC reported Tuesday morning that a deal valued at $60 billion or more could be struck as early as next week.
It’s understood that high-level Disney and Fox executives had substantive conversations during the Thanksgiving holiday break. But sources at both Disney and Fox say there has been no formal communication with the rank-and-file about the prospect of a deal. The silence has led to much nervous speculation about how a Disney-Fox marriage would be structured, and what it would mean for senior leaders on both sides. Sources cautioned that the talks remain in the delicate stage with no certainty of a deal coming to fruition. But that hasn’t stopped industry insiders from speculating about what the combination of two historic Hollywood brands might look like after the dust settles.
CORPORATE
One of the most intriguing questions posed by what would be a historic union of two Hollywood studios is whether the Fox deal could also provide an answer to the drawn-out process of finding a successor for Disney chairman-CEO Bob Iger. Peter Rice, the Fox Networks Group chief who was recently promoted to president of 21st Century Fox, has been seen as a candidate even before the merger discussions took root. Twenty-First Century Fox CEO James Murdoch and executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch would emerge from the proposed stock transaction with big stakes in Disney, thanks to the Murdoch clan’s holdings. It might be hard to imagine a Murdoch working for another media giant, but already there’s been speculation that James might seek a role overseeing international TV operations. Sky and Star TV are businesses he helped grow before climbing into the corporate executive suite a few years ago. Lachlan Murdoch, meanwhile, might be more inclined to stay involved with the assets that don’t go to Disney: Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Broadcasting, and the TV station group.
FILM STUDIO
Twenty-First Century Fox CEO James Murdoch praised the one-year-old regime of Stacey Snider at 20th Century Fox for putting the film studio in “a good place” creatively. But would Snider maintain her perch if the studio is sold to Disney? Perhaps 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight would endure as a specialty labels within Disney’s film universe, which also includes such content engines as Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and, of course, Walt Disney Pictures. Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn has had the hottest hand of any studio chief in recent history— thanks in part to the wealth of material at his disposal.
Would there be enough breathing room in the kingdom for Snider to stick around under Horn? Or might she be asked to serve as the sorcerer’s apprentice for a period? Horn, who has been in the role since 2012, turns 75 in February. Disney has faced criticism for its lack of female division heads, and Snider does have a deep resume, having run Universal, DreamWorks and Fox. Some in Hollywood said they could imagine Fox as a stand-alone production unit inside Disney, making more original movies in the vein of Fox’s upcoming awards contender “The Post,” a period drama about the Washington Post during the Watergate era, while Disney continues to focus on the big tentpoles.
TV STUDIO
The formidable 20th Century Fox Television production operation is a crown jewel in the Fox empire. The mothership studio has a deep library and dozens of shows in production at any given time — with notable recent success stories including NBC’s “This Is Us” and Fox’s “Empire.” The Fox 21 Television Studios arm focuses on cable and streaming outlets. Together they deliver a wealth of mostly scripted TV series content that travels the globe. There is no question that Fox’s TV operation is larger and more profitable than Disney’s ABC Studios unit, which has been beefing up its talent roster and diversifying under the direction of president Patrick Moran. Would size win out? It’s hard to imagine Disney maintaining parallel TV production operations.
A tricky consideration here is that the 20th TV studio bosses — Dana Walden and Gary Newman — also oversee the Fox broadcast network, which is not among the assets Disney is angling to buy (for starters, FCC rules prohibit one company from owning more than one of the Big Four networks). The deal as it stands will put Walden and Newman, who have been professional partners since 1999, at a crossroads with some of their turf left behind no matter which way they go. Unless, of course, Disney has bigger plans for the pair, or Walden and Newman have their own plans. Walden’s name has surfaced as being on Jeff Bezos’ wish-list for the vacancy at Amazon Studios.
TV NETWORKS
The valuation of Fox’s FX Networks cable group has to come with a special premium for the Landgraf factor. FX Networks CEO John Landgraf is one of the most respected programmers and mangers of creative talent in the industry. He has been on the short list for major network and studio job openings for a decade. At FX, he’s built a loyal team of executives who have punched above their weight with a mix of high-brow prestige programs (“The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” “The Americans”) and edgy crowd-pleasers (“American Horror Story,” “Sons of Anarchy”).
Given this track record, it would not be surprising to see Landgraf and Co. courted for a bigger profile within an enlarged Disney TV group. Of course, such a move would have implications for existing Disney/ABC TV Group brass starting with president Ben Sherwood.
The National Geographic Channels group, headed by Courteney Monroe, would likely remain an autonomous entity even after a sale as Fox owns most, but not all, of that joint venture with the National Geographic Society.
Meanwhile, the 22 regional Fox Sports cable channels would easily fold into the ESPN operation, which has long operated autonomously from Disney/ABC TV Group. Fox’s national Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2 cable networks are not part of the sale equation as those would surely raise red flags on an anti-trust basis if combined with ESPN. ESPN has not been in the regional sports network business — but the expansion with the Fox RSNs might still prove a hurdle on the regulatory front.
INTERNATIONAL
Fox’s collection of 300-plus international cable channels, its stake in Euro satcaster Sky and the growing Star India TV business are a big part of the deal’s appeal for Disney. The international TV assets aren’t as high-profile as the Hollywood brand names but they represent huge growth potential in an area where Disney is lagging its traditional media rivals. With little overlap, Disney would probably seek to keep existing management in place, at least for the near term.
(Pictured: Stacey Snider, Peter Rice, John Landgraf, Dana Walden, and Gary Newman)Kurdish fighters of the YPG taking part in the SDF operations against ISIS in northeastern Syria. Photo: ARA News
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Pentagon wants Trump to arm Syrian Kurds, increase boots on the ground
ARA News
Hasakah – Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) on Tuesday arrested a number of people in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah Governorate, suspected of ties to the Islamic State (ISIS) radical group.
The YPG captured at least five people in Shaddadi city south of Hasakah. The Kurdish forces said the suspects had ties to ISIS.
“They were ISIS supporters. According to security sources, the suspects have been planning to carry out terrorist attacks in Shaddadi,” local media activist Ghassan Abdelaziz told ARA News.
Shaddadi city was captured by the YPG and allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in February last year, after heavy fighting with ISIS. The progress came after the local troops, supported by an air cover from the U.S.-led coalition, cut off the main ISIS supply route in al-Hawl near Syria’s northeastern border with Iraq.
However, since then ISIS has been trying to infiltrate into the area, launching mortar and car bomb attacks.
“After failed attempts to regain positions in southern Hasakah, ISIS now tries to use some sleeper cells in areas like Shaddadi,” Abdelaziz told ARA News. “The Kurdish forces have a serious challenge now to reveal such cells in the liberated areas.”
Reporting by: Lorin Silo | Source: ARA News
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Join our Weekly NewsletterJake Tapper (CNN)
CNN’s Jake Tapper took to Twitter Wednesday morning, calling on President Trump’s “attack dogs” to come after him following a contentious interview with Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway.
Responding to an Axios report that “Republican operatives were urging at least one conservative-friendly website to write Jake Tapper hit pieces,” Tapper issued what could best be called a taunt to whomever decides to come after him.
“So now we sit and wait to see which obedient attack dog follows orders. Arf arf!!” Tapper tweeted.
Tuesday afternoon, Tapper called out Conway for the Trump administration’s continuous lies, including saying the media refuses to report on terrorist attacks.
Late Tuesday, conservative CNN panelist Matt Lewis called Tapper a “rock star” for his handling of Conway whom he also described as “laughable.”
Tapper, more than any other CNN host, has become a thorn in the side of the Trump administration on his daily The Lead program.
See Tapper’s tweet below:To the AUS Executive Committee:
We would like to congratulate you on an extremely well-attended General Assembly last night. We would also like to express our extreme disappointment and frustration concerning the poor communication, organization, and attitude which shaped your response to the unexpected numbers and thus took a toll on SSMU staff, clubs, services, executives, attendees, and other students using the building.
Because of your lack of contingency planning for the high turnout, the SSMU Executive and full-time staff had to neglect their other responsibilities to intervene in the crisis. When we asked your volunteers and members of your Executive Committee how to help, there was little to no direction provided and most seemed clueless as to any plan of action.
Our Security Supervisor had to call in extra agents on short notice, as well as calling on other staff members to stay overtime in order to ensure the security of the event. Our Executive and staff were outside communicating to your frustrated and confused members about what was going on. The AUS harassed our clubs, most notably the Muslim Students’ Association, to move out of rooms in order to accommodate your needs. After initially rebuffing their desire to livestream the event, you demanded that TVM – a volunteer-run student service – give you “tech support” and accommodate your needs at a moment’s notice.
While we are happy to work with the AUS to help you run events that are relevant to your members (who, after all, are all part of SSMU as well), such a partnership requires responsibility sides. Such failures reflect poorly on both of our organizations.
In short, we are not only disappointed with your poor planning, but also disgusted by your sense of entitlement and disrespect for the space, time, and resources of others.
Due to these concerns, the SSMU Executive Committee has decided to take the following actions:
The AUS Executive may not book any more space in the William Shatner University Centre until the term of the current AUS Executive Committee has expired, except on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the Building Managers. Groups which normally book space through the AUS are invited to contact VP Clubs & Services Carol Fraser directly [email protected].
The AUS will be billed for all security agents, staff overtime, services (including TVM), and cleaning costs incurred by last night’s event.
We demand that the AUS issue a public letter of apology to the affected clubs and services, our Security Supervisor, our staff, and all attendees – who are also SSMU members – who were in any way frustrated by the General Assembly.
Concerning the AUS’s Nuit Blanche event on March 22, we have changed the booking to “pending” status. The booking will only be accepted upon receipt of a complete, thorough, written document about the event, which will outline all activities and their locations, all volunteers and coordinators involved and their contact information, a detailed timeline including setup and clean-up, and a crisis management plan in the event of whatever mishaps may arise. This document must be submitted to the SSMU General Manager no later than noon on Monday, March 19.
We look forward to rebuilding our relationship into a more productive partnership.
Signed by Todd Plummer (Vice President, Internal) and Carol Fraser (Vice President, Clubs & Services) on behalf of the SSMU Executive Committee, 2011-2012.KHOU 11 News Houston Metro Detective David Nettles
A Houston man has been arrested after Google sent a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children saying the man had explicit images of a child in his email, according to Houston police.
The man was a registered sex offender, convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 1994, reports Tim Wetzel at KHOU Channel 11 News in Houston.
“He was keeping it inside of his email. I can’t see that information, I can’t see that photo, but Google can,” Detective David Nettles of the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce told Channel 11.
After Google reportedly tipped off the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Center alerted police, which used the information to get a warrant.
A search of the man’s other devices revealed more suspicious images and text messages. Police arrested him and he’s being held on a $US200,000 bond.
On one hand, most people would certainly applaud the use of technology to scan email in a case like this.
On the other, debate rages about how much privacy users can expect when using Google’s services like email. In a word: none.
A year ago, in a court brief, Google said as much. Then, in April, after a class-action case against Google for email scanning fell apart, Google updated its terms of service to warn people that it was automatically analysing emails.
Considering Google has been working to fight online child sexual abuse since 2006, it stands to reason the company would scan emails looking for those sorts of images. Google has never come right out and said so, but hinted strongly at it about a year ago when Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google Giving, specifically mentioned the National Center’s “CyberTipline” in a blog post. The CyberTipline receives leads and tips regarding suspected crimes.
Fuller explained:
In 2011, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s (NCMEC’s) Cybertipline Child Victim Identification Program reviewed 17.3 million images and videos of suspected child sexual abuse. … Since 2008, we’ve used ‘hashing’ technology to tag known child sexual abuse images, allowing us to identify duplicate images which may exist elsewhere. … We’re in the business of making information widely available, but there’s certain ‘information’ that should never be created or found. We can do a lot to ensure it’s not available online — and that when people try to share this disgusting content they are caught and prosecuted.
We reached out to Google for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
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Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.METALLICA appears to have finally begun the mixing process for its long-awaited follow-up to 2008's "Death Magnetic" album, tentatively due before the end of the year.
The band's studio progress was revealed last week by Dan Nykolayko, a member of the METALLICA staff who interviewed frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich for a Metallica.com article on the 20th anniversary of the group's "Load" LP.
In the article, which was posted on June 9, Nykolayko wrote: "I managed to corner Lars and James at HQ before they locked themselves in the control room with Greg Fidelman to start mixing the new album."
It is not clear when the interview with James and Lars actually took place.
Ulrich said in a recent interview with Metal Forces that June will be a decisive month for the band's long-awaited tenth studio album. He revealed: "We're now coming towards the end of the musical creative process and we're starting to look ahead and the process of how we're gonna share this record with the universe. The month of June is basically when we're gonna sit down and figure what we're gonna do with it all; what we're gonna call it and what's gonna be on it."
Ulrich cautioned fans, however, that he is not sure if it will actually be released this year. He explained: "If the record doesn't come out this year, then it won't be because it's not done. It will be because there's some sort of cosmic reason that it would be smarter to hold onto it until next year. But the record will be done this summer."
The group has been recording at METALLICA headquarters in San Rafael, California with Greg Fidelman, who was the engineeer on "Death Magnetic".
The band has one live date on its schedule at the moment, at the new U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on August 20. That concert, at which METALLICA will be joined by AVENGED SEVENFOLD and VOLBEAT, sold out all 66,000 tickets in less than ten minutes back in March.Thunder Bay Health Unit Media Update
January 11, 2016 - With an increase in whooping cough (pertussis) cases reported in the city and district over the last 4 months, the Health Unit is urging that individuals ensure they are up to date with their immunization against this disease, particularly those Individuals who are or will be around newborns and infants less than 6 months of age.
The Health Unit is aware of ten cases of whooping cough that have been identified through laboratory testing, with additional cases in close household contacts. Five people have been hospitalized; four of whom have been under 6 months of age.
Although this is not considered an outbreak for our district, outbreaks have been reported in other areas of the country over the same time frame.
Newborns and infants less than 6 months of age are particularly vulnerable to pertussis. They are more likely than any other age group to have serious disease and are more likely to require hospitalization. In rare cases, pertussis can result in death. Newborns and infants are also not yet protected by vaccination as the infant series of immunizations occurs over the first 18 months of life.
Whooping cough is highly infectious and is spread through coughing and sneezing. Symptoms are respiratory in nature and can include a prolonged cough. Pertussis and the transmission of the bacteria to others are greatly reduced through vaccination. The routine publicly funded vaccinations given to children and youth in Ontario include protection against pertussis. Pertussis vaccines are also included in publicly funded vaccine program for adults.
The Health Unit recommends:ES News Email 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
High street coffee shops could become “makeshift” police stations in future as Scotland Yard plans to axe 243 buildings and meeting points in a drive to save cash, it was claimed today.
Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced plans to close 40 police stations as well as dozens of neighbourhood officers and public contact points in libraries and supermarkets because few people visit them.
Instead, he has proposed local ward officers should hold “community contact sessions” in “convenient locations” for the public.
The decision marks the end of police setting up ‘contact points’ in libraries and supermarkets such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s and even Planet Organic in Muswell Hill.
The move will leave London with around 32 operational police stations open to the public, compared to 73 today.
Scotland Yard wants more people to report crime online and by telephone in future and will launch a new specialist phone investigation unit later this year.
However, questions are being raised over how police will meet Londoners in future with plans to close more than 70 neighbourhood office and public contacts points in the capital as well as 40 police stations.
London Assembly member and Conservative policing spokesman Steve O’Connell, said: “These station closures will effectively bring an end to the traditional method of contacting the police – an understandable move given the influence of modern technology.
“However, the additional closure of 131 Safer Neighbourhood bases raises the question of how and where people will have face-to-face contact with officers.
“The vague proposition of new ‘community contact sessions’ suggests high street coffee shops will be turned into makeshift police stations.
“If the Mayor is going to bring the public with him on this he needs to specifically outline his alternative contact methods, otherwise the Met risks becoming a faceless force.”
The Mayor has launched a consultation document on the proposals to close police stations and encourage more online crime reporting.
Senior officers and the Mayor want to see officers spend more time on the beat and be stationed in so-called “officer hubs” which could be based in remaining police buildings or in local council office or fire stations.
The document says “contact points” which were set up in communities after the last round of police station closures are “extremely poorly used.”
Police believe the changes could save more than £15 million a year in running costs of police stations and safer neighbourhood offices.
The plans come as the Met is facing budget savings of £400 million with the Mayor warning that government cuts could mean police numbers fall below 30,000.
Critics say the Mayor had already agreed a list of stations to close before launching the consultation document this week.
Sophie Linden, the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, said: “Londoners have been voting with their feet for years, and the fact is that just 8 per cent of crime reports are now made at front counters, down from 22 per cent in 2006.
"The Contact Points created by the last Mayor did not work. They have an average of just one or no visitors at all each week.
“That is why we have set out detailed draft proposals to transform the way local communities can engage with police officers, led by local Dedicated Ward Officers and tailored to local needs.
"We invite everyone to take part in our consultation to help to develop our final strategy.”
She said the Met planned to have at least two local dedicated beat officers in every London ward by the end of the year.
She added: “They will develop new community contact sessions in convenient locations. Contact Points will not be closed until these sessions are in place.”KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Two months after foreign countries and international agencies pledged $4.1 billion to help Nepal recover from its worst natural disaster, the government has yet to make arrangements to receive the money and has spent nothing on reconstruction.
A woman walks past the debris of a collapsed house as she leaves a temple, months after two deadly earthquakes in Kathmandu, Nepal July 28, 2015. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar
The United Nations estimates almost three million survivors of twin earthquakes in April and May – around 10 percent of the Himalayan nation’s population – need shelter, food and basic medical care, many in mountainous, hard-to-reach areas.
Govind Raj Pokharel, chief executive officer of the newly created National Reconstruction Authority, said the government was unlikely to start spending the money until October at the earliest because of delays in approving plans and concerns about starting building work in the monsoon season.
“The government’s response has been slow. I accept that,” said Pokharel.
Nepal has been criticized for its chaotic response to the quakes that killed almost 9,000 people. The country failed to adequately prepare even though experts had predicted an earthquake was likely. And then the government struggled to cope with relief.Four months later, many partially damaged buildings in Kathmandu are still standing and rubble is strewn across public parks. Tens of thousands of people are living in plastic tents, preyed upon by flies and mosquitoes, with muddy paths and no drains.
Maili Pariyar, 50, knitting a purse to sell outside her tent, said she only received food and tent materials from aid agencies. She has not been given anything by the government.
“We have lost everything. We are desperate,” she said. “How much longer do we have to wait for help?”
Pokharel said the government had failed to spend any money because ministers had still not signed off on rebuilding and aid distribution plans.He said the government made an error by attempting to pass a contentious constitution that will create a new political system and divide the country into new regions, a decision that has led to deadly clashes. The government argues the overhaul will help reconstruction in the long run by creating greater stability.
“We would have liked it if they concentrated on the reconstruction first,” Pokharel said. “That would have been better.”
Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nepal, said the government had been sluggish.
“The government needs to get going,” he said. “The next big challenge is to ensure that people living in tents are prepared for the winter.”After a two-month wait, Pokharel was appointed to head the reconstruction authority two weeks ago. He is now based in a government office that oversees printing because the earthquake damaged other buildings.”We have lost time and now we need to catch up,” he said.Fruit punch recipe with step by step photos. Fruit punch is a very delicious and healthy summer drink recipe. Fruit punch is usually a concoction of various fruit juices with club soda or water. Fruit punch is usually served as alternate to alcoholic drinks. Fruit punch recipe can have as many fruit juices as possible. The sweetener used in fruit punch recipe could be sugar or honey or any other sweetener of choice. Fruit punch drink is a very famous one in Indian street shops.
Fruit punch recipe is typically made in punch bowl. You can easily make this fruit punch recipe is a mixer. Usually a variety of chilled juices is mixed together in a punch bowl. The mixed juice is served with loads of crushed ice. Here I am sharing fruit punch recipe in the way made it. I prefer to use fresh juice always. There is nothing like serving fresh juice immediately. Here is a healthy and fresh fruit punch recipe for you all.
There cannot be a single fruit punch recipe. I have been making this for years with whatever fruits I have in hand. Initially I used to follow Sanjeev Kapoor’s fruit punch recipe for this summer drink recipe. I have changed the combinations and proportions as per our taste.The fruit punch recipe I am sharing today is the one we like the most. This is the easy fruit punch recipe ever. Use any seasonal fruits available. The thickness of fruit punch is a personal preference. I don’t like to add too much water or soda to my fruit punch recipe. I usually keep the ratio as 3/4 cup juice and 1/4 cup water or soda.
To make fruit punch recipe I have used orange, strawberry, kiwi and apple. Lemon and ginger adds flavor and punch. Addition of mint leaves gives a refreshing taste. You can add ice cubes while serving. You can even top with crushed ice if you like.
Serve fruit punch immediately. If stored for long the taste will change.
Here is how to make fruit punch recipe with step by step photos. If you are looking for more summer drink recipes do check mango mojito, strawberry mojito, muskmelon juice.
How to make fruit punch recipe
1. Wash and and peel apples and kiwi. Wash and hull the strawberries. Roughly chop the fruits. Transfer to a blender jar. Puree well along with sugar and peeled ginger.
2. Extract juice from orange and lemons. Mix well the prepared fruit puree.
3. Add soda or water. Serve fruit punch with mint leaves and ice cubes.
Fruit punch recipe card below:
5 from 1 vote Print Fruit punch recipe, how to make fruit punch Prep Time 20 mins Total Time 20 mins Fruit punch recipe, Quick and easy to make juice with varied fruits. Refreshing and healthy summer drink recipe. Course: drink Cuisine: world Servings : 6 Calories : 114 kcal Author : Harini Ingredients (1 cup=250 ml) 3 apples peeled and roughly chopped
2 kiwis peeled and chopped
10 strawberries hulled and chopped
Juice of 2 oranges
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon minced ginger
Water or soda
Mint leaves
Ice cubes
Sugar Instructions Wash and and peel apples and kiwi. Wash and hull the strawberries. Roughly chop the fruits. Transfer to a blender jar. Puree well along with sugar and peeled ginger. Extract juice from orange and lemons. Mix well the prepared fruit puree. Add soda or water. Serve fruit punch with mint leaves and ice cubes. Recipe Notes 1. You can add mango in this recipe.
2. Add water or soda as per preference3.. You can leave out water or soda too.
3. Add sugar according to the sweetness of fruits.
Sharing is caring!One of the ironies of winning an argument is that it leads to an even greater number of questions. The National Endowment for the Arts sided with the righteous in agreeing to consider video game projects for funding. It's true, we've won. Games are art. Now what do we do with them?
If games are art, does it make sense to present them in a museum? And if so, how exactly?
The most basic function of a museum has been to preserve things -- be it history, culture, art, or things that combine all three. With video games, this simple task can become massively challenging in a number of unique ways.
"It can be very complicated, because the original medium or hardware are no longer accessible or in the case of more modern games there might have been numerous revisions or patches, or in the case of online games the fact that the game really existed on a server somewhere," said Henry Lowood, curator for History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford, one of the world's biggest video game archives.
"The main problem we've had so far is because of formats -- the media on which the game exists. Almost every solution we're talking about nowadays involves extracting the content from that medium -- so it would be like the installation package that was on the disc, or cassette tapes or cartridges -- and moving it onto another medium that we can store on a long-term basis."
Lowood and his staff seek out old cartridges, floppy disks, compact discs, tape-based games and attempt to extract the data exactly as it was recorded. It's then transferred to a storage server for posterity. "To do that work of the data extraction we have a forensic workstation -- to my knowledge it's one of only three in the world that are used in research libraries," Lowood said. "There are two libraries in the US -- Emory and Stanford -- that have forensic workstations. So we do the whole business with write blocking to make sure that nothing is changed."
In cases where games are damaged or data has been corrupted, Lowood and his team will sometimes hire data recovery specialists to see if they can salvage things. In other cases, there may be a need to simply recreate data from scratch.
"The strategy of'recreation' has been developed most strongly in the area of new media art and digital art with museums," Lowood said. "There have been installations in the past that were set up and you can't really install things in the way they were in the past. It's impossible. Let's say someone did something in 1989 that involved drawing data from a stock market feed. You're not going to be able to do the same stuff that they did. The technology is different, the stock data is different."
"So there's a group that's been working on new media art that's developed an approach to that. They use a questionnaire with the artist to learn what the artist's intentions were, what kind of equipment they used. They basically put together a package so that in the future somebody could recreate that exhibit. What you preserve is more about information about the artist's intentions, photographs of what it looked like, or video."
If the idea of preserving video games as cultural and historical artifacts is uncontroversial, the question of whether or not video games should be treated as museum-worthy works of art is less straightforward.
I asked Frank Lantz, Zynga New York creative director and Interactive Telecommunications professor at NYU's Tisch School, if Doom belongs in a museum. He compared it to heavy metal. In the same way that bands like Black Sabbath intended their works to live in the world of everyday people, to place them in a museum would be "silly," a curator co-opting the intent of the artist. In the same way, most video game developers have intended their works to be enjoyed in the living room or the arcade, and not the white cube of the museum.
But even so, there is a real history of games and digital interactions that intended to be art. In 1966 Robert Rauschenberg combined digital art, music, and physical gameplay in "Open Score." The interactive artwork was a kind of tennis game meant to be played in a dark room. The only light was to come from the racquets held by each player and the balls they'd hit back and forth. Every time a player hit a ball a musical note would be emitted over a sound system and so the traditional form of two people competing was transformed into an abstract collaboration of color and sound.Last week, the New York Times reported there were nearly 50,000 incidents of mail surveillance in 2013. Under the "mail cover" program, which has been around for roughly a century, federal, state and even local law enforcement officials can trace a suspect’s mail using data collected from the outside of an envelope or a parcel, including sender and recipient, addresses and where the mail entered the postal system.
Law-enforcement officials obtain mail covers by placing a request with the Postal Inspection Service, who are in charge of vetting requests and asking the Postal Service turn over the data. (Opening the mail would require an additional step: obtaining a warrant.)
This is unsettling news for anyone who cares about privacy. The Inspection Service, which polices the mail for kiddie porn, illegal lotteries, and other perfidy, is not administering the program very well. An inspector general's report found numerous screw-ups. About 21 percent of approved mail-cover requests were granted without written authorization and the Inspection Service failed to review the program annually for policy compliance. Plainly, heads need to roll and the program needs reform.
For certain, the mail-tracking controversy underscores the importance of independent inspectors general and the Freedom of Information Act. It was the USPS IG who conducted the audit and refused the Postal Service’s request to keep it hidden from the public. FOIA helped the Times pry loose additional information about the mail cover program.
But at least three big questions remain unanswered.
The first concerns the growth of this program. Why did mail cover approvals skyrocket from about 8,000 per year between 2002 and 2012 to 49,000 in 2013? Is the Inspection Service, to venture a charitable hypothesis, simply becoming more efficient at processing these requests? Are local law-enforcement agencies catching on to this program, much as they did with the federally authorized asset seizure program? Or are other factors at play?
This leads to a second question worth a public response: how many law-enforcement requests for mail covers were denied? Knowing this number would clarify whether the Inspection Service is rubber-stamping these requests. Which it may well be, seeing as it authorized a renegade sheriff and prosecutor to use mail tracking to investigate a politician who dared criticize them. A former FBI agent has said the mail cover program is "so easy to use...you don’t have to go through a judge....You just fill out a form."
The IG report on this program was first released in June, and Politico immediately ran a story on it. The New York Times covered the topic in July, and further revealed that USPS is digitally recording the information of every
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Bangalore: In May 2015, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) set up a Central Fraud Registry to check growing bank fraud. After this, the Prime Minister’s Office called a meeting to review the fraud-detection system, a clear indication that the government was worried.
It was more than just a bunch of bounced cheques.
The media reported the move, but largely laid the blame on the rise in bank non-performing assets (NPA), loans in danger of default.
Now, data obtained by OnlineRTI.com, a Bangalore-based startup helping citizens file queries under the Right-to-Information (RTI) Act, via the RTI reveals that NPAs are not entirely to blame.
NPAs did rise 23% between 2013-14 and 2014-15, threatening India’s banking system, but it is also true that in the year since Narendra Modi’s government took charge, there has been a 100% increase in bank fraud (as per RBI data). Indeed, this is why the RBI set up the fraud registry and why the PMO reviewed the fraud-detection system.
Over the year since Modi’s government took office, the amount involved in bank fraud rose from Rs 10,170 crore ($1.6 billion) in the fiscal year 2013-14 to Rs 19,361 crore ($3 billion) in 2014-15, i.e. nearly 100%.
The fraud ranged from cheque alteration to fake loans, debit/credit card fraud to cyber fraud.
Maharashtra and West Bengal lead the way in bank fraud
The spike is mainly because of a multi-fold increase in cases of fraud recorded by banks in Maharashtra and West Bengal, both states accounting for more than 50% of the total loss through fraud.
While banks in Maharashtra saw a 150% increase in fraud, from Rs 2,445 crore in 2013-14 ($376 million) to Rs 6,115 crore in 2014-15 ($940 million), banks in West Bengal notched a six-fold increase in fraud, from Rs 773 crore ($118 million) to Rs 5,930 crore ($912 million).
The RBI has been able to close only 30% of these cases every year.
Public-sector banks appear to have borne the brunt of the fraud-spike, with the Punjab National Bank, which lost a sum of Rs 2,310 crore ($355 million), topping the list for 2014-15, followed by the Central Bank of India, where the lost amount stands at Rs 2,150 crore ($330 million), the data further reveal. Both banks recorded a fraud increase of more than 200% since 2012-13.
Experts are confounded why bank fraud has risen in West Bengal. While some believe more cases of fraud were reported, others said the increase in banking transactions could be responsible.
A“thorough probe” is needed to to explain the sudden rise in banking fraud in West Bengal, said Rajesh Goyal, a former banker and founder of allbankingsolution.com, a banking watchdog portal.
“The increase in fraud in the case of PNB is phenomenal and could be either because the figures are wrong or these were cases suppressed in earlier years but reported only now,” said Goyal. “Public-sector banks have never shown urgency to unravel the root causes of these [cases of fraud] or to find the modus operandi of the fraudsters. Soon after a probe is initiated, banks stop investigation with the plea that no further leads are available.”
The government should fast track such cases because they involve direct cheating or siphoning of the public money, said the All India Bank Employees Association’s general secretary Viswas Utagi.
Public-sector banks handle fraud better than private banks
Contrary to popular belief, public-sector banks have actually handled fraud better than private banks.
Despite a market share of 30%, private banks collectively account for around 40% of losses from bank fraud. India has 20 private banks, 26 public-sector banks and 30 foreign banks.
A RBI circular issued in July said that when banks discovered fraud, they were to report cases to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the police or to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office.
In some cases, bank staff were involved: 47 such cases of fraud, valued at Rs 177 crore, were detected during 2014-15, according to data submitted to Parliament.
When staff are involved, bank have always tried to suppress fraud and categorise them as NPAs (to show they were business loses), alleged Utagi.
NPAs, the fig leaf behind which fraud hides, soared 23% from Rs 2,51,060 crore ($38 billion) in March 2014 to Rs 3,09,409 crore ($48 billion) in March 2015, according to a statement in Parliament this July by Minister Of State (Finance) Jayant Sinha.
(Gangadhar S Patil is the founder of www.101reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroot journalists. He has worked with The Economic Times, DNA and The New Indian Express.)
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A social worker and three managers have been sacked for failings in the care of Baby P, Haringey Council has said.
The sackings follow the dismissal of Sharon Shoesmith as head of the London authority's children's services unit.
The 56-year-old was sacked without compensation in December after a critical Ofsted report.
Baby P was 17 months old when he died with more than 50 injuries in August 2007, despite being on the north London authority's child protection register.
'Loss of trust'
He suffered a catalogue of injuries including broken ribs and a broken back.
Haringey Council said Cecilia Hitchen, the deputy director of children and families, had been dismissed for "loss of trust and confidence" following the damning Ofsted report in December last year.
A council spokesman said social worker Maria Ward, team manager Gillie Christou and head of safeguarding services Clive Preece were sacked for gross misconduct.
A fifth employee, social worker Sylvia Henry, had no action taken against her because there was no case to answer, the council found.
The General Social Care Council also currently has interim suspension orders against Miss Ward and Miss Christou.
Baby P's mother, 27, who cannot be named, pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the toddler's death.
Her boyfriend, 32, who also cannot be named, and Jason Owen, 36, from Bromley, Kent, were found guilty of the same offence. All three are awaiting sentence.
Following the Baby P case the government asked Lord Laming to carry out a nationwide review of child welfare services.
He reported back in March, attacking public bodies for failing to put recommendations made six years earlier into practice.Share. Lookin' good. Lookin' good.
A fresh batch of new photos taken from the set of X-Men: Apocalypse offer a sneak peek at Angel, as well as a look at the film's new costumes.
In a trio of posts on Instagram, director Bryan Singer revealed a handful of tantalizing images for fans to salivate over, not the least of which includes an early look at Ben Hardy's Angel hanging out in a 1980s fight club in Berlin.
In addition, here's a hazy, silhouetted look at the new costumes.
And, finally, here is Singer himself, standing below a giant metal X.
For more on X-Men: Apocalypse ahead of its May 27 release next year, check out this new image of Storm in Egypt and this additional batch of hi-res images. Then check out our comprehensive character gallery below.
X-Men: Apocalypse Characters Round-Up 10+ IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 OF 42 X-Men: Apocalypse will be depicting some of the most comic-booky of costumes yet seen in an X-Men movie. Here we have Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse and Olivia Munn as Psylocke. 01 OF 42 X-Men: Apocalypse will be depicting some of the most comic-booky of costumes yet seen in an X-Men movie. Here we have Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse and Olivia Munn as Psylocke. X-Men: Apocalypse Characters Round-Up Download Image Captions ESC
Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.When Russian air strikes kill civilians in Syria, it is big news in U.S. newspapers, but there is near-total silence when U.S. bombs kill civilians in Iraq or Syria, a human rights dilemma addressed by Nicolas J S Davies.
By Nicolas J S Davies
USA Today reported on April 19 that U.S. air forces bombing Syria and Iraq have been operating under new, looser rules of engagement since last fall. The war commander, Lt Gen Sean McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials made it clear to USA Today that U.S. air strikes are killing more civilians as a result of the new rules.
Under these new rules of engagement, the U.S. has conducted a major escalation of its bombing campaign against Mosul, an Iraqi city of about 1.5 million people, which has been occupied by Islamic State since 2014. Reports of hundreds of civilians killed in U.S. air strikes reveal some of the human cost of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement.
Previous statements by U.S. officials have absurdly claimed that over 40,000 U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Syria have killed as few as 26 civilians. Speaking to USA Today, a senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war dismissed such claims, noting that heavier civilian casualties were inevitable in an air war that has destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles.
Professor Souad Al-Azzawi, the award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist from Mosul who conducted the first studies of the health effects of depleted uranium after the First Gulf War, has compiled a partial list of air strikes that have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure in Mosul, most of them since the new U.S. rules of engagement went into effect. The list is based on reports by Mosul Eye, Nineveh Reporters Network, Al Maalomah News Network, other local media and contacts in Mosul and is not intended as a complete list of civilian casualties or civilian infrastructure destroyed.
Missing a Crisis
As I reported for ConsortiumNews in January, this kind of “passive reporting” from war zones can only capture a fraction of actual civilian casualties, and an even smaller fraction in areas outside government control and beyond the reach of conventional media:
-Many government buildings have been destroyed. As U.S. officials told USA Today, such attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but they have killed night-time security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings.
-Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed.
-Two large dairies were bombed, killing 100 civilians and wounding 200 more, including local people lining up outside to buy milk and dairy products.
-Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19 and 20 (the 13th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq) killed 92 civilians and wounded 135, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women’s dormitory and a faculty family apartment building from which only one child survived.
-50 civilians (including entire families) were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on two apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa.
-A mother and her four children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district in East Mosul on April 20, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged.
-22 civilians were killed (including 11 members of one family) in an air strike on houses in front of the Mosul Medical College.
-20 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waquf building and surrounding houses and shops.
-The Nineveh Plains water treatment plant was bombed in October 2014, and another water treatment plant and a hospital were shut down by an air strike on a power station in northeast Mosul in July 2015.
-Flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops have been bombed, with civilian casualties, all over Mosul.
-The Central Bank of Mosul in Ghazi Street and the main and local branches of two other banks, Rafidain and Rasheed, have been bombed, with heavy damage and civilian casualties in the areas surrounding each of them. After the first bank was struck, all the cash was removed from the others before they were bombed a few weeks later.
-Three workers were killed and 12 wounded in an air strike on the former Pepsi bottling plant.
-The Governor’s residence and guest houses and the Turkish consulate were hit by air strikes.
-An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno that caused 150 casualties on April 18.
-Urban planning and engineering planning offices were bombed in Hay Al Maliyah.
-Air strikes targeted a food warehouse, power plants and electric sub-stations across West Mosul.
-The Al Hurairah Bridge was destroyed by air strikes.
Punishing Civilians
At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul, as well as destroying much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions. And yet this is, by all accounts, only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul.
One and a half million civilians are trapped in the city, 30 times the United Nation’s estimate of the number of civilians in Fallujah before the November 2004 assault by U.S. Marines that killed 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly civilians. Meanwhile Islamic State (also known as ISIS,ISIL and Daesh) is preventing civilians from evacuating the city, believing that their presence protects its forces from even heavier bombardment.
International humanitarian law is absolutely clear that military attacks on civilians, civilian areas and civilian infrastructure are strictly prohibited. The presence of several thousand ISIS militants in a city of 1.5 million people does not justify indiscriminate bombing or attacks on civilian targets.
As the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq warned U.S. officials in a Human Rights Report in 2007, “The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian nature of an area.”
Bombing food warehouses, flour mills and water treatment plants is also a war crime.
As Jean Ziegler, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, protested in 2005, as U.S. forces besieged other cities in Iraq, “A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition’s occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of food and water as a weapon of war.” He called this, “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”
The controlled leak of the new rules of engagement to USA Today appears to be an “information operation” to provide political cover for air strikes that violate the laws of war and are killing large numbers of civilians, as the U.S. escalates its air strikes against Mosul and other cities occupied by Islamic State.
Controlling Information
Post-Cold War U.S. military strategists have theorized that sophisticated U.S. “information warfare” can shape public perceptions to remove political constraints on the use of U.S. military force.
As Major Ralph Peters, an officer responsible for “future warfare” in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, wrote in a 1997 military journal article, “We are already masters of information warfare … we will be writing the scripts, producing (the videos) and collecting the royalties.”
Peters also predicted that U.S forces would “do a fair amount of killing … to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.”
On the domestic front, the U.S.’s information warfare has proven so effective that most Americans know almost nothing of the real impacts of U.S. military operations. The median response to a 2007 AP-Ipsos poll that asked Americans how many Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was 9,890, or 1.5 percent of the total revealed in 2006 by a comprehensive mortality study. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Victory of ‘Perception Management.’”]
But internationally, the wartime conditions now afflicting people from Afghanistan to Nigeria to Ukraine have created new realities that render Western narratives increasingly suspect and drive an urgent quest for other ones that can better explain the violent and chaotic world in which more and more people are forced to live.
The presumption that U.S. information warfare could brainwash the world to provide political cover and impunity for systematic U.S. aggression and other war crimes is collapsing under the real-world impacts of U.S. policy.
Spreading Extremism
Wahhabi jihadism is thriving in the new reality born of the U.S. government’s hubris and aggression. The fundamental contradiction of the militarized “war on terror” has always been that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadi groups who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world.
Meanwhile U.S. wars and covert operations against secular enemies like Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad keep creating new zones of chaos where the jihadis can set up shop.
U.S. officials, not least President Barack Obama, have acknowledged publicly that there is therefore “no military solution” to jihadism. But successive U.S. administrations have proven unable to resist the lure of military expansion and escalation at each new stage of the crisis, unleashing wars that have killed about 2 million people, plunged a dozen countries into complete chaos and exploded Wahhabi jihadism from its original safe havens in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan to countries across the world.
In 2014, as I wrote at the time, the mostly Sunni Arab people of northern and western Iraq had been tortured, terrorized and murdered by U.S.- and Iranian-backed death squads for ten years and accepted the rule of Islamic State as the lesser of two evils.
If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies now follow through with their threatened assault on Mosul, the resulting massacre will join Fallujah, Guantanamo and Obama’s drone wars as a new, powerful symbol and catalyst for the next mutation of Wahhabi jihadism, which is likely to be more globalized and unified.
But although Al Qaeda and Islamic State have proven adept at manipulating U.S. leaders into ever-escalating cycles of violence, the jihadis cannot directly order American pilots to bomb civilians. Only our leaders can do that. So our leaders bear the moral and legal responsibility for these atrocities, just as Islamic State’s leaders bear the responsibility for theirs.
Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.Richard Simmons has been ordered to pay the National Enquirer's legal bill following his failed bid to sue the magazine for defamation.
The exact amount has not been determined yet according to TMZ, but could reportedly run into the hundreds of thousands.
The reclusive fitness guru, 69, lost his lawsuit against American Media Inc. last month after it published a front page story in 2016 saying he was transitioning into a woman.
Footing the bill: Richard Simmons has been ordered to pay the National Enquirer's legal bill following his failed bid to sue the magazine for defamation
The court ruled that identifying an individual as transgender may not necessarily expose them to 'hatred, contempt or ridicule' and would not be considered defamatory in nature.'
'While, as a practical matter, the characteristic may be held in contempt by a portion of the population, the court will not validate those prejudices by legally recognizing them,' the judge added.
Simmons, 69, plans to appeal to the tentative ruling, his lawyer, Neville Johnson told TMZ, after the pair received the devastating news.
Simmons previously confirmed that he is not transgender and even created a pointed list of reasons why in an ongoing explosive lawsuit with the publishing company.
The comedian has been living as a recluse for years, and the June 2016 article claimed his transition was the reason why. The magazine also published claims that Simmons had a 'boob job' and 'castration surgery.'
Bill: The exact amount has not been determined yet according to TMZ, but could reportedly run into the hundreds of thousands
On the stand: The Longtime fitness guru lost his lawsuit against American Media Inc. last month after it published a front page story last year saying he was transitioning into a woman
Simmons filed legal documents on August 20 outlining why the story is wrong, starting with the straightforward statement: 'I am a male.'
The filing read: 'I am not transgender. I have never sought to obtain any medical treatment or procedure designed to transition from male to female.'
Simmons also said he has never had breast implant surgery, and he never 'consulted with any medical professional regarding sex reassignment surgery.'
The magazine's cover at issue exclaimed: 'Richard Simmons: He's now a woman!' The front page piece shows what appears to be Simmons lying down in make-up and a wig.
Court: Simmons filed his suit against the Enquirer and parent company American Media in May 2017 (pictured in 2013 before he went into hiding)
Simmons' legal team filed a sworn statement by his former assistant who admits he sold photos of Simmons to the magazine and gave a two-hour interview, but never gave information that would have amounted to the cover's headline.
Mauro Oliveira confessed he sold photos of Simmons dressed as a woman and gave a two-hour interview to a story broker about his former boss in May 2016.
'Although I may have said that Richard Simmons's chest looks like the chest of someone who might be on hormones as well as stating that Richard Simmons told me that he sometimes feels like someone is trapped inside his body, I never stated that Richard Simmons is now a woman, had breast implants or had a sex-change surgery,' he said in his signed declaration, according to the Daily News.
Oliveira also said when he saw the Enquirer's cover, he was'shocked and disturbed.'
Once a familiar face on TV, Simmons has been holed up inside his Los Angeles mansion for the last 42 months aside from going to the hospital for four days in April.
Leak: Simmons with his now former assistant Mauro Oliveira. Oliveira says he sold info and photos of his former boss to a story peddler, but says he never gave info saying Simmons is now a woman
His admission to hospital for treatment of indigestion is thought to be the first time he has left home in three years.
The aerobics actor had spent four days inside Cedars Sinai hospital in Beverly Hills where he was being treated for indigestion.
Even when he was seen briefly out in April, Simmons kept hidden under a blanket in the backseat of a Mercedes car driven by his long-term housekeeper, Teresa Reveles, on the way back to his LA home.
When Simmons originally filed his suit against the Enquirer's parent company, American Media defended the cover story too saying calling someone transgender is not an insult.
Simmons since addressed his support of the transgender community, while still taking issue with the report published in the Enquirer.
'I fully support transgender individuals and their struggle to achieve acceptance and equality. Nonetheless, the false and fabricated claims that I was contemplating 'castration' and have had a 'boob job' have caused me extreme embarrassment.'You are not logged in Gunfright V1.00 [2017]
Released by :
Rod & Emu
Release Date :
2 April 2017
Type :
C64 Game
User rating: 9.9/10 (19 votes) See votestatistics
Credits :
Code.... Emu of Rod & Emu Music.... Saul Cross of RGCD
SIDs used in this release :
Gunfright (/MUSICIANS/C/Cross_Saul/Gunfright.sid)
Download :
http://csdb.dk/getinternalfile.php/156807/GunfrightV100.zip (downloads: 1212)
Look for downloads on external sites:
Pokefinder.org
User Comment
Submitted by emu on 30 April 2017
New version Gunfright V1.10 now available. User Comment
Submitted by Yogibear on 10 April 2017
Great stuff guys! User Comment
Submitted by grasstust on 4 April 2017
Excellent conversion! And if you set the controls to directional, they are just fine. Music is very nice too, great work you all! User Comment
Submitted by emu on 4 April 2017
Yes the controls are a bit difficult to use in these types of game.
I did try to offer as many options as possible on the control front and I set the keyboard layout to the same as the Amstrad version.
I might have to look at using a re-definable keyboard option in future productions and see if that helps. User Comment
Submitted by molebrain on 4 April 2017
The controls are confusing, but man, wow...I can't wait to see more ports for C128 VDC!!! User Comment
Submitted by Kitty on 3 April 2017
Excellent ;-) User Comment
Submitted by Mr. Mouse on 3 April 2017
Excellent! A classic speccy game now on C64! User Comment
Submitted by Sledge on 3 April 2017
This is so cool. Really. 10/10 for the C128 VDC release :) User Comment
Submitted by emu on 3 April 2017
C128 VDC version users please note that the newer versions of Vice seem to have a problem with the VDC version printing lines down the screen.
You can fix it by switching off the "video cache" in the Video Settings/VDC Renderer box in WinVice. User Comment
Submitted by saulc12 on 3 April 2017
Excellent work as ever - the performance is surprisingly good and this is a really playable conversion. User Comment
Submitted by GeoAnas on 3 April 2017
10/10! User Comment
Submitted by emu on 3 April 2017
Thanks everyone for your comments.
Please note that the best tactic on the bandit draw screen is wait for the bandit to draw first (don't touch the controls). The DRAW!! text will turn red and you get plenty of time to plug him!
If you draw first you only get a fraction of a second to plug him! User Comment
Submitted by cadaver on 3 April 2017
Excellent, screen refresh is certainly enough to be playable! User Comment
Submitted by The Gothicman on 3 April 2017
Just WOW!
10/10 :) User Comment
Submitted by G-Force on 3 April 2017
Superb job. User Comment
Submitted by Dymo on 3 April 2017
Wow, really nice! :) User Comment
Submitted by Morpheus on 3 April 2017
I love these conversions! Really great work. User Comment
Submitted by Rotteroy on 3 April 2017
Just a first impression as I have only tested for like 5 minutes, but... 10 from me too!! :) Thank you Emu & Co for making this! User Comment
Submitted by Tom-Cat on 3 April 2017
AMAZING! And the speed is fine too, great conversion!!! :) 10/10 User Comment
Submitted by emu on 2 April 2017
Gunfright is now available for C64, C128 (Vic-II & VDC) and Plus4 (TED & SID sound).
Mariuszw has done another excellent Z80 to 6502 conversion for the Atari 800 which this is based on.
Again this is all CPU grunt (the only hardware sprite is used on the title screen and no hardware scrolling is used) but the speed is still very good. The C64 version is around the speed of the Amstrad & MSX versions and the C128 version is around the speed of the Spectrum version. The Plus4 versions speed sits between the C64 & C128 versions.
Saulc has supplied some great SID music & sfx which really add to the game.
To keep the C64 versions gameplay and speed the same as the C128 version I have increased the scroll speed of the C64 version slightly. This can be adjusted in the main game menu by pressing S (red border flash) for the slower/standard scroll speed and F (green border flash) for the faster scroll speed
Ive tested it on as much hardware as I can and it should work okay on PAL & NTSC machines and it fully supports SuperCPU & TC64 (by using frame syncing to slow the game down to a manageable speed). Mariuszw has also kept all the 6502 code accelerator safe, no illegal ops used.
The second fire button of the C64GS joystick is also supported for view change (not Plus4 version). The front end will automatically turn this feature off if a problem is detected, as not all modern hardware supports the extra joystick lines. The Space Bar can also be used in joystick mode to change the view or the Z key in keyboard mode.
A number of cheats have been added in the front end (press E). Please note that selecting a game start level greater than 8 will screw up the bonus game but the game will remain playable.
The C128 VDC version runs well but is just a modification of the C128 Vic-II version really. Trying to find a configuration that worked on all the various VDC versions wasnt easy so I just used the standard configuration with double pixel mode and the 8502 CPU set to 2Mhz (no tricks have been used) so it doesnt run as fast as it could have. I went for compatibility over performance. It still runs at about the same speed as the C128 Vic-II version anyway.
Ive included the source code in the build folder. Please note that some of my outside of game code is a bit hacky as I just wanted to get the game converted as quickly as possible. I will look to improve it in any future versions. Search CSDb All Releases Groups Sceners Events BBS SIDs ------- Forum Comments Advanced Navigate Prev - Random - Next
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Funding status:Raqqa, Syria was liberated from ISIS this week, but the victory has been buried in the news. Rep. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) suggests that's because it would force the press to credit the Trump administration with its tactical changes in the region.
"I agree that it’s a story that’s enormously important, and nobody’s picking up on it," Sullivan told radio host Hugh Hewitt Thursday.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announced Tuesday that the 3-year struggle was over - a struggle which reduced Raqqa to rubble. Under ISIS's "barbaric reign," Syrians were witness to public executions for minor offenses like smoking.
Sullivan said that unlike the previous administration, which denied that troops were in combat in the region, Trump and Defense Secretary James Mattis have proven there is a new sheriff in town.
"You remember during the Obama years, if you were a truck driver delivering oil or fuel for ISIS, you had a free pass," Sullivan recalled. "Nobody was going to touch you. Trust me, right now, with the new tactics, particularly implemented by Secretary Mattis and General Dunford, mostly Mattis, if you were driving any kind of vehicle that was delivering oil or any kind of refinery that ISIS was in control of, and by the way, that’s tens of millions of dollars to finance their terrorist operations."
The administration certainly deserves credit for Raqqa's liberation, Sullivan said. Yet, even more deserving of our praise are the men and women who were on the ground fighting for freedom.
"But you know who really, really deserves the credit is our troops on the front lines risking their lives in combat, yes, they’re in combat, and they’ve done a phenomenal job with good Pentagon leadership," Sullivan noted. "And I think every American should be proud."From dandruff to deep sea vents, an ecologically hyper-diverse fungus
Contact:
Anthony Amend, (808) 956-8369
Assistant Professor, Botany
Talia Ogliore, (808) 956-4531
Public Information Officer, Vice Chancellor for Research
Assistant Professor, BotanyPublic Information Officer, Vice Chancellor for Research
Posted: Aug 21, 2014
Scanning Electron Micrograph of Malassezia sp. Credit: Janice Haney Carr, CDC. Scanning Electron Micrograph of Malassezia sp. Credit: Janice Haney Carr, CDC.
Assistant Professor Anthony Amend Assistant Professor Anthony Amend
A ubiquitous skin fungus linked to dandruff, eczema and other itchy, flaky maladies in humans has now been tracked to even further global reaches—including Hawaiian coral reefs and the extreme environments of arctic soils and deep sea vents.
A review in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens considers the diversity, ecology and distribution of the fungi of the genus Malassezia in light of new insights gained from screening environmental sequencing datasets from around the world.
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa scientist Anthony Amend discovered that members of this genus encompass a species and ecological diversity far greater than previously credited, and appear to have diversified repeatedly into and out of marine environments. Until recently, these fungi were assumed to have evolved to inhabit mammalian skin.
“We have found multiple new examples of these fungi on corals, sponges and algae, and in water samples, deep sea thermal vents and sediments from Hawai‘i and around the world,” Amend said. “Equally as remarkable, a single strain of the noted human associate, Malassezia restricta, is found in some of the most extreme and disconnected habitats on the planet, including arctic soils and hydrothermal vents.”
Scratching your head yet? We’re not the only ones. Marine mammals like seals, as well as fish, lobsters, sponges, plankton and corals apparently also have that Malassezia itch. In fact, the fungus appears to dominate certain marine environments.
Emerging evidence even suggests that an interaction with warming ocean waters is linked to a reef banding disease observed at Palmyra Atoll for which a new Malassezia is implicated.
“Residence in such a broad range of habitats is exceptional and clearly ranks this dandruff-causing fungus as one of the most ecologically diverse on the planet,” Amend said. “Marine Malassezia should most certainly be the focus of future research into the diversity and distribution of this enigmatic group.”
CITATION:
Amend A (2014) From Dandruff to Deep-Sea Vents: Malassezia-like Fungi Are Ecologically Hyper-diverse. PLoS Pathog 10(8): e1004277. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1004277
For more information, visit: http://www.amendlab.com/The Art of Vintage Part II by Allie Michelle
Read Part I here.
The Pin-Up
The Pin-Up pushed the envelope in terms of sexual expression. Seductive with a sweet side, she is the original sex symbol; edgy, flirty, sexy – and not afraid to show it.
The Clothes
During the 1950s, the wholesome Pin-Up girl of the 40s gave way to the more racy Bettie Page types. The new Pin-Up added some spice to the wardrobe such as tight bodices, flowing or fitted skirts, high heels and sexy undergarments. The clothes of the Pin-Up emphasize a full figure, hourglass shape that accentuates a woman’s curves and flatter her figure. They feature bright colors and bold prints such as the cherry print, polka dots, and gingham.
Look 1: The Swing Dress
The Swing Dress is tastefully sexy, and lovely on almost any body type. The dress fits through the waist and falls into a medium full, full, or circle skirt of knee, calf, or tea length that emphasizes the hips. A crinoline was often worn underneath to give even more shape to the skirt. Predominant halter styles include v-neck, bandeau, and sweetheart neck lines. Strong yet feminine, red and pink shades are popular colors as well as navy, black, black and white combinations, blues, and greens. Common prints include leopard, polka dot, cherry print, large roses or floral patterns, and plaid. Pair with matching heals or wedges.
Look 2: The Wiggle Dress
The Wiggle Dress refers to a form-fitting dress or a pencil skirt with the width of the hem narrower than the hips. The silhouette skims the body to the knees and even the slit at the back won’t allow a long stride, so women “wiggle” as they walk; accordingly, sometimes this style of dress is referred as The Wiggle Dress. The dress flatters even the curviest of women.
Look 3: The Cigarette Pants
To achieve this flirty look, wear a halter, v-neck, bandeau, or sweetheart top with high-waisted Cigarette Pants, ankle length Capri pants or leggings. Pair with matching heels, wedges, Mary Janes, retro flats, or saddle shoes.
The Accessories
Cat Eyes Frames: Donned by classic sex symbols including Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, Cat Eye Frames portray an intelligent femininity and sex appeal. There are cat eye frames becoming to all face shapes. Women with round faces look best with frames that add angles to their bone structure, so frames with sharp edges look best. Women with a heart-shaped face or a square face should select frames with rounded edges.
Bandana: Tie a bandana or colorful headband to create a
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The rumor mill has been abuzz this weekend with various sources stating Windows 10 Mobile will be shortly available for Windows Phone 8.1 devices. First we had the @LumiaHelp account on Twitter who said that Windows 10 Mobile will become available "soon". Secondly, we got news from NokiaPowerUser (NPU) whose sources claim that Microsoft is preparing to make some Mobile related announcements on January 12.
@Devangtwi_1991 Win 10 Mobile will become available soon. Lumia 950 & 950 XL ship with Win 10, w/ additional devices to follow shortly. ^MS — Lumia Help (@LumiaHelp) January 2, 2016
We know Microsoft is gearing up to officially release Windows 10 Mobile for older devices but as with all unverified rumors this info should be taken with a pinch of salt.. NPU also claims that the Lumia 850 will be unveiled at a rumored January 12 'event'.
When the new updates are made available for users, Microsoft may be able to push the update to devices without the carriers' involvement. We know that users on Windows 10 Mobile can get updates to new versions directly from Microsoft without being approved by carriers, but it's unclear whether this update from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile will require carrier approval.
Source: NPUWhen Montana's governor, Brian Schweitzer, launched his campaign for re-election this summer he chose to be pictured on a horse lassooing a calf, and in silhouette against a barn door, presumably after a long hard day on the ranch. What was not mentioned was the word Democrat - a party affiliation that in some parts of the west still conjures up associations with gay marriage, gun control and abortion.
Those sensibilities could be in for a shake-up as Barack Obama launches the Democrats' most aggressive drive for years for votes from the Rocky Mountain west.
The strategy unrolling now across the west could turn once reliably Republican states such as Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and possibly even Montana into America's new electoral battleground. But it is Colorado which is viewed as the biggest prize.
"Colorado defines competitive," said Dick Wadhams, the chairman of the state Republican party. "I think either party could carry Colorado."
It all hinges on how you define Democrat - a political label that has been comprehensively altered by a new generation of elected politicians in the west - and an impressive grassroots organisation now being assembled by the Obama campaign.
The big push begins next week, when some 50,000 Democrats are expected to converge on Denver for the party's convention. Democrats see the convention, especially the spectacle surrounding Obama's nomination speech at a giant football stadium, as a chance to impress on voters in Colorado and other states the party's renewed commitment to the west.
Obama's first appearances on his return from holiday this week were in Nevada and New Mexico, and he is planning to campaign in Colorado after the convention. "Colorado and the west are both a big focus of this campaign," said Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Denver.
Not that John McCain, the Republican candidate, is expected to yield easily. McCain has lived in Arizona for the last 25 years, and has made frequent visits to Colorado and Nevada.
But after eight years of an unpopular George Bush, Democrats believe that voters in Colorado and other states are disillusioned with Republicans. They are frustrated with the rising deficit, the war in Iraq, and worried about the economy. This could be Obama's moment.
Unlike previous elections, when the Republicans rode a wave of emotion over terrorism, or issues such as gay marriage and abortion, this time voters' concerns are down to earth: the economy and the need for renewable energy sources.
That has led to a blurring of the conventional political divisions. In Colorado, unaffiliated voters outnumber Democrats and Republicans. Soaring petrol prices have turned conservative farmers into ardent conservationists. Even the Republican candidates have taken to carrying around solar film panels and using public transport to get to campaign events.
The early signs are encouraging for Obama. The two candidates are virtually tied in Colorado, although a Rasmussen poll last week put McCain ahead of Obama in the state for the first time in seven months. McCain and Obama are also running neck and neck in Nevada and New Mexico.
But Obama claims the edge in organising, grafting his campaign on top of rejuvenated local organisations.
In every state of the west, the Obama campaign has taken the lead in voter registration, increasing the number of Democrats.
In New Mexico, the campaign has opened 20 offices - compared to just five in the 2004 elections - and the organising effort has extended into rural areas that have not been involved in presidential contests for decades.
In Colorado, Obama's campaign has opened 10 offices, including in towns seen as redoubts of the Christian right.
Even in Montana, a state of 950,000, the campaign has deployed 40 paid organisers to register new voters.
Wadhams insists that much of the excitement about Obama's organising prowess is over-stated. "There is a lot of smoke and mirrors," he said.
But Democrats across the west believe enthusiasm about Obama's candidacy and the campaign's investment in the region could make this the Democrats' moment.
"That investment and the energy that we see on the ground in New Mexico will absolutely translate in November," said Brian Colón, the chairman of the New Mexico Democratic party.
The challenge for Obama though will be to resist Republican efforts to brand him as an elitist, or a textbook liberal more at home in San Francisco or New York than in the west.
For the last 40 years, the west has sent only Republicans to the White House - except for 1992 when Bill Clinton benefited from a third party candidate who drained Republican support. By 2000, Republicans governed all eight states, and controlled 13 of the 16 Senate seats.
Then Democratic activists began to plot their comeback. In Colorado, local entrepreneurs began funnelling money towards liberal causes, building up institutions that could put Democrats on a surer footing. First came the thinktanks, then media monitoring organisations. By 2004, the local renewal efforts under way in Colorado and other states had a powerful patron in Howard Dean, the Democratic national committee chairman.
Under Dean, the Democrats began putting money and resources into building up party networks even in states which had little prospect of voting a Democrat into the White House. Western Democrats credit the strategy with gaining a foothold for the party even in staunchly Republican states such as Utah and Wyoming, and say it will prove its value over the coming years.
"In a place like Montana there simply weren't the resources to keep a party headquarters opened during the entire year in non-election years and so it was very difficult," said Schweitzer. "It kept people on the ground recruiting new candidates, maintaining voter files, making sure we have county committees that are working and organised."
At the same time, the Democrats began recruiting a new generation of organisations, and began scouting for political candidates who could appeal to moderate voters in the west.
Eight years on, five of the eight governors of western states are now Democrats, and five of the 16 senators.
Betsy Markey, who is hoping to unseat a Christian right member of Congress in Colorado, has a simple formula for success that Obama might want to heed. What makes a successful Democrat in the west? "The government not telling you how to live your life and what to do," she said.Random Dead Presidents Fact of the Day: 4.24.10
Grover Cleveland is fairly well-known for being the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms in the White House (from 1885-1889 as the 22nd President and from 1893-1897 as the 24th). Cleveland is also the only President who was of fighting age during the Civil War to not serve in the military. Although he was drafted, Cleveland purchased a substitute to fight in his place, which was a legal option under the Conscription Act of 1863, paying $150 to a Polish immigrant named George Benninsky to replace him. Cleveland served as assistant district attorney of Erie County, New York during that time and Benninsky eventually returned home safely from the war.
It was not an aversion to difficult responsibilities that led Cleveland to purchase a substitute during the Civil War. As Sheriff of Erie County, New York from 1871-1873, Cleveland felt it was his duty to perform the role of public executioner rather than force subordinates to carry out the unfortunate task. While Sheriff, the future President personally executed two men (both of whom were convicted murderers) by hanging.Image caption Saif al-Islam Gaddafi studied for a PhD at the LSE
The London School of Economics has been heavily criticised for a "chapter of failures" in its links with the Gaddafi regime in Libya.
A report by former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf says mistakes and errors of judgement damaged the LSE's reputation.
The school's director, Sir Howard Davies, resigned in March over a £1.5m gift from a foundation led by Colonel Gaddafi's son Saif, a former student.
The LSE says it accepts all Lord Woolf's recommendations.
The LSE's centre for global governance had received £300,000 of the donation from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, when Lord Woolf was appointed to head the independent external inquiry in March 2011.
The LSE's commercial arm had also secured a contract worth £2.2m to train Libyan civil servants.
Lord Woolf's remit was to look at how the LSE came to ignore warnings and risk its reputation by forging close links with the former Gaddafi regime.
The institution's involvement with Libya caused embarrassment at the time of the Libyan uprising in February and led students there to stage a protest.
'Significant risk'
Lord Woolf says LSE's links with Libya exposed it to a "significant degree of risk" which would have been missed, had the Gaddafi regime not collapsed.
He says links between the LSE and Libya were allowed to grow unchecked, without due diligence assessments taking place.
Image caption Students at the LSE were embarrassed by the institution's involvement with the Gaddafi regime
He describes what he calls a "chapter of failures" in the way the proposed donation was scrutinised by the LSE's council, saying that due diligence "remained at best embryonic".
"The actual source of money gifted... was never established", the report says, and "Saif Gaddafi's word alone was relied upon."
He also concludes that the timing of the donation, six weeks after Saif Gaddafi was awarded a PhD, was "unfortunate", "risky", "indicative of naivety at the LSE" and gave the impression that Saif had "purchased his degree".
Lord Woolf says academics and staff acted in, what they perceived to be the best interests of the School, but the donation would not have been accepted if its source had been properly checked.
He singles out Sir Howard Davies for criticism, concluding that "despite his great experience and ability, responsibility for what went wrong must rest with the [former] director."
He also blames LSE administrators Fiona Kirk and Adrian Hall for their roles in the affair and the former head of the centre for global governance, Professor David Held, who was closely involved in supervising Saif Gaddafi's PhD work and in securing the donation.
Professor Held announced he was leaving the LSE last month.
PhD studies
The report also says that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi "duped" his academic supervisors by receiving extensive outside help in preparing his PhD thesis.
It says he was admitted to study at the LSE's philosophy department in 2003 because of an "idealism factor" that he might improve Libya - even though he had already been rejected by other LSE departments on the basis that his academic standards were not sufficiently high.
A separate University of London panel has been investigating allegations that Saif Gaddafi's PhD thesis might contain plagiarism or have been ghostwritten.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption LSE director, Professor Judith Rees: "We refused to take any money while he was a student and that is a very very strict policy"
That report is not being made public but BBC News understands that it will not recommend that Gaddafi be stripped of his LSE doctorate.
Lord Woolf makes 15 recommendations in his report.
These include setting up an ethics code to govern potential risks to the LSE's reputation and the installation of a new body to oversee the admission of postgraduate students and their studies.
He also calls for new guidance on the amount of outside assistance a postgraduate student can receive and new policies on donations to the School.
LSE director Professor Judith Rees said: "The publication of this report will help LSE move on from this unhappy chapter in its otherwise celebrated history.
"It is consoling that Lord Woolf finds that no academic or other staff member at LSE acted other than in what they perceived to be the best interests of the School.
"He also describes the work of LSE Enterprise in training Libyan professionals and civil servants as of merit. We will now work to take LSE forward, learning the lessons of the report and implementing Lord Woolf's recommendations."2C - it’s become shorthand for a safe, equitable climate deal. But the science and the UN’s position is unequivocal that if the world warms 2C above the pre-industrial age by 2100, many countries will face unbearable devastation.
Of the 195 countries present at the UN climate conference in Paris, 106 of the poorest have said a target of 1.5C is the only acceptable pathway for humankind. The head of the UN’s climate process, Christiana Figueres, has also backed this goal.
Despite the vast majority of media reporting, which suggests the overarching aim of the UN climate process is to reach a 2C target, the question is still very much alive. Negotiators in Paris met in a spin-off group on Monday night to discuss changing the long term goal to 1.5C.
This consensus-driven group is likely to deliver a final position by Friday. It is expected that wealthy countries will prevail in keeping the 2C target. A source close to the negotiations told the Guardian that on Tuesday a Saudi Arabian official had objected to the debate, saying: “I don’t think there is any scientific finding supporting 1.5C.”
However a 2014 World Bank report, found the 1.5C target was “technically and economically feasible”. One of the co-authors of that report was Dr Bill Hare, founder and CEO of Climate Analytics. He said meeting this goal would require all action to be brought forward by a decade. This would cost roughly 50% more to achieve than 2C, but would save significantly more by averting some climate-related disasters.
Hare said the cuts to emissions required by this goal necessitated a revolution in the economy and particularly investment in disruptive technologies.
Such technologies, he said, are embodied by Tesla’s rapidly improving electric vehicles and batteries and the use of biofuels for aviation. If visionary engineering projects outstrip expectations (as solar has, something even Barack Obama noted on Tuesday), they could overthrow the current models. Very quickly the impossible becomes just very hard. Or, as the Guardian overheard one Paris observer put it: “If the low hanging fruit is out of reach, cut the bloody tree down.”
The other overwhelmingly important step on the way to a 1.5C target is the load it will place on those countries who are set to emit the most over the coming decades – among those are India, Brazil and China. This has lead to divides in place of the traditional unity between developing nations.
“You will see some resistance on the idea of 1.5 degrees [from China],” said Li Shuo, a campaigner with Greenpeace China, as the cuts required happen earlier and go deeper than the government is willing to concede. However Li said even the world’s biggest emitter was showing signs that it could turn on a fivepence.
“Just two years ago if you asked anyone in Beijing whether they believed China’s coal consumption can decline this year, nobody would believe that,” he said. “It will decline further this year. So I think that created a lot of space for a very rapid U-turn of China’s emissions profile as well.”
Some academics say that Hare’s reading of the models is overly optimistic and relies too heavily on technological solutions that do not yet exist. Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change in the UK, co-authored a paper as early as 2012 which concluded the 1.5C goal was already out of reach.
“There may be theoretical pathways that involve steep emissions cuts and large negative emissions but they do not really seem feasible,” he said.
Negative emissions rely on us sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere. One of the great hopes for this potentially game-changing technology is the capture and storage of carbon emissions from fuels derived from plants. This leads to a net loss of carbon from the atmosphere. The technology for this is still very much in a developmental phase, with no guarantee of long term viability.
Professor Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said negative emissions were being unwisely treated as a get out of jail free card.
“There’s a lot of naive optimism around these negative emissions. To be thinking about the world just assuming it works is incredibly dangerous. And that’s what we’ve done now. We have normalised this technology that does not work, that we do not know about,” he said.
Yet the debate persists. French president François Hollande said in his opening address to the conference that delegates should aim for “1.5C if possible”. At a press conference in Paris on Tuesday Obama said: “We want to get to 2C or even lower than that.”
Adnan Amin, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, said staying at 1.5C was technologically feasible, although “very hard”.
“If we factor all the other elements like reforestation, it may be possible,” he said. “But it’s something that will require a level of political will that is currently non-existent.”
This is the crux of the problem. Academics are interpreting models that are based, in part, on assumptions about the climate policies of 195 countries. This is where the scientists split into two entirely unscientific camps – optimists and pessimists.
“I am perfectly happy to concede that one is entitled to be pessimistic. But that’s not a scientific statement,” said Hare. “The ultimate question is whether the politics is able to swing these shifts and right now no one really knows the answer to that.”
Anderson concedes that the politics of the 1.5C target are still live and even backs the aspiration of the poorest nations to make it the target of the climate talks.
“From a political point of view, one and a half is a really important dialogue and needs to be hammered home. Even though scientifically it’s not viable,” he said.
But Hare said scientists also had a responsibility because pessimism would be self-fulfilling. “The more observers say it can’t be done, the less likely it is to be done. So scientists have an impact on the policy debate,” he said.
The next two weeks in Paris are likely to give a degree of clarity about the biggest unknown – the politics. A target will probably be clarified. Although the open-ended nature of the proposed deal, which seeks countries to commit more in the coming years, will mean this wrangle will go on for a few years yet.The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday sought responses of Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and governments of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh on the issue of forest fires raging in both the states.
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A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar also issued notice to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) asking it to file its response in the matter by May 10, the next date of hearing.
[related-post]
The tribunal had on Tuesday issued show cause notices to both the states in the matter observing it was shocked that everybody was taking the issue “so casually”.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the advocate representing the petitioner, told the bench that massive forest fires in large parts of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have also reached Jammu and Kashmir.
“This (forest fire) is an annual affair but no one is doing anything. This is a disaster for the environment. The forest areas are under grave threat and the authorities are not doing anything. There is a gross negligence,” the counsel said.
He also said it was a serious environmental issue as such fires cause air pollution and also impact the glaciers.
The bench asked the counsel representing MoEF and the states, “What action have you taken? You were informed well in time about these fires. What steps have you taken? Today, the fire is huge. It must have started somewhere. What is being done on the alerts about such forest fires?”
To this, the lawyers said, “We will come out with all the details.”
WATCH INDIAN EXPRESS VIDEOS HERE
The bench directed the ministry as well as both the state governments to apprise it about the steps taken in this regard and also about the preventive measures to stop such incidents.
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The Centre has claimed that situation in the state was “under control”. Forest area of over 3000 hectares have been blighted in Uttarakhand due to the fire.This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use
All those claims about how you just can’t get SSDs in capacities comparable to those you can find with traditional hard drives will now have to be rethought. OCZ has announced the Colossus LT series of 3.5-inch SSDs that are available in capacities up to 1TB.
The catch? Need you ask? It’s the price. The 1TB drive will set you back $4,000. And no, that’s not a typo.
OCZ boasts about the series’ “excellent” mean time between failure (MTBF) rating of one million hours, and backs up the drive with a three-year warranty and dedicated technical support.
We’ll be interested to see how (or whether) the new Colossus drives will change the market, and finally help nudge capacities up and prices down at a slightly faster rate. For all but the most dedicated enthusiasts, however, we imagine the prices still have to drop a lot.
Would you be willing to pay $4,000 for a 1TB SSD? What’s the maximum you would pay, for what capacity? Let us know in the comments.It isn’t just upset community members who contribute to book censorship. A recent Controversial Books Survey done by School Library Journal found that school librarians themselves are more likely now than they were eight years ago to add content warning labels, create restriction sections, or flat out not buy particular challenged books for their collections.
In a recap of survey results, Linda Jacobson discusses self-censorship on the library front as a means to avoid controversy within an increasingly reactive society.
In 2008, SLJ conducted a landmark survey that uncovered critical data about trends occurring at the school and library level with regard to book censorship. Looking at all levels of education, from elementary school to high school, the survey examined how content labels were being applied to controversial books, how many librarians had constructed restricted sections for flagged titles, and even the frequency with which a librarian would simply pass on purchasing a particular title due to its content.
Although the findings were troubling, eight years later, things look a lot grimmer. Whereas in 2008 the use of content labels across elementary to high schools was an average of 11%, that number has jumped to 24% today — elementary and middle school libraries were impacted the most, with a 15% and 17% increase in flagging respectively.
A similar pattern has been uncovered for restricted sections, with 10% of elementary, 12% of middle school, and 6% of high school librarians saying that they have built restricted sections for mature or potentially controversial titles.
Most alarming, though, were the findings on book buying habits. More than 90% of elementary and middle school librarians commented that they decided not to buy books that could cause offense. High school librarians reported 75%.
“I used to not buy books where there was sex, but then I thought, ‘if it [involves] a ghost that’s 240 years old, I guess it’s OK,’” notes Sara Stevenson, librarian at O. Henry Middle School in Austin, TX, adding:
Then I had to change it to, ‘OK, as long as it’s just implied.’ Then I had to change it to, ‘OK, as long as it’s not too graphic.’ Then I had to let some more graphic ones through because the kids wanted them and they had great reviews. Now there are more and more books with gay sex, so where do you draw the line?
What is causing this alarming trend? Out of all of the 574 librarians surveyed, more that 40% noted that they had faced book challenges at their schools.
Organizations like CBLDF are kept busy defending books from challenges. From joining coalitions to defend popular books like TTYL and TTFN, as we did recently in Nassau County, Florida, to writing a letter to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe urging him to veto a house bill that would change the way that books are assigned and read in the state, free speech advocates, teachers, and librarians across the country are dealing with challenge situations that often make them resort to self-censroship to avoid controversy. “We can be our own worst enemies,” continues Stevenson, who has dealt with challenges her whole career. “I fear I will be less brave now that I’ve had to go through the ordeal of a formal challenge.”
One way to combat this fear is to establish clear and precise challenge policies within schools that allow teachers and librarians to have a structured method of dealing with an attempt to remove a book. Moreover as Pat Scales, the former chair of ALA’s Intellectual Freedom Committee notes, conversation with concerned parents is also key. “Good conversation with a parent, or any challenger, usually ends with reason, and without further actions,” she says.
The worst thing that can be done, though, is to deny children the right to materials because a few deem them to be too inappropriate. Contrary to adult beliefs, if children find a book too difficult, they will let you know that they are not ready for the material. Moreover, as Scales points out, if you allow them the flexibility to make choices about their reading material, you benefit on two fronts: you allow them access to texts that can help inform the broader world that they are living in, but also encourage them to explore their literary boundaries in a non-hostile manner. “When we free them to read, we also free them to reject,” and at the end of the day it is their right to uninhibited education that should be protected.
To read more about the 2016 Controversial Books Survey, click here. Also, if you are a teacher and librarian interested in learning how you can incorporate challenged books into your collections, check out CBLDF’s Librarian & Educator tools. As always, if you are facing a book challenge — any book, not just comics — give us a call at 1-800-99-CBLDF or email [email protected]!
We need your help to keep fighting for the right to read! Help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work by visiting the Rewards Zone, making a donation, or becoming a member of CBLDF!
Contributing Editor Caitlin McCabe is an independent comics scholar who loves a good pre-code horror comic and the opportunity to spread her knowledge of the industry to those looking for a great story!The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore broke India's poor ranking spell by making a debut in the world's top 100 universities for engineering and technology.
IISc made its entry at 99th spot in a list that remains dominated by US institutions with Stanford, CalTech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the top three positions in the 'Times Higher Education (THE) Ranking for Engineering & Technology'. "This year's stand out success story has to be India, making its debut in this prestigious engineering and technology ranking, which represents the top few per cent of world universities for these subject disciplines.
"Whether you look at high tech sectors such as IT or aerospace engineering or more traditional fields such as steelmaking, India's engineering and technology prowess is highly visible the world over in the shape of companies based in India or run by people born in India, such as Google and Microsoft, Infosys and Wipro or Tata and Mittal," said Phil Baty, Times Higher Education World University Rankings editor.
THE has singled out the year as one of Asian progress, with the US holding 31 positions down from 34 last year while Asia holds 25 positions in the Top 100, up from 18 last year. Asian universities occupied six positions in the Top 30 this year, with Japan, China, Kora, Taiwan and India all improving their representation, while Singapore and Hong Kong maintained theirs.Investigators see no connection between the fire that destroyed the north side of the Bellevue mosque and vandalism late last year at a Redmond mosque.
Police believe a fire at a Bellevue mosque early Saturday was set by a homeless man who had previous run-ins with worshippers there.
There is no evidence of a hate crime, said Mike Hogan, King County senior deputy prosecutor. Nor is there any connection to recent vandalism at a Redmond mosque, said Police Chief Steve Mylett.
Bellevue police and firefighters responded to the Islamic Center of Eastside after a witness reported flames at 2:44 a.m. coming from the 1970s-vintage, wooden building at 14700 Main St. The fire destroyed the north side of the mosque. Nobody was inside.
Police found the homeless man, 37, lying on the ground at a nearby parking lot, and approached him initially to see if he was injured, said Mylett, who declined to repeat what the man said. He didn’t appear intoxicated, officers reported.
The man is being held at King County Jail. Charging papers, for second-degree arson, are expected to be filed Tuesday, Hogan said.
Last year, the man came to the mosque on occasion and said he wanted to pray, Imam Faizel Hassan said after a Saturday evening news conference at City Hall. But the man used profanities and created conflicts that led the mosque to exclude him, Hassan said.
“Very few people knew him. He is homeless. I would not describe him as Muslim,” the imam mentioned.
The mosque, the only one in Bellevue, can draw 100 people for the five daily prayers and 1,000 on Fridays.
“We want our Muslim brothers and sisters to know we stand with them,” Mayor John Stokes said during the news conference.
Firefighters salvaged “many holy books that were important to the mosque,” Stokes said.
Saturday prayers were moved to the Highland Community Center, and leaders plan to look at leasing space elsewhere.
Hassan said nearby Catholic, Church of Christ, Jewish, Latter-day Saints, Lutheran and Seventh-day Adventist congregations all have offered temporary space.
Hassan praised police and firefighters for arriving so quickly. “This is something we really appreciate,” he said during the news conference.
Mosque leaders are posting updates, and a link to a rebuilding fund, at eastsidemosque.com. As of late Saturday, about $86,000 was pledged on LaunchGood, a Muslim crowdfunding site, toward a $500,000 goal.
Varisha Khan, a senior at the University of Washington who grew up on the Eastside, had planned to attend midday services at the mosque Saturday with her family.
“It was really my second home,” she said Saturday afternoon. “I was crying for quite a while.”
Earlier in the day, Arsalan Bukhari, executive director of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, urged people to not jump to conclusions about motive.
“We need to learn more,” he said. “In most hate-crime cases, we have some indication if there’s a bias motive. In this case, we don’t have any indication.”
Khan, too, was reluctant to speculate. Still, “this did not happen in a vacuum,” she said. “This mosque itself, it’s received threats. Hate speech does inspire attacks.”
In the past week, in an apparently unrelated incident, an Auburn man who had allegedly threatened to kill members of the Islamic Center of Eastside was charged with malicious harassment, a hate crime.
Kamal Samater, 36, was arrested Jan. 6 in the mosque’s parking lot, after allegedly telling a man in the lot that he was “going to assassinate every one” at the mosque, and yelling “There is no place in America for Muslims.”
In Redmond, the sign in front of the Muslim Association of Puget Sound was damaged last month and weeks earlier.
Redmond police said they were notified the morning of Dec. 17 that the metal face of a granite slab in front of the mosque had been damaged overnight.
At the time, police asked for the public’s help in finding the person responsible. Police described looking for a tall, thin, young white male wearing dark clothing and a dark baseball cap.
Police were investigating that incident and the one Nov. 21 at the mosque — the largest mosque in the Puget Sound region — as possible hate crimes.
In August, Redmond police received several anonymous calls threatening worshippers at that mosque.
Those calls followed the June 12 shooting at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The gunman in that attack, who was killed by a SWAT team, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, officials said.This is not an April Fools’ joke. I swear. Look at the date!
There was a time when weird cult movies like Basket Case were frowned upon. They certainly weren’t respected by cinephiles and they weren’t even treated as real art. But the times are changing. The entire Basket Case trilogy is on Blu-ray as of last year, and believe it or not, the freakin’ Museum of Modern Art has just chosen the original for preservation and restoration!
Director Frank Henenlotter just made the (highly surprising) announcement over on Facebook today, revealing that a new restoration of the 1982 cult gem is coming soon. He wrote:
Hey, Basket Case fans. I’m both humbled and proud to announce that Basket Case is now part of the permanent film collection of the Museum of Modern Art. (And, yes, I asked them if they actually watched the film and they assured me they did.) It’s quite an honor and one that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. I’ve already given them all the film elements for preservation, and they’ll be doing an all new restoration in the upcoming months. Amazing, yes? Congratulations to producer Edgar Ievins, actors Kevin Vanhentenryck and Beverly Bonner, as well as everyone else who helped make this crazy little movie a reality way back when. Thank you, Moma.
In the film, “a young man carrying a big basket that contains his extremely deformed Siamese-twin brother seeks vengeance on the doctors who separated them against their will.”Since the franchise was first created back in 1988, the Miami Heat have climbed the NBA mountaintop and brought home three Larry O’Brien trophies (2006, 2012, 2013). Fans may have their own personal favorite out of the three, but we’re going to take an in-depth look at which one of these championship-winning teams was actually the best.
This competition is only between the 2012 and 2013 Finals teams, especially considering 2006 was the only time the Heat were actually considered significant underdogs heading into the finals. This was also the only team out of the three without LeBron James or Chris Bosh.
Instead of the infamous Big Three, Wade’s only weapon was a 33-year-old Shaquille O’Neal. Don’t get me wrong, O’Neal still averaged 20 points and 9.2 rebounds per game that season, but he was obviously well past his prime. Besides Wade and O’Neal, no other player on the Heat roster averaged over 13 points per game.
According to ESPN’s Hollinger stats, in 2006, the Heat ranked 7th among all NBA teams in offensive efficiency and 17th in defensive efficiency. Of all three championship teams, 2006 was their worst year in both of these categories.
Choosing between 2012 and 2013 is extremely difficult, mostly because these teams consisted of basically all of the same players. The 2013 Heat only had two different impact players, Ray Allen and Chris Birdman Anderson. Both of which played huge roles, especially in the postseason.
Anderson brought high-intensity defense, and Allen landed a game-tying three pointer in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals against the Spurs, which many fans consider the biggest shot in NBA history. To me, it’s pretty clear, the 2013 finals Heat team was probably their best all-around squad.
In the defense of the 2012 roster, they were the only Heat finals team to rank in the top five in defensive efficiency. But on the flip side, 2013 was the only year they ranked first in offensive efficiency. So basically, by these numbers, 2012 was their best defensive team, and 2013 was their best offensively.
Let’s not forget, in 2013, the Heat ran roughshod over the entire league, and won 27 consecutive games, only 6 short of the record set by the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers. During this streak, the Heat outscored their opponents by an average of 11.9 points per game.
The thing that really puts it over the top for me was who they beat to get to the top. The 2012 Heat had to face a young inexperience Oklahoma City Thunder team. In 2013, the Heat had to take on the three headed, soon-to-be Hall of Fame monster that is Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan. Not to mention, their master, Gregg Popovich. In 2013, the Spurs were dominant on both side of the court. They ranked third among all teams in true shooting percentage and defensive efficiency.
In 2012, the Thunder were a great team filled with young stars, James Harden, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, but they were simply too inexperienced. The Thunder roster had an average age of 24.8 that season.
Clearly, all three of these Heat teams were great, but the numbers show 2013 was probably their best year. Whether you look at the numbers, the streak, the roster, or their opponent, the 2013 Heat team were one of the best squads of all time.Life – The Text Adventure
by Kristian Bland
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You are floating in a murky pool
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that way.
Now imagine the newer tests that split European, Asian, Pacific Islander, African, Native American and so on into many subcategories. Now even the first mom’s all red becomes a variety of different colors. And these can get passed down differently leading to different percentages.
Mom might be 23% Northern European, 46% Eastern European, and 31% Southern European. And these can be further subdivided. Maybe the Northern European is really 15% British, 5% Scandinavian and 3% German/French.
Here is what mom looks like now:
Now she has children with her Japanese husband. Here is what the children’s DNA might look like:
Now it is getting very confusing. By chance, child 1 has no British, French/German or Scandinavian DNA while child 2 does. Even with the same parents!
Now split the Southern and Eastern European DNA into subgroups and see what happens. Then start splitting dad’s DNA further to add more to the mix. Do all of this and you can see how siblings might wind up with very different ancestry results indeed.Emily Lakdawalla • September 29, 2014
Mars Orbiter Mission delivers on promise of global views of Mars
Ever since I first learned about the capabilities of Mars Orbiter Mission's small payload of science instruments, I have been anticipating one type of data in particular: global color views of Mars captured in a single 2000-pixel-square frame. Just days after entering orbit, Mars Orbiter Mission has delivered on that promise. The Mars Colour Camera is one of three payloads on Mars Orbiter Mission that has been activated; Srinivas Laxman tells me that Methane Sensor For Mars and Lyman Alpha Photometer have also been switched on. Two more instruments remain; he's promised a detailed report once all five are activated. (Edit: Steven Clark reported that K. Radhakrishnan announced at the International Astronautical Congress that a fourth instrument has now been activated.)
Here is the first of, I hope, many many beautiful color views of our neighboring planet from Mars Orbiter Mission:
ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission's first global image of Mars Mars Orbiter Mission captured this global view of Mars with its Mars Colour Camera on September 28, 2014, from a distance of 74,500 kilometers. Mars Orbiter Mission captured this global view of Mars with its Mars Colour Camera on September 28, 2014, from a distance of 74,500 kilometers.
We're looking almost straight at Meridiani Planum, by the way, with the Opportunity rover's landing site located just a bit below the center of the disk. Toward the upper left of the disk, you can see some dusty-looking clouds. Thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter MARCI team's Mars weather reports, I can tell you more about those clouds:
Martian weather between 15 September 2014 and 21 September 2014: Regional storm activity picked up in the northern hemisphere, with large storms occurring from Utopia to Arcadia and arcuate-shaped storms following the Acidalia storm track into Chryse. Even in the caldera of Olympus Mons, a small spiral-type, "Lee" dust storm occurred this past week. Dust-lifting was less active in the southern hemisphere, but isolated local storms were observed in Noctis, Aonia, and Noachis. Diffuse water ice clouds were present over the Tharsis volcanoes, Tempe, and over the western rim of Hellas basin. Skies remained storm-free over the Opportunity rover site in Meridiani and the Curiosity rover site in Gale Crater.
Mars Orbiter Mission will only get these full-globe views when it's near the apoapsis of its orbit. But the way elliptical orbits work, the spacecraft will actually spend most of its time near apoapsis, so we should be able to get nice series of global views of Mars, at different phases and of different parts of the globe over time.
When the spacecraft is closer to Mars, we'll get cool images like this one, which was taken just two hours after Mars Orbiter Mission arrived at Mars:
ISRO Mars' limb from Mars Orbiter Mission Mars Orbiter Mission took this photo of the hazy limb of Mars on September 24, 2014, just two hours after entering orbit, from an altitude of about 8449 kilometers. Mars Orbiter Mission took this photo of the hazy limb of Mars on September 24, 2014, just two hours after entering orbit, from an altitude of about 8449 kilometers.
You can barely discern craters and surface features in this image because we're looking through so much Martian atmosphere. But the sharp-eyed folks at unmannedspaceflight.com figured out what we were looking at. Coincidentally, though it's lost in the haze in this image, a feature named Indus Vallis is located within the image frame.
ISRO / Daniel Machacek Location of the September 24, 2014 Mars Orbiter Mission Mars limb photo
I am so excited about Mars Orbiter Mission's global Mars views. We used to get global views of Mars at every Martian opposition from Hubble, but their resolution was not as high, and Hubble has not been used to image Mars recently. Hubble's best image of Mars, taken more than 11 years ago, shows an almost identical hemisphere, and you can see that the Mars Orbiter Mission photo has superior detail:
NASA, J. Bell (Cornell University), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute) Mars during the 2003 opposition This photo was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope during Mars' closest approach to Earth in over 60,000 years, on August 27, 2003. This photo was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope during Mars' closest approach to Earth in over 60,000 years, on August 27, 2003.
But Hubble is not usually so close to Mars as it was on August 27, 2003, so most Hubble images of Mars have even lower resolution. Here is the most recent true-color Hubble view of Mars, taken almost 7 years ago:
NASA / STScI / Keith Noll / processing by Ted Stryk Mars from Hubble, January 2008 The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of Mars on January 30, 2008, about a month after the 2007 conjunction. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped this image of Mars on January 30, 2008, about a month after the 2007 conjunction.
The only other camera currently capable of seeing all of Mars in a single frame is the Visual Monitoring Camera on Mars Express. This is a Webcam-like engineering camera that was included on the spacecraft for the sole purpose of monitoring the departure of Beagle 2. It was repurposed as a camera for public outreach and now regularly produces cool photos of Mars, often in unusual half-lit or crescent phases from high over the poles, but the camera's quality is not that great. (I love the photos anyway.) Here's a sample of what VMC can do:
ESA / Bill Dunford Some Favorite Shots from the Mars Webcam Some of the most interesting views of Mars captured during the past few years by the Mars Express orbiter's Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC), the "ordinary camera in an extraordinary place," sometimes known as the Mars Webcam. Some of the most interesting views of Mars captured during the past few years by the Mars Express orbiter's Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC), the "ordinary camera in an extraordinary place," sometimes known as the Mars Webcam.
If the Mars Orbiter Mission does nothing else but return to us a variety of global images of Mars from different positions and phases, the mission will be a great success, as far as I'm concerned. It'll be a data set unlike any generated by any other mission, and the single-frame photos should find their way into lots of books and magazines, informing the public perception of Mars for years to come.
Edited to add: Image magician Ted Stryk worked with the Mars Orbiter Mission photo to produce a version that looks more like the colors we expect for Mars -- a subjective, artistic adjustment to the original colors.
ISRO / processed by Ted Stryk Mars Orbiter Mission's first global image of Mars (processed) Mars Orbiter Mission captured this global view of Mars with its Mars Colour Camera on September 28, 2014, from a distance of 74,500 kilometers. This version of the image has been artistically processed to more closely match the expected color of Mars. Mars Orbiter Mission captured this global view of Mars with its Mars Colour Camera on September 28, 2014, from a distance of 74,500 kilometers. This version of the image has been artistically processed to more closely match the expected color of Mars.
Emily Lakdawalla Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist for The Planetary Society
Read more articles by Emily LakdawallaHaving unfit and harmful drinking habits can be called as ‘Alcohol abuse’. For example, consuming alcohol every day or drinking excessively at one go. Alcohol abuse can be detrimental to your relationships, can hamper your work and cause legal problems like drunken driving (intoxicated). When alcohol is abused, you keep on drinking in spite of knowing that it will cause problems.
Drinking excessively leads to alcohol dependence which is also termed as alcoholism. There is physical or mental addiction to alcohol. You experience a strong craving for alcohol.
Alcohol dependence can be determined by the occurrence of following problems annually.
No control over the amount of alcohol consumed and difficulty in quitting alcohol completely.
You have to drink additionally to feel the same upshot.
You face withdrawal symptoms when you discontinue drinking. They comprise of feeling sick, anxiety, unsteadiness and excessive sweating.
You need to give up other work in order to find time to drink.
You drink even if it affects your relationships and weakens you physically.
Alcohol becomes a part of people’s lives and finds its place in family traditions and culture. Many times it becomes difficult to know when a person is consuming too much of alcohol.
Having more than 3 drinks at a time or more than 7 drinks per week for women is too much whereas for men, taking more than 4 drinks at a time or more than 14 drinks per weeks can be extreme.
Alcohol related problems can be diagnosed at a normal visit to the doctor. The doctor will question you about the symptoms and health history or will carry out a physical exam and mental health assessment. This is to know if the person is not facing a mental problem like depression.
Alcohol related health problems like cirrhosis are also tested.
Treatment is carried out depending on the severity of the alcohol problem. A counselor’s help is all it takes for some people to cut down the consumption to a fair level. People having addiction require medical help and need to stay at the treatment centre.
Detoxification is given to the patient in order to flush out all the alcohol from the body, after which the focus remains on staying away from alcohol or being restrained. Medicines are needed to stay sober.
When a person is successful in staying sober, he/she takes an initial step in the direction of recovery. To recover entirely, other aspects of life such as learning to cope up with family and work commitments should be focused. Counseling and group support such as Alcoholics Anonymous helps a great deal in the recovery process.
Alcoholism is not a weakness. It is a serious problem which can be successfully addressed and solved by means of professional help and family support.Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Tohti, pictured here in 2010, is a member of the Muslim Uighur ethnic group in China
The detained Uighur academic Ilham Tohti was denied food for more than a week and his legs have been shackled, his lawyer says.
Mr Tohti, an economics professor who has criticised China's ethnic policies, has been detained since January. He has been charged with separatism.
His lawyer Li Fangping met with him for the first time this week.
He said Mr Tohti was denied food for 10 days after an attack on a Kunming train station in March that killed 29 people.
The attack was blamed on Uighur separatists by the Chinese authorities.
Mr Tohti is a member of the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic group from China's far western Xinjiang region.
He has been critical of China's treatment of the Uighurs but there is no record of Mr Tohti ever having supported the cause of separatism, says the BBC's John Sudworth.
Mr Tohti maintains his innocence, said his lawyer.
"He believes that in his words and deeds, he has always sought to work for the country's national interests and the organic integration of the Han majority and Uighur minority's common benefits," said Mr Li.
He added that Mr Tohti went on a hunger strike in January for 10 days to protest against being served food that did not follow Islamic dietary laws.
Authorities force-fed him milk when his organs started bleeding, his lawyer was quoted by news agencies as saying.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Relatives mourned the deaths of their loved ones days after the March attack at a Kunming train station
China has blamed a number of violent attacks on civilian targets over the past year on Uighur separatists and launched a sweeping security crackdown.
Earlier this month it executed 13 people for what it said were terrorism-related offences.
It has recently carried out at least two mass-sentencing events in front of large crowds gathered in sports stadiums.Image caption Eyes of the world media were on Donald Trump as he gave "main speech of his life" in Cleveland.
World media reaction to businessman Donald Trump's speech accepting the Republican Party's nomination for the presidential election has varied from region to region.
Latin American writers were disappointed by what they saw as the "racist" content of his address whilst Middle East journalists said they saw nothing new.
Mexican daily El Universal found "the only surprise" was that the speech did not contain the same amount of "barbarities" as before.
"Xenophobia, racism and egocentrism" formed the key points of the speech, according to Venezuelan-based news channel TeleSur which noted that Mr Trump blamed immigrants for the economic crisis whilst ignoring the millions of dollars spent on "unjustified military invasions".
Image copyright TeleSur
"Demagogic, populist and racist" was Brazilian news portal Ultimo Segundo's view of the speech and it quoted a pundit who suggested that Mr Trump's rhetoric was effective because of the "incessant search by the Republican electorate for a common enemy".
'Lavish promises'
In the Middle East, pan-Arab Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera TV channels highlighted Mr Trump's pledges on security and terrorism but said he gave no detail of future policy.
An Al-Jazeera TV reporter said "Trump lavished Americans with promises but, as usual, he forgot to tell them how he would achieve them".
Al-Arabiya TV said Mr Trump vowed to defeat the so-called Islamic State but added that he continued to blame his rival, Hillary Clinton, for its rise. Al-Arabiya's correspondent complained she heard "nothing new" in his remarks and no alternatives to current policy.
In China, national state TV also focused on Mr Trump's speech with Shanghai's Dragon TV correspondent saying the two key points were "security" and "prosperity", with a mention of China "three times".
But Chinese government mouthpiece People's Daily accused Mr Trump of making "groundless accusations against China on currency manipulations and the theft of US intellectual property."
Independent financial news website Caixin, however, noted that Mr Trump's motto of "Americanism" has struck a chord with online readers. It said he plans "to put US interests first, with the US creed of 'Americanism' instead of 'Globalism'".
Image copyright Caixin\Weibo
'Apocalyptic' vision
Some European papers were disturbed by Mr Trump's "apocalyptic message on America's decline" as German broadsheet Die Welt put it.
While acknowledging that Mr Trump "delivered an effective and well-calculated speech" - which it described as his "most coherent" for a long time - the daily said that he painted "a bleak picture of America".
"'Crime, violence, poverty' was his negative message", it added.
Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung agreed, saying that Mr Trump used the right-wing media's image of the USA being "a post-apocalyptic wasteland". His main message was that "America is ruined and he is the solution", the paper said.
German-language news website Spiegel Online said the acceptance speech showed a different man. "No repulsive macho, no shameless narcissist", it noted, but added that his subject matter remained unchanged.
Image copyright Spiegel Online Image caption Germany's Spiegel Online dubbed Trump's speech 'Festival of lies'
"Lies, paranoid visions, abstruse promises, uncomplicated appeals to white America. The USA destroyed, threatened from within (crime) and outside (terrorism)... Everything is still there, just packaged differently," it observed.
French newspaper Le Monde pointed out that Mr Trump had departed from the party line over the LGBTQ community, which he now promised to protect, despite the GOP's plan to revisit the issue of gay marriage.
However in Russia, Mr Trump's departure from party policy apparently went unnoticed as state-owned Rossiya 1 TV reported that "no political sensation took place" and Gazprom-owned NTV noted that "there was no mention of Russia" in his acceptance speech.
But a correspondent for Russian state-run news channel, Rossiya 24, said: "No matter how the election campaign pans out, it is the main speech of his life."
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.I have an entities called Organization and Person.
I have create a custom field type named OrganizationType which I add under PersonType :
class OrganizationType extends AbstractType { public function buildForm($builder) { $builder->add('name'); $builder->add('description'); } } class PersonType extends AbstractType { public function buildForm($builder) { $builder->add('fullName'); $builder->add('organization, new OrganizationType()); } }
This works fine for this submitted data structure:
{ "fullName" : "Justin Case", "organization" : { "name" : "FooBar Organization", "description" : "We do bar stuff." } }
In my application logic, this will create two entities: The Person entity and the Organization entity, with their association persisted as well.
However, I wish to support scalar values in form of an identifier for the organization field, too:
{ "fullName" : "Justin Case", "organization" : 5 }
The intended result is the Person entity is created, an an association to an existing Organization with ID 5 is linked and persisted as well.
However, it seems like a custom type can only support either a scalar value or non-scalar value, not both.
What I have tried:
I've experimented with attaching data transformers to OrganizationType ( $builder->addModelTransformer(...) and $builder->addViewTransformer(...) both) in hopes that I can reformat the submitted data from scalar to non-scalar (or vice-versa) depending on what my custom type expects but sadly it doesn't work -- if the custom type expects scalar, passing in a non-scalar value will result to my transformers not being called at all. This is true for both view transformers and model transformers)
Is this use-case for the Form component supported at all? Or is there a solution for this?ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An Alaska-based soldier is under investigation for a video on his Facebook page that taunts smiling Iraqi children by asking if they're gay, if they engage in certain sex acts and if they would grow up to be terrorists.
The two young boys did not appear to understand the questions, which were in English, but smiled at the camera and at times flashed the "thumbs up" gestures during the 30-second clip.
Spc. Robert A. Rodriguez, who is based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, was ordered to remove the video from his site, Army spokesman Maj. Bill Coppernoll said Monday.
"The incident is currently under investigation, and the Army will take appropriate action based on the findings of the investigation," he said.
It wasn't immediately clear if Rodriguez shot the video or just posted it, and discovering that will be part of the Army's investigation, Coppernoll said.
The video is "disgraceful and clearly inconsistent" with standards expected of every soldier, he said.
WATCH:
Raleigh, N.C., television station WRAL first reported the video after another soldier stationed at Fort Wainwright shared it with friends in North Carolina, who took their concerns to the station.
WRAL aired part of the video and quoted from Rodriquez's Facebook page before the site was made private.
Above the Facebook video posting, which was titled, "future gay terrorist!," is written, "i got bored in iraq... so I kept myself entertained!"
The boys are shown on a dirt road, facing a camera.
A voice is heard asking the boys, "Are you going to grow up to be a terrorist?"
When the boys show two thumbs up, the voice on the video says, "Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah, terrorist."
There was no phone listing for Rodriguez in the Fairbanks area. Coppernoll said he did not know the soldier's hometown, but the video of the Facebook page shown on WRAL indicated Rodriguez listed Miami.
"For anybody to be so cruel and disrespectful to children of any country but especially a country that we are occupying is really disgraceful and repugnant," said Tim Stallard, a spokesman for Alaskans Together for Equality.
The anti-gay bias is disturbing, also, he said.
"It's ugly, as well, and it's sorry to see anybody expressing such unfortunate and strong bias against gay people," he said.On Monday night, the Warriors beat the Grizzlies 119-69.
On Wednedsay night, the Warriors beat the Clippers 112-108.
Following the loss to Golden State, the Clippers' Twitter account sent out the following tweet:
"Final from Oakland... GSW 112 LAC 108 #didntloseby50"
Following Memphis' shootaround in Portland on Thursday, several Grizzlies players responded to the hashtag. (h/t Ronald Tillery of The Commerical Appeal)
Courtney Lee: “It’s childish. We took our L and we kept it moving, right? We lost by 50. We didn’t cry over it, and went on to the next one. Apparently, they’re holding on to it. That’s what they got to do to overshadow their loss. Last time I heard, a loss is a loss. But that’s what they do over there.”
Tony Allen: “You ever seen the movie 'White Men Can’t Jump'? It’s like those brothers would rather look good in a loss and look bad in a win. Whoever is in charge of their Twitter should be fired. I’ve never seen anybody broadcast losing. Who’s proud of losing -- whether it’s by one, two three or 50? Enough said.”
Zach Randolph: “I take it with a grain of salt. I ain’t with all that talking and Instagraming and tweeting and bluffing. You got to prove it on the court.”
Coach Dave Joerger: “I don’t do Twitter.”
In the first round of the 2012 Western Conference playoffs, the Clippers beat the Grizzlies in seven games.
Memphis exacted revenge in the opening round in 2013, knocking off Los Angeles in six games.
The Clippers host the Grizzlies on Monday night.
Stay tuned...Here's what Blinov did not say in those three hours. Thirty-three of the 35 prosecutorial witnesses actually briefed on Navalny's behalf. The defense was not allowed to call any witnesses of its own. V.N. Opalev, the one man upon whose testimony Blinov claims to have hung his prefabricated judgment, often forgot his lines and contradicted himself. At one point, as the BuzzFeed's Max Seddon reminds us, Opalev offered the "wrong" evidence and so the "right" kind was simply read aloud for him, to which he replied that, yes, "it was like that."
Historical comparisons ought not be stretched too far, but observers aren't wrong to detect a whiff of the 1930s creeping into 2010s. In 1936, as Stalin began liquidating the Bolshevik opposition blocs to his dictatorship, a low-ranking Trotskyist called Holtzman was put on trial, accused of "terrorism" and attempted assassinations of the Soviet leadership. Among the invented targets was Stalin himself, who then helped invent Holtzman's verdict. The state claimed that the defendant had met up with Trotsky's son Sedov in Copenhagen's Hotel Bristol. There was one minor error, however. The Hotel Bristol had burned down in 1917. So Soviet propagandists had to come up with a new location without overtaxing their imaginations; thus the Café Bristol became the furtive rendezvous spot for plotting to dismantle the people's first socialist democracy.
No one ever accused Navalny of being furtive; up until today, he was running a long-shot campaign to get elected mayor of Moscow and he's openly stated his intention of one day running for president, two contingencies now foreclosed by a criminal conviction. (There is still some wriggle room for the mayoral race, apparently, related to the timing of an appeal, but Navalny withdrew his candidacy a few hours ago, promising only to continue if he's released from jail.) His activity has been out in the open, published on LiveJournal and on Twitter. That was the point, after all, to awaken everybody to what's been happening around them for over a decade. He wants to dismantle Putin's "managed democracy," which he has cleverly and charismatically exposed as a racket of gargantuan proportion, where oligarchs have been given government titles and KGB agents from "St. Pete" have been given chairmanships on the boards of oil and gas giants -- what Navalny called a "repulsive feudal order that sits like a spider in that Kremlin." Anyone standing in the way of this order, or telling the truth about the criminality that sustains it, is hereby deemed dispensable either through murder, public vilification in the state-controlled organs, or imprisonment. A martyr can do only so much from a labor camp. Ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch sentenced for fraud, or Pussy Riot's Mary Alekhine, who was beaten in prison today.Updated: Feb 7, 2017, 12:49 IST
Ravinder Kaushik was born in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan in 1952 to a Punjabi family. He was just a teenager who loved performing theater when he was spotted by India’s external intelligence agency, RAW. Nothing much is clear as to what happened in between his first contact with the RAW personnel during the national drama presentation and his graduation in 1975. Ravinder Kaushik joined the intelligence agency after graduating and little did he know that it would turn out to be a life-altering decision.
© Twitter
Fast forward to November 2001 in Pakistan where a certain Nabi Ahmed suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis and heart disease takes his final breath on his deathbed while ensuring a secret passage for the last of the letters he would write to his mother. This was not a hassle for him; passing on secret texts and document across the border, it is what he had been trained for thirty years ago when he first started training as an undercover agent for India.
Ravinder Kaushik or Nabi Ahmed was India’s best spy to ever penetrate the rank and profile of the Pakistan army. He went undercover at an age of 23 after being recruited by RAW. During his training in Delhi he learned Urdu, got acquainted with the muslim religious texts, the topography in Pakistan and underwent circumcision. When he was sent to Pakistan in 1975, all his records in India were destroyed and he was given a new identity of Nabi Ahmed Shakir. Nabi Ahmed now started his LLB in Karachi University to create a perfect back story and join the Pakistan army.
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He was commissioned in the Pakistan Army and soon promoted to the rank of Major. During that time he converted to Islam and married a local girl Amanat, fathering a son with her. From 1979 to 1983 he passes on critical information to the Indian defense forces which were of great help. Because of the valuable information being sent by Nabi Ahmed he became famous as ‘The Black Tiger’ in Indian defense circles, a name conferred by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi herself.
In 1983, Inyat Masiha was sent by RAW to get in touch with Nabi Ahmed. He was caught by Pakistani intelligence agencies and tortured to reveal Nabi Ahmed’s true identity. The cover now blown by the Pakistani intelligence agencies, Ravinder Kaushik was tortured for two years before being sentenced to death in 1985. His death sentence was later changed to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court.
Kaushik spent the last 16 years of his glorious life in various jails including Mianwali and Sialkot. Due to the poor facilities in the Pakistani jails, he contracted Asthma and TB which turned fatal. After enduring extreme trauma he finally succumbed to a heart disease in the New Central Multan Jail. The finest Indian spy is still buried today behind that jail.
His life still inspires a lot of young RAW officers and he is still remembered as India’s finest intelligence agent who never gave up serving his country in his death. Ravinder Kaushik will always be a true Indian soldier who gave his life without ever asking for any acknowledgement. We salute the great Indian warrior – The Black Tiger!
Photo: © Twitter (Main Image)
Don't MissThe debate on basic income has at least one virtue, namely that of reminding us that there is a degree of consensus in France on the fact that everyone should have a minimum income. Disagreements exist over the amount. At the moment, the Revenu de Solidarité Active or RSA (the French minimum income scheme) granted to single individuals with no dependant children is 530 Euros per month, a sum which some people find sufficient, and others would like to increase to 800 Euros. But on both the Right and the Left, everyone seems to agree on the existence of a minimum income around this level in France as, moreover, in numerous other European countries. In the United States, the childless poor have to make do with ‘food stamps’ and the social State often assumes the guise of guardian or even prison. In contrast, the French and European consensus is to be commended, but at the same time we cannot consider it satisfactory.
The problem with the discussion about basic income is that in most instances it leaves the real issues unexplored and in reality expresses a concept of social justice on the cheap. The question of justice is not simply a matter of 530 Euros or 800 Euros a month. If we wish to live in a fair and just society we have to formulate more ambitious objectives which cover the distribution of income and wealth in its entirety and, consequently, the distribution of access to power and opportunities. Our ambition must be that of a society based on a fair return to labour, in other words, a fair wage and not simply a basic income. To move in the direction of a fair wage, we have to re-think a whole set of institutions and policies which interact with each other: these include public services, and in particular, education, labour law and organisations and the tax system.
In the first instance, we have to challenge the hypocrisies in our educational system, which too frequently reproduces or even exacerbates inequalities. This is the case in higher education. The university tracks which are the most attended by the disadvantaged students are massively under-funded compared with the elitist grande ecoles tracks that are more attended by better off students. The situation has only got worse with the result that today whole generations cram into over-crowded lecture theatres.
The same is true for schools and technical colleges. In practice, the underprivileged establishments have many more inexperienced teachers on short-term contracts than the others, with the result that effective public expenditure per pupil is in reality less than elsewhere. In the absence of a transparent and verifiable policy of allocation of means, the focus has been on stigmatizing establishments by categorizing them as being in an educational priority area or ZEP (Zone d’éducation prioritaire), without increasing their resources, whereas the authorities should have done the exact opposite.
If in addition we bear in mind the fact that nothing has been done to promote a mix of social classes and that private schools are allowed to recruit whoever might be thought fit, while benefitting from public financing, we are very far from the equality of opportunity vaunted in the advertising slogans in electoral campaigns.
To move towards fair pay, we must stop denigrating the role of trade unions, the minimum wage and salary scales. We should reconsider the role assigned to the employees’ representatives. In countries where they play an active role on the executive boards – between one third and half of the votes in Sweden and Germany – we find a narrower range of salary scales, greater investment of the employees in the firms’ strategy and in conclusion higher productivity. In addition, there is nothing to prevent us from imagining original forms of power-sharing, with the board members being elected by a combination of employees and shareholders (to go beyond the interaction between paid administrators and shareholders with the latter automatically holding the majority).
To restrict the power of capital and its perpetuation, the tax system must also play its role fully, in particular by means of the progressive tax on property which enables the transformation of the right of ownership into a temporary right, at least for the largest property owners. This is in effect what inheritance taxes do for intergenerational transmissions (family property is no longer permanent), and annual progressive taxes on property do the same within a lifetime. Instead, the Right-wing wishes to suppress our meagre wealth tax (ISF – Impôt Sur la Fortune); this should instead be brought closer to the property tax (taxe foncière), to reduce this for smaller property owners.
Finally, a progressive income tax rate should contribute to the fair wage by reducing the income gap to the strict minimum. Historical experience shows that high marginal tax rates on very high incomes – 82% on average between 1930 and 1980 in the United States –enabled an end to giant salaries to the considerable benefit of lower salaries and economic efficiency.
The last point is that with deduction of income tax at source, a progressive income tax enables the basic income due to low-wage earners to be paid directly on the pay cheque or remuneration statement. At the moment, a full-time employee paid at the minimum wage rate (the SMIC) earns 1150 Euros net, after deduction from his gross wage of 1460 Euros of 310 Euros for the CSG (Generalized Social Contribution) and other contributions. On application, several months later the employee is eligible for an activity allowance, equivalent to 130 Euros per month. It would be infinitely preferable to reduce the deduction at source and raise the net salary by an equivalent amount.
For the same reason, I have difficulty in understanding those who insist on wishing to pay a basic income of 500 Euros per month to those earning a salary of 2000 Euros, and then get back the same sum by raising their taxes deducted at source.
It is now time for the debate on justice to ask the right questions.
Signaler ce contenu comme inappropriéGovernment waste is catapulting America into a financial abyss, yet democrats just want to talk Trump’s Twitter.
Top experts were quick to label this week’s Mika Brzezinski hullaballoo a non-story, particularly at a time when the President is making amazing strides in eliminating health care and empowering investment banks.
It really makes you wonder why radical leftist activists are so anxious to change the subject! What in the world are they hiding?
It turns out what they’re hiding isn’t exactly on this world at all!
On Thursday, a top CIA official revealed that the Bill Clinton Administration funded a series of NASA projects that defy any Biblical sense of morality. Yet this story was almost immediately buried in the corporate mainstream media.
It appears that Ms. Brzezinski is more important to the DNC than those poor, suffering children on the Red Planet!
As an investigative journalist, I’m always on the lookout for ways liberals manipulate the news narrative and something about their eagerness to deflect from the Mars sex slave colony just didn’t sit right with me.
After a little digging on space travel, I discovered some fascinating scientific evidence that cats may not have originated on Earth. They’re also likely involved in the chemtrails conspiracy. Naturally, I knew this meant that there had to be a connection to Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House.
Felines represent the epitome of the leftist Saul Alinsky mindset. They’re infinitely lazy yet consider themselves intellectually superior. Many are drug addicts. They will defecate on your best sweater and enjoy watching you clean it up. They are, in a word, the spirit guides of the Democratic Party.
“Who better to send to the Moon than cats?”
According to a leaked post on the conspiracy research website Reddit.com, this is precisely how Hillary Clinton broached the subject in a secret meeting with the Council of Foreign Relations in 2010. George Soros approved the plan but with one caveat: These had to be Super Cats, not ordinary tabbys.
Up until recently most believed that Super Cats were a myth. The rumor is that this special breed of felis catus can grow up to ten times the size we normally associate with our domesticated pets. They are uniquely immune to chemtrails and seem to transmit at a higher frequency than even the most woke human beings. They can perform advanced quantum mechanics with ease, but prefer not to. They’ve even been known to use MK Ultra mind control to force their owners to attend to their every need!
Of course, such a master race of felines would be an incredible asset for the Democratic Party.
We simply don’t know how much Barack Hussein Obama spent on this particular NASA black budget item, but it’s clear that claiming the Moon for hardcore liberalism has always been a top priority. Just imagine how many illegal votes they could get from an astral body singularly devoted to socialized medicine and homosexual orgies!
With that $10 trillion investment at stake, it’s obvious why the liberal media needed to manufacture the public’s outrage over Mika Brzezinski provoking the White House this week. Indeed, many suspect that Brzezinski herself may be involved with the Super Cat Colony Conspiracy. We actually have no idea how far up this scandal goes, but it’s well within our rights to speculate that these castronauts have grown so powerful on their Moon bases that they now control Ms. Brzezinski and her entire staff! This is proven by the obvious feline bias of MSNBC’s 2010-2017 pet coverage to say the least!
There are bigger questions, however.
Maybe we should be asking ourselves why Super Cats need their own news
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of filmmakers around you, you have to be prepared to do everything yourself,” said Nolan, interviewed by Slamdance president Peter Baxter. “That’s something that never goes away…you have to be prepared to carry the flag for the film because if you’re not, nobody else is going to bother. The tricky thing is, it can seem like arrogance because it’s the film you made, but there’s no way around it. You just have to do it.” Asked how he made the transition to large-scale budgets while many others flounder when they step up to that sandbox, Nolan said the key was taking incremental steps, and trying to look at each project from the vantage point of an audience member, making sure as director your vision matches up with a studio’s expectation of the film it will receive for its investment. It is sound advice; how many times have we seen directors become insulated, go way over budget and deliver a mess of a picture, pissing off a studio to the point it writes off the film as a failure, cuts its losses and doesn’t spend P&A, and stunts the filmmaker’s trajectory?
The question that made me chuckle was one asked by Blake Robbins, the former star of the HBO series Oz who just finished his directing debut, The Sublime And Beautiful, which made its Slamdance debut today. Robbins clearly wasn’t far removed from marathon editing sessions when he asked Nolan if he found a moment in the editing room where he hated each of his films. Nolan confessed that when his editor puts together a rough assemblage, he tries not to watch it. “It’s four hours long and it’s terrible and I don’t want to start from that place,” Nolan said. “I want to start from a sense of possibility…when we were cutting Inception, I remember we got to reel three and it was completely incomprehensible. And when I looked back at the script for that part of the film, it was not that different.”
It made me laugh because I recall speaking with some of the Warner Bros executives who were in the room when Nolan pitched his vision for Inception. Several confessed later that even though Nolan gave a detailed and exuberant presentation, the concept was so complex that they smiled, nodded — and didn’t get it at all. But they also weren’t going to let another studio jump on it and perhaps steer Nolan away so they committed to a huge budget and a green light, taking it on faith that their resident hitmaker knew what he was doing. It seems somehow poignant that even a confident helmer like Nolan had to find his way through one of the best-executed and most creatively ambitious studio blockbusters of the last 20 years.
Nolan talked about how Brad Pitt read Memento but passed on it, but described that as lucky because just having word circulate that Pitt had read it gave the script momentum and got it to the attention of Guy Pearce. Nolan felt that rejection paved the way for his breakthrough film and it reinforced a valuable adage for the newbie filmmakers here. It is hard to make movies at any level, and you never know where the break is going to come from, the one that gets your foot in the door. If you’re talented and dogged enough, you will find your way in.The first blocks of tickets for UFC 129 go on sale Thursday morning, and if you’re hoping to secure a seat at Rogers Centre April 30 you should do two things.
First, join the UFC’s Fight Club, where a $74.99 (U.S.) annual fee gives you a chance to buy up to eight tickets before they go on sale to the general public. Non-members must wait until Saturday morning to buy tickets.
Then you need to act fast.
To ensure the general public will still have seats to buy on Saturday the UFC will cap initial ticket sales to Fight Club members. With the most heavily hyped event in the UFC’s history approaching and nearly 20,000 people enrolled in the Fight Club, the UFC could easily sell all 40,000 seats without even opening sales to the general public.
Hence the cap on pre-sales. Tom Wright, the UFC’s director of Canadian operations, says that even for $75 your Fight Club membership doesn’t guarantee you a chance to buy tickets.In today’s world, the quality of work being put out into the creative space is as high as has ever been. Now with the cost of entry being low and the quality of technology being constantly updated, making a name for yourself is getting harder and harder daily. We are always looking for that “edge” as professionals that set us apart from the crowd or that little extra boost of energy needed to finish that late-night editing session. Lucky for us the answer isn't more caffeine (though it never hurts) or something we have to go out and buy. It's as simple as dedicating a few minutes a day to personal fitness.
It wakes up our body and mind in a way that can’t be replicated artificially. In a world where everything is put on a platter for us, we fail to understand that our bodies are meant for so much more than sitting behind a desk all day or in front of a TV binge watching our favorite Netflix series. We are meant to be out physically stressing ourselves daily. Introducing this into our lives can bring lifelong benefits and ensure that we have a leg up on the competition.
Physical Capacity
Now in terms of actual physical fitness there is way more to it than just looking good in the mirror, it’s about being functional. While I understand that not everyone is interested in scaling mountains to get photos, even as a professional working in a studio you can reap the benefits. On any given day in as a photographer we can be transporting heavy kits of gear to multiple locations, moving lighting equipment around our studios, or just carrying a camera around a city all day waiting to capture that perfect moment. We can all benefit from things like improved metabolism, higher bone density, and higher amounts of daily energy. When we are in good shape things like a hard day at work or an all-day photo shoot, we can function at a higher level for a longer duration than someone who doesn’t take care of themselves. This should be a huge reason to consider taking fitness seriously in itself because what is worse than being at a point where you just can’t physically function at a professional level during a shoot? Along with that we learn a lot about our bodies along the way like how to pace yourself through long sessions or how to prepare for a strenuous day of work.
Mental Capacity
In a recent interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson, TV host and the face of Old Spice Terry Crews explained in detail about how when he’s running and pushes through the “runner’s wall” that’s when his great creative ideas for TV shows and comedy skits come alive. While we aren't writing dialogs, we do find ourselves in situations where we need to make split second decisions that can make or break productions. Now it affects everyone differently, but most can say from experience that after an intense workout we have a mental clarity that we haven’t been able to find otherwise which goes a long way in this industry. Studies from Harvard have shown that regular exercise improves verbal memory and learning along with reducing stress and anxiety. Even if you didn’t need to be creative having this clarity when juggling the many different jobs that we have as photographers can be vital to your business' success. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a flood of anxiety and stress weighing on you as you’re pushing forward towards a close project deadline.
Overall Well-Being
Along with physically feeling better and being mentally clear there is the overall well-being aspect. These are just a few of the many side effects of fitness: better sleep quality, better dexterity, better immune system, better hormone production, more confidence, and the list goes on and on. Combine these all together from a singular act and you have one of the most beneficial things you could do for yourself. We all want to have long fruitful careers and this job isn’t easy. We must invest time in the most important piece of gear we have (no it's not your camera or that nice collection of glass you have) and that's ourselves. Being in control of your well-being will leave you able to focus on the important things in your day to day without worry of how you’ll perform.
When it’s all said, and done, fitness in general is something that is meant for all of us. Some of us aren’t going to be lifting ungodly amounts of weight, some us aren’t going to be running ultra-marathons, but all of us are built to be physically active. When you factor in what all fitness can do for you, you owe it to yourself to at least try it. The longevity of our artistic careers all depend on being able to stay at our peak level for as long as possible and given that you devote the proper time to your fitness and health. I will guarantee that it will pay dividends to your creative productivity and provide a quality of life you wouldn't have known otherwise.McDonald’s customers in Washington, D.C., can expect their next order of fries to come with a message of inclusivity.
In celebration of the city’s LGBTQ community, select McDonald’s locations in the D.C. area will be serving large orders of french fries in rainbow-print packaging during Pride weekend.
The colorful fry boxes will be available between June 9 and June 11, but only while supplies last, and only at three specific McDonald’s restaurants located along this year’s Capital Pride Alliance’s parade route.
MCDONALD'S AUSTRALIA ADDS FREQUENTLY REQUESTED 'SECRET ITEM' TO OFFICIAL MENU
The McDonald’s Family Restaurants of Greater Washington, D.C., is also a sponsor of the Capital Pride Alliance — a non-profit organization dedicated to LGBTQ education and outreach — and will reportedly have a float in this year’s parade on June 10.
Cathy Martin, co-chair of the McDonald’s PRIDE Network and vice president/general manager of McDonald’s Baltimore Washington Region, explained the company’s new fry boxes in a press release obtained by Fox News.
“The rainbow fry boxes are a fun way to show our support of the LGBTQ community using one of McDonald’s most iconic and recognizable items; however, these fry boxes are ‘small potatoes’ in the grand scheme of our commitment to this community,” said Martin.
“We are proud to honor and celebrate the LGBTQ community, including our employees, customers and beyond, each and every day.”
Participating McDonald’s locations include: 1944 14th Street, NW; 1619 17th Street, NW; and 1916 M Street, NW.
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This year’s Capital Pride parade is scheduled for June 10 between 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. Other Capital Pride weekend festivities include a rooftop pool party on June 8; an opening celebration on June 9; a block party and brunch on June 10, and the closing festival and concert on June 11.
McDonald’s of Greater Washington, D.C. is also an official sponsor of the Capital Pride Block Party on June 10.The Scottish diet is associated in the UK media and popular discourse with unhealthy deep-fried foods. In addition to the stereotype's negative effects on perceptions of Scottish food, culture and people, there is evidence that the stereotype of the Scottish diet has negative effects on food behaviour and public health in Scotland, having been shown to encourage consumption of deep-fried foods and discourage positive dietary change. The most notorious deep-fried food associated with Scotland is the deep-fried Mars bar (DFMB), arguably invented in Stonehaven (near Aberdeen), and first reported in the Scottish and UK press in 1995. This article reports findings from an analysis of newspaper references to the DFMB in the two highest selling newspapers in Scotland, the Scottish Sun and the Daily Record, between 2011 and 2014. A keyword search ("deep fried Mars bar") using the online media database Lexis Library generated 97 unique records, and the resulting dataset was analysed thematically and discursively. Analysis showed that both newspapers clearly associated the DFMB with Scotland. Further, both newspapers portrayed the DFMB and the broader "deep-fried" Scottish diet stereotype ambivalently (mixed positive and negative associations). However, the Daily Record actively criticised the DFMB stereotype much more often than did the Scottish Sun. These findings suggest that the Scottish population encounters different messages in the press about food and nutrition from people elsewhere in the UK, and that these messages vary depending on choice of media in Scotland. Given the known negative effects of the stereotype, differences in Scottish media discourse should be considered a potential factor in persistent health inequalities affecting Scotland. Educational efforts, and opening discussion with journalists and amongst the Scottish public, may be helpful.
Copyright © 2016 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.Former Lion was going to end it all, but now shares his story of why he didn’t
In a Detroit Free Press file photo, Lions QB Erik Kramer completed this 3rd quarter pass to Eric Lynch against the Chicago Bears. (Photo: Julian H. Gonzalez, Detroit Free Press)
Erik Kramer flew home to California last July, after finishing a month-long stay at the Eisenhower Center rehabilitation facility in Ann Arbor, and almost immediately began planning his death.
Kramer, who quarterbacked the Detroit Lions in 1990-93 and led the team to its only playoff victory since 1957, sat down at his computer and started typing out a suicide to-do list.
Known for his meticulous preparation and diligent work habits as a player, Kramer wrote, in order, everything he wanted to accomplish before alleviating the unbearable mental and emotional pain he had been dealing with, off and on, for almost two decades.
He had to redo his will and tidy up some business ventures. He had bills to pay and chores to do around the house. He had suicide letters to write to the eight or 10 people closest to him: his son, his ex-wife, his sister and a few friends and business partners.
And he had to buy a gun.
One day, Kramer drove to a gun store in Simi Valley, Calif., about 30 minutes from his home in Agoura Hills, northwest of Los Angeles.
He made small talk with a clerk at the store, said he was in need of a handgun, and when the clerk recommended a SIG Sauer 9mm, he filled out the paperwork and waited 10 days before he was cleared for purchase.
Finally, with everything checked off his to-do list and a few practice rounds under his belt at a local gun range, Kramer took what he planned to be his last day on Earth for himself.
On Tuesday, Aug. 18, with his son Dillon a day away from starting his junior year of high school, Kramer printed the suicide notes from his computer and put them in personalized envelopes on his desk. He picked up Dillon for lunch and dropped him off at his ex-wife’s house. He had dinner at a local place he can’t remember. And he checked into a second-floor room at the Good Nite Inn on Agoura Road in Calabasas, Calif., where, around 8 p.m., he tried to take his own life.
“All of that came to sort of an end, and it was time to either do it or not do it,” Kramer said. “I think I hung out for a little bit. I think I may have gone to eat some dinner somewhere and then came back and, I don’t know what time, but sort of took the gun, crawled into bed and pulled the trigger.”
That Kramer is alive today to tell his story — one of hope built from despair, and one that he wants to serve as a life preserver for others dealing with depression — is nothing short of a miracle.
Kramer, in a series of phone interviews with the Free Press over the past 11 days, described in detail both his suicide attempt that made headlines last August and his recovery, spurred on by family and former teammates, in the months since.
The bullet traveled through his chin, left a hole in his tongue, went up through his sinus cavities and out the top of his head.
He spent most of the past nine months in two California hospitals, where he underwent surgery to repair his tongue and replace a chunk of his skull, and two brain-rehabilitation clinics before returning home last month.
He’s back living a normal life that includes golfing, driving and dating. And most important, he said that the suicidal thoughts that have come and gone since his playing days — and intensified early last year — have subsided completely.
“I don’t want to tempt fate but, at this point, I feel very good,” Kramer said. “And so my hope is to just keep living life and keep contributing and keep all that going.”
‘Fall from grace’
When the Lions signed Kramer as a free agent on March 21, 1990, he was little more than a footnote on the transaction report.
The team was a month away from drafting Andre Ware in the first round, and with Rodney Peete returning as starter, no one expected much from the Canadian Football League refugee.
Kramer, the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year as a senior at North Carolina State, always had to fight for his keep on the field.
He was a backup quarterback and starting safety in high school who spent 2 1/2 years in junior college before moving on to N.C. State. His first taste of the NFL came as a replacement player for the Atlanta Falcons during the short-lived 1987 strike, and when he was cut during training camp the next fall, he headed off to play for the Calgary Stampeders of the CFL.
In 1989, Kramer tore a ligament in his knee during an intrasquad scrimmage. Not wanting to return to Canada the next year, he sent out feelers to all 30 NFL teams after the season and got one response — from the Lions.
Kramer worked out for the Lions in the winter of 1990 and signed with the team soon afterward. He suffered a shoulder injury that August that knocked him out for the season, then spent the next three years splitting time with Ware and Peete.
When Peete tore his Achilles tendon in October 1991, Kramer finished out the season as starter and led the Lions to their only NFC championship game appearance. He threw for 341 yards and three touchdowns in a divisional playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys that he still ranks as the proudest moment of his NFL career.
In a Detroit Free Press file photo from October 1994, Detroit defensive end Robert Porcher got to Bears' QB Erik Kramer here for a sack late in the 1st quarter. (Photo: JULIAN H. GONZALEZ, DETROIT FREE PRESS)
The Lions have been to the playoffs just seven times since, without a victory.
“They never really got out of their base defense, which was kind of strange,” Kramer said of the Cowboys game. “We just kept throwing the same two or three routes all game.”
It wasn’t long after Kramer’s breakout 1991 season that he first remembers having suicidal thoughts.
He signed a three-year, $8.1-million free agent contract with the Chicago Bears in 1994 to replace Jim Harbaugh as starter, but separated his shoulder early in the season and spent most of the year on the bench.
“I think it was the fall from grace (that first brought on the depression),” Kramer said. “Coming in as the starter and the free agent and then getting hurt, feeling better after a few weeks, like I could play, but then not getting an opportunity to. And I think that all played a part in it.”
Kramer said he never told the team about his mental state but did confide in a psychotherapist and family members.
He started taking anti-depressant medication around that time and was “off and on (the medicine for) probably 10 or 15 years.”
In 1995, Kramer had the best individual season of his career. He threw for 3,838 yards and 29 touchdowns, still Bears records, but, the following spring, battled depression again.
“The high, I guess, that I was on from playing and playing well, it did not last throughout, say, the next full off-season,” Kramer said. “So, yeah, I began to, I guess, question things and feel — I think some depression crept in before the start of the next season, in ’96.”
While injuries eventually ended his career — San Diego Chargers team doctors ordered him to retire midway through the 1999 season because of a serious neck injury — Kramer said he did not experience the post-playing depression that strikes many in the NFL.
He coached high school football, started a quarterback-mentoring camp and got into TV, and it was only when a series of personal tragedies struck that Kramer’s world began to spin out of control again.
Loss and loneliness
Suicide was the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S. last year, according to an annual report by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Among adults age 50 and over — Kramer turns 52 in November — some 2.9 million people (2.7%) reported having serious thoughts of suicide in 2014, the last year for which data is available, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Despite increasing awareness about the problem, Dr. Jane Pearson, chair of the National Institute of Mental Health’s suicide-research consortium, said there’s no easy answer for what drives people to attempt suicide.
“People get to that point for lots of different reasons,” said Pearson, who has not worked with Kramer. “It’s usually not just one reason. It’s often an accumulation of things.”
Kramer’s ex-wife, Marshawn, hinted in an interview with NBC and in a post on her Facebook page after Kramer’s suicide attempt that football was partly to blame for his condition.
“He is a very amazing man, a beautiful soul, but he has suffered depression since he was with the Bears,” Marshawn Kramer said last August. She did not respond to the Free Press for this report. "I can promise you he is not the same man I married."
Kramer said he never was diagnosed with a concussion during his playing days in college nor the pros, and he wrestles with how much, if anything, the sport had to do with “the state of being that I was in.”
“I’ve thought about that often, but nothing really stands out as connecting football to the sort of feeling I’ve had with depression,” Kramer said. “It very well may be linked. It doesn’t feel like it to me.”
Instead, Kramer points to a series of losses he endured that left him feeling isolated and alone.
His son Griffen died of a heroin overdose in October 2011. His mother, Eileen, passed away from uterine cancer in July 2012. His father, Karl, was terminally ill with esophageal cancer at the time of his suicide attempt and died weeks later, while Kramer was still in the hospital. He went through a difficult breakup with a girlfriend late in 2014. And his relationship with his son Dillon was fraying at this time last year.
“I would say there was an emptiness,” Kramer said. “And getting older. I’m 51 now and I know that doesn’t sound really old, but you’re definitely on the other side of the halfway point. And I think, just as all these people that have meant a great deal to me, all of a sudden were either gone already or on their way out. So I think the loneliness that comes with that and, at the point of life I’m in now, all played a role. It’s too late to start over.”
Last June, with his depression bottoming out and thoughts of suicide paralyzing his brain, Kramer reached out to a handful of friends, including ex-Lions quarterback Eric Hipple and Dr. Bryce Lefever, a former Navy psychologist who was then clinical director at Brightwater Landing, a Pennsylvania mental-health and addiction recovery center.
Kramer had worked with Hipple and Lefever in training Navy special warfare personnel in a mental-fitness program a year earlier, and now he was in need of their help.
He told both men of his plight, and after Hipple and Lefever conferred, they brought Kramer to Ann Arbor for a 30-day stint at the Eisenhower Center, where Hipple works as an outreach specialist.
“When he came out, he was immobile,” Hipple said. “He had total lack of emotion. No joy, no feeling, just felt out of place completely and no energy, no appetite. So all the classic symptoms of clinical depression that go with him. My guess is he was probably riding that bench for quite awhile and then, at the last moment not knowing, he just was stuck, so he made the phone call, and that’s when we went and got him.”
While Kramer showed some progress during his time at the Eisenhower Center, he said he knew a few days into his treatment that the program, which was designed with former football players and military personnel in mind, wasn’t right for him.
“I was only there for a couple of days, and it just hit me,” Kramer said. “The things that I felt I needed were not being addressed.”
Dealing with pain
There’s a small, indistinct scar on Kramer’s chin about half of the size of a dime.
“It could be anything,” Kramer said.
But of course, it’s not.
Lefever helped connect Kramer with a psychologist after he returned to California last July, and Kramer said he was honest about his feelings in therapy sessions even as he planned his own death.
He didn’t say anything about why he wanted the gun when he drove out to the store in Simi Valley.
“I didn’t explain, ‘Hey, I’m looking to go shoot myself. What kind of gun should I get?’” he said.
And he said he felt “strange” when he stopped by the local gun range to practice.
“Like, ‘I’m going to a gun range and shooting out at a target that’s down the range that I’m never going to be using this for,’” Kramer said. “But it did get me familiar with the gun, I will say that.”
Kramer said his suicide notes, which remain unseen by family and friends and are in the possession of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, were “just instructional letters, really, for letting people know what to do,” with a little bit of life advice and an explanation of his mental state for his son Dillon.
As for the attempt itself, Kramer doesn’t remember much about that nor the ensuing weeks, though he did send text messages from his hotel room to his sister, Kelley, and close friend Chris Germann that were odd enough to arouse suspicions.
Kelley called Hipple in a panic the night of the suicide attempt after receiving Kramer’s text.
Germann declined an interview for this report.
In a Detroit Free Press file photo, Lions' coach Wayne Fontes hugged his new QB Erik Kramer as they walked off the field after their 21-14 win over Phoenix. (Photo: Julian H. Gonzalez, Detroit Free Press)
“It was going through my mind (before the attempt) how much I was going to miss Dillon and my sister and her kids, how much I was going to miss my friends,” Kramer said. “But at the same time, I was in a state of sort of — I don’t know what you call it. Maybe depression or some sort of pain where I was also looking forward to, um, to not having to deal with some of the pain. I also had reasoned and realized that there was going to be quite a bit of pain just over the suicide, and mourning because of that. So all that was sort of weighing on me a little bit.”
While the LASD, which also declined interview requests for this report, citing privacy concerns, put out an advisory after the attempt, saying an unnamed adult male was airlifted to a local hospital following the incident, Kramer said he has a vague recollection of traveling by ambulance to Northridge Hospital Medical Center.
“I’m told I was talking and polite with the ambulance driver and all that,” Kramer said.
In some ways, Kramer’s own thoroughness in planning his death turned out to be his salvation. He checked into the Good Nite Inn because he “just didn’t want there to be a big aftermath (at home) for my son to have to deal with,” but his attempt caused enough of a commotion that someone at the hotel alerted police.
“I think he lost sight of how much he was loved and regarded,” Lefever said. “And when somebody gets that down, especially somebody who’s so focused, so solution-focused, I think that he got — I suspect, and again, he’s not my patient, I suspect that he got focused on the idea that suicide would be the end of his pain.
“The metaphor I like to use is a water slide. At the beginning, you don’t really recognize the danger if you were to fly off this slide and die. You don’t recognize that at first. You get going faster and faster and, the last 10 feet, you can’t stop yourself. You need to stop yourself much further up the slide or not get on the slide at all if you recognize it for what it is. And he was kind of in a faster and faster slide. It seemed like nothing was going to get him out of it.”
Rehab and reconnect
As badly as he was injured by the gunshot, Kramer jokes now that he was saved for one simple reason: “I’m a bad shot.”
“I think that’s the only thing that came out of it,” he said, laughing. “Well, not the only thing, but that’s one of the things that came out of it was that I’m not even a very good shot at point-blank range.”
Kramer did suffer a traumatic brain injury in the incident and was in a medically-induced coma for much of the six or so weeks he spent at Northridge.
Kelley, who traveled from her home outside of Las Vegas to be with Kramer on weekends, said he was "touch and go" for several weeks.
"He's come a long way," she said. "He’s doing amazing. He’s been through — he’s overcome a lot. He’s worked really hard to get where he’s at today."
Doctors removed what Kramer estimates as “the front quarter” of the left side of his skull during his time at Northridge and, earlier this year, after having a mold of his head made, he underwent a cranioplasty to plate the area.
That procedure, along with one to sew his tongue back together, are the only two surgeries that Kramer remembers.
From Northridge, Kramer went to the UCLA Medical Center for a few weeks before rehabbing at two separate brain trauma therapy clinics. He spent 4 1/2 months at the Centre for Neuro Skills in Encino, where he lived in one of the facility’s group homes and received regular counseling for his depression, and another two months as an outpatient with the Nevada Community Enrichment Program while living in Nevada with his sister.
Though Kramer did not suffer any permanent sensory loss nor significant cognitive impairment from his suicide attempt, he said the structure both programs provided was invaluable in helping him to regain short-term memory capacity and re-engage with people.
At the Nevada facility, Kramer said he and others took regular Friday field trips to places like Red Rock Canyon. One day, with Hipple in town for a visit, Kramer drove over to meet Hipple and his wife for lunch. Upon seeing the progress his friend had made, Hipple began to cry.
“The first instinct everybody has with this sort of thing is to retreat inward. And they wanted to make sure that people were trying to engage outward,” Kramer said. “I think it was initially a little difficult for me, but I’m glad that that was part of their program, because I think, over the course of those two months (in Las Vegas), that definitely helped.”
While at CNS, Kramer received a surprise video montage from about 25 former Lions, wishing him well in his recovery. He also reconnected with a handful of ex-teammates who shared stories of their own post-career struggles. Peete and former Bears teammate Curtis Conway were among those instrumental in his recovery.
“It meant a lot to me,” Kramer said of the video, which was the brainchild of former Lions executives Rob Wooley and Elizabeth Parkinson, in conjunction with the team’s peer-support group. “It’s not something that happens every day and so it definitely stood out as very important.”
From left, Sean Miles, Bryce Lefever, Eric Hipple and Erik Kramer gather in March 2014. (Photo: Courtesy of Bryce Lefever)
‘Worth living’
Hipple and Kramer had a long talk during the car ride back to Agoura Hills after Kramer was released from the hospital last year.
At one point, Kramer started to explain how hard it was to plan his own death.
“He told me all that in the car and he said, ‘And here I am, I’m still alive,’” Hipple recalled. “And I asked him, I said, ‘So what does that mean to you?’ And he said, ‘That I should be alive.’
“And so, for me, that was the biggest positive thing of somebody coming to the realization that life is worth living and that maybe make steps and recover rather than seeing it as a botched suicide attempt. More looking at it like, ‘I was very lucky,’ and almost a miracle the way he made it through all this, and that this is something he should be doing.”
Nine months after his failed suicide attempt, that’s exactly how Kramer said he sees things.
His relationship with Dillon is improving. He has resumed dating his former girlfriend. And his will to live is apparent.
"It is definitely a miracle and a gift at a second chance," Kelley said. “I think he’s got an amazing heart and can help a lot of people with his experiences that he’s been through."
Kramer said he doesn’t take any medication for his depression and isn’t seeing a psychologist, though he’s about to resume therapy through CNS.
He plays golf several days a week at North Ranch Country Club in Thousand Oaks, where his “frustrating” 5 or 6 handicap usually plays more like a 10.
And if his story hadn’t made headlines last year, no one would know that he once tried to take his own life by the looks of him.
“I think, the emotional side, I think he’s good. I think the wanting to live life is good. The conversations I’ve had, he’s upbeat about all that,” Hipple said. “Cognitively speaking, that’s a question mark always, about how much is not there or is there. Is it 98%? Is he 99%? Nobody really knows. When you talk to him, he feels like 100%, but then you’ve got to remember this was a traumatic brain injury and, like I said, the miracle back has been fantastic. His memory’s all great. His working memory, his audio memory, his digital memory. He’s engaging and funny and he’s Erik.”
Kramer does have one minor physical impairment left from his incident. The gunshot shifted his teeth, and now that they’ve had a chance to settle, he’s scheduled to undergo oral surgery in July to realign his lower bite.
That procedure involves breaking a bone in his mouth and pushing up his teeth. But after everything Kramer has survived, and with everything he now has to live for, that doesn’t seem so scary.
“During the course of all that treatment, I was around a lot of people who (suffered brain injuries),” Kramer said. “Through all of that, I can’t help but think that I should have been the worst, the most worse off than anybody, but I just was extremely lucky. And after talking to the doctors, after talking to the staff at these places, I don’t know how that happened. I guess I’m just one of the lucky ones. There’s no real reason other than that, I think.”
Contact Dave Birkett: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.
Download our Lions Xtra app for free on Apple and Android!One morning, my partner Kurt looked into our field and saw a black horse that wasn’t there. The horse looked just like our neighbor Jeremy Frith’s horse, and turned out to be a harbinger of his impending death.
A week earlier, Jeremy had been admitted to the emergency department due to concerns about his heart, but after EKG and blood pressure analysis his mind was put at ease. He was told that with a little bed rest he’d be just fine.
Tuesday morning I was outside shoveling around the hay trailer. Cheryl stopped in to tell us that she had just seen a number of emergency response vehicles at the Frith’s Mountain Meadow Farm. Just then Kurt came out of the house saying that another neighbour had called to share the sad news that indeed Jeremy had died. We fumbled to collect what we needed to go up the road.
People were gathered in the driveway in shock. I went into the house, suspecting that Jeremy’s body had already been removed by the first responders, who must have tried to rush him to the hospital. My intention was to offer support to his wife Sue.
To my surprise, there on their bedroom floor lay Jeremy – his head cradled in Sue’s lap. He was still warm, only recently pronounced dead. He looked wonderful (if slightly pale). There was nothing grotesque about his appearance at all. In fact my thought at that moment was, “how can someone who looks so strong and healthy be dead?” My impulse was to go closer to touch him.
Medical personnel were still around and since the death was unexpected, the police were conducting an investigation. It was difficult to witness Sue’s experience, but I refused to comply with those who conspired to “protect her” by insisting that she come downstairs to the living room for tea. Instead I chose to hold space for what was naturally unfolding.
Sue’s world was turned upside down, and she fretted about what would become of the farm, their animals, their gardens and herself. I sat down with her and Jeremy both, and said that all she had to think about right now was that this was the last chance she’d ever have to be with Jeremy’s body. When Sue was given permission to spend that time in any way that felt right for her, she opened to the experience so fully, and with such love, that being in their presence was an honour that I will never forget.
The local minister and I nodded at one another as we watched Sue communicate with Jeremy rather than about him. As a grief counselor, I recognized the important grief work that was being done. She looked into his face and imagined his answers to questions. “Do you know how much I love you?” She was holding his body as she made the difficult phone calls to tell his sons about their dad’s death.
Hours passed. Sue did everything a person could with that precious time. She agreed with the medical examiner that Jeremy must have an autopsy to try to attain some answers about his unexpected death, and by the time his remains were removed she felt his spirit was no longer embodied. One of the women who came to take Jeremy away was excited by the closeness of the dogs Kipper and Lucy who were cuddled at his side. She
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bonus, the opening chapter of Thieves Castle, the work-in-progress sequel, is also up...
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Excerpt:
It was all about waiting.
Flanders had been damp and cold and dull and dangerous. The motley collection of soldiers in the Lowlands that made up the small English expedition under Morgan and Gilbert had been a mélange of ex-Sea Beggars, Prussian mercenaries, English soldiers-of-fortune and rake-hell adventurers, leavened with a healthy mix of brutal Scottish Highlanders and amoral Dutchmen. They were hard, cruel and unscrupulous men, men who prized loot, fighting, drink and women. They were routinely drunk, undisciplined, licentious and lice-ridden. They fought among themselves almost as much as they fought the Spaniards but fight they did. They had honed their belligerent skills in the dank and stony streets of Edinburgh and Haarlem, in the hard arenas of clan warfare and on the chill decks of the Dutch brigand fleet.
In their ranks, Tyburn had been well-schooled.
The man stepped forward, looking to close fast and pull the interloper off balance, to reach out with his massive calloused hands and break this bastard player.
Waiting was over.
Tyburn sidestepped and slammed his open hand into the lunging man’s throat. The man gagged and choked, both hands inadvertently pulling away from their intended target. Tyburn’s booted foot raked down the man’s instep and he lurched forward, his advance turning into a painful stumble, Tyburn arced a hard closed left fist into the man’s right ear and another into his stomach. As his opponent bent over, Tyburn levered his arm and slammed him headfirst into the cornerpost with a sickening crack.
The man fell like a brick.
Cuttle glared up at the player and rose, head swimming. One hand dropped to his belt, grasping the bone hilt of his dagger.
Tyburn regarded Cuttle with a chary stare and flipped back his yellow cloak, tapping the hilt of his rapier. “That’s a path you don’t want to tread, friend.” he said in a mild tone, shaking his head.
What's been done?
The book is 100% complete, but as I learned, writing is only part of the road to publication.
The next step lies before me: going from words on paper to a fully published novel.
Publication is a journey and, although self-publishing today is click-of-a-button-simple, putting out a good book – one that has few typos, a nice layout and structure, well-edited & graced with brilliantly compelling cover art – can be expensive.
I have invested significant time and effort in research, writing and re-writing, aimed at creating a compelling and exciting story set in the Elizabethan world, while trying to keep it as historically accurate as possible.
What's needed to bring this tale to publication?
To bring a good product to market - in this case the first novel in a planned series - you need to provide a quality reading experience and value for readers. That means superlative writing, a great story and a terrific reading experience. This requires professional editing, proofing, layout design (interior & exterior), multiple e-book formats, and a great cover.
Successful publication also requires marketing, in order to be visible and promoted to the widest possible reading audience. That's easy if you are in the hands of a major publisher, but much harder if you are on your own.
Editing, design and marketing
These are the three items that bring me to Kickstarter. I need capital support to help me bring the book to the publication stage. This involves sourcing & hiring:
1). A great copy editor
2). A layout designer to help manage the interior design layout so a reader's experience is flawless and smooth no matter if it be a Kindle, Kobo, Nook or a print copy.
3). A cover designer who can capture the energy & excitement of the story and help get readers to pick it off the shelf.
What do you get?
Aside from my undying gratitude, some great rewards and a well-spun story, your investment in the publication of The Jesuit Letter isn't just the start of this tale, it is the start of a SERIES. Tyburn's tale is planned to encompass a significant part of the Elizabethan reign, from the 1570's through to at least 1588 and the advent of the Armada.
Once the first book is off the ground, the others will follow. The second book, Thieves Castle, is currently 1/3 complete and is slated to be done by the end of 2014, followed by book three, Sorcerer's Street, and at least two more that are in the early planning stages.
Investing in a Kickstarter is about more than just swag, its about the opportunity to help support, create, develop and build an endeavor.
Nobody likes to wait! If project supporters are interested in receiving the unedited advance per-release digital copy of The Jesuit Letter immediately (i.e. no waiting til September!) I would be more than pleased to provide it as an Advance Edition to the various reward levels.
Even if you decide that The Jesuit Letter isn't for you, poke about and throw your support behind some of the other projects on Kickstarter. Ideas and dreams always can use a little bit of help or a nudge in the right direction.
I hope you decide to be a part of it.(Photo by Victor Tan / New Day Review)
ORLANDO, Fla. – Goalkeeper. Role model. Sharks. Great hair.
When you think of Orlando Pride goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris, those are some of the first words that come to mind. Following a near-17 minute-long, one-on-one interview with her, I wrote down some of the words that came to me. Here’s what I’ve got:
Proud. Humble. Patient. Great hair.
In my sit-down with the native Floridian, Harris expanded on what it means to know herself physically and how that plays into a relationship with a long-time coach. She showed that being a big-name player and being a mentor are not mutually exclusive statuses. And though she’s endured an injury that has kept her out since May, Harris has shown the wisdom behind patience.
Of course, I couldn’t help but admire her hair too.
On relationship with goalkeeper coach Lloyd Yaxley, on Yaxley’s coaching style.
Well, Lloyd and I—I mean, we’ve been together now for almost five years, and I think there’s an element of trust that goes into that—developing a good relationship with your coach, and I just think that at this point in my career, he knows my body; he knows, you know, all that—when you start a new relationship with a coach, it’s hard because you’re not on, like—there’s a hierarchy. Like, we’re gonna do what I wanna do, but sometimes when you’re at—pushing 30, 31, 32, it’s gotta be a combined effort because usually my body will tell me how sessions will go.
The good thing about Lloyd—it was a no-brainer to bring him here. He’s a fantastic coach, and he’s definitely more on the modern side in understanding it’s not so much about quantity but quality and limiting, you know, how many reps I get; making sure I’m not smashing the ground a ton each day. So that’s kind of where we’re at. I trust him, at the end of the day. I trust that he’s gonna prepare me well enough to be at my best when it comes game time, and that’s doing the right things during the week, and I think, last year, my body was in shambles, and it was very uncomfortable. I actually didn’t train as much as I wanted to, and it was always just trying to maintain an uncomfortable, like, trying to heal and then push on and heal and push on. It wasn’t a good cycle for me. I think he’s come in; he’s done a really good job. I think he’s helped the younger kids out, and I love his style. It’s very open. It’s like, “Okay, maybe this isn’t working. What can we do different?” And we’re both very open to each other’s ideas, and we bounce off each other, and, at this level and at this age, it has to be that way.
On Yaxley’s usage of unorthodox, non-soccer equipment in training.
It’s hard to compare him to anyone else. Like, you know, the things we can do here are different than things you can do—like, national-team stuff, you can’t—you come in for a week. It’s not a like a developmental stage. Does that make sense? So it’s hard to compare, like—I’ve had some unbelievable goalkeeper coaches. Paul Rogers. Graeme Abel, who’s our goalkeeper coach now. And it’s just like, these goalkeeper coaches are the best at what they do, but it’s hard when you only go in a week, and most of that’s prepping for a game, you know? So, it’s really just brushing a surface area.
Here, you know, I can come out—like,this morning. I came out. I have reaction goggles on that help take away sight. So, how quickly can I pick up a tennis ball being hit at me when my sight’s taken away? A certain amount of beats per second. I don’t have time to do that stuff when I’m at the national team.You know, coming out here this morning, doing reaction stuff with the tennis ball and a racket. He’ll just pepper tennis balls at me. And how many can I catch? How many do I parry in a good position? I mean, I don’t—it’s hard to do those things. We work well because that takes a lot of impact off my legs. So I can get a lot out of training without throwing myself on the ground. And I think he’s developing, too. I think he gets ideas from—he wasn’t always like this. You know, he loves to learn the game. And what I love most about him is he’ll take a step back, and he’s not a “I know everything” type of guy. He’s like, “I’m gonna go watch Graeme. I’m gonna go watch Paul. I’m gonna go watch the men over here at Orlando City, and I’m gonna take pieces that I think could be really beneficial for us. And that’s a good quality to have and not always just thinking you know everything. And he’s been able to grow a lot from just stepping back and observing.
On bringing Yaxley to the Pride in the offseason.
Yeah, and that’s usually, at this level, that’s how it works. When you’re a goalkeeper, you—it’s a unique position to be in. It’s a different realm. It’s a different game. It’s a different being. So, it’s good to have your comfort, you know? We can sit down and go over video, and I can say stuff to him, and he can say stuff to me—nothing’s ever personal. You know, it’s just like a good balance. We have, like, the best connection together, and that takes years. And when you have a six-month season, and you throw someone new in here, you don’t have time for that, you know what I mean? So, he came in, hit the ground running. We started training the first day he got here. But, yeah, I’m happy he was able to do this. I’m thankful. I think he’s a large part of my success over the past few years, and it’s only gonna get better from here, you know? And with him here, my length, my life—whatever you want to call it in terms of my soccer length and life—will be prolonged because he gets me. And he gets how hard he can push me without hurting me in certain aspects like that.
On goalkeeper Aubrey Bledsoe stepping into Harris’ shoes as the starting keeper during Harris’ injury.
Yeah, she’s done a great job. I’ve been really proud of her, and she’s worked really hard, and I think she’s made leaps and bounds from last season, and I think the difference between—Aubrey and I have a great connection, a great relationship. And what I always loved most is being in environments where my goalkeepers around me are helping coach me, and it would be easy for me to come in and just focus on myself, but I really wanted to take her under my wing from the beginning and be like, “Hey, this is what you need to do here. This made me think about it this way. Or maybe try to tweak this that way.” And that, I think, that’s a good thing to have because I see everything behind her. You know, when Lloyd’s kicking balls, his focus is accuracy and all those things. I have a perfect picture of what’s going on, and I think it would be harmful not to say anything, and that’s kind of been my strategy since she’s gotten here is to bring her up along. It pushes the training. It’s better, and I think every goalkeeper at her age needs to have that.
[Too] many times rookie goalkeepers get thrown in, and they get eaten up and spit out, and it hurts their careers, and it takes years to rebuild it and sometimes can be a nightmare. And, as you can see with Aubrey, she takes a year under her belt of understanding the game, learning the game, learning the position, and when she steps in, she can do well. It sets her up for success, not for failure, and I think that’s the biggest thing people are seeing. She’s been ready. She wasn’ put into a situation she wasn’t ready for.
On how she and Yaxley jointly run training sessions.
Yeah, well, I think, for Lloyd, he has—he comes in every morning with his plan. He has it on paper. I look over it—looks great, seems right, but when you get out there, if the movement’s not right, it might look right on paper, but when I’m moving through the goal, if something’s not working, it doesn’t feel natural—everything I replicate is in the game. If I’m having to move in ways I don’t in the game, I’m not gonna do it because it’s just teaching bad habits. So once I get in goal, if I do something a few times, and I’m like, “This isn’t working. Doesn’t feel right.” He can see it, too.
So, both of us will step in, and I’ll be like, “It seems more natural for me to move this way and get set or my body shaped this way, or your angle’s off. Or it cause me to dive backwards.” Those are the things that until I get in and I can really feel it, I have to change it because I’m not just gonna do something to do it. I think it’s important to replicate everything I do even in the weight room. I won’t do squat jumps just to do squat jumps. Like, everything I do, it has to be a purpose in what I’m gonna do out here on the field. So that’s kind of where she’s probably thinking we bounce things off to get it right. That’s the importance is to get it right.
On admiration from Bledsoe and their relationship.
Aubrey and I have a great relationship, same with the team. I’m a vocal leader. That’s my job. So, any time I can step in and help make an impact or coach or do anything like that, I try to do that. I think too many times—I mean, has it been exhausting? Yeah. Because I’m here. I’m at PT. I’m at the hospital, but there are days where I’m not here, and while I’m here, I do; I try to make the most of it. And I think sitting back, and if I see things wrong, I’m becoming more of the problem instead of the solution, so it’s hard for me just to sit back and shut my mouth.
And people—it’s a different perspective coming from me compared to coming from Tom or Khano or Lloyd. Just playing at the level I’ve played at, I think it holds, and it sticks to them, and sometimes I’m really fricking harsh on them, truthfully. I’m the first to say that I’m very—I think that there’s a standard, and the standard should always be held, but I think we’re all human. And there’s an emotional side to it. So, any chance I get to be—put my arm around someone or tell them how well they’re doing or how much I appreciate them, it’s important to get those opponents and because, you know, people don’t know, like, how much you care, like, until you really go out of your comfort and you’re vulnerable.
Yeah, it’s really difficult. It’s tricky in women’s sports because a lot of things do get held personally. So you have to put your arm around people, and if you observe, you know which players that you need kind of lift up, but, also, it’s about being competitive and holding a high standard, and I’m not perfect, and I don’t know if I have the perfect balance, and I think that’s really awesome that my teammates think that of me, and I’m very grateful for that. But every day, I just, like, try to really show up and be me, and that’s giving this team 100 percent of me and not feeling any regrets or leaving any of that out. And that’s all aspects.
On approach to injury.
You know, truthfully, could I have rushed back? Could I have been playing by now? Yes. I just don’t see the point in that. I think Aubrey’s in a really good place. The team is in a good place. She’s doing her job. If it was a nightmare, it would’ve been different. She’s made it easier on me. I just have to be smart about these type of things. With my position, I ripped my quad pretty bad, and I wanna make sure that that doesn’t become a chronic thing. I can’t have every few months—you know, I don’t let it heal, and it’s continuing to nag, and if it’s a World Cup final, if it’s an NWSL final, that’s different. But she’s stepping it—I trust her. I trust Aubrey. I trust—the team trusts her. You know, if I had an issue where everyone was like, “Oh, Jesus. She’s—” Like, we don’t have that. So it’s giving me the opportunity to sit back, do it at my pace, do it at my comfort because even though Orlando Pride is my priority, there are other priorities that are down the line. I have to be careful that I don’t thrash myself, and now I set myself back four months instead of two months. So, everyone has got together, and, you know, it’s been a process, but it’s been a smart process, and that’s what I love most about my medical staff here and my coaching staff.
They’re not pushing me to do anything I’m not comfortable with which makes life very easy for me. I feel 100 percent good. I’m great in training. I’m training more and harder than I ever have. I’ve been working with PTs; I’ve been working with ATs, the doctors, Lloyd every single day. I’m out here before anyone. So it’s only helping me, but I just gotta ease my way in. You know, a normal player, you get 20 minutes. You know, like an Alex coming off a hamstring, she’ll play 10 minutes; then she’ll play 20 minutes; then she’ll play 45 minutes; then she’ll play, hopefully, 90. I don’t have that luxury. I have to be 100 percent and 100 percent ready to be played in. We don’t even have the numbers this week to play big-sided. So all week, it’s been small-sided stuff. So I haven’t even seen the bigger picture. And to kind of throw myself into that this week, it’d be like throwing me to the wolves. So, that’s kind of the process of where we’re at. But, yeah, I’m 100 percent healthy and fit. I’m ready to go. It’s just gotta be the right timing. Everything is a timing thing right now.
For more on Harris, as she returns to the pitch, follow Victor Tan on Twitter at @NDR_VictorTan.Nerve Gaming now recruiting
In addition to all of this, all applicants also must:
- Be active on the SEA server (inactives will be removed from the team if the team is not given notice)
- Willing to attend clan practice sessions at least 3 to 4 times a week
- Always be looking for ways to improve their play
- Interact with all fellow clan members in a respectful manner
So if this sounds like you and you're able to satisfy all of the above and would like to apply please use the following form and create a thread here:
Please put your Bnet ID.Code and Race as the thread title.
Bnet ID.Code:
Name:
Age:
Country:
Race:
League:
Time spent on SC2 daily and weekly:
SC2 Goals:
SC2 Milestones/Achievements:
Why would you be a valuable addition to Nerve Gaming?:
(Optional) Do you have any other skills you can offer to the team, e.g. casting?:*
*If applying for caster or event organization position this is compulsory. League is not considered for these positions but can help, SC2 goals and achievements should be relevant to the appropriate position.
Please put time into your applications, if it's an obvious 5second job the application will be ignored. Trials and further questions will be held for successful applicants to determine if you will fit into the team or not. If you have any queries please message us in game (PickleWeasel.945/Reere.355 or join channel 'Nerve Gaming') or post in the thread.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your application!
Quick Comments nirvAnA: always nice to see new teams. gl and hope this brings you a fresh start Nerve Gaming is now looking for Masters league or higher level players that are dedicated to SC2 and have the desire to compete at the highest level of play. We have no delusions of grandeur that we will be able to compete with top teams such as aLt, TA, and xGKing any time soon, but that is the long term goal: To become one of the top teams on the SEA server. So if you aren't a serious player that has this high goal in mind or the dedication and perseverance required to achieve this, then this isn't the team for you.In addition to all of this, all applicants also must:- Be active on the SEA server (inactives will be removed from the team if the team is not given notice)- Willing to attend clan practice sessions at least 3 to 4 times a week- Always be looking for ways to improve their play- Interact with all fellow clan members in a respectful mannerSo if this sounds like you and you're able to satisfy all of the above and would like to apply please use the following form and create a thread here: http://nerve-gaming.enjin.com/recruitment Please put time into your applications, if it's an obvious 5second job the application will be ignored. Trials and further questions will be held for successful applicants to determine if you will fit into the team or not. If you have any queries please message us in game (PickleWeasel.945/Reere.355 or join channel 'Nerve Gaming') or post in the thread.Thanks for reading and good luck with your application! Last edited by Snx.FigJig; Tue, 1st-Nov-2011 at 5:42 PM.Close your eyes and think about today. Think about the United States of America. Think about the state of education. Think about the state of job creation. Think about the state of mind we are in. Think about what our country might look like in 20 years. Now think about and wonder why and who and when and what it's going to take for Detroit not to turn into a slum. What is it going to take for my niece and her friends to have the best education? And your nephew to graduate and not just get a job, but have a career?
I'm writing this on my laptop and you're probably reading it on your phone or tablet, and none of the stuff we are actually buying "regardless" of a recession is made in America. Technology is recession proof and most kids are not dreaming of being programmers, scientists or engineers. The ones that are, do not get the spotlight or attention. Instead, they are looked at as geeks or uncool, when in actuality technology is the only thing that is cool today. iPhones, Android devices, Facebook, Twitter (all tech), all exciting. This is why I put my own money, passion and time to take Dean Kamen's FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and turn it into a back-to-school TV special.
Dean Kamen invited me to visit his office at DEKA Research and to also attend a FIRST gathering of high school kids who get together to build robots. Who knew there was an international competition of teenage robot builders? After meeting Dean and these kids, I saw the promise that these bright young minds. I am convinced that the 13 year-olds building robots and competing at FIRST will be the business and tech leaders of tomorrow. I am convinced these kids will invent new medical devices, communications and consumer electronics gear, rockets, renewable energy sources and high mileage cars -- the things that can help America better compete in a global economy.
You've probably noticed that it is "back-to-school" season and families are gearing up to send their kids back in to classrooms. The backpacks, lunch kits, clothes and school supplies are essential. But the most important back-to-school item on every family's checklist does not come in a package or have a price tag.
This is the gift of curiosity for students to learn and explore. Encouragement and positive reinforcement from parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors and friends is what it takes to spark this curiosity.
I created the i.am.scholarship that includes high school academic mentoring with the i.am.scholarship College Track program. I'm also a co-founder and supporter of the Peapod Foundation with The Black Eyed Peas. These academic and creative scholarship support programs are young and growing, but are not yet able to reach every student that needs encouragement and support. That's why I teamed up with Dean Kamen to produce my back-to-school TV special, "i.am FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll" that will air on Sunday August 14th on ABC 7pm|6pm central time.
This TV special is part of my paying it forward plan, and a way to thank the people who helped spark my curiosity to do well in school, including my Mom and my uncles. I want to share my excitement about technology and science with as many students as possible and to show that it can be creative and cool.
For every person who took my first phone call or answered my email and good things happened, this is another reason to do a good deed for someone else. All those school basketball courts could be shared to host local FIRST club activities.
The theory is simple -- if entertainers perform in programs like the Teen Choice Awards, then why can't we do it for our kids who get good grades? You would be amazed to see how many people thought kids and robotics weren't important. It's amazing how many non-believers there are in the world, and I realized why America is in a weird state -- a divided state. A state of dysfunction. A state of what the fuck. It's like people don't want to take real risks. So I took a risk. I stand to lose a lot of my own dollars to make this show. I didn't do it to make money. I did it to make change. I called ABC myself and bought air time. Sometimes you have to take risks and just do it, so I did it and I am proud of this show and everyone who helped me.
Debt ceilings, unemployment rates -- this stuff I don't understand and I probably never will understand it. Just like how I don't understand why we can't create new jobs in America. Why can't the youth get better education? Why is it that every school, public and private, in good neighborhoods and bad has a busy basketball court while the majority of its students are underperforming in math and science skills? It makes me really sad and angry to know that the U.S. ranks 25th out of 34 places in high school math skills.
I feel obligated as an American citizen to do this work. I'm the guy that made the "Yes We Can" video, so this is my part of the "we" in the "Yes We Can," concept. I'm doing my part and so are these kids and parents that are a part Dean Kamen's FIRST. These kids are amazing. They are dedicated to math, science, engineering, technology. These kids are our Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryants and our team is losing right now. If we don't acknowledge them and support them, they might not want to play for our American team when they graduate from college. They probably won't create jobs in America with the technology they invent.
If we support the troops, we have to support our scientists, engineers, programmers, code writers and geniuses. I believe solving our debt ceiling is job creation, but what do I know? I'm just a rapper.The "Do It for Mom" campaign asks for a "donation" of at least 25 Danish krone ($3.74) towards a holiday package, which Spies will match with a discount of up to 1,000 Danish krone ($149).
Denmark has one of the lowest birth rates across Europe at 1.7 children per woman, according to 2013 World Bank data. That's already down from 1.9 back in 2010.
"It puts our welfare and Spies' future business under pressure," a translation of the campaign landing webpage explains. "But those who suffer most are mothers who may never experience [having] a grandchild".
The accompanying video ad gets a little racy, but include shots of a sad grey-haired woman sitting alone in the park or flipping through photo albums in an empty home.
"Send your child on an active holiday and get a grandchild within nine months," the video promises.
But all good wishes for population growth aside, Spies' Head of Marketing Eva Lundgren admits it's a creative ad gimmick that's mean to promote the firm's "active" travel packagesThe first of many Dragon Ball Z covers for Animerica. This one is “The World..From A to Z”
DBZ scans I wanted to share: The first Dragonball Z broadcast ad. DBZ was first in syndication through Saban Network For Kids. Syndication in the 90’s as you see in the ad was as different times. There was no Sundays at 9:30 E/P. Syndication was not guaranteed nationwide coverage.
The second scan was an interview with FUNimation founders Gen and Cindy Fukunaga. FUNimation was San Jose California based back then. In this article, Dragon Ball Z had 88% syndication. That means some people would have to wait till Cartoon Network picks up the show in years to come.
Other ads of note was the ADV/Soft Cel ad that promote a “New English Dub Version” for their F3 – Frantic Frustrated & Female title (I wonder what that show’s about?) Ellcia was another series that didn’t last for anime fandom. It’s getting to become routine for each issue to find a title that has been forgotten by today’s fandom. Also, Misato has a lot of back for this ad.
Manga Video likes dynamic ads, and their Go Nagai’s Violence Jack delivers.
Manga Video still confuses me. You name an anime company after printed source material, yet they still won’t say anime. Their tagline for this ad is “Manga Video – Your #1 Source for Japanimation” Plus their website address is www.manga.com/manga I’m pretty sure you could just go with www.manga.com.
Blockbuster Video decides to do retail ads – mainly calling out US Manga Corps. (again with the Manga)
Animerica anime fan art is full of Halloween Ball theme.
And finally, I leave you with the sing-a-long words for the classic: “Tonakai-san The Red-Nosed Reindeer”
And thank Twitter for this. Saban created TV bumpers for Dragon Ball Z. Enjoy the madness."Fly the W" has become an iconic rallying cry on social media and at the ballpark, front porches, downtown buildings and all manner of other places as the Cubs made their historic World Series run this year. Whether you take the meaning of the flag to be "win" or the success of the team in a more holistic sense, there is no doubt the symbol is now completely fixed in Cubbiedom. Like the team, the flag has an interesting and colorful history likely going back to the the Wrigley family's purchase of an island off the coast of Los Angeles, a shipping company and the constant changes at Wrigley Field. Here is a brief visual tour.
William Wrigley Jr. buys a California island The chewing-gum magnate purchases Santa Catalina Island, 26 miles off the coast of Southern California, for $3 million, or more than $41 million in today's dollars. It was sold by the Banning family, who built a shipping empire in California. "Part of the purchased package was a company that the previous owners had founded in 1884, Wilmington Transportation Co.... all of Wilmington's vessels flew the white W on a dark blue background," said Michele Bestudik, historian and film liaison for the Santa Catalina Island Co. Wilmington is a neighborhood along the harbor in Los Angeles. This W flag was possibly flown aboard a steam ferry built in 1924 that chugged to and from William Wrigley's island off the coast of Los Angeles. The flag is signed by crew members from the Wilmington Transportation Company, which operated the ships. The signatures are dated 1933. (Lucy Ruggirello / Los Angeles Maritime Museum) (Bain News Service, William Wrigley Jr., Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. and Chicago Tribune archives)
Cubs take SS Avalon to spring training Wrigley moves the team's spring training to Catalina Island in 1921. The team takes the SS Avalon from Wilmington to Catalina Island. With a ballpark built for them, the Cubs would travel to the island for spring training from 1921-41 and then 1946-51. Formerly called the SS Virginia when it sailed the Great Lakes, this ship was bought by William Wrigley Jr. and renamed the SS Avalon. It was 263 feet long and capable of carrying nearly 3,000 passengers. (Santa Catalina Island Co.)
Wrigley continues to use W flag on Catalina One of Wrigley's additions to the island was the opening of Catalina Casino, and an invitation to the grand opening featured the W flag. "What's interesting is that the invitation was sent out by the Santa Island Catalina Co., which Wrigley chaired (since) 1919. Wrigley bought the Cubs in 1921 and the ballpark changed its name to Wrigley Field in 1926. This invitation with the W-wearing pirate was sent out in 1929. While there are missing links, I think this is a good piece of evidence to support the theory that the flag design was swiped from the Wilmington Transportation Co. flag," said Stephanie Arias, reference services manager at The Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., which holds the Banning Co. records. (Banning Co. records addenda II, The Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.)
Wrigley Field renovations includes flags Philip K. Wrigley — a shy, diminuitive leader who refused to add lights to Wrigley Field — assumed control of the team and ballpark after his father's death in 1932. In 1937, P.K. Wrigley decided to make some adjustments to Wrigley Field to create a better experience for fans — adding new bleachers, the iconic center-field scoreboard, a flagpole and ivy to climb up the outfield walls. He put a young Bill Veeck Jr. in charge of the beautification plan, who detailed this process in his 1962 autobiography: "There was only one promotional gimmick I ever got away with. Mr. Wrigley permitted me to install lights on top of the flagpole to let homeward-bound Elevated passengers know whether we had won or lost that day. The flagpole was on top of the new scoreboard, and at its summit I put a crossbar with a green light on one side and a red light on the other. The green light told the El passengers we had won, the red that we had lost." (Holabird & Root)
W flag appears in center field The actual date when the W flag flew over Wrigley Field for the first time is not known. "There were a lot of changes to the park between 1937 and 1938 — the building of new bleachers, a new outfield wall, a new scoreboard — the flying of a new flag apparently didn't warrant a mention with so much else going on," said Ed Hartig, the Cubs historian. (Chicago Tribune historical photo 1938)
Cubs program explains meaning The won/loss flags were referenced in a 1946 Cubs program, says Todd Radom, a contributor on logos, design and visual history for Sporting News. He picked up the program on ebay, and penned a guide to Wrigley's flags. Cubs historian Hartig adds, "That 1946 program is the only one with the Cubs W flag graphic." (Courtesy Todd Radom)
Changing colors Hartig says a conversation with a former Cubs front office staffer revealed the W flag changed colors several time during this time period. No photos were available of these differences, however.
Cubs in 1st place On July 2, 1967, the Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-1, to tie with the St. Louis Cardinals to lead the National League. As Hartig recalls, some of the more than 40,000 fans on hand refused to leave until the Cubs' flag was placed atop the league standings on the flagpole atop the
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raaj, there can be no differing views. The level of intolerance that one is noticing against anyone opposing Modi and the courage with which the attacks are happening clearly shows how anti-socials and political goons know there is someone to protect them”.She added “The myth of development in Gujarat under Modi has resulted in modern Indians choosing to forget the horrifying Gujarat riots. It is almost like completer shutters down over their eyes. We have chosen to forget how Muslims were slaughtered in Gujarat in the biggest blot on Indian democracy in recent years”.Nandita has now lent her support to a campaign which says “Dear Fellow-Indians, The best thing about our country is its cultural diversity, its pluralism – the co-existence of a number of religions and ethnicities over centuries, and hence the blooming of multiple streams of intellectual and artistic thought. And, this has been possible only because Indian society has prided itself on being essentially secular in character, rejecting communal hatred, and embracing tolerance”.“Today, that very sense of India is vulnerable. The need of the hour is to protect our country’s secular foundation. Undoubtedly, corruption and governance are important issues, but we will have to vigilantly work out ways of holding our government accountable to that. However, one thing is clear: India’s secular character is not negotiable. Not now, not ever. As Indian citizens who love our motherland, we appeal to you to vote for the secular party which is most likely to win in your constituency”.Nandita’s warnings come just days after sculptor Anish Kapoor, film director Deepa Mehta, novelist Salman Rushdie and some of the best known Indian academics teaching in Britain’s top universities sharply attacked the BJP leader saying “The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread”.They warned that a Modi victory would “likely mean greater moral policing, especially of women, increased censorship and vigilantism, and more tensions with India’s neighbours”Professors from institutions like the London School of Economics, Cambridge, Oxford, SOAS and King’s College issued a letter opposing Modi as the next Indian Prime Minister.The 75-strong intelligentsia led by Prof Chetan Bhatt and Gautam Appa of LSE sharply attacked the BJP leader saying “The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread”.Calling Modi a leader embedded in the Hindu nationalist movement, namely the RSS and other Sangh Parivar groups, with their history of inciting violence against minorities, they highlighted how groups that support Modi stand accused in recent terrorist attacks against civilians.They said “As the people of India vote to elect their next government, we are deeply concerned at the implications of a Narendra Modi-led BJP government for democracy, pluralism and human rights in India. We recall the extreme violence by the Hindu Right in Gujarat in 2002 which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. This violence occurred under Modi’s rule, and senior government and police officials have provided testimony of his alleged role in encouraging or permitting it to occur”.They added “Some of his close aides have been convicted for their involvement, and legal proceedings are ongoing in the Gujarat high court which may result in Modi being indicted for his role. He has never apologized for hate speech or contemptuous comments about various groups – including Muslims, Christians, women and Dalits. His closest aide has been censured recently by India’s Election Commission for hate speech used in this election campaign”.The latest letter comes just a few weeks after more than a dozen of India’s most revered artists and academics expressed “acute worry” at the prospect of Modi becoming the country's Prime Minister.The group that included British lawyers, activists, academics and three members of the British parliament said “Modi refuses to accept any responsibility or to apologize for the horrifying events that took place in Gujarat in 2002. Without questioning the validity of India's democratic election process, it is crucial to remember the role played by the Modi government in the horrifying events that took place in Gujarat in 2002. The Muslim minority were overwhelmingly the victims of pillage, murder and terror, resulting in the deaths of more than 2,000 men, women and children. Women, in particular, were subjected to brutal acts of violence and were left largely unprotected by the security forces”.Gordon Ramsay is not known for his subtlety, nor is he for being less than harsh with those who cross him. In this YouTube video, he treats a wild boar as though the animal is a contestant on Hell’s Kitchen. That is to say, he hunts and butchers it and then eats it. The chef heads to Fort Benning in Georgia, the third largest military base in the country. The wild hogs there run a bit too wild, and destroy forests to the point that the commander general has put a bounty on their heads- $40 per hog.
Ramsay trains and learns to shoot a long-range rifle. It’s not easy to hunt them, because they’re always “one step ahead.” Finally, with help, he traps and kills a hog. After butchering it, he prepares the loins and ribs, and despite a graphic butchering scene, the results are pretty incredible.
Watch the video:
Note: this video contains graphic animal butchering.
Related:
WATCH: Gordon Ramsay Shoots a Pigeon, Then Serves it Over a Salad
WATCH: Gordon Ramsay Gives a Tour of His Home While Making a Full English Breakfast
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Have a tip we should know? [email protected] playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The CCTV appears to show three suspects outside the Mexico City apartment where photojournalist Ruben Espinosa was killed
Mexican police are searching for three men shown on surveillance video leaving the building where photojournalist Ruben Espinosa was killed.
The bodies of Mr Espinosa and four women were found in a flat in the Narvarte district of Mexico City on Friday.
They had been tied up and shot dead.
Mexico City prosecutor Rodolfo Rios Garza said the three men were the prime suspects in the murder, which has shocked Mexico City residents.
Main suspects
The surveillance footage shows them leaving the flat at 15:02 local time, 50 minutes after Mr Espinosa sent a text message to a friend, his last known communication.
Investigators said one of the men was pulling a suitcase.
Another can be seen getting into a red Ford Mustang which belonged to one of the victims.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Video footage shows a car belonging to one of the victims being driven away
The car was found abandoned on the outskirts of Mexico City on Monday.
The bodies of the five victims were found by one of their friends in the flat on Friday evening.
Investigators said three of the four women had been raped and the body of Mr Espinosa showed signs of torture.
Mr Rios Garza said they were looking into all possible motives for the crime.
Speculation
On Sunday, officials said the fact that one of the victims' cars had been taken pointed to a robbery.
But the theory was dismissed by the editor of news magazine Proceso, for which Mr Espinosa took photos.
The editor said that the brutality of the crime suggested it was not a simple robbery.
Mr Espinosa spent eight years working in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, where almost a dozen journalists have been killed in the past years.
Image copyright AP Image caption Mr Espinosa had spent years working as a photojournalist in Veracruz
He moved to Mexico City in June saying he had been harassed and threatened.
One of the female victims, Nadia Vera Perez, was a student activist in Veracruz and had worked there with Mr Espinosa.
She was highly critical of the Veracruz governor.
She had moved to Mexico City to work as a cultural promoter.
The three other victims were the cleaner and two women who shared the flat with Ms Vera Perez, one of whom is believed to be Colombian.
While the motive behind the crime remains unclear, rights group say it suggests that journalists who have come under threat in violence-ridden states are no longer safe in the capital.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 31 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 1992 in connection with their work.HTMLCountry7
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A new world record: Universal Declaration in 370 languages
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set a new world record of being the most translated text. The UN Human Rights office has received a certificate from the Guinness Book of Records stating that the Declaration has been translated into in 370 languages and dialects from Abkhaz to Zulu.
A decade ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) received a certificate from the Guinness Book of Records as the most translated document in the world. At that time, the UDHR was available in 298 languages and dialects. Since then, the UN Human Rights office has received a constant flow of translations.
The latest additions are all found in Russia: Karelian, Nenets, Nganasan, Veps, Tuvan, Shor, Altay, Khakas, Yakutian and the Evenki language, which is also used in Mongolia and in the People’s Republic of China. They are spoken in different areas of the country but all share some historic elements.
The number of speakers of each of the dialects varies, ranging from Yakutian which has around 360,000 to Nganasan spoken by only 500 people. The origin of these languages also differs. Tuvan, Shor, Altay, Khakas and Yakutian are Turkic languages. Karelian, Nenets, Nganasan and Veps are Finno-Ugric dialects, and Evenki is a member of the Tungusic group.
The translation of the UDHR into the ten indigenous dialects was supported by the UN Human Rights office. Dirk Hebecker, Senior Human Rights Advisor in Moscow, says he believes that giving people the opportunity to read the UDHR in their language is an important support for endangered languages. As an example, Evenki, a Siberian dialect is now considered at risk. According to the last census in 2002, more than 90 percent of Evenki speakers were opting for Russian as their principal language.
As High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the UDHR, on 10 December 2008, the UDHR is “a single short document of 30 articles that has probably had more impact on mankind than any other document in modern history.”
The UDHR is not only translated into languages used by millions. Mandarin Chinese has more than 885 million native speakers but the nearly extinct Pipil, a dialect spoken in El Salvador and Honduras in Central America, counted only 20 speakers in 1987. The UDHR was added to its literature in 1998.
Anyone can submit a new translation of the UDHR to the UN Human Rights office at any time. Rules for submission can be found on the following page: Submission Guide
23 April 2010Just a few days after a triumphal speech at the Reagan library, where Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker laid out his vision of a state without taxes and a privatized school system, Walker's name came up in a different context. In the sentencing hearing of top aide Kelly Rindfleisch.
Rindfleisch had pled guilty to illegally conducting campaign fundraising activities while serving as deputy chief of staff to Walker during the time he was Milwaukee County Executive, but running for governor. Even after she was implicated in the criminal investigation, afterwards Rindfleisch continued to work on Walker's campaign.
In laying out the seriousness of Rindfleisch's crimes, Milwaukee County prosecutors handed over a two foot stack of emails and unveiled a remarkable power point presentation that put Walker in the center of a "campaign committee" where top county staff took a back seat to campaign staff.
Illegal Campaign Work While on the Government Payroll
As part of a wide-ranging "John Doe" criminal investigation into activities at the Milwaukee County Executive's office, Kelly Rindfleisch and another Walker aide were charged with criminal and misdemeanor counts of conducting partisan campaign work while on the public payroll. These charges are no joke in the state of Wisconsin, where in 2005, two Senate Democrats and the Republican Assembly Speaker were sentenced to jail time for similar crimes in an episode dubbed "the Caucus Scandal."
Rindfleisch, who reached a plea deal with prosecutors in exchange for her testimony, was sentenced to six months of jail time and three years of probation yesterday. The judge was not impressed with her apology given that she had a role in the earlier Caucus Scandal and was in a position to know that her activities were not only improper, but illegal. Another Walker aide, Darlene Wink, pled guilty earlier this fall and is awaiting sentencing for similar crimes. Yet another set of Walker aides and associates are implicated in other serious crimes, including embezzlement of funds. Walker's veteran affairs director for Milwaukee County was convicted of embezzling some $51,000 from a veteran's charity. Tim Russell, Walker's former deputy chief of staff and longtime aide, is awaiting trial for bilking the vets too, and he has been implicated as the staffer who set up a secret Wi-Fi system in Walker's office that facilitated the illegal fundraising.
It's getting a bit crowded in the Milwaukee County jail and Russell, the highest ranking Walker aide, has yet to be tried, but one person missing from the perp walk so far has been Walker himself. With his power point presentation, Milwaukee Assistant District Attorney, Bruce Landgraf, introduced a raft of new characters in the drama and put Walker in the center of it all.
Walker "Campaign Group" Coordinated County Work
In laying out Rindfleisch's crimes Landgraf described a core "Campaign Group" that included Walker, his campaign manager Keith Gilkes (later his chief of staff in the governor's office), campaign spokeswoman Jill Bader and campaign adviser R.J. Johnson. It also included several top county aides such as Cindy Archer, whose home was raided by the FBI, spokesperson Fran McLaughlin, deputy chief of staff Tim Russell, and chief of staff Tom Nardelli.
Landgraf's power point suggests that most of the gang met daily by phone and frequently in person. Gilkes and the political staff had the upper hand: "You guys are in the driver's seat," Rindfleisch wrote in an email to Gilkes. Walker campaign staff apparently directed a diversity of county business including messaging, press releases, damage control and more. Most significantly, Landgraf revealed that campaign manager Keith Gilkes instructed county staffers to "make sure there is not a piece of paper anywhere that details any problem at all" with a county parking garage after a slab of cement in the parking garage broke off killing a 15 year old boy. After the incident, the County Executive's office was inundated with open records requests. If Gilkes was ordering staffers to destroy public records, further charges may be forthcoming.
While it is not unusual for a politician's schedulers and communication directors to be in contact during an election cycle so they can coordinate the boss' activities, it is unusual to have this degree of integration between public and political staff with the political staff in the driver's seat. Whether the activities cross the line into illegal behavior is the question that Landgraf left unanswered yesterday.
Is the John Doe Winding Down or Are More Charges Anticipated?
The big question is where do we go from here?
Previously, Landgraf has said that the Rindfleisch case was solely about Kelly Rindfleisch. But for the first time yesterday, Landgraf used the power point to implicate Walker and other top aides who had not been charged. "What jumped off the page," said Rindfleisch's attorney after Landgraf's hour-long presentation, was that his client was the only one of those mentioned who's currently facing jail time.
From the few Walker emails released as part of the investigation, it appears that Walker was aware of the illegal fundraising activity taking place around him in the County Executive's office. In May 2010 when the first story broke related to the illegal campaign work, Walker sent an email to Tim Russell saying "we can't afford another story like this one... that means no more laptops, no more websites, no time away during the work day." Many speculate, that what the prosecution lacks are emails showing Walker or Gilkes directing the illegal campaign activity. Although dozens of computers appear to have been seized in Milwaukee and Madison, neither has been charged with any crimes. This has led many to speculate that records have been destroyed, and indeed it was suggested by the prosecution at one point that Darlene Wink was ready to testify about destruction of records.
Landgraf did not disclose whether Walker or any other members of the Campaign Group remained under investigation or might be charged, but Rindfleisch has agreed to testify at the trial of Tim Russell December 3, the long-time Walker loyalist central to it all. Also Wink has yet to be sentenced.
The prosecution seems involved in an elaborate move to force the little fish to give up the sharks. Only time will tell if they will succeed.Canada has been chosen as the site of the next World Indigenous Peoples' Games, slated for 2017, set to feature ferocious tug-of-war competitions, plus sports ranging from a Mexican version of hockey in which the puck is on fire to Brazil's jikunahati, like soccer except players whack the small ball only with their heads.
Canada was selected in a consensus decision by a council of international indigenous leaders at the first-ever iteration of the games in Palmas, in central Brazil, last week. The precise location and date will be determined after spiritual and political consultations, organizers say.
More than 2,000 athletes and cultural delegates, drawn from two dozen countries and hundreds of different first nations, participated in the first world games. The event was chaotic, disorganized and nevertheless full of remarkable cross-cultural connections and moments of sporting triumph.
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Canada sent a 53-member delegation that included a women's soccer team that won gold in a nail-biting final match against Brazil's Xerente nation, and long-distance runners who won gold and silver medals as well. Canada's cultural delegation, headed by traditional dancers and drummers from Treaty 6 Cree Nations in Saskatchewan, were scene-stealers, drawing huge crowds to their performances.
But Rick Brant, president of the North American Indigenous Games Council, said it is unrealistic to think the games could be staged in Canada in 2017, both because of what will be needed to mount the event and because the calendar is already crowded. Toronto will host huge North American indigenous games that summer, while Winnipeg (one site discussed for the world games) is already booked to host the Canada Summer Games.
"Beyond the fact that those two events are being delivered, you think of all the very complex elements that go into planning and staging an event like this, and two years isn't sufficient time to do the type of groundwork," he said in a telephone interview from Duncan, B.C., on Tuesday.
The council was not involved in sending the delegation to Brazil, but Mr. Brant said they are "eager to hear about" Brazil and see how they can support bringing the games to Canada.
The World Indigenous Peoples' Games were first proposed at a global conference of aboriginal leaders in 1977, by Chief Wilton Littlechild of the Ermineskin Nation in Alberta. It took until this year to stage world games, with participants from countries including Ethiopia, Mongolia, Finland, Chile and New Zealand, and a huge turn-out from 23 of the 305 different indigenous communities in Brazil, many of them on a first-ever trip outside their home territory.
Chief Littlechild, who got home to Alberta on Monday, is now launching a process of consultation – with spiritual leaders; with chiefs across Canada and leaders from the Métis and Inuit, who did not send athletes to Brazil; with the network of indigenous sports councils across Canada; and with the new federal sports minister, "whoever that will be. I expect there will be a line at the new minister's door and I'll be in it," he said with a chuckle.
He anticipates that the councils and communities will be keen to stage the games, given that several First Nations in Canada have years of experience and capacity hosting similar events. Regina, for example, welcomed more than 4,000 participants last summer for the North American Indigenous Games. And for now, he's sticking to the 2017 timeline.
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The games may be held on a traditional territory or in a city, or some combination of both. Which provincial or city governments offer partnership will be a key factor, Chief Littlechild said, since the main challenge in staging the games will be financial. Brazil's games cost an estimated $30-million. He will be looking for commitments from indigenous communities themselves, and also from the private sector.
"Some [corporations] have a very bad name in terms of their activity on indigenous territory and this gives them a chance to reconsider how they have dealt with those communities," he said. The Regina games had sponsors including mining and energy companies.
Another key lesson from Brazil is the challenge of communication: English, Spanish and Portuguese were all in use at the games here, plus dozens of indigenous languages, while the Mongolians and Siberians, among others, were largely left without translation.
While the North American indigenous games tend to focus on a roster of sports close to those played at the Olympics, organizers of the first world games decided to focus on traditional sports and games. "We wanted to break away from this idea of an 'Indian championship' – it's not about that," said Marcos Terena, who sits on the Brazilian indigenous sports council. Some of these – such as swimming and archery – are common across many indigenous communities internationally but others, such as tug-of-war, are less widely played. Soccer appears to be the only universal.
"There needs to be a discussion about what is a good blanace," said Chief Littlechild. "We need to maintain that traditional element – if you shift that balance too much to more mainstream sports you're going to lose the traditional part of it. We could add lacrosse, or maybe an Inuit game like high kick."
(Chief Littlechild was not only a delegation head in Brazil but also a participant – he joined the river swimming race in Palmas and brought home gold in his age group. Indeed, at 71, he was the oldest athlete at the games by nearly a decade.)
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Mr. Terena said Canada's First Nations people must decide what, besides sport, will be on their games' agenda. "Here in Brazil, we wanted to talk about demarcation of lands, the indigenous voice and climate change," he said. "There, we have to help, for example, the Canadian youth to get its self-esteem back: They have a problem with suicides." But aboriginal groups from Brazil and elsewhere visiting Canada could stand to learn from what he sees as a greater level of autonomy and political influence in North American aboriginal communities. "In Brazil, the Indian is treated as incapable."
Chief Littlechild expressed concern that having the games in Canada could narrow the field of who can participate. "You might lose the richness of diversity of cultures if you move it away from central South America [given the] relative wealth of the communities – you may lose those people who attended the games by sitting on a bus for three days."
Nevertheless the choice of Canada was popular with other delegations. Juan Correa Calfin, director of the Centre for the Human Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Chile, said he felt Chief Littlechild had demonstrated great understanding of indigenous knowledge and would be certain to organize good games; they will begin fundraising and networking immediately to raise the money to participate in Canada in 2017, he added.
Harko Brown, who led the Maori delegation, called Canada a "great choice" given the experience with organizing these events. And the event could only be valuable for participants, he said by e-mail as he was making his way back to New Zealand.
"The so-called setbacks of the Palmas games turned out in many ways to add value … for example, the kitchen breaking down meant the Brazilian tribes had to come eat at the international accommodation. [It was] a beautiful collision of cultures, sharing songs and dances with each other while waiting for dinner. The bottom line is the sharing of our diversities and commonalities. We could sit down in a big huddle and the games would still be a success."
With a report from Manuela AndreoniIn the last few weeks we've had Bush's executive order which gutted the Intelligence Oversight Board, bring all "oversight" functions under the executive. We've had the the revelations from whistle-blower Babak Pasdar, Wikileaks published a purported letter from Cablevision Systems Corp. to the FBI showing that "the FBI using the Patriot Act to obtain information not related to terrorism. In this case customer data from Cablevision is obtained which is used for non-terror related investigations." And today was the WSJ's explosive story on the massive scope of the NSA's reach.
If that wasn't damning enough, this information ends up in the utterly incompetent hands of Michael Chertoff at DHS. How bad is it? Check out this extremely well-timed interview by Jeff Stein, national security editor at CQ, with DHS director Michael Chertoff, who claims Sgt. Schultz style, "I know nuthink!"
Another government information pipe burst last week, leaking details of yet more possibly illegal taps on our e-mails and telephone calls. But even as news broke that a wireless carrier had discovered a security breach traced to Quantico, Va., home to a U.S. Marine Corps base and the FBI Academy, Michael Chertoff was telling me that what the Department of Homeland Security does with such information is none of my business — or his, either, for that matter. "All we get is product. We may get product that is incorporated in analysis, and we may not know exactly what the source of each is, or it may be generically described," Chertoff told me and a half dozen other bloggers gathered in a small room at the Ronald Reagan Building on March 3. "I’m not going to speculate where it comes from," he added. Nor would he say where it goes or how it’s used.... Me [Stein]: Were you aware that this program was ongoing with the telecomm companies? Chertoff: I don’t know what program you’re talking about. Me: I’m talking about harvesting information — Chertoff: I’m not — but you see, you’re assuming stuff you’ve read in the paper. Me: I’m not. I’m asking you for information. Chertoff: I’m telling you I have received — we get information from the intelligence community. It can be collected from a variety of sources. I don’t know which program it comes under. I don’t know whether it’s got a warrant or doesn’t have a warrant. I don’t know whether it’s collected — I mean, as soon as I can contextually tell where it’s collected or not collected. So I don’t know if it’s under this program or that program. None of that is known to me. All I know is, incorporated in the massive intelligence we get is all these different streams of intelligence, which help us decide whether we need to do something to protect the country or not. I can’t verify your assumptions concerning whether something was under this program or that program. I have no basis to accept your characterization of harvesting, which doesn’t strike me as having any legal significance....
Beyond the question of basic competence, the problem here is pointed out by John Rollins, who had been chief of staff to Chertoff's predecessor, Tom Ridge. Illegally obtained information--obtained from those warrantless wiretaps--could have gone out to local law enforcement.
"Setting aside the fact that the secretary is a former federal court judge who spent a career in the Justice Department, and also has a staff of lawyers conversant in civil liberty and corporate liability issues, it’s pretty damn insincere for him to, at best, claim uncertainty, or at worst, maintain willful ignorance of not knowing how information on U.S. citizens is obtained or where it came from," Rollins told me by e-mail. "One can’t be the benefactor of a piece of information while simultaneously claiming it is not my responsibility to figure out how the information landed in my inbox," he said.
These people are not to be trusted with our civil liberties, much less our national security. That a Democratic Congress is even thinking of giving these people expanded intelligence powers--and closing off any avenue left open to investigating just how far they've already over-reached by granting telco amnesty--is a travesty.
The FISA legislation should be tabled now. There is more than ample evidence to show that it would be far more dangerous to give this administration any more leeway on domestic intelligence than it would be to continue to operate under the existing, and adequate, FISA law.Angeles Forest/Inspiration Point
Posted by Charles Maxey | Tags: Routes & Rides, U.S. - California
This bike camping adventure took place along the route of the Mount Lowe Railway. I won't go into too much detail about he history, since there are a quite a few blogs and videos to check out. This one, for example: Mount Lowe Railway -- the guided tour.
The Mount Lowe Railway ran from 1893 to 1936, serving a resort area on Echo Mountain; one could take the railroad to various lodges in the hills. In the late 1930s the resort and all of its locations were burned to the ground. In the 1960s, the remains of the buildings were further destroyed by dynamite.
If you like climbing hills and mountains for five hours on paved and dirt roads with a load of 30 pounds, then this is the adventure for you.
I started from the Brewery Artists Lofts, Chinatown Metro Rail. I exited at Lake Street in Pasadena and wound my way north to the Chaney Trail in Altadena. That led to 2N50/Mount Lowe Road. (See route map.)
The road/trail started out as broken pavement.
At about my halfway point, the road surface turned to dirt.
The uphill was challenging; very steep in quite a few sections. Between mile 6 and mile 8, I gained close to 1,500 feet of elevation. Every 20 minutes I would take a break of a few minutes, and then attack the mountains once again. I must have stopped twelve times to do this and to rehydrate.
There were many information signs along the way interpreting the history of the Mount Lowe Railway and the area's resorts. I felt like I was on my own guided tour. During my ride, I would think about what it must have been like to live in that era and vacation in the mountains so close to Los Angeles. It was a bit eerie to think that I was riding along a railway from the late 1800s. It felt so close, yet so far away in time.
I took pictures of all the signs, because reading and comprehending them was not going to happen during my ride. I was too exhausted from climbing, sweating profusly, and thirsty. Quite a few times I would just shoot the sign and not read it at all, and move on to the next one.
As the trail was making a long and lazy turn to the right, I finally spotted the peak of the roof marking Inspiration Point.
It was a joy and relief to finally get to my last "informational destination." I knew I was getting close, about another quarter mile to go. I had never been to my camping destination; for whatever reason, I was concerned that I may not be able to camp there.
But my camp location was amazing! I had a view of Los Angeles and beyond. And the nice-sized tree worked out great, providing shade to keep my food, my drinks, and me cool. But most of all, it may have kept me safe what a nearby sign had warned about: That I was entering an area where bears and mountain lions are common. From previous camping trips, including many hunting trips with my dad, I knew I should hang my food high in a tree. Which is exactly what I did. I placed my food in my panniers and sealed it tight, and made sure that no food was in my tent. I wouldn't want this to happen to me.
Climbing for five hours was worth it. At an elevation of 4,558 feet, the views were spectacular.
And the night's dinner was sponsored by: Lanza Brothers, Buca di Beppo (leftovers), along with help from nuts, raisins, cranberriers, apples, oranges, and Oreo cookies.
Tip for this adventure: It's a very tough uphill. Many points of reference; it's like a traveling history lesson. Amazing view of the city and sunset.
Favorite local bike shop: Coco's Variety. The owner, Peter, and his mechanic staff are awesome people.Soulcalibur VI first details, screenshots
Mitsurugi, Sophitia, and Reverse Edge.
Following its announcement at The Game Awards 2017 last night, Bandai Namco has released the first details and screenshots of Soulcalibur VI.
Get the information below.
■ Fact Sheet About History hides away more than one truth… Soulcalibur VI represents the latest entry in the premier weapons-based, head-to-head fighting series and continues the epic struggle of warriors searching for the legendary Soul Swords. Taking place in the 16th century, revisit the events of the original Soulcalibur to uncover hidden truths. The heroic battles transpire in a beautiful and fluid world, with eye-popping graphics and visual appeal. Soulcalibur VI tunes the battle, movement, and visual systems so players can execute visceral and dynamic attacks with ease. Soulcalibur VI marks a new era of the historic franchise and its legendary struggle between the mighty Soul Swords! Key Features Unreal Engine – For the first time in franchise history, beautiful and jaw-dropping 3D character models, visual effects and stages rendered in Unreal Engine.
– For the first time in franchise history, beautiful and jaw-dropping 3D character models, visual effects and stages rendered in Unreal Engine. New Battle Mechanics – Read opponents’ attacks to execute a strategic Reversal Edge to land a counter attack while in guard.
– Read opponents’ attacks to execute a strategic Reversal Edge to land a counter attack while in guard. Multiple Fighting Styles – Choose from a worldly roster of warriors, each with their own deadly weapons, fighting styles and
visual fl are.
– Choose from a worldly roster of warriors, each with their own deadly weapons, fighting styles and visual fl are. Dynamic Battles – Spectacular, high-speed battles featuring all-new battle mechanics taking gameplay to the next level. ■ Characters Mitsurugi Heishiro Gender: Male
Origin: Bizen, Japan
Height: 173cm
Weight: 71kg
Birthday: June 8
Blood Type: AB
Weapon: Japanese Sword
Weapon Name: Shishi-Oh
Fighting Style: Shin Tenpu-Kosai-Ryu Kai Sophitia Alexandra Gender: Female
Origin: Athens, Ottoman Empire
Height: 169cm
Weight: Unknown
Birthday: March 12
Blood Type: B
Weapon: Short Sword and Small Shield
Weapon Name: Omega Sword & Elk Shield
Fighting Style: Athenian Style
Relationships: Achelous (Father), Nike (Mother), Cassandra (Younger Sister), and Lucius (Younger Brother) ■ New System: Reversal Edge In Soulcalibur VI, “Reversal Edge” is a new battle system that integrates both offense and defense. Once a Reversal Edge is activated, you can continuously defend against the opponent’s techniques to clash against each other and follow-up with powerful counterattacks based on the opponent’s actions. When a Reversal Edge hits, you can enjoy a powerful production like a scene from an action movie highlighted by a dynamic camera.
Soulcalibur VI is due out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam in 2018.
View the screenshots at the gallery.In Norway, fact-checking is growing up.
The country of 5 million will soon get a site devoted entirely to fact-checking. Faktisk — which means “actually” or “factually” in Norwegian — is an unusual collaboration between rival news organizations that will be fact-checking everything from stories that are beginning to trend on social platforms to political debates to the media itself.
Editors at Verdens Gang, the Norwegian daily tabloid owned by Scandinavian media giant Schibsted, had been mulling over the possibility of a more permanent national fact-checking effort ahead of the country’s parliamentary election in September, with the warning posts of Brexit, the U.S. election, the fears around fake news in Europe looming large.
Instead of keeping the effort inside Schibsted, VG looped in Dagbladet, the second-largest daily tabloid in Norway.
“Six people were put into a secret dark room in downtown Oslo just before Christmas. We were told, ‘You’re going to outline a strategy for how this initiative could work, and work together.’ It took maybe just five minutes before we were all speaking freely,” Kristoffer Egeberg, a longtime investigative reporter for Dagbladet, who is heading up the new Faktisk team, told me. “One of the first things we realized was that we had to sit outside our own organizations.” The team then brought in NRK, the Norwegian public broadcaster, as a third partner news organization.
Fritt Ord, a Norwegian foundation that focuses on freedom of speech issues, along with Tinius Trust (a major share owner of Schibsted), the Dagbladet Foundation, and NRK together invested 8 million NOK (just under $1 million USD) to kickstart the project.
Faktisk is skipping over what dominant platforms like Facebook might want to offer in the way of fact-checking and forming its own separate company, with its own staff of editors, reporter/fact-checkers, and developers. Jari Bakken, a VG developer currently working full-time on Faktisk, is building a new CMS to handle the work (with an assist from a few other front-end developers). All the development work will be open sourced.
“The developer team at my old paper had been asking, why don’t you use the CMS we have? We’ve spent millions developing a state-of-the-art CMS, so why are you spending time to use your own?” Egeberg said. “The answer is, we are not just making articles. We are making fact checks. We need a CMS that can cut up our fact checks into parts, that will then make it possible in the future to use it in automation and artificial intelligence efforts. Our traditional CMSes are not made for this.” (The team has met with research institutions like SINTEF and the IBM Watson group to discuss potential ways to scale tasks like social monitoring and detecting claims. Egeberg and Bakken both gave a nod to the U.K.’s Full Fact on its work in automating the fact-checking process.)
“A lot of journalism produced today is still just a chunk of unstructured text, and I think
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0Y2hhIiwidGVybXMiOiIiLCJyZWNhcC10aGVtZSI6ImxpZ2h0IiwicmVjYXAtdHlwZSI6ImF1ZGlvIiwicmVjYXAtc2l6ZSI6ImNvbXBhY3QifSx7ImJzX2NsYXNzX2lkIjoiNiIsIm5hbWUiOiJzZW5kIiwibGFiZWwiOiJTZW5kIiwiaHRtbCI6InN1Ym1pdCIsImFkZF9jbGFzc2VzIjoiIiwiYWRkX3N0eWxlcyI6IiIsImFkZF9hdHRyIjoiIn0seyJic19jbGFzc19pZCI6IjYiLCJuYW1lIjoicmVzZXQiLCJsYWJlbCI6IlJlc2V0IiwiaHRtbCI6InJlc2V0IiwiYWRkX2NsYXNzZXMiOiIiLCJhZGRfc3R5bGVzIjoiIiwiYWRkX2F0dHIiOiIifV0sIm9wdHNfYXR0cnMiOnsiYmdfbnVtYmVyIjoiNCJ9fSwiaW1nX3ByZXZpZXciOiJiYXNlLWNvbnRhY3QuanBnIiwidmlld3MiOiIxMjQzIiwidW5pcXVlX3ZpZXdzIjoiNjkxIiwiYWN0aW9ucyI6IjMiLCJzb3J0X29yZGVyIjoiMSIsImlzX3BybyI6IjAiLCJhYl9pZCI6IjAiLCJkYXRlX2NyZWF0ZWQiOiIyMDE2LTA1LTAzIDE1OjAxOjAzIiwiaW1nX3ByZXZpZXdfdXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6XC9cL3N1cHN5c3RpYy00MmQ3Lmt4Y2RuLmNvbVwvX2Fzc2V0c1wvZm9ybXNcL2ltZ1wvcHJldmlld1wvYmFzZS1jb250YWN0LmpwZyIsInZpZXdfaWQiOiIxMV81MDQwNTQiLCJ2aWV3X2h0bWxfaWQiOiJjc3BGb3JtU2hlbGxfMTFfNTA0MDU0IiwiY29ubmVjdF9oYXNoIjoiNTc1NmJmZGYwMmY1YzQ4ZTk4YWQ4NWM3ZmFjMWZhMmMifQ==Ambassador: Bush personally bullied UN diplomats into supporting Iraq war RAW STORY
Published: Saturday March 22, 2008
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Print This Email This Heraldo Muñoz, a personal friend of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, details the Bush administration's persuasion tactics in the months leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in his upcoming memoir, the Washington Post reports. "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," to be released in April 2008, outlines bullying tactics exercised by President Bush in attempts to persuade United Nations diplomats to back a 2003 resolution to authorize military force against Iraq. Mocking of unsupportive allies, threats of trade reprisals and attempts to fire U.N. envoys were among actions taken by the Bush administration against those less than cooperative, Muñoz writes. Ultimately, he continues, America's "rough-and-tumble" strategy backfired, with Bush later reaching out to Chile and Mexico, which he'd earlier spurned for preventing the war resolution, aggressively backed by the United States and Britain, from taking hold. # EXCERPTS: On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the eventual invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But U.S. ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning their governments that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Muñoz writes. Muñoz said subsequent ties remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Muñoz said in an interview. The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on." # The entire Washington Post article can be read HERE.Our national motto – “A foundation for all sports.”
This motto epitomises the essence of the sport of Little Athletics. Contrary to popular belief, Little Athletics does not seek to turn children into gold medal winning Olympic Athletes. Our aim is to provide children with an opportunity to participate in a sport for their own enjoyment.
The basic skills of running, jumping and throwing are often taken for granted and we do not realise that children need to develop these skills over time. Little Athletics provides children that opportunity without the pressure of competing in a team based sport.
As one of the founding clubs in the Belmont Centre, the Kewdale Little Athletics Club has demonstrated a lasting commitment to providing children with the best opportunity to fullfil their potential as young athletes, with many past athletes returning with their own children to enjoy the sport of little athletics at the club.Magnus-Rex Seismic Experiment - October, 2007
Magnus-Rex, a new seismic refraction experiment set out to shed light on the relationship between topography and Moho depth in southern Norway and to help determine if topography is compensated by crustal thickness. The project is the refraction component of MAGNUS, (Mantle investigations of Norwegian uplift structure), a multidisciplinary study of the lithosphere in southern Norway. - MAGNUS-REX
Three ~400 km long seismic lines were deployed across southern Norway, in October 2007 (Figure 1). A total of 26 shots of 100-400 kg charge size were fired along the three lines. Vertical
component seismographs were deployed every two km along each line to record the explosions. An instrument spacing of 750 meters was used along a 120 km section across the Oslo Graben. Three different structural domains are covered by the refraction seismic lines; the Southern Scandes Mountains, the Oslo Graben and Fennoscandian Shield crust. - MAGNUS-REX
Gotham City had suffered the results of a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in the earlier Cataclysm storyline. In response, the U.S government declared Gotham a "no man's land," destroyed all bridges leading to Gotham and forbade people from entering or exiting.
The city was swiftly carved up by gangs and various supervillains Batman had battled over the years, primarily The Penguin. Jim Gordon and several members of the Gotham police department stayed behind to protect civilians. Oracle and Huntress also ended up on the inside. Bruce Wayne (Batman) left the city to lobby the government to not cut Gotham off, but failed. Gordon and his men waited for his return, but by the time he returned more than three months later, they believed he had abandoned Gotham. - Wikipedia
Batman and James Gordon's officers work separately to reclaim Gotham, piece by piece, by beating and subduing the gang leaders and then marking the reclaimed territory with graffiti. - WikipediaSenator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made waves as a democratic socialist presidential candidate. Here's what you need to know about being a democratic socialist and how it's different from socialism. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)
UPDATE: Almost exactly a month after first proposing it, Sen. Sanders is giving a speech Thursday on what it means to him to be a socialist. Specifically, a democratic socialist, which is the Democratic presidential hopeful's particular strain of a political philosophy that many Americans, almost by definition, are wary of.
Sanders has a big hill to climb pitching his ideas to totally transform the nation: A June Gallup poll showed more than half of Americans say they wouldn't vote for a socialist, preferring instead to vote for a Muslim or atheist. Sanders is speaking at 2 p.m. Eastern time at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., ostensibly to try to change that.
The speech is a big moment for Sanders in other ways. He has been reluctant to embrace the term "socialism" throughout his three-decade-long career in politics. Here's a history of his wary relationship with it:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) didn't set out to be America's champion for socialism. He kind of backed into it.
To be clear, Sanders has always had socialist leanings. In the 1970's, he volunteered to run as a sort of sacrificial candidate for the U.S. Senate for the left-wing Liberty Union Party of Vermont. He served as an elector for the 1980 Socialist Worker Party nominee, Andrew Pulley.
But Sanders stayed away from the s-word even after winning his first major election later that year as mayor of Vermont's largest city, Burlington.
"It never came up," said his friend and supporter in those years, Greg Guma. Guma,author of "The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution," said Sanders talked about his political philosophy only when the media branded the new mayor as a socialist — Guma would say outed him — and he was forced to respond to questions about his political philosophy.
Today, Sanders gives full-throated defenses of his version of socialism. As one of the Democratic Party's leading presidential candidates, he got front-runner Hillary Clinton to debate with him the merits of it in the party's first presidential debate Tuesday. He says he's preparing "a major speech" to define his particular branch, democratic socialism. It's probably safe to say America would not be talking about socialism versus capitalism in 2016 without Sanders.
But Sanders often only brings up the socialist label when asked about it. His role as the movement's standard-bearer in America is a role he has seemed reluctant to embrace and is tweaking even to this day.
Here is Sanders's evolution on using the term "socialism," in his own words:
Early on: Avoiding the s-word
Greg Guma, who worked with Bernie Sanders and later wrote a book about him, shows off old articles and photos. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The '70s and '80s in America were very different times politically. Sanders and his allies avoided the term "socialism" at all costs for fear of being branded as communists, Guma said. When Sanders ran for the U.S. Senate in 1971 as a candidate for the Liberty Union Party, here's what he wrote of his strategy in his 1997 autobiography, “Outsider in the House":
"Wealth=power, lack of wealth=subservience. How could we change that? The ideas I was espousing were not ‘far out’ or ‘fringe.’ Frankly, they were ‘mainstream.’ ”
First win: A stump speech without the s-word
(Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
But as The Washington Post's David Fahrenthold details, running under the umbrella of a left-wing party was getting Sanders nowhere fast. So he switched to independent and stunned the city of Burlington in 1981 when he beat the five-term Democratic incumbent by 10 votes.
In that first election, socialism didn't come up at all, Guma said. Sanders campaigned mostly on local issues and avoided discussions of political philosophy.
But it was clear his philosophy was driving his politics. United Press International went to Burlington to catch his swearing-in. What Sanders said was to form the basis of his stump speech for the next 34 years:
''In America today, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the millions of families in the middle are gradually sliding out of the middle class and into poverty. ''In the final analysis, the people of America are going to have to say that the wealth, labor and natural resources must be used to benefit all the people, not just a few super-rich. At the same time, he said he has no ''great sadistic desire'' to destroy the city's business community, and would try to work with businessmen on city projects.
Still, Sanders didn't run from the term when asked about it. In a 1983 reelection debate, according to the Associated Press, he said this:
"I am a socialist; of course I am a socialist," he said. "To hold a vision that society can be fundamentally different, to believe that all people can be equal — that is not a new idea."
Congress: Talking about but downplaying socialism
(John Duricka/The Associated Press)
Sanders's election to Congress in 1990 was a similar political surprise. Once he got to Washington, Sanders was arguably the loneliest person there: He was the sole representative from his state, the first socialist lawmaker since the 1920s and the first lawmaker to not be a member of either party in at least 40 years (he tried to caucus with the Democrats but was rebuffed).
Sanders focused on his status as an independent more than any other of his firsts:
"I am extremely proud to be an independent," he told the Associated Press in 1991.
And when he was asked to explain his socialist philosophy, he talked it down, telling the AP: "All that socialism means to me, to be very frank with you, is democracy with a small 'd.' Our goal is to create a society where you don't have such a gross inequality in terms of wealth and power, and to provide more political equality for working people and poor people."
Senate: No escaping the socialist label
(The Colbert Report)
Sanders's election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, with broad support from his home state, drew loud headlines in the national press, such as "Socialist leads in Vermont polls" and "Cantankerous Sanders likely to be first socialist in U.S. Senate."
On the national stage, there was no escaping the socialist label. It was the first — and only — question that Stephen Colbert, then-host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," asked Sanders in 2008 during an interview.
"So you're a socialist," said Colbert, playing his ultra-conservative alter ego. " That's like half of Chicago Fire saying, 'I'm an arsonist!' "
Sanders defended his socialism much the way he had his whole career: By focusing on the impact his socialist policies would have. Not for the first time, he brought up capitalistic European countries with socialist policies to make his point. Here are excerpts from his conversation with Colbert:
SANDERS: The reality is there are many countries in Scandinavia and Europe who have done things like provide health care to every man, woman and child as a right to citizenship. COLBERT: Need I remind you this is not Scandinavia or Europe. SANDERS: Need I remind you we have 47 million Americans without any health insurance, and we spend twice as much as any other country. COLBERT: That's class warfare. You're talking about redistribution of wealth. SANDERS: I am.
Presidential race: Socialism's reluctant standard-bearer
Today, Sanders frames his "democratic socialist" policies as the best, last hope to save a torn America. There is much more urgency to his message that wealth needs to be redistributed:
"I think most Americans understand that our country today faces a series of unprecedented crises," he said by way of introduction at the first Democratic presidential debate. Later on, when CNN host Anderson Cooper asked Sanders to explain why he thinks there's room for a socialist in presidential politics, Sanders explained.
"And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent — almost — own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent," he said. "That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent."
Presidential race 2.0: Socialism's willing standard-bearer?
But Sanders still rarely brings up his socialist label unless he is asked. That is, until Sunday, when he announced he was going to give a yet-to-be-scheduled speech on what it means to be a democratic socialist.
The next phase of Sanders's evolution with the term is to be continued.The good news is that, eventually, when the humiliation becomes too much to bear, a Reaganesque or Churchillian leader raises America up off its knees. When George W. Bush attacked Iraq, Kristol declared that the “era of American weakness and doubt in response to terrorism is over,” while Max Boot announced “The End of Appeasement.” This week, in The Washington Post, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said he hoped that for Americans, Putin’s actions in Crimea would mean “the end of illusions.”
It’s a phrase that could easily have been uttered by Putin himself. In his view, it’s Russia that has been perennially bullied by tougher and nastier countries—in particular, America and its NATO allies. “They have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact,” he explained in a speech announcing Russia’s incorporation of Crimea. “They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner.” But now, finally, the era of appeasement is over. “Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from,” Putin said. “If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard.”
For American hawks, appeasement is not merely bad foreign policy. It represents a crisis of values—an aversion to those martial, manly virtues that make nations strong and give life meaning. In his 1977 essay, “The Culture of Appeasement,” Podhoretz argued that “one of the interesting similarities” between Jimmy Carter’s America and Neville Chamberlain’s Britain “was the prominence of homosexuals in the literary worlds” of both eras. Under their influence, Podhoretz suggested, “words such as soldier and fighter, which had previously carried a positive charge, now became so distasteful.” In the 1990s, David Brooks, then at The Weekly Standard, similarly warned that “we have become a nation obsessed with risk avoidance and safety. We allow soft sentimentalism to replace demanding moral principles.” In response, Brooks, Kagan, Kristol, and McCain championed what they called “national greatness conservatism.” Invoking Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1899 speech, “The Strenuous Life,” Brooks called for making American foreign policy “a more demanding and a more heroic enterprise.”
Today, hawks still link appeasement and effeminacy. Last month, for instance, after comparing the “bare-chested Putin” to “Barack Obama, in his increasingly metrosexual golf get-ups,” National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson suggested that Putin’s aggression might finally rouse Americans to peer “into ourselves—we the hollow men, the stuffed men of dry voices and whispers” and get tough.
For Putin, too, overcoming appeasement requires overcoming the soft, unmanly culture that made Russia unwilling to fight. The fall of the Soviet Union, he argued last year, “was a devastating blow to our nation’s cultural and spiritual codes” that led to “primitive borrowing and attempts to civilize Russia from abroad.” That borrowing was not only economic but “cultural, religious and even sexual.” And now, to reject foreign domination, Russia must also reject Western “policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.”“The corporate tax is one of the pillars of Ireland’s economy, because it drives exports and jobs, and creates tax revenues for the government,” said Paul Duffy, a vice president at Pfizer in Ireland, one of the biggest multinational employers here. Raising the tax could scare away companies and “would damage a recovery and our ability to repay the massive debts we’ve taken on,” he said.
Critics, however, say that in addition to siphoning business from countries with higher corporate tax rates, some multinationals operating under Ireland’s tax rules use complicated schemes to move profits in and out of subsidiaries there. In some cases, that allows them to lower their effective tax rate, they say.
That has opened Ireland to criticism from countries like Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel must justify why taxpayers should help pay for another bailout package. The argument is that Ireland could be collecting more money from the companies it has lured.
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Tax rates have become a contentious issue in Europe, where governments are competing as never before to lure badly needed foreign investments as the economic crisis weighs on growth.
Economic activity has declined sharply in the housing and banking industries. That leaves manufacturing and exports as two of the few channels to stimulate the necessary growth. Ireland’s exports grew 6 percent over the last year and manufacturing output increased by more than 10 percent.
Philip R. Lane, a professor of international macroeconomics at Trinity College Dublin, said that if the tax rate were nudged a little higher it would help the country collect significant revenue.
“But in the context of a devastated economy, where it’s the only thing driving the multinational sector, trying to tweak that rate is not something that any of the political parties want to do,” he said.
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Ireland’s has long pursued a strategy of luring business by helping major corporations from the United States and elsewhere reduce the tax they pay on profits. While the rate is well below that of Germany and France, it is higher than in Hungary and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe.
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Ireland’s edge, businesses and politicians say, is that it is a small, open economy with a well-educated, nimble and English-speaking work force and with a relatively stable social compact between unions and companies.
That combination has attracted drug companies like Pfizer and Forest Laboratories, and technology firms like Google and, more recently, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Multinational corporations employ more than a quarter of a million people in Ireland. Google, for instance, established its European beachhead in Ireland in 2003 and has been reinvesting and expanding operations. This summer, the company announced it would hire 200 people to run a new operations center on top of the 1,500 staff members already there..
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About 70 percent of the nation’s exports, and 70 percent of business spending on research and development here, comes from foreign direct investment, according to the country’s Industrial Development Agency, or I.D.A. Ireland, the body responsible for luring foreign investment to Ireland.
Foreign-owned firms that are members of I.D.A. Ireland pay workers about $7.1 billion each year and provide one in seven of the country’s jobs, either directly or indirectly. All told, multinationals paid about 5 billion euros in corporate tax to Ireland last year, more than 50 percent of all corporate tax receipts, according to the group’s figures.
Pfizer, which has been in Ireland for decades, is among the many multinationals monitoring the tax debate. “When you’re a company like Pfizer, you make billions of dollars of investments for the long term because Ireland has provided certainty” about the tax rate, said Mr. Duffy, the vice president. “When you start to mess with that, you raise issues of trust” that could cause some companies to reconsider the wisdom of investing in Ireland, he said.
Microsoft, Intel and Hewlett-Packard recently indicated that they would reconsider whether Ireland was the best base for their main European operations if the corporate tax were to rise. Companies could find it more attractive to relocate outside of the European Union to countries whose low tax rates are not menaced by political haggling in the European Union.
“The difficult calculus the Irish government has to make is if they raise the rate to siphon in more money, will that be a deterrent to future generations of foreign investors,” said Iain Begg, a professor at the London School of Economics.
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Mr. Begg said other countries had quickly recognized that pressing the issue further with Ireland now would be counterproductive. Some officials are instead mulling the idea of a levy on Ireland’s banks, which would theoretically raise money once they returned to profitability.
Tax policy is a matter of state autonomy, Mr. Begg added, and any future effort to persuade Ireland to revisit the matter would probably raise hackles in Britain and in Central and Eastern Europe, which have insisted that sovereign matters like these cannot be dictated by other countries.
Irish voters have mixed feelings about the government’s decision to keep the corporate tax rate steady, even as many fret that income and property tax increases will affect their personal finances, said Paul Sweeney, economic advisor at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
“People feel that on the one hand, corporations, including Irish banks, caused the crisis, and therefore the whole corporate sector should pay,” said Mr. Sweeney. “On the other hand, because people are so nervous about the future, they know that the corporate tax is one of the factors that attracts foreign direct investment, and therefore it would be a delicate time to touch it.”Angry-Signs vs. the Haters
Belinda and Emily talking with each other and then they return inside the castle to continue to feast with Angry-Signs inside Belinda's belly and then there is the last cutscene with the Queen in a black screen if you deserve a special prize in base of your game score.
Angry-Signs vs. the Haters 2???
Angry-Signs vs. the Haters 3???
Angry-Signs Around the World???
Angry-Signs: Belly Edition The Masked Zexagon evading from the Fetishville Protection Squad Against the Haters and he gets eaten by Sara and destroyed with a small atomic bomb by expanding and exploding without hurting herself.
Angry-Signs: Tour in Fetishville???
Angry-Signs: Call of Booty???
Angry-Signs: Call of Booty 2???
Angry-Signs: Call of Booty 3???
Angry-Signs: Call of Booty Wobble at War???
Angry-Signs: Tummy Tactics???
Angry-Signs: Tummy Tactics 2???
Angry-Signs: Tummy Tactics 3???
Angry-Signs: Tummies at Tussle???The meditation known in Arabic as Naẓar ila'l-murd (Arabic: النظر إلى المرد), "contemplation of the beardless" is a Sufi practice of spiritual realization.
Peter Lamborn Wilson claims this as the use of "imaginal yoga" to transmute erotic desire into spiritual consciousness.[1]
Richard Francis Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (commonly called The Arabian Nights in English) included collections of stories that were often sexual in content and were considered pornography at the time of publication. In particular, the Terminal Essay in volume 10 of the Nights contained a 14,000 word essay entitled "Pederasty" (Volume 10, section IV, D) in which Burton speculated and opined that male homosexuality was prevalent in an area of the southern latitudes named by him the "Sotadic zone".[2] Rumors about Burton's own sexuality were already circulating and were further incited by this work.
Criticism [ edit ]
Conservative Islamic theologians condemned the custom of contemplating the beauty of boys. Their suspicions may have been justified,[original research?] as some dervishes boasted of enjoying far more than "glances", or even kisses. Nazar was denounced as rank heresy by such as Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), who complained, "They kiss a slave boy and claim to have seen God!"[3]
The real danger to conventional religion, as Peter Lamborn Wilson asserts, was not so much the mixing of sodomy with worship, but "the claim that human beings can realize themselves in love more perfectly than in religious practices."[4] Despite opposition from the clerics, the practice has survived in Islamic countries until only recent years, according to Murray and Roscoe in their work on Islamic homosexualities.[5]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]Getting to know the Eastern black rail has always been tough.
The sparrow-size bird lives deep in marshes that are hard to access, and it is most active in the wee hours of the morning. Even then, it tends to scamper through dense vegetation, rather than fly — some call it a “feathered mouse.”
“We know almost nothing about this species,” said ornithologist Bryan Watts, director of the Center for Conservation Biology in Virginia. “It’s very tiny and incredibly secretive. Even most bird watchers have never seen this species before.”
Now, even hearing their call is unlikely. Its habitat, a delicately balanced zone deep within coastal marshes, is being flooded by the rising waters. And the Eastern black rail is disappearing fast — potentially becoming the first victim of sea level rise around the Chesapeake Bay and other areas of the East Coast.
Watts recently completed an exhaustive review of literature about the black rail, going back more than 100 years. His findings on the status and trends of its rail population were compiled in a 148-page report released in 2016.
“They are sort of evaporating around us,” Watts said.
The decline has been rapid and unexpected. Only 50 years ago, part of Dorchester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore was a world-renowned hot spot for birders seeking a glimpse of the elusive black rail. Today, the black rails are gone from Elliott Island, and only a handful are left in the state. None have been seen in Virginia’s coastal marshes for a couple of years.
Their exact number doesn’t make much difference, Watts said, because the downward trend is so strong — Maryland numbers have fallen 90 percent in just 25 years.
“This species is not going to be sustainable in its landscape in the face of sea level rise,” he said. “It will be lost. Maybe in five years, maybe in 10 years. But it’s on the way out.”
David Brinker, an ornithologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, shares this assessment. He said that surveys for the state’s next Breeding Bird Atlas would start in 2022. “By which time,” he said, “we’ll be really lucky to find a black rail unless some miracle happens.”
The bird is listed as endangered in both Maryland and Virginia, as well as several other states along the Atlantic Coast. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering protecting it through the federal Endangered Species Act and is expected to make a recommendation in September 2018.
Historically, the black rail has received little attention. Along with its deep marsh habitat and nocturnal activity, the black rail is quite small. Its body is about 6 inches long, with dark feathers and white speckles on its wings, back and abdomen. It has brilliant red eyes. But hardly anyone sees it — even professional ornithologists.
“I’ve seen one in my lifetime,” Brinker said.
The closest most birders — and scientists — come to the bird is hearing males call in the early morning hours of breeding season: “kickee-doo” or “kic-kic-ker.”
Biologists “look” for black rails by playing recordings of the call and listening for a response. Even that is difficult because the birds are most active between midnight and 4 a.m. Surveys sometimes require maneuvering boats in shallow-water marshes in the dark.
Black rails were once found from Texas up the East Coast as far as Massachusetts. Over time, they have suffered major habitat loss as marshes were buried to make way for urban growth. Places such as Cambridge, MA; Queens, NY; Atlantic City, NJ; and Baltimore once supported black rails. The historic ditching and draining of marshes eliminated more habitat.
But scientists believe the recent, rapid demise of black rails is linked to rising water.
Black rails live in high marshes that, with slightly higher elevation, typically escape the daily tidal over-wash. But the birds forage for invertebrates, such as water beetles, in areas that have wet soil or even a thin covering of water.
It’s a narrow band that Watts describes as a “hydrology tightrope.” With sea level rise, he said that he believes the nests are increasingly inundated by storms and unusually high tides. If a nest is ruined in a single year, the population can rebuild the next year. But if nests are drowned more frequently — and eggs along with them — the birds gradually disappear.
The birds can adjust by moving upslope but, because marshes are relatively flat, even a small amount of rising water can push them out of suitable habitat toward trees, roads or stands of invasive phragmites.
“If the water gets up 2 centimeters, it is not just inundating the edge of the marsh, it is inundating the entire marsh,” Watts said. “Once it hits that tipping point, you are effectively flooding the entire marsh.”
In the Saxis Wildlife Management Area on Accomack Island on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, black rails were last located at the tree line, and then they were gone.
The decline has been rapid. In 1991–92, a DNR survey in Maryland’s portion of the Bay recorded 180 black rails. “We found more than we expected,” Brinker said. “They were widespread. It was the third most frequently encountered rail in the marshes of the Chesapeake Bay.”
In 2007, the DNR and the Center for Conservation Biology, which is affiliated with both the College of William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University, collaborated on a Baywide survey. They found just 50 calling males in Maryland and Virginia combined. “That was the first indication that we had that the population was collapsing,” Watts said.
Birders had been reporting a decline, Brinker said, “but the magnitude of the change sort of hit us in the face.” A 2014 survey found just 10 individuals — eight in Maryland and two in Virginia.
The decline isn’t limited to the Bay. Black rails have largely disappeared at the northern edge of their range, with “catastrophic” rates of decline in New Jersey, Delaware and North Carolina, according to Watts’ status report, which was prepared for the upcoming federal endangered species review. South Carolina had a slower rate of decline, but still more than 4 percent each year.
According to Watts’ report, the total number of breeding pairs along the Atlantic Coast is between 455 and 1,315. Their status might be better in Florida and Texas, both of which have large amounts of potential habitat, but many of those areas have not been surveyed.
In those two states, “we have a huge amount of uncertainty,” Watts said.
Biologists, state and federal agencies are coordinating to conduct surveys in those and other areas in the next two years.
Historically, black rails were also found at some inland sites in the Eastern United States that simulated conditions found in high marshes, such as hayfields adjacent to river flood plains. But over time, most of those locations have also disappeared, largely because agricultural practices have intensified and altered the habitat, Watts said.
Black rails are also found in the Caribbean and in Central America, but little is known about their status.
Devising protection for black rails will be difficult. Creating special habitats for the birds is one possibility; they have, for instance, survived in impoundments built for waterfowl, where they are able to nest on the edge and forage on the flat, wet bottoms. But, Watts cautioned, “the slightest rain will fill these impoundments up and flush the nests out.”
Designs might be tweaked to accommodate black rails, but doing so at a scale that would secure the population’s survival could be costly.
“You have to get it just perfect, or they won’t be there,” Brinker said. Also, securing funds for a bird that most people never see could be difficult. “Black rails are nowhere near as charismatic as bald eagles and whooping cranes,” Brinker said.
While the immediate concern is for the black rail, other species that use the same habitat are also showing steep declines, such as the saltmarsh sparrow, which ranges from Accomack County in Virginia to New England, and the sedge wren.
The sedge wren has already largely disappeared from most coastal areas in the region, though they are still found inland. But the saltmarsh sparrow is declining at a rate that would make
it extinct in less than 50 years, biologists say.
The black rail “is really like a canary in a coal mine, telling us that things are going on in our tidal wetlands, and they are not good things,” Brinker said. “We are looking at some pretty serious changes.”
“This is just like the first one to go because its niche is so narrow and so precise.”Victoria urged to ditch change to mental health law that allows electric shock therapy on children
Updated
Legal advocates are calling on the Victorian Government to reject a proposed law that allows psychiatrists to use electric shock therapy on children.
The Federation of Community Legal Centres is lobbying the Government over changes to the mental health bill, which includes the potential for the use of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) to treat severe depression and other illnesses in children under the age of 13.
The Victorian Government says the new legislation will significantly improve patient welfare, and give patients a greater say in their treatment.
But the federation's senior policy adviser, Dr Chris Atmore, says the legislation erodes patients' human rights.
"We're concerned about the possible impact on children's developing brains," she said.
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great chance to win as he develops," he said. "This is a decision we had to make recently. It’s just a continuity thing and I think Justin had a chance to show what he could do in a game and I think he showed that he’s improved a lot from a year ago.
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"I think he’s got a lot of upside potential and hopefully he can lead us to some victories."
The coach made it clear the Bombers are not discarding Pierce, though it remains to be seen how much more the injury-prone veteran can do for the team on the field.
"He’s got a lot of experience," Burke said. "He knows the defensive co-ordinators in this league. He knows a lot of players in this league so he can assist them (the other quarterbacks) with all that kind of knowledge."
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Twitter: @WFPEdTaitRichard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist with the graduate school of education, and the Making Caring Common Project have come up with recommendations about how to raise children to become caring, respectful and responsible adults. (The Washington Post)
Earlier this year, I wrote about teaching empathy, and whether you are a parent who does so. The idea behind it is from Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist with the graduate school of education, who runs the Making Caring Common project, aimed to help teach kids to be kind.
I know, you’d think they are or that parents are teaching that themselves, right? Not so, according to a new study released by the group. (Chat with Weissbourd here.)
About 80 percent of the youth in the study said their parents were more concerned with their achievement or happiness than whether they cared for others. The interviewees were also three times more likely to agree that “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member in class and school.”
Weissbourd and his cohorts have come up with recommendations about how to raise children to become caring, respectful and responsible adults. Why is this important? Because if we want our children to be moral people, we have to, well, raise them that way.
“Children are not born simply good or bad and we should never give up on them. They need adults who will help them become caring, respectful, and responsible for their communities at every stage of their childhood,” the researchers write.
The five strategies to raise moral, caring children, according to Making Caring Common:
1. Make caring for others a priority
Why? Parents tend to prioritize their children’s happiness and achievements over their children’s concern for others. But children need to learn to balance their needs with the needs of others, whether it’s passing the ball to a teammate or deciding to stand up for friend who is being bullied.
How? Children need to hear from parents that caring for others is a top priority. A big part of that is holding children to high ethical expectations, such as honoring their commitments, even if it makes them unhappy. For example, before kids quit a sports team, band, or a friendship, we should ask them to consider their obligations to the group or the friend and encourage them to work out problems before quitting.
Try this
• Instead of saying to your kids: “The most important thing is that you’re happy,” say “The most important thing is that you’re kind.”
• Make sure that your older children always address others respectfully, even when they’re tired, distracted, or angry.
• Emphasize caring when you interact with other key adults in your children’s lives. For example, ask teachers whether your children are good community members at school.
2. Provide opportunities for children to practice caring and gratitude
Why? It’s never too late to become a good person, but it won’t happen on its own. Children need to practice caring for others and expressing gratitude for those who care for them and contribute to others’ lives. Studies show that people who are in the habit of expressing gratitude are more likely to be helpful, generous, compassionate, and forgiving—and they’re also more likely to be happy and healthy.
How? Learning to be caring is like learning to play a sport or an instrument. Daily repetition—whether it’s a helping a friend with homework, pitching in around the house, or having a classroom job—make caring second nature and develop and hone youth’s caregiving capacities. Learning gratitude similarly involves regularly practicing it.
Try this
• Don’t reward your child for every act of helpfulness, such as clearing the dinner table. We should expect our kids to help around the house, with siblings, and with neighbors and only reward uncommon acts of kindness.
• Talk to your child about caring and uncaring acts they see on television and about acts of justice and injustice they might witness or hear about in the news.
• Make gratitude a daily ritual at dinnertime, bedtime, in the car, or on the subway. Express thanks for those who contribute to us and others in large and small ways.
3. Expand your child’s circle of concern.
Why? Almost all children care about a small circle of their families and friends. Our challenge is help our children learn to care about someone outside that circle, such as the new kid in class, someone who doesn’t speak their language, the school custodian, or someone who lives in a distant country.
How? Children need to learn to zoom in, by listening closely and attending to those in their immediate circle, and to zoom out, by taking in the big picture and considering the many perspectives of the people they interact with daily, including those who are vulnerable. They also need to consider how their
decisions, such as quitting a sports team or a band, can ripple out and harm various members of their communities. Especially in our more global world, children need to develop concern for people who live in very different cultures and communities than their own.
Try this
• Make sure your children are friendly and grateful with all the people in their daily lives, such as a bus driver or a waitress.
• Encourage children to care for those who are vulnerable. Give children some simple ideas for stepping into the “caring and courage zone,” like comforting a classmate who was teased.
• Use a newspaper or TV story to encourage your child to think about hardships faced by children in another country.
4. Be a strong moral role model and mentor.
Why? Children learn ethical values by watching the actions of adults they respect. They also learn values by thinking through ethical dilemmas with adults, e.g. “Should I invite a new neighbor to my birthday party when my best friend doesn’t like her?”
How? Being a moral role model and mentor means that we need to practice honesty, fairness, and caring ourselves. But it doesn’t mean being perfect all the time. For our children to respect and trust us, we need to acknowledge our mistakes and flaws. We also need to respect children’s thinking and listen
to their perspectives, demonstrating to them how we want them to engage others.
Try this:
• Model caring for others by doing community service at least once a month. Even better, do this service with your child.
• Give your child an ethical dilemma at dinner or ask your child about dilemmas they’ve faced.
5. Guide children in managing destructive feelings
Why? Often the ability to care for others is overwhelmed by anger, shame, envy, or other negative feelings.
How? We need to teach children that all feelings are okay, but some ways of dealing with them are not helpful. Children need our help learning to cope with these feelings in productive ways.
Try this
Here’s a simple way to teach your kids to calm down: ask your child to stop, take a deep breath through the nose and exhale through the mouth, and count to five. Practice when your child is calm. Then, when you see her getting upset, remind her about the steps and do them with her. After a while she’ll start to do it on her own so that she can express her feelings in a helpful and appropriate way.
You might also like:
I had to learn to stop splurging on my son
Why it’s good to have a strong-willed child
How to help middle-schoolers living in a sometimes scary place
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GALLERY: 12 ways to live a better life
1 of 13 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × 12 ways to live a better life View Photos Karl A. Pillemer, a Cornell gerontologist, used the wisdom of crowds — more than 1,000 Americans aged 65 and over — to glean material for his book “30 Lessons in Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.’’ Here are 12 of his tips. Caption Karl A. Pillemer, a Cornell gerontologist, used the wisdom of crowds — more than 1,000 Americans aged 65 and over — to glean material for his book “30 Lessons in Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.’’ Here are 12 of his tips. 1. Marry someone like you Experts believe marriage is vastly more difficult with someone whose orientation and approach to life is different from yours. There are many ways partners can be similar, but the experts focus on one dimension in particular: similarity in core values. Hasan Jamali/AP Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
Interested in getting a newsletter from On Parenting? Sign up here.Bascom Hall on the campus of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Every Wednesday next semester, the students in Damon Sajnani’s class will meet to discuss, in depth, “The Problem of Whiteness.”
But the title of the course and its description has the University of Wisconsin at Madison mired in controversy before students have cracked open a book or peeked at a syllabus.
“Have you ever wondered what it really means to be white? If you’re like most people, the answer is probably ‘no.’ But here is your chance!” the description reads.
“Critical Whiteness Studies aims to understand how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy.”
The course explores “how race is experienced by white people.” But it also looks at how white people “consciously and unconsciously perpetuate institutional racism.”
The class has injected the university into a decades-old debate about whether taxpayer-funded educational institutions have an obligation to tackle the important issues of the day — or to stay out of them altogether.
The class is taught in the African Cultural Studies Department of a university where 2 percent of the student population identifies as black and more than 75 percent are white.
The most vocal opponent of the course is David Murphy, a Wisconsin state assemblyman who expressed outrage last week that taxpayers “are expected to pay for this garbage.”
The legislator, who chairs the assembly’s committee on colleges and universities, took issue with what he calls the underlying premise of the class: “that white people are racist.”
[A twist on controversial ‘Professor Watchlist’: Notre Dame academics want their names added]
His criticism comes with a not-so-veiled threat: “UW-Madison must discontinue this class. If UW-Madison stands with this professor, I don’t know how the University can expect the taxpayers to stand with UW-Madison.”
In a statement emailed to The Washington Post, Murphy (R) said the decision to approve the class makes him question the judgment of university leaders.
“I support academic freedom and free speech,” he said. “Free speech also means the public has the right to be critical of their public university. The university’s handling of controversies like this appears to the public as a lack of balance in intellectual openness and diversity of political thought on campus.”
Gov. Scott Walker (R) told the Wisconsin State Journal that he didn’t agree with Murphy’s call to withhold funding from the university if it doesn’t drop the class.
.@GovWalker says he doesn't support calls for UW-Madison to drop "Problem of Whiteness course" or lose funding https://t.co/tTsTIcbAUz pic.twitter.com/9x8hI3NVk7 — Nico Savidge (@NSavidge) December 21, 2016
Murphy takes issue not just with the class, but with Sajnani’s vocal public opinions. “Even more troubling, the course is taught by a self-described ‘international radical’ professor whose views are a slap in the face to the taxpayers.”
Murphy included copies of some of Sajnani’s tweets in his news release.
One tweet is a picture of a CNN breaking news report about police officers being shot in Dallas. “Is the uprising finally starting?” Sajnani said. “Is this style of protest gonna go viral?”
Is the uprising finally starting? Is this style of protest gonna go viral? pic.twitter.com/z0Kjgqbq4Q — ProfessorD.us (@profd) July 8, 2016
Another, from a few weeks later, is in response to former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder: “No @EricHolder it is not true that an attack on a police officer anywhere is an attack on all of us, since they DO NOT equally protect us all.”
Sajnani didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday. He received a PhD from Northwestern University’s African American studies Department, according to a University of Wisconsin spokesman. He has published papers on Rachel Dolezal, a former president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Wash., who was outed as not being black. He also has written about West African hip-hop and Canadian abolition.
In a statement, the university defended the course and stressed that it was elective, not required, and that it was “not designed to offend individuals or single out an ethnic group.”
“We believe this course, which is one of thousands offered at our university, will benefit students who are interested in developing a deeper understanding of race issues,” the university’s statement said. “The course is a challenge and response to racism of all kinds.”
Greg Bump, a spokesman for the university, told The Washington Post that he didn’t know of any criticism that had come from students.
Several organizations have criticized the class or called for tighter restrictions, including Breitbart, a conservative news site.
The Young America’s Foundation posts a list of a dozen college courses that it calls “the most bizarre and concerning instances of leftist activism supplanting traditional scholarship in our nation’s colleges and universities.” The Wisconsin course is not on that list.
Every semester, universities make similar decisions about controversial courses. Among them: “Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology,” a Swarthmore College course that examines feminist and queer writings about God. There’s also Bowdoin College’s “Transgender Latina Immigration: Politics of Belonging and Labor in the United States,” which focuses on the social conditions of transgender Latinas.
And a new website called “Professor Watchlist” lists the names of academics a conservative group says advance “leftist propaganda” or discriminate against conservative students.
Sajnani’s name isn’t on the site, but UW-Madison has a history of wading into racial controversies that goes back decades.
Earlier this year, hundreds of people protested at Bascom Hill after a black student was arrested for spray-painting anti-racist messages on campus, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. At the protest, students taped a list of demands to a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
And in 1964, UW-Madison student Andrew Goodman was one of three activists killed by the Ku Klux Klan while registering black people to vote near Philadelphia, Miss.
This post has been updated.
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The first thing cancer patients saw when they got to this hospital: An ad for a funeral homeMahagoni said she would much prefer it if there were no stock models at all. “I am just trying to get my message across,” she said. “I am pro-black and I love to share people in my designs on my social media. Those images being shared are more powerful to me than a stock image.”
A spokesperson for Redbubble told BuzzFeed News: “There are a number of different ‘stock models’ of different races on which the digital works, created by independent artists, are displayed.”
They added: “The digital model on which a digital image is displayed is randomly selected. If artists are concerned about the race of the model on which their work is displayed they can disable the apparel-related options. Their work would still be available on all the other products available on Redbubble.”It was around the year 2009 that Pune-based organisation Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) began working with women of the drought-hit Marathwada. The aim was to empower the women in a way that they are able to manage the available natural resources and achieve food and income security through agriculture.
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An initiative was introduced wherein the local women farmers were encouraged to adopt climate resilient agriculture model that involved use of bio-fertilizers and pesticides, preservation and exchange of local seeds, diversifying from single crop to 5-7 crops to reduce climate risk.
This not only enhanced household food consumption but also allowed women to sell surplus crop. The women were also introduced to efficient ways of water management through use of hydroponics, drip irrigation, sprinklers, farm ponds, recharging of borewells, tree plantation etc, all of which resulted in better groundwater levels and soil fertility.
The initiative by SSP has recently won the Equator Prize 2017 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and partners which recognised 15 local and indigenous communities from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The winning organisations, which showcase innovative solutions for tackling poverty, environment, and climate challenges, will be honoured at a celebratory gala in New York on September 17. The winners were selected from 806 nominations across 120 countries by an independent Technical Advisory Committee of internationally renowned experts. The selection process emphasised community-based approaches that provide a blueprint for replication.
Speaking about the award-winning initiative, Prema Gopalan, executive director, SSP, said, “This model addresses the issues of food security, income security, natural resource management and women empowerment all at the same time.”
The initiative focuses on women and their families who are marginal and landless farmers and own four or less than four acres of land in drought-hit Marathwada region. Gopalan added that with the training, coupled with the right know-how, the marginal farmers who are worst-affected have better soil fertility, income security, and are able to make informed decisions about the types of crops, their cycles and water resources even in bad weather conditions. Since 2009, the initiative has reached out to as many as 72,000 women in Marathwada.
“Marathwada is not just about farmers’ suicide. It is also about people like us who have challenged drought and destiny,” Shaila Narore, one of the women farmers to benefit from the initiative, said. All the Equator Prize winners will receive US$10,000 each and the opportunity for a community representative to join a week-long summit in New York during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. The Equator Prize Award Ceremony on September September 17 will feature celebrities, government and UN officials and members of civil society.
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The Equator Prize has been supported by former heads of state Gro Harlem Brundtland and Oscar Arias, Nobel Prize winners Al Gore and Elinor Ostrom, thought leaders Jane Goodall and Jeffrey Sachs, indigenous rights leader Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, philanthropists Richard Branson and Ted Turner, and celebrities Edward Norton, Alec Baldwin, Gisele Bündchen, and many more.Platooning, you know about. You throw a lefty at me, and by golly I'll stack my lineup with right-handed hitters. Casey Stengel, the Ol' Perfessor, was a big proponent of platooning, though he was hardly the first. Platooning's tough these days, though, what with 13-man bullpens and all.
It's also tough when your boss gives you two right-handed hitters for one position. Which is what Reds GM Walt Jocketty has done to for M Dusty Baker, who's got two right-handed hitters slated for semi-regular duties in left field. So what's Baker going to do? He doesn't use this term, but it's sometimes called complex platooning. MLB.com's Mark Sheldon:
However the Reds plan the platoon in left field between Chris Heisey and Ryan Ludwick, it certainly won't be conventional. For starters, both players are right-handed hitters. When manager Dusty Baker writes out his lineup card this season, scouting reports and pitching matchups will play a large role in his decision-making for left field. "Ludwick likes the ball more down and away, and Heisey likes the ball in and up," Baker said. Heisey also likes to pull the ball, and is a lifetime.288 hitter vs. right-handed pitchers, compared to.180 against lefties. "Everybody thinks put the right-hander up against the lefty," Baker said. "I remember Pedro Guerrero hated lefties. There'd be a lefty, and then they'd bring in this tough right-hander throwing sinkers and he'd say, 'Thank you.' "It's part of my job to put [Heisey] in a situation where he will succeed. Everybody says, 'Oh, he should play every day,' but there are certain guys he will struggle against. And there are certain guys that he should have success against. It's not only left-handers he has trouble with. It's guys that throw to that side of the plate." Over his career, Ludwick has also been better vs. right-handers, with a.272 average compared to.237 against lefties.
I agree absolutely with Dusty Baker about one thing: It's absolutely his job to put his player in a situation in which he will succeed. In fact, that quote seems to me like something that's been directly lifted from the pages of a Baseball Abstract from the 1980s.
Not that it's particularly relevant at the moment, but while those batting averages seem interesting enough, they really don't mean anything much at all. From The Book:
A right-handed hitter needs around 2,000 appearances against left-handed pitchers before his measured platoon split can be considered reliable...
Chris Heisey has 166 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers; Ryan Ludwick has 947. Ludwick's career tells us next to nothing about his true platoon skills; Heisey's tells us nothing at all, and there is every reason to assume that he will, given enough time -- which he might never earn -- hit lefties better than righties.
Both of them are just decent hitters for corner outfielders, and the Reds would be better off with a real platoon, featuring a left-handed hitter and either Heisey or Ludwick. Both is redundant, especially since neither's got the defensive chops to spell Drew Stubbs -- yet another right-handed hitter -- in center field, or the anything chops to spell Jay Bruce in right.
By none of which do I mean to suggest that Dusty Baker is wrong, necessarily. You go to war with the outfielders you've got, not the outfielders you want. He's got Heisey and Ludwick, and an old baseball man like Baker should have some decent ideas about how to best use them. There's some small evidence that a sort of platoon based on fly-ball and ground-ball tendencies -- or in Baker's parlance, high-ball pitchers and low-ball pitchers -- might be at least moderately more effective than simply drawing names from a cap.(AP Photo/J. David Ake)
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court handed down a ruling that will help determine how the U.S. Supreme Court handles its next big abortion case. But Cline v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice hasn’t been scheduled for oral arguments just yet. The law in question, which deals with abortion-inducing drugs, was messily written, leaving room for considerable doubt about whether the state of Oklahoma intended to require doctors to follow a particular set of dosage requirements (the state attorney’s argument)—or ban the use of the drugs for abortion entirely (the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice’s argument). When it accepted the case, the U.S. Supreme Court sent it back to the Oklahoma court for clarification about the law’s original aim. After several months of deliberation, the Oklahoma justices decided that the law effectively bans all medication-induced abortions by prohibiting the use of one crucial drug. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will have to decide whether to dismiss the case and defer to the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s original ruling, which declared the law unconstitutional, or proceed. If they go ahead with the case, the court will face a weighty question: Is it legal for a state to effectively prohibit a procedure that accounts for 25 percent of first-trimester abortions?
Medication abortions are available to women who are still in their first trimester and would rather have a drug-induced miscarriage than a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy. Most doctors, when prescribing the two medications that cause abortion—misoprostol and mifepristone, commonly packaged together under the brand name “Mifeprex”—follow evidence-based guidelines recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the World Health Organization that deviate slightly from the regimen that the FDA outlined when it approved Mifeprex in 2000. The biggest difference between the two treatments is timing: According to the FDA, medication abortion can only be provided through seven weeks of pregnancy, but doctors commonly prescribe it for women through nine weeks.
As part of the larger cascade of abortion restrictions that have swept the country in the past three years, five states, including Oklahoma, have passed laws requiring doctors who prescribe abortion drugs to follow the FDA protocol, but only the laws in Texas, Arizona, and Ohio are in effect. Oklahoma’s law has been suspended since 2011 pending the outcome of the case, and a judge in North Dakota struck down its law earlier this year. But the courts aren’t consistently opposed to laws that impose the FDA protocol on abortion providers. On Monday, a federal judge in Texas partially upheld such a law, saying that although off-label use is safe and effective, requiring the FDA protocol is not an “undue burden” for a woman seeking an abortion, except in situations where her life is in danger. Last year, a federal court in Ohio came to a similar conclusion.
The question, now, is whether the U.S. Supreme Court wants to tackle a case that goes beyond the other states’ fairly straightforward regulations on how abortion-inducing drugs should be prescribed. The complications stem mainly from the fact that misoprostol, although it’s included in the FDA’s regimen for Mifeprex, isn’t technically approved for abortion. According to its label, misoprostol is used to prevent gastric ulcers; in a medication abortion, it contracts the uterus and expels the embryo. But the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision added another wrinkle to the case. In addition to banning medication abortion, it ruled that the law prohibits doctors from using methotrexate, a drug approved by the FDA for as a remedy for psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, to treat ectopic pregnancy. The only alternative to treatment for ectopic pregnancy, a potentially fatal complication, is surgery. “The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling threw the issues into sharper relief,” says Michelle Movahed, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights and one of the lead attorneys on the case. “It makes it clear that this law is as extreme as it seemed. But we have to wait and see what the Supreme Court will do next.”
When they’re written correctly, laws like Oklahoma’s are clever. Their Machiavellian genius is that, on the surface, requiring doctors to follow the FDA protocol sounds like a great idea. If doctors are deviating from the government-sanctioned regimen for abortion-inducing drugs, one might reasonably ask, isn’t that a genuine women’s health concern—and shouldn’t the state have every reason to step in?
The problem is, that’s not how science works. When the FDA approves a drug, it uses the best research available at the time to suggest a regimen for the drug’s use—but doctors and scientists don’t stop studying its effects. As more studies come out, they often show that drugs have other medical functions, or can be used in a different way to more effectively provide care. Obtaining re-approval for a new use of the drug or a treatment regimen is laborious and expensive, and drug companies aren’t required to do it, so many don’t bother. As a result, doctors prescribe drugs “off label,” basing their recommendations not on the FDA’s standards, which can be outdated, but on the latest scientific evidence. The Mayo Clinic estimates that approximately 20 percent of commonly used drugs are prescribed off label.
“The FDA encourages it,” says Mitchell Creinin, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California-Davis. “They say, look, we know that more literature will become available. Of course, you can’t just say, ‘I think aspirin will work for a runny nose.’ You need to use a validated regimen. And you have to inform the patient.”
It’s been more than a decade since the FDA approved Mifeprex, and since then, doctors have made a number of adjustments to the standard procedure for prescribing the drug. For women up to seven weeks pregnant, the FDA protocol prescribes 600 mg of Mifeprex, given over the course of three clinic visits. The mifepristone is taken on the first day, to block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain the pregnancy. Two days later, the woman comes back to the clinic to take a dose of misoprostol that expels the embryo; she returns to the clinic once again within two weeks for a checkup. Later research showed that the dosage could be substantially reduced, the second clinic visit was unnecessary, and the medicine was safe for women up to nine weeks pregnant. Now, most doctors give 200 mg of Mifeprex over two clinic visits, allowing women to take the misoprostol at home.
The new regimen is cheaper—it costs $90 rather than $270—and it’s more effective. The World Health Organization recommends the evidence-based protocol for medication abortion; for many doctors, following the FDA’s guidelines would be agreeing to practice bad medicine. “No professional wants to use a regimen that’s less safe, more expensive, and has worse side effects,” says Tracy Weitz, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California-San Francisco. “You don’t give someone three pills if you know one pill is enough.”
If the Supreme Court chooses to take the Oklahoma case, their charge will be considerably broader than addressing the constitutionality of the FDA protocol laws. Rather than considering a particular limitation on abortion access, the case will hinge on whether it’s constitutional to prohibit a procedure that comprises one-quarter of first-trimester abortions. That’s not necessarily good news for pro-choice advocates. “I think it’s likely that the Supreme Court would rule that since surgical methods are available, a ban on medication abortion isn’t an undue burden,” says Jessie Hill, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University who worked on Ohio’s FDA protocol case. “They’d say, you can’t complain if there’s another equally effective method out there.”
Of course, it’s equally likely that the Supreme Court will reject the case without moving further, allowing the Oklahoma ruling to stand. Hill points out that the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s expansive ruling may have produced a higher-stakes challenge than the high court’s justices were bargaining for. But if the case is dismissed, states looking to restrict abortion access won’t be deterred from passing similar legislation; they’ll just take more pains to ensure that the legislation is precise. To doctors, the FDA protocol requirements are just one more in a long line of attempts to limit abortion access in the name of women’s health—and infringe on their rights as medical practitioners. “The legislators who are behind these laws would hate it if we applied these same restrictions to any other kind of medicine,” Creinin says. “If they got cancer, and I said they could only use the FDA guidelines for their cancer drugs, they’d be outraged. These laws are not about women’s safety. They’re about trying to inhibit the safe provision of medical care.”In 2006 Indian Prime Minister Singh declared Naxalism the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by India. Estimated to be 40,000 strong, the Naxalites have been waging a Maoist-inspired insurgency against the Indian government since the late 1960s. The group has been a strain on the country's security forces and a barrier to development in the vast mineral rich region in eastern India known as the "Red Corridor." Today, the Naxalites heavily influence a third of the country, and India is no closer to eradicating the insurgency than it was 50 years ago.
The Naxalite impacted states are home to most of India's natural resources, where coal, iron, bauxite, manganese, nickel, and copper are found in abundance. Orissa and Jharkhand alone account for more than half of the country's coal reserves (coal is by far India's largest energy source). This makes the region strategically important for the country, yet Indian security forces have for decades been ineffectual as a fighting force in Naxalite territory. The depth of India's poverty, the vast expanse of rural land, and inadequate infrastructure in the Red Corridor have made it a difficult battleground, and the Naxalites have been able to attract new recruits on a regular basis.
Since many rebels are recruited among tribal villagers, they have a built-in advantage over the security forces. Whereas government forces outnumber the rebels and have greater resources at their disposal, they have frequently fallen prey to devastating attacks in remote areas. In May of this year 27 people, including high-level politicians, were killed when ambushed by more than 150 rebels in the state of Chhattisgarh -- a hotbed of Naxalite activity.
Electricity and running water are virtually non-existent in remote areas of the Red Corridor. The absence of basic necessities has produced opportunities for the Naxalites to provide services to local residents, such as irrigation systems. But the infrastructure that does exist has long been a target of the Naxalites: power plants, schools, and phone and rail lines have all been attacked. This gives credence to the central government's assertion that security needs to be established before development will come. This is a contentious issue among affected states, which argue that the Naxalites will have less ability to attract new recruits if basic needs are met on a more acceptable basis.
In 2006 a major piece of legislation was enacted in Parliament with the purpose of defining land rights for tribal communities, along with a process for economic project approval. But in 2010, the Council for Social Development, a well-established Indian think tank, released a report stating that the Act had been poorly applied in some areas, and not at all in others. Another complicated issue is that many tribal communities do not share the government's vision for capitalist led growth. Almost all their needs are met by indigenous resources available from the forests in which they live. It is therefore understandable that many villages would question whether they would ultimately benefit from enhanced investment, as the government wishes. This absence of a shared vision, and a lack of basic education excludes most locals from new jobs that may be created via new investment, make many of the selling points for local investment irrelevant to the local population. So an important part of gaining acceptance for economic development rests in convincing these communities that there are genuine benefits to be gained.
Under India's constitution, issues of law and order have traditionally been the responsibility of the states, rather than the federal government. The federal government's realization that it needed to play a greater role in the counter-insurgency led it to create a division of the Home Ministry devoted to the Naxalite problem in 2006. More than three years after identifying Naxalism as the biggest internal threat, Prime Minister Singh admitted in 2009 that the government's efforts at containing the Naxalites had not been successful. This was the backdrop for the government "Green Hunt," a large-scale offensive that combined central and state security and involved 50,000 troops deployed in the worst affected states. Despite setbacks, this initiative has been successful in targeting key leaders and gaining control of some territory previously held by the rebels.
The government is fighting as much for the hearts and minds of Indians in impacted states as it is for the objective of gaining control over its own territory. Given the number of civilians that have to date been killed by the Naxalites, and that a large part of Naxalite funding comes from extorting companies for protection money, the group's claim that it is fighting for the people lack credibility. The resulting loss of support for the Naxalites among some quarters is starting to have an impact.
If the government stays on the offensive, is successful in eliminating the majority of the Naxalite leadership, and can turn the development tide in the Red Corridor, it may be able to weaken the group enough so that it does not pose a serious threat. For the time being, the Naxalites remain a significant threat to the government of India. The Naxalites are likely to exist in some form for decades to come. The key to success is removing the sources of Naxalite support. If the standard of living can be raised to a sufficient degree, the Naxalite appeal will eventually disappear. However, given the Indian government's record to date on this subject, and its general perception of being ineffective, it will take much time, effort and money to turn the tide. The odds of that happening in the next 20 years are not encouraging.
*Daniel Wagner is CEO of Country Risk Solutions, a cross-border risk advisory firm, and author of the book "Managing Country Risk". Mikael Roussel is a research analyst with CRS based in New York.Activist Judge Appointed by Obama Blocks Texas Voter ID Law – For Second Time
Obama-appointed Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos struck down the Texas voter ID law on Wednesday that requires ID’s to vote. Judge Ramos believes it is racist to believe blacks and Hispanics are able to fill out paperwork and purchase an ID card.
This is the second time Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos blocked the Texas Voter ID law. In October 2014 Judge Ramos voided the Texas photo ID law just weeks before the November election calling it a poll tax.
The law was then softened for the 2016 election.
Earlier this year the Trump-Sessions DOJ asked a federal court to dismiss the department’s earlier claim that the ID law was enacted with the intention of discriminating against minority voters.
Americans need ID cards to function
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q “Research” because the first use cases will be in the context of scientific studies, this isn’t just for researchers. For example, if you’re a developer interested in building an app or a feature using genomic data, you could use this API as well.
[2] Note, however, that if you revoke access, this means that the researcher can no longer access your Seeq data from that moment on. If they’ve already accessed it (and thus presumably have a copy of it) and you would like them to no longer use your data for research, they should have a mechanism set up to allow you to opt out. If they do not, let us know and we will completely remove their study’s access to Seeq.Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during The Wall Street Journal Digital Live (WSJDLive) conference at the Montage Laguna Beach, California, October 19, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake This has been a huge year for Apple, the most valuable company in the world, with the launch of three major products: The Apple Watch, Apple Music, and the massive iPad Pro tablet.
Despite the hype, all three of those products earned mixed reactions.
Compound that with the repeated and persistent reports that Apple is going to make an electric car, and a lot of pundits are wondering just what the heck Apple thinks it's doing.
Well, it's pretty simple.
If you ever want to know why Apple does what it does, look at it through this lens: "How does this benefit the iPhone?"
Removing the brakes from the train
Today, Apple iOS may not be the most popular smartphone operating system in the world — Google's Android holds that distinction — but the product based on it (the iPhone) is the most profitable tech product the world has ever seen.
In fact, if you broke out just Apple's $31.4 billion iPhone revenue from the last quarter, it's higher than any other tech company's total revenue over the same period.
If iPhone shipments slip, even a little, it's going to cause real pain to Apple's sales and profits. So it's all-important that the iPhone keep going.
But a big reason why iPhone sales aren't slowing down is because Apple is removing any reason to hop off the train.
A MacBook Air with iPhone. Flickr/Alejandro Pinto Apple's goal is to create the best platform experience in the world, so each new Apple product you buy improves the experience on all the other Apple products you already own — particularly the iPhone.
For instance, both the iPad and the MacBook get even better if you also have an iPhone, since you get the ability to sync texts and send photos across devices.
Conversely, it means that if you get an Android tablet or a Windows PC, you lose those iPhone-related superpowers. This is extraordinarily clever. It means that users have a series of good reasons to own all Apple devices. When it's upgrade time for any of these devices, it's a serious reason in favor of buying another Apple device, whether it be phone, PC, or tablet.
Now, extend that logic out.
The platform effect
The Apple Watch, which seems to be a sales disappointment, is still very likely the best smartwatch on the market. And if you want to use one, you need an iPhone. Not everyone will want one, but for those who really want a smartwatch, it's one fewer reason to leave the iPhone world and one additional reason to join it.
The new Apple TV, which is a refresh to a product that the company had all but forgotten about, now also has the ability to run a selection of iOS apps.
Better yet, if you already own an app for your iPhone, the attendant Apple TV version is also free. It means that if you have an iPhone, the Apple TV looks better. If you have an Apple TV, the iPhone looks better.
The same goes for the iPad. Maybe nobody is replacing their old iPads as fast as Apple shareholders might have hoped, but it's still selling in the tens of millions a year. And if you have an iPhone, you probably already also have a bunch of iPad apps.
Similarly, the iPad Pro exists because Microsoft has proven the market exists with its Surface Pro 4 tablet/laptop hybrids. Apple wants as few reasons for people to go outside the Apple iOS world as possible. Getting work done on an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil stylus. Melia Robinson/Tech Insider Looking forward, the Apple Car is a little more esoteric. But if you look at it as Apple looking to protect the future of iOS in the automotive market, it makes a little more sense. If it succeeds, Apple would own the operating system in a car that it also owns, extending the dominance of iOS to the roads, and making an iPhone an even smarter purchase. The same goes for HomeKit, Apple's platform that connects the iOS ecosystem to various devices in your home.
Apple Music is kind of an odd duck, since it has an Android version and works on the Windows version of iTunes. But it's integrated deeply with the iPhone and iPad versions of the built-in Music app, which means that Apple devices are still the best place to run the service.
All of which is to say: It doesn't matter if any one Apple product succeeds or fails, so long as the iPhone continues to succeed. And with each passing day, Apple makes more and more defensive moves to keep anyone from ever considering anything else.
Just remember that for this strategy to work, Apple has to keep coming out with the best versions of whatever it comes up with. They don't have to be massive hits. But if they're flat-out bad, customers will start looking outside of Apple's little world. And maybe they'll start looking for something other than an iPhone to go with it.Nutrisystem is one of the most well-known weight loss programs in the world. But even with its reputation, many people doubt that the food is actually as good as it's claimed to be, and that it's super simple to stay on track. What can look easy enough is not always replicable in real life. There are so many weight loss programs out there, so we wanted to see if Nutrisystem was the best of the best. Here's what we found.
A common concern that many face when starting a weight loss program is the need to count calories. Not only is it time consuming, but it's difficult to know the right guidelines to stick to. We're not all nutrition experts, but just need valuable tips to be able to meet our goals. The great thing about Nutrisystem is that it does all the calorie-counting for you. The plans are designed by nutrition experts, and provide you with the right balance of nutrients and the right amount of calories to help you lose weight safely.
Their strategy is to make meal-time regimented but also filled with variety. Nutrisystem sends a monthly shipment that includes three meals and a snack a day. All the meals are quick to prepare, and a delicious breakfast is as easy as grabbing a snack bar or muffin on your way out the door. All you need to do is follow the perfectly portioned meal plan and you're guaranteed to lose up to 13 pounds in your first month, or your money back. It works because there's no room for error. Nutrisystem is designed to give you all the necessary tools to see results.
The second concern that people have about weight loss programs is that they won't be able to eat their favorite foods anymore. But Nutrisystem doesn't take all the pleasure out of eating. Unlike traditional unhealthy comfort foods, Nutrisystem® pizzas and mac & cheese are balanced with complex carbs, lean protein and fiber without sacrificing taste. They help keep you feeling full and make sure you're getting all the nutrients you need, so you can maintain a healthy lifestyle and continue to achieve your weight loss goals.
The last concern has to do with exercise. Many people simply don't have the time to workout every day. But it turns out, you don't need to exercise to lose weight on the Nutrisystem plan. In fact, studies have found that you're more likely to lose weight by cutting calories than by increasing exercise. So don't worry that your physical limitations are going to stand in the way of your weight loss goals. Nutrisystem recommends just three 10 minute exercises a day, so you won't need to live in a gym. If you focus on following the Nutrisystem® plan, you will have everything you need to be a healthier you.
Nutrisystem exceeded our expectations, and we're convinced it's a great program for those looking for a comprehensive plan to lose weight.
UPDATE: The awesome folks at Nutrisystem are extending a special offer to our readers.Follow this link to receive 40% off the one-time rate with new 4 week auto-delivery order!
This content is sponsored by Nutrisystem.Bill Ingalls/NASA
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Perhaps it's the bleak, Soviet-style block apartments. It could be the dust-blown, almost featureless landscape. Or maybe it's the scraggly trees that eke out their meager existence in Baikonur, with their lower trunks painted white so the bark does not crack during the bitter winter freezes. This lonely town in southern Kazakhstan is not one of planet Earth's garden spots.
As they began to build a spaceport to launch first satellites and then humans into space, the Soviets chose this desolate area of the Asian steppe in the 1950s both for its remoteness and its access to the Syr Darya River. Amusingly, "Baikonur" means “rich soil,” an appellation that was true for the original Baikonur hundreds of kilometers to the north. To throw off American spies looking for its launch facilities during the Cold War, the Soviet Union built a fake launch site at the real town of Baikonur. Eventually, spy planes observed the southern site and its launches, so the Soviets simply called the new site Baikonur as well.
In the post-Space Shuttle world this camel-trafficked region serves as the launch site for all Russian and US human spaceflights from the very same pad that Yuri Gagarin blasted off of in 1961. On Wednesday, at 9:36pm ET, the latest launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome will carry Expedition 48—Soyuz commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, and engineers Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Kate Rubins of NASA—into space. They will spend about six months on board the International Space Station.
Until SpaceX and Boeing begin flying their Dragon and Starliner commercial spacecraft into space from Florida in late 2017 or 2018, America's road to orbit goes through Russia. And while the relationship between the US and Russian space programs has warmed considerably during the last three decades, the traditions in Baikonur have not changed much.
The routine goes something like this: about two weeks before launch, the primary and backup crews for the flight leave the Star City cosmonaut training compound outside of Moscow and take a private flight to Baikonur. There they spend the last days before their mission undergoing final training and tests, waiting for their rocket roll out of the hangar down train tracks to the launch pad. They plant trees and idle in the Cosmonaut Hotel, which backs up to the Syr Darya River. It can be a mundane experience, halfway around the world from home, but for now it is the only way for NASA astronauts to get to the International Space Station.
The interesting bit for Wednesday evening's launch, which will occur on Thursday morning in Baikonur, will be the use of an enhanced Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz has now flown nearly 130 times since the first crewed mission in 1968, but the newest version, the Soyuz MS, has received several upgrades. These include improved thrusters, additional micrometeoroid debris shielding, increased power from more photovoltaic cells on the spacecraft’s solar arrays, and improved docking capabilities.
However, because these new systems will need to be tested once in space, the Soyuz will not make a "fast" six-hour rendezvous with the space station. Instead the crew will make 34 orbits over the course of about two days before docking. It will be a tight fit for three people inside the Soyuz capsule and its small orbital module, but perhaps not the worst of experiences after long days of waiting on the Asian steppe.Last Saturday, Logan Smith, the man behind the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist, began posting photos of alleged white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia—and gained over 300,000 followers in a single weekend, some of whom helped him expose the identities of the protesters. One of the people Smith outed has since been fired from his job at a Berkeley, California, hot dog stand. Another, pictured screaming and holding a tiki torch, claims he's been misrepresented as an “angry racist.”
Another was disowned by his family. Another, Kyle Quinn, was more than 1,000 miles away from Charlottesville at the time of the protest—a case of mistaken identity that brought a wave of threats and accusations of racism so large that Quinn felt unsafe in his home. Still another was James Alex Fields, Junior, who murdered anti-racist protestor Heather Heyer.
To some, this all makes Smith an internet hero. To others, he’s just the vile, destructive left wing doxer du jour. (Smith did not respond to request for comment, though he has discussed the campaign on NPR.)
So who's got truth on their side? The internet has always been a swamp of ambiguity, especially where doxing is concerned. But as doxing continues to evolve as the preferred tactic of both far right and left wing internet factions, it’s important to take a hard look at what each side is trying to accomplish. While the two sides use different logic to justify their actions, the true result is the same and even cumulative—leading to an arms race of financially incentivized, shame-slinging vigilantes.
Two Poles, Two Practices
The internet has been fussing over what doxing is and isn't for decades. Most recently, the debate has centered on whether journalism is doxing. (For the record, it's not.) But at a base level, most people agree that the term refers to the digital release of private information without consent, typically as a display of power or blackmail. That immediately clouds the water around how to classify what @YesYoureRacist did, since the information the account published isn't actually private. "The Unite the Right rally was a public protest in a public park," says Andrew Zolides, a digital media scholar at Xavier University. "They're not wearing masks. What did they expect?"
Still, @YesYoureRacist is emblematic of left wing doxing's dominant motivation: social and economic punishment. In left wing doxers' minds, they're just creating consequences for being openly hateful—and releasing information only acquaintances and family members would recognize or care about. On one hand, that would seem to give them some moral high ground: They're just exposing names and faces, not personal information such as addresses and phone numbers and family members' names. Those sorts of details would not only make the doxee easy to harass but possibly physically unsafe.
Publicizing those sorts of details isn't exclusive to right wing extremist doxing (Anonymous has exposed plenty of emails and phone numbers), but it's far more common. Most employers won't fire a person for showing up to demonstrate against hate groups or in support of women, people of color, or the LGBTQ community—which essentially leaves out-and-out harassment as the far right's only option. But from their perspective, they're still just creating consequences for being openly hateful too. After all, many white supremacists believe the left is perpetrating a vast "white genocide." So if you're a pure relativist, each side has a moral defense for its doxing.
But even if you're not—and in this case, when the opposing forces are lethally violent white supremacists and, y'know, not white supremacists, it's kinda tough to be—the impact ends up being about the same. For all the high-minded distinctions Anonymous or antifascists or @YesYoureRacist might draw, internet sleuthing in 2017 can expose people to widespread harassment and even physical danger. "Doxing is a sloppy form of justice that often hurts many beyond the intended target," says Jared Colton, who teaches about ethics and technology at Utah State University. "It punishes their families and even people who look like them or have similar names." Once you strip away the intentions, in other words, both sides are sharing the same swampy low ground.
The Rise of the Doxing Mercenary
That's not uncommon for battlegrounds, which is kind of what the internet has become. But experts aren't sure the doxing war is going anywhere productive. "We need to stop thinking of the ethics of doxing in terms of how well it performs justice by punishing others," Colton says. "Until we can show evidence that the people being doxed will actually change their lives for the better, we may be only fanning the flames. It might work on those who have just joined the group, but those heavily indoctrinated will only dig deeper." After the Charlottesville naming and shamings, few have expressed remorse—only outrage at what they perceive as character defamation.
So if doxing helps neither left- nor right wing extremists, who does it benefit? Well, increasingly, it's a financial boon for self-styled internet investigators. On the right there's WeSearchr, a kind of far right GoFundMe where users post bounties on things they'd like exposed—which often include the identities and personal information of anti-Trump protesters. Then other users pile on, contributing money to the pot to raise the stakes. The bounty on the antifascist who attacked so-called alt-right activist "Baked Alaska" in Charlottesville has topped $6,000. On the left, Patreon has become a way for name-and-shamers to earn a bit of cash.
Even if "professional doxer" never becomes part of the internet's gig economy, having this kind of financial incentive to participate in doxing efforts could be severely destabilizing, and not just for internet culture. "The scary part is there's an uncomfortable sense of vigilante justice," Zolides says. It's an understandable response to the failure of traditional institutions (like real police forces) to adapt their work to the rapidly shifting needs and realities of the digital world. But rather than helping the situation, the enforcement they're supplying is not only amateurish but is eroding trust in professionals.
These groups are also changing the scope of doxing, which used to be a digital punishment for digital "crime." "This is the internet policing the internet, but also outside lives," Zolides says. "It's not as bad as mob rule, but it is a kind of surveillance state." And if stating your beliefs in public becomes a risk not just for you but for your family, and even strangers who look like you, effecting change is going to be a whole lot harder—for everyone.CLOSE BRIDGMAN - Stop by Tapistry Brewing on your next trip to Warren Dunes. Andy Fitzpatrick
Tapistry Brewing bartender Davis Brown pours a beer at the Bridgman brewery. (Photo: Andy Fitzpatrick/The Enquirer)
BRIDGMAN — In the heart of West Michigan's vacation land, there's a small tap room where tourists and locals come together to form an extended family of beer fans.
At Tapistry Brewing, owner Joe Rudnick said, there are daily regulars who mix in the summertime with crowds traveling from Chicago and points east to the popular, busy Warren Dunes State Park.
"It’s just like 'Cheers,' basically," Rudnick said.
When a couple of beers were being poured for a photo session, the guys at the bar collectively wondered if they could maybe take care of them when it was over.
Like "Cheers," basically.
Rudnick, who lives in Mattawan, started Tapistry about four years ago after a 20-year career as an engineer at Pfizer in Kalamazoo. Now, he's glad to be part of businesses bringing people into downtown Bridgman.
More on beer:
The Beer File: Silver Harbor Brewing Co.
The Beer File: Territorial Brewing Company
JB's Whiskey Creek opens in Springfield
The Beer File: Dark Horse Brewing Co.
Tapistry speeds up in the summer and slows down in the winter. Rudnick said the lean months are when they get by on their distribution sales.
Detroit, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Traverse City are obviously the places a Michigan craft brewery is going to aim for, and Tapistry is available in northern Indiana as well.
"Lansing is a good one for us," Rudnick said. "We kill it in Lansing."
What's your most-ordered beer?
Mr. Orange has been moving, Rudnick said, partly because of the popularity of its style. Think Blue Moon or Shock Top.
"It’s a Belgian witbier with blood oranges, chamomile and rose hips," Rudnick said, adding that the blood oranges make the beer pretty different from its competitors.
"Probably what’s most attractive about it is its lower ABV for those who are maybe not into the higher ABV beers," Rudnick said.
What's something that hasn't worked?
"We experimented with some Patagonian malt," Rudnick said. "It was a smoked malt that had a little bit different flavor to it. It was kind of a hit-or-miss beer. People either loved it, or they didn’t like it all."
Is there a Tapistry philosophy?
Rudnick said the name tells the brewery's story: It combines beer taps with chemistry. It's fitting, he said, since head brewer Kyle Heslip has a Ph.D. in chemistry.
"We also love art," Rudnick said. "We support a lot of local artists. If you come in our tap room you’ll see the art for sale."
What should people know before traveling to Tapistry?
"Hopefully, you like a variety of beers, because we have 20 of them on tap," Rudnick said. "We do anything from Belgians, to IPAs to the witbier. We like hops. We’re hop heads here."
Contact Andy Fitzpatrick at 269-966-0697 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @am_fitzpatrick. Hear him on soundcloud.com/thejumppage and soundcloud.com/bestpodinworld.
If you go
WHAT: Tapistry Brewing.
WHERE: 4236 Lake St., Bridgman.
WHEN: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily.
INFO: Call 269-266-7349 or go to Call 269-266-7349 or go to tapistrybrewing.com
Read or Share this story: http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/entertainment/2017/06/06/beer-file-tapistry-brewing/370523001/Under a federal program, local police departments like the St. Louis County Police in Ferguson, Missouri are arming themselves with tactical military gear that they obtain for free from the Pentagon.
Talking Points Memo reported on the connection between U.S. police militarization and the federal 1033 program, approved in 1992, which established a materiel pipeline between the military and local police forces. The program was originally a component of the War on Drugs.
In response to what was seen in the 90s as a mushrooming threat of inner city gang violence fueled by the narcotics trade, wrote Newsweek‘s Taylor Wofford, “the 101st Congress in 1990 enacted the National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1208 of the NDAA allowed the Secretary of Defense to “transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is— (A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense.” It was called the 1208 Program. In 1996, Congress replaced Section 1208 with Section 1033.”
According to a 2014 report by the ACLU known as “War Comes Home,” the military has supplied around $4.3 billion in refurbished equipment to U.S. police forces since the project began, with approximately $450 million in equipment and ammunition being distributed in 2013 alone. Newsweek noted that the entire annual budget for the St. Louis County Police Department is less than $200 million.
“By providing law enforcement agencies with surplus military equipment free of charge, the NDAA encourages police to employ military weapons and military tactics,” wrote Wofford.
Police who are suited up for combat, though, often end up treating civilian populations as the enemy, say critics of the practice.
Kara Dansky, senior counsel for the ACLU, told TPM, “It’s a culture of militarism. We determined that the police in America have become excessively militarized. It’s dangerous because it undermines public trust in law enforcement. It makes it difficult for them to effectively police their communities.”
The 1033 program, Dansky said, suffers from a lack of transparency and accountability. Often police officers do not receive the same type of exacting safety training that military personnel who use the same equipment receive.
“The program contains a built-in incentive,” she said to TPM’s Dylan Scott. “As these local police departments receive this equipment, there are no meaningful constraints on their ability to use it.”
Possessed of such vastly superior firepower, she said, police are unlikely to show restraint. “If all you have is a hammer,” she said, “everything looks like a nail.”
Angry protesters have filled the streets of Ferguson nightly since Saturday. The Associated Press reported that some protesters have resorted to throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at police and firing weapons.
St. Louis County Police Chief Thomas Jackson ordered all media out of the area and the FAA has created a no-fly zone around the city for media and other aircraft. Officers have arrested and released reporters from the Washington Post and Huffington Post.
On Wednesday night, police fired tear gas and riot-stopping projectiles at media teams that were attempting to document the violence.
Thursday afternoon, President Barack Obama held a press conference about the violence in Ferguson, appealing for calm.
“There is never an excuse for violence against police or those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting,’ said Obama. He also called for greater police transparency and cooperation.
[image of police in riot gear via Shutterstock.com]June set another satellite-era record low for average sea ice extent, despite slower than average rates of ice loss. The slow rate of ice loss reflects the prevailing atmospheric pattern, with low pressure centered over the central Arctic Ocean and lower than average temperatures over the Beaufort Sea.
Overview of conditions
Arctic sea ice extent during June 2016 averaged 10.60 million square kilometers (4.09 million square miles), the lowest in the satellite record for the month. So far, March is the only month in 2016 that has not set a new record low for Arctic-wide sea ice extent (March 2016 was second lowest, just above 2015). June extent was 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below the previous record set in 2010, and 1.36 million square kilometers (525,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average.
Sea ice extent remains below average in the Kara and Barents seas, as it has throughout the winter and spring. Despite lower than average temperatures over the Beaufort Sea, sea ice extent there remains below average, and was the second lowest extent for the month of June during the satellite data record.
Conditions in context
The average rate of ice loss during June 2016 was 56,900 square kilometers (22,000 square miles) per day, but was marked by two distinct regimes. First, there was a period of slow loss during June 4 to 14 of only 37,000 square kilometers (14,000 square miles) per day. This was followed by above average rates (74,000 square kilometers, or 29,000 square miles) for the rest of the month. For the month as a whole, the rate of loss was close to average (53,600 square kilometers per day). The slow ice loss during early June was a result of a significant change in the atmospheric circulation. May was characterized by high surface pressure over the Arctic Ocean, a basic pattern that has held since the beginning of the year. However, June saw a marked shift to low pressure over the central Arctic Ocean. This type of pattern is known to inhibit ice loss. A low pressure pattern is associated with more cloud cover, limiting the input of solar energy to the surface, as well as generally below average air temperatures. However, in June 2016, it was only in the Beaufort Sea where air temperatures at the 925 hPa level were distinctly below average (about 2 degrees Celsius below average, or 4 degrees Fahrenheit). The change in circulation also shifted the pattern of ice motion. In general, winds associated with such a low pressure pattern will tend to spread the ice out (that is, cause the ice to diverge).
June 2016 compared to previous years
Through 2016, the rate of decline for the month of June is 44,600 square kilometers (17,200 square miles) per year, or 3.7 percent per decade. June extent remained below 2012 levels throughout the month, but it was above the 2010 extent for several days. 2010 had the lowest extent for several days during June.
View from above
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the NASA Aqua and Terra satellites provide multiple views each day of the Arctic, and in summer the entire region is sunlit. Two mosaics for June 9 and June 28 show the seasonal progression in surface melting and darkening of the sea ice; the blue-green areas where surface ponding is present; and the movement of large sea ice floes in the Beaufort Sea. On June 9, the ponds are most evident in the Laptev Sea off the coast of Siberia; on June 28, the ponds are most evident in the Canadian Archipelago.
A quick look at sea ice thickness fields
Results from NASA’s Operation IceBridge aircraft missions conducted during late April and early May indicate that ice thicknesses from the Alaskan coast of the Beaufort Sea up to the North Pole were generally in the 2 to 3 meter range (7 to 10 feet), indicative of multiyear ice. However, substantial variations were found along the flight transects with several locations showing an ice thickness of 1.5 meters (5 feet) or less, indicative of first-year ice, while in other locations thicknesses were over 5 meters (16 feet), corresponding to either fairly thick multiyear ice or ridged first-year ice. This substantial variation is representative of a broken up and variegated ice pack with thick multiyear floes interspersed with thinner first-year ice.
The first-year thicknesses were found to be generally thinner than is typical at the end of winter, which is consistent with the usually high temperatures characterizing last winter. Very thin ice (less than 0.5 meters, or 1.6 feet) was found in places near the Alaskan coast, where leads opened up fairly late in the ice growth season. The IceBridge results are generally in agreement with the ice thickness surveys conducted in early April by researchers from York University, and with CryoSat-2 thickness maps discussed in our previous post.
Sea Ice Outlook
Each summer the Sea Ice Prediction Network (SIPN) requests forecasts of the September average sea ice extent. Requests are made in June July and August. This year, thirty contributions to the June Sea Ice Outlook were received, employing a variety of methods, including statistical models, dynamical models, and informal polls. The median prediction for this year’s September sea ice extent is 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles), similar to the extent observed in 2007. Dynamical models predict 4.58 million square kilometers (1.77 million square miles), compared to the slightly lower overall median extent prediction of 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles) from statistical models. The lowest median extent comes from the heuristic contributions (4.0 million square kilometers, or 1.5 million square miles). Only one forecast points towards a new record low for 2016.
Antarctic sea ice
Antarctic sea ice extent continues to track at near average levels, in sharp contrast to the previous two winters, which were above average. While the total ice extent in the Antarctic shows a small positive trend, particularly during the cold season, whether or not the total mass of the ice has changed depends on how much of the pack ice consists of consolidated ice, the extent of the marginal ice zone (the outer edge of the ice pack, which is lower in ice concentration), and coastal polynyas (open water areas near the coast). The marginal sea ice zone and the coastal polynyas have important biological implications. These are key regions for phytoplankton productivity and krill abundance that in turn feed Antarctic sea birds and nektonic fauna (things that swim).
A new study looks at how these regions are changing using two sea ice concentration algorithms distributed by NSIDC. While the algorithms give similar trends in the overall sea ice extent, they differ in terms of whether or not the sea ice cover is becoming more compacted (i.e., the consolidated ice pack is increasing in extent) or if the marginal ice zone is expanding (Figure 6). When sea ice is is growing seasonally, both algorithms indicate that it is due to an expansion of the consolidated ice pack, whereas during winter and spring, one measurement method (the NASA Team algorithm) finds the marginal ice zone is also expanding as well, and the other measurement (Bootstrap algorithm) shows no significant trend in the marginal ice. The algorithms also differ in how much of the total ice pack consists of pack ice or the marginal ice, with the NASA Team algorithm having on average twice as large of a marginal ice zone as the Bootstrap algorithm. As well, the NASA Team algorithm is known to underestimate ice concentration in the Antarctic. This highlights the need for further validation of sea ice concentrations derived from passive microwave satellite data.
New Sea Ice Index version
As part of our quality control process, the Sea Ice Index, which supplies sea ice extent and concentration values, has been updated to Version 2. Changes include using the most recently available version of the Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Passive Microwave Data that provide final sea ice concentration data. The version update also adjusted three procedures in the Sea Ice Index processing routine that affected both the near-real-time data and the final data. These four updates affect different portions of the Sea Ice Index time series. Because of these updates, minor changes in some of the ice extent and area numbers will be seen. However, these changes are almost all quite small and do not alter current conclusions about Arctic or Antarctic sea ice conditions. More information on Version 2 is available in the Sea Ice Index documentation.
Reference
Stroeve, J. C., Jenouvrier, S., Campbell, G. G., Barbraud, C., and Delord, K. 2016, in review. Mapping and assessing variability in the Antarctic Marginal Ice Zone, the pack ice and coastal polynyas. The Cryosphere Discuss., doi:10.5194/tc-2016-26.You know that argument the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign has been relentlessly making that Barack Obama "pals" around with terrorists such as '60s ex-radical William Ayers?
And they say this reflects on his poor judgment becaus e of other associates such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and newly-convicted Tony Rezko?
And worried Obama PR folks jump right on the e-mail whenever Obama and Ayers and the word "friend" appear together anywhere, even though Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Obama chief strategist David Axelrod have called them friends or friendly.
Anyway, a listing on Amazon.com, one of the largest and most successful online merchandisers in the world, seemed to come down even beyond the Republicans' side -- for a while anyway. With Halloween just days away, they're making a bundle off a $49.95 Barack Obama mask.
Which was displayed on the "terrorist costume" page.
You read that right!
(UPDATE: Amazon's listing seems to have caught itself and deleted the Obama mask from the terrorist page. However, before that happened, The Ticket captured a photo. See below.)Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama's stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Obama's approval ratings on other front-burner issues, such as the economy and the federal budget deficit, have also slipped over the summer, as rising concern about spending and continuing worries about the economy combine to challenge his administration. Barely more than half approve of the way he is handling unemployment, which now tops 10 percent in 15 states and the District.
The president's overall approval rating remains higher than his marks on particular domestic issues, with 59 percent giving him positive reviews and 37 percent disapproving. But this is the first time in his presidency that Obama has fallen under 60 percent in Post-ABC polling, and the rating is six percentage points lower than it was a month ago.
Obama has taken on a series of major problems during his young presidency, but he faces a particularly difficult fight over his effort to encourage Congress to pass an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.
The legislation has run into problems in the House and Senate, as lawmakers struggle to contain spiraling costs and avoid ballooning the deficit.
Since April, approval of Obama's handling of health care has dropped from 57 percent to 49 percent, with disapproval rising from 29 percent to 44 percent. Obama still maintains a large advantage over congressional Republicans in terms of public trust on the issue, even as the GOP has closed the gap.
The erosion in Obama's overall rating on health care is particularly notable among political independents: While positive in their assessments of his handling of health-care reform at the 100-day mark of his presidency (53 percent approved and 30 percent disapproved), independents now are divided at 44 percent positive and 49 percent negative.
At the same time, there is no slackening in public desire for Obama to keep pressing for action on the major issues of the economy, health
|
executive quoted in the Economist said he can cope as long as the oil price is above $50. Another said the industry is "not healthy" below $70.
Businessweek reports that the "dirty secret" of the shale oil boom is that it may not last. Fracked wells are short-lived, with a well's output typically declining from more than 1,000 barrels a day to 100 barrels in just a few years. New wells must be drilled frequently to maintain production.
While wells currently pumping can survive low market prices because they have already incurred startup and drilling costs, low oil prices diminish the incentive to invest in new well investments.
Of course, as Michael Webber of the University of Texas at Austin told the New York Times, price fluctuations are part of a repeating cycle in the oil business over the past century. No one thinks the current low prices are permanent.
"This is what commodity markets do," Webber said. "They go to high price, and high price inspires new production and also inspires consumers to use less. After a couple of years of that, prices collapse. Then low prices inspire consumers to consume more and encourage suppliers to turn off production. Then you get a supply shortage and prices go back up."
View Images Saudi Arabia remains the world's largest oil producer. Known Middle East oil reserves are vastly bigger than U.S. oil shale reserves. Photograph by Reza, National Geographic
Geological Limits
While low prices may only temporarily throttle expansion of oil fracking, the underlying geology—deeply buried shale rock that contains diffuse hydrocarbons—looms as a more fundamental limit on fracking's future. Recent projections indicate that by decade's end or a few years after, U.S. oil production from fracking will likely flatten out as supplies are depleted.
"A well-supplied oil market in the short-term should not disguise the challenges that lie ahead," International Energy Agency (IEA) chief economist Fatih Birol said in releasing the IEA's 2014 World Energy Outlook.
The IEA report projects that U.S. domestic oil supplies, dominated by fracking, will begin to decline by 2020. "As tight oil output in the United States levels off, and non-OPEC supply falls back in the 2020s," the report says, "the Middle East becomes the major source of supply growth."
Earlier this year the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) also forecast a plateau in U.S. oil production after 2020.
The basis for these forecasts are estimates of shale oil reserves. A 2013 Energy Department report on technically recoverable shale oil—the amount that's recoverable without regard to cost—puts U.S. potential at 58 billion barrels. That's equivalent to a little more than eight years of U.S. consumption at the current rate of almost 19 million barrels a day.
The Energy Department's estimate of "proved reserves" of shale oil—those that can be recovered economically today—is only about ten billion barrels. That's about a sixth of technically recoverable reserves, and less than a year and a half's worth of current consumption. Proved reserves include all currently known U.S. oil shale resources-North Dakota Bakken, Texas Eagle Ford, Colorado and Nebraska Niobrara, Texas Barnett, and others.
In contrast, the proved reserves from just three Middle East nations—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates—total more than 460 billion barrels. That's 46 times U.S. shale oil reserves, and more than 12 times the total U.S. oil reserves.
Those estimates help explain why the IEA projects the Middle East as "the major source of future supply growth," long after the U.S. shale oil boom has run its course. Price is important, but whether oil exists at all is even more so.Facebook’s latest feature is one people will hope they never have to use.
The social network launched “Safety Check” today, a tool that is activated after a natural disaster, using either the city you say you live in or your location settings if you use the “Nearby Friends” feature. It will help you alert friends and family that you’re okay while also tracking the status of others.
“In times of disaster or crisis, people turn to Facebook to check on loved ones and get updates,” the company wrote in a blog post about the feature. “It is in these moments that communication is most critical, both for people in the affected areas and for their friends and families anxious for news.”
Facebook said the feature grew out of lessons it learned and work it began to do following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
“Our engineers in Japan took the first step toward creating a product to improve the experience of reconnecting after a disaster,” the company wrote. “They built the Disaster Message Board to make it easier to communicate with others. They launched a test of the tool a year later and the response was overwhelming.”
Once the feature appears during a natural disaster, the user clicks a button that says “I’m safe.” Likewise, users receive notifications about friends in disaster areas when they check in.
The feature should now be live for all Facebook users.CLICK HERE FOR THE SUBMISSION DOCUMENT
Okay, you’ve heard the exciting news. Anyone who’s ever fancied a bash at writing or drawing comics is in luck because I want to give you a hand. Just like last year, I want to do an annual where prospective writers and artists get a chance to write or draw our Millarworld characters and get paid real cash $$$. Just for the sheer joy of it.
I’ve always been very precious about letting other people do my creations, but the industry always need new blood and last year’s entries were just beyond stellar. Comics has been really good to me and I want to do what I can with my limited time to help other creators get into print here. So in the other thread you’ll see the specifications for new writers and this thread is for new artists. At the top of this post you should see a link to a submission guideline as, like Marvel and DC, you need to sign a document to send with your proposal to a special mailbox we’ve established. Once you’ve done this, our team will be able to read your submission and the six best will be revealed on December 23rd as a lovely Christmas surprise. It’s as simple as that.
I’m going to pay these rates out of my own pocket for the annual and I reckon we’ll make our money back. Any profits I want to donate entirely to the Hero Initiative charity as there’s something quite nice about new creators directly helping the men and women who’s work possibly inspired them in the first place. As far as the art goes, this couldn’t be simpler. If your work looks good enough to be one of the six new artists being hired for our second annual we’ll be in touch on December 23rd and send you a script by a newbie writer. If you meet the deadline we give (which will be a nice, easy one) you’ll receive your payment one week later and be showcased when we publish in July next year. The stories will all be four or five pages long, much like the short stories comic-creators traditionally started out on, and the characters being used are as follows.
KICK-ASS & HIT-GIRL (5 pages)
EMPRESS (5 pages)
NEMESIS (4 pages)
HUCK (5 pages)
SUPERCROOKS (4 pages)
SUPERIOR (5 pages)
We will also be looking for a cover artist, paid at a rate of $450 for black and white, $600 for colour.
To submit your entry post three pages of sequential art in this thread. Only three please, posts will be deleted if you post more. And they have to be sequential pages. We’ll use your entries to select both interior artists and the cover artist. You’ll then need to fill in the submission document linked at the top of this post and email it to us.
IN SUMMARY:
1/ One entry per person
2/ Please post three pages in this thread.
3/ Email just the submission document to [email protected].
4/ This search is for new, undiscovered talent. If you’ve been paid for a comic from an established publisher you can’t enter.
5/ All entrants must be over 18.
6/ Deadline for entries is November 30th
7/ The selected six artists and six writers for the 2017 annual will be contacted by 23rd December 2016
BEST OF LUCK!
MM
Moderator’s Note: Please read through this post and the Writer’s Submission Thread carefully before asking questions that are already answered. If you still have questions, please PM a moderator. Do not post anything other than the 3 page submission in this thread.Bisphenol A (BPA) is an endocrine disrupting environmental contaminant used in a wide variety of products, and BPA metabolites are found in almost everyone’s urine, suggesting widespread exposure from multiple sources. Regulatory agencies estimate that virtually all BPA exposure is from food and beverage packaging. However, free BPA is applied to the outer layer of thermal receipt paper present in very high (∼20 mg BPA/g paper) quantities as a print developer. Not taken into account when considering thermal paper as a source of BPA exposure is that some commonly used hand sanitizers, as well as other skin care products, contain mixtures of dermal penetration enhancing chemicals that can increase by up to 100 fold the dermal absorption of lipophilic compounds such as BPA. We found that when men and women held thermal receipt paper immediately after using a hand sanitizer with penetration enhancing chemicals, significant free BPA was transferred to their hands and then to French fries that were eaten, and the combination of dermal and oral BPA absorption led to a rapid and dramatic average maximum increase (Cmax) in unconjugated (bioactive) BPA of ∼7 ng/mL in serum and ∼20 µg total BPA/g creatinine in urine within 90 min. The default method used by regulatory agencies to test for hazards posed by chemicals is intra-gastric gavage. For BPA this approach results in less than 1% of the administered dose being bioavailable in blood. It also ignores dermal absorption as well as sublingual absorption in the mouth that both bypass first-pass liver metabolism. The elevated levels of BPA that we observed due to holding thermal paper after using a product containing dermal penetration enhancing chemicals have been related to an increased risk for a wide range of developmental abnormalities as well as diseases in adults.
Our objectives were to examine the impact of having dry hands vs. wet hands due to using a popular hand sanitizer that contains dermal penetration enhancing chemicals on extraction of BPA from the surface of thermal receipt paper coated with BPA. We also measured (using a LC/MSMS assay) unconjugated, bioactive BPA (uBPA) and its conjugated metabolites, BPA-glucuronide (BPA-G) and BPA-monosulfate (BPA-S), in serum and urine in adult male and female subjects after holding a thermal receipt. To determine the proportion of thermal receipts that contained BPA, we examined receipt papers for the presence and amount of BPA. We also examined receipts for the most commonly used BPA replacement chemical, bisphenol S [bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)sulfone; BPS; CAS #80-09-1].
To assess the relevance of this research to real-world behavior, we conducted a preliminary observational study in fast-food restaurants, food courts and shopping malls in Columbia Missouri. Receipt contact time varied widely, but was sometimes substantial. In one restaurant, we found that receipt contact time ranged up to 65 sec for people purchasing food that was eaten in the restaurant; the 75th percentile for time holding the receipt was >12 sec, and the 90th percentile >32 sec. In a fast-food restaurant that is part of an international chain, take-out food was placed into a bag and the top of the bag was folded, then the thermal receipt was stapled to the top of the bag; the result was that the print surface of the receipt (coated with BPA) was grabbed when the bag was picked up. The contact time between the hand and thermal receipt was thus considerably longer than would be the case for food eaten in the restaurant. In a food court we observed that some fast-food restaurants had hand sanitizer dispensers available for use by customers next to the cash register, and customers were observed using the hand sanitizer before handling the thermal receipt. The estimate is that 50 million people eat in a fast-food establishment every day in the USA [16]. Finally, our experiments here are also relevant to occupational exposures, because we observed in a national chain big-box store that all cash registers had a hand sanitizer dispenser next to them for use by the cashiers.
The use of hand sanitizers and other skin-care products, including soaps, lotions and sunscreens, is significant because some contain mixtures of chemicals that are also used as dermal penetration enhancers to increase the transdermal delivery of drugs. Drugs and chemicals that are suitable for transdermal delivery and are impacted by dermal penetration enhancers have a LogP>1.5 and a molecular weight <500 Da [9]. There are many factors that impact the ability of compounds to pass through skin in addition to molecular weight and lipophilicity, including differences arising from the location of skin on the body, gender and age [13]. Mixtures of dermal penetration enhancing chemicals can act synergistically to increase by up to 100 fold the dermal penetration of small lipophilic molecules such as estradiol [8], [9], with which BPA shares physical-chemical and biological properties [4]. For example, Purell hand sanitizer (Gojo Industries), which we used in the current study, contains a number of dermal penetration enhancers, such as isopropyl myristate and propylene glycol, and is (63% w/w) ethanol. The use of hand sanitizers has increased in recent years and is now about a 200 million dollar a year industry just in the USA [14]. The impact of the use of personal care products such as moisturizing lotions that contain dermal penetration enhancing chemicals on exposure to environmental chemicals has been identified as a concern [15].
While small lipophilic compounds such as BPA (logP = 3.4; molecular weight 228 Da) can pass through skin [8], [9], regulatory agencies have assumed that this route of human BPA exposure should not be significant in spite of the lack of data and acknowledged “significant uncertainties” around the issue of human exposure to BPA from thermal paper [10]. However, a factor that has not been considered in estimating transdermal exposure to BPA from thermal paper is that hand sanitizers are now commonly used, particularly in fast-food restaurants where people may handle thermal receipts before eating or ordering food. Hand sanitizer and other skin care products may also be used by cashiers while working. Exposure to BPA from thermal paper goes beyond just transdermal exposure and consumption of food that is picked up and eaten with a BPA-contaminated hand. The transfer of a chemical directly from hand-to-mouth (mouthing behavior) has been proposed to be an important variable for estimating total chemical exposure in humans [11], particularly in young children [12].
Bisphenol A [BPA; bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)propane; CAS #80-05-7] is one of the highest volume chemicals in commerce with 15-billion pounds produced per year [1], and based on the presence of BPA metabolites in urine, it can be concluded that virtually everyone is exposed [2], [3]. BPA has estrogenic and other endocrine disrupting activities [4], [5]. BPA molecules are polymerized to make polycarbonate plastic used for food and beverage containers, epoxy resins used to line cans, and dental composites and sealants, but free (unpolymerized) BPA is also used as an additive (plasticizer), such as in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) products. Our interest is in the use of BPA in thermal paper, which is used for airline ticket, gas, ATM, cash register and other types of receipts ( Figure 1 ). The print surface of thermal paper is coated with milligrams of free BPA per gram paper as a heat-activated print developer [6], and it appears that free BPA is readily transferred to other materials that the thermal paper contacts [7].
The objective of this study was to examine the amount of BPA transferred to a clean dry hand and then present in serum and urine without using hand sanitizer. In this study we examined 12 adult men and 12 adult women subjects. The subjects washed and dried their hands and provided a baseline blood and urine sample as described in Experiment 3. The non-dominant hand was swiped 3 times each with 3 ethanol-soaked Kimwipes to obtain a baseline measure of BPA on the hand prior to holding a thermal receipt. After the hand was dry, subjects held an 8×12 cm piece of thermal receipt paper (from the roll used in Experiment 1) with the non-dominant dry hand for 4 min. Thirty minutes later a second blood sample was collected from the contaminated arm, after which the BPA was swiped from the contaminated hand with ethanol-soaked Kimwipes as described previously. As above, the contaminated hand was not allowed to touch anything during the 30-min period prior to the second blood collection. The hands were washed, and a second urine sample was collected 60 min after holding the receipt paper.
Blood was collected from the IV port before holding the thermal paper (baseline) and at 15, 30, 60 and 90 min after consumption of the last French fry. The non-dominant contaminated hand (from which the French fries were eaten) was not allowed to touch anything during the 90-min after holding the receipt paper and then picking up the 10 French fries; this hand was swiped with 3 ethanol-soaked Kimwipes after the final 90-min blood collection at the end of the study. After these swipes were obtained, both hands were thoroughly cleaned and a second urine sample was collected.
Blood samples were collected from the cubital vein from the still contaminated arm of 7 subjects, 4 males and 3 females, and from the uncontaminated arm of 3 subjects, one male and 2 females. The blood collected from the BPA-contaminated arm provided direct information about BPA absorbed from the hand on which BPA remained for 90 min, since the cubital vein is one of the major veins draining the hand; this blood is not subject to first-pass liver metabolism prior to going to the heart and being transported in the arterial circulation to tissues. The blood collected from the uncontaminated arm provided information about BPA in the systemic (mixed) circulation.
After the last French fry was consumed, the subject’s dominant hand was swiped with 3 ethanol-soaked Kimwipes to clean BPA off the hand and for determination (by extracting BPA from the Kimwipes) of the amount of BPA remaining on the hand immediately after holding the 10 French fries that were placed into test tubes. The non-dominant hand was not cleaned after holding the receipt paper and eating French fries, and thus was a continuing source of transdermal BPA exposure over the following 90-min period of blood collection.
French fries that had been purchased from a local fast food restaurant and had been found to not contain detectable BPA were briefly warmed in a toaster oven. Immediately after holding the thermal receipts in each hand, the subjects picked up a French fry in each hand, and held both fries for 10 sec. The fry held in the dominant hand was placed into a labeled glass tube, and the fry that was held in the non-dominant hand was eaten. A total of 10 French fries was handled by each hand and either placed in a test tube or eaten using this same procedure. Approximately 4 min elapsed between removal of the receipt paper from the hand and consumption of the last French fry. Thus, it took about 8 min from the time that the thermal receipt paper was first touched and consumption of the last French fry.
The background level of BPA on the dominant hand was determined when the subjects first arrived at the CRC. The dominant hand was swiped 3 times with 3 separate Kimwipes soaked with ethanol, from which we extracted BPA for analysis by HPLC with CoulArray detection, and the hands were then cleaned. The subjects’ weight and height were determined, after which they provided a baseline urine specimen, an IV port was inserted into the cubital vein, and a baseline blood sample was collected. Purell hand sanitizer was applied to the hands as described in Experiment 2. An 8×12 cm piece of thermal paper cut from an unused receipt roll (used in Experiment 2) was then placed BPA-coated side down into each hand with the hands still wet. The subjects held the receipt papers for 4 min in each hand. The dominant arm of each subject was determined based on whether the person was right or left handed, and in this experiment the non-dominant hand remained contaminated with BPA for the duration of the experiment. Blood was collected from the cubital vein in the contaminated arm of one set of subjects (N = 7) and from the cubital vein in the non-contaminated arm of other subjects (N = 3). We note that the phlebotomist did not handle the thermal paper for either Experiment 3 or Experiment 4. The study coordinator who did handle the paper wore gloves to do so and did not touch the blood tubes of other equipment. A separate person swiped the subjects’ hands after thermal paper exposure and wore fresh gloves for each swipe session and discarded them immediately afterwards.
Of the 5 male and 5 female subjects, 7 subjects had serum collected from the cubital vein in the arm with a contaminated hand that contained the BPA from holding thermal paper. Three subjects had blood collected from the cubital vein in the unexposed arm that did not have BPA on the hand throughout the 90-min test period during which blood was collected. Urine samples were obtained before and at the end of the test period.
The objective of this experiment was to measure the transfer of BPA from thermal paper receipts to hands, and the amount of BPA remaining on the surface of a hand 90-min later, after using Purell hand sanitizer (as described in the prior experiment) in 5 male and 5 female subjects. In addition, we measured the amount of BPA transferred from a BPA-contaminated hand to 10 French fries, and measured blood and urine concentrations of uBPA, BPA-G and BPA-S before and after ingestion of the French fries and BPA absorption through skin. The design of the study is shown in Figure 2.
The objective of this experiment was to determine the amount of BPA extracted by a hand from a standard piece of thermal receipt paper immediately after using Purell hand sanitizer (Experiment 2-A) or with dry hands (Experiment 2-B). Subjects in both experiments cleaned and dried their hands prior to the experiment and between each trial. For Experiment 2-A the subjects (2 men and one woman) each held the thermal paper for different lengths of time: 2, 15, 30, 45, 60 or 240 sec (in 6 separate trials for each subject). Both hands were wetted by applying three “squirts” of Purell to each hand, and the hands were then briefly rubbed together to distribute the hand sanitizer evenly across both palms and fingers, but the sanitizer was not allowed to dry prior to holding the receipt paper. In experiment 2-B the subjects (2 men and 2 women) held the receipt with dry hands for 60 or 240 sec (2 separate trials for each subject). In both experiments an 8×12 cm portion of thermal paper cut from an unused receipt roll that was obtained from a local merchant (previously identified as containing 27.2 mg BPA/g paper) was placed BPA-coated (print surface) side down into the right hand. The hand was swiped 3 times each with 3 ethanol-soaked Kimwipes, and BPA was extracted from the Kimwipes with methanol and measured by HPLC with CoulArray detection.
The objective of this experiment was to determine the amount of BPA and BPS in thermal receipt paper and to determine the proportion of receipts that contained BPA or BPS, which is the most commonly used BPA replacement chemical. Thermal paper sales receipts were obtained by purchasing items from 41 different vendors in Columbia, MO and from a further 9 vendors in Southern Missouri (50 receipts total). Weighed portions of each paper were extracted and assayed for BPA by HPLC with CoulArray detection and for BPS by LC/MSMS. After screening, an unused roll was obtained from a vendor from which a BPA-positive receipt had been identified. The BPA content of paper from this roll was confirmed prior to being used for testing with human subjects in Experiments 2, 3 and 4.
For both uBPA and BPA-G, the area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) up to the last measured serum concentration above the LOQ, i.e. AUC (0–90 min), was calculated by using the linear trapezoidal rule. The average AUC (0–90 min) (ng/mL) was calculated by dividing AUC (0–90 min ng/mL)/90 min. Time (Tmax) of maximal plasma BPA concentration (Cmax) was directly obtained from the raw data. Comparisons of men and women were conducted using the Mann-Whitney U test or ANOVA. Statistical significance was set a P<0.05, two-tailed test. All data are presented as mean±SEM.
The possibility of BPA leaching from each piece of equipment used in the collection or processing of samples identified above was determined by passing BPA-free water through all collection equipment, which was then handled and assayed for BPA as described below for the actual samples. All equipment and sample handling was determined to not leach detectable BPA before any sample collections occurred.
Multiple-point blood samples were collected via IV catheter into 10 mL syringes, and the syringes were emptied into the same uncoated vacutainer tubes (for details and catalog numbers of collection materials Section S1 in File S1 ). Single point blood samples were collected by venipuncture into uncoated glass vacutainer tubes (Becton Dickinson, Franklin Lakes, NJ). All blood samples were allowed to clot at room temperature for 15–30 min and then refrigerated until centrifugation at 4°C for 15 min. The serum was transferred with glass Pasteur pipets into 15 mL centrifuge tubes and then frozen at −20°C. Samples were extracted using C18 SPE as previously described [17] ; see Section S1 in File S1. Procedural blanks were also run alongside the samples to monitor for reagent contamination or interference. Serum extracts were analyzed by LC/MSMS.
For experiments in which there was hand contact with thermal receipt paper, subjects were required to wash their hands with soap and water, rinse thoroughly, and then dry using Kimwipes (Kimberly-Clark, Irving, TX). A number of soaps were screened for BPA content and/or chromatographic interference prior to the start of the study, and the soap chosen was Softsoap “Aquarium series” (Colgate Palmolive Company, Manhattan, NY), which showed no detectable BPA or chromatographic interference with the assay of BPA. Standard brown laboratory paper towels were tested and found to contain BPA at around 6 µg/towel. Because of this, Kimwipes, which tested negative for BPA, were used throughout for drying hands. Water from faucets used in the CRC was tested and found to be below the limit of detection (LOD) for BPA content (detection limit was 10 pg/mL by HPLC with CoulArray detection based on C-18 extraction of 250 ml of water).
For all studies participants were asked to refrain from touching thermal paper receipts, consuming food or beverages stored in polycarbonate or other types of plastic containers as well as canned food and beverages during the 48 hr prior to participating in the study, in order to reduce background BPA levels in body fluids as much as possible. The participants also filled out a questionnaire concerning their activities during the prior 48 hr (see Section S3 in File S1 for questionnaire).
Participants for the different experiments in this study were recruited through a weekly University of Missouri campus-wide email newsletter. Candidates (men and women) were pre-screened by age, height, weight, and health status. Participants selected were 20–40 years old (average 27.0 yrs), and an attempt was made to select those with average height, weight and normal-range body-mass index. Participants selected were not taking any prescription or non-prescription medication other than oral contraceptives; the type of oral contraceptive used was recorded. To ensure that pregnant women were excluded from the study, all women were administered a pregnancy test when they arrived at the CRC.
We conducted this study with 12 male (age 27.7±1.6 yrs, BMI 26.9±0.9) and 12 female (age 25.8±1.6 yrs, BMI 25.2±1.5) subjects. Male and females subjects held a single 8×12 cm piece of thermal receipt paper in the non-dominant hand for 4 min, but unlike the prior experiment, no hand sanitizer was used prior to holding the thermal paper with a dry hand. No BPA was detected on the hands of any subject after washing and drying the hands prior to holding the thermal receipt paper. We did not determine the amount of BPA transferred to the hand immediately after holding the thermal receipt paper, since we had previously examined this ( Figure 3-B ). However, 30 min after holding the thermal paper BPA was swiped from the surface of the hand: for men (5.5±1.7 µg; range: 0.8–22.5 µg) and women (6.1±0.8 µg; range: 1.3–10.6 µg). There was no difference between males and females in the urine total BPA concentration at baseline or at 60 min, and there was also no difference between total urine BPA at baseline vs. 60 min for either males or females ( Figure 5-A ). There was a tendency (based on 2-tailed t-tests) for males to have higher serum uBPA at baseline (P = 0.08) and after 30 min (P = 0.06) relative to females ( Figure 5-B ). While there was no sex difference in conjugated BPA (cBPA), consisting of both BPA-G and BPA-S, at the baseline blood collection ( Figure 5-C ), at 30 min after holding the thermal receipt males had significantly higher serum conjugated BPA than females (ANOVA; P<0.001).
We also obtained data from 3 subjects who had the same procedures described above except that they had blood collected from the cubital vein in the opposite uncontaminated arm that did not have BPA remaining on the hand during the 90-min period of blood collection. The 3 subjects consisted of one male and 2 females (age 22.3±0.9 yrs, BMI 26.0±0.9). While the baseline serum uBPA levels were very low ( Figure 4-C ; Table 3 ), the average serum uBPA AUC (0–90 min) for the two female subjects ( Table 3 ) was similar to the data from the other 7 subjects discussed in Experiment 3-A ( Table 2 ). Even for the male subject with low serum uBPA after holding thermal receipt paper, BPA-G in serum increased between baseline and 90 min ( Figure 4-C ), and urine total BPA increased dramatically over the 90-min test, similar to the increase in total urine BPA in the women ( Table 3 ). These findings show that high levels of uBPA could be detected in the systemic circulation of subjects after holding thermal receipt paper and eating 10 French fries. Levels of total BPA in urine at baseline or 90 min in these 3 subjects ( Table 3 ) were similar to levels measured in the other 7 subjects ( Table 2 ).
The data for female subject #3 are not included in the pharmacokinetic data ( Table 2 ) calculated for the remaining 6 subjects that had blood collected from their contaminated arm but who had undetectable baseline levels of BPA on their hands when they first entered the CRC and also had very low baseline uBPA in serum (0.23±0.15 ng/mL; N = 6]. These 6 subjects showed a dramatic increase in serum uBPA after holding the thermal receipt and eating 10 contaminated fries. Females had a greater Cmax and maximum increase relative to baseline in serum uBPA and BPA-G than males after holding the thermal paper, while males reached peak levels of uBPA (Tmax) later than females. The average uBPA value, based on the area under the concentration-time curve [AUC (0–90 min)] did not differ between males and females, while for BPA-G, the AUC (0–90 min) was greater for females than males. The ratio of BPA-G/uBPA based on the average AUC (0–90 min) was very low (0.35±0.12 for males and 1.82±0.30 for females), consistent with routes of absorption of BPA (dermal and sublingual) that bypass first pass metabolism [19], [20].
The BPA then remained on the contaminated hand throughout the following 90-min period of blood collection (blood was collected between 15–90 min after eating the last French fry). Panel A: data for serum BPA collected from the contaminated arm with BPA remaining on the hand for 4 males and 2 females that had very low baseline serum uBPA. Panel B: serum BPA data collected from the contaminated arm from Female #3 who had a high baseline serum concentration of uBPA. Panel C: serum BPA data for one male and 2 females who had systemic blood collected from the uncontaminated arm.
Since the participants had been instructed to avoid known sources of BPA, such as canned products, and instructed not to touch thermal paper, 9 of the 10 subjects had undetectable BPA on their dominant hand prior to washing their hands when they first arrived at the Clinical Research Center; none of the subjects was a cashier. However, one female had 0.9 µg of BPA extracted from her hand upon arriving at the CRC, and she was also found to have a very high background concentration of serum uBPA (14.3 ng/mL) prior to holding the thermal receipt paper (subject #3; Figure 4-B ). This was the only female subject who was menstruating and thus using products to control menstrual flow, and she also indicated use of hand and body lotion 7–9 times in the prior 48 hr, which was more than any other female or male subject (see Section S3 in File S1 ). However, even though female #3 ( Figure 4-B ) had very high background serum uBPA, she showed a dramatic 9.5 ng/mL increase relative to baseline in serum uBPA after holding the thermal receipt and eating 10 contaminated fries at the 15 min blood collection time (15 min after consuming the last French fry). The increase relative to baseline in serum uBPA for female #3 was thus virtually identical to the maximum increase (relative to baseline) found for the other 2 females who had low baseline serum uBPA levels and that were tested in the same way (blood was collected from the BPA contaminated arm; Figure 4-A ; Table 1 ).
We measured the amount of BPA swiped from the dominant hand after using hand sanitizer, holding a receipt and then eating 10 French fries, which took 8 min. BPA levels were not significantly different for the 5 males (mean±SEM: 126±19 µg) and the 5 females (mean±SEM: 128±10 µg). These levels measured at about 8-min after first touching the thermal receipt paper were lower than levels measured at 45 sec and 4 min in Experiment 2 ( Figure 3-A ), which likely reflects rapid transdermal absorption of BPA due to the use of hand sanitizer as well as some of the BPA having been transferred to the French fries. Importantly, females transferred significantly more (58±19 µg) BPA from their dominant hand to the 10 French fries than males (15±3 µg; Mann-Whitney U; P<0.05), resulting in females having a significantly higher oral BPA dose than males between 4–8 min after applying the hand sanitizer.
The data in Figure 3-B show that holding a thermal receipt with dry hands resulted in dramatically lower amounts of BPA being extracted from the receipt relative to the amounts extracted immediately after using hand sanitizer. The ratio of the extracted BPA swiped from the wet vs. dry hand was higher at 60 sec (ratio = 185) than at 240 sec (ratio = 51), reflecting the fact that while the amount of BPA swiped from a wet hand decreased between 60 and 240 sec, the levels increased over this time when the hand was dry, likely due to a reduced rate of absorption with dry relative to wet hands.
The data shown in Figure 3-A reveal that after using Purell hand sanitizer with the hand still wet, the maximum amount of BPA swiped from the palm and fingers of the hand (581 µg BPA) occurred after holding a receipt for 45 sec. After holding a receipt for 2 sec, 40% (235 µg BPA) of maximum was recovered from the hand, and within 15 sec 58% (339 µg BPA) of maximum was recovered from the hand. The decrease in BPA swiped from the hand between 45 sec and 4 min to 73% of maximum (425 µg BPA) may have been due to absorption into skin occurring at a greater rate than transfer to the skin from the thermal receipt.
Thermal receipts were collected at stores, bars and restaurants in mid-Missouri. Of the 50 receipts, 22 (44%) contained high levels of BPA ( Table 1 ). High levels of the BPA replacement chemical BPS were found in 26 (52%) of the receipts, and 2 receipts contained an unidentified chemical as the print developer [18] ; see Section S2 in File S1 for individual values. These findings suggest that BPS is now as commonly
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report with PBS NewsHour. (It airs Tuesday night on PBS.)
Krupke published a study several years back that linked bee deaths with pesticide-laden dust that flies up during the planting of the pretreated seeds.
But one of the leading manufacturers of neonicotinoids, Bayer Crop Science, says it has found a way to reduce that problem: a seed lubricant that reduces the dust.
Bayer says that, outside of acute exposures, neonicotinoids are not harmful to bees. David Fischer, Bayer's chief scientist, told us that when neonics are used as part of a seed treatment, the pesticide residues that get into the plants are in a "safe range" for bees.
"The body of evidence suggests there's no link between neonic exposure, neonicotinoid use, and bee decline or bee health," Fischer says.
He argues that varroa mites, not pesticides, are responsible for many of the problems bees face.
"Eighty percent of the problem is varroa mites, and the viruses and diseases" that the mites bring, Fischer says.
And the industry stands behind the safety of the pesticides. "Ongoing research and field studies have consistently found no adverse effects on bee colonies when pesticides are applied according to label directions," concludes Crop Life America, an industry trade group.
But, the findings of some recent studies challenge this conclusion.
For instance, a study published in the journal Science found bees exposed to neonicotinoid pesticides seemed less able to navigate their way back to their hives. And another study documented negative effects on populations of wild bees in seed-treated fields and in surrounding meadows.
Last month, a study published in Nature found that neonicotinoid pesticides affect honeybee queens. The researchers wrote that the "reproductive anatomy (ovaries) and physiology [of neonicotinoid exposed queens] were compromised."
"We found that queens exposed to the pesticides were not laying offspring to the [same] levels as those that were not [exposed to the pesticides,]" study author Geoffrey R. Williams, of the Institute of Bee Health in Switzerland, told us.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Allison Aubrey/NPR Allison Aubrey/NPR
Queen health is critical to the health of the colony, says Williams. "Our study shows it's possible that these pesticides can play a role in reducing queen health."
Bayer's Fischer says he's not convinced by Williams' findings. He says the study has "a lot of technical flaws in it, and I think it needs to be repeated."
The industry has challenged the findings of studies conducted in laboratory settings. Industry scientists argue that lab-based studies don't capture what happens in the field.
But, as a spate of studies point in the direction of harm, the industry has stepped up efforts to promote the work it's undertaking to promote bee health.
Bayer and Syngenta, the top two neonic makers, have launched campaigns aimed at bolstering bee habitat and forage.
Both companies are planting millions of flowers in the U.S. to increase bee forage. And in 2014, Bayer opened a $2 million Bee Care Center in North Carolina. (Bayer earned a reported $3.6 billion in total profits last year. The company told us it wouldn't disclose its sales of neonics only, but according to figures from 2009, Bayer's global sales of a neonicotinoid called imidacloprid alone totaled $1 billion.)
The industry is having to work harder to fend off criticism — and new regulation.
Earlier this year, Ontario, Canada, introduced new rules aimed at reducing the use of these pesticides.
The aim of the new rules is "to reduce the number of acres planted with neonicotinoid-treated corn and soybean seeds by 80 percent by 2017," according to a government release.
New rules will help ensure that the pesticide-treated seed "is only used when there is evidence of a pest problem," according to the release.
And, the European Union has had a partial ban of neonicotinoids in place for the past two years.
Now, the question some farmers are asking is: Do I really need these pesticides?
Lucas Criswell, who farms close to 2,000 acres in Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley, has stopped using neonic-treated seeds on some of his crops.
Several years back, Criswell got an outbreak of slugs eating his soybean crop. He worried that the pesticides were killing off the predators of slugs.
When entomologists at Penn State studied the issue, they found evidence that this could happen. As they reported in a study published last year, neonic "levels in field-collected slugs... were still high enough to harm insect predators," such as beetles.
"Our research suggests that neonicotinoids can have unintended costs, even within crop production," John Tooker, associate professor of entomology at Penn State, said in a release about the paper.
Bayer's Fischer says he's aware of these findings, but he says the research was "conducted on a small plot on a research farm." Fischer says there's no data to show that this happens broadly.
And, Fischer says there's good evidence that neonicotinoids are beneficial to farmers. "They're extremely valuable," he says.
He says neonics "increase crop yields often by 20 percent, versus the other competitors. So they contribute billions of dollars to the ag economy in the United States." He points to this industry-supported analysis that supports this conclusion.
But Pennsylvania farmer Lucas Criswell is not convinced. He says his corn crop is strong — without using neonic-treated seeds. "We've been getting pretty good yields," Criswell told us — "definitely comparable" to yields from pesticide-treated seeds, he says. And, he says he's saving money, since he's paying less for the untreated seeds.
Now, instead of using the pesticide prophylactically in a pretreated seed, he uses a field scout to keep an eye out for the pests he may need to treat. "So, it's not a blanket approach," he says. If he needs to use a pesticide, "it's a spot treatment."
These pretreated seeds are used so widely, they're almost ubiquitous in corn crops. Criswell says it was a challenge to find untreated seeds. "Typically," he says, "the [pesticide] just comes with [the seed] — even if it's not needed."
He likens the prophylactic use of neonics to taking an aspirin before you have a headache. "All it does is put something in your body that you do not need." He says it's the "same as putting something into the soil that we do not need. "
Criswell says he knows that other farmers may benefit from the pesticides, but he says his crops aren't beset by many of the insects that the neonics are intended to treat.
The Environmental Protection Agency is currently re-evaluating the neonicotinoid family of pesticides. The president's task force on pollinators has asked the EPA to expedite the review. And the agency has "temporarily" halted the approval of new uses of neonicotinoids.Wikileaks Releases Transcript Of German Inquiry Into Growing NSA Spy Scandal
from the not-dead-yet dept
Compared to its early days, when releases of material like Collateral Murder dominated public discourse for weeks, Wikileaks is now only a shadow of its former self, eclipsed largely by Snowden's leaks. That's understandable, perhaps: Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for nearly three years, and it has been hard for the organization to raise funds to pay Wikileaks' running costs. However, that reduced visibility and activity doesn't mean it's not still releasing valuable material, particularly in the area of trade agreements. Today, it has published another interesting set of documents, this time from the field of surveillance: WikiLeaks releases ten months of transcripts from the ongoing German Parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities in Germany. Despite many sessions being technically public, in practice public understanding has been compromised as transcripts have been withheld, recording devices banned and reporters intrusively watched by police.
WikiLeaks is releasing 1,380 pages of transcripts from the unclassified sessions, covering 34 witnesses – including 13 concealed witnesses from Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The transcripts cover from the start of the inquiry in May 2014 through to February 2015.
WikiLeaks has also written summaries of each session in German and English as the inquiry, due to its subject matter, is of international significance. This underlines an important aspect of Wikileaks' work: the fact that it seeks to make the documents it releases useful by providing commentary, summaries and indexes. Those valuable additions are often overlooked, but can play a crucial role in helping people understand the raw material provided.
The German parliamentary inquiry has been rumbling on for a year now, but has gained renewed importance with the recent revelations that the German spy service, the BND, has been searching through its databases using "selectors" (keywords) provided by the NSA, with apparently no oversight. Not only were many of the targets for those selectors EU citizens, but they included senior politicians and industry figures, too. Here's Wikileaks' summary: One of the biggest scandals to emerge from the inquiry so far is the recent "selector" spy target list scandal where a BND official revealed that the agency was expected to spy on thousands of targets at the instruction of the NSA. These targets included members of the French government and European industry. This put into question Germany's suitability in taking a leadership role in the European Union. It also showed that international co-operation on mass surveillance, which has been marketed in public as a counter-terrorism measure, is in practice also used by the United States for the purposes of industrial espionage and geopolitical advantage vis-a-vis members of the European Union. The committee requested the full "selector" list of targets provided to the BND by the NSA. The committee was told that the US would first need to be asked permission for the list to be revealed to the committee (even in confidence). Last Wednesday, 6 May 2015, when the answer was meant to be delivered, stalling tactics were used, leaving the German public, and the Parliamentary inquiry, without any ability to understand what their own secret services are up to. The "selector" scandal has now reached the highest political echelons in Germany, with Angela Merkel's earlier outrage over NSA spying -- not least against herself -- looking hypocritical at best, or dangerously naive at worst. Wikileaks' latest release therefore comes at just the right moment for those seeking to understand what has been going on in Germany. It's also a timely reminder that Wikileaks is still able to perform an important service in this respect, despite its straitened circumstances.
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Filed Under: germany, interviews, leaks, nsa, surveillance, transparency, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaksRolf Landauer never thought his principle would solve the mysteries of quantum mechanics. He did expect, though, that information would play a part in making sense of quantum weirdness.
And sure, nobody thinks that all the mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics are solved now — and many wonder whether they ever will be, for that matter. But a new approach to one deep quantum mystery suggests that viewing the world in terms of information, and applying Landauer's principle to it, does answer one question that many people believed to be unanswerable.
That question, posed in many forms, boils down to whether quantum math describes something inherent and real about the physical world. Some experts say yes; others believe quantum math is just about what people can find out about the word. Another way of posing the question is to ask whether the quantum description of nature is “ontic” or “epistemic” — about reality, or about knowledge of reality. Most attempts to articulate an interpretation of what quantum math really means (and there are lots of such interpretations) tend to favor either an ontic or epistemic point of view. But even some epistemic interpretations maintain that outcomes of a measurement are determined by some intrinsic property of the system being measured. Those are sometimes lumped with the ontic group as “Type I” interpretations. Some other interpretations (classified as Type II) believe quantum measurements deal with an observer’s knowledge or belief about an underlying reality, not some inherently fixed property.
Arguments about this issue have raged for decades. And you’d think they would continue to rage, as there would seem to be no possible way to determine which view is right. As long as all experiments come out the same way no matter which interpretation you prefer, it seems like the question is meaningless, or at least moot. But now an internationally diverse group of physicists alleges that there is in fact a way to ascertain which view is correct. If you’re a friend of reality — or otherwise in the Type I camp — you’re not going to like it.
There’s no way to decide the debate within the confines of quantum mechanics itself, Adán Cabello and collaborators write in a new paper, online at arXiv.org. But if you throw in thermodynamics — the physics of heat — then a bit of logical deduction and a simple thought experiment can clinch the case for Type II.
That experiment involves the manipulation of a quantum state, which is described by a mathematical expression called a wave function. A wave function can be used to compute the outcome of measurements on a particle, say a photon or electron. At the root of many quantum mysteries is the slight hitch that the wave function can only tell you the odds of getting different measurement results, not what the result of any specific measurement will be.
To dispense with some unnecessary technicalities, let’s just say you can prepare a particle in a quantum state corresponding to its spin pointing up. You can then measure the spin using a detector that can be oriented in either the up-down direction or left-right direction. Any measurement resets a quantum state; sometimes to a new state, but sometimes resetting it to the same state it was originally. So the net effect of each measurement is either to change the quantum state or leave it the same.
If you set this all up properly, the quantum state will change half the time — on average — if you repeat your measurement many times (randomly choosing which orientation to measure). It would be like flipping a coin and getting a random list of heads and tails. So if you kept a record of that chain of quantum measurements, you would write down a long list of 1s and 0s in random order, corresponding to whether the state changes or not.
If the quantum state is Type I — corresponding to an intrinsic reality that you’re trying to find out about — it must already contain the information that you record before you make your measurement. But suppose you keep on making measurements, ad infinitum. Unless this quantum system has an infinitely large memory, it can’t know from the outset the ultimate order of all those 0s and 1s.
“The system cannot have stored the values of the intrinsic properties for all possible sequences of measurements that the observer can perform,” write Cabello, of the University of Seville in Spain, and colleagues from China, Germany, Sweden and England. “This implies that the system has to generate new values and store them in its memory. For that reason, the system needs to erase part of the previously existing information.”
And erasing is where Landauer’s principle enters the picture. Landauer, during a long career at IBM, was a pioneer in exploring the physics of computing. He was particularly interested in understanding the ultimate physical limits of computational efficiency, much in the way that 19th century physicists had investigated the principles regulating the efficiency of steam engines. Any computational process, Landauer showed, could be conducted without using up energy if performed carefully and slowly enough. (Or at least there was no lower limit to how much energy you needed.) But erasing a bit of information, Landauer demonstrated in a 1961 paper, always required some minimum amount of energy, thereby dissipating waste heat into the environment.
A Type I quantum state, Cabello and colleagues argue, needs to erase old information to make room for the new, and therefore a long run of measurements should generate a lot of heat. The longer the list, the more heat is generated, leading to an infinite release of heat for an infinitely long list, the researchers calculated. It’s pretty hard to imagine how a finite quantum system could generate an infinite amount of heat.
On the other hand, if your measurements are creating the list on the fly, then the quantum state is merely about your knowledge — and there’s no heat problem.
If the quantum state is Type II, it “does not correspond to any intrinsic property of the observed system,” Cabello and coauthors note. “Here, the quantum state corresponds to the knowledge or expectations an external observer has. Therefore, the measurement does not cause heat emission from the observed system.”
Fans of Type I interpretations could argue that somehow the quantum system knows in advance what measurement you will perform — in other words, you really can’t orient your detector randomly. That would imply that your behavior and the quantum system are both governed by some larger system observing superdeterministic laws that nobody knows anything about. Bizarre as that sounds, it would still probably be a better defense than attacking Landauer’s principle.
“Landauer’s principle has been verified in actual experiments and is considered valid in the quantum domain,” Cabello and coauthors point out. “Therefore, whenever the temperature is not zero … the system should dissipate, at least, an amount of heat proportional to the information erased.”
If you would rather not take their word for it, you should check out the September issue of Physics Today, in which Eric Lutz and Sergio Ciliberto explain the intimate links between Landauer’s principle, information and the second law of thermodynamics.
“Having only recently become an experimental science,” Lutz and Ciliberto write, “the thermodynamics of information has potential to deliver new insights in physics, chemistry and biology.” The new paper by Cabello and colleagues appears to be an example of just such an insight.
Nobody should expect this paper to end the quantum interpretation debate, of course. But it surely provides a new point of view for discussing it.
“Ultimately, our work indicates that the long-standing question, Do the outcomes of experiments on quantum systems correspond to intrinsic properties? is not purely metaphysical,” Cabello and colleagues write. “Its answer in the affirmative has considerable physical consequences, testable through experimental observation. Its falsification will be equally exciting as it will force us to embrace radically new lines of thought.”
Follow me on Twitter: @tom_siegfriedWSWS speaks to French workers on protests
By Antoine Lerougetel
19 October 2010
In the latest national day of action against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s programme of pension cuts and austerity, millions of workers and students took to the streets in France October 16 in demonstrations in over 250 cities and towns.
In Paris, police put the number of marchers at 63,000, against 310,000 according to union estimates.
Marchers in Nice
In Nice, there were 25,000 in the protests; in Marseille, 180,000.
The marches took place as railway workers were on the fourth day of their indefinite strike, an action that was severely disrupting train services. Dockers’ and refinery workers’ strikes and blockages were threatening to bring the country to a halt with petrol stations running out of supplies; the provision of fuel to the major Paris airports of Roissy and Orly was choked off and threatened to ground air transport. Tens of thousands of high school students have struck and closed down schools over the past week.
Early Friday morning, massive riot police interventions forced the dispersal of pickets blocking access to fuel depots and preventing petrol lorries from filling up and replenishing supplies at petrol stations. The CGT, the majority union at the supply depots and refineries, made no request for mass action in defence of the refinery strikers and merely told pickets to disperse quietly. The issue of state intervention and police violence against a section of workers was not brought into the Saturday demonstrations by the trade unions and the bourgeois left parties.
The march in Paris
The WSWS spoke Saturday to several railway workers from Amiens, a railway town in northern France with train maintenance depots and workshops located in the vicinity. The discussions made clear the need to expose the role of the unions and ex-lefts in downplaying the depth of the capitalist crisis and limiting the strike to the single issue of pensions.
Many workers still have illusions, or would like to believe, that Sarkozy can be made to “withdraw the bill”. No one in the unions or on the “far left” has raised the demand that Sarkozy should be driven out by the action of the working class, or that workers need a political perspective based on their independent social interests.
Arnaud, 24, a signalman, was on the Amiens march. He has been a railway worker for six years, since becoming an apprentice at 18. He’s a CGT member, but recognises that the trade union leaders are “cut off from the rank and file. We have to block the economy. All workers must understand that we must change the system. I’m in complete solidarity with the dockers and the refinery workers in Fos.”
Rue de Riolan railworkers’ picket on Saturday afternoon.
Expressing anarcho-syndicalist conceptions popular among some workers in France, he rejected the need of the working class to take on the capitalist state, despite the use of the national police to break the refinery workers’ pickets, for example. “The workers don’t have to take the power, just to take control of the economy,” he argued.
Geoffry, marching with the railway workers’ contingent, told the WSWS that he was a student and that his father was a railwayman. Discussing the austerity measures as a means by which French capitalism seeks to compete with its economic rivals, he said: “I’m against economic nationalism. I don’t want to be cannon fodder in a trade war.”
WSWS reporters went to the picket at the entrance of the SNCF (national rail company) depot in Amiens. The workers have erected barricades to block the road and lit a bonfire with tyres and railway ties in the middle of the road to express their determination. There is another bonfire inside the gate.
Aurélien has worked for the SNCF for nine years. He does maintenance. “We’re going to work to spread the strike. It’ll need a general strike to make Sarkozy give in. The unions won’t call it. It’s us workers who make the country function. [Bernard] Thibault [CGT general secretary] is a turncoat.”
He added: “Sarkozy won’t discuss anything—his reform is unfair.”
When WSWS reporters pointed out that there had been no call on the demonstrations for the resignation of the government, Aurélien thought a moment and said, a little shaken: “You’re right, we should. The problem is we don’t have much of a choice, the choice in 2012 [the presidential elections] between Sarkozy and Dominique Strauss-Kahn [the likely Socialist Party candidate, now the director general of the International Monetary Fund] for president is not promising for the working class. I’m a revolutionary and an anarchist. I’m not in the union—they don’t reflect my ideas.”
Jonathan is an apprentice railway worker. He had to leave his hometown Calais to find work. “There was no work to be had there.”
“My future seems bleak. In this strike, we’re fighting to keep what we’ve got. The people in the private sector should join us. The blockade of the refineries is a good thing. The police action to break up the pickets will only make things worse. I don’t know why the unions have not made a call for solidarity action with these workers. We should fight together with them, that’s what we’re doing here. My message to them is that they mustn’t give in. Sarkozy won’t back down. It’s true that there are practically no demands for him to resign.
“The working class should take the power, I agree. We’ll have to unite across the frontiers. It’s not the Chinese who’re taking our jobs, it’s big business.”
Loïc put in: “The Socialist Party goes on our demonstrations now. But they agree with prolonging the pay-in period [for pensions]. They should be thrown off the demonstrations.”After 24 years away, legendary bluegrass quartet Hot Rize is back in the saddle, announcing a new album, When I'm Free, out September 30. Hailed by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) as "the connective tissue that links the great founders of bluegrass with the modern tradition," Hot Rize started in 1978 and have picked up where they left off after disbanding at the peak of their fame in 1990. Featuring three of the original members, they've added Grammy winner Bryan Sutton on guitar to replace Charles Sawtelle, who passed away in 2002.
Listen to "Blue Is Fallin'," the first track off When I'm Free, right here, and get ready to see Hot Rize live on what they promise will be a "massive tour."
[soundcloud src='https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159629951%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-30S8I&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true' width='100%' height='450' moreclass='embed--soundcloud-tracks' position='left']I’m not sure any LeBron James team can fly under the radar, but the Cavaliers have relatively quietly won five in a row. Most importantly, in those five games, Cleveland’s defense is 8.6 points per 100 possessions better than their season average (and eighth in the league in that stretch). The Cavaliers may be finding their groove.
Not that anyone is noticing because Boston has rattled off 16 wins in a row to have the best record in the NBA.
Hey, J.R. Smith, are the Cavaliers paying attention to Boston’s hot start? (Via Bleacher Report.)
“Nah,” JR Smith told B/R when asked if they’re paying attention to the league-leading. “It’s too early. Too early. We don’t start paying attention until after All-Star break when you see teams spacing out (in the standings). You start getting your best shot after the All-Star break.”
Cleveland, even after the win streak, is 5.5 games back of the Celtics. While it’s too early to say anything with certainty, much like last season it seems probable that Boston will be the No. 1 seed and the Cavaliers will need to go on the road to secure another trip to the Finals. Which is just fine with the Cavs if they can be healthy and rested when the postseason rolls around.
Healthy means getting LeBron a little more rest at some point — he leads the NBA in minutes played at 37.9 per game, and he’s in his 15th season. He’s played more regular season games than Michael Jordan. At some point, the Cavaliers need to get him some rest.
But LeBron said postgame he’s not playing the hard minutes, yet.Babicz Bridge Assembly for crazy sustain, phenomenal intonation, and precise string height adjustments to match the neck radius!
Custom Neck with Bone Nut, Roller Trees for beautiful open string sustain, and Sperzel Locking Tuners!
Lace Sensor Pickups that were selected for their vintage tone, and low string pull allowing the guitar to have crazy sustain!
This is a mint condition custom Chicago Blackhawks tribute Telecaster that is only 3 of 500 that were ever made... but the ONLY one that is truly a custom player's guitar!Even though it's way cool memorabilia, make no mistake, she is a serious player!It is outfitted with the following top end components:The guitar has been professionally set up by my guitar tech; Rob Zwally whom is extremely precise and takes his time to do the highest possible quality work! He has leveled and finished the frets on the custom neck, hand carved the bone nut, added roller trees for open note sustain, and installed the pickups & tuners... so this is a truly professional playing and sounding guitar! Rob is known as "The String Doc" for very good reason!This guitar comes with a new Hardshell Case to ensure safe transit to you!Buy a piece of history today and enjoy it for a lifetime!SNc Channels:
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Aug-01-2011 15:41 TweetFollow @OregonNews A Republican War on the Environment A bill is loaded with a promise to business to end regulation and leaves only the profit motive to determine the use of land, water and wildlife.
Pink Floyd 'Animals' album cover
(APTOS, Calif.) - As the nation's attention remains riveted on the GOP attempt to downsize government by refusing to raise the national debt limit, the party is working through the backdoor to destroy protections for the environment. In a study that reveals the GOP pledge to protect business interests at all costs, the Center for Media and Democracy recently analyzed 800 bills supported by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This secretive group consists of big businesses and conservatives who influence state legislatures around the country to lower wages and taxes on business, and weaken environmental protection that could crimp profits. Undoing efforts to address climate change is a major priority of ALEC sponsors such as Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, AT&T and Peabody Energy. For example, they created a model law-State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives-that is being introduced by state lawmakers to curb carbon reduction mandates and overturn cap-and-trade deals. The GOP's efforts don't stop here. Because they believe private property should be the basis for environmental policy, owners become the only protection for the environment. According to the GOP, only self-regulation and a laissez-faire market can provide protection. Toward this end, House Republicans created a rider for the 2012 appropriations bill (H.R. 2584), consisting of items to weaken environmental regulations by cutting funding and rolling back rules. While the Senate would have to confirm the changes and President Obama would have to sign the bill, it's unlikely that such changes will pass. The bill continues to change; nevertheless, the attempt reveals GOP plans to roll back environmental protections agreed upon by both parties over the past 40 years. The GOP promises more jobs and recovery from the current depression as a reward for such actions. "Many of us think that overregulation from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is at the heart of our stalled economy," said Mike Simpson, Republican from Idaho. The bill cuts up to 18 percent of the funding from the Forest Service, the Department of the Interior and the EPA, and was voted out of committee by House Republicans. The bill is loaded with a promise to business to end regulation and leaves only the profit motive to determine the use of land, water and wildlife. By blocking regulations the GOP would allow: Automobiles to stop increasing gas mileage after 2016, and allow them to spew fine particles that cause cancer into the air.
Pesticide manufacturers to use false and misleading information on their labels, and chemical companies and agriculture to dump pesticides into the waterways.
Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon.
The cement industry to pump cancer-causing dust into the air.
Increased levels of arsenic, formaldehyde and other cancer-causing substances in the air, soil, drinking water, and sediment, as well as allow increased ammonia emissions from power plants.
Oil conglomerates to ignore health-based air quality standards offshore, and make it more expensive for citizens to challenge government actions regulating oil extraction companies.
Increased storm water discharge from commercial and residential construction sites, mountaintop removal water to run off into streams, and prohibit the EPA from forcing Florida to enforce the state's Water Quality Standards.
Increased ash from the burning of coal, and methane from manure piles.
Lawsuits over grazing on public lands to proceed more easily, livestock to move freely across government grazing land, and prevent reviews of grazing permits.
Alaskan western red and yellow cedar to be cut and sold for shipment overseas.
Unlisted endangered animals to be hunted and killed, and wolves to be de-listed from protection.
Endangering of bighorn sheep by allowing more livestock to graze in their habitat. In addition, the GOP would: Eliminate the regulation of livestock waste runoff or disposal.
Allow greenhouse gas producers, such as coal plants, to continue emitting for one year, and bar lawsuits during this time.
Prohibit funding for listing or protecting any new animal species under the Endangered Species Act.
Block any updates to the Clean Water Act, and prevent regulation of cool water intake facilities.
Limit public appeals of Forest Service timber harvest plans.
Provide financial breaks for mining companies, and prevent any new hard rock mining regulations.
Allow Texas to implement its own cap-and-trade system without Federal input.
Prevent boat inspection safety checks on the Yukon River.
Prevent the EPA from adopting water ballast requirements that stop the intrusion of invasive species into the Great Lakes.
Force the EPA to ignore Clean Air Rules for power plants, and ignore the public health benefits of the Clean Air Act.
Block the designation of Federal land to be set aside as wilderness areas.
Require detailed records to be kept and quarterly reports on any gas or oil permits not allowed. These efforts make it clear that Republicans ignore the role of deregulation of financial institutions that sunk the economy and robbed millions of Americans of their jobs and their savings. They hope voters will forget President Bush and the Republican role in this disaster, blame the depression on Obama, and give them the presidency in 2012. They destroyed the economy once and they can do it again-this time taking the environment with it. ___________________________________ Don Monkerud is an Aptos, California-based writer who follows cultural issues and politics and writes occasional satire.
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Articles for July 31, 2011 | Articles for August 1, 2011 | Articles for August 2, 2011Note from Brian: Ever since my good friend, Alex, taught a dingbat like me how to build a quadcopter, I’ve been telling him that he should start up a blog and share that same knowledge and passion for teaching with the rest of the Internet. My persistence and stubbornness finally paid off when Alex bought a new toy and was finally excited enough to write a blog of his own. To try and encourage him to get started, I told him I’d publish whatever he wrote. Hopefully some day in the future, we’ll see Alex’s content hosting on his own blog. But until then, I’m honored to publish what he wants to share.
The search for my first electric skateboard started about a year ago. The idea to acquire an electric skateboard was born out of my love for snowboarding as a teenager, and the subsequent fact that there is not much snowboarding in or around Dallas, Texas. The experience of carving down (or up) slopes and bike trails that ran through the trees, parks, and underpasses was something that definitely sparked my interest. The utility of an electric skateboard seemed like an afterthought, but was intriguing nonetheless.
The Search Begins
I consider myself a fairly DIY-oriented guy and with the previous endeavors of building computers, 3D printers, racing drones, and the occasional A/V rack, I felt prepared to build my own electric skateboard. Just a short four months ago, a simple Google search for a pre-built electric skateboard would return a few Kickstarter projects and the Boosted Board. At $1,500. the Boosted Board was a bit too rich for my blood, which left me to explore DIY options. Another quick search led me to DIY Electric Skateboards and I began pricing out all of the required parts. This website is a great place to get started in all aspects of the e-skate world, from just trying to familiarize yourself, to building your own complete skateboard through their guides and parts, or sourcing your own.
The Basics
To build an electric skateboard you’ll need the following:
Motor/s ($90 per motor) A front and back truck ($65 for the pair) The deck ($40 – $150) Wheels ($50) Battery ($120 – $300) VESC ($100 – $150) Wireless Remote & RX ($20 – $75) Charger ($30 – $100)
With a few extra odds and ends, you’ll end up spending $600―$1,100 to build your own electric skateboard. This again was a bit pricey for my budget-minded self. I went back to Google, and some new results had bubbled up to the top.
Kieran, aka the Creator of Meepo
The Meepo board was one of the top results. It seemed to be everywhere, reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and about half a dozen e-skate blogs. The Meepo board had blown up. An interview with Kieran was the first result I explored to find out that Kieran used to be an employee at a budget electric skateboard manufacturing company in China, but had decided to create his own company with a more personal touch. The Meepo Facebook page still posts pictures of YOUR board before being shipped out to you, and replies to any questions or problems within the hour. The best part of the Meepo was the price: $400 shipped. This price came in under the DIY cost, and far below the boosted board and pre-built boards like it. The one downside was shipping time: for me this was 29 days. Some of the reason for this delay was the fact that Kieran himself was building the boards with three of his employees, and had a bit of a backlog of orders to fill. Most of the delay was due to his choice of shipping companies and his relatively new relationship with these services.
The Board
When I ordered my board from the Meepo website, it was the only complete board available, now known as the Meepo v1.0. This board had dual hub motors paired with a dual VESC (the speed controller), a 4.4Ah 10s battery, charger, wall mount, deck, trucks, wheels, taillight, and a 2.4GHz wireless remote. The Meepo board has a top speed of 23 MPH and a range of 11 miles depending on the slope or grade of any hills you may be riding up.
Stepping onto the Meepo for the first time brought back some slight nostalgia from my teenage years of cruising around on a traditional street skateboard. It rolls wonderfully without giving the board any power but right out of the box the trucks seemed just slightly too loose (this means the board will turn too easily). I tightened the trucks with the included tool and looked at my remote. There are three speed settings to use on the remote control: slow, medium, and really, really way too fast. They all behave differently in that the slow and medium settings have a nice smooth, maybe even gentle acceleration, but
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Jan. 7-9, courtesy of AT&T.
"It's going to be busy," said Uber driver Ed Zeggaf. "It's going to be really busy."
Road barriers are already up. Traffic patterns are set. Parking lots in downtown Tampa and around Raymond James Stadium, the site of the game Monday night, are expected to be filled to the brim.
"We know in these three days there are a lot of concerts and everything and a lot of people coming from outside," Zeggaf said.
Here's how it works:
Riders can open the Uber app and request "FOOTBALL" from 11 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday as Tampa celebrates the College Football Championship weekend.
Select riders will be given the ability to watch live football action via on-board Samsung tablets powered by the AT&T network.
Be patient. Demand is expected to be high and availability to be limited.
Zeggaf encourages riders to tip their drivers if they get a free ride.
Anyone can ride for free, not just AT&T customers, the company said.
http://wx.wfla.com/oembed/email/noon_signup.htmlWhen you just have to bake, and eggs aren’t an option, what next?
Substituting in cooking is typically fair game: Having all the exact ingredients on hand is a rarity, then there are those times when you omit something out of preference and taste—or dietary restrictions. But when it comes to baking, people are typically a little more fearful to add ingredients or leave them out entirely.
That said, I've always been a fan of messing around with baking—including omitting eggs and trying out egg replacers. (Sometimes, your guests can’t eat eggs, and sometimes, you just don’t have eggs around). While there are commercial egg replacers on the market, I wanted to test out some ones you might already have in your kitchen. See how each fared below.
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The Contenders
For this test I used a classic Blueberry Lemon Muffin recipe and substituted the two eggs called for with four different egg substitutes. For each egg called for, I tried substituting:
- Banana (1/4 cup mashed)
- Flax egg (Made by mixing 1 tablespoon ground golden flaxseed with 3 tablespoons water and letting it sit for 5 minutes)
- More acid and base (1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar and 1 teaspoon baking soda)
- Chickpea water (3 tablespoons of the water from an unsalted can of chickpeas, also known as aquafaba)
More: Other adventures in aquafaba.
From left: Chickpea water, banana, flax, acid/base
How They Fared
Banana
Out of all the muffins, the banana one clearly looked the most appealing. The extra sugar from the fruit helped the muffin top brown and gave it a caramelized chewy top. The texture was ever so slightly dense with a moist crumb. The only characteristic of this muffin I found problematic was the fact that it really tasted of banana. If this was a plain blueberry muffin, that might have not been so bad, but it was competing too much with the lemon.
Flax
The flaxseed batter was the runniest of the bunch, which caused the blueberries to bleed, resulting in a grey muffin. The top remained pale with very little browning and caramelization. Much like the banana muffin, the flax muffin was ever so slightly dense and moist, yet the flax remained totally undetectable. The end result was ugly, but pretty tasty.
Acid and base
This one was an utter failure! Firstly, the batter was super stiff, so I had to add a splash more milk to bring it to the consistency of the others. Once in the oven, these muffins over-proofed, leaving a flat-topped muffin with a sunken middle and a strange yellow color. The texture was crumbly and dry and the flavor was overwhelmingly acrid and bitter. These headed straight for the compost.
Chickpea water (aquafaba)
To be honest I felt awkward adding bean water to my muffins, but the chickpea water batter seemed the most like an egg-based batter than the rest of the muffins—neither too runny nor too stiff. The baked muffins had uniformly domed tops, with a slight golden color (still not as golden as the banana), a much lighter structure than both the banana and flax, and a nice bouncy crumb. And surprisingly enough, there was zero bean flavor!
From left: Chickpea water, banana, flax, acid/base
The Verdict
4th Place: Acid and Base. Maybe it works in another recipe, or in a smaller proportion, but not here. No way.
3rd Place: Banana. Tasty, but also pretty banana-y. Possibly best in something chocolaty, or as a plain banana muffin.
2nd Place: Flax. Pretty good all around, just not the most attractive looking.
1st Place: Chickpea water. I amazed to admit it, but this yielded a soft and fluffy muffin that nobody would suspect of being egg-free.
Photos by Sophie - Wholehearted Eats.Ben Carson endorsed Donald Trump for president in March, but hasn't been a great surrogate in televised appearances since then. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Ben Carson has been a standout TV surrogate for Donald Trump — but not in the way the Trump campaign might have hoped.
In the months since he endorsed the Republican presidential nominee, Carson has said — among many, many other headline-grabbing moments — that he would have “preferred” a different candidate atop the GOP ticket, and that even if Trump turns out to be a bad president, America would only be stuck with him for four years.
His interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday was so bad that it just might be the worst of the 2016 campaign.
Discussing allegations that surfaced this week about Trump’s treatment of women, Carson raised questions about the story told by Jessica Leeds, a woman who said in the New York Times on Wednesday that Trump groped her on a flight in the early 1980s. MSNBC’s Katty Kay pushed Carson on whether he was accusing Leeds or Trump’s other accusers of making up their stories. That’s when it all went off the rails.
“Are you saying that these women are lying?” Kay asked bluntly. Carson accused Kay of trying to make him look bad, calling it “your characterization.” Kay and Joe Scarborough, one of the show’s hosts, pushed back, and the whole thing devolved into what any transcriber would rightly call “crosstalk.”
That is, until Carson asked that Kay’s microphone be turned off.
That’s a bad look for Carson for two reasons: The first is that Kay’s question was a pretty simple one. Trump surrogates have repeatedly and clearly attempted to delegitimize his accusers and their accusations. But the second is the subject matter itself: The optics of a male Trump surrogate attempting to silence a female TV commentator who is asking basic questions about alleged sexual assault victims are unquestionably not positive for the Trump campaign.
We would call it the highlight of Carson’s 2016 media career — but there is still over three weeks left.As a nation, we need a vision for our future. Of the kind of economy we want. And to make the argument that the future is built on the wisdom of our decisions today.
This week’s conference on climate change where we seek international agreement on how we stand together in common purpose is a clear example of that, and where we would want our Prime Minister to be taking a leading role shaping the future.
So it was right that, standing next to President Obama at the launch of COP 21 in Paris this week, David Cameron said: “instead of making excuses tomorrow to our children and grandchildren, we should be taking action against climate change today. It’s not difficult, it’s doable, so we should come together and do it today.”
What a pity then that while David Cameron saying one thing in Paris, his Chancellor is doing the opposite in London.
At Treasury Questions in the Commons yesterday I asked the Chancellor what measures he introduced in the Autumn Statement to support UK renewable energy businesses. The UK Government, he claimed, is committed to doubling its investment over the next five years. He mentioned low-carbon nuclear power and small modular reactors and energy efficiency.
What he implied couldn’t be more different from what he is actually doing. Last week in his Autumn statement the Chancellor cut the £1 billion fund to develop carbon capture and storage. The feed-in tariff subsidies for solar panels have been cut by 87%. This follows the Chancellor’s decision earlier this year to remove the Climate Change Levy exemption for renewable energy generation.
He is not just failing to support our renewable energy sector manufacturing industry, he is holding it back. There was no news last week on the potentially global-leading Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, which would not just deliver massive amounts of sustainable energy but would unlock significant economic potential for the UK.
That silence speaks a thousand words. Because George Osborne’s record on infrastructure is a record of failure. Just 9% of the projects in his infrastructure pipeline have been started. The Treasury scheme to guarantee infrastructure projects has fallen far short of its £40bn target, approving only £3.7bn of projects since it was introduced in 2012.
These are the kind of projects that are vital to our future economic prosperity and security and to a sustainable environmental future.
It’s not just we in the Labour party who are sounding the alarm about Osborne’s failure. Last week a range of companies including Tesco, IKEA, Vodafone and Unilever wrote to the Prime Minister raising concern about the renewable energy cutbacks and warning that they pose a risk to UK businesses.
This becomes more important than ever with OBR forecast figures last week showing productivity set to decline further and, as the report ‘Make or Break’ published yesterday by Respublica also outlined, a focus on manufacturing growth has to be central to balancing the economy and tackling our current account deficit.
There is an alternative to George Osborne’s choices – a new approach to investing in the future. What he has proven is that we cannot cut our way to prosperity. A strategic state working in partnership with business and industry to balance the economy is the best long term strategy firstly to balance the books and secondly to build the jobs and growth of the future. Our renewable industries are pivotal to both this and tackling climate change. The Chancellor is wrong: it is not a choice between tackling change and fixing the economy – we can and should be both now.Press release
English Swedish
2013-10-07
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award
The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jointly to
James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman
and Thomas C. Südhof
for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic,
a major transport system in our cells
Summary
The 2013 Nobel Prize honours three scientists who have solved the mystery of how the cell organizes its transport system. Each cell is a factory that produces and exports molecules. For instance, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood and signaling molecules called neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another. These molecules are transported around the cell in small packages called vesicles. The three Nobel Laureates have discovered the molecular principles that govern how this cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time in the cell.
Randy Schekman discovered a set of genes that were required for vesicle traffic. James Rothman unravelled protein machinery that allows vesicles to fuse with their targets to permit transfer of cargo. Thomas Südhof revealed how signals instruct vesicles to release their cargo with precision.
Through their discoveries, Rothman, Schekman and Südhof have revealed the exquisitely precise control system for the transport and delivery of cellular cargo. Disturbances in this system have deleterious effects and contribute to conditions such as neurological diseases, diabetes, and immunological disorders.
How cargo is transported in the cell
In a large and busy port, systems are required to ensure that the correct cargo is shipped to the correct destination at the right time. The cell, with its different compartments called organelles, faces a similar problem: cells produce molecules such as hormones, neurotransmitters, cytokines and enzymes that have to be delivered to other places inside the cell, or exported out of the cell, at exactly the right moment. Timing and location are everything. Miniature bubble-like vesicles, surrounded by membranes, shuttle the cargo between organelles or fuse with the outer membrane of the cell and release their cargo to the outside. This is of major importance, as it triggers nerve activation in the case of transmitter substances, or controls metabolism in the case of hormones. How do these vesicles know where and when to deliver their cargo?
Traffic congestion reveals genetic controllers
Randy Schekman was fascinated by how the cell organizes its transport system and in the 1970s decided to study its genetic basis by using yeast as a model system. In a genetic screen, he identified yeast cells with defective transport machinery, giving rise to a situation resembling a poorly planned public transport system. Vesicles piled up in certain parts of the cell. He found that the cause of this congestion was genetic and went on to identify the mutated genes. Schekman identified three classes of genes that control different facets of the cell´s transport system, thereby providing new insights into the tightly regulated machinery that mediates vesicle transport in the cell.
Docking with precision
James Rothman was also intrigued by the nature of the cell´s transport system. When studying vesicle transport in mammalian cells in the 1980s and 1990s, Rothman discovered that a protein complex enables vesicles to dock and fuse with their target membranes. In the fusion process, proteins on the vesicles and target membranes bind to each other like the two sides of a zipper. The fact that there are many such proteins and that they bind only in specific combinations ensures that cargo is delivered to a precise location. The same principle operates inside the cell and when a vesicle binds to the cell´s outer membrane to release its contents.
It turned out that some of the genes Schekman had discovered in yeast coded for proteins corresponding to those Rothman identified in mammals, revealing an ancient evolutionary origin of the transport system. Collectively, they mapped critical components of the cell´s transport machinery.
Timing is everything
Thomas Südhof was interested in how nerve cells communicate with one another in the brain. The signalling molecules, neurotransmitters, are released from vesicles that fuse with the outer membrane of nerve cells by using the machinery discovered by Rothman and Schekman. But these vesicles are only allowed to release their contents when the nerve cell signals to its neighbours. How is this release controlled in such a precise manner? Calcium ions were known to be involved in this process and in the 1990s, Südhof searched for calcium sensitive proteins in nerve cells. He identified molecular machinery that responds to an influx of calcium ions and directs neighbour proteins rapidly to bind vesicles to the outer membrane of the nerve cell. The zipper opens up and signal substances are released. Südhof´s discovery explained how temporal precision is achieved and how vesicles´ contents can be released on command.
Vesicle transport gives insight into disease processes
The three Nobel Laureates have discovered a fundamental process in cell physiology. These discoveries have had a major impact on our understanding of how cargo is delivered with timing and precision within and outside the cell. Vesicle transport and fusion operate, with the same general principles, in organisms as different as yeast and man. The system is critical for a variety of physiological processes in which vesicle fusion must be controlled, ranging from signalling in the brain to release of hormones and immune cytokines. Defective vesicle transport occurs in a variety of diseases including a number of neurological and immunological disorders, as well as in diabetes. Without this wonderfully precise organization, the cell would lapse into chaos.
James E. Rothman was born 1950 in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA. He received his PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1976, was a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and moved in 1978 to Stanford University in California, where he started his research on the vesicles of the cell. Rothman has also worked at Princeton University, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute and Columbia University. In 2008, he joined the faculty of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, where he is currently Professor and Chairman in the Department of Cell Biology.
Randy W. Schekman was born 1948 in St Paul, Minnesota, USA, studied at the University of California in Los Angeles and at Stanford University, where he obtained his PhD in 1974 under the supervision of Arthur Kornberg (Nobel Prize 1959) and in the same department that Rothman joined a few years later. In 1976, Schekman joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he is currently Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell biology. Schekman is also an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Thomas C. Südhof was born in 1955 in Göttingen, Germany. He studied at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, where he received an MD in 1982 and a Doctorate in neurochemistry the same year. In 1983, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow with Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein (who shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). Südhof became an investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1991 and was appointed Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University in 2008.
Key publications: Novick P, Schekman R: Secretion and cell-surface growth are blocked in a temperature-sensitive mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1979; 76:1858-1862. Balch WE, Dunphy WG, Braell WA, Rothman JE: Reconstitution of the transport of protein between successive compartments of the Golgi measured by the coupled incorporation of N-acetylglucosamine. Cell 1984; 39:405-416. Kaiser CA, Schekman R: Distinct sets of SEC genes govern transport vesicle formation and fusion early in the secretory pathway. Cell 1990; 61:723-733. Perin MS, Fried VA, Mignery GA, Jahn R, Südhof TC: Phospholipid binding by a synaptic vesicle protein homologous to the regulatory region of protein kinase C. Nature 1990; 345:260-263. Sollner T, Whiteheart W, Brunner M, Erdjument-Bromage H, Geromanos S, Tempst P, Rothman JE: SNAP receptor implicated in vesicle targeting and fusion. Nature 1993;
362:318-324. Hata Y, Slaughter CA, Südhof TC: Synaptic vesicle fusion complex contains unc-18 homologue bound to syntaxin. Nature 1993; 366:347-351.
Image (pdf 197 Kb)
The Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Its Nobel Committee evaluates the nominations. Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded to scientists who have made the most important discoveries for the benefit of mankind.
Nobel Prize® is the registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation
To cite this section
MLA style: Press release. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Wed. 27 Feb 2019. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2013/press-release/>Between the Mercury Prize that came with their 2012 debut and continued commercial success, Alt-J are something of an anomaly in 2017, a successful modern alternative rock band not riding the coattails of hits from a decade ago. Their success arises from their general inoffensiveness, a palatable interpretation of late-’00s Radiohead, Foals, and Grizzly Bear records. For their third album, Relaxer, the British trio decided to challenge themselves by expanding their sound beyond the muted, pensive rock of their early years.
With only eight songs coming in at 39 minutes, Relaxer is the band’s shortest album yet. However, this brevity does not lead to a tightly focused record. Each track sees the band trying on a different suit, a scattered approach that finds varying degrees of success. They make puzzling decisions, like their update on folk standard “The House of the Rising Sun”. Changing a handful of lyrics and adding some original verses, they re-frame the classic tale to focus on the narrator’s alcoholic father. Slowed-down and dramatic, their take on the song ominously builds in a way that almost guarantees it’s future placement in a movie trailer.
The problem with Alt-J’s approach throughout Relaxer is that they frequently come off as different bands clashing with themselves, often within the same song. Hypnotic guitars reminiscent of The Books work well on their own, but paired alongside singer Joe Newman’s outsized theatrical impression of Dan Bejar trying out for Muse, the sound doesn’t quite hold on songs like “3WW”. Each song is a gamble of which Alt-J will show up, whether it’s the sparse, haunting sound of single “Adeline” or the extravagant hymnal on closer “Pleader that veers towards contemporary Christian rock levels of bombast.
Unlike the affable aimlessness of This Is All Yours, Relaxer finds Alt-J more than willing to take risks so that even when the experiments fail, it’s not for a lack of trying. This is most apparent on the band’s attempt to write a Velvet Underground song on “Hit Me Like That Snare”. Over a psych-garage freak-out, Newman is in rare form as he exhibits a drunken swagger where one could describe him as “cool” for the first time in his career. The facade doesn’t last long, as you learn no one can sound dangerous singing the faux-woke lyric “I don’t subscribe to your cultural norms” not once but twice. The song is fully derailed by the time it reaches its disastrous ending, a repeated, petulant refrain of “fuck you, I’ll do what I want to do” that aims for Bradford Cox but ends up something that wouldn’t make it past the cutting-room floor of a Black Lips studio session.
As scattershot and wandering as Relaxer is, there are moments that work well. “Deadcrush” builds to a steady groove over the band’s most forceful beat yet, while Newman finds his rock star voice through some drugged, stream-of-consciousness rambling that somehow works Henry Tudor and Anne Boleyn into a commentary about sampling and licensing music for commercials. On single “In Cold Blood”, the horns bring in a melodramatic flair that elevates an otherwise forgettable song, adding a bit of camp to a band who could stand to take themselves less seriously.
Whether discussing “cultural norms”, commercialism, or how technology affects relationships, Alt-J frequently attempt to address larger issues even if their overall message comes off as muddled. Sometimes these asides are humorous, like a cheeky name-dropping of a Radiohead record that plays with the frequent comparisons. Other times, like the repeated zeros and ones on “In Cold Blood”, the winks and nods fail to extend anywhere beyond the surface level. As it wouldn’t be a proper Alt-J record without at least one embarrassing sexual reference, Relaxer’s contribution comes early with the line “Well that smell of sex, good like burning wood,” where someone’s clearly doing something wrong.
The reason to bring this up is because when Alt-J cut away all the references, innuendos, and grandstanding, they excel in simplicity. The album’s clear highlight is “Last Year”, a tender duet that trims the excess to tell a direct tale of heartbreak. The song finds Alt-J in a state of growth, finally managing to wring tension out of a slower ballad, creating a palpable sense of longing.
It would have been easy for Alt-J to continue making albums that followed a standard pattern, and in that regard, Relaxer represents ambition and a willingness to take chances. The downside is that it finds the band in a state of confusion, pulled in all directions and sacrificing a sense of cohesion. Alt-J’s first two records were built off of their comparisons, and on Relaxer they work to forge their own identity. They just haven’t figure out what that is yet.
Essential Tracks: “In Cold Blood”, “Deadcrush”, and “Last Year”MANY Germans still love to bask naked on the beaches of Spain and France but at home, long the land of the all-over tan, the nudist movement is in decline.
For almost a century, German sunworshippers have been known to rip off their clothes at the first sighting of the country’s all-too-rare summer rays.
Especially since the carefree 1970s, naturists, unencumbered by clothing and their parents’ prudish mores, have frolicked in the buff on beaches, lakes and in city parks.
The trend was especially popular in the former communist East Germany, whose people celebrated it as a rare expression of personal liberty in an otherwise highly oppressive society.
But times are changing for the movement known in German simply as “FKK”, short for Frei-Koerper-Kultur or “free body culture”.
“Society is changing,” laments Kurt Fischer, president of the German Federation of Naturist Clubs (DFK).
The energetic septuagenarian has been counting membership forms and says total numbers for Germany’s 145 clubs have fallen two per cent a year to about 40,000.
Bowling in the buff
Followers of the bronze cult are now ageing fast. The largest contingent is currently in the 50 to 60-year-old bracket, and members under 25 have become rare.
Fischer blames radical changes in people’s working lives, with irregular hours making it hard to commit to FKK clubs and associations.
“Twenty years ago almost everyone had the weekends off,” he said. “Now in almost all jobs, we must be flexible and free time is dictated by the employer.
“This is a problem for organisations that have their own structures and that want to bring people together for an event at a specific time.” From bowling to table tennis and even sailing holidays in Greece, the FKK clubs offer a wide range of outdoor activities and competitions.
But rival leisure opportunities have also exploded in recent decades. “People no longer want to commit,” said the DFK president. “They say ‘one weekend I do this, another weekend I do that’.”
‘Naked skateboarding? No!’
This is especially true for younger people who are far less likely than their parents to strip off their trunks or bikinis in public, in part because they regard fashion as a crucial marker of group identity.
“Skateboarding is trendy, but skateboarding stark naked, no!” laughed Fischer. Young people with immigrant backgrounds and from Muslim cultures, where the unclothed body remains taboo, have proven impervious to the lure of nudism.
Paradoxically, “uncommitted” naturism, such as taking a dip in a lake in one’s birthday suit, is still going strong in Germany.
“It has become natural, it’s part of a lifestyle where we want to reconnect with nature,” said Peter Zellmann of the Vienna-based Research Centre for Leisure and Tourism.
“We no longer need to be part of an association, of a structured organisation.” In Munich, the capital of the conservative and mainly Catholic southern state of Bavaria, the largest city park, the Englischer Garten, has a space reserved for naturists.
Many a foreign tourist strolling through the green space has been stunned to come face-to-face with exposed female breasts, not to mention disrobed men playing frisbee.
The same goes for the windswept beaches on the Baltic and North Sea, which are strictly divided between swimwear and “fabric-free” areas.
When summer comes to Europe, between eight and 12 million Germans still engage in nudism, said French geographer Emmanuel Jaurand, author of a comparative study on the naked cult in Germany, where nudism has been legal since the 1920s, and in France where it was authorised only in 1956.
In his study, Jaurand concluded that Germany remains committed to “urban public nudity that is uninhibited and quiet” and “detached from any sexual connotation”.Before I go on this rant about Ajax, some things need to be clear. I have not seen the Golden Age of Ajax, I wish I had. When I became a fan, the infamous seven year dry-spell of titles had just started. I was born four miles away from the Amsterdam Arena, and now I own a season ticket and live three miles away from the Johan Cruyff Arena. This humblebrag is all so I can make the following statement carry a little weight.
Last Sunday, I saw the worst football played by an Ajax-side, I’ve ever seen. That first half was incomprehensibly bad. There was literally no pace, no movement, no desire to do anything. The entire squad seemed to be stuck in the same lackluster tempo, that even Frank de Boer would find too low. This is worse then when we drew RKC 0-0 at home, or when Mido needed to save Martin Jol’s ass at home against VVV.
Vitesse didn’t even play that well. They just needed to sort of ‘be there’. That was enough to close the deal. The four or five chances created in the second half were not enough to cover for the fact that when Ajax plays every game like that first half this weekend, there is not a single team in the Eredivisie that can’t beat us. Not one. That was relegation-levels of sh*t.
Last week, I wrote about how Keizer is shaping up to be a really bad pick. I’m willing to say now he has turned out to be a horrible choice for manager. There is absolutely nothing he is able to successfully implement a squad that, for at least half of it, managed to make the Europa League final under God’s gift to Dutch football, Peter Bosz. He has had ten games so far, of which we won three. That’s nowhere near enough.
So, I think Keizer needs to go. Sooner rather than later. However, this poses a real problem. Because if Keizer gets the sack, and he gets replaced by someone who has a little more experience than just relegating with Cambuur, and the season somehow gets a little better, that might be f*cking sh*t. Imagine ending up winning the league this year under another manager. God forbid doing the double. That would derive all attention from the issues we have.
If Keizer stays, the football remains terrible. I’m fairly convinced of that, and if it does indeed change, I will apologize for all my statements. But if he goes, the larger problem will remain unsolved. Bergkamp will still be there. Van der Sar will still be there. They need to burn at the stake for what they are doing to our club. Keizer is an easy scapegoat, a passenger, a sacrifice this board can make to safe their asses one more time. And that would mean this club would stay terminally ill until they finally dissolved all of what once made Ajax great. It’s like choosing between being sh*t or p*ssed on. Every option is terrible.
But hey, at least we made some profit, right?The Bank of Japan cut its economic forecast for the current fiscal year in a quarterly review of its growth projections, although this was a technical revision reflecting a steep contraction in first-quarter GDP. It kept its projection for the following year unchanged.
Japan’s economy is likely to have contracted for three straight quarters through June but is expected to grow 1.0 percent in the third quarter, a Reuters poll showed, as companies make progress restoring supply chains hit by the March disaster.
Factory output jumped by the most in almost 60 years in May while business and consumer sentiment showed signs of recovery from the quake’s damage, underscoring the Bank of Japan’s view that the economy will resume a moderate recovery in the autumn.
The central bank was more optimistic in its assessment of the economy compared to its remarks last month, when it had said that while the economy appeared to be picking up, it remained under pressure.
On Tuesday, the central bank was also more upbeat about exports and domestic demand, saying they were improving.
That brighter view reinforces investors’ expectations that no immediate monetary easing is on the horizon.
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“As recent economic data has shown an improvement, it is natural that the BOJ raised its view on the economy,” said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital Japan.
“As long as the BOJ maintains its GDP forecast for fiscal 2012-13 as its main scenario, it is unlikely to implement additional easing steps.”
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The Bank of Japan cut its economic forecast for the current fiscal year to 0.4 percent from the 0.6 percent projected three months ago. It maintained its 2.9 percent growth forecast for the following fiscal year, as well as the 0.7 percent core consumer inflation projection for both years.
The central bank’s statement did not include a warning that it was focusing on downside risks to the economy — a sign that it is less concerned about Japan’s near-term economic prospects.
The Bank of Japan’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, said Tuesday that global economic growth was easing somewhat. But he said there was no change to the central bank’s view that the global economy will be the key driver of Japan’s growth once supply constraints ease.
“We are mindful of various risks to Japan’s economy, both at home and from abroad,” Mr. Shirakawa said at a news conference.
Some in the Bank of Japan have become increasingly worried about softening global growth. U.S. jobs growth ground to a near halt in June, dashing hopes that the world’s largest economy was emerging from a soft patch, while annual inflation in China accelerated to a three-year high, signaling that more monetary tightening may be needed in the second-largest economy even as economic growth slows.
The central bank issues its long-term economic and price forecasts in April and October of each year, and reviews them in January and July.
The Bank of Japan has stood pat on monetary policy since easing credit just days after the earthquake by topping up a pool of funds to buy assets ranging from government bonds to corporate debt.
It has expressed its readiness to ease policy further if the damage from the quake proves to be bigger than expected, although recent upbeat economic data has reduced expectations of imminent central bank action.Behind the Lens: 2016 Year in Photographs
The Obama White House Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 30, 2016
For the eighth and final time, I am presenting my annual Year in Photographs.
All of them were taken either by me or a White House photographer on my staff. For many of the images, I’ve included the backstory behind the image to provide further context or to share why that image was particularly important to me.
As always, the editing for this project is both subjective and personal. Yes, there are some historic moments included but mostly I was looking for behind-the-scenes moments that give people a more personal look at the President and First Lady. And I’ve included a few that I thought were just cool photos.
I hope you enjoy this final Year in Photographs of the Obama administration. It’s been the honor of a lifetime to be a witness to history these past eight years.
— Pete Souza, Chief White House PhotographerBaseball’s most recent collective bargaining agreement introduced new rules regarding draft pick compensation, and the changes were expected to help free agents. However, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney reports that some agents and general managers say certain free agents who obtained qualifying offers are now seeing reduced interest from teams. These players are talented, but general managers are hesitant to give up draft picks. Here are more notes from Olney’s column…
One GM pointed out that teams aren’t “wild about giving up a draft pick for a reliever," even though Rafael Soriano is a good pitcher. The Yankees almost certainly won’t consider taking him back, according to Olney.
is a good pitcher. The Yankees almost certainly won’t consider taking him back, according to Olney. The Red Sox have targeted players who aren’t linked to draft pick compensation, as Olney points out.
Adam LaRoche is tied to draft pick compensation and it’s “really hurting him,” Olney writes. The first baseman has been sitting on a two-year offer from the Nationals.
is tied to draft pick compensation and it’s “really hurting him,” Olney writes. The first baseman has been sitting on a two-year offer from the Nationals. It appears that the Braves would be fairly comfortable going into the season with Martin Prado playing both left field and third base. They’d use Reed Johnson in left field against left-handers and Juan Francisco at third base against right-handers in that scenario.Gunpoint looks very good indeed, good enough to be nominated in the best design category at the IGF in fact. Its clever infiltration and security rewiring combine wonderfully with slapstick violence and trouser-propelled window-diving. Yes, it looks good, but how will it sound? Designer/wordsmith Tom Francis sent out a call for musical submissions and two new videos are here to pleasure your ears with the choices that have been made. Best listened to while in a dark bar with a haze of smoke around the ceiling and a shot of bourbon in your hand. If I were you, I’d probably think about the one that got away the whole while as well.
Don’t mind me. I’m just clicking my fingers over here in appreciation.
Last time I wrote about Gunpoint I mentioned that Tom was wondering whether people would be willing to pay for the game. Plenty of you started throwing money at your screens, which has been taken as an affirmative, so when the release occurs, which should be sometime in March, there will be a price attached, although there will also be a ‘substantial’ free version.
Excellent.Coinbase has struck a deal with payments platform RewardsPay that enables online shoppers to use bitcoin for purchases at the likes of iTunes and Facebook.
RewardsPay's service lets people use the cash rewards they get from credit card companies, hotels, airlines and retailers to make online purchases
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do not have photos of the road covered in foam novelties. But to assist with a visualization, here is an artist’s rendering of how a road covered in foam tomahawks would look:
There’s no word on how long the delay will last while tomahawks are cleaned off the interstate.VIDEO: Conor McGregor dominates Jon Jones and Paige VanZant in Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
The odds would have heavily favoured the Americans ahead of the mini-Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots tournament yesterday.
But the striking credentials of Ireland's own Conor McGregor translated perfectly to the boxing toy which never really took off on this side of the Atlantic.
"The Notorious" eliminated women's strawweight contender Paige VanZant before beating UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones at the iconic children's game.
The three UFC stars were in New York yesterday for the launch of Reebok's new line of runners, a throwback to the famous Pump collection.
Disappointing that a spinning wheel kick isn't doable with Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots or we're sure we'd see an altogether more flashy finish but, hey, we'll settle for what we got.
H/t to BleacherReportAl-Qaeda's branch in Yemen has launched a book review contest in the besieged city of Taiz with promises that the top bookworm will land themselves a Kalashnikov rifle as their prize.
Members of al-Qaeda's promotional committee handed out flyers in the streets of the flashpoint city this week advertising the competition, The New Arab's Yemen correspondent reported.
"Conditions of the contest: You must carefully read and listen to our assigned book and audio material and summarise them in 30 pages," the flyer for the contests reads.
"Your review must not resemble any other contestant's work. If plagiarism is discovered both contestants will be disqualified," it said.
The handout explained that first place submission will receive a brand new Chinese-made automatic rifle, second place a motorcycle, third place a pistol, fourth place a laptop with mobile phones and cash prizes for the other winners.
The group have called the contest "This is Our Message", indicating that the book that will be scrutinised will be a manifesto promoting al-Qaeda's cause.
The extremists set the deadline for the book reviews to be handed in on the 15th of the upcoming Islamic month of Ramadan but warned that only "sincere contestants not interested in winning cheap material goods" were eligible.
The group have called the contest "This is Our Message" [TNA]
Al-Qaeda fighters have reportedly been fighting for months in Taiz shoulder to shoulder with pro-government forces against the Houthi rebels.
This week, the group's leader said that his militants have often fought alongside their "Sunni brothers" against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
"We are fighting alongside all Muslims in Yemen", including "the Muslim Brotherhood and also our brothers among the sons of [Sunni] tribes," Qasim al-Raymi said.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP] has exploited a power vacuum created by the war between the government and Houthi rebels who control the capital Sanaa and number of major cities along the Red Sea coast.
AQAP seized the city of Mukalla, the capital of Yemen's largest province of Hadramawt in 2015, but was forced to withdraw last year.
The United States regards the group as the extremist network's most dangerous branch.The 2016 elections gave thoughtful Americans plenty of reasons to despair about the state of our democracy. The looming Donald Trump presidency has forced us to confront ugly truths about racism, misogyny and economic inequality. But according to a new paper published in the prestigious academic journal “Philosophy & Public Affairs,” there is at least one more heretofore undetected poison floating in the cocktail that is our politics. If the philosophers behind the paper are right, this problem is amplifying every other malady afflicting American culture.
They call it “moral grandstanding.”
“Moral grandstanding is the use of moral talk for self-promotion,” says Justin Tosi, a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Michigan’s philosophy department. “It’s people using moral conversation, making moral claims, to present an impressive image of themselves to others.”
Listen to Tosi’s analysis in the latest episode of the HuffPost Politics podcast So, That Happened, embedded below:
We’ve all seen it in annoying tweets and chest-thumping Facebook posts ― items presented as casual observations or political arguments that carry a much different underlying meaning: I am good because I have said this important thing now, here, on the Internet! The social need to be perceived by our peers as being morally upright ― or to pile on, with tribal abandon, with our likes and faves ― has replaced our calling to pursue moral truth. Or to actually engage in morally useful activities.
The problem is extremely common, Tosi argues, something even the best-intentioned of us have succumbed to at some point or another, though some of us are more flagrant and frequent offenders than others. It isn’t restricted to social media. Brian Leiter’s popular philosophy blog cites the paper approvingly, noting that moral grandstanding is rampant even in Twitter-anemic academia, where otherwise intelligent people stake out entire careers on preposterous-but-shocking arguments. “I will resist naming the professional philosophers who should read this, but you know who you are,” he writes.
Even more troubling to Tosi and his co-author, Bowling Green State University Assistant Professor of Philosophy Brandon Warmke, moral grandstanding is foreclosing meaningful debates about what the right thing to do might actually be. The nature of a just society is complicated, and the right answer to new issues can be difficult to decipher. Moral grandstanding encourages people to simply stake out successively extreme positions to impress their friends, instead of simply talking to each other. This eliminates nuance and forces people into bizarre partisan camps. People who share a great many moral intuitions become polarized as antagonists.
“It’s like a moral arms race,” Tosi told HuffPost. “It doesn’t really impress people if you’re good at compromising, if you’re good at listening to the other side. It impresses people if you can destroy other people.”
Tosi and Warmke aren’t explicitly talking about all of the political and social debates surrounding 2016, but only a fool would miss the implication. Bernie Bros and Hillary Bots savaging each other over whether the Trump phenomenon was about only race or only economic anxiety, as if the two couldn’t possibly interact. The acid disdain some Democrats directed toward Trump supporters in the general election, and the at times violent hatred Trump supporters hurled at Democrats. A lot of this looked more like perverse moral grandstanding than serious inquiry.
There’s an important difference between moral grandstanding and the simple statement of moral ideas and beliefs, and it isn’t always easy to tell the difference between the two (although, yeah, sometimes it is). But Tosi and Warmke see the social status afforded to the most efficient moral grandstanders as blocking out more thoughtful discussion.
“We need to be able to talk to each other about morality,” Tosi says. “Or we need to be able to talk about what justice requires ― what the right thing to do is.”Cross Posted from Food & Water Watch
On September 7 and 8, the shale gas industry is holding a conference in Philadelphia called Shale Gas Insight so they can network and share ideas for how to assert their power and control over legislative and regulatory arenas. To take advantage of the moment and draw attention to those opposed to fracking, Food & Water Watch is joining up with our allies to participate in a counter-conference, called Shale Gas Outrage, which will coincide with Shale Gas Insight. There will be a rally from 12 to 2pm on Wednesday September 7th followed by a march that will last until 3pm.
Sign up here to let us know you plan to stand with us in Philly. We’ll keep you updated with news and details about Shale Gas Outrage events.
AdvertisementsIn an in-depth interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Sunday, Billy Bush spoke out for the first time about the "Access Hollywood" tape of Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE bragging about sexually assaulting women while Bush laughed along with Trump's comments.
In the aftermath of the tape’s release, Bush was suspended from NBC News and then fired, getting a multimillion-dollar severance package and agreeing to a nondisclosure agreement that prevents him from talking in detail about his exit.
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He said he’s only heard the three-minute tape in which Trump talks about “grabbing” women by the genitals three times. He told THR that while he and others at NBC had known about it for a while, he watched it once three days before it became public and then twice in preparation for the interview with the magazine.
Each time he was "totally and completely gutted," he told THR. “Looking back upon what was said on that bus, I wish I had changed the topic. [Trump] liked TV and competition. I could've said, 'Can you believe the ratings on whatever?' But I didn't have the strength of character to do it."
He said his then-15-year-old daughter called him from school when the tape leaked and asked him, "Why were you laughing at the things that he was saying on that bus, Dad? They weren't funny."
"It hit really hard, and I stopped for a second, and I said, 'I have no answer for that that's any good. I am really sorry. That was Dad in a bad moment a long time ago. You know me. I am really sorry that you had to hear and see that. I love you,'" Bush continued.Four gender-equality campaigners share their views on feminism and the backlash against women's rights. What do you think?
Ruby Johnson and Devi Leiper O'Malley
Frida: the Young Feminist Fund
What does it mean in today's world to take an established tradition and make it your own? We are young women of the millennial generation, with more than 100 International Women's Days (IWD) gone by. We live in an era of increasing inequalities of wealth and resources and continue to witness a frightening backlash against women's rights gained to date.
IWD remains meaningful to us because we see young feminist activists claiming this day as their own, gathering at the forefront of today's most heated disputes, demanding access to abortion, amplifying voices of sex workers, or seeking justice for the disappearances of women human rights defenders. They are casting off the taboo of feminism, applying new social media technologies and drawing on the arts to make these celebrations relevant and expressive of multiple realities, identities, and movements.
Each year, IWD falls around the annual session of the UN commission on the status of women (CSW), a key policymaking space for governments to make commitments to women's human rights. However the CSW remains a somewhat exclusive space that many people have not heard of or find difficult to enter and influence. Global decision-making spaces for women's human rights continue to fall outside of the popular gaze. This is a dangerous disconnect. IWD is just one day, while the CSW could potentially guarantee that every day will be women's rights day in practice.
Despite the barriers, young women are finding alternative ways to contribute to an age-old struggle. Whether hashtagged in tweets, composed into songs, or included in official statements at the UN, we believe the groundswell of young feminist activism can revitalise the power and potential of decision-making spaces like the CSW or IWD with radical solutions, strategies, and spirit.
The value of IWD is in our ability to integrate these new voices and find the threads that weave us together. This will enable us to strengthen interconnected movements and collectively speak truth to power.
Fatima Haase, policy and advocacy assistant
Progressio
On Saturday a number of my friends will post something on Facebook to celebrate women or speak out against gender inequality. International Women's Day makes it easy for young people to put on their part-time activist T-shirts. It's great. Ordinary people will get excited about women's rights, if only for the day.
But, those of us who've invested in a professional wardrobe to fly the flag for feminism need a serious think. Are we doing enough to educate and motivate the public to really challenge societal norms that lead to discrimination against women?
We need to tackle difficult questions such as: how can we increase the number of young women in leadership positions? Why don't young women have the same access to employment and participation in decision-making as young men? International Women's Day will spark these debates and steer public opinion. That's why we need it.
However, we also need to raise the profile of negotiations such as the UN CSW. While it might not sound trendy, opportunities such as this can be harnessed to influence decision makers, policymakers and ultimately the international laws that can be used to secure and protect women's rights.
The more ordinary people that can add their voices to the debate, the more chance the outcome document will have of being rooted in people's experiences. The more the negotiations reflect our reality the more useful they can be in bringing about the changes we want to see. Yet even my friend with the T-shirt has never heard of the CSW.
Let's hope International Women's Day 2014 will draw attention to the thousands of activists gathering in New York and to those people all over the world who continue to work for gender equality. Let's inspire people to keep wearing the T-shirt long after 8 March.
Zemach Getahun, gender and business development adviser
Farm Africa
"In the beginning my husband opposed my involvement in the village savings and loans association, but after observing the change brought to our family he decided to join, and we now compete with one another to see who saves more."
In 2012, at a UN Women and African Union symposium, I had the pleasure of hearing Etenesh Daniel speak about how she manages a financing group in Ethiopia. Etenesh wasn't a typical speaker at this meeting of African ambassadors and UN officials – she is an Ethiopian farmer.
Her speech symbolised why International Women's Day is important. It is the one day in the year when the amazing contributions made to ordinary lives by extraordinary women are recognised and celebrated.
In my work as the gender and business development adviser for Farm Africa, I work alongside Ethiopian women who bravely voice their desire for equal opportunities and an end to harmful traditional practices.
It is estimated that closing the gender gap in agriculture could reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17%. At Farm Africa we know that women have a crucial role to play in the development of the rural economy. That is why we design projects that empower women like Etenesh.
We have challenges here in Ethiopia, but we take this day to celebrate and recognise the contribution of women to our society, and we must keep making progress toward equality. I know that inequality isn't just a developing world problem, how many female leaders are there around the world?Editor's note: Nicholas L. Syrett is associate professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado and the author of "The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN) -- In curbing the excesses and occasional crimes of fraternities and sororities, universities have relied on a traditional set of punishments. They have suspended chapters, or in extreme cases, expelled them from campus. And they have denied chapters "official" recognition as campus organizations. These strategies rarely have any lasting effect and they ignore two of fraternities' defining characteristics, both of which contribute to frequent misbehavior: exclusivity and gender segregation.
By mandating this week that its two residential fraternities admit women on an equal basis, Wesleyan University has taken an important step toward attacking the root of the fraternity problem.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the male-only policy is the heart of the fraternity experience. To the men who join them, it is fundamentally important that theirs is an all-male organization, a brotherhood. A fraternity allows a man to surround himself with others who confirm his masculinity.
It is no surprise that Wesleyan's decision has already been criticized by Delta Kappa Epsilon, one of its fraternities. No doubt many alumni are also upset. But gender exclusivity is precisely the problem with fraternities. In only allowing men to join, fraternities insist that men are fundamentally different from women right in the middle of an environment -- a university -- whose goal is to question such shopworn truisms.
Candidates for membership are evaluated not on a particular skill (like the ability to play soccer or engage in parliamentary debate) or welcomed not because they share political ideals or religious beliefs (like being a libertarian or practicing Catholicism). Rather, the primary criterion for membership—in addition to the secondary characteristics of good looks, wealth, coolness, athletic prowess and unofficially in some organizations, whiteness or blackness—is simply being male.
Fraternities' gender exclusivity has the effect of emphasizing brothers' collective traits, masculinity especially, above all others. Men who join fraternities understand that fraternity membership brings popularity and that their brothers will reward them when they "score" with women.
The reports of sexual assault and gang rape associated with fraternities have much more to do with this kind of hyper-masculinity than with the binge drinking that is so frequently blamed. Men rape women because they believe they are entitled and because they think they can get away with it.
There is an obvious chicken-and-egg question here: Do young men who think about women in demeaning ways join fraternities because the organizations validate their thinking? Or do fraternities inculcate these attitudes in their members? The answer is: both.
Wesleyan's new policy will force fraternity brothers to interact with their female peers in something much closer to equality than before. They might even find that they have something in common. And this sense of similarity might also lead them not to countenance the kind of rapes that occurred in their houses in 2010 and 2013, and that (along with the resulting lawsuits) are surely the impetus behind this step by Wesleyan's administrators.
Wesleyan is only one school and it only has two residential fraternities. It has not mandated gender inclusivity in the organizations (including its one sorority) that do not have on-campus housing. And there is no reason to think that the new policy will lessen drinking, another perennial problem associated with fraternities.
But it may well go some way toward making Wesleyan fraternity men see their female classmates as something other than a proverbial notch on a bedpost. After all, they will now be sisters.
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Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion.Microsoft is one of the firms the NCC wants to see investigated
The National Consumer Council (NCC) has accused 17 firms, including Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec, of using unfair "end user licence agreements" (EULAs).
The NCC has asked the Office of Fair Trading to launch an investigation.
The NCC said the firms' EULAs were misleading customers into "signing away legal rights".
"Software rights-holders are shifting the legal burden on to consumers who buy computer programmes, leaving them with less protection than when they buy a cheap Biro," said Carl Belgrove of the NCC.
"Consumers can't have a clue what they're signing up to when some terms and conditions run to 10 or more pages.
"There's a significant imbalance between the rights of the consumer and the rights of the holder," he added.
'Legal responsibility'
As one of the firms named by the NCC, Microsoft said it had not seen the details of the report and was unable to comment.
But it added that it was committed to dealing "fairly" with consumers and addressing any concerns they might have.
Meanwhile Symantec said it would welcome the opportunity to engage with the NCC and any other organisations in order to best serve the interests of its customers.
The NCC looked at 25 software packages and said that in 17 instances, the packaging did not tell potential buyers they would have to sign an EULA in order to use it.
While some contained the EULA inside an instruction manual, or let it be read online, this was only after the software had been bought.
"This means that consumers are unable to make informed decisions before they buy a product, yet are being forced to take on an unknown level of legal responsibility," said the NCC.
After examining the contents of the EULAs, the NCC also said that some contained potentially unfair clauses.As the protesting spirit spreads in Wisconsin, one tactic that union members are now adopting is to take aim at institutions that have donated heavily to Governor Scott Walker.
Members of the Wisconsin firefighter’s union set out for a local branch of the M & I Bank on Thursday to withdraw their personal savings. The UpTake, which describes itself as “a citizen-fueled, online video news gathering organization,” reports that “on Thursday members of the union withdrew close to $200,000 from the bank.”
A website titled “Keep on eye on Marshall & Ilsley Bank” had been targeting the M & I Bank since last month. “After working families gave Marshall and Ilsley Bank (M&I) a $1.7 billion bailout in 2008,” the site explains, “their executives did an about face and funded Governor Scott Walker’s attack on our right to collectively bargain. In fact, their financial help combined was more than what the Koch Brothers contributed. And while Governor Walker was demanding austerity from working people, M&I CEO Mark Furlong got an $18 million golden parachute. Even after the bank was having diffulty paying back its TARP loan.”
According to Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars, the run on the bank began when teachers, firefighters, and police offers threatened to start a boycott on March 17 if the bank did not publicly oppose Walker’s attack on collective bargaining rights. But after the governor pushed the cancellation of collective bargaining through the state legislation, it inspired so many protesters to show up on Thursday that the branch shut down “under the advisement of the Madison Police Department.”
A diary at Daily Kos, headed “We’re Going To Destroy A Bank,” described the action in more personal terms. “M & I Bank of Wisconsin has committed an unpardonable offense,” diarist Stranded Wind wrote. “This bank took bailout funds and thanks to the magic of Citizens United our own tax dollars flowed through their executives hands into the coffers of Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. We haven’t dug deeply yet, but I think when we do we’re going to find that we no longer have Russ Feingold’s voice in the Senate because of this as well.”
“What these pictures show are six hundred ordinary citizens descending on the M&I branch near the Wisconsin Capitol after learning of their purchase of the gubernatorial election last November,” the diary continues. “If the 60% of Wisconsin that’s sick to death of Scott Walker’s behavior simply go close their accounts the bank will crash and they’ll have stripped him of the funds he needs to fight the recall next January.”
The bank has continued to insist that “M&I has not contributed to any candidate and did not contribute to Governor Walker or Mayor Barrett in the last gubernatorial election. M&I has over 6,000 employees in Wisconsin, and, in the great tradition of political freedom in this country, those employees have the right to contribute to the candidate of their choice.”In the early hours of Friday morning, police officers in Texas took what is thought to have been unprecedented action for US law enforcement. Using a bomb disposal robot, they killed the suspect in last night's shooting in Dallas after negotiations with the individual broke down. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," Dallas police chief David Brown told reporters. "Other options would have exposed our officers to great danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb."
Many experts believe this is the first time that a bomb disposal robot has been used in this way on US soil. Such robots are controlled remotely, and used for tasks such as surveillance and investigating suspect bombs. Some are equipped with two way intercoms and even cameras to allow for police to negotiate with suspects without risk. When deployed for bomb disposal, they often use small explosives in order to trigger the larger bomb.
Bomb disposal robots have been used to kill enemy combatants in iraq
But while their intended function is not to injure enemy combatants (or criminals), this isn't the first time they've been put to this use. Peter W. Singer, an expert in military technology and think tank strategist, tweeted that US troops in Iraq had used their own bomb disposal robots in this way.
Yes, this is 1st use of robot in this way in policing. Marcbot has been ad hoc used this way by troops in Iraq. https://t.co/FfrsgLS2x1 — Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) July 8, 2016
Singer describes this practice — which used a cheap bomb disposal robot called the MARCbot — in an essay in the book The Changing Character of War:
"The MARCbot is not just notable for its small size; it was the first ground robot to draw blood in Iraq. One unit of US soldiers jury-rigged their MARCbots to carry Claymore anti-personnel mines. If they thought an insurgent was hiding in an alley, they would send a MARCbot down first, and if they found someone waiting in ambush, take him out with the Claymore. Of course, each insurgent killed in this fashion meant $5,000 worth of blown-up robot parts, but so far the army has not billed the soldiers."
Kelsey Atherton, a writer for Popular Science who specializes in defense technology, tweeted that he too thought this was a first for US law enforcement. He pointed out that "the whole point of having robots is to do things that we cannot safely ask willing humans to do," and that although this was an "extraordinary use" for the robot, last night was an "extraordinary case."
An important thing to stress is that the robot was completely under human control. Bomb disposal bots are not autonomous — they rely on human decisions and human controllers, and as such, have quite a long history. Atherton later tweeted pictures of remote-controlled demolition vehicles used by the Nazis in World War II.
Remote control bomb deliverers not new; German did it in WWII as anti-tank tool. https://t.co/dhLRjr3U6d pic.twitter.com/GBzbBONv6X — Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) July 8, 2016
These were radio-controlled, equipped with miniature tank treads, and used for tasks like blowing up enemy tanks. The bomb disposal bot used by the Dallas police may have been more technologically sophisticated than these decades-old robots, but its end purpose was just as straightforward.
one bomb disposal robot ended a standoff using pizza
Bomb disposal robots, though, have emerged as a flexible tool for law enforcement, particularly SWAT teams. In April, members of the California Highway Patrol used a bomb disposal robot to deliver a pizza to a suspect, effectively ending a standoff. And in 2013, a SWAT team in Albuquerque used their bot to remove the blanket from a suicidal individual barricaded in his room, checking whether or not he was armed. (No weapon was found and a SWAT team took him into custody.)
It's not yet clear what robot was used by the Dallas police, but it's been suggested that it too is likely to be a MARCbot, many of which have found their way into the hands of law enforcement via military surplus programs.
There's over 200 federal, state and local U.S. law enforcement agencies using robots accessed through the 1033 program — Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) July 8, 2016
Outside of the ethical questions facing the Dallas police department (what led them to take the decision to simply kill the suspect rather than try other options to capture them?), this incident raises a number of practical considerations. These include the decreased usefulness of such robots as negotiators. If suspects fear them as potential assassins, why bother to talk to the police at the other end?
There's also the issue of safety and control. How secure was the communication line between the robot and its controller? Was there a chance of the bomb exploding prematurely or by accident? And how can a negotiator know that negotiation is pointless if they're not physically in the room with a suspect? Should that be a concern in situations when there is a danger posed to the general public?
There will be many more questions than these as details emerge about last night and this morning's events. And while this is not the start of "killer robots" taking human lives, it is another example of governments using technology to exert lethal force at a distance. This is a debate we've started with military drones and their use in foreign countries. Now, the conversation is domestic as well.A recent announcement by Nepal's Ministry of Home Affairs had threatened a ban on tourists wanting to trek alone in any part of the country. But the decision has now been delayed as a review takes place. It is the BMC's understanding that a ban on solo trekkers in Langtang continues to apply.
The new policy, which was slated to come into effect in September, would require solo trekkers or FITs (Free Independent Trekkers) to take at least one local support staff, either a guide or porter.
The Nepalese Government, which will now wait for the Ministry of Tourism to make the decision mandatory, has apparently brought in the new policy after increasing concern about the safety of trekkers.
It follows a government ban on FITs in the Langtang National Park after the death in June of a young Belgian female solo trekker.
The 23-year-old had set out alone to complete the well-known trek to the sacred Gosaikunda Lakes and was later found beheaded, though both rape and robbery seem to have been ruled out.
On two separate occasions late last year foreign women were attacked while trekking alone in Langtang, and two years ago a young American female completely disappeared in this region.
Unfortunately, over the years several popular areas of Nepal have developed a reputation for mugging or worse, Gosaikunda and the Helambu region immediately south being one, the tail end of the Annapurna Circuit from Ghorapani onwards another.
Similar incidents were reported in the Everest region last year and a general increase in crime rates has led to a perceived negative impact on Nepal's trekking and tourism industry.
Recommendations from trekking agencies, embassies, the international media, and relatives of missing trekkers appear to have created pressure on the government to act.
The Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal has naturally welcomed the decision. Group trekkers are already obliged to employ the services of government registered trekking agencies, and it now appears all trekkers may have to do the same.
It's estimated that more than 40% of foreign visitors to Nepal come to trek, and the vast majority of these go to the Annapurna, Langtang, Helambu or Khumbu regions, for which no fee-paying "trekking permit" is needed (other areas are generally considered "remote" and group permits at variable cost can be obtained through registered trekking agencies).
The introduction of the TIMS card (Trekkers Management Information System) a couple of years ago for every trekker making a one-off nominal payment ensured there was an authentic computerized database of each trekker's personal details. This would help carry out search and rescue operations after accidents, incidents and natural catastrophes.
Implementation of these cards would also give authorities better control over unauthorized trekking operations, and income from their provision has been stated to cover administration, looking after the welfare of local helpers, and maintaining trails, promoting new destinations etc.
Trekkers also need to pay conservation area permits and national park entrance fees.
« BackEarlier this week, I discussed the problems of share buybacks as delineated in “Profits Without Prosperity,” an article by William Lazonick in the September issue of Harvard Business Review and explained how CEOs, through the pervasive use of share buybacks, have become takers, not makers. Instead of creating value for their organizations and society, they are extracting value.
Pervasive share buybacks are an economic, social and moral disaster: they contribute to loss of shareholder value, crippled capacity to innovate, runaway executive compensation, destruction of jobs, rapidly increasing inequality and sustained economic stagnation. Yet share buybacks have become “an unhealthy corporate obsession,” even “an addiction.”
The situation is one of fundamental institutional failure. CEOs are extracting value from their firms. Business schools are teaching them how to do it. Institutional shareholders are complicit in what the CEOs are doing. Regulators pursue individuals but remain indifferent to systemic failure. Rating agencies reward malfeasance. Analysts applaud short-term gains and ignore obvious long-term rot. Politicians stand by and watch. In a great betrayal, the very leaders who should be fixing the system are complicit in its continuance. Unless our society reverses course, it is heading for a cataclysm.
The solution to fundamental institutional failure goes beyond passing a few regulations or changing the behavior of a few CEOs. It involves changes in behavior in a whole set of institutions and actors: CEOs and their firms, investors, legislators, regulators, rating agencies, politicians, analysts, thought leaders and business schools all need to think and act differently. The good news is that some of this is beginning to happen, as a consensus emerges on the way forward.
Four reforms proposed by HBR
In his HBR article, Lazonock puts forward four proposals for reform:
End open-market buybacks. In a 2003 update to Rule 10b-18, the SEC explained: “It is not appropriate for the safe harbor [for share buybacks] to be available when the issuer has a heightened incentive to manipulate its share price.” In practice, though, the stock-based pay of the executives who decide to do repurchases provides just this ‘heightened incentive.’” To correct this glaring problem, the SEC should rescind the safe harbor.
Rein in stock-based pay. “Overall the use of stock-based pay should be severely limited. Incentive compensation should be subject to performance criteria that reflect investment in innovative capabilities, not stock performance.”
Transform how boards that determine executive compensation. “Boards are currently dominated by other CEOs, who have a strong bias toward ratifying higher pay packages for their peers.” Other risk-takers such as “taxpayers and workers should have seats on boards. Their representatives would have the insights and incentives to ensure that executives allocate resources to investments in capabilities most likely to generate innovations and value.”
Tax reform: “Congress should fix a broken tax regime that frequently rewards value extractors as if they were value creators and ignores the critical role of government investment in the infrastructure and knowledge that are so crucial to the competitiveness of U.S. business.”
What’s missing: The root cause
Lazonick’s prosposals are sensible, but they’re not enough. Thus his article itself identified as the root cause of the problem, the notion that the purpose of a firm is to maximize shareholder value. Unless we do something about the root cause, the problem will remain.
So long as maximizing shareholder value governs the thinking of CEOs,, institutional investors, legislators, regulators, politicians, analysts and business schools, changes in a few regulations or the tax code won’t make much difference. Firms and their leaders will find ways around such changes.
We have here an instance of intellectual enslavement. As John Maynard Keynes pointed out: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
Few people today read the NYT article by Milton Friedman in 1970 that launched the shareholder value movement or know that it assumed its conclusion from the outset and then proceeded to offer incompatible quasi-legal proofs. Even less do they attempt to read the widely-cited article co-authored by Michael Jensen in 1976, which clothed the same preconceived conclusion in nonsensical psychology and abstruse mathematics.
The rotten foundations of shareholder value theory in the writings of Friedman and Jensen are now lost to the public view. Yet the unthinking recitation of the dictum that “the purpose of a firm is to maximize shareholder value” is on the lips of most CEOs, institutional investors, legislators, regulators, politicians, analysts and business school professors. Recently, even the President of the United States himself paid unwitting homage to it.
Maximizing shareholder value is the intellectual pillar on which this pervasive and pathologically asocial behavior on the part of our business leaders ultimately rests. Legislation and rules may help, but they won’t solve the problem until this noxious theory is erased from brains of the C-suite.
A very bad idea
Let’s first of all remind ourselves just how bad maximizing shareholder value is. It causes not only share buybacks, but also a host of other problems, including massive offshoring of manufacturing, thereby destroying major segments of the US economy, undermining US capacity to compete in international markets and killing the economic recovery.
In banking, it is responsible for:
Trading gone awry, as in JPMorgan’s “London Whale.”
as in JPMorgan’s “London Whale.” Price fixing at LIBOR.
Foreclosure abuses.
Money laundering.
Facilitation of tax evasion.
Misleading clients with worthless securities.
Gambling in the $700 trillion derivatives market.
High frequency trading.
Trading in secret “dark pools.“
The emerging consensus on the way forward
Change won’t happen merely by pointing out that shareholder primacy is a bad idea. Bad ideas don’t die just because they are bad. They hang around until a consensus forms around another idea that is better.
Fortunately, a consensus is emerging around a better idea. The idea isn’t new. It’s Peter Drucker’s foundational insight of 1973: the only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer. It’s through providing value to customers that firms justify their existence. Profits and share price increases are the result, not the goal of a firm’s activities
Drucker’s idea has fresh urgency today because of the epic shift in power in the marketplace from seller to buyer. As a result of globalization, customers now have choices and the Internet provides instant and reliable information about those choices and an ability to communicate with other customers. Consequently the customer is now in charge. As Roger Martin has pointed out, we live now in the Age of Customer Capitalism. Firms that focus on short-term share price ahead of customers are unlikely to survive for long.
In the last few years, more than a score of books have been written about this better idea, including notably Roger Martin’s own book, Fixing The Game. The language, terminology and emphases differ somewhat from book to book, but there
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press organized to get a location set up. There were two nights that I went and spent the night there, right next to Mr. Trump (Trump’s star). It was cold, it was hard and it was an awful experience.
The journalists with cameras there, did you invite them?
No. When I asked them, I spoke to some of the press earlier about the event. But I asked them how they got there and they said “we were just coming by.” They were not specific press that were invited.
Well, how did the big TV camera and Deadline Hollywood know to be there at 5:45 a.m.?
I did not invite them. I invited someone else, that did not show up.
Are you a Democrat or Republican?
I’m a Democrat, I’m a Bernie Democrat.
Do you plan to vote for Hillary Clinton?
Hell yeah. I love Hillary.
Did the LAPD say what charges you’re facing?
No they didn’t. I just heard on the radio, “vandalism felony.” And I’ve heard various years in prison and I hope they’re generous and I hope they are fair.
Was it worth it?
Absolutely, absolutely. I really do think it’s worth it because it has brought attention to violence against women.
Staff Writer Ryan Carter contributed to this story.The idea that Clive Palmer and his PUPs would be a positive force for good policy has taken a beating. The other senators are worth talking to and negotiating with but I have grave doubts about the government dealing with Palmer. He constantly contradicts himself, revels in creating uncertainty and lives for personal aggrandisement and opposition to the Coalition. The real betrayal of the Australian people is that by his actions, to date, any hope of support from Palmer for economic reforms is fading fast.
No one should forget the TV clips of Palmer organising last week’s Senate mayhem. And more importantly, no one should forget that only as recently as November, Palmer said “he would be abstaining from voting in the House of Representatives on the carbon tax repeal legislation to avoid a potential conflict of interest”. He then said, “I’m applying company standards and stepping out of this debate as there’s currently a potential conflict of interest”. If the issue was not resolved by July the PUP senators will “deal with it”. Sunday's press reported Palmer’s office saying that although the amendments agreed over the weekend looked fine “it would be up to Mr Palmer to approve them”.
Conflict of interest: Clive Palmer owes an explanation to the Parliament and to the people. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Palmer owes an explanation to the Parliament and to the people. Conflict of interest matters are not trifling issues. Palmer’s words and behaviour demand a much higher standard than he has shown so far. But he is not just breaching basic standards.
Last week Palmer concocted a series of nonsense excuses for opposing the repeal of the carbon tax. And when Palmer refused to answer questions about his integrity, attacked fiscal reform and promoted new red tape it seemed obvious it’s unlikely he can be trusted on anything.NEW DELHI: Authorities in a northeastern Indian city said Friday they had imposed a round-the-clock curfew, a day after a rape suspect was pulled out of jail and lynched by a mob and another man was killed in the subsequent police firing.
The suspect, who stood accused of raping a woman multiple times and was arrested in late February, was dragged out of the prison in Dimapur city in Nagaland state before being beaten to death and strung up to a clock tower on Thursday.
“A 25-year-old youth suspected to be part of the mob was injured in police firing, who later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital,” Meren Jamir, superintendent of police in Dimapur, told AFP.
He said police were “trying to bring the situation under control”.
Tensions had been rising in the district since February 24 when police arrested the alleged rapist over the assault of a 19-year-old tribal woman.
Nagaland Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang said the suspect was a Bangladeshi immigrant, and Jamir said his killing had been followed by attacks on Bangladeshi-owned businesses.
Nagaland's indigenous tribal groups have for years accused the growing population of Bengali-speaking Muslims from nearby Bangladesh of illegally settling on their land and eating into their resources.
Jamir said the situation was “very tense”, but they were trying to “restore order”, with hundreds of riot police personnel patrolling the streets.
An inquiry was also under way over the prisoner's killing, Zeliang told AFP by telephone.
“The curfew will continue until the situation improves. We will do whatever possible to stop any escalation,” he said.
The violence comes as India is in the midst of a raging controversy over a government order to ban the broadcast of a documentary about the December 2012 gang-rape of a young student.
The incident, which sparked outrage both within India and around the world, highlighted the frightening level of violence against women in the world's second most populous country.By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Wladimir Klitschko will be randomly tested by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association throughout training camp for his April 29 showdown with Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium in London.
Klitschko said following a press conference Tuesday at Madison Square Garden to promote their heavyweight title fight that Las Vegas-based VADA will test him during his eight weeks of preparation in Ukraine and Austria. London’s Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) said Tuesday that he wouldn’t fight Klitschko (64-4, 53 KOs) if both boxers weren’t subject to the most stringent testing for performance-enhancing drugs.
That was fine by Ukraine’s Klitschko, who has been criticized for not regularly participating in Olympic-style blood and urine testing for PEDs.
“I think it’s very important,” Klitschko said. “I’m very supportive of this program. If you want to have a clean sport, you have to get random testing in boxing, Olympic-style. I think it’s tremendously important because a boxing match is not a tennis match. The health of the other person is on the line, and I think doping could give you a gigantic advantage to whatever – conditioning, strength. In any sport, it doesn’t matter which sport, I’m totally against doping and I’ve always been for random testing.”
Klitschko, who’ll turn 41 before he faces Joshua, didn’t specify how many times he has undergone random blood and urine testing before fights. The former undisputed heavyweight champion only would say that his testing history dates back to when he competed for Ukraine at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
“Since I’ve been an Olympian I’ve been tested,” Klitschko said. “In the past. What is it? Twenty years now, yeah.”
Klitschko also was tested by VADA during training camp for his ill-fated rematch against England’s Tyson Fury (25-0, 18 KOs) last year.
Their second fight was postponed from July 9 to October 29, then canceled altogether because Fury failed a pre-fight test for cocaine. The embattled former champion eventually sought help to treat alcoholism, drug addiction and depression.
“I mean, if you know you’re gonna be tested randomly, and you’re sniffing cocaine, he must be dumb,” Klitschko said. “What else [could it be]? Without mentioning any names, it’s just something that obviously is missing in the mind.”
Though the 6-feet-6, 245-pound Klitschko can be tested at any time during training camp by VADA, the 6-6, 250-pound Joshua acknowledged that he would feel more comfortable if Klitschko and other fighters also were bound by the UK Anti-Doping guidelines to which he adheres or something similar. UK Anti-Doping tracks the daily whereabouts of all fighters from the United Kingdom, as well as non-UK residents scheduled to compete in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and can show up any day of the year to test those fighters.
“I’m on Whereabouts, where they know where I sleep every night and where I am every day,” said Joshua, who’ll also be tested by VADA during training camp. “I wish both of us were on it, but we have drug-testing for eight weeks [for Klitschko]. For the last year, they’ve known where I am every day. So they can randomly turn up. But not everyone’s on that system. It’s called ADAMS Whereabouts [Anti-Doping Administration & Management System]. Listen, if I beat someone that’s on dope, I’m better than I expected. If not, the drug-testers will do their job.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.By
Steven Kendus reports a pet F-1 Savannah cat—a first-generation cross between an African serval and a domestic cat—has been roaming Brandywine Hundred since October 16. Sightings of the 30-pound cat Saturday night prompted a resident of Glenside Farms to contact police after she recorded video of the cat in her yard. Several New Castle County Police officers used thermal imaging equipment to locate the cat in a grassy field behind Rita’s Water Ice on Silverside Road, but they could not capture him.
The cat was last seen around 1:00 AM Sunday morning crossing Silverside Road near Branmar Plaza.
Cat owner Richard Todd of Wilson Road in Brandywine Hundred said the 8-year-old cat’s name is Boo Tala. “He is a domesticated cat and is not dangerous. He poses no threats to humans or pets, and he is declawed,” says Todd. “He’s easily frightened, however, so he could be standoffish.” He is typically fed raw chicken.
Boo is about 30 pounds with a small head, large ears, elongated neck, and long slender legs. The hind legs are longer than the front legs. His coat is pale yellow with black markings (spots). See the attached photos of Tala.
Todd says New Castle County Police, Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife, and the Brandywine Zoo have been notified.
Police are asking that if anyone sees the aforementioned animal to use caution, and do not attempt to approach the cat.
Citizens should call the New Castle County Police Department at (302) 573-2800 or report a sighting on the department website, www.nccpd.com.This article is about historical Tokyo. For other uses, see Edo (disambiguation)
"Yeddo" redirects here. For a town in Indiana, USA, see Yeddo, Indiana
Former city in Musashi, Japan
Edo (江戸, "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.[2] It was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868. During this period, it grew to become one of the largest cities in the world and home to an urban culture centered on the notion of a "floating world".[1]
History [ edit ]
From the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu headquarters at Edo, the town became the de facto capital and center of political power, although Kyoto remained the formal capital of the country. Edo grew from what had been a small, little-known fishing village in 1457 into the largest metropolis in the world with an estimated population of 1,000,000 by 1721.[1][3]
Scroll depicting the Great Fire of Meireki
Edo was repeatedly devastated by fires, with the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 being the most disastrous. An estimated 100,000 people died in the fire. During the Edo period, there were about 100 fires mostly begun by accident and often quickly escalating and spreading through neighborhoods of wooden machiya which were heated with charcoal fires. Between 1600 and 1945, Edo/Tokyo was leveled every 25–50 years or so by fire, earthquakes, or war.
Map of Edo in the 1840s
In 1868, when the shogunate came to an end, the city was renamed Tokyo ("eastern capital"). The emperor moved his residence to Tokyo, making the city the formal capital of Japan:
Keiō 4 : On the 17th day of the 7th month (September 3, 1868), Edo was renamed Tokyo. [4]
: On the 17th day of the 7th month (September 3, 1868), Edo was renamed Tokyo. Keiō 4 : On the 27th day of the 8th month (October 12, 1868), Emperor Meiji was crowned in the Shishin-den in Kyoto. [5]
: On the 27th day of the 8th month (October 12, 1868), Emperor Meiji was crowned in the in Kyoto. Keiō 4 : On the eighth day of the ninth month (October 23, 1868), the nengō was formally changed from Keiō to Meiji and a general amnesty was granted. [5]
: On the eighth day of the ninth month (October 23, 1868), the nengō was formally changed from to and a general amnesty was granted. Meiji 2: On the 23rd day of the 10th month (1868), the emperor went to Tokyo and Edo castle became an imperial palace.[5]
Magistrate [ edit ]
Ishimaru Sadatsuga was the magistrate of Edo in 1661.[6]
Government and administration [ edit ]
During the Edo period, Roju were senior officials that looked over the entire Shogunate government. Machi-bugyō (City Commissioners) were in charge of protecting the citizens and merchants of Edo, and Kanjō-bugyō (finance commissioners) were responsible for the financial matters of the Shogunate. [7]
Geography [ edit ]
Chōnin-room exhibit at the Fukagawa Edo Museum -room exhibit at the Fukagawa Edo Museum
The city was laid out as a castle town around Edo Castle. The area surrounding the castle known as Yamanote consisted largely of daimyō mansions, whose families lived in Edo as part of the sankin kōtai system; the daimyō made journeys in alternating years to Edo, and used the mansions for their entourages. It was this extensive samurai class which defined the character of Edo, particularly in contrast to the two major cities of Kyoto and Osaka neither of which were ruled by a daimyō or had a significant samurai population. Kyoto's character was defined by the Imperial Court, the court nobles, its Buddhist temples and its history; Osaka was the country's commercial center, dominated by the chōnin or the merchant class.
Areas further from the center were the domain of the chōnin (町人, "townsfolk"). The area known as Shitamachi (下町, "lower town" or "downtown"), northeast of the castle, was a center of urban culture. The ancient Buddhist temple of Sensō-ji still stands in Asakusa, marking the center of an area of traditional Shitamachi culture. Some shops in the streets near the temple have existed continuously in the same location since the Edo period.
The Sumida River, then called the Great River (大川, Ōkawa), ran along the eastern edge of the city. The shogunate's official rice-storage warehouses,[8] other official buildings and some of the city's best-known restaurants were located here.
ukiyo-e print by Nihonbashi in Edo,print by Hiroshige
The "Japan Bridge" (日本橋, Nihon-bashi) marked the center of the city's commercial center, an area also known as Kuramae (蔵前, "in front of the storehouses"). Fishermen, craftsmen and other producers and retailers operated here. Shippers managed ships known as tarubune to and from Osaka and other cities, bringing goods into the city or transferring them from sea routes to river barges or land routes such as the Tōkaidō. This area remains the center of Tokyo's financial and business district.
The northeastern corner of the city was considered a dangerous direction in traditional onmyōdō (cosmology), and is protected from evil by a number of temples including Sensō-ji and Kan'ei-ji. Beyond this were the districts of the eta or outcasts, who performed "unclean" work and were separated from the main parts of the city. A path and a canal, a short distance north of the eta districts, extended west from the riverbank leading along the northern edge of the city to the Yoshiwara pleasure districts. Previously located near Ningyocho, the districts were rebuilt in this more-remote location after the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657, as the city expanded.
Gallery [ edit ]
See Tokyo for photographs of the modern city.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Historic [ edit ]Codi Wilson, CTV News Toronto
Thirty of the Bloor-Danforth subway line’s 31 stations did not meet the TTC’s benchmark for cleanliness in the second quarter of 2017, according to new data released by the transit service.
The TTC’s recent cleanliness audit shows that St. George Station was the only stop on Line 2 to meet the service’s cleanliness threshold.
Woodbine Station was ranked the dirtiest stop in the entire subway system.
The TTC has set its target score for cleanliness at 75 and in the second quarter of 2017, the transit service’s 69 subway stations had an average score of 73.7, up from 59 in the first quarter of 2008.
“You will see an obvious upward trend globally, notwithstanding a few peaks and valleys,” Stuart Green told CP24 in an email Thursday.
“You probably also know that our CEO has made station cleanliness a priority and our customers have noticed. Out modernized station management model and the hard work of frontline janitorial staff are making a tremendous difference.”
Despite their efforts, the TTC has only met its target three times in the last 18 quarters.
In assessing the cleanliness of a station, the TTC looks at glass, metal, platform edge markers and elevators and gives them a score from one to five.
“The auditors assess the cleanliness of the components based on the criteria listed in the contract and scores it accordingly,” Green said.
Green added that the TTC will also be acquiring new tools to help make the stations cleaner.
“We are also in the process of procuring new equipment which can blast clean the terrazzo surfaces with much better results,” he said.
TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said the TTC has one of the cleanest subway systems in the world.
"Our customer satisfaction surveys also reflect customer appreciation for just how clean stations - and vehicles - are today over five years ago," Ross said in an emailed statement Thursday.
Speaking to CP24 Thursday, TTC CEO Andy Byford said he has set the bar high when it comes to cleanliness.
“Back in 2013, I set the TTC a target of 72 per cent but because we were regularly beating that… we increased the score to 75,” he said.
“I believe we should aim for higher. We should be looking at continuing this improvement. Had we kept the target at 72, we’d have beaten it 13 out of 17 but I want us to do better.”
Byford said some of the stations that did not meet the target are currently under construction.
“We’ve got Presto work going on. Woodbine, we are putting in elevators. It is going to be dusty,” he added. “But we’re not going to let up on this. We are going to keep up our efforts. I’m very proud of my janitors. I think they do a great job.”
Dirtiest stations:
Woodbine- Score: 63.73
Dundas West- Score: 64.29
Chester- Score: 64.88
Scarborough- Score: 65.24
Donlands- Score: 65.66
Old Mill- Score: 65.94
Coxwell- Score: 66.20
Main- Score: 66.70
Dufferin- Score: 66.95
Pape- Score: 67.20
Cleanest stations:
Rosedale- Score: 83.16
Davisville- Score: 82.82
King- Score: 82.28
Downsview- Score: 81.76
Wellesley- Score: 80.34
Museum- Score: 80.04
Queen- Score: 79.94
Ellesmere- Score: 79.04
North York Centre- Score: 78.98
Dundas- Score: 78.85
See below for full chart from the audit:Never mind the 8,000-year-old flint-tipped spears that archaeologists link to nomadic tribes that hunted bison and moose near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
And forget about the 800-year-old burial mounds of the Woodland people who predated the Dakota, Ojibwe and the French fur traders — all of whom knew the ins and outs of the swampy, mosquito-infested, creeks and lakes southwest of Bemidji.
When it comes to the so-called discovery of the Mississippi’s source, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft not only gets the credit. He landed naming rights in 1832. He combined the Latin words for “true” and “head” — veritas and caput — and dropped a few letters from each end to come up with a new lake name.
Lake Itasca is now commonly considered the true head of the mighty river, attracting a half-million stone-stepping visitors annually. But before everyone agreed, the headwaters’ back story was punctuated with controversy, fraud and a young female park director who didn’t back off from gun-totting loggers.
Finding the great river’s source wasn’t easy because the Mississippi actually starts off winding north and east before coursing south to the Gulf of Mexico. Cases were made that nearby Turtle River or Elk Lake deserved the source designation.
Lt. Zebulon Pike first waded (and portaged) into the debate, trekking up to northern pre-Minnesota in 1805 to visit Leech Lake and Cass Lake, then known as Upper Red Cedar Lake. He recorded seeing the Turtle River trickling into Cass Lake’s north end, then the agreed-upon source of the Mississippi. Mission accomplished, he headed west to put his name on Colorado’s Pikes Peak.
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
Michigan Territorial Gov. Lewis Cass, who later got his name on the lake, led an 1820 expedition that made it as far as Pike did — to the mouth of the Turtle River — before heading south down the Mississippi. Among Cass’ trip mates were Schoolcraft and David Bates Douglass, whose journal recounted Indians in the area insisting the Mississippi’s true head was more than 50 miles west at a lake the French traders dubbed Lac Le Biche or Elk Lake.
Schoolcraft returned a dozen years later and renamed Lac Le Biche “Itasca,” jotting in his journal: “We glided through opposing thickets with an exhilaration of spirits, arising from the thoughts that we were near the goal of our hopes and toils. Presently, we reached the brow of a ridge, the bright gleams of a lake burst upon our vision. It was Itasca Lake.”
If the lake and its famous headwaters deserve anyone’s name it might be Ozaawindib (Yellow Head). He was the Ojibwe leader of Schoolcraft’s 30-member party that in 1832 traipsed through deep mud and mosquito clouds to reach and name Lake Itasca. At 1,475 feet above sea level, it’s the highest point in the region of lakes and streams — thus its distinction as the headwaters and the start of a roughly 2,300-mile meander to the Gulf of Mexico.
Joseph Nicollet’s 1836 map of the area, though, showed a smaller lake also known as Elk Lake that feeds into Itasca. Government surveyors and journalists in the 1870s also showed the little Elk Lake and pondered if that was the true source.
On July 4, 1881, a group led by Willard Glazier launched a mission to travel the Mississippi from “source to sea.” Along the way, they reportedly dined with an Ojibwe chief named Flat Mouth, who expressed to Glazier “regret that his white brothers had been so long in ignorance of the source of the Mississippi.”
Flat Mouth sent an Ojibwe guide named Chenowagesic along, leaving Leech Lake, pushing beyond Lake Itasca through a marshy “network of rushes” to a spot Glazier insisted was the real “source of the father of waters.”
He promptly named this lake after himself and headed downriver, arriving at the Gulf of Mexico in mid-November. When he published his findings, all hell broke loose. The Minnesota Historical Society launched an investigation.
Its conclusion: Glazier was a “quack explorer and charlatan adventurer” who had plagiarized Schoolcraft and Nicollet’s 45-year-old maps and simply named Elk Lake after himself. Glazier later confessed that he had not visited any streams feeding Elk Lake.
The Legislature passed a resolution insisting on the “Itascan sources of the Mississippi … so that its earliest explorers be not robbed of their just laurels and to remove temptations to adventurers in future to gain notoriety by attaching their names to said lakes.”
In 1888, the Legislature passed a bill — with one vote to spare amid pro-logging dissenters — creating Itasca State Park and earmarking $21,000 to buy the land from loggers.
In 1903, the park’s first director, John Gibbs, died and Gov. Samuel Van Sant, a logger, named Gibbs’ daughter and park secretary as his successor. Mary Gibbs was only 24.
When logging interests that year dammed the lake to raise the water level to more easily float timber, Mary Gibbs showed up and demanded the level be dropped to protect the old-growth pine forests from flooding.
A lumber boss with a rifle later threatened her warrant server or “anyone who puts a hand on these levers.” Mary Gibbs, reportedly armed, went to the dam and put her hand on the levers and proclaimed “you will not shoot it off, either.”
Loggers reluctantly opened the gates, dropping the lake level before being arrested. Newspapers ran headlines saying: “She had nerve and a big gun.” Facing a demotion pushed by the logging lobby, Gibbs soon quit. Loggers were given total control over the lake, the dam and the river.
A week after Gibbs resigned, President Teddy Roosevelt stood by the Grand Canyon and said, “Leave it as it is.” A preservationist ahead of her time, Gibbs moved to western Canada, got married, raised four kids and died in Vancouver in 1983. She was 104.
Curt Brown’s tale on Minnesota’s history appears each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at [email protected] Williams, 19, risked injury and put herself in between rioters and the van in Whitehall, outside the Treasury building in central London.
The van was rocked by dozens of protesters and at one point came close to tipping over.
A handful got onto the roof and started ripping off the siren and tannoy. A wingmirror and riot shield were torn off and a stink bomb was let off in the front seat.
Messages scrawled on the van included 'Tory scum' and 'f--- the police'. One rioter wearing a hoodie and a balaclava urinated over a wheel.
The protesters later returned to the van and broke in, turning on the lights and emptying its contents.
Police were later forced to block in a large number of protesters in Whitehall close to the junction with Parliament Square, near Westminster Tube.
The tactic, known to police as containment and to protesters as kettling, has been criticised in the past.
There were clashes at a bottleneck entrance to King Charles Street, close to the Foreign Office, where metal barriers were thrown at police.
One officer suffered a broken arm in the scuffles while another could be seen being dragged away by a colleague brandishing a metal baton.
As she saw what was happening Miss Williams and an unidentified friend attempted to reason with the protesters.
They were met with a barrage of abuse.
Miss Williams, a first year History of Art student at Courtauld Institute, said the violence distracted from the point of the protest.
"I was trying to stop other people from getting injured as obviously at some points people were rocking the van,” she told Sky News.
“I don’t they understand the fact that when it rocks and falls it falls on other people and other protesters.
“As soon as I saw them doing that I really wanted them to stop. Shouting for them to stop from two rows back didn’t seem to do anything.”
She added: “If you get eye contact with someone and ask them to stop it is a bit more effective. Still people were still telling me to beep off and telling me to shut up.”
Zoe Williams confronts a female anarchist in attempt to stop vandalism of a police van
Miss Williams, who had attended Colfe's School, south-east London, said the protest was about university fees and that the education issue was being hijacked by “I hate the police” troublemakers.
“I was trying to get across to them that the cause we are here for today is not about ‘I hate the police’ and ‘I want to burn the police and I want to destroy everything they represent’,” she said.
“But when I asked them to rationalise what they were doing they did not have a reason. It was just ‘I am having fun’ and I don’t really understand that.
“It really does dampen the effort of other people. There are a lot of people that do have a stance of being anarchists and rebellious form of protest.”
She added: “Some kind of aggressive behaviour can show the government that we are not joking around and we are not just here saying ‘we don’t like this but we will let you do it anyway’.
“But on the other hand showing that we are this violent and some are going to take it to these levels is detrimental. The press are just there to show there are a lot of yobs burning stuff.
“Many people are not here to do this for the cause they are doing this to have a day off school and to burn stuff and be rebellious as opposed to actually add anything to our cause.”
She said many were young students had a cause just “to be angry” and they should not be vandalising public property.
“They really need to have a better way of doing that, they should not just vent their anger on police vans just for the sake of it,” she said.
One Twitter user later said: “Zoe Williams is a modern day hero among the student scum. Let's see more of her and listen to what sense she has to say!”
Another added: “Zoe Williams seems like the most sensible person in London today”.
While others simply said: “Well done Zoe Williams”.
Lara Allen-Mepham, 19, a first year Arabic student at the school of oriental and African studies, also tried to push back anarchists attempting to destroy a police van.
She pleaded with them to stop their violence. "This isn't why we are here. Nothing will be gained from violence and I condemn those doing it. It's a small group and they are detracting from the real issue".
In Trafalgar Square, central London, several thousand gathered on the steps outside the National Gallery and at the base of Nelson's Column for a rally, watched closely by police officers.
They chanted slogans including ''Tory scum'' and ''No ifs, no buts, no education cuts'' and carried placards reading ''RIP my degree'', ''Nick Clegg, shame on you'' and ''David Thatcher, education snatcher''.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed a constable had suffered a broken arm during the protest and no arrests had been made.
He said: "There is a containment on Whitehall to prevent further criminal damage and we will look to disperse anyone being held as soon as we can, when we can ensure that no further criminal damage will be committed elsewhere."
Elsewhere, students carrying anti-cuts banners congregated at Brighton station, watched by police. At the University of Sussex students gathered on campus to listen to speeches.
In Oxford, there were reports that up to 300 students had occupied Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian library.
Two weeks ago, protesters stormed a building that houses the Conservative Party headquarters in London during the first major demonstration directly linked to the 81 billion pound ($130 billion) spending cuts announced by the coalition last month.
Police arrested almost 70 people over the disorder earlier this month which saw windows smashed, objects hurled at officers and an 18-year-old student pleaded guilty on to throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof of the building.
Students claimed there would be no repeat of the violence that marred the earlier protest.
Freddie Winter, 19, from Wandsworth, south west London, studying at Lansdowne College, said: ''I was at Millbank and it got overtaken by the violence.
''I don't think there'll be any of that today. Quite a lot of kids are here, school kids.''
Griffin Dillyoung, 20, from Camden, north London, said: ''I hope the message gets across this time.
"'Everyone's quite hyped but I don't think it will turn violent.
''I wanted to be here because if someone can't afford to go to university, it's a complete waste of their talent, and that's not a good thing.''During the trial, which began Oct. 1, prosecutors contended that Blankenship was a bullish micromanager who knew about and meddled in the smallest details of Upper Big Branch.
Prosecutors said Massey's safety programs really were just a facade — never backed by more money to hire additional miners or take more time on safety tasks.
And prosecutors consistently reminded jurors that a conspiracy doesn't have to be spelled out formally between parties.
"The defendant wants you to reward him for being smart enough not to come right out and say, 'I want you to break the law,'" Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Ruby told jurors in closing arguments. "He wants you to let him off the hook because he was careful enough to come right up to the line of putting it explicitly, putting it into words without doing it. Don't do that."
Blankenship's defense made a rare, risky move by not calling a single witness in the case. His attorneys said there wasn't a shred of evidence that Blankenship was involved in a conspiracy.
"We don't convict people in this country on the basis of maybes," lead defense attorney William Taylor said in his closing argument. "We don't convict them of crimes because they are rich or they are rude or they are tough. We require the government to prove more than that a man was in charge of a company when a terrible tragedy occurred."
Prosecutors made their case with Blankenship's own voice, using phone calls he secretly recorded in his Massey office.
In key calls, Blankenship said a scathing internal safety memo should be kept highly confidential, and that it would be a terrible document to show up in legal discovery if there was a mine fatality.
Photo Gallery: West Virginia Coal Country Battles Devastating Decline
Under defense cross-examination, Christopher Blanchard — who ran the subsidiary that oversaw Upper Big Branch — said Blankenship and Massey pushed for safety.
Testifying to prosecutors, Blanchard said he believed Blankenship thought it was less expensive to pay fines than pay for measures to prevent safety violations. He also said most Upper Big Branch violations could have been prevented by hiring more miners or spending more time on safety tasks.
Former Massey safety expert William Ross, who gave a tough review of the company's safety shortcomings, wept while testifying about how thrilled he had been to think that Massey was going to change. He also became emotional while talking about a 2009 meeting with Blankenship, in which he told the executive that Massey couldn't "afford to have a disaster."Getty Images
Matt Flynn’s short tenure in Oakland has come to an end.
Flynn, the quarterback acquired by the Raiders in a trade with the Seahawks this offseason, has been released, according to Jim Trotter of Sports Illustrated.
Although the Raiders traded for Flynn with the expectation that he would be their starter this season, he was beaten out in training camp and the preseason by Terrelle Pryor. When Pryor missed a game this season with a concussion, Flynn played so badly that he was demoted from second to third on the depth chart after Pryor returned. And now Flynn isn’t on the Raiders’ depth chart at all.
For the Raiders, who traded away a fifth-round pick for Flynn, this is an embarrassment that is compounded by the embarrassment of spending a fourth-round draft pick on quarterback Tyler Wilson and then cutting him before the start of the regular season. The good news, however, is that Pryor looks like a keeper at quarterback.
Now the question is where Flynn will end up. After failing to earn a starting job in Seattle or Oakland, there may not be another place where he could compete for a starting job. What might make sense is a return to Green Bay, where Flynn did good work as Aaron Rodgers’ backup.Editor's note: If you'd like an email notice whenever we publish Ross Ramsey's column, click here.
Elders vote. Young adults don’t.
Lots of Texans — of all ages — don’t vote, either.
This particular report on the dismal state of civics comes from Portland State University, where a study of mayoral races — those important but not usually epic meat-and-potatoes exercises in civic responsibility — revealed some ugly facts about voters.
The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.
Texas voters didn’t fare well in this one.
The study — called “Who Votes for Mayor?” — included 50 cities, including Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
The researchers’ summary might line up with general expectations, but it falls a long way short of what one might expect of a healthy democracy: “The results show that in most cities, few people vote in mayoral elections, and those who do vote tend to be older and more affluent than the population at large and less likely to be people of color. This raises important questions about social justice and public policy related to local elections.”
In each city, they looked at turnout in the most recent may
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. The brewing chamber is inserted into the top of the Sight brewer, while the empty carafe is set on the counter below. Once brewing is initiated, what looks like a cone of light extends from beneath the the bottom carafe, which is then elevated upward until it forms a seal with the bottom of the brew chamber. (Tilton describes the valve as akin to the spring-seal valves on traditional coffee makers, only inverted.)
The brewer can then perform the pre-programmed brewing recipe of the barista’s choice, be it a full immersion brew cycle with fully user-defined parameters for preinfusion, infusion, and kick-down, or a straight drip-through cycle. (Smaller batches are also programmable, and the company intends to produce a half-gallon size as well.) Sight relies on time-based volume rather than flow metering. (“We’re using a pump, says Tilton, “so it’s very consistent.”) All agitation comes from the water pulsations themselves, making the Sight a departure from the steam-circulation technology that drove the Steampunk. Once the brew chamber is full and the immersion cycle is complete, a vacuum is applied from beneath to release the valve and coffee drips down into the dispensing carafe—illuminated in heavenly coffee-colored-light all the way.
The carafes are built of thermoplastic with stainless steel parts and an edict to minimize coffee to plastic contact, Tilton tells me. Once brewed and mounted on its stand, a small metal lever near the bottom of the carafe handle becomes a dispenser tap, ready to serve—about 6-8 minutes from start to finish, depending on the brew recipe.
While the Sight is in beta stage here at Expo, Alpha Dominche will begin taking pre-orders this fall, and hopes to be fully launched by early 2017—perhaps dominating the front counter of a coffee bar near you.
Liz Clayton is the associate editor at Sprudge.com, based in Brooklyn. Read more Liz Clayton on Sprudge.As construction continues on MoPac's long overdue toll lanes, CH2M, the Colorado-based engineering company responsible for the project's design and construction – originally scheduled for completion in September 2015 – reported in its March 31 quarterly report that its disruption of Austin's westside commute was "approximately 75% complete." The delays have come with extreme cost overruns at CH2M; the company estimated them at $121.3 million in March, and blamed both the cost and delays on seemingly everything short of a plague of locusts: "survey engineering and design challenges, rework of previously installed work, client-caused delays including limited daytime access to portions of the site, greater than expected subcontractor costs, [and] subcontracting work previously planned to be self-performed."
March wasn't MoPac's first appearance in CH2M's quarterly reports. The project has been something of a bête noire for the contractor since September 2014, causing persistent problems as the company underwent two corporate restructurings in as many years. The project continued to hang around like a bad smell, even as CH2M restructured with the goal of becoming a fundamentally different engineering enterprise. Through the process, management made a habit of explaining that the project's cost issues were contained, and they were ultimately believed. On Wednesday (Aug. 2), the company announced that it would be acquired by Jacobs Engineering Group in a cash and stock deal that values the company at $3.27 billion – a 73% premium to their value in March. The deal is expected to close during the first quarter of Jacobs' 2018 fiscal year.
Retrospectively, the first signs of trouble may have emerged almost immediately.
The MoPac job was commissioned by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority in 2013 to alleviate Austin commuters' own bête noire: traffic on the north-south highway. One toll lane northbound and another going southbound, the CTRMA suggested, would give motorists an opportunity to buy their way out of an ever-crowded moving parking lot between the Downtown exits and Parmer Lane.
CTRMA Executive Director Mike Heiligenstein told the Chronicle that its decision to solicit a design-and-build contract for the project – rather than designing the project itself or commissioning its design, then soliciting bids from contractors for the construction – was done in the interest of time and continuity. With a single contractor designing and building a project, the theory went, the planning and execution phases can be seamless. Aspiring D&B teams were narrowed to three serious bidders in September 2012; all three submitted detailed proposals in January 2013. With visions of an Austin newly bestowed with an affordable way to zip past traffic, the CTRMA selected CH2M's bid that February, and sent out its notice to proceed that April.
CH2M is a sizable government contractor with an impressive work portfolio. The company designs (and builds) power plants, airfields, and many other types of private and government infrastructure. Its proposal for the MoPac job was the work of an established outfit with too much institutional knowledge to get beat out of a bid for a highway toll lane. CH2M's bid featured a flex of the company's design chops, in the form of two "alternative technical concepts" – features that the CTRMA didn't envision in the original request for proposals, but that accomplished the same thing with a design innovation. The CH2M ATCs turned the planned overpass on-ramps to the north- and southbound express lanes (entering and exiting at Cesar Chavez and Fifth Street) into trim, elegant underpasses. The design cut down on sound pollution, preserved sight lines, and was just the type of thing a modern highway ought to have.
Just as notable was that CH2M's bid for the project came in at $137 million – a full $62 million cheaper than the closest competing bid. The CTRMA is bound by Texas statute to weigh the cost of the bid as 70% of its ultimate decision. Heiligenstein says they felt like CH2M "could come back on them legally" had the CTRMA rejected the highly cost-competitive and (supposedly) competent bid. Certain additional work, including the removal of old asbestos insulation in certain areas along the corridor and other potential improvements, was subsequently added to the project, bringing the budget to a cool $204 million.
"Significant Cost Growth"
Retrospectively, the first signs of trouble may have emerged almost immediately, as the real-time logistics of construction on an old railway-corridor-become-highway became obvious. Despite an apparent handle on the task at hand expressed in CH2M's bid, the effective reconstruction of 11 miles of highway – and the associated unearthing of sections of utility resources, both active and outdated – is prone to complication. Rerouting of various duct and utility lines, including the City of Austin's water line, added delays, as the various stakeholders coordinated the permitting and execution. Disagreements between the CTRMA and CH2M seem to have started in January 2014, when the approval of a rerouting of ducting by the Union Pacific Railway took longer than anticipated, and have continued since then at pace. Despite several early, unplanned delays, the CTRMA maintains that the contractor continued to assure them that the lost time could be made up.
In June 2014, CH2M subcontractors began work on the excavation necessary to install the subsurface drainage infrastructure for the southbound portion of the much-anticipated underpasses, and kicked off what appears to be the main source of delays – and, more importantly, the main source of conflict between the contractor and the CTRMA. Documents submitted as part of a dispute resolution process detail a litany of repeated equipment failures and repairs, and associated overtime that finally achieved the requisite goal of boring through rock to provide the necessary drainage for the underpasses in March 2015, six months later than was budgeted for. Boring work on the northbound drainage system began in November 2014, and finally finished the following July – allowing for the project to finally begin the actual excavation of the underpasses, right around the time the entire project was supposed to have been completed.
CH2M President and CEO Jacqueline Hinman said the company was “delighted” about the merger.
In September 2014, CH2M began telling its shareholders that its contribution to Austin's congestion was becoming rather costly. It would seem that geotechnical investigations didn't prepare them for the hardness of the Edwards limestone unit on the particular path of the drainage systems. The company took a $38.7 million charge because of "significant cost growth" associated with the project. In that same quarter in 2014, CH2M began the first of its corporate restructurings, calling for a total workforce reduction of 1,200 people and "a more disciplined approach to risk mitigation and project delivery."
Meanwhile, back on MoPac, crews were still trying to figure out how to effectively get through the hard rock of the Edwards limestone unit. After they eventually did so, in July 2015 CH2M tried unsuccessfully to recover the cost overruns through the fixed price contract's dispute resolution process, arguing that the density and unworkability of the rock was an unforeseen circumstance – a "differing site condition" for which the contract provided extensions and cost entitlements if encountered. CH2M's bid for the MoPac project proclaims that initial investigations found that the rock was "soft and rippable," and its arguments to the dispute resolution board leaned on the fact that neither its own drilling nor the holes provided by the CTRMA found rock as hard as what was encountered. The CTRMA countered, successfully, that the Edwards limestone unit is well-known to be composed of varying densities, and that CH2M ought to have known that – and certainly ought to have made the necessary adjustments sooner. By September 2015, the 2014 restructuring had cost the company $96.2 million, and it was taking another $53.6 million operations charge for "additional cost growth" on MoPac.
Re(con)structuring
MoPac certainly hasn't been the only costly project afoot at CH2M, and it isn't even the only fixed-price contract that has given the company any headache. But its central place in the ongoing financial firefighting at the company is undeniable, and it became a perennial source of cost overruns that's frequently cited in company disclosures as an example of the type of business that CH2M was restructuring to avoid. The company executed an unprecedented sale of preferred stock to New York-based private equity firm Apollo Global Management in June 2015, a $300 million deal that included an agreement to require the explicit approval of the preferred equity holders before the company enters into "certain firm, fixed-price or lump-sum design-build or EPC contracts."
The Apollo deal also contained clauses that effectively gave the fund the ability to force a sale or IPO of CH2M should such an event not take a natural course in the first five years following the financing. The distinctly fund-friendly deal pays Apollo a 5% annual in-kind dividend, and lets Apollo maintain a 20% interest in the contractor through any future offerings.
Government contractors are cash intensive businesses and, as such, operate with revolving credit loans. The terms under which CH2M borrows money from a consortium of banks (including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan) was reworked in May 2016, and reported in their September 2016 quarterly report. Company press releases detailing the change in credit terms noted: "Factors in 2016 that negatively affected the company's borrowing capacity included the charges the company incurred for increased estimates in costs to complete two design-build, fixed-priced contracts."
The amended agreement appears to betray lenders' concern over the never-ending project, specifically prohibiting CH2M from incurring any more than $50 million in costs attributed to MoPac after June 24, 2016, for the purpose of calculating their adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) in the context of the agreement. Despite the amount being capped in its loan agreement, the company warned shareholders in its March 2017 quarterly report that the $121.3 million it's already charged against the project may not be the end of it, and spread the blame around in the process.
"While management believes that it has recorded an appropriate provision to complete this project, we may incur additional costs and losses … not previously included in our total estimated loss," read the report. "These possible cost increases include extensions of the schedule to complete the job, lower than expected productivity levels, and performance issues with our subcontractors." The agreement also caps the paper cost of a second restructuring plan at the $70 million that's estimated.
This second restructuring began two years after the first restructuring, and three years after CH2M submitted its bid to design and build MoPac's toll lanes. It promised to more fully align global operations with a "client-centric" strategy through workforce reductions and facilities consolidations. Accordingly, the company saw "involuntary turnover" of 3,247 employees in 2016. Joe Schroeder, the lead project manager listed on the MoPac bid, is no longer with CH2M. The circumstances under which he left the company are unknown. CH2M declined to answer questions for this story. In announcing the sale on Wednesday, CH2M chairman and CEO Jacqueline Hinman said the company was "delighted" about the merger. "Since late 2014, we've been transparent about our plans to pursue an ownership transition, providing sustained access to capital for growth," she said.
The Work Continues
Work on the project continues to alter traffic patterns on the crowded highway. Meanwhile, reports from the Maintenance of Traffic (MOT) indicate that measures taken to provide working crews with access to the areas they need to work with appear to have been as contentious among the people working on the highway as with those driving on it.
The CTRMA told the Chronicle that CH2M felt that lost time could be made up through an aggressive MOT plan that moved traffic off the main highway and onto side streets as crews undertook bridge widening at Enfield Road; the CTRMA would not approve such a plan. The shifting of lanes as crews moved their work from lane to lane led to serious complaints about previous road markings remaining visible and the active lanes being unclear. Re-masking and re-striping was undertaken to make the active lanes more obvious.
Despite a clear disdain for the project, and cost overruns approaching the original bid price, CH2M crews continue to soldier along with paving and widening the toll lanes.
CH2M continued to express its intention to recover the cost overruns, or at least a portion of them, from the CTRMA. The CTRMA has not moved off of its position that the delays were caused by the contractor, and that budget overruns on the fixed price toll lane that never ends will remain on the contractor's balance sheet. The CTRMA has largely backed off on issuing hard completion dates for the project, and has yet to comment on whether or not it plans to attempt any sort of legal action for non-performance on the albatross of an ongoing project that was originally scheduled for completion two Septembers ago. (Jacobs declined to comment Wednesday as to whether the merger could impact progress on the project.)
The latest progress update, given at a public meeting on May 31, announced that the CTRMA would be hiring a new contractor to complete some finishing work, including additional sound walls – a natural extension of an apparent breakdown in relations between the contractor and the CTRMA. The progress report announced that the final paving of the underpass exchanges on the Downtown access "should" be done in June. In a break with tradition, the June 28 progress update did in fact show substantial paving having been completed on those underpasses. Gingerly, CTRMA Deputy Executive Director Jeff Dailey projected that the MoPac toll lanes would be open to drivers by September.A cyclist and his canine companion on the Walmer Street bridge in Abbotsford. But his colour choice – floor-to-ceiling black to match his black road bike – is unlikely to garner credits from road safety organisations. VicRoads advises cyclists to "wear a bright top day and night" and in 2014 mandated learner motorcyclists wear an approved high-visibility vest or jacket. In 2013 New Zealand coroner Ian Smith went further, saying high-visibility clothing for cyclists was a "no-brainer" and should be compulsory. Meanwhile, the City of Melbourne Bicycle Plan, released in March, puts a target of zero fatalities and serious injury crashes by 2020 front and centre.
A cyclist behaving badly on Royal Parade in Melbourne's north. Credit:Jason South "I actually did buy a bright yellow fluoro jersey and every time I put it on I felt like I lit up. It just didn't feel right," says Spurling. So, does Spurling's sombre cycling chic put him at risk of ending up, literally, a fashion tragic? Rain and damaging winds are expected to hit the city about 6.30pm. Credit:Pat Scala Garry Brennan, senior policy advisor at Bicycle Network, is not so sure.
"Crash evidence often indicates the cyclist was not observed by the driver and the conclusion is that the cyclist was difficult to see. We challenge that conclusion and that it can be solved by dressing the cyclist up in bright clothing," says Brennan. Trading parking and speed for safety, a cyclist rides on Sydney Road, Coburg. Credit:Jason South It seems baffling that a peak cycling advocacy body could question the value of high-vis clothing, but evidence is gathering behind it. Dr Sandar Tin Tin, research fellow in the faculty of medical and health sciences at the University of Auckland, recently finished a six-year PhD study of cyclist visibility. Braving the traffic in Lonsdale Street in Melbourne's CBD. Credit:Eddie Jim
"Being visible is different from being noticed. Visibility is about standing out from the background and cyclists can enhance that, especially in poor weather or low lighting conditions, by wearing high-visibility materials," says Tin Tin. "But being noticed is different because it depends on drivers' attention to and expectation of the cyclists," she says. This distinction is key to a Transport for London commercial, viewed more than 22 million times on YouTube, that asks viewers to count how many passes a basketball team makes. SPOILER ALERT
Number nerds will be gratified to learn the answer is 13 but they're missing the point, which is actually the bear that moonwalks through the game mid-action. Yes, the bear. Half of the viewers don't spot the bear. "It's easy to miss something you're not looking for. Look out for cyclists," exhorts the ad, which draws heavily on a 1999 experiment by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris that features an "invisible" chest-thumping gorilla. The gorilla has become something of a fixture in the literature on so-called "inattentional blindness" and has even duped experts. In 2013 researchers at the Harvard Visual Attention Lab craftily inserted a three centimetre by five centimetre gorilla image into a CT scan and asked radiologists to examine the scan for lung nodules.
Awkwardly, 83 per cent of the doctors didn't notice the gorilla even though eye-tracking software proved more than half of them were looking straight at it. The gorilla image is in the top right of the CT scan. Eye-tracking software (right) indicated that more than half the doctors looked directly at it. What is going on? Dr Steven Most, senior lecturer and ARC future fellow at the UNSW School of Psychology, has impeccable credentials when it comes to ersatz primates. Most did his PhD under Simons at Harvard, was a basketballer in the original experiment and actually procured the gorilla suit.
"Attention and expectations seem to play a more profound role in shaping what we become aware of than the salience of a stimulus," says Most. In one experiment Most had people follow black or white shapes that bounced around a computer display until, mid-experiment, a red cross makes an appearance and coolly crosses the screen. "It's the only red thing in the display, it's like the visual equivalent of an alarm bell. And yet a third of people didn't see it," says Most. If you're focused on black or white squares and circles an unscripted red cross can effectively become invisible. On the road, sheer weight of numbers means drivers expect to see cars and trucks and so their attention dutifully shifts towards them. Solitary bicycles, blazing fluoro or no, are like Most's red cross; they simply can't count on being noticed.
Tin Tin's findings tally eerily well with the psychology. She graded the visibility of riders in New Zealand's Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge based on the use of fluoro, lights, reflective materials and the main colour of their jersey, helmet and bike frame. Over a several-year follow-up 162 riders had crashes with vehicles, but their reported visibility didn't predict the risk of a collision. "We concluded that visibility aids are not very effective in the New Zealand transport environment," says Tin Tin. What did seem to matter was the proportion of bikes to cars in the traffic mix.
"We analysed cycling risk across New Zealand. Auckland had the highest level of car use and the lowest level of cycling. It also had the highest risk of cycling injuries," says Tin Tin. The finding supports the idea that for cyclists there is "risk in scarcity"; as bicycle numbers dwindle motorists are less likely to expect them, less likely to notice them, and more likely to collide with them. That seems to hold even for riders in dazzling fluoro (or, for that matter, sporting a gorilla suit emblazoned with a red cross). And the fact that motorists' attention is a finite resource just adds volatility to the mix. An Irish study published in May had people in a life-size Volkswagen Polo driving simulator negotiate a road with cars parked on either side.
When the gap between the parked cars was easily wide enough to get through 22 of the 41 drivers noticed an unexpected pedestrian in a red blouse. But when drivers had to contend with a gap barely wide enough for the VW only seven noticed the pedestrian. The study fuels concern that increasingly complex and cluttered roads tax the attention of drivers and put unexpected cyclists at even greater risk. A popular policy response is simply to tell drivers to look out for cyclists Last year the Amy Gillett Foundation and the NSW government launched the It's a two way street campaign that tells motorists, "Just as you expect to see other vehicles on the road, expect to see people riding bikes too".
But Chabris and Simons are downbeat on this kind of public service entreaty in their bestselling book The Invisible Gorilla. They concede drivers who see a sign "look for motorcycles" might be more likely to notice motorcycles for a short time. But after a few minutes of not seeing any motorcycles the drivers' "visual expectations will reset, leading them to again expect what they see most commonly – cars", they write. Brennan's favoured solution seems to follow logically; he wants to combat risk in scarcity with safety in numbers. "In Copenhagen on a morning commute you wouldn't see one in a thousand bikes in high-vis... in Copenhagen bikes are completely normalised, people expect to see them," says Brennan.
In Copenhagen 41 per cent of people cycle to work or school yet, at 1.5 deaths per 100 million kilometres, Denmark's cycling fatality rate is well below that of countries where fewer people ride, such as the UK and US. And a May report by the Norwegian Centre for Transport Research found that as cyclists flock to Oslo streets in spring their risk of collision drops because drivers expect to see them, also supporting safety in numbers. Melbourne's new Bicycle Plan pledges to get more people cycling through "safe infrastructure" and, "improved facilities and route connectivity", but the white charger of technology could well get here first. The June report from Google's self-driving car project showcased night footage of the vehicle – which has 360 degree "vision" – confronted with a pedestrian and an oncoming bicycle when, suddenly, a miscreant cyclist veers across its path. The autonomous vehicle deftly misses all three (and later dodges a wheelchair-bound woman chasing a duck with a broom, several frog-hopping pedestrians, and a semi-naked man).
Indeed, Volvo has offered an optional cyclist detection system with full auto brake since 2013. Such technology may well be a boon for Spurling who remains unmoved by brights even as they gain a toehold in the cycling fashion catalogue: "It's more a mindset for me. I've just always worn black". Twitter @pbieglerIn response to a new survey suggesting that P2P file-swapping might not be harming music sales, music's international trade group IFPI today put out a statement. "The net effect of illegal file-sharing in the UK and elsewhere has been to reduce legitimate sales," IFPI asserts. "This is why spending on recorded music has fallen every year since illegal file-sharing began to become widespread."
In other words, P2P file-sharing is the main cause of the revenue decline and the (very real) job losses in the recorded music business. It's a strong assertion, but it's not necessarily accepted outside the music industry. And we're not talking about the usual copyrighters, or groups like EFF, or Pirate Party backers; complaints about P2P have failed to convince even people like the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding.
The industry responded not with a vigorous new ideas, but with strong-arm tactics and threats. It served fans not with digital innovation but lawsuits—more than 20,000 in the span of four years, in an attempt to intimidate consumers away from file sharing.
Back in June 2009, Reding made a speech in which she put equal blame for the problem on Big Content, so terrified of piracy and lack of control that many companies refuse to give customers what they want.
"It is necessary to penalise those who are breaking the law," she said, "but are there really enough attractive and consumer-friendly legal offers on the market? Does our present legal system for Intellectual Property Rights really live up to the expectations of the Internet generation? Have we considered all alternative options to repression? Have we really looked at the issue through the eyes of a 16 year old? Or only from the perspective of law professors who grew up in the Gutenberg Age? In my view, growing Internet piracy is a vote of no-confidence in existing business models and legal solutions. It should be a wake-up call for policy-makers."
Innovation stagnation
"A vote of no-confidence in existing business models." It's a common criticism, and one advanced by all sorts of people who aren't out to destroy copyright or sink major music labels.
Take the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group in the UK Parliament, which solicited mountains of comments from groups on all sides of the issue, and concluded in its final report (PDF) this fall that "much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available."
Plenty of musicians now agree. Greg Kot, a Chicago journalist and the host of NPR's "Sound Opinions" radio show, collected a wide range of such sentiments for his recent book Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.
Kot quotes Peter Jenner, the first manager of 60s psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd, saying, "The flagrant spread of 'Internet piracy' in developed countries is a reflection of the failure of the industry as a whole to develop an appropriate copyright responds to the distribution and remuneration options made possible by the new technologies."
Kot's own take on what happened to the music labels is that they took the wrong approach to file-sharing. "The industry responded not with a vigorous new ideas, but with strong-arm tactics and threats," he writes. "It served fans not with digital innovation but lawsuits—more than 20,000 in the span of four years, in an attempt to intimidate consumers away from file sharing."
Even music's top executives now recognize the dire lack of innovation in their businesses. Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner, said in 2007, "We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection, and file sharing was exploding. And of course, we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inversely went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find. And as a result, of course, consumers won."
Steve Knopper, in his excellent book Appetite for Self-destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, quotes Mac McCaughan, founder of Merge Records (early home to bands like Arcade Fire).
"I've always felt like major labels claiming downloading for their declining sales is just somewhat wishful thinking," he said. "It's like a scapegoat—they wish it was that and not 'they've been putting out terrible records for a long time' People who are our hardcore fans like music and want to support the artists and labels that put out records they like. We're all in the music business, but it's like we're two different businesses."
The single resurgent?
Stealing music is not killing music. When I talk to people in the music business, most of them will admit that the problem is they're selling songs and not albums.
But if P2P isn't the main driver of lost revenue, where's that revenue going? After all, major label music income is way down, and up to 50,000 people may have been laid off during this decade.
Knopper offers a simple explanation: labels used the CD era to basically eliminate the single and push the album. In addition, the new-at-the-time digital format encouraged many consumers to re-purchase albums that they had previously owned only in analog.
When the digital download era arrived, labels had grown fat on this business model and were not prepared to nurture "album bands." Instead, the relentless obsession on creating "hits" in order to move albums, which worked so well in the CD era, proved disastrous in the age of iTunes. Individual digital downloads brought the single back to life in a big way, and moving a 99� single couldn't come close to generating the same profit as a $14 CD, even with the costs of packaging eliminated.
And as for repurchasing albums, CDs were already digital, and typically featured better sound than that available through compressed downloads online.
Knopper quotes Robert Pittman, the cofounder of MTV. "Stealing music is not killing music," said Pittman. "When I talk to people in the music business, most of them will admit that the problem is they're selling songs and not albums. I mean, you do the math."
Copyright lawyers like William Patry agree. In his new book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, Patry takes up the theme: "The problems in the Copyright Wars are not caused by technologies or by consumers acting badly, and they cannot therefore be solved by laws, and certainly not by more draconian laws. The problems—such as the decline in sales of CDs and DVDs—are the result of the copyright industries' many and considerable failures to focus on satisfying consumers' desires as opposed to stifling those desires out of a woefully misguided view that copyright equals control and that control equals profits."
None of this is to say that file-sharing has no effect on music sales; while some studies have seen a positive impact due to greater music exposure, other studies suggest that revenue (at least for music labels) declines. But it seems unlikely to be the music industry's chief problem, as numerous innovative (and profitable) bands have shown in the last few years.Created for a railroad magnate in the 1860s, the building had only housed three families prior to the Costellos: the Montgomerys, the Heroes and the Reynoirs, the youngest generation of whom had left their mark in the attic by scrawling Bob Dylan lyrics all over the walls. During their first year there, people would constantly come up to the Costellos to reminisce about first kisses on their porch or late nights in their parlor, an airy room with 14-feet walls painted in creamy shades that evoke meringue and mascarpone. An early interaction with their next-door neighbor started with an apology, Paul remembers: “She said, ‘I’m sorry about your garage. I had to punch out the window when I saw that my kid was smoking pot in there. That was my fault. But welcome to the neighborhood!’”
While the Costello family was busy transforming the house, the house was subtly transforming them. The fancy fashion parties of New York society — with their preening crowds and eager photographers — had gotten tedious; here, says Sara, things are much more relaxed: “We stepped into the previous owners’ cool vibe, and imagined it for ourselves.” Nowadays, their social life is as textured as the city itself, with a group of friends that includes the production designer James Chinlund, the musician Solange Knowles and the actress Reese Witherspoon, who has looked at real estate in the area. Ben Jaffe, a bassist and tuba player for Preservation Hall Jazz Band, regularly invites them to all-night parties in the French Quarter. (“We just dance our asses off,” says Paul.) They’ve taken a special liking to Grover Mouton, a gray-haired professor of architecture at Tulane University who has been integral in helping them build a community here. Stately, but with the wicked humor of a John Kennedy Toole character, he is gregarious and gossipy, and just as comfortable discussing seedy massage parlors as local nobility. “The other thing I love here is blending with all age groups,” Sara says. “We hang out with a lot of older people here. You don’t hang out with a lot of 60-year-olds in New York — at least I didn’t.” If their lives feel chaotic, it’s a calm type of chaos — filled with unexpected guests and impromptu get-togethers.
On this particular afternoon in June, Sara is showing me around the house in a flowy white dress and sandals, while Paul tends to his immaculate garden, a luxury the California native missed terribly during the 20 years he spent in New York. Their oldest, 14-year-old Harrison, is in the library eating pizza out of a Domino’s takeout box. Kiki, 11, is outside perfecting the choreography of a hip-hop-inflected swimming routine with one of her classmates. Ruffy, 4, is running naked through the hallways, pursued by the children’s babysitter, while their nine chickens — all named Donut — erupt every now and then into a cacophony of clucks from a coop just outside the house. Everywhere, among the crystal chandeliers and trellised windows, there are signs that this home is meant for living: The dining table is actually a Ping-Pong table, crutches and other storage-room miscellany have been stuffed into a shower on the main floor and piles of magazines and books are stacked on shelves, on counters, on tabletops. The smell of fresh banana bread wafts from the kitchen.
Outside, the wind has picked up. “We’re getting into hurricane season,” says Sara, smiling. “Living here, there’s a real sense that you’re snagged in a time warp. We’re still on deadlines and answering emails, but it’s just slower in a beautiful way. And when the electricity blinks on and off all summer, it’s the best thing in the world.” She pours two glasses of lemonade, and we head out to the front porch to watch the clouds roll in.In the latest instance of decades of blatant racially motivated voter disenfranchisement in South Dakota, Republican officials at the state and county level have begun the process of limiting Native American access to the ballot. Shannon County, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, faces the prospect of no early voting access this fall. Worse still, there remains the very real possibility of no Election Day voting at all in Shannon County.
There is little ambiguity to what has transpired in South Dakota in the last month. According to the 2000 Census, Shannon County is 94.2% Native American. Lying entirely on reservation land, Shannon County is the second poorest county in the United States. In the 2004 and 2008 elections, Shannon County has been the highest Democratic performing county in the country. In 2008, Barack Obama received 88.6% of the vote in Shannon County. Because of the rural nature of the county, it has traditionally seen much higher levels of absentee and early voting than the South Dakota averages.
Because Shannon County is one of two unorganized counties in South Dakota, elections have been administered by neighboring Fall River County. This has been standard procedure for over thirty years. Frustrated and seeing a political opportunity, however, Republican officials at the state and county level decided to act. In August, county officials in Fall River County made it clear they would resign if asked to administer the same early voting opportunities in Shannon County that every other county receives. When they were formally asked to do so on September 3, 2010, a number of county officials subsequently resigned, leaving no one to run the election in Shannon County.
The next Thursday, September 9, Republican Secretary of State Chris Nelson met with officials from both Shannon and Fall River Counties. As reported by the Rapid City Journal, Nelson arbitrarily declared that Shannon County had only until the next Monday, September 13, to resolve the situation. In addition to only giving Shannon County two business days to respond, Nelson repeatedly suggested that there was nothing that the state could do to help. Brazenly, Nelson told those gathered at the meeting, “You all have a huge challenge on your hands.” Nelson, the chief elections officer in the state and a former Republican candidate for Congress, is prepared to sit idly by and watch an entire county be disenfranchised.
As of now, there is no plan in place for how any elections are to take place in Shannon County, South Dakota. Voting rights groups believe the turnout for the 2010 cycle in Shannon County could be as high as 5,000 votes, a sizeable percentage of the state vote in South Dakota. Because many of those votes will be for Democrats, South Dakota Republicans are willing to take on lengthy legal fights to protect [the decision], because they know it can’t be resolved before election day.
None of this is new. For the past several years, South Dakota has openly flouted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, considering fair and equal access to the ballot an unnecessary hassle that the state need not worry about. This has led to numerous lawsuits, all of which have been lost by the state. The problem is that by the time the court resolves the issues, the damage has been done.
You may remember that two years agoreaders helped South Dakota candidate Kevin Killer raise enough
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attacks and threats that came after her collective protest against Ramadan rules prompted her to leave Morocco again for France where she began to report for Charlie Hebdo, bringing her memories of having “vomited up compulsory religious classes” in a country where “being Muslim is not a choice” unless you’re Jewish or Christian.
Extreme personality cult
So-called Islamic fascism, seen in its most extreme form in groups like ISIS, shares characteristics in common with all extreme-right fascisms, El Rhazoui argues, because it combines an intense personality cult around Mohammed as the incarnation of the nation. It also employs widespread systems of suspicion and denunciation, exemplified by “sartorial branding” — for example Burkinis or niqabs — that allow for immediate identification and targeting of non-adherents. There are also familiar fascist tropes of repressive sexism against women and homosexuals, armed militias, adoption of a flag, and a strategy that confers the benign status of ‘Muslim women’ to heavily veiled adherents in the West, and characterizes them, disingenuously, as victimized objects of exclusion.
“The literary corpus of Islam is so stuffed with damning accounts it would be difficult to cleanse it without altering the fundamentals of dogma,” El Rhazoui writes.
“If the terrorists of Daesh [ISIS] behead those they judge to be miscreants, that is because they draw on their legislation in the texts like the 8th surah of the Koran, al-Anfal, verse 12: “Remember what Your Lord revealed to the angels : I am with you, so support those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. You can strike them above the neck and strike off every fingertip”.
‘You can be Arab, Muslim and a free thinker’
Drawing on her personal experience and scholarly knowledge of Islam’s core Arabic texts, the politics of the post-Arab Spring Middle East, and the wellspring of reformism and dissidence embraced within the multi-faceted Islamic civilization, El Rhazoui’s book is an impassioned response to all the extremists who want to see her and her fellow opponents of politico-religious repression dead.
The greatest racism is, El Rhazoui argues, the racism of the Islamist ideology that forbids marriage with people who are not Muslims, and that rejects women. “That is the definition of racism and fascism and we must say it,” the writer adds.
“Today Islam in the world only has a role as a civilization. A civilization is defined by many things and not uniquely by religion — but also by its geographical heritage, its artistic, culinary and sartorial traditions and by literature.
“The Muslim religion has its place in the modern world if it submits itself fully to the laws that rule humanity today: universal principles of equality between men and women, sexual and individual freedom, and equality for all, no matter your creed or religion. Until Islam has admitted this and accepted that the freedom of men and women is superior to it, Islam will not be acceptable.”
‘Islamophobia whiners’
Destroy Islamic Fascism aims to puncture the hypocrisy and faux-intellectual “fakery” (the author’s word) of “Islamophobia whiners” and other “collaborationists” from across the political spectrum — particularly the hard left, “Crypto-Islamist” anti-racists on a quest for a new “Muslim proletariat,” certain feminists, cultural relativists and so-called moderate Imams. All these “willing accomplices” do is distort the noble cause of fighting racism to give undeserved legitimacy to an ideology that at its most extreme results in the horrors of Islamic State, the author says, but also makes the lives of millions of Muslims living in Islamic countries downright miserable.
“What do these Islamophobia whiners say to the millions of individuals who live in Islamic theocracies and dream of liberty?” El Rhazoui concludes in her book. “Who speaks about the nightmare of a woman who decides to cross the streets of Algiers, Casablanca or Cairo in a skirt?… those who would like to drink a glass of alcohol in countries where you have to flout the law to do it? … about homosexuals, pariahs of Muslim societies, who often only have the choice of death, prison or exile? Who speaks about this youth born Muslim but dreaming of a normal life, these teens attacked for having had a romance?”
The summer furore over Burkini bans in France agitated the author who deplored the cynical rush of Islamists and their Western sympathizers in the media, academia and politics to celebrate the controversial swimsuit as a form of “liberation” and simultaneously a banal piece of cloth preferred by “Muslim women,” even though most never wear it.
“Western media, in an intolerable readiness to oblige, have defended the Burkini as a ‘freedom’ and a legitimate cultural expression of a part of humanity,” she said, but pointed out that “in Muslim countries the beaches are not filling up with Burkinis, but they are emptying themselves of women. From one year to another, they are disappearing from the public space, because the veil has never been anything except an extension of the walls of their harem to the exterior.”
As for mainstream or moderate Muslim clerics, El Rhazoui tells Women in the World that during the Burkini debate in France not one Imam stood up and said “Hey, wait a minute, you can be Muslim and wear a [regular] bathing suit.”
History will judge those who have monopolized the debate, given a platform to Islamist fundamentalism and even given it a guarantee of acceptability, the author of Destroy Islamic Fascism told Women in the World. “This is just betrayal and it is collaboration with one of the worst forms of fascism that exists today,” she said.
According to the writer, who is repeatedly accused of bigotry, the “Islamophobia ruse” is driven by “great ignorance” and a lack of understanding of the culture of Islam and what Islam with a big ‘I’ is — “they ignore its complexity and that there have always been opposition currents and progressive and liberal pushes from within.”
“The accomplices don’t recognize the struggles playing out today in Arab countries will inevitably be won by the democrats and free people. No fascism or totalitarianism has ever been able to win in the long haul of history. The people who are the allies and collaborators of this totalitarianism today will be judged by history and seen as accomplices to this criminal ideology to which they have given a veneer of respectability.”
For El Rhazoui the true racism emerges from a condescending approach to Islamic culture that decrees an Islamic woman in a burqa is congenitally not free and that her “race” is the burqa. “We present the fundamentalists as being a race and this only shows the contempt we have for this culture. It is absolutely intolerable,” she says.
Survivor syndrome
Women in the World asked El Rhazoui how she manages to keep up her spirits, and continue her struggle for the freedom to dissent after everything that has happened since January 2015.
“It is a question people often ask me,” she said with a perceptible tremor in her voice. “But when you live through these moments in which you are confronted by a reality as cruel and simple as life and death, you realize can put many things in perspective.
“Straight after the attacks, like many of my colleagues I felt guilty for having stayed alive. I said to myself ‘Those who are dead are dead for all our work, and some are dead when it wasn’t even their work. But it was my work because I am a journalist and I am still here.’ And then you understand this is all part of survivor syndrome, which is normal when you survive a massacre like that.
“As you start to heal you say, ‘I am lucky to be alive and if I am still here perhaps that is because I still have something to do.’ I understood long before the attack on Charlie, when I engaged in a struggle for individual liberties and democracy in Morocco, that when you fight against totalitarianism, whether it is political or religious, you should never give your enemies the pleasure of stopping living. We fight so that everyone can have a free and happy life and we must continue to live this same life.
Still a day doesn’t go past when she doesn’t think of her old colleague Charb and their many heated discussions.
“He was someone who was extremely lucid and for whom the concepts were clear. He was a true humanist who didn’t fear being accused of being racist because for him it was absurd.”
El Rhazoui’s deconstruction of Islam is also a defense of Muslims, she reasoned, as “salvation will come when we stop aligning the identity of an entire community with the most fundamentalist people who pretend to represent it.”
“We have to extend a hand to all these Muslims who are free people, who have questioned their heritage, and who are fighters for liberty, battling for the same values as us but in a context controlled by Islamists,” she says….Joshua Wong: 'We had no clear goals' in Hong Kong protests
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Juliana Liu speaks to Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong
Wherever Joshua Wong goes in Hong Kong, the teenage political activist is instantly recognised.
In the space of just half an hour in the Admiralty district, two young professionals and a group of middle-aged women greet him warmly, asking to pose for photos with him on their mobile phones.
But when I ask for permission to snap them jointly for a news story, some well-wishers decline, saying they do not wish to be publicly identified with the democracy campaigner, fearing it might affect their jobs.
Mr Wong, 18, just smiles and poses. He is not surprised.
The expression of private but not public support may help explain why last year's Umbrella protest movement, while unprecedented in scope and length, did not ultimately succeed in gaining greater voting rights for Hong Kong citizens.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Wong leads the high-profile Scholarism student activist group
"First, we did not have any clear goal or roadmap or route for democracy. We did not deliver the message to the general Hong Kong public," says the university student, over lunch.
"Secondly, not enough people were willing to pay the price by protesting. We did not have enough bargaining power with the Chinese authorities.
"Say, for example, during the Umbrella Movement, if two million Hong Kong people had occupied the streets, along with labour strikes, and if this had continued for more than two months, we would have had enough bargaining power."
Global icon
Tens of thousands of people took part in the 79-day movement, which ended in mid-December when the authorities dismantled the main occupation sites in the Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok districts.
Mr Wong, already well-known in Hong Kong for successfully campaigning against the introduction of patriotic education in local schools, emerged as a global democracy icon.
In fact, the movement was unexpectedly sparked when he and other young activists scaled a high fence surrounding the forecourt of the central government office on 26 September.
Footage of the police arresting protesters, including Mr Wong, drew public anger and prompted pro-democracy supporters to rally.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The initial arrests of about 60 protesters including Mr Wong on 26 September sparked subsequent protests the next day
When the authorities cracked down on the growing crowd with tear gas, the public grew even more infuriated and took to the streets in one of the biggest mass protests Hong Kong had ever seen.
"My decision to climb over the barrier was the best decision I made in the whole of my life," he says, before sheepishly conceding that getting together with his girlfriend, Tiffany Chin, was actually his best call.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Images of tear gas fired on protesters triggered widespread anger in Hong Kong and led tens of thousands to take to the streets
Deported, attacked
He says he has not been changed by the experience. His priority now is to finish his studies - he is studying politics and public administration at a local university - and plans on getting a job after graduation, though he isn't sure what kind yet.
But in May, he was deported from Malaysia, after being invited there by local activists to talk about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
In June, he and Ms Chin were beaten by an unknown man on the street after a movie date.
"Yes, I admit that I'm afraid," she wrote in a piece for a current affairs website after the attack. "Starting today, I feel a bit frightened every time my eyes meet someone else's on the street. This fear is unbearable, but I hope it won't last long."
Image caption Mr Wong keeps in constant contact with members of his student activist group
And in July, Mr Wong, along with other activists, were charged with obstructing police during a protest last year.
He denies having done anything wrong, but admits he faces jail time.
"In principle, I don't mind taking responsibility. I don't mind going to prison," he says. "But I don't know what I would do with no mobile phone and no internet. I think it would be utterly unbearable."
During the hours we spend together, he is constantly glued to his smartphone, tapping out messages on a chat group with more than 100 members of Scholarism, the protest group that he chairs.
They are hotly debating the future of democracy in Hong Kong in an opinion piece to be published by a local newspaper.
Road map
In June, lawmakers in the Hong Kong Legislative Council voted against a controversial proposal that would have let Hong Kong voters elect their chief executive - but only from a pool of candidates vetted by a pro-Beijing committee.
The proposal was rejected, which means that, in 2017, the city's top leader will again be chosen by a small committee largely loyal to the Communist Party.
But Mr Wong is looking far ahead. He wants to rectify the mistake of not presenting a viable plan to the public.
He says that by 2030, the democracy movement needs to present a clear roadmap spelling out how it can achieve a legally binding referendum on the city's future.
"Let every Hong Kong citizen vote to support a new Basic Law or constitution in Hong Kong. That, I think, is the minimum requirement," he says.
Image caption Mr Wong believes entering the forecourt of the central government offices on 26 September was one of his best decisions
By 2047, the "one country, two systems" formula is due to end, and the de facto border between the two sides is meant to disappear.
When asked whether he is planning another civil disobedience movement, Mr Wong says not for a few years.
"The power that we can mobilise on the street has already reached its maximum during the Umbrella Movement," he says.
"Maybe in 10 years, we'll be able to mobilise something much larger. But within these three to four years, we need to take a rest."We’ve all been there: You want to play Xbox One games while your family sleeps soundly just down the hall or your roommates study for their finals. That’s why we’re so excited to announce the Xbox One Stereo Headset, which will allow fans to immerse themselves in their games and play at whatever volume they’d like.
Releasing across Xbox One markets worldwide in early March, the Stereo Headset will offer a premium audio experience for both game and chat audio. Offering a full-range (20Hz – 20kHz) audio spectrum to ensure fans can enjoy the deepest bass and the clearest high frequencies, the Stereo Headset will also feature a unidirectional microphone for clear voice capture and over-the-ear speakers to keep you comfortable during long sessions with your Xbox One. The Xbox One Stereo Headset will ship with a detachable Stereo Headset Adapter that puts all of the audio controls right at your fingertips. You can balance the game and chat audio levels to hear just what you want, control the master volume, and mute the microphone each with the touch of a button.
For our fans that already have a set of stereo gaming headphones they can’t live without, we’re happy to reveal that the Stereo Headset Adapter will also ship separately worldwide in early March. Volume controls on the adapter let you adjust chat volume levels and mute your headset’s microphone without taking your hands off the controller. Simply plug the adapter into your controller and connect your compatible stereo headset to enable fantastic chat audio – thanks to integration with Skype’s audio codec. Add in-game audio by connecting your headset to the back of the Xbox One or to your TV.*
The Xbox One Stereo Headset will retail for $79.99 MSRP and the Stereo Headset Adapter will be available for $24.99 MSRP.
Update Feb. 11 at 3:20 p.m. PT: We realize you might have some questions, so we hope this helps provide some clarification:
Legacy gaming headsets receive game audio from the back of the console from the S/PDIF port, and receive chat audio by connecting the 2.5 mm chat cable to the adapter.
New Xbox One Stereo Headsets receive chat and stereo directly from the adapter. There is no need to connect anything to the console.
Any 3.5 mm stereo headset (that uses the CTIA plug standard) can receive stereo game audio by plugging into the adapter.
*For use with stereo headsets with 3.5mm audio jack, or Xbox 360 gaming headsets with 2.5mm chat cable. Game audio available in stereo headsets by connecting directly to Xbox One via optical cable or TV via RCA cables (cables not included). Additional requirements may apply for full functionality, see xbox.com/xboxone/compatibleheadsets. Voice chat requires Xbox Live; in-game requires Xbox Live Gold (sold separately).Features Everything you need to achieve your fitness goals, all in one place.
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Smart Nutrition Your calorie and macronutrient requirements will automatically adjust over time based on how you're progressing toward your weight goal, ensuring that your meal plan isn't just an estimate: it will be tailored to your exact needs.Ullrich should return his yellow jersey, says LeMond Related Articles Jan Ullrich comes in from the cold
Ullrich refuses to hand over Olympic medals
Pinot and Bardet left empty-handed at Mende
Jan Ullrich, winner of the 1997 Tour de France, “should think about giving back his yellow jersey,” Greg LeMond told the German BILD tabloid newspaper.
“For his entire life he will have to come to terms with what happened in his career,” LeMond said. “I said it this way about Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton: You have to live your whole life with a lie. That is damned hard.”
The American, who won the Tour three times, said there was a difference between Lance Armstrong and Ullrich. “Lance was the boss. The team belonged to him. He encouraged the doping. He was not judged simply because of doping, but also because he organized illegal acts.”
In contrast, “Ullrich was 21 years old when he came into an already-existing system. He didn’t have any idea what was happening to him.”
Hoj admits to limited doping
Frank Hoj has admitted to doping in his career. The Dane, who retired in 2010, said that he used a limited amount of EPO and stopped after hearing of the 1998 Tour de France Festina scandal.
“As a neo-professional, I regret to say that I tried EPO. I tried to take it. I probably did not take it in the amounts that were expected to produce results,” he said on Danish TV 2 Sport television on Sunday.
That scandal was enough to make him stay away from doping, he claimed. “Very naively, I had a notion that the sport changed after the Festina scandal and doping simply disappeared quietly out of it.”
He again denied claims by fellow Dane Michael Rasmussen that he smuggled drugs into the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Hoj rode from 1995 to 2010 for a variety of teams.
Thibaut Pinot targeting polka dot jersey
Thibaut Pinot (FDJ.fr) told reporters at the finish Sunday, the polka dot jersey is now on the radar for the final week of the Tour de France. The Frenchman was forced to change tactics after a damaging first week that pushed a podium spot on GC out of reach. Last year he had finished third behind compatriot, Romain Bardet (Ag2r).
Pinot found himself in Sunday’s break with a renewed focus and energy. Monday’s route to Gap offers several opportunities for points before heading to the Alps. “The initial tactic was for Arnaud [Démare] to go but I found myself there, not by chance but because I had good legs,” he said.
The 25-year-old currently sits in 25th place with 11 points, far down from Chris Froome (Team Sky) in first with 61 points, and Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha) in second with 52. “The polka dot jersey can become a target. We’ll see in the Alps.” L’Alpe d’Huez offers 50 points to its victor on the penultimate stage.By Elise Labott
When Secretary of State John Kerry first took office he talked of changing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's calculus.
Assad "needs to know that he can't shoot his way out of this," Kerry said in March at a Rome meeting with members of the Syrian opposition.
When he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov first conceived the idea of bringing the regime and the opposition together for peace talks in Geneva, they believed strengthened international support for both the political opposition and rebel forces would leave the Syrian leader ready to negotiate his own ouster.
U.S. policy since then has had the opposite effect.
Assad's calculus has indeed changed.
The political opposition is on the verge of collapse, rebel groups now having to battle the growing strength of Islamist forces on the ground, and his regime is at the center of implementing an international deal to rid the country of chemical weapons. He heads to Geneva believing the false narrative that he is even more powerful.
As his forces continue to kill thousands each week from barrel bombs with impunity, Assad has no reason to think he can't shoot his way out of the crisis.
With a week to go until the talks, the Syrian opposition has yet to put forth a delegation for Geneva and remains bitterly divided on whether to attend at all.
Members of the opposition suggest that the United States is setting them up to fail by not providing the Free Syrian Army with sufficient resources to change the balance of power on the ground.
"Is the opposition being set up for success by United States, not just to participate in a conference that will lead to a political solution, but being empowered to ensure success of the stated objectives of Geneva?" asked Oubai Shahbandar, a senior adviser to the opposition.
"It is the position of the opposition that you cannot have a successful political process if the U.S. doesn't also increase its support. Right now, the regime thinks its winning. They think they have successfully avoided military strikes, western sanctions and repercussions for continued war crimes. It is these components that make any successful outcomes of Geneva unlikely," Shahbandar said.
For months, U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford has shuttled to Turkey to meet with members of the Syrian National Council. In preparing for Geneva, Ford and other U.S. officials repeatedly urged the opposition to present a transition plan that saw the group playing a major role in a post al-Assad government, which could include some elements of the current government. Now the group is being implored to just show up.
The Obama administration maintains it still believes al-Assad should step down. But rather than hand over power, he is talking about running for re-election this spring in what is all but certain to be a fraudulent election. And the opposition, whose legitimacy is mostly conferred upon them by the international community, appears to be in no position to force his hand.
"The Syrian opposition is in a space capsule heading toward Geneva and breaking up in the atmosphere and this may be one of the West's biggest failures," says Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center.
"Geneva has put unbearable pressure on an opposition that has always lacked unity and direction and this has a great bearing for any process the international powers are looking to launch," Sheikh said.
Having lacked resolve to either use force against al-Assad or arm the opposition, and with no coming together of the Security Council on even the growing humanitarian crisis, the Obama administration now has fewer tools in the toolbox.
What's left is the diplomatic "fig leaf" of Geneva, which few people besides Kerry believe is more than an effort to check the diplomatic box and manage some sort of response to the Syrian crisis, rather than demonstrating the mettle to find a solution.
"Despite how everyone tries to dress it up, this is not the right kind of place for the U.S. to be on what is shaping up to be the biggest humanitarian disaster of this century and which is promising to have the largest loss of life and bloodiest conflict the Middle East has seen," Sheikh said.
"But there is no alternative. It is all we have, so now have to go through it and hope for something after Geneva. I think it is a misreading of the situation and the whole region. I'm not sure they can stand many more months of this while the ground churns," Sheikh said.
Moreover, there is no agreement in terms of what the parameters of the Geneva talks are. The United States, United Nations and other Western and Arab countries want talks on a transitional government. The Syrian regime, Russia and Iran - who won't be there as a participant but with thousands of fighters on the ground helping the regime will be the elephant in the room - believe Geneva is about fighting the growing Islamic insurgency and rehabilitating al-Assad.
With al Qaeda forces continuing to capture territory and even checkpoints on the border with Turkey, narrative of al-Assad as savior is stronger.
Even as Washington is turning up the pressure on the opposition to join the talks, the administration is significantly lowering expectations. U.S. officials concede merely getting the opposition and the regime in the room would be a success.
"When we first conceptualized the conference, we believed that we would be able to help form a transitional government and that would be that," one senior State Department official acknowledged. "But we understand achieving political progress is more challenging eight months later."
The first direct talks between the two sides after three years of conflict would be a milestone. To jumpstart negotiations over a political transition, Kerry said he and Lavrov are seeking confidence-building measures, including possible local ceasefires, access for delivery of humanitarian aid and exchange of prisoners. Agreement on these issues would also be no small feat.
With progress toward a transitional government highly unlikely, the conference will now focus as much on the humanitarian crisis as it will on discussions about Syria's political future.
"The humanitarian situation has taken on a greater importance. It is an enormous crisis and it is appropriate to focus on that," another senior U.S. official said.
"We still have a desire to see a transitional government and nobody is giving up with that. But we are also thinking about what our other objectives are," the official said.
Having accepted the fact that Geneva is not likely be a turning point for the conflict, the administration now says it hopes Geneva will be the beginning of a "process." But there is wide trepidation among the Syrian opposition about a process that is open-ended and fails to stop the violence and suffering.
"Nothing will happen overnight but it can't be indefinite, Shahbandar said. "The regime will drag this process on while it continues to bomb cities and increase its starvation campaign."
In addition, any future effort to find a political solution to the Syrian conflict must focus more on broadening the participation of that process to include more Syrians with influence on the ground.
"The biggest failure of Geneva is that the regime and opposition can't turn the corner. They can't because they don't represent the majority of Syrians," Sheikh said.
Revolutionary councils inside Syria, the backbone of the civil resistance, have been providing services to the people and are increasingly becoming the de-facto representation of the Syrian opposition.
But those doing the work on the ground, whether it be political or fighting, are not involved in the political process under way.
Sheikh, who meets frequently with a cross section of Syrians said that with all of its planning for a post al-Assad Syria, the international community has yet to help build an indigenous opposition in a meaningful way.
"Alawites, Christians, tribal leaders, rebel commanders and business associations all need to be brought in and they aren't," Sheikh said. "If I can do that in a little old think tank, how come the international community hasn't been able to support that?"Getty Images
The Steelers had their best running game of the season last Sunday against the Ravens, rolling up 141 yards on 29 carries on their way to a 19-16 victory.
Four of those carries came out of the Wildcat as the Steelers installed that wrinkle to their offense against Baltimore. The plays, which featured running back Le’Veon Bell taking a shotgun snap and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger split wide, gained 18 yards but their relative success didn’t make Roethlisberger a proponent of using them more in the future.
“I don’t like to go over and just be split out wide and take a chance that a [defensive back] is going to come up,” Roethlisberger said on 93.7 The Fan, via ESPN.com. “I don’t think we’ll see a lot of it.”
It’s rare to see a team with a quarterback at Roethlisberger’s resume take him away from the quarterback spot, which one could see as a source of continued strain between Roethlisberger and offensive coordinator Todd Haley. There’s no sense of that from Roethlisberger, however, and he praised Haley for another new addition to last week’s playbook.
Roethlisberger was fond of the shovel pass that the team installed as it resulted in their only touchdown of the day when Roethlisberger hit Heath Miller near the Baltimore end zone. Whether or not Roethlisberger loves everything that Haley puts into the gameplan each week, the significant thing is that the Steelers didn’t stand pat with what they were doing while losing their first four games of the season.
It gives the team more options to attack defenses at the same time as giving defenses more to think about when preparing for the Steelers, two things that can be leveraged to Pittsburgh’s advantage over the rest of the season. That might not be enough to climb out of the 0-4 hole they dug for themselves, but it stands a better chance than just doing the same old thing.723 Bracketeers voted in Batch 84, and 10.24m votes have now been cast.
Visual results are here and today’s results are:
Survival of the Fittest defeats Takenuma Bleeder with 95.82% of the vote
Overbeing of Myth defeats Verduran Emissary with 89.62% of the vote
Beseech the Queen defeats Flesh-Eater Imp with 88.75% of the vote
Sylvan Caryatid defeats Nissa, Nature’s Artisan with 88.46% of the vote
Desecration Demon defeats Binding Grasp with 87.46% of the vote
Chainer, Dementia Master defeats Briarberry Cohort with 86.73% of the vote
Innocent Blood defeats Crosis’s Attendant with 83.38% of the vote
Coalition Victory defeats Nissa’s Expedition with 82.85% of the vote
Scion of Oona defeats Grafted Skullcap with 80.65% of the vote
Fireball defeats Consult the Necrosages with 80.61% of the vote
Helldozer defeats Swarm of Bloodflies with 78.62% of the vote
Kokusho, the Evening Star defeats Jund Charm with 78.40% of the vote
Extirpate defeats Decaying Soil with 78.30% of the vote
Mirror Universe defeats Deserter’s Quarters with 75.99% of the vote
Maze’s End defeats Mirror Match with 75.94% of the vote
Harrow defeats Requiem Angel with 73.10% of the vote
Etherium Sculptor defeats Dash Hopes with 71.86% of the vote
Snow-Covered Island defeats Riptide Chimera with 68.72% of the vote
Dralnu’s Crusade defeats Mystic Crusader with 65.46% of the vote
Foil defeats Combust with 64.86% of the vote
Frontier Siege defeats Illusory Ambusher with 63.88% of the vote
Throne of Empires defeats Kyren Negotiations with 63.56% of the vote
Become Immense defeats Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker with 61.86% of the vote
Flamekin Harbinger defeats Swift Reckoning with 61.30% of the vote
Taurean Mauler defeats Archivist with 60.82% of the vote
Silent Specter defeats Crypt Angel with 60.34% of the vote
City of Solitude defeats Ratcatcher with 58.21% of the vote
Cackling Flames defeats Shadow Slice with 57.86% of the vote
Leonin Arbiter defeats Teferi’s Puzzle Box with 55.83% of the vote
Kazandu Blademaster defeats Spellbinder with 53.30% of the vote
Giant Ambush Beetle defeats Utopia Vow with 53.24% of the vote
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon defeats Obsidian Fireheart with 51.97% of the vote
Full results to date can be seen here.ISIS’ resistance is stiffening as coalition fighters close in on the city.
BAGHDAD – The battle for Mosul has seen snipers, car bombs, missiles, oil-filled moats waiting for the torch, secret village-to-village tunnels, and a burning sulfur plant — and yet U.S. war leaders here warn that this is the light stuff. With each advance of Iraqi, Kurdish, and American forces, ISIS resistance is hardening.
In other words, things are going exactly as expected. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commanding general of coalition forces in Iraq, said they are pleased with how Iraqi, Kurdish, and American forces have positioned themselves in early fighting on Mosul’s outskirts. The anti-ISIS forces have squeezed an estimated 7,000 ISIS insurgents into their stronghold for a fight they predict will intensify with each kilometer.
“So far, it is proceeding according to our plan,” Carter said at Baghdad International Airport after a daylong visit with American commanders, Iraqi leaders, United Nations, and State Department officials in the city’s secure Green Zone. But there’s a feeling this week’s advances were all a setup for something much deadlier to come. “We’ve got tough fighting ahead,” he said.
One week into the announced start of the Mosul campaign, the top U.S. commander said progress for coalition forces has not been easier than anticipated, as some observers have argued.
“The resistance is about as we expected,” said Townsend, standing at Carter’s side. “It’s pretty significant. We’re talking enemy indirect fires, multiple IEDs, multiple vehicle-borne IEDs each day, even some anti-tank guided missiles. So, it’s been very tough fighting – snipers, machine guns. The Iraqis expected this and they’re fighting through it.”
U.S. military officials estimate about 1,000 to 2,000 ISIS fighters are positioned in Mosul’s outer bands, where 100 to 200 U.S. troops are in combat accompanying, advising, and assisting Iraqi-led coalition fighters. Already, the battle has claimed its first American military casualty in Navy Chief Petty Officer Jason Finan, who was killed after the Iraqi armored vehicle he was in struck an IED north of Mosul and rolled over. Finan died of his injuries later at the military base in Erbil. Footage on social media posted by reporters and Iraqi and Kurdish military feeds shows such blasts are increasingly common.
“It’s stiffened over the last couple of days, but that’s not really surprising,” Townsend said. “We see the enemy, they’re watching, and when an attack starts it takes them a couple of days to kind of figure out what we are up to. And they start voting.”
As Iraqi forces surround Mosul, U.S. officials again said the coalition will not attempt to close off escaping ISIS fighters to the west. “There’s not a plan to seal all the way around,” said another U.S. military official in Baghdad. “Thus far, we’ve seen no large movement either in or out of Mosul to the west.”
East of Mosul, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters already have reached their self-restraining limit on the eastern flank, clearing routes and villages up to roughly 20 kilometers outside of Mosul. They are nearing their boundary from the north, as well, according to U.S. military official in Baghdad who briefed reporters traveling with Carter. Per their agreement with Baghdad, the Peshmerga are expected to halt their advance, and then permit Iraqi police and army units advancing from the south to seize, clear, and hold Mosul.
In his meeting Saturday, Carter said he praised Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi for “the way this has been accomplished with Iraqi unity”— politician’s code for playing nice with the Kurds. Another common formulation is “the Peshmerga force have operated within the Iraqi Security Forces very successfully.”
Less unified is the uneasy way Turkey has inserted its forces into Iraq and the Mosul campaign without Iraqi permission. Carter in Ankara on Friday had said there appeared to be an initial agreement between the parties that Turkey should have a military role to play in the Mosul battle and counter-ISIS campaign beyond, and other non-military roles. But Abadi appeared to flatly reject the notion. After meeting Carter, Abadi said, according to a State Department translator, “That is important, for us to have good relations with Turkey. Turkey is a neighboring country but the Mosul battle is an Iraqi battle and the ones who are conducting it are Iraqis. I know that the Turks want to participate, we tell them thank you, this is something the Iraq
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had the basic meaning of 'war-leader'. Between the birth of Christ and 400 AD, the non-Roman population of Germanic Europe both increased substantially in wealth and size, and also threw up new structures of authority and social power. It was these transformations which underlay the appearance of the new named groupings on the other side of Rome's European frontiers.
Consequence and causation
These new political structures proved much more formidable than those they replaced, and this already shows up in third-century events. The real origins of this crisis certainly lay in Persia, but it also had a strong western component. The new coalitions of 'barbarian' Europe not only raided widely across Roman territory as emperors struggled to deal with the Persian threat, but even forced the empire to abandon certain of its territories: a salient in what is now southern Germany between the Rhine and Danube, and Dacia in what is now Transylvania. These were arguably strategic withdrawals, not headlong retreats, but, for the first time, firmly-ruled Roman territory had passed out of imperial control. And, in the fourth century, these new frontier groupings operated as only semi-subdued clients of the empire. They did contribute to imperial armies on occasion, but also required regular Roman military campaigning and targeted foreign aid to willing kings to keep them in line. The imbalance of power in favour of the Mediterranean, which had allowed the Roman empire to come into existence, was being eroded by Persia, and also by the rise of new structures in non-Roman Europe.
Less obvious, while some of these processes of transformation had longer-term roots, the projection of Roman imperial power had hugely increased their scope and speed of impact. The Sassanian dynasty united west Asia, for instance, taking over from the previously dominant Arsacids, on a straightforwardly anti-Roman ticket. The prestige and wealth which came to it from its successful wars against a succession of Roman emperors was the cornerstone of its new authority.
Likewise in Europe, a whole series of different interactions with the Roman world generated or at least speeded up the crucial transformations which turned Rome's neighbours into much more formidable adversaries. For one thing, the Roman empire stationed large numbers of troops right on its Rhine and Danube frontier lines. At least some of the agricultural expansion beyond these frontiers profitably serviced the huge demand for foodstuffs, leather and so forth that this unprecedented concentration of man- and spending-power represented. Roman demand for luxury items, notably amber and slaves, also stimulated development across the frontier and brought new wealth into the Germanic world. The same was true of Roman diplomatic subsidies, which, in the form of annual gifts, represented a regular flow of new wealth across the frontier from the earliest period. And alongside this, of course, was all the wealth resulting from raids mounted upon the frontier groups' rich Roman neighbours: cross-border raiding being entirely endemic.
All this new wealth then came to underpin the new social and political hierarchies as fierce struggles were let loose in the non-Roman world to control its various sources and flows. As the new words for authority indicate, the evidence is that these struggles were military and direct. Not least, the new wealth flowing across the frontier was quite unequal in its geographical distribution, with diplomatic subsidies and both raiding and trading opportunities falling most naturally to those nearest the frontier. The wealth of the frontier region, however, quickly became a target for those less-fortunate groups set further away. One marked pattern of adjustment in the second and third centuries, therefore, saw groups from beyond the immediate frontier zone organize and arm themselves to seize a corner of the action from those previously monopolizing it. This was the basic motivation behind the arrival of Goths on Rome's Danubian frontiers in the third century, and played some part too in the reorganizations in the west. These expansions were naturally carried forward by military action, since the group already profiting from its position near the frontier was not about to give up its advantages voluntarily. Roman aggression itself even carried the process forward by another route. From the first decade of the first century AD, one consistently-documented motive for banding together in larger groups was the desire to resist more effectively the worst intrusions of Roman domination.
Newton's 'third law of empire'?
Many contingent sequences of events contributed to the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire. Not least, the sudden explosion of Hunnic power out of the Eurasian steppe and into the eastern fringes of Europe generated two major pulses of migration into the Roman world, one 376-80, the other 405-8. By 440, their component parts had coalesced into two major alliances, each much larger than any of the groups which had existed beyond the frontier: the Visigoths in southern Gaul and the Vandals in north Africa both representing amalgamations of three separate immigrant groups of 10,000 plus warriors. The immigrants had in the process inflicted great damage on the west-Roman state structures by first mincing their armies and then preventing their proper replacement by either ravaging or annexing key areas of their tax base. This in turn allowed Anglo-Saxons and Franks to take over former Roman territories in Britain and north-eastern Gaul, weakening state structures still further. The immigrants also acted as alternative sources of political magnetism for local Roman elites. Given that these elites were all landowners, and could not therefore move their assets to more desirable locales, they were often faced with little choice but to come to agreements with immigrants as they became locally dominant: if, that is, the immigrants were willing to do so. In this way, the west-Roman state eventually faded away, if not without vigorous martial efforts to restore its fortunes, sometimes made with substantial aid from the Roman east, as revenues fell away to the point where it could no longer put effective forces in the field against the immigrants who were busy expanding their zones of control.
In all this, the entirely contingent impact of the Huns is clear. Without it, the two main pulses of migration, each involving several major groups, would never have occurred in short enough order to prevent the Roman authorities from dealing with the migrants which, had each group arrived separately, they certainly could have managed. The effect of the internal limitations of the Roman state is also clear, not least in its inability to increase revenues markedly beyond fourth-century levels as the new crisis began to bite after 400. The ability of the immigrants to detach Roman landowners politically from their allegiance also reflects the naturally loose levels of control exercised locally by such a geographically vast state encumbered with such primitive modes of communication. And, of course, the eastern half of the empire was always able to pick and choose the moments and scale of its assistance to the west, where a single united imperial authority might have been willing to take greater risks.
But even giving these points due weight, the external factor - represented by the immigrants of 376-80 and 405-8 - was the prime mover behind western-imperial collapse. The empire's internal limitations only came into play because the immigrants put pressure on its structures, and there is no sign that, by themselves, these limitations would have brought the it down, any more than they had done over the preceding half millennium. Two further considerations underline the point. First, the eastern half of the empire carried on happily enough for more than another century using precisely the same structures. Second, the main limit upon the empire's ability to respond to crisis in the fifth century - the lack of any further slack in its fiscal/military systems - had in any case been caused by another outside factor: the rise of Persia in the third century.
The more contingent aspects of the crisis could not have had the same cumulative effect without the transformations generated in non-Roman Europe by centuries of interaction with its imperial neighbour. Had the Huns arrived in the first or second century, the kind of Germanic group that might have been set on the march would not have been large or coherent enough to survive its initial brush with Roman power. Germanic groups of this period could field no more than a few thousand warriors at most. By the same token, the processes of political amalgamation required to generate warrior groupings of a few tens of thousands, on the scale of the fifth-century Visigoths or Vandals, would have been so complex, involving so many small separate parts, that they are highly unlikely to have been completed successfully before the individual groups were destroyed by a Roman empire, which prior to the rise of Persia, still had plenty of fiscal/military slack in its systems. There is a strong sense, therefore, in which imperial Roman power and wealth created - over the long term - its own nemesis, by generating opposing forces which were powerful enough to match its military might. And here, if nowhere else, the fall of the western Roman empire might still have lessons which modern empires would do well to ponder.
Further Reading P.R.L. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150 - 750 (London, 2004). J.F. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court AD 364-425 (Oxford, 1975). B. Ward Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation (Oxford, 2005). C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800 (Oxford, 2005).China used downed U.S. fighter to develop first stealth jet
China was able to build its first stealth bomber using technology gleaned from a downed U.S. fighter, it has been claimed.
Beijing unveiled its state-of-the-art jet – the Chengdu J-20 – earlier this month.
Military officials say it is likely the Chinese were able to develop the stealth technology from parts of an American F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.
Sabre rattling: Scores of people gathered to watch China's J-20 stealth fighter jet complete a second test flight on Sunday
It was during Nato's aerial bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo war, that an anti-aircraft missile shot a Nighthawk (pictured). It was the first time one of the 'invisible' fighters had ever been hit
During Nato’s aerial bombing of the country during the Kosovo war, a Serbian anti-aircraft missile shot the Nighthawk. It was the first time one of the ‘invisible’ fighters had ever been hit.
The Pentagon believed a combination of clever tactics and luck had allowed a Soviet-built SA-3 missile to bring down the jet.
The pilot ejected and was rescued but the wreckage was strewn over a wide area of farmland.
Civilians collected the parts – some the size of small cars – as souvenirs.
‘At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers,’ says Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia’s military chief of staff during the Kosovo war.
‘We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies... and to reverse-engineer them.’
A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up ‘in the hands of foreign military attaches’.
Rising power: China is developing a ballistic missile system and plans to launch its first aircraft carrier in 2015 but insists its military is pursuing a peaceful, defensive policy
In what appears to be a clear message of its military might, China staged the first test flight of the new stealth jet earlier this month - at the same time that U.S. defence chief Robert Gates was in Beijing on the second day of an official visit.
The fighter jet's successful test follows reports that China is planning to launch its first aircraft carrier and has tested a ballistic missile capable of sinking U.S. vessels in the Pacific.
The prototype jet was shown in flight, with civilians and air force personnel watching on, in pictures on several unofficial Chinese military websites, after local media outlets had claimed a successful test flight had taken place.
While the Chinese government is renowned for its stringent approach to state secrets, photos and reports of the J-20's test have remained online.
According to international agencies, the scheduling of the test flight to coincide with Mr Gates' visit to China, coupled with the seemingly relaxed approach to reports about the flight, indicated Beijing's willingness to be more open about its military intentions.
Nonetheless, reports of the stealth's successful test will do little to quell anxieties about the speed of China's military progress.
The U.S. F-22 Raptor is currently the only operational stealth fighter in the world, while Russia's Sukhoi T-50 jet is expected to enter active service in the next four years.
But pictures of China's J-20, which looks larger than the F-22 or T-50, will be of concern to the Taiwanese government, whose antiquated aircraft and radar systems would provide little resistance to radar-evading Chinese jets.
The U.S. has claimed China would not be capable of developing a stealth jet for years and production of the F-22 was recently capped.
But the J-20's successful test, coupled with reports of the development of an aircraft carrier and missile system, confirms China's growing military might.
SPY TECH: HOW THE J-20 SHAPES UP AGAINST ITS RIVALS A study of photographs of the aircraft by industry journal Aviation Week revealed the J20... is a single seat, twin-engine aircraft.
is bigger and heavier than its Russian (Sukhoi T-50) and U.S. (F-22) equivalents.
is around 75ft long with a wingspan of 45ft
has landing gear that retracts into body-side bays, indicating the likely presence of F-22-style side weapons.
could be loaded with larger weapons including air-to-surface munitions because of the distance of its base from the ground.
likely weighs 75,000-80,000lb, with no external load, suggesting a generous fuel capacity.
is compatible with newly developed air-to-ground weapons revealed by Chinese engineers at the Zhuhai air show in November. The F-22 Raptor... is also a single seat-twin engine stealth fighter.
is 62 feet long with a wingspan of 44ft 6in, making it lighter and more maneuverable.
It stands 16ft, 5in off the ground.
can carry medium and short range air-to-air missiles in three internal weapons bays on the bottom and sides of the fuselage.
It weighs 43,430lb when empty, and around weight: 64,460lb when loaded. Its maximum takeoff weight is 83,500lb.
Its fuel capacity is 18,000lb internally, or 26,000lb when it uses two optional external fuel tanks,
While many are still operational, the F22 is coming towards the end of its shelf-life, with the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act containing no funding for F-22 production. The Sukhoi T50... is currently being developed for the Russian Air Force by Moscow defence company Sukhoi.
had, by November 2010, made 40 test flights. The second prototype is due to start its flight test this year.
will replace the MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker and directly compete with the F-22 Raptor.
is a one-seat twin engine stealth fighter.
is 65.9ft long with a wingspan of 46.6ft and stands 19.8ft high.
weighs 40,785lb when empty and 57,320lb fully loaded with a fuel capacity of 22,711lb.
has a top speed of Mach 2, 1,560mph.
does not yet have armaments but there is apparent provision for two 30mm cannons with two internal bays for guns and missile.Amazon
Amazon will pull the plug on its Amazon Wallet beta on Wednesday, six months after it launched the limited mobile-wallet effort.
The Internet retail giant began informing users by email on Tuesday that it is shutting down the beta and removing the app from app stores. The beta's closure comes as Silicon Valley companies struggle to expand beyond their roots selling products or services and into the lucrative financial industry.
"We have learned a great deal from the introduction of the Wallet and will look for ways to apply these lessons in the future as we continue to innovate on behalf of our customers," Amazon spokesman Tom Cook said in a statement.
Amazon did not address whether or when Amazon Wallet would return. Users will still be able to use any gift, loyalty or membership cards store on the app, but wallet balances will no longer be updated after Wednesday, meaning users will have to track their own balances.
Quietly launched in late July, Amazon Wallet allowed users to store and manage gift, store and loyalty cards for in-person and online transactions involving the cards. However, unlike its competitors in the mobile payments niche, the app could not be used to manage credit or debit cards.
The promise of turning smartphones into true digital wallets -- including the ability to pay at the register -- has been hyped for years. By 2019, consumers are expected to use mobile-payments services to conduct $142 billion in transactions, up from $52 billion in 2014, according to Forrester Research. But so far, it's been more promise than results.
Google was one of the first companies to offer mobile payments, with a service called Wallet, but the offering failed to gain traction with consumers. Apparently hoping to bolster its efforts, the Internet giant is now reportedly in talks to acquire Softcard, a mobile payments venture backed by wireless carriers that has struggled to catch on.
Online payments business PayPal has tinkered with ways for people to use the service for real-life transactions in addition to transferring funds online or through its mobile app. However, it too has struggled to turn itself into the preferred mobile wallet for consumers.
Apple upped the ante in September with Apple Pay, which allows consumers to make credit card purchases with an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. Less than 72 hours after its debut, 1 million credit cards had been used on the service. However, Apple got caught in the middle of a long-simmering feud between retailers and credit card companies a few weeks later when pharmacy chains Rite Aid and CVS disabled consumers' ability to use Apple's mobile payment platform.With thanks to Alexander Wales for permission to use an idea of his.
Monitoring: Hannah Johnson
Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
16:30 Coordinated Universal Time
Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
Meanwhile—
A thousand kilometers away, Hannah Johnson is experiencing her own revelation.
Someone else might laugh at the absurdity of her situation: she has a magic trick, something to show at parties. If moneymaking were on their mind, the first thing on their list would be children’s birthday parties, maybe followed by “Vegas?” with the question mark really big, because how would someone go about pulling off a whole magic show around just one trick. Maybe if she were already one-half of Penn and Teller, but at the end of the day it’s just a gimmick. There may be someone out there with laser eyeballs and bulletproof skin, and what she has is a conversation opener.
But she isn’t someone else. She’s Hannah Johnson, and she’s going to turn that conversation opener into a million dollars. She just has to prove that this is happening. Hannah’s working on it in the back of her mind, trying to figure out where to go from here, but most of her attention is on the map in front of her: The Principality of Cazgin. With the pencil work all done now, she’s on to placing the ink. It has to be clear enough that it shows through when she scans it into the computer.
She isn’t terribly good at drawing—there’s a reason she’ll have to commission someone to make a decent illustration out of this after she’s done—but the pen seems to glide in her hand anyway. Tracing the previous step’s lines is so much easier, and there’s a satisfaction in seeing her homemade worlds turn from graphite black to ballpoint blue.
Someone knocks on the door. She can’t be sure, but it was probably Carol. If she knows Jeff at all then he’s probably already left Carol to hold the fort while he gets drunk at some New Year’s Eve Party. Hannah doesn’t need shit from either of them, especially when she’s trying to think, so she puts on her headphones. Dubstep stopped being enjoyable a while ago, but it’s good for drowning out noise.
Her living situation, admittedly, is not the worst she’s ever had. The neighborhood is safe, she has her own room for once, and Jeff might scream but he doesn’t hit her, out of some perverse respect for… not her grades, no. She helped his kids with their work, but nothing changed for them even after they got better report cards. Hannah can’t imagine why he’d care about her anyway, since she has no share of his genes (thank God). He takes some sort of pride from having a smart kid. Whatever the cause, it’s been a long time since she’s been bruised, which is more than she can say for the others in his house.
Forty minutes later, the Principality of Cazgin has been inked down to the last Black Oaks freehold and Hannah thinks that she’s got the other situation figured out. She scans over the map one more time, then carefully slides the parchment into a drawer.
Time for one last test, she thinks. There’s an Arby’s down the street where she can get what she needs: raw materials and witnesses.
Halfway through the door, she pauses just long enough to shout, “I’m leaving!” before she slams the door behind her. The cold bites at her for just a moment as she she finishes pulling her coat around her.
Carol can rot in Hell, and Jeff with her, for all that Hannah cares. She knows who her family really is, and if the checks from the state are actually being used to her benefit for once, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still getting used. Being somebody’s trophy is no better than being their paycheck, thanks very much.
She’s getting pissed just thinking about it, much to the imminent detriment of the cashier in front of her.
“Welcome to Arby’s, can—”
“Can you break this twenty, I need change,” she says absentmindedly, words blurring together in her haste. The man behind the cashier stares at her blankly, so she repeats herself more slowly, giving each word its own aggravating pause. “In coins,” she adds.
“I, um… Are you going to order anything?”
“What’s your most inexpensive item?” she asks.
“You want us to give you nineteen dollars in coins and hold up all these people behind you,” he says slowly, “in exchange for you buying something off our lunchtime dollar menu?”
Hannah drums her fingers on the counter between them. “And a cup of water too.”
“Uh, you know that water is free?”
“Fine don’t get bent out of shape, let’s get a chicken tenders meal, is that good enough? Now can I get my coins and my food?” It takes a sort of effort for Hannah to space the words out like they ought to go. She counts herself lucky that she has a one-track mind right now and doesn’t have to worry about changing topics mid-sentence.
“Right. Step to the side,” he says, ringing up her order. He turns to another employee behind him. “Hey Sam, can you count the coins while I take this next order?”
As she takes her seat, she admits to herself that she could have afforded to be a bit more polite. It wasn’t his fault that she’d been reflecting on her so-called guardians. She’ll give a big tip to make up for it.
There will still be enough here for a couple of test runs even after the tip, though, which is good enough for Hannah. She eats her meal first, then sets her garbage next to the four-dollar apology tip. She tests a couple of times for herself to make sure that she’s still got her conversation opener—she knows she does (it’s like a light in her skull that won’t turn off) but she’s got to double-check that she’s not crazy—and then she turns to the table next to her.
“Hey I got a magic trick want to see?” The kids turn to her fast enough that she’s surprised they didn’t whiplash. “Okay pay real close attention,” she says, and then she does it.
“Where’d it go?” one of them asks.
It’s not exactly the best of superpowers, but for all Hannah knows there aren’t any better ones that are actually out there. She doesn’t need something amazing, anyway—just money, and there’s a One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge waiting for the first confirmed case of supernatural powers. She just has to get there before anybody else.
Another coin disappears beneath her touch, and Hannah smiles. It’s really happening, it’s real, other people can see it, and it’s going to work.
AdvertisementsOver the last few months, the lab-testing startup Theranos has endured a relentless stretch of bad publicity, morphing from a health tech darling to a Silicon Valley cautionary tale. It started last October, when The Wall Street Journal published an investigation of the company’s much-hyped technology, which promised it could run a host of lab tests (including those for diabetes, high cholesterol and prostate cancer) from just a few drops of blood taken from a finger. Its proprietary technology and lower prices, the company said, would democratize blood testing and encourage its use for routine health monitoring. But the Journal reported that the proprietary device wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and that the company was running most of its tests on conventional lab machines. Since then there has been news of dissolved business partnerships, problems with regulators, criminal and civil probes and just this week, personnel changes. Founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes, the Stanford dropout who was the subject of much positive media coverage before the WSJ’s report, could be banned from the industry for two years.
Much of the debate over the last few months has been about whether Theranos’s technology can actually do what the company has said it can. But there’s a dubious assumption at the heart of Theranos, arguably just as damning as the questions about its technology. Theranos wants us to believe that ostensibly healthy people can get healthier by having more tests. But the science suggests that is far from true.
To see why, let’s go deep into Holmes’s pitch for why Theranos was so important. Let’s use her 2014 TEDMED talk, which has been viewed more than 380,000 times, as a proxy for her elevator pitch:
We define diagnosis today as the determination of the presence of disease from its signs and symptoms. Yet diseases often begin so much earlier than when symptoms first appear. We see a world in which every person has access to actionable health information at the time it matters. A world in which no one ever has to say, “If only I’d known sooner.”
It seems obvious: Finding a disease as early as possible would lead to fewer deaths than finding it late. But as more and more research is showing, it’s not as simple as going exploring in healthy people to see what turns up, then treating what you find. “The reservoir of abnormalities is bottomless,” said Dr. Brenda Sirovich, co-director of the Outcomes Group at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt. “And we don’t know anything about what those things mean in an asymptomatic vacuum.”
For example, levels of prostate-specific antigen in the blood are elevated in men with prostate cancer, so a logical leap suggests that we might be able to detect nascent disease by looking for it in seemingly healthy men. But the PSA test (available from Theranos on its own or as part of a set of routine men’s health tests) is questionable as a way to screen for prostate cancer. Screening with PSA provides at most a small benefit in preventing mortality from prostate cancer, and some studies suggest it harms more men than it helps through the side effects of treatment, which can include impotence and incontinence.
The effectiveness of screening for a given disease before signs and symptoms appear depends on a host of conditions, said Dr. John Ioannidis, director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center — including whether there’s an effective treatment for whatever is found, and whether people will fare better if they get treatment without waiting for symptoms. He added that a successful screening test needs to be accurate, without too many false positives or false negatives.
But depending on the prevalence of a disease or condition in a given population, false positives can outnumber true positives, even for a test that’s quite accurate.
The wider the pool of people being tested, the greater the chance of false positives, which is why screening guidelines generally limit the population to be screened. The more independent tests you do at once, each with its own chance of error, the larger the chance that at least one of those tests produces an incorrect result, said Rebecca Goldin, director of STATS.org and a professor of mathematical sciences at George Mason University.
Screening may also find disease that would never have caused a problem if it had been left alone — what researchers call “overdiagnosis.” “There are a zillion things that are a disaster to screen for,” said Ioannidis. Last year, he was an author of a study that reviewed the evidence behind screening for 19 potentially deadly diseases and found it was “uncommon” for targeted screenings to lead to reductions in death from the disease being screened.
Holmes’s talk also advocates that individuals should have more power to order blood tests on their own:
And today I can go buy a deadly exotic animal, a venomous viper, a military truck or armored vehicle … but I can’t order a blood-based pregnancy test or an allergy test because that could be dangerous. God forbid I stop eating peanuts.
She elaborates on this point in a 2014 New Yorker profile, noting that Theranos’s direct-to-consumer vision would require changes to state laws and regulations, some of which prohibit blood tests without a prescription.
Holmes doesn’t get into details about the full range of tests that the company would like to see available without a prescription or expert guidance. (Theranos didn’t respond to emails requesting comment.) Other companies are also pursuing this direct-to-consumer vision. But there are reasons people generally can’t order tests themselves. For one thing, some screening tests merit a discussion ahead of time about whether the potential benefits outweigh the potential harms.
Tests are also hard for consumers to interpret. Few lab results are inherently binary. “Very few blood tests give you a ‘Yes, you have this condition,’ or ‘No, you don’t,’” said Dr. Kenny Lin, an associate professor of family medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. Context — symptoms, personal and family medical history — is essential to interpret those results. Dr. Eleftherios Diamandis, division head of clinical biochemistry at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, wrote in a 2015 opinion paper about Theranos that a layperson whose PSA value was 20 micrograms per liter “will assume, based on statistics, that he would have a more than 50 percent chance of harboring prostate cancer; and ask for a biopsy.” But if his PSA was 1 microgram per liter a few days earlier, he likely has benign prostatitis, not cancer.
Even something as seemingly straightforward as the allergy test Holmes mentions is fraught. A 2015 study found blood-based allergy tests in kids usually resulted in misdiagnosis and overly restrictive diets. There are real consequences to telling people they are allergic to things they aren’t.
One other idea is central to Holmes’s talk: that giving people more information about their risk of disease will cause them to make meaningful and beneficial changes.
When individuals have access to the information about their bodies, they can begin to change outcomes. Type 2 diabetes alone, which drives 20 percent of our health care costs, can be reversed through changes in lifestyle, in diet, in exercise. Yet today there’s 80 million Americans who are prediabetic and 90 percent of them don’t know that they are.
Certain people probably are motivated to make positive lifestyle changes merely by getting more comprehensive information about their health. But in the aggregate, data alone doesn’t seem to fuel better decisions. For example, almost 35 percent of American adults are obese, which is likely quite apparent to them, yet many have great difficulty losing weight. A review of studies published in March concluded that communicating genetic risk for diseases does not change people’s health behaviors, including smoking, diet, exercise, alcohol use and sun protection. And a study published last year found that screening for Type 2 diabetes didn’t change total physical activity, smoking habits or alcohol consumption.
As for prediabetes, while there is an awareness campaign to identify those who have it (about 86 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), there’s little evidence that that doing so will change outcomes. And identifying someone as “sick” can change self-image and cause stress, even though most people with prediabetes will not actually develop diabetes, said Gabriela Spencer Bonilla, who conducts health services research at the Mayo Clinic. It will also funnel millions more people into lifestyle management programs that are already strained by the needs of people with full-blown diabetes.
Not all of Theranos’s vision is misguided. Making lab tests cheaper, expanding access to tests used for diagnosis, and reducing the pain of traditional blood tests are “clearly worthy goals,” Ioannidis wrote in a critical look at Theranos published last year. But the vision of giving everyone widespread access to more blood tests in the belief that more information is always better is naïve at best, and harmful at worst.Tesla owes Shashank Chitti $1,000.
That’s how much the Bay Area tech consultant paid to reserve a Model 3, the automaker's highly anticipated electric sedan for the masses. Chitti was among tens of thousands of people who waited in line to reserve the car sight unseen, hours before Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed it to the world on March 31, 2016. In the days following the Model 3's debut, hundreds of thousands more people placed deposits, netting the company what amounts to a humongous interest-free loan. How humongous? According to its latest earnings report, Tesla holds $616 million in customer deposits. Most of that money comes from Model 3 reservation holders.
But not all of those reservations (more than half a million, by the latest count) will translate into sales. Placing a $1,000 deposit is one thing. Throwing down for a car that starts at $35,000 is another matter. And while Tesla may have delivered its first 30 Model 3s on Friday, most reservation holders won't receive their cars until 2018 at the earliest, leaving plenty of time for second thoughts and changed circumstances.
Fortunately, Tesla makes it easy to ask for your money back; the company’s website says deposit holders can cancel at any time. Per the company's Model 3 Reservation FAQ, “Refunds can take up to three weeks depending on your country of delivery.”
At least that's how it's supposed to work.
"Every time, they ask for my address and say that a check will be promptly on its way. The check never comes."
Chitti cancelled his reservation on May 17, 2017. He says he was tired of waiting and frustrated by Tesla's lack of transparency. Yet more than two months later, he hasn't received his refund. "Every time I reach out I get the same explanation: They have a lot of cancellations to process, they'll prioritize my request, and that my refund should go out in the next batch," he says.
His experience is not unique. Many deposit holders have taken to Twitter to complain to Musk directly about their late refunds. In a poll posted to the popular Tesla Motors Forum, a majority of respondents reported waiting more than a month to receive their reimbursement. On other message boards, claims of 5-, 6-, and 7-week waits are common, and many say they’ve held out even longer. “It has been three months,” wrote /r/teslamotors user UnDosTresPescao on Reddit on July 3. “I have called/emailed them several times over the last month and a half asking about status. Every time they ask for my address and say that a check will be promptly on its way. The check never comes.”
This seems as good a place as any to disclose that I, too, was once a Model 3 reservation holder. I cancelled my deposit in April, when an honest evaluation of my transportation needs forced me to concede that the last thing I need in life is a new car. Tesla took just shy of three months to refund my deposit, which I received soon after the company caught wind of me reporting this piece.
What’s taking so long? It depends on who you ask.
Pointing Fingers
In email correspondence between Tesla and deposit-holders that WIRED reviewed, customer service representatives supplied a variety of explanations for late refunds. Two blamed a third-party error. Others said Tesla had received more reimbursement requests than it could see to in a timely fashion. Several stated that a "system failure," "IT issue," or "database error" within Tesla had interfered with the company's ability to process payments.
Here's how it went down for me: I called Tesla's customer service twice after cancelling my reservation on April 23. The first time, in mid-May, the sales rep told me the company was working through a backlog of reimbursement requests, but that I'd receive my refund in the mail within 10 business days.
About two months later, in mid-July, I called again; by this point I'd begun reporting this story, and had spoken with some refund-requesters about their experiences.
In as unthreatening a tone as I could muster, I told the representative who fielded my call that I was not only a reservation holder, but also a journalist investigating late Model 3 deposit returns. He apologized about my late refund and gave me a familiar explanation: The team tasked with processing refunds had run into an IT issue, he said, delaying payments by two to three weeks. The representative noted how long it had been since I’d cancelled, and told me he’d make my refund a priority (another familiar line from Tesla’s customer service).
My next call was to Tesla's communications team. As I had with the service rep, I made clear that I, too, had been waiting a long time for my refund. Which... maybe I shouldn't have. The morning of July 18, a Tesla spokesperson provided this statement, which, while helpful to me, did not thoroughly address the larger trend:
"The total number of Model 3 reservations has continued to grow, with new reservations far exceeding refund requests. At times, refund processing slows down when additional confirmation is needed to prevent fraud via identity theft. That is what occurred in the case of this journalist."
The next day, I found a FedEx envelope on my doorstep. My refund had arrived — 61 business days after I cancelled my reservation.
The One-Year Cutoff
Not every Tesla refund takes
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and flee.
A war machine can spend a double move to move at the speed of the crew's slowest member. War machine unit move as skirmishers. If any crewmen are slain, the speed of the unit is reduced proportionally (characters that join the unit can take the place of slain crew in this way). For example, an elven bolt thrower with two crew (speed 7) at the start of the battle looses one crewman. The crew's speed of 7 is therefore halved to 3.5".
Characters that join the unit may not help the crew fire the machine, but they are free to shoot at a different target from the target of the war machine. Characters that have joined war machine units are not affected by misfires.
Reloading a war machine is a move action. If the crew are reduced to a single crewman, reloading a war machine becomes a double move action, however bolt throwers, with their simpler mechanism, are not affected by this rule, and always require a move action to reload. Firing a war machine is a standard action.
A war machine cannot charge. When a war machine is charged, the crew line up in between the machine and the charging unit before the charge is made. Otherwise, a war machine's crew are treated as skirmishers in close combat.
When the crew of a war machine flees, they will leave the war machine behind as they flee, becoming a separate unit of skirmishers. Any allied war machine crew can become the abandoned machine's crew. The war machine and the crew become a new unit. A crew may also deliberately abandon a war machine to operate another one. A crew can abandon a war machine simply by moving away from the war machine.
Bolt Throwers [ edit ]
A bolt thrower is a huge crossbow that fires spear-sized bolts at enemies, each capable of spearing several warriors with a single shot.
The bolts fired by bolt throwers are ranged attacks, for example:
Bolt ♦ At-Will Effect: +10 Vs. Reflex; 2d8 + 4 damage; make a secondary attack. Secondary attack: Previous attack bonus -2 Vs. Reflex; 1d6 + 4 damage; make a secondary attack. Keep making secondary attacks until you miss or until you hit 6 times.
When firing a bolt thrower, pivot the bolt thrower on the spot until it faces it's target, and then make the primary attack, as normal (including the minimum of 8 to hit). If you hit, make the secondary attack, but subtract 2 from the attack roll. Keep making secondary attacks (at -2 to hit each time) until you miss or until you hit 6 times. Note that the secondary attacks are only made against units made up of companies. You cannot make any secondary attacks against non-company units. This represents the heavy bolt piercing through the ranks.
For example: A bolt thrower fires at a unit of goblin warriors (Reflex 13). The bolt thrower therefore hits on the roll of an 8+. If the bolt thrower hits, make a secondary attack with a +8 to hit. Repeat the attack at a -2 penalty each time (+10, +8, +6, +4, +2 +0), until you miss or until you hit 6 times.
Note that bolt throwers, unlike stone throwers, never misfire.
Stone Throwers [ edit ]
Stone Thrower Misfire Chart [ edit ] 1d6 Result 1 Destroyed! The stone thrower is destroyed and its crew slain as the machine is ripped to bits by the strain placed upon it. 2-3 Disabled: The stone thrower is damaged and cannot shoot until it is repaired with a standard action. In addition, one random crewmember takes 1d10 damage. Increase this damage to 2d10 at paragon tier and 3d10 at epic tier. 4-6 May Not Shoot: The stone thrower simply does not fire this turn. It may fire next turn, so long as it is reloaded.
A stone thrower is a huge engine of destruction that hurls massive rocks that shatter on impact, slaying many foes with shards of rocks.
To fire a stone thrower, rotate the model on the spot to face the chosen target—this is part of the standard action used to fire the machine. Then, choose any model of your choice within range that the stone thrower is facing. You cannot choose a model within 12" of the stone thrower, as the machine is too powerful to throw a stone such a short distance!
After the target has been selected, the stone scatters—a stone thrower, after all, is hardly a precision instrument! Roll 1d10 and a scatter die (a scatter die is a six-sided die with an arrow on four of the sides and a hit symbol on the other two sides). If a hit is rolled, the stone lands on the chosen target. If an arrow is rolled, the stone lands a number of inches away from the target equal to the number rolled on the d10 in the direction shown by the arrow on the scatter die. If a 1 is rolled on the d10, the shot is not fired (regardless of the result shown on the scatter die), and the stone thrower misfires. Roll 1d6 on the stone thrower misfire table.
Place a 1" diameter circular base on the point where the stone lands—this is the pint that the area burst is centered on. All creatures (friend or foe) in the area of effect are attacked by the stone thrower. Calculate the roll needed to hit as normal. From this point, the stone thrower's shot is simply treated as an area burst against all creatures in the burst.
Special Rules [ edit ]
Armies [ edit ]
For battle to commence, you need armies! This section contain rules for building armies of the age of war. It contains the basic stat blocks for the various armies of the age of war, which will be expanded on in later supplements, as well as rules for assembling these units into armies.
Building an Army [ edit ]
Pts by Level and Battle Size Level Pts by Battle Size Small Medium Large Huge 1 3000 6000 9000 +3000 2 3750 7500 11250 +3750 3 4500 9000 13500 +4500 4 5250 10500 15750 +5250 5 6000 12000 18000 +6000 6 7500 15000 22500 +7500 7 9000 18000 27000 +9000 8 10500 21000 31500 +10500 9 12000 24000 36000 +12000 10 15000 30000 45000 +15000 11 18000 36000 54000 +18000 12 21000 42000 63000 +21000 13 24000 48000 72000 +24000 14 30000 60000 90000 +30000 15 36000 72000 108000 +36000 16 42000 84000 126000 +42000 17 48000 96000 144000 +48000 18 60000 120000 180000 +60000 19 72000 144000 216000 +72000 20 840000 168000 252000 +840000 21 96000 192000 288000 +96000 22 124500 249000 373500 +124500 23 153000 306000 459000 +153000 24 181500 363000 5445000 +181500 25 210000 420000 630000 +210000 26 270000 540000 810000 +270000 27 330000 660000 990000 +330000 28 390000 780000 1170000 +390000 29 450000 900000 1350000 +450000 30 870000 1740000 2610000 +870000
When building armies of roughly equal power, there are several points that you must decide on.
Firstly is the number of characters to include in the armies. Both armies should take the same number of characters of the same level. This is because characters are much more powerful than the various units in the army and can overbalance an army if taken in excess, and characters with a level distance can also overbalance the game. In the case of battle fought as part of a regular game, both sides should have a number of characters equal to the number of characters in the adventuring party, of the same level as the characters in the party (for example, a party of 5 6th level characters should be fighting against an army including 5 6th level characters). In the case of battles played outside of a campaign, it is best to include three to five characters of the level of the battle.
Secondly, you must decide on the level and size of the armies. For battles fought as part of ongoing campaigns, chose a level equal to the level of the party, or a level within about four levels of the party's. For other battles, 5th, 15th or 25th level are good default levels. For the size of a battle, you can choose either small, medium, large or huge. If you don't have much time for a battle, small is the best size to choose. Medium is the best default size, and large or huge should only be selected if you have plenty of time to resolve the battle.
Finally, you can cross-reference the size and level of the battle on the table opposite to find how many points you have to spend on the armies. Each army should have a number of points roughly equal to this value—it is acceptable to go a few points over this limit. One point is equal to one experience point, so you can include a monster (such as a troll or a dragon) from the Monster Manual for a number of points equal to its experience point value as a rare formation what units you can select; the char below shows how many formations of each type you can select. The number of common formations shown in the table is a minimum rather than a maximum; there is no maximum number of common formations that you can select.
Small Medium Large Huge Common Formations 2+ 3+ 4+ +1 Special Formations 0-3 0-4 0-5 +1 Rare Formations 0-1 0-2 0-3 +1
Each unit has three points values shown, separated by slashes (for example; 200/1200/6400 pts/company). At heroic tier battles, use the first points value shown, and use the second and third values for paragon and epic tier battles, respectively. At paragon and epic tier, add 10 or 20 respectively to the initiative, defenses and attack rolls of the unit, or use the paragon or epic stat line if present. In the case of damage dealt by the unit's powers, three values separated by slashes, as with points values. At heroic tier battles, use the first damage value shown, and use the second and third values for paragon and epic tier battles, respectively
Magic Items [ edit ]
Magic Item Pts Cost by Level Level Pts by Level Heroic (+0) Paragon (+10) Epic (+20) 1 100 600 3200 2 125 700 4150 3 150 800 5100 4 175 1000 6050 5 200 1200 7000 6 250 1400 9000 7 300 1600 11000 8 350 2000 13000 9 400 2400 15000 10 500 2800 19000
In addition to units, you may select a number of magic items (2 for a small battle, +1 per size increase). These magic items, with the exception of the army's battle banner, cannot be assigned to characters; they must be taken by units. Note that any bonuses conferred to attack rolls, defenses, etc, only apply to the model carrying the item, and are simply treated as +2 bonuses, regardless of the actual size of the bonus. Not that you must select the level of item that is closest to the level of the battle, so no selecting level 1 magic weapons in a 20th level battle! Magic items cost a number of points equal to those shown in the table opposite.
Finally, you can select a single battle banner. This costs the same points value as two magic items of the banner's level, but does not use up your magic item "slots" (i.e. it is in addition to the maximum number of magic items you can select), and it can only be carried by a character, even though magic items selected as part of an army cannot be taken by characters. Battle banners are simple magic banners with additional rules (as described above). Note that a magic banner taken in this way cannot be kept after the battle. If a character already has a magic banner, that banner may be used as a battle banner at the points cost of a single magic item of the banner's level.
Characters [ edit ]
Characters should be generated using the rules in the Player's Handbook, as normal, however, characters gain a resilience score, attacks and action points, as shown below, as well as additional special rules based on their class. The magic items carried by characters are not counted towards the maximum number of magic items you can take in the army or the army's points value.
Avenger [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Avenger — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Avenger — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Avenger — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Armor of Faith, Avenger's Censure, Channel Divinity, Oath of Enmity.
Divine Assassin: If you are in base-to-base contact with an enemy unit that has the target of your Oath of Enmity power within it, you can make melee attacks against that target, even if the target is not in reach.
Barbarian [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Barbarian — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Barbarian — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Barbarian — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Barbarian Agility, Feral Might, Rage Strike, Rampage
Devastating Rampage: Once per encounter, when you use your rampage class feature, you can take a multiattack action to make basic attacks instead of simply making a basic attack.
Bard [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Bard — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Bard — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Bard — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Bardic Training, Bardic Virtue, Majestic Word, Multiclass Versatility, Skill Versatility, Song of Rest, Words of Friendship.
Inspirational Leader: You, and any unit you are in, gain a +2 bonus to courage checks. In addition, you, and any allies within 6" of you have the stubborn special rule.
Cleric [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Cleric — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Cleric — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Cleric — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Channel Divinity, Healers Lore, Healing Word, Ritual Casting.
Divine Litany: You, and any unit you join, can re-roll failed courage checks. You cannot re-roll this re-roll, and the second result must be accepted, even if it's worse.
Druid [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Druid — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Druid — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Druid — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Balance of Nature, Primal Aspect, Ritual Casting, Wild Shape.
Primal Fear: While in your beast form, you cause fear.
Fighter [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Fighter — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Fighter — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Fighter — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Combat Challenge, Combat Superiority, Fighter Weapon Talent.
Mighty Defender: If you join a unit, the unit you join gains a +2 bonus to its AC.
Invoker [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Invoker — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Invoker — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Invoker — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Channel Divinity, Divine Covenant, Ritual Casting.
Icon of Divinity: You, and any unit you join, can re-roll failed courage checks. You cannot re-roll this re-roll, and the second result must be accepted, even if it's worse.
Paladin [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Paladin — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Paladin — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Paladin — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Channel Divinity, Divine Challenge, Lay on Hands
Sanctified Challenge: When you declare a challenge, it cannot be refused.
Ranger [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Ranger — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Ranger — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Ranger — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Fighting Style, Hunter's Quarry, Prime Shot
Rapid Short: If you have the archer fighting style, while weilding a ranged weapon, you gain a an extra attack when shooting.
Dance of Blades: If you have the two-blade fighting style, while weilding two melee weapons, you gain a an extra attack in close combat.
Rogue [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Avenger — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Rogue — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Rogue — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Rogue Tactics; Rogue weapon Talent; Sneak Attack.
Assassin: If you are in base-to-base contact with an enemy unit that has a character within it, you can make melee attacks against that character, even if the character is not in reach.
First Strike: At the start of each round of combat, you have combat advantage against any creatures that have not acted yet in that round of combat.
Shaman [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Shaman — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Shaman — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Shaman — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Companion Spirit; Healing Spirit, Speak With Spirits
Spirit Strike: When you take a multiattack action to use an attack power that doesn't have the spirit keyword, you can also use a single at-will spirit power once, in addition to the attacks made as part of a multiattack action.
Sorcerer [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Sorcerer — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Sorcerer — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Sorcerer — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Spell Source.
Magic Disruption: All arcane powers (other than your own) used within 6" of you take a -2 penalty to all attack rolls made as part of the power.
Swordmage [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Swordmage — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Swordmage — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Swordmage — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Swordbond, Swordmage Aegis, Swordmage Warding.
Arcane Shield: When you join a unit, all models in the unit gain the benefit of your swordmage Warding class feature.
Warden [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Warden — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Warden — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Warden — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Font of Life, Guardian Might, Nature's Wrath.
Mighty Defender: If you join a unit, the unit you join gains a +2 bonus to its AC.
Warlock [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Warlock — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Warlock — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Warlock — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Eldritch Pact, Prime Shot, Shadow Walk, Warlock's Curse.
Mass Curse: When you use your warlock's curse class feature, you can instead choose to curse a unit (so long as that unit consists of 2 or more models). When you take a multiattack action to attack a cursed unit, you can make an extra attack against that unit.
Wizard [ edit ]
Pts/as character
Hero Infantry Character
S I Hp R A AC F R W AP Heroic Wizard — — — 1 3 — — — — 2 Paragon Wizard — — — 1 4 — — — — 3 Epic Wizard — — — 1 5 — — — — 4
Unit size: Individual
Special Rules: Arcane Implement Mastery, Cantrips, Ritual Casting, Spellbook.
Quickspell: When you use the multiattack action to use a ranged arcane power, you can make an additional attack.
Back to Main Page → 4e Homebrew → Rules.As much as we love our parents, it's probably fair to say most of us would prefer not to move back in once we've left home.
But more than seven million Britons - dubbed the 'doomerangers' - have been forced to do exactly that after a break-up because they can't afford to live on their own, a survey found.
And unlike the 'boomerang generation', who return to the family home not long after flying the nest, the 'doomerangers' are fully grown adults, often with spouses and children.
More than seven million Britons have been forced to move back home after a break-up because they can't afford to live on their own
Research revealed men are more likely to go through the humbling experience of becoming a 'doomeranger'
In fact, according to the survey of 505 people who had moved back with their parents, a quarter had done so following a bad break-up, saying they needed distance or independence from their ex-partner.
The research revealed men are more likely to go through the humbling experience of becoming a 'doomeranger' after a divorce or separation.
By contrast, women are more likely to keep the house, particularly if children are involved.
And no matter how much we would like to be independent, rising rent and mortgage costs mean many of us are left with no choice but to return, however reluctantly, to the family nest.
On average, 'doomerangers' - who make up 14 per cent of the adult population - spend six months living with their parents, according to the survey for Churchill Insurance.
Financial pressure is the main reason for returning to the family nest, with 55 per cent saying this forced them back home.
Women are more likely to keep the house, particularly if children are involved, following a break-up
These pressures can vary from sky-high rents to needing to save up to buy a property, or pay off debts. But almost four in ten said they wanted emotional support, and 13 per cent said they needed help with childcare.
Meanwhile, teenagers who leave home are now a rarity - only one in ten boys and one in eight girls strike out on their own.
Martin Scott, head of Churchill Home Insurance, said: 'A separation or divorce is an emotionally traumatic experience and sometimes parents are exactly what we need to help us get through these difficult periods in our lives.
'The additional financial strain of having to keep separate properties often means it's easier to move in with family, rather than try and find somewhere else to live.'Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, we are very pleased to announce that Top Gear TV and Extra Gear host Chris Harris will feature in a new series of online videos exclusive to TopGear.com.
Yep, the Master of Sideways himself will be presenting – and driving – the world’s most exciting new cars, and you’ll be able to watch it all right here on TopGear.com.
“Obviously I’m thrilled to be making beautiful films like the F12tdf piece for the Top Gear television show,” says Chris, “but the longer-form, more detailed web films I’ve made with Neil Carey over the years remain my natural format, and broadcasting them through TG’s huge online audience is a dream come true.
“If you want to know even more technical details about cars, hear more in-depth analysis, I hope we’ll be the perfect destination. I want the films to be just as they were on Chris Harris on Cars. With added slow-motion slides.
“The Top Gear magazine and online team are the best out there. I can’t think of a more exciting recipe than applying myself and Neil’s skills in making engaging films for hardcore car enthusiasts, with their ability to actually be organised (never my strongest attribute) and push the content as far and wide as possible.
“But most of all I want to have fun. Having fun shooting cars makes much better films,” he added.
Ah yes, fun. We’ll announce details of the first film in due course, but for now, we urge you to stop everything you’re doing, and rejoice in a minute of Chris drifting various exotica in the video above.BII This story was delivered to BI Intelligence IoT Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.
Google's parent company Alphabet is in the process of transitioning its self-driving car unit from a research lab into a separate, stand-alone subsidiary, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The unit, whose finances were moved away from Alphabet's X unit at the start of 2016, will continue to operate under the Alphabet umbrella.
This puts the unit on the path to begin selling its self-driving vehicles in the near future.Astro Teller, the head of X, said that Alphabet will likely roll out its vehicles over the course of the next several years, and that it will probably have both cars that are designed for sale directly to consumers and others that are designed for shared mobility.
Further, since it's now a separate division under Alphabet, it will likely be expected to begin generating revenue, which could be difficult for a group that has yet to perfect its product or bring anything to market.
This marks a significant step forward for one of the earliest pioneers in the self-driving car market. Alphabet was one of the earliest entrants into the self-driving car market, launching its self-driving division all the way back in 2009.
However, recent reports emerged that the project was being held back by higher ups such as Larry Page, who was reportedly looking to delay any product release short of a fully self-driving vehicle. But this news indicates that Alphabet is further along in the race to develop a fully autonomous vehicle than many previously believed.
John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on self-driving cars that examines the major strides automakers and tech companies have made to overcome the barriers currently preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the market. Further, the report examines global survey results showing where fully autonomous cars are highly desired.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
Three barriers have been preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the road: 1) high technological component prices; 2) varying degrees of consumer trust in the technology; and 3) relatively nonexistent regulations. However, in the past six months, there have been many advances in overcoming these barriers.
Technology has been improving as new market entrants find innovative ways to expand on existing fully autonomous car technology. As a result, the price of the components required for fully autonomous cars has been dropping.
Consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicle technology has increased in the past two years.
California became the first US state to propose regulations. California's regulations stipulate that a fully autonomous car must have a driver behind the wheel at all times, discouraging Google's and Uber's idea of a driverless taxi system.Co-owners announce Friday pro team is folding
Brothers Tom Fath and Dave Fath poured their hearts, souls and millions of dollars attempting to make professional soccer viable in Edmonton.
Unfortunately in the end, the ball was taken away from them.
The co-owners of FC Edmonton announced Friday they are leaving the North American Soccer League and ceasing operations of the professional team. They will continue to fund the FC Edmonton academy.
“It’s difficult, of course, because we had put a lot of time and energy and money into it,” Tom Fath said. “We were doing it because we wanted to give back to the city and we’ve seen a number of ways which it has. I think it’s helped build soccer in the community. We’ve had more than 14 youth move up through to our national team programs from our academy. Between the academy and the games, we’ve hosted huge number of youths to our games.”
The NASL was kneecapped when the United States Soccer Federation decided not to renew the league’s Division 2 status and instead categorized it as a Division 3 circuit for next season.
The league took another hit recently when a U.S. federal judge ruled against an antitrust lawsuit filed against the USSF, the governing body of soccer in the United States. The ruling may essentially kill off the league.
“I’ve always believed in the NASL and I’ve always supported them, but the primary thing is that our franchise, the way it’s turned out since we started in November 2009, it’s not sustainable the way it is right now,” Fath said. “If you look at the USSF, by the struggles we had last year and currently where they’re not sanctioning us as Division 2, it’s just another factor and effectively reinforces the need to do what we’re doing.
“Regardless of the decision, we must express our sincere thanks to the players, coaches and supporters and our very hard-working administration team and their commitment and dedication to professional soccer in Edmonton. We also want to reinsure local youth soccer that we remain committed to our local youth academy.”
FC Edmonton was founded by the Fath brothers in 2009 and began playing in the reincarnated version of the NASL in 2011. The Faths were the last original owners in the league, which had a fluctuating number of clubs through its existence.
“It’s not easy. It’s tough emotionally, and we’ll be thinking about things over the next little bit,” Fath said. “Looking at moving forward, we have to see if there is an opportunity to move forward with a sustainable model in some way or other. Currently, there isn’t another league. There is a potential other league, so we’re evaluating our potential moving forward.”
Fath said FC Edmonton will not be joining the United Soccer League, which retained the Division 2 status it was granted on a provisional basis last year.
The proposed Canadian Premier League is a possibility, but there is no definite startup date for the national circuit.
“We will not go to the USL and we’re not going to the MLS, those are really the only two other leagues,” Fath said. “As far as the CPL, I think the CPL is exactly what Canadian soccer needs moving forward.”
As two successful local businessmen, Tom and Dave Fath were originally approached by former Edmonton Trappers president Mel Kowalchuk about investing in a professional soccer club.
Despite the previous demises of professional soccer in the city, which included the Edmonton Drillers of the original NASL, the Edmonton Eagles, the Edmonton Brickmen and the Edmonton Aviators, the Fath brothers agreed to form FC Edmonton, knowing they were unlikely to ever turn a profit running a pro team in the city.
The two agreed to bring back professional soccer for the benefit of the community.
“That was absolutely 100 per cent of the reason,” Fath said. “I didn’t ever play soccer. I didn’t really ever watch soccer and I’d never been to a pro soccer game in Edmonton. We felt confident that it was a good way to give back to the community, that it had potential to make a difference.”
The brothers are believed to have lost upwards of $1-million per season running FC Edmonton and struggled to gain support from the city and the local amateur soccer community. The club did its best to refurnish Clarke Stadium with the Fath brothers installing grandstands on the east side of the venue out of their own pockets to bring the capacity to 5,000.
“We needed a stadium twice the size to be sustainable,” Fath said. “It’s not just the USSF and their decision about Division 2, and I know that fight is still in the courts, but it’s also about the fact it has to come somewhere close to making sense to be sustainable and it hasn’t got there.”
E-mail: [email protected]
On Twitter: @DerekVanDiestFor more on Marvel’s The Defenders, including exclusive photographs and interviews, pick up Entertainment Weekly on stands now, or buy it here now. And don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
It would be a Marvel Comics’ fan’s dream come true: a crossover of epic proportions, of characters coming together from their individual worlds, to work as a team.
Marvel’s The Defenders will make that happen with its four street-level heroes in New York City, but the team-up of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist does add another series for fans to binge. Yet the Marvel machine doesn’t worry about superhero fatigue — even with the addition of The Punisher, starring Jon Bernthal, to the Marvel-Netflix lineup. “I don’t know that you’d be asking this question if we were a medical show or a law show or a cop show,” Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb explains. “I think the other part that separates us from, let’s just say, our distinguished competition” — obliquely referencing DC shows like Arrow and The Flash that populate The CW — “is that we take place in a very real, grounded world. We’ve always said that there is a fifth Defender, and that is New York.”
Speaking of New York, does that mean that The Defenders will visit New York-based Doctor Strange, cross over with other Marvel series like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or enter the realm of the films? “You’re trying to trap me into saying, ‘Hashtag, it’s all connected,'” Loeb says, chuckling. “If the story warrants it, we will obviously do our best to have folks cross into each other’s story lines.”
For now, the company’s film and television arms continue to make sure each of the superhero stories can stand alone, no matter the size of the screen. “We certainly communicate with each other in terms of what we’re doing and what we have planned and the characters that we’re using and where it’s all going,” Loeb says of working with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who oversees the films. That helps limit the fatigue, but also poses a personal problem for Loeb: “Unfortunately for me as a fan,” he says, “I tend to know more about what’s happening in the movies than I want to know.” Only fans receive spoiler alerts, after all.
Marvel’s The Defenders hits Netflix summer 2017.Data blogger and technology consultant Nick Berry has been crunching pins to see which are easiest to guess
We all carry debit cards, credit cards and mobile phones, and most of these items require a four digit pin to unlock them. Shockingly, it appears that one in every 10 people uses the same pin – 1234.
Theoretically, there are 10,000 possible four-digit combinations the numbers 0 to 9 can be arranged into, and if everyone selected a number entirely at random that would offer a reasonable level of protection.
People, however, seem to exhibit a staggering lack of imagination and select very predictable numbers. This is probably because people choose numbers that are easy to remember, but this unoriginality leaves them vulnerable.
Recently, I performed detailed analysis on 3.4m four-digit pins that had been exposed online: you can see the full details of the research here. The table below shows the top 20 pin numbers in use.
Table: DataGenetics
1234 accounts for 10.7% of all pins, followed by 1111 and 0000. Just these three combinations account for 18.6% of pins and the most common 20 combinations are responsible for more than a quarter of all pins in use. Statistically, to get a third of all pins you'd need
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. The Democratic majority includes some from low-population states -- both from Delaware and West Virginia, one each from Alaska and Nebraska.
So in reality, what's the population balance? Counting the new Republican Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts, the 41 Republicans in the Senate come from states representing just over 36.5 percent of the total US population. The 59 others (Democratic plus 2 Independent) represent just under 63.5 percent. (Taking 2009 state populations from here. If you count up the totals and split a state's population when it has a spit delegation, you end up with about 112.3 million Republican, 194.7 million Democratic + Indep. Before Brown's election, it was about 198 million Democratic + Ind, 109 million Republican.)Cheap & Easy Vegan Breakfast Burrito Bowl Recipe
Vegan breakfast burritos are the king of mornings! Picture this: “cheezy” tofu scramble, crispy potato wedges, and beans piled high under mountains of guac. Oh, and we also turned it into a giant vegan breakfast burrito bowl.. Now we’re talkin’!
Ever since my post on Living Vegan on a Budget, I’ve had people reach out with awesome questions/requests!
It is my goal to convince as many as possible that vegan living on a budget is 100% possible.. It’s fantastic to have this kind of response!
Now readers are asking for vegan budget recipes with prices.. Ask and ye’ shall receive! 🙌 Don’t we all love real-world examples of thriving on a vegan budget?
That being said, this recipe is amazing (whether you’re on a budget or not!). This proves how deliciously flavorful living on a vegan budget can be.
Cheap & Easy-As-Hell Vegan Breakfast Burrito Bowls for Everyone!
What’s the real story?
You’d never guess, but the thought of a breakfast burrito gagged me once upon a time.. I hated eggs, so the non-vegan version turned me off for years! (Why did I wait so long to try tofu scramble!?)
Needless to say, I’ve been in love with vegan breakfast burritos since I took my first bite. It’s something about the combination of salsa and fantastic tofu scramble that makes me weak-in-the-knees!
Years later, I’ve finally perfected Tofu Scramble at home.. I don’t have time for bland sh*t! Seriously, though! Once you know how, tofu scramble is addictive to make.
Now, since I’m promoting this vegan breakfast burrito bowl as “budget-friendly”, let’s break the ingredients down by price!
Per serving:
Potatoes cost $.48
Dinosaur Kale cost $.49
Tofu Cost $.66
Bulk Pinto Beans cost $.82
Avocado cost $.33
Tomato cost $.53
Tortilla Cost $1.30
That means, per serving, this recipe costs only $4.61! Also, that’s with almost completely organic ingredients.. Don’t care about organic? Yours will be even cheaper! 😀
Also, you might be wondering why I didn’t include spices on the price list.
First, I keep these stocked all the time, so it’s not fair to say I bought it for this recipe alone.
Second, I buy spices for cheap in bulk (even organic!), so the cost is very insignificant for how much we’re using.
Lastly, you can always work with what you have access to! I recently found this (hilariously accurate) quote:
Hot sauce covers the taste of poverty
– Unknown
Nick @ ServingRealness.com Serves 4 Big Bowls 459 Cheap & Vegan Breakfast Burrito Bowl Recipe Vegan breakfast burritos are the king of savory breakfasts! Think: "cheezy" tofu scramble, crispy potato wedges, and beans piled high under mountains of guac. Oh, and we also turned it into a giant vegan breakfast burrito bowl.. Now we're talkin'! 30 minPrep Time 15 minCook Time 45 minTotal Time Save Recipe Save Recipe Print Recipe My Recipes My Lists My Calendar Ingredients 4 russet potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
1 tablespoon oil
Salt & pepper
1-2 teaspoons garlic powder
5 dinosaur/lacinato kale leaves, washed
For the Tofu Scramble 1 block firm/extra-firm tofu, excess water pressed out
1 1/2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
Dash of red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
To Assemble 2 cups prepared pinto beans (homemade or canned and rinsed)
1 tortilla, mine was whole-wheat
1 avocado
1 tomato (optional)
Hot sauce or salsa (optional) Instructions Heat a nonstick pan with oil over medium-high heat Add potatoes to hot oil, stir to incorporate evenly Add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste Cook potatoes until pierced easily with fork (about 7-12 minutes) While those are going, wash your kale and "massage" the leaves to tenderize (like you're gently crumpling paper in your hand) The last minute-or-so of cooking, add the kale to the potatoes Remove from pan and keep covered and warm For the Tofu Scramble Make sure your tofu has been pressed for 30 minutes - 1 hour to remove excess water. This can be as simple as stacking cookbooks on top of baking trays, or you might consider getting a tofu press. Roughly chop tofu into cubes and add to the same pan over medium-high heat Once your tofu is starting to look golden, prepare the sauce Add seasonings to small bowl Add a dash (or two) of water and whisk until a pour-able sauce is formed Pour over tofu and stir to coat evenly* Cook tofu for another minute-or-so Remove from heat To Assemble Vegan Breakfast Burrito Bowls Prepare bowl with tortilla first, then fillings, and lastly the tomato and avocado on top! Notes *The key to the tofu scramble is to first push the tofu to one side of the pan. When pouring the sauce, try to get as much on the tofu as possible (while avoiding the pan). If you're too sloppy about it, the sauce has a habit of just burning to the pan, rather than soaking into the tofu. Nutrition Calories 459 cal Fat 12 g Carbs 76 g Protein 14 g Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info 7.8.1.2 70 Nick Abell
So, What Are You Waiting For!?
Put on some salsa music, grab some tortilla chips, and fiesta like there’s no tomorrow! No one’s judging your lack of spice tolerance, I promise 😉Tracy Morgan's attorney says the comedian may not fully recover from the "severe brain injury" he suffered in addition to a broken leg, nose, and ribs in last June's deadly limo accident.
"He's fighting to get better, and if there's a chance for him to be back to the Tracy Morgan he once was, he's going to try to do that," Benedict Morelli said Tuesday, according to the Hollywood Reporter. "But we just don't know because of the severity of the injuries that he sustained and the fact that he had such a severe brain injury."
Morelli and lawyers from Walmart were in New Jersey on Tuesday for a scheduling conference about Morgan's lawsuit against the retail giant. On June 7, a Walmart truck crashed into a limo van carrying Morgan and several others, killing Morgan's friend and mentor, Jimmy Mack McNair.
Since then, Morgan has had to cancel comedy tour dates as well appearances on a TV show and in a movie. Morelli said last month that Morgan may never recover from his injuries, claims which the lawyer reiterated Tuesday afternoon.
"When you have a traumatic brain injury it takes a very long time to find out how you're going to do and how much you're going to recover," Morelli said Tuesday. "You just don't know. So that's where he is. He's still fighting and trying to live his life at the same time and trying to get better, and he's just not better. We're hoping and praying to get him back to where he was. But the jury's out."
[Image via AP]All of the painstaking months that hockey’s powerbrokers spent haggling over insurance, travel and hospitality issues weren’t just about delivering a deal to send NHL players to the Sochi Olympics.
The parties at the bargaining table also believe they’ve laid the foundation for bigger and bolder – not to mention more lucrative – opportunities in the future.
You see, the fifth straight trip to the Olympic Games for NHLers will only be the start of an expanded calendar of international events across the sport.
Click here for the NHL’s full 2013-14 schedule
The rebirth of the World Cup tournament for 2015 is also on the horizon, as are expanded forays into Europe by the NHL. Those will include more regular-season games on that continent along with the expansion of the Victoria Cup concept, which pits NHL teams against the champions of European leagues.
In fact, the NHL is so committed to growing its product internationally that it plans to open a staffed European office by the end of 2013, according to a source.
These are exciting times for those who love international hockey.
As difficult as the Olympic negotiation process proved to be in recent months, there seemed to be genuine optimism coming from the NHL, NHL Players’ Association and International Ice Hockey Federation following Friday’s announcement about the Sochi Games.
With those groups showing a spirit of co-operation, it left some of the most powerful men in the sport dreaming big.
“I hope that this is the first step in a multi-year deal, which will involve World Cups, Victoria Cups and other new events internationally,” Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson told sportsnet.ca. “I think that there is a great opportunity for the IIHF, NHL and NHLPA.”
There is no doubt that the NHL recognizes the opportunity.
In recent years, it has launched native language websites and hopes to eventually have live game distribution available across all devices in Europe.
The contentious labour negotiations last year also included a hint of what was to come. NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr repeatedly mentioned the need to explore more opportunities in Europe and the new collective bargaining agreement mandates that every NHL team must make at least one trip overseas before it expires.
The NHL and NHLPA also seem ready to work together on reviving the World Cup tournament. The first event of that kind since 2004 is being targeted for a year after the Sochi Games, which means that preparations will have to start soon.
While Nicholson acknowledged that there wasn’t an in-depth discussion on the World Cup during the recent Olympic negotiations, he expects to be part of one in the very near future.
“Hopefully we’ll have these next talks started by the end of the summer,” said Nicholson, who also serves as a vice-president with the IIHF.
What it means is that the best players on the planet will likely be given more opportunity to pull a national team sweater over their heads. Sidney Crosby hasn’t done that since scoring the Golden Goal at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and seemed downright giddy about the possibility of doing it again soon.
The Pittsburgh Penguins star is clearly in favour of the new international initiatives being planned for the sport.
“I think it would be great,” Crosby said Friday afternoon. “I think expanding (the international calendar) and playing different teams, representing Canada, the more that you get an opportunity to do that I think it’s great for everyone.
“I see that happening in the future.”
The wheels will start being set in motion soon.
While much of the focus from fans and media will now be on preparations for Sochi – Hockey Canada is expected to formally introduce head coach Mike Babcock and his staff, plus its list of invitees to next month’s orientation camp, in the coming days – a lot of other planning will be taking place behind the scenes.
With the continued growth and expansion of the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League, the ground seems to be shifting in the game on a global level. The NHL is clearly playing a role in the movement as well, starting with the deal to send its players back to the Olympic Games.
“The National Hockey League features the most international player population in professional sports, and our outstanding athletes take tremendous pride in representing their homelands on the global stage,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “The decision to participate … was in many ways a difficult one, but one that we know will be well received by our players and, most importantly, by the vast majority of our fans and sports fans everywhere.”
And they’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of possibility.After actress Rose McGowan called on Jeff Bezos to "stop funding rapists" in a Twitter thread, the Amazon boss has taken action.
In a series of tweets last night, McGowan said: "I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof.
"I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing. I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar," McGowan continued. "I am calling on you to stop funding rapists, alleged pedos [sic] and sexual harassers...there is rot in Hollywood."
HW is believed to refer to Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and the "studio head" she is referring to is believed to be Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios.
1) @jeffbezos I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn%u2019t been proven. I said I was the proof. — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
2) @jeffbezos I had already sold a script I wrote to your studio, it was in development. When I heard a Weinstein bailout was in the works — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
3) @Jeffbezos I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing. I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar. — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
4) @jeffbezos I called my attorney & said I want to get my script back, but before I could, #2 @amazonstudios called to say my show was dead — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
4) @jeffbezos I am calling on you to stop funding rapists, alleged pedos and sexual harassers. I love @amazon but there is rot in Hollywood — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
5) @jeffbezos Be the change you want to see in the world. Stand with truth. #ROSEARMY #Amazon — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
Following these accusations, as well as claims he sexually harrassed Isa Hackett, Amazon has issued a statement saying that it is putting Price on leave. Hackett is the producer of Amazon Studios' The Man in the High Castle. "Roy Price is on leave of absence effective immediately," Amazon responded when we asked for comment. "We are reviewing our options for the projects we have with The Weinstein Company."
Elsewhere, Amazon said it was considering scrapping two projects it was working on with the Weinstein Company, which sacked one of its founders Weinstein earlier this week, namely The Romanoffs and an untitled drama starring Robert De Niro.
McGowan has been regularly tweeting in response to allegations made by a rising number of women claiming Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. Yesterday, Twitter suddenly suspended her account.
TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED ME. THERE ARE POWERFUL FORCES AT WORK. BE MY VOICE. #ROSEARMY #whywomendontreport A post shared by Rose McGowan (@rosemcgowan) on Oct 11, 2017 at 9:19pm PDT
The speed with which Twitter responded to suspend McGowan was particularly unedifying for a company not know for its rapid response to abuse. At the time of her Twitter ban, McGowan was attacking Ben Affleck for his claims he had no idea what disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was up to.
@benaffleck %u201CGODDAMNIT! I TOLD HIM TO STOP DOING THAT%u201D you said that to my face. The press conf I was made to go to after assault. You lie. — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 10, 2017
At the time, Twitter refused to comment on the reasons for McGowan’s suspension, hiding behind the all-time classic response of refusing to comment on individual cases for “privacy and security reasons.” But McGowan’s 800,000-plus Twitter followers had seen what led up to the ban, and they were obviously incensed. It smelled like yet another powerful body silencing a female voice seeking justice.
Many women are boycotting the social network in response, including Chrissy Teigen and Lauren Duca - both of whom have been victim to misogyny on the site - as a sign of solidarity towards the women coming forward with allegations.
Tomorrow (Friday the 13th) will be the first day in over 10 years that I won%u2019t tweet. Join me. #WomenBoycottTwitter pic.twitter.com/xoEt5Bwj5s — Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 13, 2017
READ NEXT: How to get help if you've been a victim of sexual assault
The outrage that followed led Twitter to U-turn on its initial non-response. The company had taken action, it claimed, because McGowan had tweeted a private phone number – which violates the company’s terms of service.
We have been in touch with Ms. McGowan's team. We want to explain that her account was temporarily locked because one of her Tweets included a private phone number, which violates our Terms of Service. 1/3 — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 12, 2017
The Tweet was removed and her account has been unlocked. We will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future. 2/3 — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 12, 2017
Twitter is proud to empower and support the voices on our platform, especially those that speak truth to power. We stand with the brave women and men who use Twitter to share their stories, and will work hard every day to improve our processes to protect those voices. 3/3 — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 12, 2017
Which is fine and logical, except Twitter has been known to break its own rules in less high profile cases, as this tweet from Natalie Shure illustrates.
Some alt-right dickbag tweeted my phone number last winter, and when I reported it Twitter denied it was a violation of terms of service https://t.co/Imb5XmJpnC — Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) October 12, 2017
Not to mention, as McGowan herself pointed out, that the president of the United States gets away with breaking the terms of service all the time. And for fairly obvious financial reasons.
when will nuclear war violate your terms of service? https://t.co/72FiiyoZ59 — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017
Rules inconsistently applied are basically not rules, and Twitter has picked an odd point to come off the fence. The rapid U-turn on giving an explanation suggests that they’ve now come to terms with exactly how bad this looks – but it beggars belief that they didn’t see this coming. Silencing a woman calling out an establishment stitch-up looks like an establishment stitch-up.
Whatever Twitter’s motivations for banning Rose McGowan, it seems all they’ve achieved is amplifying her important words about the serious problems in Hollywood and beyond.
If you or a loved one has been affected by the issues raised in this story, you can get support and advice from Rape Crisis England and Wales or by calling the National Rape Crisis Helpline on 0808 802 9999. Rape Crisis Scotland's number is 08088 01 03 02.The new head of music at BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra has hailed the talent of black British artists and said the recent Brit awards could have done a better job of reflecting the diversity of UK music.
Chris Price praised artists such as Stormzy, who was named best grime act at the Mobo awards in successive years. The rapper previously criticised the Brit awards, saying Britain “is not just One Direction”.
In an interview with the Guardian, Price, who holds one of the most influential jobs in the UK’s music industry, predicted this could be the year that grime becomes Britain’s next “big cultural export”.
Chris Price, head of music at BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra. Photograph: BBC
He hit out a recent report for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that called on Radio 1’s output to be less populist to help advertising-funded rivals, saying this was a terrible idea and would quickly make it into a “niche station”.
Price, 42, said: “At Radio 1, we’re really focused on making sure we reflect the diversity of our audience in our music policy. And I’d love to see the success of an artist like Stormzy, who’s got a long history with 1xtra and Radio 1, and a top 10 single with Shut Up – the first freestyle ever to do that – to be reflected at the Brits. I’d also really love to see the excellent work that 1xtra does at the black and ethnic minority end of the scale be reflected.”
At the Brits ceremony in February, British breakthrough nominees Wolf Alice tweeted that grime was “criminally overlooked” and singer-songwriter Laura Mvula boycotted the event. The organisers of the awards have promised to improve inclusivity.
Price said: “This year could be quite a turning point for grime. Can this become our big cultural export moment, our hip hop? It feels like international eyes are on the genre. Look at Drake signing to Boy Better Know last month or signing grime artists to his own label and Kanye West turning up at the Brits mob-handed with the entire grime industry last year.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stormzy (right) talks to Oxford University students during a Q&A session this week. Photograph: Barcroft Media
He said grime faced one obstacle: “It’s not really been an albums genre … In the past 10 years, I think even most grime fans would say there’s been one seminal grime album and that’s Boy In Da Corner by Dizzee Rascal. But Stormzy’s going to drop an album this year, Skepta’s probably going to drop an album this year, Kano has just released a phenomenal body of work.”
Price grew up in Buckinghamshire and studied French and German at Bristol University. After a brief flirtation with record label marketing in the late 90s, he became a music producer at Radio 1 before heading the music team at MTV and later Last FM. He subsequently founded New Slang Media, a music strategy consultancy working with radio stations and streaming services.
On the same day as he started in his new role, a report commissioned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport called on Radio 1 to curb its populist appeal to help commercial rivals. “It’s a terrible idea,” Price said. “Breaking new music is enshrined in Radio 1’s service licence, it’s what we’re here to do. But what’s unique about us is that we play brand new music in the mix with more established names, that’s what gives us our size and our strength. So if Radio 1 were to play only music that was ignored by other broadcasters, it would quickly turn into a niche station. We would lose our ability to make the hits, which means commercial radio wouldn’t have any hits to play.”
He maintained that Radio 1 brought huge cultural capital as well as revenue to the UK creative industries. “If you look at the three breakthrough artists of last year – Jess Glynne, James Bay and Years and Years – Radio 1 played a central role in kickstarting and then growing all of their careers. Of course, all that money flows back to the music industry and it’s one of the reasons we have such a vital music industry that’s respected around the world.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kanye West performs All Day at the 2015 Brit awards with a host of UK grime artists. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Asked about the choice of artists for daytime airplay, Price said: “I think, in general, music radio has over the past five years or so has become a bit too overreliant on data, whether it’s Shazam tags, YouTube views or Twitter followers. The irony is that it almost leads to less certainty about what’s going on in the market than more.
“The best and only response is a return to the two things that are never going to let you down: your ears and your heart.”Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is a day of challenge and confrontation, emphasizing the issue of prisoners
On the occasion of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, we salute every prisoner, the heroes and heroines of the battles of will and steadfastness, to every flower and cub, to the sick prisoners, administrative detainees and imprisoned leaders, led by the imprisoned General Secretary, Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, Marwan Barghouthi, Hassan Salameh, Wajdi Jawdat, Anas Jaradat, Bassam Kandaji and the long line of leaders who represent the national struggle and the prisoners’ cause.
On this occasion, we make a particular salute to the martyrs of the prisoners movement and to all of those engaged in confrontation and the struggle for victory. We are firmly committed to see each battle of confrontation with the Prison Service and its instruments of repression and intelligence agencies as a collective battle. Every action initiated by any faction is all of our battle.
We also congratulate the longest-serving woman prisoner, Lena Jarbouni, on this occasion of her freedom after 15 years in Israeli jails.
In this context, we affirm that we stand hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder in any struggle waged by the prisoners, and we consider the decision to engage in the battle of dignity and honor against the jailer, beginning on Monday, April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day 2017, to be one which we support and which we are part of. This comes in two ways, both through the decisions and guidelines for the comrades to engage in the battle, and through approving a program of support for the strike in all prisons and among our comrades outside.
In this context of high appreciation and support for this battle and all the heroic prisoners who will engage in it, we affirm our continued struggle for the unity of the prisoners’ movement and the escalation of confrontation against the prison administration.
Thus, we call on all the Palestinian people and their supporters and friends around the world to stand side by side with the prisoners in their continuing battles inside the prisons, escalating the mass movement to support the battle of wills, challenge and confrontation, and to once again reaffirm the centrality of the cause of the prisoners.
We also call upon all human rights, humanitarian and media institutions to support our prisoners in order to develop a unified national program at all levels for more effective results.
We call upon the leaders of the Palestinian people to make unremitting efforts to uphold their responsibility for the prisoners and the martyrs and do everything possible to defend them and support their steadfastness until victory in the ongoing battles against the prison service, through all forms of action for their liberation.
On this occasion, we urge all to close ranks in the field of national unity and urge our Front, all of the national and Islamic forces and factions and the masses of our people to devote their efforts and time in service of the cause of the prisoners.
We hope that the culmination of all of these battles waged by the prisoners inside the prisons, with the popular support inside and outside Palestine, will be to unify the prisoners’ movement, in light of the traditions and norms established by the prisoners’ movement for over 50 years, of prisons as revolutionary schools which unite all forces behind revolutionary national ideals.
We urge all actions and intensified work in the Palestinian, Arab and international arenas, everyhere in the world in support of the prisoners’ cause.
Salutes of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – Glory to the martyrs – Freedom for the prisoners of freedom
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Prison Branch
April 16, 2017Every single "Big Brother Canada" viewer saw it with their own eyes: contestants Jon Pardy (the eventual winner of Season 2) and Neda Kalantar (the third-place finisher) were made for each other.
According to ET Canada, what we thought for the entire season was actually true -- there were romantic sparks between the inseparable houseguests.
Yes, the rumoured couple is now dating. After Pardy's $100,000 win things changed for him, and fast. He broke up with his girlfriend, Janelle, who lives in his home province of Newfoundland. No word on any fallout from the split.
At the "Big Brother Canada" Season 2 finale taping (at which I was present), once Jon was pronounced the winner, there was obvious friction onstage between Pardy and his girlfriend. When he stopped to hug Kalantar, who was still stinging after Pardy eliminated her, Janelle was there next to him, glaring.
In the post-finale interviews (conducted immediately afterwards in the "BBCan" backyard), Kalantar was visibly shaken and very upset. Pardy, on a winner's high, was jubilant and excited. He was very quick to say that he loved Kalantar, but "like a sister." Well that has obviously changed, if it was ever true in the first place.
Here's a photo of the two holding hands in Vancouver not too long ago:
And here's a hand-on-leg shot:
(Photo courtesy ofwww.trevwoh.com)
To refresh your memory, here are a few GIFs of the "Big Brother Canada" lovebirds. Tell me it's not obvious. Like a sister. Please.Fintech & Blockchain is 'Eating the German Landscape'
Blockhain and financial technology may be going German, with a vast amount of startups in these industries choosing to set up shop in Berlin.
Also read: Bitwala Raises €800k from Germany’s Largest VC Firm
Brexit Forces Fintech to Berlin
Several startups in Berlin told Reuters that the German Capital is booming as a hub for financial technology. Berlin is currently home to over 70 fintech companies, while there’s less than half that number in the financial centre of Frankfurt.
The companies say that Frankfurt is usually the attractive region for financial services, but lately, Berlin has been bringing in all the fintech business. Talented specialists are lured in by affordable living and a great number of English-speaking residents. German fintech company builder FinLeap has promoted nine financial technology startups over the past two years, and says that it gets hundreds of applications a month. Ramin Niroumand, co-founder and managing partner at FinLeap, told Reuters:
We’ve had more than 50 senior applications coming from London in the past six weeks.
SAP Is Putting the Blockchain Into Everything
Among the fintech businesses transforming the German industry are blockchain-related projects that are appearing in the region. Legacy banks and tech firms within the country are keen on studying innovative technology, such as Bitcoin’s distributed ledger (blockchain) technology.
The World Economic Forum has recently called Blockchain technology one of six Internet and computer “megatrends.” In 2015, this trend affected Germany, with people involved with fintech and blockchain applications in Berlin numbering roughly 13,000, according to Ernst and Young.
Meanwhile, multinational software firm SAP, headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, is also working on distributed ledger technology. SAP recently announced a partnership with Ripple Labs, ATB Financial in Canada, and ReiseBank. The teams built a platform that was used to send payments between the two banks. The firms stated they were able to make payments in twenty seconds, as opposed to traditional settlements that usually take a week to clear.
Bloomberg reports that roughly 50,000 businesses use SAP’s financial software. According to the publication, the firm is creating unique software for customers involved with media, farming, banking, energy and healthcare all connected to blockchains tethered to the company’s Hana Cloud Platform. SAP says that it has been testing multiple technologies including Bitcoin and the Ethereum protocol. The company has also written numerous essays on the potential of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
Blockchain Is Blossoming in the German Capital
Back in May, Bitcoin.com reported on the GTEC Awards, which awarded €50,000 to innovative technology startups. The contest, held in Berlin, exclaimed “Blockchains are eating the world,” and judged over 100 applicants from distributed ledger startups from all around the world. The shortened list of twelve startups pitched their projects to eight judges at the former GDR State Council Building in central Berlin.
The projects that won the competition were Arcade City winning the gold prize, Cargochain taking second place, and Clipperz coming in at third for their IP registration project. Influential industry executives judged the German competition, such as Thomas Birr, Inken Braunschmidt and Carsten Stöcker from RWE, as well as Jens Hewald and Thomas Hessler from Globumbus.
Germany — particularly its up-and-coming fintech hub, Berlin — is continuing to make waves in this industry. With a steadfast approach to blockchain technology that could transform the financial sector within the country, Germans seem to be optimistic when it comes to the future of the nascent fintech industry.
What do you think about the fintech and blockchain influence in Germany? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, GTEC Awards.
Did you know Bitcoin.com is throwing a premiere industry event in London, Blockchain:Money. On November 6-7 leading innovators and executives from the blockchain and cryptocurrency space will gather to discuss these emerging technologies. Get your tickets today!Coffee stains may seem mundane, but they are actually an interesting quirk of physics.
Now researchers have discovered a surprising twist that changes our understanding of how these stains form. It turns out that liquids, such as coffee, that are made up of spherical particles dry differently than liquids with more oblong particles, scientists have found.
In the case of coffee, each particle, or clump of molecules, is roughly a micrometer (one millionth of a meter) wide, which is about 10,000 times larger than individual coffee molecules, researchers said.
As a drop of coffee dries, liquid evaporates more efficiently from the drop's thinner edges. Liquid in the middle then flows outward to replenish the edges, carrying the suspended solids with it. These are then left behind in a ring around the edges of the drop when all the water has evaporated, leaving the telltale dark halo at the drop's edge, with a more translucent center to the stain. [Video - Liquid Drop Defies Gravity]
Researchers assumed that particles that were oblong, rather than spherical, would behave similarly. To their surprise, they found instead that oblong particles tend to clump together much more strongly than spherical particles. This clumping hinders the flow of liquid from the middle of a drop to the edge, thus distributing the solids more evenly as the drop dries, and leaving behind an even stain without the ring effect.
"I think people are very surprised that by just changing the shape of the particles without changing the chemistry, we're able to avoid this effect," said University of Pennsylvania graduate student Peter Yunker, who led the research.
The revelation could be of interest beyond the physics community.
"There are a lot of very elegant physics in a lot of everyday objects," Yunker told LiveScience. "There are also a lot of practical applications that come out of some very basic physics."
For example, the coffee-stain discovery could help makers of paint and ink, who often go to great lengths to prevent their products from drying unevenly without adding extra solid solvents.
"We were really interested in understanding what we can do to avoid the coffee-ring effect," Yunker said.
"In inkjet cartridges, the ink costs more than expensive champagne per volume," Yunker added. "If we can reduce the solid content in inkjet ink by a small amount, we could potentially decrease the cost by a large amount."
The finding is detailed in the Aug. 18 issue of the journal Nature.
This article was reprinted with permission from LiveScience.
Related on LiveScience:
Scientists explain coffee stains as mystery of physics
Now researchers have discovered a surprising twist that changes our understanding of how these stains form. It turns out that liquids, such as coffee, that areWASHINGTON — When Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign, he decried the lack of intelligence of elected officials in characteristically blunt terms.
“How stupid are our leaders?” he said. “How stupid are they?”
But with his own choice of words and his short, simple sentences, Trump’s speech could have been comprehended by a fourth-grader. Yes, a fourth-grader.
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The Globe reviewed the language used by 19 presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans, in speeches announcing their campaigns for the 2016 presidential election. The review, using a common algorithm called the Flesch-Kincaid readability test that crunches word choice and sentence structure and spits out grade-level rankings, produced some striking results.
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The Republican candidates — like Trump — who are speaking at a level easily understood by people at the lower end of the education spectrum are outperforming their highfalutin opponents in the polls. Simpler language resonates with a broader swath of voters in an era of 140-character Twitter tweets and 10-second television sound bites, say specialists on political speech.
“There’s no time to explain in modern politics,’’ said Elvin T. Lim, a professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
Mike Huckabee and Jim Gilmore, who are struggling in the polls, are both spinning sentences above a 10th-grade level, according to the algorithm. Ben Carson, who has surged and maintained a second-place standing in the polls, communicates with voters at a sixth-grade level — despite a medical degree and career as a brain surgeon.
Daniel Zedek/Globe Staff
Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton’s speeches are just right for eighth-graders; Bernie Sanders’s strong critiques of Wall Street and American capitalism are aimed higher, at the 10th grade.
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By every criteria in the algorithm, Trump is speaking at the lowest level. He used fewer characters per word in his announcement speech, fewer syllables per word, and his sentences were shorter
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with many of his friends and contemporaries giving speeches complimenting/mocking him. One such toaster was Tina Fey, and Vulture transcribed her entire speech. She opened by talking about how afraid she was to ask him to star in 30 Rock:Of all the foods in the breakfast brigade, one stands out as the most misunderstood: the incredible edible egg. What’s the deal with eggs, anyway? One day, researchers find they’re worse for you than cigarettes (a study, by the way, thatincurred heavy criticism), and the next day, they’re being hailed as the ultimate superfood.
And here’s even more confusing egg news to add to the mix: A recent study from Yale University found that people with coronary heart disease could safely eat two whole eggs a day for six weeks without experiencing any negative consequences to their blood pressure, cholesterol, or body weight. And another study from the University of Connecticut found that adults with metabolic syndrome could eat three eggs a day when on a carb-restricted diet without any problems—and the eggs actually improved their good cholesterol.
That’s great news for omelet-vores everywhere. But has the tide officially turned in favor of eggs? Lead author of the Yale study David Katz, MD, MPH, founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center and Prevention advisory board member, thinks so. “Overall, the research has gone a very long way to exonerating the egg,” Dr. Katz said. “The evidence is really overwhelming that dietary cholesterol exerts minimal effects on blood cholesterol levels.” That’s important, considering that cholesterol is the main reason people tend to nix eggs from their diet.
More from Prevention: The Kindest Eggs You Can Buy
Dr. Katz’s lab has conducted several intervention studies with eggs and has yet to find harmful effects in any population he’s studied, whether in adults who are healthy, adults who have high cholesterol, or (most recently) adults who suffer from coronary heart disease: “We gave them two eggs every day for eight weeks and we saw no harmful effects there either,” Dr. Katz said.
And let’s not forget the best part of eggs: They’re ideal protein sources and super-rich in nutrients. Plus, Dr. Katz adds, they fill you up, so you might not have room for that breakfast donut or bacon after a plate of scrambled eggs.
Here’s the million-dollar question: How many eggs can we get away with eating? “I think the average person, and just about everyone who’s eating a mixed diet, could eat seven to 10 eggs a week,” Dr. Katz said. (Of course, if you’re particularly sensitive to dietary cholesterol, you should ask your doctor.)
Can’t wait to get whisking? Start with our 9 Great American Breakfasts for our favorite protein-packed egg dishes.SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint's family history research center is launching a social media campaign encouraging youngsters around the world to share their best stories about their grandmothers.
The #MeetMyGrandma campaign is the latest effort to push young Mormons to capture stories from and about older family members before it's too late.
The program is being run by Family Search, the Church's nonprofit organization. The goal is to get 110,000 new stories logged in family trees on the organization's website in 10 days starting Sept. 20.
Some stories will come from grandmothers who are still alive while others may come from family members reciting an inspirational or funny story they remember about grandma, said Brad Lowder, international marketing manager for Family Search.
"We're trying to give as many people around the world an opportunity to recall how special their grandma is to them," Lowder said. "When you know those stories, whether it's hilarious or something touching or sweet or sentimental, there's something so connecting about it."
The focus on genealogy by LDS faithful is rooted in their belief that families should be the focal point of their lives, and that family relationships continue into eternity.
Salt Lake City is a hub for genealogy enthusiasts. The church's Family History Library is considered the world's largest repository of genealogy records and is visited by 700,000 people annually.
Each year, Family Search hosts a conference called Roots Tech that brings together people with various levels of experience in genealogy to learn how websites, software and other technology can help people find, organize, preserve and share family history
The grandma stories are already rolling in. One young person found out that her 80-year-old grandmother loved skydiving. Another found out her grandmother ran a business from her bed despite fighting cancer for 20 years. A 90-second video on the website features some of the other touching stories from around the globe.
After people put their stories online in their family trees on the Family Search website, they are encouraged to share the tales on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms.
A smartphone app is available to help people capture the stories. The app features 20 questions to ask your grandmother, and allows people to take a selfie or record audio with their grandmother and upload it to the family tree on the website.
"They can go to their grandma and say: 'Tell me how you met grandpa. Tell me your love story,'" Lowder said. "Then, grandma in her own words and her own voice records the story of how she fell in love."
This new initiative will hopefully lure people into genealogy who find the old ways of documenting family trees to be clerical and boring, Lowder said.
"Family history is no longer dates and places and a sort of static experience," Lowder said. "It comes to life through photos and stories."
___
Online:
Family Search: familysearch.org
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Related LinksA 12-year-old boy has become the youngest person in Britain to have a gastric band fitted, as doctors struggle to fight the child obesity epidemic.
The schoolboy is one of an increasing number of youngsters who have had the controversial weight-loss operations, despite recommendations that such high-risk surgery should be a last resort when other efforts to slim down have failed.
Figures seen by The Mail on Sunday show that 62 young people aged 18 or under had the stomach-shrinking surgery at NHS and private hospitals over a three-year period. They include the 12-year-old, one boy aged 13 and two boys aged 15.
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Indulgent: Natalie admits she gives daughter Talulah, aged four, sweets 'for an easy life'
Leading doctors and dentists blame parents for letting their children become so unhealthy that they need surgery – not just gastric bands but also operations to remove rotten teeth caused by sugary diets.
Professor Monty Duggal, head of paediatric dentistry at Leeds Dental Institute, who regularly operates on obese children to remove decayed teeth, said it was ‘a matter of national shame that we have these health problems when we are a wealthy, developed nation. The treatments I carry out all cost taxpayers money.
‘[Yet] as a professional in my field I have to approach parents with great caution. I can’t accuse parents of anything. But of course the parent is responsible for the child’s welfare and health.’
He added that social workers would be quick to step in at any sign of a parent abusing a child, ‘yet you can have a child with up to 20 decayed teeth in their mouth, a big fat face, seriously ill and having to be admitted to hospital for a serious operation under general anaesthetic without consequence for the parent.’
Denisa, 13, visits King’s College Hospital in London with her parents to be assessed for the £12,000 surgery
'One last treat': Denisa and her family in McDonald's - minutes after she was assessed for surgery
His comments come as a new Channel 4 documentary series reveals some of the extreme cases doctors have to deal with at specialist NHS clinics that offer gastric bands to under 18s.
The two-part series called Junk Food Kids: Who’s To Blame? features one 13-year-old schoolgirl who weighs 16st. Denisa, who came to Britain from Romania four years ago, visits King’s College Hospital in London with her parents to be assessed for the £12,000 surgery.
During a consultation about the operation, Denisa’s mother, who is not named in the programme, is questioned about the efforts her daughter has made to lose weight.
It's a matter of national shame that we have these health problems when we are a wealthy, developed nation
Speaking in broken English, she explains: ‘We keep on diet, all three together. It was very good, but now we cannot keep. She cannot give up bread – she likes very much.’
The family are given a detailed diet plan when they leave in a final attempt to try reduce Denisa’s weight without surgery. But just 15 minutes later, the family are shown heading straight to a nearby McDonald’s for ‘one last treat’.
The documentary series also features children attending NHS obesity services in Leeds and being treated for associated conditions such as dental decay.
One of these youngsters is four-year-old Talulah, who due to her weight struggles to fit into a uniform designed for nine-year-olds for her first day at school. In a shameful admission, her mother, referred to only by her first name Natalie, says despite her daughter’s obesity problems she continues to indulge her with sweets for an ‘easy life’.
‘I like to just have an easy life,’ the 29-year-old says.
‘I think everyone just wants an easy life. Sometimes I think to myself no I shouldn’t give in – but I do.’
In another heartbreaking scene, Talulah is seen in tears after surgery to remove eight of her teeth, which have badly decayed because of her sugary diet. But Natalie seems equally unapologetic about the situation. She said: ‘I know that’s my fault, but it was easier for me on a night to give her a bottle of juice than to try to sit up with her all night and get her back to sleep.’
In the same documentary, consultant Fiona Campbell, who works at Leeds Children’s Hospital said: ‘I think the parents have to be blamed for overweight children, but they have to be helped.
Critic: Professor Monty Duggal blames parents
‘Although this is difficult for them – and we can understand chastising children and stopping them doing what they want is difficult – I’m afraid that’s their responsibility. It comes with being a parent.’
Denisa’s family also continues to make a string of excuses about their daughter’s failure to reduce her dangerously high weight and why they are putting her forward for the surgery.
Her father Virgil says: ‘Dieting, changing your eating style, is about the power of willing.
‘And we’ve demonstrated we’re not that strong.
‘She tried to lose weight when she was 11 and 12, but got fatter and fatter. But with surgery you don’t have to give up on temptations.’
Denisa herself admits: ‘My parents find it hard to keep to a diet. That’s why I can’t keep to a diet because they find it hard.’
Gastric band surgery is only offered to obese patients as a last resort, and children or teenagers must meet a strict criteria before they are even considered for the procedure. To qualify they must have a body mass index of more than 40, have reached puberty, have first tried to slim through dieting or exercise, and have a full understanding of the psychological implications.
Some parents, when they come to us, have the idea that if their child has the surgery it will act like a magic wand
But even with these stringent rules, Government figures show the number of young people under 19 having gastric bands on the NHS doubled between 2007 and 2013, when more than 200 children had the surgery.
The average cost of the operation is more than £7,000.
Official statistics from the National Bariatric Surgery Register, which is compiled from surgeons’ reports, reveal that the 12-year-old boy is the youngest child to have been fitted with a gastric band within this group, although it is not recorded if the operation was publicly or privately funded.
NHS statisticians said the youngest patient they had on record for bariatric surgery paid for by the Health Service was 13.
However, many surgeons argue that the stomach bands could save the NHS money through reducing levels of obesity and associated illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, which are estimated to cost the Health Service £5 billion a year.
Dr Lucy Stirling, a clinical psychologist at King’s College Hospital, said parents whose children are facing gastric band surgery can fail to take responsibility for their child’s weight issues.
She said: ‘Parents can be in denial of the part they have played.
‘But children need to be brought up to eat in such a way that they’re nurturing their body rather than slowly damaging it.’
Paediatric consultant Ashish Desai added: ‘Some parents, when they come to us, have the idea that if their child has the surgery it will act like a magic wand.’SAN FRANCISCO — In a formal audit just months before the deadly San Bruno blast, PG&E failed to tell state regulators about manufacturing defects affecting more than 80 miles of gas pipelines, according to evidence presented Friday in the utility’s federal criminal trial.
Calvin Lui, a supervising engineer in pipeline risk management who began working at PG&E in 2008, was the sole witness Friday. Lui was shown internal documents indicating that the utility was aware of wide-ranging threats to its pipeline system before participating in a state Public Utilities Commission audit of the aging network.
The PG&E documents showed the utility knew in early 2010 that 84 miles of pipeline, comprising 443 pipe segments, had manufacturing defects. The PUC pipeline audit took place in May 2010. In September of that year, a gas line beneath San Bruno ruptured, killing eight people and leveling dozens of homes.
Federal prosecutor Hallie Hoffman asked Lui several times if PG&E officials present for the audit ever notified or alerted auditors about the defects.
“No,” Lui replied each time.
In earlier testimony, William Manegold, a PG&E risk assessment supervisor, testified utility executives advised engineers on what kind of information they should provide PUC auditors.
“We were told not to answer questions that we weren’t asked by the PUC,” Manegold told the court.
In the years leading up to the explosion, Lui testified, engineers for PG&E operated as if they were unclear about whether federal regulations would allow them to spike pressures on older lines such as Line 132, the pipeline that burst beneath San Bruno.
“The pipeline codes tended to conflict and to confuse us,” Lui said.
Lui said that confusion existed even though PG&E engineers had widely circulated among themselves clear-cut rules from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Those rules require operators to conduct pressure tests or inspections on any pipes in which the maximum pressure has been exceeded.
However, evidence presented by prosecutors showed that PG&E sought to skirt those rules. When inspections of certain older pipes were required, the utility promoted external corrosion observations as a cheaper alternative to more costly procedures such as high-pressure water tests or sending robots into the lines to inspect the pipes, according to internal company memos and prosecution witnesses.
Prosecutors told the judge after the jury had departed for the day that they expect to call no more than three more witnesses and anticipate they will conclude their case by Wednesday.
Among the upcoming prosecution witnesses are Sandra Flores, an FBI special agent; and Ravindra “Ravi” Chhatre, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge who led the agency’s probe of the San Bruno explosion.
San Francisco-based PG&E faces 13 criminal counts, including 12 alleged violations of violating pipeline safety rules and one that it obstructed the NTSB investigation. PG&E has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and could be fined $562 million.
Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167. Follow him at Twitter.com/georgeavalos.DETROIT, MI -- Kid Rock responded to a court subpoena Monday, and appeared to deliver it with the kind of colorful, brash, aggressive style only a self-proclaimed "American Badass" can.
that he doesn't own a glass dildo that was allegedly given to him by a former Insane Clown Posse employee tied to a harassment lawsuit. And Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, also told lawyers suing the ICP — with plenty colorful words — that they should leave him alone because he doesn't know anyone involved in the case. An excerpt from his first letter directed to
I'm told that you have issued a subpoena for a 'glass dildo' that was supposedly given to me. No idea what you're talking about, and I definitely don't have it. I've never heard of, seen, or met any people involved in this case. But I'm pretty sure you already know that. What I do know is that you've been dragging my name around in the media to gain attention for your sad ass excuse for a law firm. I don't care what you do when you finally catch up to the ambulances you chase, but I do care when you bring my name into it for no reason at all.
Marko told MLive.com earlier Monday that
or else he'd have to explain in court why he didn't. The subpoena claims a glass dildo was allegedly given to Rock by Dan Diamond, a former employee of the ICP who allegedly said in a deposition he gave it to musician. Diamond, who lives in Las Vegas, has repeatedly declined to comment about the matter when he's been contacted by MLive. Read Kid Rock's entire letter by
The website includes another letter directed to Brian E. Koncius, Diamond's lawyer. Kid Rock suggests in the letter to Koncius that Diamond either lied under oath during a deposition when he claimed he gave the dildo to him or was simply trying to be funny. "I've never met your client, and if I had met your client I'd certainly remember if he tried to give me a glass (expletive) dildo," Kid Rock wrote. "Even if it was the “Rasor Law Firm” that sent a press release to the press, you have done nothing to clear up this blatant lie which makes you to blame, too." Kid Rock added in the letter to Koncius that he choses to live in Detroit to get away from lawyers who interfere with innocent persons lives and what he claims are attacks against his celebrity status. An excerpt:
I live in Detroit because I can stay out of the fray here and live my life the way I choose to. If I wanted to deal with this (expletive), I'd move to LA, and if I want press, I can get it — trust me. No matter why your client said what he did, it's clear that you, your client, and the Rasor Law Firm have gone out of your way to help get this story told. How would you feel if one day your name appeared across the internet connected to a story you knew absolutely nothing about?
that claims Diamond admitted under oath that he told Pellegrini he'd harass her with the dildo. A Rasor Law Firm press release claims Diamond said under oath in a July 18 deposition he gave the dildo to Kid Rock. "The dildo, which Diamond claims is a work of art, is part of Pellegrini's sexual harassment lawsuit," the press release reads. "Diamond's deposition was taken last Friday in Las Vegas, Nevada. "During that deposition Diamond testified that after he had attempted to give Pellegrini the phallic object and she refused to accept it, Diamond gave the piece to performer Kid Rock." The firm's press release also claims
Pellegrini is suing the rap group for sexual harassment and unethical practices. The lawsuit, filed in Oakland County Circuit Court last fall by Pellegrini, claims she was "mocked belittled and the subject of sexual advances" by those associated with ICP's record label, Psychopathic Records. Attempts to reach Jason Webber, Psychopathic Records public relations director, have been unsuccessful. The lawsuit has ICP members Joseph "Shaggy 2 Dope" Ulster and Joseph "Violent J" Bruce listed as defendants along with Diamond, Psychopathic Record president William Dale and Robert Bruce, reportedly Pellegrini's former supervisor.
from the U.S. Department of Labor who were investigating the record label and encouraged her to get automatic weapons for a video shoot.Next generation artificially intelligent engineering software will take many decisions out of the designer’s hands. Should engineers be worried?
Late last year we highlighted a study warning that one in three UK jobs are at risk of replacement by technology over the next 20 years.
Unsurprisingly, this report – which was published by Deloitte and Oxford University – suggested that those carrying out low paid repetitive jobs were at greatest risk of being usurped by robots. And despite the inevitable and irresistible slew of headlines warning of our imminent subjugation, the general conclusion was that those in highly skilled professions – and in particular engineers – had nothing to fear.
But following a conversation with a senior executive at a large engineering software firm this week I’m not so sure.
The world of engineering design – according to our source – stands on the brink of unprecedented technological change that could take a host of pretty fundamental design decisions away from the engineer and put them in the hands of a new generation of smart software tools.
Armed with an understanding of a product’s desired functionality, able to instantly mine “the cloud” for design data, and equipped with advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, these tools will almost instantly figure out the most efficient and simple to manufacture design.
Want to design a load bearing component for a critical application? Simply input some key parameters such as weight, stiffness and footprint, sit back, and let the software do your job for you.
A number of companies are already pointing the way to this kind of functionality. Perhaps most notably London firm Within Labs has developed a number of tools and design processes that use AI to generate complex latticed structures, whilst a number of research groups around the world are investigating the ways in which AI might be used to power tomorrow’s engineering software.
This intriguing trend has, in part, been driven by the emergence of 3D printing, a technique which allows almost unfettered design freedom but which has, many contend, been held back by the capabilities of existing design tools and the imagination of designers.
It’s hardly a surprising conclusion. Engineers, and indeed most humans, are far more effective at delivering a solution, and indeed more creative, when asked to work within defined parameters. Remove the familiar constraints, as additive does, and the almost limitless possibilities can actually have a stifling effect.
But will these tools really kill the designer? It’s certainly likely that that the role of the engineer will change and evolve (as it always has done) and that tomorrow’s tools will perform many of the calculations that are currently carried out by humans.
Hopefully though, this won’t spell the demise of the engineering designers, but will help them properly exploit the benefits of emerging manufacturing techniques and free them up to do what humans do best: innovate.James Erwin, 37, works for a financial services firm in Des Moines, Iowa, writing software manuals. He’s been doing that for a couple of years, and he enjoys it. It’s a pretty low-stress job for a person with a methodical turn of mind—good pay, short commute. He’s home by 5:30 every night to spend time with his wife and 1-year-old son.
One Wednesday last August, Erwin rose from his desk around noon. He walked to the company lunchroom, microwaved a pretzel-bread Hot Pocket, and carried it back to his desk on a paper towel. He took a bite of the Hot Pocket and logged in to Reddit.com.
Reddit is a sprawling news site, where “news” is defined by its tens of millions of users—one of the largest communities on the Internet. Anyone can post a link or a comment, and everything on the site, down to the tiniest squib of text, wears a pair of clickable arrows—one up and one down. The site constructs itself on the fly by tabulating billions of “upvotes” and “downvotes.” Popular items rise, unpopular items fall. More reliably than Twitter, more scientifically than Facebook, Reddit answers this question: What do people on the Internet think is important, funny, cute, gross, uplifting—right now?
It’s common for random questions to appear on Reddit’s front page, like “Is there a magnet capable of pulling the iron out of your body?” or “What is the most awkward thing you could say to a cashier while purchasing condoms?” That day, as Erwin scanned Reddit, a question caught his eye. It was posed by someone calling themselves The_Quiet_Earth: “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU [Marine Expeditionary Unit]?” Erwin clicked on the question and a lively comment thread unfurled. Hundreds of people were whipping hypotheticals back and forth, gaming out the implications of a marines-versus-Romans smackdown. What’s the range of a Roman spear? How would the Romans react to a helicopter? What would happen when the Americans ran out of bullets?
Erwin, who studied history at the University of Iowa, had been posting on Reddit for about five months. He used the alias Prufrock451, a dual reference to the schlubby protagonist of a T. S. Eliot poem and the Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451. Prufrock451’s contributions were all over the map. One day he wrote about the historical roots of the civil war in Liberia; another day he told a funny story about a shooting range in Iowa. He also uploaded a few pictures of European forts that he thought looked cool and a quote by Voltaire. In his atypicalness—Prufrock451 was pretty clearly a quirky character—he was entirely typical of a habitual Reddit user, and like many other redditors, as they are called, he found the site addictive. More than just a creative outlet or time-killer, Reddit was a game. The object was to amass points—”Reddit karma.” Every time Erwin saw his karma level increase, he felt a little squirt of adrenaline. “People are sweating to make you laugh or make you think or make you hate them,” Erwin says. “It’s the human condition, plus points.”
Now, in response to The_Quiet_Earth’s question about time-traveling marines, Erwin started typing. He posted his answer in a series of comments in the thread. Within an hour, he was an online celebrity. Within three hours, a film producer had reached out to him. Within two weeks, he was offered a deal to write a movie based on his Reddit comments. Within two months, he had taken a leave from his job to become a full-time Hollywood screenwriter.
Although Erwin’s success is unprecedented, it’s entirely consistent with Reddit’s ethos. The site was purposely built to make instant heroes of the funny and the artful. It was created in June 2005 by a pair of recent University of Virginia graduates, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman. At first, Ohanian and Huffman didn’t have any users, so they made dozens of bogus accounts and posted content themselves. “We just wanted to create a place where you could find what was interesting online,” Ohanian says. “All Steve and I knew early on was that we were going to need a community to make it work.”
At that point, Ohanian’s only prior experience with community-building was a Quake clan that he ran in high school, “and maybe an EverQuest guild.” But he and Huffman knew what they liked—and hated—about other sites. They liked the content on geek-news site Slashdot. They liked the Popular page on the social-bookmarking site del.icio.us, even though the links themselves were often dull. They hated sites that assault you with animated ads or trick you into giving your email address. And they hated when site admins deleted stuff for no good reason.
The Post That Started It All Last August, James Erwin stumbled upon a question someone had posed on the social news site Reddit: “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?” Erwin’s answer, the first entry of which is reprinted below, delighted the Redditcommunity and almost instantly set Erwin on the path to becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. DAY 1 The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes. The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot—nearly all of the MEU’s vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake. Nelson’s men soon report a complete loss of all communications, including GPS and satellite radio. Nelson now believes something more terrible has occurred—a nuclear war and EMP which has left his unit completely isolated. Only a few men have realized that the rest of Bagram has vanished, but that will soon become apparent as the transport helos begin circling the 35th’s location. Within an hour, the 2,200 Marines have regrouped, stunned. They are not the only moderns transported to Rome. With them are about 150 Air Force maintenance and repair specialists. There are about 60 Afghan Army soldiers, mostly the MEU’s interpreters and liaisons. There are also 15 U.S. civilian contractors and one man, Frank Delacroix, who has spoken to no one but Colonel Nelson. Miraculously, no one was killed during the earthquake but several dozen people were injured, some seriously. All fixed-wing aircraft and the attack helicopters were rendered inoperable by the shifting concrete, although the MEU did not lose a single vehicle or transport helicopter. As night falls, the MEU has established a perimeter. A few locals have been spotted, but in the chaos no one has yet established contact. Nelson and his men, who are crippled without mapping software and GPS to fix their position, begin attempting to fix their location by observing stars. The night is cloudy. Nelson orders four helicopters back into the air at first light, to travel along the river in hopes of locating a settlement.
Figuring, Ohanian says, that there was “a ceiling to how clever one admin can be, and it’s a pretty low ceiling,” he and his partner designed Reddit to put as much power as possible in the hands of its users. Huffman programmed a “hotness algorithm” to determine what should appear at the top of the page; users could sort links and comments by hotness, newness, and the number of upvotes minus downvotes. The scheme worked beautifully, sifting chaos into intelligible tiers. Ohanian and Huffman refused to delete any content that wasn’t spam or overt racism, even after they were purchased in 2006 by old-media publisher Condé Nast. (Yes, the corporation that owns Wired. Reddit’s office is sequestered in a corner of the same floor where the magazine and Wired.com are produced. The Reddit team did not have any influence over or access to this article.) Ohanian and Huffman also allowed users to create their own nooks within the site, called subreddits; there are now more than 100,000 subreddits devoted to everything from gaming to atheism to the city of Winnipeg. Extremely popular items bubble up from the subreddits. “You could be a brand-new user, and if you submitted something great, you could be on the front page,” Ohanian says. (The two founders have since cashed out, but Ohanian continues to serve on the board and acts as a spokesman.)
Yes, tons of stupid pictures appear on the front page, as well as in-jokes like “the narwhal bacons at midnight”—a sort of pass code used by redditors to identify other members of the faithful in real life—but the community’s ability to launch truly powerful memes is now a meme in itself. The best-known example is Comedy Central’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which drew 250,000 people to the National Mall in October 2010; the idea for the rally was first publicly proposed on Reddit. Last winter the Reddit community organized a boycott of web hosting company Go Daddy for its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act. After Go Daddy lost thousands of domains in a single day, the company quickly reversed its position.
Reddit users have also demonstrated an eagerness to experiment with ways of being nice. They have sent thousands of free pizzas to one another through a subreddit called Random_Acts_Of_Pizza. In 2009 a redditor proposed a Secret Santa gift exchange. Last holiday season, the exchange involved 40,000 people in 115 countries. There’s no other site where a shy idea can so easily snowball into a project of vast ambition.
Of course, like any site that thrives on pseudonymity, Reddit attracts its share of the sick and the deluded. There’s a subreddit, MensRights, “for people who believe that men are currently being disadvantaged by society,” and for years the site admins tolerated subreddits devoted to pictures of underage girls. (In February, Reddit banned sexual content involving minors.) Last year, redditors heaped abuse on a 21-year-old woman who was trying to raise money for kids with cancer. They mistakenly believed that she was a scammer, and one redditor claimed to have reported her to the FBI. “The mob mentality existed before Reddit,” Huffman says. “But now Reddit’s big enough to be a mob.”
James Erwin grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the son of a midwestern father and a Korean-born mother. (His father, who had been in the Air Force, met his mother during the Vietnam War.) “I had a cloudy idea of my future,” Erwin says of his childhood. “Part of me really wanted to be in front of people, and part of me wanted to hide in my room and read books all day.” In college in Iowa City, Erwin got involved with theater and open-mic nights. He lacked discipline and goals, but he had been clever enough to muddle through school without really studying. After graduating, he worked at an Arby’s, a burrito place, a couple of bookstores.
While bumming around, though, he was also running a website called Footnotes to History, an atlas of strange and tiny nations: Abaco, Abalonia, Abkhaz Republic (“The Abkhaz Republic suffered through a great deal more history than its short existence might seem to justify”). Several years and a couple of office jobs later, Erwin got it in his head that he should follow up Footnotes to History with an encyclopedia. In 2006 he published Declarations of Independence, a comprehensive account of American secessionist movements, from the Cherokee Nation to the Artists’ Republic of Fremont.
By that time he had moved to Des Moines to work a series of contract jobs. In 2009 he set to work on his second encyclopedia, which was just released this spring. Encyclopedia of U.S. Military Actions is exactly what it says it is—an exhaustive description of every single American war, quasi war, occupation, landing, and expedition. It comes in two volumes. If Erwin were to rest his chin on a table next to the manuscript, the 700,000-word stack would tower above his neatly shaved head. He completed it in just two and a half years, working evenings and weekends. It retails for $185. “Pound for pound,” he says, “it’s a pretty good buy.”
The encyclopedias proved that he had talent and erudition, but they didn’t bring him any attention—the buyers were mainly libraries—and barely earned him minimum wage. But writing the encyclopedias did teach him a crucial set of skills. He now knew how to mine history for tragedy and comedy. He could instantly recall huge swaths of fact. (Erwin competed on Jeopardy! in 2009, walking away a two-time champion and $23,598 richer.) Perhaps most important, he could compose large blocks of text with astonishing speed.
Last August, when he started to scroll through the Reddit thread about marines versus Romans, Erwin couldn’t help but think that the hypothetical deserved some kind of a larger story.
“DAY 1,” he typed:
The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.
The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome …
It took him just 10 minutes to write 350 words about the marines’ first day in ancient Rome. He clicked save. A few moments later, he refreshed his browser and saw that he had gotten a couple of upvotes. Then he thought about what to write next.
Erwin needed to invent a good reason for the two armies to fight. Unsurprisingly, he happened to have read a lot of Roman history, and he knew that around 23 BC, some senators had attempted a coup on emperor Augustus. What if, just as the senators were plotting, a small army appeared out of nowhere “with a vast array of what appears to be bizarre siege machinery”?
Erwin typed “DAY 2” and fleshed out another short scene, this one describing a marine recon mission over Rome in two Sea Knight helicopters: “Behind them, they leave a city in chaos, as terrified Romans flee the awful creatures in the sky.” He quickly moved on to Days 3 and 4, and as he wrote, his fingers and stomach began to tingle, a feeling he had gotten only a few times before, when he knew that what he was writing was very good. Something about the extreme economy of the prose made the narrative more vivid, not less; readers would be forced to fill in key details themselves, to imagine the sound of the helo rotors, the smell of smoke from the Roman pyres. Erwin rapidly sketched a cast of characters: a dour marine colonel, a Hispanic private who finds something “eerily familiar” about the language of the Romans, a frightened Praetorian commander. Each chapter ended on a little cliffhanger. Beyond merely answering the hypothetical, Erwin was creating a rich fictional world.
The Best & Worst of Reddit Discussions on the sprawling site run the gamut from the sublime to the slimy. Here’s a guide to the sections that can make your day, make you laugh … or make you want the past five minutes of your life back. IAMA Interesting people answer questions posed by the community. One day it’s astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson, the next it’s a former hooker, the next it’s Louis C.K. PROJECT ENRICHMENT A new self-improvement challenge every week, from “Talk to 10 strangers
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of Mass Effect 3, so I thought I'd share my perspective with you here. I'll avoid outright spoilers, but I'd still recommend finishing the game and experiencing it for yourself before reading this. For the last eight years, Mass Effect has been a labor of love for our team; love for the characters we've created, for the medium of video games, and for the fans that have supported us. For us and for you, Mass Effect 3 had to live up to a lot of expectations, not only for a great gaming experience, but for a resolution to the countless storylines and decisions you've made as a player since the journey began in 2007. So we designed Mass Effect 3 to be a series of endings to key plots and storylines, each culminating in scenes that show you the consequences of your actions. You then carry the knowledge of these consequences with you as you complete the final moments of your journey. We always intended that the scale of the conflict and the underlying theme of sacrifice would lead to a bittersweet ending-to do otherwise would betray the agonizing decisions Shepard had to make along the way. Still, we wanted to give players the chance to experience an inspiring and uplifting ending; in a story where you face a hopeless struggle for basic survival, we see the final moments and imagery as offering victory and hope in the context of sacrifice and reflection. We've had some incredibly positive reactions to Mass Effect 3, from the New York Times declaring it "a gripping, coherent triumph", to Penny Arcade calling it "an amazing accomplishment", to emails and tweets from players who have given us the most profound words of appreciation we've ever received. But we also recognize that some of our most passionate fans needed more closure, more answers, and more time to say goodbye to their stories-and these comments are equally valid. Player feedback such as this has always been an essential ingredient in the development of the series. I am extremely proud of what this team has accomplished, from the first art concepts for the Mass Effect universe to the final moments of Mass Effect 3. But we didn't do it on our own. Over the course of the series, Mass Effect has been a shared experience between the development team and our fans-not just a shared experience in playing the games, but in designing and developing them. An outpouring of love for Garrus and Tali led to their inclusion as love interests in Mass Effect 2. A request for deeper RPG systems led to key design changes in Mass Effect 3. Your feedback has always mattered. Mass Effect is a collaboration between developers and players, and we continue to listen. So where do we go from here? Throughout the next year, we will support Mass Effect 3 by working on new content. And we'll keep listening, because your insights and constructive feedback will help determine what that content should be. This is not the last you'll hear of Commander Shepard. We look forward to your continued support and involvement as we work together to shape the remaining experiences in the story of the Mass Effect trilogy. Thanks for taking this journey with us. Casey Hudson
Casey Hudson on the Conclusion of Mass Effect 3 [BioWare Social Network. h/t Sgt.LulzJager]Although it’s believed that Italian side Inter Milan remain the front-runners to snap up Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva, that hasn’t stopped Turkish side Besiktas from making their interest known in the versatile and out of favour Brazilian.
The Reds have yet to transfer list the 28-year old, but it’s believed that they will listen to offers in the region of £8mil for his services after he supposedly had a falling out with boss Brendan Rodgers over his lack of playing time. Rated highly by a number of clubs from Serie A, this news is rumoured to have perked up the ears of both AC Milan and reigning champions Juventus, though neither side has made a move for him at this point — something that’s sure to encourage the Black Eagles to continue in their pursuit.
It’s obvious that Besiktas have some problems in the middle of the park; both Veli Kavlak and Tolgay Arsla are ruled out through injury until the turn of the year, leaving boss Senol Gunes scrambling for reinforcements. Rumour has it that the Turkish outfit are preparing a bid in the region of £3.5mil to try to tempt Liverpool’s hand, though it’s expected that the Reds will turn away any offers that don’t come close to their valuation. With time running short, a number of media sources are stating that Besiktas have now turned their attentions to bring him in on a season long loan, but with interest from Italy still hot on the burner, the Anfield outfit could be reluctant to oblige their request.
Despite being linked with a number of sides, links to Inter Milan remain the most credible with boss Roberto Mancini on the record as a known admirer of his many skills, and with Croatian midfielder Mateo Kovacic shipped off to Real Madrid for a boat-load of money, not only does the Italian manager have funds at his disposal, he’s got a spot in his squad as well. If Besiktas want Lucas that bad, they’re going to have open their wallet — and do it fast.Nightcrawler
Still from the original footage
Fresno County, California Background Type Humanoid First Sighting Early November, 2010 Last Sighting 2017 Country United States and Poland Habitat Fresno, CA Possible Population Unknown
Sightings
The Carmel Area Creature
The, also known as the, is a cryptid that has made two appearances so far, one in Fresno, California and the other in Yosemite National Park. In both sightings, it's only seen in video footage. However, a man in Poland has claimed to have seen the creature. It also is said to resemble the Carmel Area Creature.
The witness, a 60-year-old ex-marine yet to be named and his wife were driving near Carmel on December 12, 2014 when they came up over a hill and saw a 7' tall slender, gray creature which is now known as the Carmel Area Creature.
The witness said the following: "We recently bought a place in the Fort Hill area (in southeast Highland County). We first noticed after about 30 days of living here that we suddenly have a perfect circle that stays fresh green, no matter what weather, in our front yard. On Friday night (the 12th), we were driving home. After turning on Carmel Road, which leads to our road, we went around the curve by the Carmel church and then up a small incline and approximately 10 feet over the incline and in front of our truck, the 'alien' ran across the road and into the woods."
There have been many possible sightings of the Nightcrawler in the form of the Carmel area creature, a thin, armless, pale white humanoid creature seen in Ohio
Nightcrawlers
The creature has also been spotted in Yosemite where footage was again taken from what appears to be another security camera. This time there are two creatures, one being very small (less than.5 meters), and the feet of the creatures can be clearly seen. As well as what appears to be some sort of webbing connected from the knees to the upper body on at least.
The cryptid has also been videotaped in Poland, this time from what appears to be a handheld camera judging from the shakiness of the footage. The creature can not be seen for too long but appears to have similar traits to the larger one taped in Yosemite.
Explanations
An alien or extraterrestrial being.
A new species. Possibly a primate with short arms.
A misidentified gazelle standing upright.
Pants and/or a puppet on a wire
Description
Fresno nightcrawlers appear to be a relatively short creatures (approx. 1.5 meters) with most of their height being made up of their legs as they possess an extremely small upper body. It is hard to find details in the upper body of the cryptid due to the poor quatlity of its footage. It is an extremely thin, white humanoid with no discernible arms. A larger specimen appears to have webbing connected from each knee to the torso. The cryptids appear to have very short, thin, and stilt-like feet. It is hard to judge the exact characteristics of the cryptids in the footage due to poor quality. The Carmel Area Creature is tall and gray, with presumably no arms and long, muscular legs. It is bipedal and walks in an odd manner with its backwards bending knees. It resembles the Fresno Nightcrawler.
Origins
While there have been claims that they are a part of Native American folklore in the region, this has been debunked.
The first sighting of a Fresno nightcrawler happened in Fresno, California by a man named Jose. Jose had a surveillance camera watching his front lawn and looked at the camera when he heard a dog barking.
Media
The Fresno nightcrawler is most known for being one of the two featured video cases on the second episode of Syfy's Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files. The team deemed the Nightcrawler "unexplainable". It is also now considered a "fun urban legend" and an "endearing addition to pop culture"
Hoaxes
Some of the sightings are actually a pair of white pants being puppeted, so therefore a hoax. The alleyway Gif of the Fresno Nightcrawler was a CGI fake. Overall, there is some evidence, but most evidence points towards the Nightcrawler being a hoax.
Videos
Fresno Alien, Nightcrawler, Stick Figure Surveilence Analysis - Higher Quality Original sighting Strange Alien Stick-like creatures caught on security camera above Fresno in Yosemite National Park Another sighting Exclusive Official Breakdown The Fresno Nightcrawler Youtube-documentary on Fresno nightcrawlers FRESNO NIGHT CRAWLERS FOUND IN POLAND The most recent footage and sighting
Add a photo to this gallery
Gallery
Sources
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/fresno-nightcrawlers
https://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Carmel_Area_Creature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact_or_Faked:_Paranormal_Files#Criticism
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article219755195.htmlOAKLAND, Calif. — My neighbors are picking lemons from their tree in gas masks. My husband is overnighting us particulate masks to breathe through because Home Depot and all the Ace Hardware stores nearby are sold out, just like they sold out of every single fan in August, during the heat wave. It’s the latest version of California’s new normal: Add masks to your emergency kit, don’t breathe deeply and try to stay inside.
When I woke up one morning last week with a nose bleed and a wracking cough, I decided to give in and order that particulate mask, but first I consulted with friends. “Is N95 the same as P95?” Liat asked, as we huddled over my laptop. My nurse friend said to search for N95, but the old bepreparedcalifornia.ca.gov pdf that is circulating uses a “P,” and Keally says the one put out by the pre-Pruitt Environmental Protection Agency is better. Seth sends out more links about smaller-size masks to a group of neighborhood parents because the ones we bought don’t come in kid sizes.
It’s been seven days now of some of the Bay Area’s worst ever air quality, and most of the fires north of us in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties are minimally contained, or not at all. The smog enveloping Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose and other cities is literal and figurative: There has been little clarity about how best to protect ourselves. The consensus seems to be that we’re not supposed to exercise, that we should refrain from driving as much as possible and that if we do venture outside we should be wearing the kind of heavy-duty face masks that keep out the smallest particulate matter, these gray ashes that are falling from the sky.
My friend Iris and I brainstorm about the most airtight public spaces, places like movie theaters or hospitals that can filter air for large numbers of people, so we can gather there. She researches which filters really work for smoke pollution, and texts a group of us to say her living room will have the filter on at all times for anyone who needs to come over.Americans becoming less religious; Seattle and San Francisco less religious than ever
Pew Research Center recently released an in-depth study on the American religious landscape, revealing that at small but statistically significant rates, American religious belief is on the decline.
Last year, a Gallup poll revealed the most and least religious states based on residents who identified as "very religious." Click through to see which states have the most faith and which have the least. less Pew Research Center recently released an in-depth study on the American religious landscape, revealing that at small but statistically significant rates, American religious belief is on the decline.
Last year, a... more Photo: David Goldman, Associated Press Photo: David Goldman, Associated Press Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Americans becoming less religious; Seattle and San Francisco less religious than ever 1 / 28 Back to Gallery
Americans are less religious than they were eight years ago, with members of the millennial generation less likely to pray or go to church regularly, according to a new, sweeping study of religious beliefs conducted by the Pew Research Center.
The survey found that the United States remains far more religious than other Western nations, but with wide variations in religious belief and practice. Such cities as Seattle, which has long been known as "unchurched," and San Francisco show far less religious practice than the country as a whole.
The Pew survey, which involved 35,000 people, found that 70.6 percent of Americans still identify themselves as Christian, although 20.8 percent are now listed as "nones," answering that they are atheists, agnostics or just "nothing in particular" with respect to religious beliefs. Belief in God is still strong at 89 percent, but down from 92 percent in 2007.
In the Seattle area, however, just 52 percent of residents identify as Christian, while the figure in greater San Francisco is 48 percent. The "nones" make up 37 percent of Seattle's population, with 10 percent atheist, 6 percent agnostic, and 22 percent "nothing in particular." Thirty-five percent of Bay Area residents list no religious affiliation.
Compare these figures to greater Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Houston voted Tuesday to roll back its LGBT rights ordinance, 37 years after Seattle voted to sustain its ordinance prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.
Seventy-three percent of Houstonians and 70 percent of those living in Dallas-Fort Worth identify themselves as Christians. The "nones" total just 20 percent in Houston and 18 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Just 49 percent of greater Seattle residents believe in the existence of heaven, with 40 percent as disbelievers. Hell does worse. Thirty-four percent of those surveyed in greater Seattle believe in a fiery inferno presided over by Satan, while 58 percent do not. Eight percent don't know, but will presumably find out when they die.
By contrast, by a 76-17 percent margin, greater Houston believes in heaven, with hell getting a 65-28 percent thumbs-up. Seven percent don't know. Dallas-Fort Worth believes in heaven by a 75-18 percent margin, and affirms hell by 63-30 percent.
The millennials are changing Pew's findings about religion.
Nationally, about half of those born between 1990 and 1996 believe absolutely in the existence of God, compared to 71 percent from the "lost generation" born between 1928 and 1945. Just 39 percent of millennials pray daily or worship regularly, compared to 67 percent for their elders.
The Pew survey caught another trend -- the decline in religious observance and belief in New England, and particularly such former bastions of Roman Catholicism as Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The archdiocese of Boston suffered deep, self-inflicted wounds by covering up priest pedophilia until the scandal broke open on pages of the Boston Globe in 2002.
Just 57 percent of greater Boston residents now identify as Christian, and only 29 percent as Catholics. The "nones" total 33 percent. Providence remains more religious, with 72 percent identification as Christian and 46 percent as Roman Catholic. Still, the "nones" at 23 percent were greater than the national average.
Seattle has always been a city with low church attendance. Local religious leaders have cited its Scandinavian heritage, as well as a tendency of people to "leave behind" traditions -- including religious traditions -- when residents begin a new life in the Northwest.
The absence of people automatically in the pews has, however, spurred both an ecumenical and social activist tradition among Puget Sound area churches.
Episcopalians and Lutherans were joining in worship long before the tradition was formalized by their parent denominations. KOMO-TV was running a regular discussion program with a priest, minister and rabbi just as the Catholic Church was opening itself to other religious traditions under Pope John XXIII. Catholic priests were at the altar in St. Mark's Cathedral for its annual Thanksgiving eucharist.
The Seattle religious community took a lead role in 1960s civil rights activism, and in the 1970s battle to end banks' redlining of minority neighborhoods.
In recent times, the Seattle-area faith community launched the gun-safety movement that led to statewide Initiative 594, requiring criminal background checks for those purchasing firearms at gun shows or online.
Pew found that Americans are sorting themselves politically in accordance with their religious beliefs.
Evangelical Christians, about 25 percent of the population, make up 38 percent of the country's Republicans (and a vast majority of caucus-goers in Iowa, the first test of presidential candidates).
The "nones," at 20.8 percent of the population, break two-to-one for the Democrats. Roman Catholics comprise about 21 percent of membership in each of the political parties.“It’s called an Adipose. Made out of living fat.”
Ok, remember the Doctor Who: Legacy app we told you about?
Well, this cute little bundle (if we do say so ourselves) will be available to unlock on the Doctor Who: Legacy app (Android and iOS ) starting this Friday.
Complete the Season 6 level, Zygon Ambush: Nefertiti and Riddell – and you’ll have the chance to unlock the Adipose for free. If you’re not that far in yet, the Adipose will also be available to buy through the in-app store. There’s also one other way to unlock the Adipose which is the purpose of this here post…
Guise. GUISE. You have a chance to win + play with one of our squishy distant relatives in Doctor Who: Legacy!
You can win one of 10 codes that unlock the Adipose or 10 Fan Area codes by creating some lovely, stubby, squishy, oleaginous Adipose fan work.
You can do anything you’d like for this! You could draw a picture, make a video, make one of those funny stop-motion animations and upload it as a gif, dress up as an Adipose, write a poem, a song or create a new Adipose emojicon.
ლ(╹◡╹ლ) *
(* sorta kinda adipose-ish)
To have your post entered into our giveaway, use #Adipose Fan Work Contest Thingy in the tags of your post. Here at the Doctor Who Tumblr, every contest winner is decided at random. (We also like to contact everybody before we announce the winners, so please bare with us while we wait for peeps to respond.) We’ll be closing the contest at 12pm ET this Friday January 31st 2014.
BTW. The Doctor Who: Legacy game design team will be doing a Twitch video cast on Thursday at 9p GMT, 4p ET, 1p PT here: twitch.tv/theadiposetv where they’ll be taking a look at some of your Adipose fan work.
We’re so, so sorry to those of you living the international life of leisure and mystery, but this contest is only open to residents of the United States of America who are 18 years old or older (if you’re younger than 18, you just need a parent or guardian to sign for you.) You can read the full terms and conditions for BBC America social media contests by clicking here.
Have fun and good luck!
Here are the links to get Doctor Who: Legacy for iOS and Android.Never before has a game made me question everything I ever thought about in life. What am I doing? Why am I here? Where's my life going? Am I all of me? I never had to question my political, religious or philosophical beliefs until I played this game. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the greatest game ever made.
Hundreds of years into the future, when games are world renowned for being pieces of art, one game will sit in the Louvre alongside The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. It won't be Half-Life, it won't be The Last Of Us and it won't be Journey. It will be Shadow The Hedgehog.
Silky smooth gameplay
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Shadow The Hedgehog is a platformer that incorporates and improves upon the action adventure gameplay seen in Uncharted. The game is non-stop from start to finish and will leave you behind if you can't keep up. The developers made the brave decision to make the movement feel like you're fighting a gorilla on an ice rink, and you know what? It pays off. Never before have I been so challenged with keeping my character on screen. Every time I flew off the edge it was never the games fault. I should have known that my homing attack was going to miss. The AI is just too good. It was very clever to give them psychic powers that allowed them to deflect all my homing attacks and send me flying to my death.
The game also fantastically incorporates gunplay from the third-person perspective. A decision I am very happy with. The only way Sonic Team could have improved upon Sonic Adventure 2 was by adding guns, because guns make everything better. Just look at Sonic Boom. No guns, awful game. It was clear that when Gears of War was released they were borrowing heavily from Shadow The Hedgehogs fast paced TPS gameplay. I mean, when I see them side by side I just can't tell the difference.
A story that Quentin Tarantino is jealous of
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This game is a significant departure from past Sonic games. It is now much more mature, as evidenced by the fact there are guns(Did you know guns make things more mature?) and large amounts of foul language that would make The Wolf of Wall Street look tame. Just look at some of the swears in the game:
"Damn"
"Hell"
Just look at that list! Apparently they had to cut the word "piss" out because testers were fainting at the sound of it.
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The story is simple, yet elegant and very philosophical. Shadow has amnesia, aliens come and invade Earth and the leader seems to know Shadow. Shadow must now decide between being good or evil. Along the way you see characters such as Charmy, who represents the common migrant who must move abroad for work, all the way to Cream, who is an analogy for the influence large companies such as BP and Pizza Hut have over governments across the world. Of course you'll have to read between the lines, but it's all there.
If this were a movie, it would win an Academy Award, that's for sure.
Choices that matter
Shadow The Hedgehog allows players to choose between being good, evil or neutral in most levels, with each decision having serious and dire consequences on the world. Mass Effect eat your heart out. Decisions can come in a wide range of objectives, such as:
Kill bad guys
Kill good guys
Do your own thing
Every time I made a decision, I had to set my controller down and contemplate all life decisions I made up until that point. The next level you will play will be different based on whatever option you chose, leading to a wide range of ways to play the game, which leads me on to my next point...
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Mountains of replayability
In order to get the super secret final level and boss you will need to complete every possible final scenario in Shadow the Hedgehog, of which there are twelve. Mass Effect 3 only had three, so Shadow the Hedgehog is, by definition, four times better.
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It takes roughly 5 to 6 hours to complete a single playthrough, so with twelve different endings there is roughly 60-72 hours of non-stop fun.
BUT WAIT! There's more!
If there's any hardcore completionists out there who feel that games like Skyrim, DA: Inquisition, Pokemon and Fallout are bush league when it comes to completionism, this is the game for them. In order to get 100% in this game you will have to play through Shadow the Hedgehog not once, not twice, not thrice, not...four times, not five times, not six times, not seven times, but not eight times, not nine times, not ten times, not eleven times, not twelve times, but three hundred and twenty six times. 326. 300 times and then another 26 times. Let's do a little math, shall we?
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Say 5 hours to complete one playthrough, times that by 324 times. That's 1620 hours of extreme, high octane, non-stop action.
That's nearly 68 days, or 97920 minutes, or 5,875,200 seconds.
Times the number of seconds for one playthrough by the speed of light, which is 299,792,458 m/s. We get 1.7613406x10^15.
Divide that by the charge of a proton, which is 1.6x10^-19. We then get 2.9923877x10^15 joules of energy.
A person will use around 380 billion joules in their lifetime. This means that Shadow the Hedgehog is 7874704.5 times more fun than life itself.
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The math might be a tiny bit off, but you can't argue with facts.
Greatest soundtrack ever
Just like any other Sonic game, the soundtrack is amazing. There's not much I can really say here, so I'll just link the main theme here. I saved you all some time by linking the 30 minute extended version. Thank me later.
With deep lyrics such as 'Do it, do it, do it!' and 'Here we go buddy, here we go buddy, here we go', it is very clear that Shadow is a deep a complex man hedgehog. I for one cannot wait for the Broadway musical.
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Multiplayer
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Shadow the hedgehog not only has a fantastic singleplayer, but also has a fun multiplayer that pits two players against each other in a fight to the death. While it is fun with friends, many people may just find it too complex, as it uses more strategy than Street Fighter, Battlefield and DOTA combined. It takes weeks of intense training just to be able to'main' one character, and with a wide range of characters to choose from, it can be pretty difficult to pick just one. I like to main Shadow the Hedgehog, while my friend likes to main Shadow the Hedgehog 2, but my acquaintance is a large fan of Shadow the Hedgehog the third.
However, people on the forefront of esports, such as Daigo, should have no problem controlling the beast that is Shadow the Hedgehog 4.
I personally cannot wait to see Shadow the Hedgehog at next years EVO.
Doesn't have Sonic Boom Knuckles
While I guess I can live without Sonic Boom Knuckles, it was a shame to see such a rich, developed character not make it into Shadow the Hedgehog. I know what you're thinking, 'But Shadow the Hedgehog came out 9 years before Sonic Boom!'. My question to you is, do you seriously think SEGA doesn't have a time machine?
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Shadow isn't in Smash as a playable character
You see, Shadow the Hedgehog is such a fantastic game I just cannot find anything to fault it, so I'm going to fault other games instead!
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Sakurai must have been smoking some heavy stuff when he thought Duck Hunt Dog and Bowser Jr. deserve a place in Smash Bros. over the ultimate lifeform. This I cannot forgive and I am boycotting everything he does until he joins Smash. They could've just made Shadow a clone of Sonic and I would've been happy! But noooooo, Pit has to get one instead!
I've compiled a list of other things wrong with Shadow-less games:
It's not called The Legend of Shadow. Shadow could easily replace Zelda
You can't catch Shadow in Pokemon.
Shadow wasn't one of the three playable characters in GTA V
All Mario & Luigi RPGs should be Shadow & Boom Knuckles
It should be Paper Shadow: The Thousand Year Door
Shadow isn't the main character in God of War
Shadow isn't a Persona or a Stand
Where is Super Shadow Strikers Charged?
Shadow should be Tom Nook
In the interest of time I have cut this list from over three thousand points.
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Shadow the Hedgehog is a fantastic game that everyone should have the privilege of playing through before copies of the game get destroyed and World War 3 is fought between North Korea and the US for the last copy.
But seriously guys, never play this game. It's awful.Update: Peyton Manning finally revealed the meaning of Omaha.
If you've watched any football coverage over the last minute, or just paid attention to media, you've heard about Peyton Manning yelling Omaha. He used the call dozens of times in the divisional round, scaled it back against the Patriots a bit, and likely will be heard screaming OMAHA in the Super Bowl. But why is Peyton Manning yelling Omaha?
To understand the call, there's a bit of context to understand. Manning is known for gesticulating and yelling at the line of scrimmage. His specialty is lining up, seeing what the defense is giving, then changing around the offense to exploit what he sees. Sometimes it's for show. Sometimes it's not. And trying to decode him as a defensive player is futile.
But we do know a few of the things Manning does at the line of scrimmage. At times, he'll walk up and go through the motions with a show-me hard count (watch him walk up, get under center, and yell "hut-hut."). It doesn't really mean anything, other than buying some time to see what the defense is showing, and perhaps get lucky and pull a guy offsides.
He'll then call out the middle linebacker -- you'll hear Manning say XX is MIKE (in Seattle's case the XX is 54) to set the protection. Everything typically pivots off the middle backer, thus the call.
Manning, like other quarterbacks, also uses code words to change the play. Some flip it, some change it completely. An example here is "FAT MAN" from the AFC Championship. Chris B. Brown smartly posited that this was likely a change to a belly run (fat man … belly). These codes change every week.
By the time Manning is done bouncing around the line of scrimmage, waving his arms, and checking the play, time may be running out. Thus you get OMAHA. Simply, Omaha is a hurry up and go call. He'll call out OMAHA (sometimes stretched out as O-MA-HA), and the next sound signals to snap it.
The curveball here is Manning's hard count. Everyone knows Omaha. It's not an uncommon call. But every once in a while, and sometimes more frequently, Manning will yell Omaha, then another word (set, hit, whatever), in an attempt to get the defense to jump. Whether it's triggered by an earlier word or the cadence of Omaha, or something else completely like a call in the huddle, can change every week too.
Manning's former receiver on the Indianapolis Colts, Reggie Wayne, had a different explanation for Omaha, but also admitted that there was "no way" it still had the same meaning so many years later.
You'll also note that Omaha is not unique to Peyton Manning. See his little brother:
You can bet on the number of times Manning will say OMAHA during the Super Bowl -- the line was set at 27.5 -- and there'll be plenty of talk about his love for the Nebraska town. But the word serves a very functional purpose, just as any other quarterback's cadence (Russell Wilson will use Blue or White and a number, for instance) tells a story.
Peyton's 'Omaha' call sets off a comical false startThe violent anti-government protests that shook Venezuela in February have once again thrust the issue of the pace of change into the broader debate over socialist transformation. Radical Chavistas, reflecting the zeal of the movement’s rank and file, call for a deepening of the “revolutionary process,” while moderate Chavistas favor concessions to avoid an escalation of the violence. The same dilemma confronted the socialist government of Salvador Allende in the early 1970s, but under different political circumstances. Unlike in Chile, Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro have won nearly all national elections over a period of 15 years by absolute majorities. In addition, Chavistas, since the early years, have maintained firm control of the two most important institutions in the country: the armed forces and the state oil company PDVSA.
The invigoration of the Chavista rank and file, along with mass mobilizations, became a must for the Maduro government’s political survival in the face of the opposition’s disruptive and at times violent tactics in February. Thus on successive days in late February, Maduro spoke at mass rallies of women, oil workers, motorcyclists, telephone workers, and finally peasants and indigenous people. On each occasion social movement representatives called for the “deepening of the revolutionary process,” “radicalization,” and “people’s power.” Maduro, for his part, outlined popular measures and at times threatened the elite with radicalization. This combination of expectations of radicalization and announced programs favoring the popular sectors had enabled Chávez to overcome situations of crisis in the past.
Similarly, immediately after each triumph, the Chávez government took advantage of its political capital by announcing bold initiatives. For instance, following his victory in the recall election of 2004, Chávez defined himself as a socialist and expropriated several abandoned factories. After his capture of 63% of the vote in the 2006 presidential elections he nationalized strategic industries. The impressive showing of the Chavistas in the December 2013 municipal elections appeared to follow the same pattern in that immediately after the contests, Maduro took calculated risks. Opinion, however, has been divided within the movement as to whether his moves contributed to the deepening of the revolutionary process or represented a step backward. The measures he implemented were designed to face the problems of acute shortages of basic commodities, price increases far above those set by the government, a 56% inflation rate (nearly triple that of the previous year), widespread currency speculation, and the refusal of the opposition to recognize the government’s legitimacy.
The favorable electoral results in December represented a turnaround for President Maduro. Shortly after Chávez’s death in March 2013, Maduro was elected president by an unexpectedly narrow margin of 1.7%. In interpreting the outcome, the opposition and private media stressed the fact that Maduro failed to measure up to Chávez’s leadership capacity. The International Herald Tribune, for instance, ran a story on disillusioned Chavistas and quoted one who claimed he still supported the government but, in reference to Maduro, added, “We don’t want a president who is a joke.”
Maduro’s popularity recovered in November when he declared war on price speculation and in doing so invigorated the Chavista base. As part of a well-publicized campaign, Maduro and government authorities inspected large commercial outfits and documented what he called “grotesque prices” of household appliances and other products imported with “preferential dollars”—dollars sold by the government to merchants at an artificially low price in Venezuelan bolivars. The National Guard occupied the stores at the same time that prices were slashed; in several cases, the government detained and initiated judicial proceedings against store owners. This no-nonsense approach resonated among voters in December. According to the public opinion firm Hinterlaces, 70% of Venezuelans approved of the “economic offensive” and 62% supported measures to limit profits.
Following the December elections, Maduro defined three strategies. First, he indicated his willingness to meet with opposition leaders and businesspeople to find ways to reduce tension and solve specific problems. Second, he announced stringent measures against speculators, hoarders, and contrabandists. Finally, the president sought to “rationalize” government controls to narrow the disparity between regulated prices and market value of goods and services. All three approaches generated controversy in and out of the Chavista movement, and would not have been politically feasible had the Chavistas fared poorly in the December elections.
All three strategies were accompanied by specific actions. Just 10 days after the December elections, Maduro met with nearly all recently elected governors and mayors belonging to the opposition with the aim of listening to their grievances and suggestions on seven specific problems at the local level including personal security, housing construction, and health. Late January saw the approval of the Law for the Control of Fair Costs, Prices, and Profits, which establishes jail sentences of up to 14 years for contrabandists, 12 years for those accused of hoarding, and 8 to 10 years for merchants who sell above regulated prices. In addition, the law establishes a federal office to monitor prices and assure that profits do not exceed about 30% of investment.
Finally, in an attempt to put the economy in order, Maduro dramatically devalued the bolivar from 6.3 to 11.3 to the dollar for imports of non-essential goods as well as for tourists who travel abroad. To infuse flexibility into the economy, Maduro left open the possibility that the exchange rate could fluctuate on a regular basis as could regulated prices for basic commodities. Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramírez also floated the idea of increasing gasoline prices, the cheapest in the world, in order to cover production costs.
*
In some respects, government discourse and actions have differed, albeit in degree, from the positions assumed by Chávez. Most important, ever since the early years of his rule, Chávez refused to negotiate with representatives of the political and economic elite in order to achieve national reconciliation. Indeed, Chávez’s point of honor was that he would not take part in the old wheeling and dealing that had guided Venezuelan party politics since the ouster of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 195
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” answer he could give.) Obama’s spokesman said the president “certainly believes that Director Clapper has been straight and direct in the answers he’s given.”
Obama’s own veracity must also be questioned. In his speech he said that when he was a senator he was critical of the George W. Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping. But if that’s true, why did he vote for the 2008 FISA law, which, as Greenwald notes, “legalized the bulk of the once-illegal Bush program”?
To the extent Obama has become more favorable to surveillance since the Bush years it’s apparently because, as a former aide told the New York Times, “he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration.”
In light of this flagrant disregard for the truth and willingness to bamboozle the people, why should anyone take Obama’s “reforms” seriously? He promises mostly executive-branch safeguards — created by Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder — but in the end, this will be little more than window dressing to regain public trust. There are always emergency escape clauses.
To be sure, Obama is clever. He says,
Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.
But “the law” can’t constrain those in power, because the law is always interpreted and enforced — or not enforced — by those very people in power. Ultimately, government officials define their own powers. Checks and balances mean that one part of the state monitors another part. It’s hard to muster confidence in such a weak safeguard.
Obama says we need surveillance to protect us from terrorists. But we could be safe without having our freedoms trampled if the government would stop committing and enabling oppression in foreign countries, thus creating the desire for revenge against Americans.
Freedom and security require no trade-off, because genuine freedom includes security against government snooping. Obama asks for trust, but we have too much experience to grant him his wish. Yet even if government officials had pure motives, they still should not be trusted with the power to spy.The giant asteroid Pallas reaches opposition on Friday July 29, 2011, in the tiny but interesting constellation of Sagitta, the arrow, right in the middle of the summer triangle, Vega, Deneb, and Altair.
This week, skywatchers equipped with telescopes have a good chance to observe the huge asteroid Pallas as it reaches opposition on July 29.
Despite its size, the 326-mile (524-kilometer) wide Pallas is still too small and far away to be visible with the naked eye. But it is readily visible in binoculars and small telescopes as it sails westward across the tiny constellation of Sagitta, the arrow.
Sagitta has no bright stars, but is easily visible in a dark sky with the naked eye, or with binoculars in the city. It is very easy to locate, right at the center of the "summer triangle" formed by the three bright stars Vega (in Lyra), Deneb (in Cygnus) and Altair (in Aquila).
In the sky map of Pallas available here, the dots indicate positions of the huge asteroid five days apart. As you can see, it’s a fast mover. Try to sketch the stars in its vicinity and look for the one that moves from one night to the next: that will be Pallas.
Other skywatching targets
While looking at Sagitta with binoculars, be sure to check out the two fine deep sky objects in its close neighbor Vulpecula, the Little Fox. The Coathanger Cluster looks like its name suggests: an upside down coat hanger.
The Dumbbell Nebula is the brightest and among the largest of the planetary nebulae: puffs of gas given off by dying stars. It’s small but easily visible in binoculars, and a real treat in any telescope.
Sagitta itself is the home to a nice little globular cluster, Messier 71. Because of its small size, this cluster is best appreciated in large amateur telescopes, but still is an interesting find for any stargazer.
The moon and Mars are also offering up good views this week. On Wednesday morning before dawn the moon and Mars will be visible together.
Even in the middle of July 2011, the winter constellations dominate the sky an hour before dawn. On Wednesday morning, the moon meets Mars in the constellation Taurus. (Image: © Starry Night Software)
Mars and the moon currently appear against a background of what we usually think of as winter constellations: Auriga, Taurus, Orion, and Gemini. It’s an open secret among astronomers that you can get the jump on the seasons by staying up late. So early risers can observe the most beautiful winter objects in warm summer temperatures rather than in the middle of freezing winter.
While observing Mars and the moon, be sure to take in the Pleiades star cluster and the Crab Nebula, two of the best known deep sky objects in the constellation Taurus. The moon will be moving on, but these "winter" objects will be there all summer for early risers.
This article was provided to SPACE.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu.As Iraqi and Kurdish forces continue their military campaign in Mosul, the Yazidi people — an ethnically Kurdish religious minority — face genocide at the hands of the radical jihadist Islamic State group.
Mostly situated in northern Iraq’s Sinjar Mountains, near Mosul, Yazidis have suffered from a systematic campaign against them. In 2014, the Sinjar massacre saw an estimated 5,000 Yazidi civilians killed and 5,000 to 7,000 abducted and enslaved — mostly women and children — by IS fighters who have continued to target them since. Thousands of Yazidis in northern Iraq and Syria are still in danger.
Nareen Shammo was a successful Yazidi television producer and investigative journalist in Iraq where she lived and worked (further identifying details will be avoided for her protection). She had been saving up to pursue a master’s degree, but the dire situation of Yazidi women after the genocide in 2014 inspired her to become an activist. She quit her job and spent nearly all her savings to build a network to track kidnapped women and help deliver them to safety.
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According to the director of Yazidi affairs in the Kurdistan Regional government, there are an estimated 3,770 Yazidis being held captive by IS, over 60 percent of whom are women and girls.
Shammo believes there is hope for her people and she is committed to pressuring Western governments to recognize the Islamic State persecution of Yazidis as genocide. She’s spoken at the UN four times and travels around the world working with NGOs, raising awareness and requesting humanitarian aid.
In an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel, over the phone, Shammo tells of her efforts to rescue Yazidi women from a life of torture, rape and brutality.
Sex slavery, rape and torture
Shammo helps women who have been kidnapped, sold as sex slaves and repeatedly raped and tortured. Yazidis are not Muslim so IS fighters will often violently force them to convert to Islam.
She has developed a network of people, mostly victims’ families and other Arabs who wish to help Yazidis, who aid her in locating kidnapped women. Her primary channel of communication with the women is through hidden cellphones that some manage to conceal from their captors.
When women make contact with her, it can sometimes prove very dangerous. In one chilling scene in the 2015 BBC documentary “Slaves of the Caliphate,” Shammo calls a woman she is trying to rescue. An IS militant, the woman’s captor, answers the phone instead.
Recalling the incident, she said, “I tried to control myself and talk very normal. I just asked about the Yazidi girls. I know it’s dangerous for them [to answer the phone] but most of the girls were ready to kill themselves so I had no choice.”
In another case, Shammo said, a Yazidi woman was sold to a Syrian member of Islamic State. “This man took the Yazidi woman with her three children to his house and he was married. His [other] wife beat her all the time and then, one day, the wife put poison in the food and killed the three children of this Yazidi woman.”
Many of the women commit suicide before they can be located. Shammo related that she was once on the phone with one woman while two others, in the same house, had just killed themselves because they were so afraid.
“I begged her not to throw away her mobile,” she said, and tried to convince the woman that she wouldn’t be killed because she was worth more to her captors alive than dead. But the girl destroyed her phone and Shammo hasn’t heard from her since.
Shammo has been repeatedly threatened by IS as well as Asayish, the Kurdish security forces, and, as the facts on the ground change, her job becomes increasingly difficult. Her success rate isn’t high and she couldn’t share a lot of the details for fear of endangering the very lives she is trying to save. But she estimates that, in the past two months, she and her team may have helped more than 40 women and children.
Occasionally, rescued women are reunited with their families, but these families are displaced and living in refugee camps in terrible conditions. The women, suffering from trauma, find there are no resources to help them. Many take their own lives even after being rescued from sex slavery.
The stolen generation: Enslaved children
There are over 2,500 Yazidi children who were orphaned by IS, Shammo estimates, and more than 220 children who escaped but whose parents are still in captivity. She said that children under the age of 2 are often kidnapped and given to IS fighters as gifts. Young boys, usually around the ages of 8 and 9, are trained to be the next generation of jihadists.
“I have information that this year, IS took about 300 Yazidi children as child soldiers,” she said. “Some of them could be brainwashed and some of them are really scared, and they have to do whatever IS makes them do.”
Many of them, she said, will be used as human shields during clashes between IS and Iraqi forces — when IS militants suspect they will be attacked, they sometimes relocate their captives, making it harder for Yazidi activists to locate them.
“We have information that IS moved hundreds of girls by military plane to an unknown location,” she said.
The military campaign to retake Mosul is a double-edged sword, Shammo said. On the one hand, many Yazidis have been freed, but, on the other, she is “worried that IS will kill a lot of them.”
Changing policy: The road map to redemption
Shammo calls for an international military court to be established so IS militants can be prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. She insists that Yazidis cannot be treated solely as refugees.
“We need to look at it as a genocide. They are not looking for a better job or better life; they are looking to escape death.”
The displaced Yazidis still in Iraq live in 15 different camps, mostly in the Kurdish-controlled Dohuk province, and the conditions are terrible, especially in the summer. The electricity goes out every four hours and temperatures can reach over 48°C (118°F). There are food and water shortages and there is inadequate medical care.
Yazidis who have left Iraq cannot return, Shammo said.
“The Yazidis still have a deep mistrust for their government and even Iraqi forces — Kurdish forces — who were working to defeat IS didn’t help Yazidi civilians and sometimes aided in their kidnapping,” she said. “Yazidis need to believe in their government and neighbors. In Sinjar, neighbors turned against us and killed Yazidis and kidnapped women, and peshmerga [Kurdish fighter] forces didn’t protect us, and the Iraqi military didn’t protect us either.”
Still, Shammo believes, the situation is changing slowly.
“Before, I felt like we were really alone. I was feeling that we would not be alive in about 100 years, because August [2014] was the 74th genocide for Yazidis,” Shammo said.
But now she has hope.
“Now I can see that people care about Yazidis, and they are trying to know more about the situation, and I’m trying to inform the world.”Gun Stores Hear a Bold Pitch at Top Firearms Trade Show: Suicide Prevention The National Shooting Sports Foundation and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention used the 2017 SHOT Show to scale up their campaign to stop 10,000 deaths over the next decade.
Dr. Christine Moutier, medical director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, discusses an initiative with the National Shooting Sports Foundation to prevent suicide at the 2017 Shot Show. [AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane]
New offerings abounded at the 2017 SHOT Show, the industry’s largest annual trade event, hosted last week by the National Shooting Sports Foundation in Las Vegas. But among the rows of retailers hawking the latest models of firearms and tactical gear, there was one surprising addition to this year’s convention: a delegation from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. They had come to promote a unique partnership with the show’s organizers on a nationwide suicide prevention program with the ambitious goal of stopping nearly 10,000 deaths in the next decade.
“It’s really important that this kind of message is given from the gun owning community, to the gun owning community,” said Cathy Barber, a suicide prevention expert at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who called the venue for the presentation “incredibly significant.”
The collaboration is between AFSP, the country’s largest suicide prevention organization, and the NSSF, which represents thousands of gun retailers and manufacturers across the country. The partnership, which is an arm of the AFSP’s Project 2025, is intended to educate gun shop owners and shooting range operators on the risk factors and warning signs of suicide, and to provide guidance for family members who wish to restrict access to firearms from a loved one in crisis.
As The Trace has reported, the organizations have been testing the program in four states — Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and New Mexico — since August. Appearing together on the SHOT show stage, NSSF President Steve Sanetti and AFSP Chief Medical Officer Christine Moutier announced the rollout of collaboration in all 50 states.
“Suicide is one area that we have not touched on in the past,” Sanetti said at the launch event.
More than half of all suicides in the United States are carried out with a firearm, and gun suicides make up the majority of fatal shootings. In 2015, nearly two-thirds of all gun-related deaths in the country were by the shooter’s own hand, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Historically, gun-rights groups have distanced themselves from suicide prevention efforts, reluctant to acknowledge that the presence of guns in a home increases mortality risks. Some gun rights advocates take it further, arguing that suicides should not even be counted alongside other types of gun deaths. Their thinking, as outlined by National Review‘s Charles C. W. Cooke, is that “suicides and murders are not morally comparable.”
Suicide prevention programs often call for removing access to the means of self-harm, and are seen by some gun-rights activists as a cover for eventual government confiscation of firearms. Moutier, the AFSP’s representative, sensed skepticism from the crowd at the SHOT Show.
“They wanted to know, is this really not about removing firearms from the home?” she said. “So we were able to address and clarify exactly what this initiative is and what it isn’t.”
To head off concerns about the project, officials from both organizations worked carefully on the language included in the program’s educational materials. A brochure stresses that restricting a person’s access to firearms while he or she is at risk for self-harm is a temporary measure, and put an emphasis on storing weapons securely.
“This initiative is starting with the reality that guns are in one-third of American homes so, given that, what can they do to keep someone safe?” Moutier said. “We’re simply saying have that caring conversation that should include offering to help them secure their firearms temporarily if they’re having this crisis.”
Tailoring the collaboration’s message for gun owners has been crucial, according to Barber, the Harvard researcher.
“When you use a phrase like ‘removing a gun from the home,’ that’s very different than talking about choosing to store your guns away from home while somebody is at risk,” she says. “Removal sounds somehow like, ‘Wait a minute: is this an authority making a decision?’ If it’s cast in the framework of people making decisions that are in their interest, and in their family’s interest, about where they’re storing their guns, then it’s easier to have that conversation.”
Local chapters of AFSP are set to distribute brochures with the NSSF’s logo to gun shop owners and shooting range operators. The organizers hope the materials will be distributed to customers and training-course enrollees. At the news conference, Sanetti encouraged gun retailers to be proactive in acquiring the materials.
“The messages couldn’t be perceived in any way as anti-firearm,” he said. “And we know that a lot of people in the medical community, unfortunately, sincerely believe the only safe home is a home without a gun.”
Overall, Moutier said she was pleased with the reception at SHOT Show.
“I thought maybe we would have to prove ourselves,” she said. “But it wasn’t like that. The moment that we started saying that we share an interest, they were incredibly welcoming of us.”
A key test for the project as it expands nationwide will be whether it can sustain the cooperation from gun stores that it found during its pilot phase. One of the several dozen gun retailers who participated in the program’s first wave asked for a thousand brochures, rather than the 50 he was initially offered. He said he wanted to put one in every customer’s bag. In New Mexico, in addition to distributing materials to gun shops and shooting ranges, AFSP members set up their own table at a gun show. Attendees reacted with a “mixture of surprise and curiosity,” Moutier said. “Lots of people who have experienced a suicide loss would come up to the table and say ‘Thank you, I’m so glad that you’re here.’”
Still, some gun retailers remain reluctant to step into a role they think should be left to mental health professionals. Moutier said she is confident that the holdouts can be won over.
“Now that we’ve been living in this space for a while,” she said, “it has become so much more clear that there is a common ground.”This article was first published on AUT's Briefing Papers series. It is here with permission.
By Brian Easton*
While housing obviously fills a need – people need somewhere to live – it also has an investment aspect. How this investment is treated by the tax system influences the housing market, and the investment available for other purposes, such as business ventures.
There is an implicit tax-subsidy to housing investment and it is necessary to understand this in order to understand how the housing market works. Consider two people living in identical houses. Suppose they sell their $1m house to each other, but continue living in their old homes, now as tenants. The people are both home owners and renters: they receive rent for the house they own but do not occupy and they pay rent for the house they occupy but do not own. Assume each landlord clears $20,000 a year after housing costs such as rates, insurance and maintenance. Each person’s position seems neutral from the change – paying rent and receiving rent – until they report their net rental income to the Inland Revenue Department which assesses them as liable for tax. With a marginal tax rate of 33 percent, that’s $6,600.
Of course they do not sell to each other – better to live in the house one owns and avoid paying tax on rental income. In effect, owner-occupiers receive a subsidy by not having to pay tax on the rent which owners implicitly pay to themselves for living in their own homes.
It is not the intention of this analysis to challenge the principle of this tax-break for home-owners although it will argue that it is applied over-generously. That conclusion comes from observing that the consequence of current arrangements is that we over-invest in housing, distorting the pattern of savings and investment in the economy.
Consider, as an illustrative exercise, owner-occupiers being taxed as if they were landlords – an imputed rent – with a corresponding reduction in tax rates on all income. Faced with a tax bill of, say, $6,600 for living in their own home, the household might make different decisions about housing. Older adults whose children have left home may well decide to downsize in order to reduce their tax liability. The savings from the cheaper house could be used to pay off debt or invested.
After full adjustment, across the whole economy, possible outcomes include:
– a better match between family and household size: small families would be in smaller houses and larger families would be less squeezed by having moved into the larger houses they left;
– the same number of houses (or possibly more) but eventually the average size of houses would be smaller;
– a reduction in household debt and hence offshore debt (which funds household debt on the margin);
– more wealth available for investment in other – more productive – activities;
– lower house prices;
– more young families would be able to purchase their own homes;
– a lesser need for accommodation supplements and the like.
To complete this analysis, attention needs to be given to capital gains. In fact, an owner-occupier does not make capital gains (on average) when they move from one house to another, for any capital gains they make on the sale of their old house are offset by the capital losses they make on the purchase of their new one.
What about investors who do not live in houses which they own? At present they get exactly the same tax subsidies as the owner-occupier. The current arrangements enable the investor to rort the tax system. For instant, an owner of the million-dollar house could borrow $500,000 at 4% p.a. which would be covered by the tenant’s rental payments of $20,000 p.a. The return the investor would get would be from the capital gain. Allow a 10 percent annual gain, and the investor is $100,000 up at the end of the year, which is a 20 percent return on $500,000 of equity, on which they pay no tax. For housing investors make capital gains in a way that owner-occupiers do not; they do not have to invest in another house.
There is an even more ingenious way to make a profit on investment housing in times of rising values. Why take a tenant in at all? Admittedly the landlord has to pay for the rates, insurance and maintenance but there is no hassle of a tenant. The result is houses which are untenanted but generating a return via capital gains. That certainly does not help the homeless.
Removing tax breaks for investors would have a similar impact to taxing the imputed rent of owner-occupiers, although the magnitude would be smaller. Whatever one thinks of the tax-subsidy to home-owners, the case for a similar subsidy to house investors is thin, especially as it screws up the housing market for those without their own homes, diverts resources from productive activities and increases offshore debt when investors borrow to leverage their return.
What is to be done if we want to avoid these ills?
First, the logic argues for a comprehensive capital gains tax on housing which is not owner-occupied. It need only be calculated on capital gains after the date of introduction. Taxing past gains will not get the behaviour the policy is about. An interesting possibility is that some jurisdictions only have a capital gains tax exemption on owner-occupier houses up to a limit – say double the median house price – and tax any capital gains above that. Tricky to apply, but it makes the point that the tax exemption on owner-occupied homes is for comfortable living, not for extravagance.
Is there a case for some penalty on houses which are owned but not occupied? Because it is administratively complicated one needs to know something about the size of the problem – and in any case a capital gains tax would discourage such vacancies. But in principle, if the tax treatment on owner-occupiers is to enable occupation, it is not obvious why it should be given when the houses are not occupied.
As much as they will help, changes in taxation on housing will not solve all the problems in the housing market. A building programme will still be necessary. Because it will be building fewer large houses, the available resources will be able to build more houses. We probably need to reform the accommodation supplements.
Instead this analysis finishes with attention to savings and investment. Recall that which drives these proposed changes is the distortionary effects on overall investment of the tax exemptions on housing. The intention of the package is to cut back wasteful investment in housing and channel the savings into more productive activities. New Zealanders invest in housing and property because that is the only investment they understand. They will pay off any debts as they unwind out of their investment, thereby reducing the amount of offshore borrowing, making New Zealand financially more secure. But what will they do with surplus funds?
Many will deposit them in banks or finance companies which may, or may not, route the proceeds into business investment (as well as paying off international debt). However, there is also a need for a more direct channel from households to business. Kiwisaver is an example. New Zealanders need greater confidence in investing outside property or financial institutions.Donald Cerrone is “double dipping.”
The UFC welterweight contender is scheduled to headline UFC Fight Night 118 against up-and-comer Darren Till in Gdansk, Poland on Saturday. But according to Cowboy, he has a second fight already penciled in for UFC 219 on Dec. 30 in Las Vegas.
Cerrone told Sirius XM’s The Luke Thomas Show that he does not yet have an opponent, as the UFC cannot officially announce him for the card until his bout against Till is complete.
“They can’t officially book me for two. It won’t work,” Cerrone said Friday. “It’s just on ice.”
Joe Schilling, who sometimes trains with Cerrone in Albuquerque, says otherwise.
“I know who he’s fighting, but now I feel like I might’ve just let the cat out of the bag on that one,” the kickboxer told Sirius XM’s MMA Tonight one day prior. “It’s gonna be a good fight. It’s an exciting matchup for sure; I think a lot of people will be excited about it. That’s all I can say. But let’s get this dork, Darren Till, out of the way first.”
Cerrone has always been willing to fight anyone, at any given event, on any given day; that’s why he’s a fan favorite. He said fighting so often has always been a “no brainer” because of the financial success that comes along with it.
“Not to mention do I love it, but then I just know the amount of money coming into my bank account when I put four fights in,” said Cerrone, who also added that the organization knows he always wants at least four fights per year, which is why he is booked for the end-of-year show. (His Till fight this weekend will be No. 3 of 2017.)
Cerrone, who holds a record of 32-9, 1 NC in MMA and a record of 19-6 in the UFC, is aiming to to have 15 or more fights before stepping away from the sport in five years, he said.
“I said I wanted 50 fights total, but that’s right on my fingertips,” Cerrone said. “So I gotta broaden that to maybe 60. So 55 or 60; (I’ll) probably go with 60.”
Cerrone’s fight versus Till will be streamed live and exclusively on UFC Fight Pass from Ergo Arena.About 40 police officers were needed to arrest a single woman who sat down and opened an umbrella in a Seattle park this morning, according to local media.
Amid the ongoing “Occupy Seattle” protest, city officials decided to ban sitting down with umbrellas in public spaces, ostensibly because they become “makeshift structures,” which are forbidden.
In a scene from earlier today, a single woman, who identified herself as Debra Lynn Peardon, put that law to the test, opening an umbrella and sitting down on the ground.
That’s when, according to Seattle blog The Slog, “40 police officers surrounded” the woman. With her hands bound, at least four officers then carried her out by her arms and legs, with protesters all the while chanting, “Show me what oppression looks like? This is what oppression looks like!”
Video of the arrest also appeared to show an officer ramming a bicycle into an individual who filmed the arrest, sparking a confrontation.
In all, at least seven people were arrested in Seattle on Monday morning as police moved in to evict protesters from Westlake Park, according to the Seattle Police Department. Although they’re only allowed to stand, protesters have vowed to keep a constant presence at the site.
Seattle police last week were also seen giving tickets to drivers who honked in support of “Occupy” protesters.
Apart from Seattle, “Occupy” protests have also sprung up all across Washington state, in Vancouver, Tacoma, Olympia, Yakima and Spokane, according to CBS News.
The video below was published to YouTube on Monday, Oct. 17, 2011.Four attempts by Russian-linked gangs in Moldova to sell nuclear material have been thwarted by the authorities and the FBI over the past five years, according to an Associated Press investigation.
The most recent case was in February when undercover agents were offered a large amount of radioactive caesium from a smuggler who specifically sought a buyer from Islamic State, the report said.
The cases involved informants and an undercover police officer posing as a connected gangster complete with a Mercedes Benz provided by the FBI.
Despite being arrested, the alleged kingpins got away with short prison sentences and in some cases have resumed nuclear smuggling, AP found.
The material involved is believed to come from Russian hospitals and so far there has been no sign of significant quantities of more deadly fissile material being sold in the Moldovan nuclear black market.
Case files shared by the Moldovan authorities reveal smugglers have been trying to exploit a breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the west.
“We can expect more of these cases,” said Constantin Malic, a Moldovan police officer who investigated all four cases. “As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it.”
The files exposed a pattern in the way the cases were handled suggesting a vulnerability in the anti-smuggling strategy. In all four cases, the authorities arrested suspects in the early stages of a deal, giving the ringleaders a chance to escape with their nuclear contraband.
The most serious case began in the spring of 2011, with the investigation of a group led by a Russian named Alexandr Agheenco, “the colonel” to his cohorts, whom Moldovan authorities believe to be an officer with the Russian FSB.
A middle man working for the colonel was recorded arranging the sale of bomb-grade uranium, U-235, and blueprints for a dirty bomb to a man from Sudan, according to several officials.
When the colonel got away the the police could not say whether he had more nuclear material. His partner, who wanted to “annihilate America”, is out of prison.Last year Reshma Bano Qureshi, 18, was attacked by her brother-in-law and a group of men who held her down and poured sulfuric acid on her face. The attacked left Qureshi deeply scarred—her left eye is also missing—and some of her attackers were never prosecuted.
Now Qureshi is speaking out about her ordeal in a video that plays on the familiar tropes of the online beauty tutorial. In the video, produced by Make Love Not Scars, Qureshi promises to show viewers “how to get perfect red lips,” it quickly turns, however, to reveal that it’s as easy to purchase acid in India as it is to buy a tube of lipstick.
Bharat Nayak, a spokesperson for Make Love Not Scars, told the New York Times, “that bending traditional norms of female beauty was a powerful tactic intended to bring attention to persistent attacks against women in India despite efforts to limit the sale of acid used in many attacks.”
Nayak estimates that there are around 1,000 acid attacks yearly in India, despite the fact that Supreme Court ordered tighter measures on the distribution of acids in 2013. The Times notes that toilet-cleaning acid and other industrial cleaning acids are still, however, readily available on the open market.
“How To Get Perfect Red Lips” is part of a series of “beauty tutorials” intended to raise awareness of just how easy it is to obtain acids for the purpose of attacks. Other videos include Qureshi providing “tips” on eyeliner and dark spots.
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Make Love Not Scars is part of a broader advocacy movement in the country, and it’s worth reading the Times’ entire story on the subject.Antarctica's Alcohol Problem
June 21 is Midwinter Day in Antarctica, which at South Pole Station endures 24 hours of darkness for five months a year. It is one of the most important dates on the calendar because it means you’ve hit the halfway point of the Long Night, and every day thence is one closer to the sun coming back above the horizon.
You might think this would be cause for celebration. While it was certainly the reason for a feast and a party, the more common reaction was, “Fuck. It’s only halfway through winter. At least four months until the station re-opens. Pour me some more whiskey, dammit.”
Hi, my name is Phil Broughton, and I was a bartender on Antarctica.
I once gave a presentation to an AA meeting about alcoholism and enabling from the perspective of a safety professional serving people booze on “the Ice,” which is what everyone who works on Antarctica calls it. There are three US stations: South Pole, McMurdo and Palmer, and each has a “ship store” where you can buy whatever sinful products of comfort you wish: liquor, beer, wine, smokes, soda, Keebler E.L. Fudge cookies, etc.
Booze did cause a rift in the South Pole Station population of 58, between the teetotalers and the drunks, a roughly 40/60 split.
I’ve told a lot of people about the fun associated with being at the end of the earth, rivers of ions swimming in the sky over head, and a cocktail in your hand. This has generated a lot of questions about the drinking culture of the seventh continent—which, given that you are 14,000 miles from home, sometimes can go truly, horribly wrong.
There are times I still wish we’d had a chaplain at South Pole Station, like they did in the Navy days—but, alas, there was only me. At McMurdo, there is a weekly AA meeting held at the Chapel of the Snows, but none I was aware of at Pole or Palmer (although there were probably a half-dozen or so copies of AA’s “Big Book” in the library at Pole). I like to think I did right—or at least well enough—by people that were hurting. Yet, while I stand by what I’ve done, I can’t say they give me great comfort.
Some might ask, why are there even bars on Antarctica? One of the stereotypical flags that you might have a problem with alcohol is that you’re in your room drinking alone. The Navy knew this, which is why the bars were built. If you’re going to be consuming alcohol, it’s better if you are doing it in public.
Yet booze did cause a rift in the station population, between the teetotalers and the drunks, a roughly 40/60 split in a winter South Pole Station population of 58. I’m not going to lie and say that I envied the games and movie nights of the teetotalers, as I played with them now and again, but we had our own games and movies in the bar.
Phil Broughton, left, doing a trick with liquid nitrogen in Club 90 South.
For the most part, the teetotalers were drawn from the science and operations staff. I couldn’t tell you if those who abstained did so due to peer pressure from within their clique, but a few people were or had been AA members back home. Trying to stay sober on Antarctica is impressive, but what I respect even more was those same AA members’ willingness to come into the bar and engage socially with its denizens in a way that others wouldn’t. “I don’t like the taste of alcohol” combined with a poor attitude toward those who don’t doesn’t make for kindred spirits.
The largest station, McMurdo, is unique for having three bars that all charged for drinks. Barbaric! South Pole and Palmer operated on the “bring some, take some” honor system. You want to drink in Club 90 South, you better put a bottle up on the shelf or beer in the case now and then. I formalized the honor bar a bit by making broadcast announcements of what the bar was lacking, but this didn’t necessarily go over well with management, as it was seen as “encouragement.”
Club 90 South was open 24/7/365. At first, during the “summer,” I volunteered only on Saturday nights. But by the time winter rolled around I was up there most every night doing my thing. This is the joy of an honor bar: Come on in any time, no one’s gonna charge you, so help yourself. You are, of course, supposed to be working during the day—but if it’s just you in the bar, and no one’s keeping a tab, who’s to say you were even drinking? (This is a very Zen alcoholic justification.)
Antarctica’s problem is that you’ve run as far as a person possibly can to escape. I heard about every relationship shattered by distance, and all the ones that ended before you even came here. The strings of jobs and homes and towns abandoned as you tried to make a new start.
Once you get to Antarctica, there’s nowhere further to go. Then the station closes for the winter, with no more flights for nine months. And when things start going wrong again—because the common denominator in all the situations you’ve fled from is you
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delicious of equations: Ricotta + pancake batter = the fluffiest pancakes ever. Math never tasted so good.
Skip the pre-mixed Bisquick, because pancake batter is super easy and requires ingredients that you probably already have in your house. Picking up ricotta at the store is your only major task.
We dig the below recipe adapted from Everyday Food, in which we’ve swapped out part-skim ricotta for the full-fat stuff. Trust us, the added creaminess is worth the few extra calories. The end result is richer and yes, fluffier than your garden variety pancake, and the addition of orange zest brings a brightening citrus note.
Feel free to top these babies with fresh or stewed fruits, and of course, some choice maple syrup.
Orange-Ricotta Pancakes
Adapted from Everyday Food
Serves 4
1 3/4 cups (15 ounces) ricotta cheese
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons grated orange zest (1 orange)
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons canola oil
Confectioners’ sugar or maple syrup
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together ricotta cheese, granulated sugar, eggs, and orange zest. Whisk in flour until just combined.
2. Heat canola oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. Working in batches (and adding more oil to skillet as needed), add batter, using a scant 1/4 cup for each pancake. Cook until browned, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Transfer pancakes to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. Serve hot, dusted with confectioners’ sugar or drizzled with maple syrup.One of the most common feature requests from our clients is Google Map integration. On two projects recently I found myself creating very similar functionality: a map of points with links in a nearby list that activate the markers on the map. This seemed like an excellent opportunity to package up functionality into some sort of “module.” Given that jQuery is my framework of choice I decided to go the route of a jQuery plugin (see David’s recent post for the advantages of jQuery plugins).
My goal when crafting this plugin was to use the convention-over-configuration paradigm, yet allowing customization, and to have the data be embedded in the HTML, allowing for graceful degradation in the rare cases where Google Maps wouldn’t be compatible. This would also allow the javascript the end user would need to write to be very minimal; one line is the default case.
The requirements for the most recent project were simple enough:
Create a Google Map in a specific div. Add markers for given locations. Color the markers based on a category they are assigned to. Center the map around the markers and set it to a reasonable zoom level. When a link on the page for the location is clicked it should activate the marker and load the map info window with specific HTML.
Basic Usage
The most basic usage would be with HTML like this:
<div id="map"></div> <div id="map-side-bar"> <div class="map-location" data="{id: 2, point: {lng: -122.4391131, lat: 37.7729943}, category:'restaurant'}"> <a href="#" class="map-link">Nopalito</a> <div class="info-box"> <p>The best authentic Mexican restaurant in San Francisco.</p> </div> </div> <div class="map-location" data="{id: 3, point: {lng: -122.4481651, lat: 37.8042096}, category:'museum'}"> <a href="#" class="map-link">Exploratorium</a> <div class="info-box"> <p>A hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco.</p> </div> </div> </div>
And Javascript like this:
$(document).ready(function(){ $('#map').jMapping(); });
Working with options
The one thing this code doesn’t take care of is how to color the markers based on the categories. Coloring markers can easily be done with the Google Maps utility library MapIconMaker. To get it functional we just change the Javascript to this:
$(document).ready(function(){ $('#map').jMapping({ category_icon_options: {'restaurant': {primaryColor: '#E8413A', cornerColor: '#EBEBEB'},'museum': {primaryColor: '#465AE0', cornerColor: '#EBEBEB'}, 'default': {primaryColor: '#7CDF65'} } }); });
There’s a whole host of other options you can use to customize it. Most importantly you can set the selectors the plugin uses to find the locations, links, and the info box elements. There are even more examples and explanations available at its home on GitHub. That’s also where you can find the downloads, report issues, or fork the code.
In the future, I hope to add the ability to update the map, and other functionality that people request, as well as create some Rails helpers for integrating it into your views.
Look for more articles down the line here about how the plugin was designed and structured, and the way it’s tested.Yoga with cats – it must be a California gimmick, thought Edmund Vallance. Until he tried it himself
About 20 years ago, I adopted two kittens. The first one ran away to the family next door. The second fell in love with my Australian flatmate, and ended up on a plane to Adelaide. It was a painful and humiliating experience – quite like yoga, now I come to think of it.
With that in mind, forgive me if I was a little sceptical of “cat yoga”; a concept developed by Santa Barbara’s newly-opened cat cafe, Cat Therapy.
To me, it sounded like a feline fiasco; a cataclysmic catastrophe. Also, something that could only take place in California. But I was willing to give it a try.
I was anxious, the morning of my class, and also a little cynical. What next, I wondered – hamster jiu-jitsu? Terrapin triathlon? According to the website, it was “totally scientifically proven impossible [sic] to be in a bad mood inside Cat Therapy”. That, I snarled under my breath, remained to be seen.
Thankfully, my mood improved immeasurably after meeting the company’s founder, Catalina Esteves. All the animals who attend the classes are brought in from local shelters, she told me, and her clients often adopt them on the spot. After just five months in business, Catalina had found homes for 56 cats.
“Sometimes it’s love at first sight,” she says. “It’s beautiful to watch.”
“A lot of the cats are very nervous to begin with,” she adds. “But after a month or so, most of them are at the centre of the room, loving every minute of it.”
It was a heart-warming story, and looking around the room, I couldn’t spot a single po-faced yoga freak. Everyone was smiling. Some of them were actually laughing. Had I been too quick to judge?
Aneta, our instructor, was faultless as a yoga teacher, her voice soothing yet commanding, her directions clear and concise. Just as well, really, because I was having trouble making notes on my phone while engaging my abs in downward dog. Aneta smiled kindly. I was genuinely grateful.
Thirty minutes into the class, I noticed a ginger tom curled up in my camera case. He purred loudly, regarding me with sleepy-eyed indifference. Laying my phone aside for a moment, I was shocked to find myself stroking the little bugger under the chin. “Surely I’m the victim of some catty Jedi mind trick,” I thought, segueing into warrior pose two, and scanning the floor for more fur.
I counted at least 12 cats of varying sizes and colours, all beguiling me with relentless cuteness. Some lay on their backs like stoned astronauts, some curled up in little daybeds shaped like NYC taxis. One of them – as white and fluffy as Blofeld’s pet sidekick – licked my toe with his sandpaper tongue. The feeling was not altogether disagreeable.
After an hour-long yoga class, it was time for a 30-minute session of cat cuddling. Before too long, I was up to my neck in feline fuzz, avidly engaged in conversation with Maria, a real estate agent from Los Angeles.
“You should really try goat yoga,” she said, nuzzling three cats simultaneously. “Sometimes they dress them up in pyjamas.”
“Why do they do that?” I asked.
“I guess because people like seeing goats in pyjamas,” she said.
And why not? What harm could possibly come from it? Californian sunshine was streaming through the windows; birdsong was filtering through the speakers; and a huddle of grinning humans was connecting with a huddle of furry animals, all exchanging warmth and energy in this bizarre, quasi-mystical, 90-minute ritual. I felt like Captain Spock at Woodstock; self-conscious, out-of-place, but ever-so-slightly groovy.
“How did you find it?” Catalina asked, when it was all over.
“Great,” I said, realising that I actually meant it.
“So glad you enjoyed yourself,” she said. “There’s something about hanging out with these happy little creatures that really relaxes you. It can totally change your mood.”
Annoyingly, she was right.
Like this: Like Loading...Water: it poses one challenge after the next in the 21st Century. It’s increasingly scarce, it’s increasingly dangerous as sea levels rise, and it’s increasingly changing the workforce.
Grand Ideas The 21st Century is continually throwing us new challenges and expecting us to adapt – but for every Earth-shattering megatrend, there are dozens of genius solutions. Follow them all in BBC Future's special series, Grand Ideas.
But one of its most vital functions is often overlooked: the fact that it’s a lynchpin for (relative) world peace. Without clear distinctions of who it belongs to and how to share it, the world would be thrown into chaos.
Earlier this year as part of our Grand Challenges series, we reached out to a panel of water experts to describe the big problems we’re facing when it comes to the precious commodity. What they said was clear: “hydro-politics” – politics surrounding the availability and accessibility to water – will shape the 21st Century.
Take an example: the Nile flows through myriad countries, starting in Ethiopia and ending in Egypt. That gives Ethiopia an upper hand in geopolitics, because if tensions prompted it, it could theoretically cut off or limit that huge water supply to Egypt.
In an ever-changing world with an ever-changing climate, water is integral to prevent widespread conflict. But how can we ensure that everyone get their fair share?
As part of our Grand Ideas follow-up series, we reached back out to our panel and asked them to nominate solutions to the looming challenges facing the world.
One of those experts is Zenia Tata, executive director of global development and international expansion at the non-profit XPrize. Tata’s solution? Through clever technology, give a greater number of people the ability to tap their own water.
Wanted: a device that extracts a minimum of 2,000 litres of water per day from the atmosphere using 100% renewable energy
“The obvious revolution is to create decentralised, on-demand, community-level systems – giving people their basic needs, wherever and whenever they want them,” Tata says.
To that end, her organisation, XPrize, has created a Water Abundance project that aims to make water more available for all – through technology.
In a $1.75m (£1.29m) prize competition, the non-profit is asking teams of engineers from around the world to create “a device that extracts a minimum of 2,000 litres of water per day from the atmosphere using 100% renewable energy, at a cost of no more than two cents per litre.” Or as the organisation puts it, “harvesting fresh water from thin air”. If the XPrize competitors can come up with such a device, it’ll be revealed next August.
It might sound difficult, but researchers are already well on the way to achieving this goal. One team that has already been exploring water-harvesting technology is led by Omar Yaghi at the University of California, Berkeley. Using materials called metal organic frameworks – a powder that ‘harvests’ liquid from the atmosphere in its pores, they have shown that as little as 1kg of the powder can trap nearly 3 litres of water in only 12 hours. In humid parts of the world, this technology could provide an entirely new water source for people, without having to rely on centralised gatekeepers.
Since the dawn of humanity, it can be argued that fresh water has been the most basic, most important thing for survival. But as we move further into the 21st Century, water is now even more important. Its availability (will there be enough?) and accessibility (will everyone get some?) will be key issues the human race will have to grapple with.
Luckily, there’s no shortage of people with ideas ready to tackle this issue….
For more insights and ideas about water from Zenia Tata and more experts, click hereWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Western sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program contributed to a steep drop in Tehran’s access to global sources of capital last year, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a report to Congress.
Foreign banks cut their lending exposure to Iran by the equivalent of $9.1 billion in 2012, down 53 percent, said the report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
Iran’s isolation from foreign lending “means that much needed investment to support its continued economic development is scarce,” said the report, which Congress required in the U.S. sanctions law.
Broader international sanctions against Iran and other perceived weaknesses in the investment climate in Iran also contributed to the drop, the report said. It cited lending data from the Bank of International Settlements, which promotes collaboration among central banks.
The United States and the EU have imposed sanctions on Iran that aim to choke funding to Tehran’s nuclear program. The West says the program is developing nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
Iran’s gross domestic product is falling “possibly by the largest margin in 25 years,” the report added.
It did not elaborate. But the Washington based Institute for International Finance said late last year Iran’s 2012 GDP was expected to shrink by 3.5 percent, from 1.2 percent positive growth in 2011, as sanctions helped slash the country’s oil exports by 1 million barrels per day.
In Washington’s latest effort to tighten sanctions, the Treasury said on Wednesday Iran’s oil earnings would now be shackled in special accounts in countries that buy oil from the Islamic Republic. Tehran can only use the funds to buy goods from its oil customers, preventing the money from being repatriated and used on the nuclear program.
The new measures represent a “significant turning of the screw,” a senior U.S. official said.
Still, many experts say sanctions alone are unlikely to stop Iran’s nuclear program as the country has a large foreign currency reserve built up from years of high oil prices.
Last month Iran announced plans to install and operate advanced uranium enrichment machines.
Iranian crude exports in December rose to their highest level since EU sanctions took effect last July, analysts and shipping sources said last month, as strong Chinese demand and an expansion of its tanker fleet helped Tehran dodge the sanctions.Bitcoin exchange Kraken today announced that it is acquiring Coinsetter, another Bitcoin exchange with deep roots in the US and Canada.
The San Francisco-based exchange, which had left the US markets in 2014 citing issues with banking partners, aims to utilize Coinsetter’s presence to reestablish itself in the North American region. As confirmed by CEO Jesse Powell, Kraken is looking to mousetrap the ever-expanding Bitcoin markets in hopes to boost its overall volume.
The New York based Coinsetter currently offers Bitcoin trading services in 37 US states, while the exchange’s nationwide presence in Canada is inherited from its previous acquisition of CAVIRTEX, the True North’s first Bitcoin exchange which was closed last year due to security concerns. Together, the two exchanges hosted an impressive Bitcoin volume from both the US and Canadian clientele, an aspect that would benefit the expansion plans of Kraken.
“The acquisition of Coinsetter and Cavirtex marks the beginning of a new era for Kraken,” said Powell. “The consolidation of these three veteran giants is the largest exchange deal to date. Combined, we represent over thirteen years of bitcoin exchange experience in an industry that is only seven years old.”
Coinsetter CEO Jaron Lukasiewicz also expressed a similar confidence on Kraken, and stated:
“For years, the teams at Coinsetter and Cavirtex have worked closely with traders, bitcoin companies and investors to advance the burgeoning bitcoin space in North America. We are confident that Kraken is the right world-class company with the resources, vision and drive to successfully carry our torch far into the future.”
Kraken also announced partnership with American payment company SynapsePay to enable fast and low-fee USD deposits and withdrawals all across the 37 US states and Washington DC. The exchange claims that it will give Americans easy access to their “advanced exchange services”, including Bitcoin-Dollar trading.
This is perhaps is the first time in which Kraken can be seen taking an energetic interest in the US virtual currency market. The exchange has had its share of troubles in the past while coming to terms with the country’s controversial stand on digital currency startups. In August 2015, Kraken had announced that it will be discontinuing its services in New York due to the state’s “draconian” Bitcoin law – notoriously known as BitLicense.
“Regrettably, the abominable BitLicense has awakened. It is a creature so foul, so cruel that not even Kraken possesses the courage or strength to face its nasty, big, pointy teeth. It’s at least a 40-man, bro,” the exchange had said facetiously.
On the other hand, Coinsetter had willfully applied for BitLicense to continue providing Bitcoin trading services to its New York customers.
New York Customers to Lose Bitcoin Service
Kraken’s plan to migrate into the US markets might come as a bad-and-sad news to Coinsetter’s existing clientele in New York. CEO Jesse Powell told NewsBTC that Kraken will be unable to provide Bitcoin trading services to Coinsetter’s New York customers upon migration on January 26. He said:
“Unfortunately, this acquisition does not mean that we’ll be turning on service in New York. Clients in New York State will again be losing service upon migration, on January 26.”
Image Source: 1, 2The Razor’s Edge is a column written from the precarious middle between the forever warring powers, BOB and GOONS (modern day Northern Coalition and The Imperium). This year a third side to the rivalry opened when the Casino bankers of IWANTISK allowed me great access during their struggle to survive and then during their attempt to bring down The Imperium. This was the major narrative of EVE in 2016, and having access to all three sides was helpful for me as a writer. Most of the events during the war were covered by the Meta Show and the Talking In Stations on a week by week basis, but here is a year end recap of 2016 as we transition into the new year.
The Casino War
To explain 2016, I need go a bit further, to the end of 2015. At that time I was a heavy influence at EVENEWS24, writing and editing the writing of others. As a team we were watching our competitor, TMC, struggle through a disastrous layout change. We were high on the prospect of beating TMC to the news while raising our reputation for quality. Then came EVE Vegas, 2015. I was the sole representative from EN24, but I was slated to speak on EVE Media, a plus for our side. TMC was there in force, wearing black uniformed shirts and moving camera equipment back and forth as if they were a mini CCP. They were making preparations to going to do what CCP refused to do; stream the event. Coincidently, TMC had a big announcement: a book deal with CCP, so the cameras were already there. I was amused that TMC was making a big deal of throwing it all together in three days, because ShadowandLight had put together a streaming package in 24 hrs, and was able to capture the elusive round-table sessions.
Inside the EVE universe, players were still pessimistic about the new sov system and worried the announced changes to structures and capital ships would be the final straw – killing EVE for good. The PCU numbers were down, and people were nervous. At the center of discontent was the feeling that null was not worth it, and they were right. Hundreds of hours of grinding by players could not compare to the earning potential of Casino money which was starting to be spread around streamers and media types. Those on the take accepted tens of billions in return for promoting the gambling sites through their medium. “Free money” entering the game at that scale devalued the working man’s grind not worth doing. Only farming C6 wormholes were paying off, and at the time there was a secret war for C6 domination by Quantum Explosion, a Russian alliance. Their conquest created a renting empire that null-sec alts used to enrich themselves while they waited for CCP to fixed the incentives to grind sov.
The Imperium was being crushed under their own weight, with highly visible Goons Endie, Suas, and Blawrf McTaggart, defecting to other groups. Mittani had not adequately convinced them that the Imperium brand name was a worthwhile change from the “clusterfuck” name. The Imperium was seen as a dominate power in the north, a space Rome with its own Pax Imperium. Goons and allies adapted to jump changes far better than their rival N3 coalition, which broke apart when NC reset allies and left sov holding as a practice. N3 could not defeat the Imperium, even with the help of heavy weight mercs Black Legion and Pandemic Legion. Many feared Goons could claim they won EVE if the game closed its doors. The “Empires of EVE” book was about to released. Concerns of legacy were fresh, and Goons wanted to write another book about the Fountain War, a war Goons won.
The book deal with CCP needed funding. The Kickstarter platform was used to crowd source the astronomical amount needed to pay for a professional author. The marketing campaign’s ironic sense of humor was lost on many players. CCP didn’t support the book deal very well and TMC was pretty upset at being abandoned as criticism of the proposed book mounted. That is when I joined TMC. I originally came over to write a few articles and retire, but Sion asked me to take ownership of the EVE news division. Always wanting to build a news organization, I accepted, as long as I had final say on the EVE content published. My marketing and design background got me a seat at the “site development” table, but first I needed to write and shape the news. My first major assignment was to investigate the smoldering beginnings of SMA versus IWI. It was very a very interesting conflict – an alliance versus a Casino.
From my standpoint as a veteran PVPer in null-sec, Imperium’s Space Monkeys Alliance (SMA) were a big alliance with a weak reputation as fighters. My friends in Honorable Third Party would hot drop them as they did Provi, but unlike Provi, SMA had something to prove to their PvP allies in The Imperium. SMA also had a “tendency to put their women on a pedestal,” according to former SMA female player. The need to gain reputation and the tendency to white knight women led SMA to their doom, dragging the whole Imperium into war. Here is how that all started:
One of SMA’s female directors caught the ire of her friend, the owner of IWANTISK (IWI), over the treatment of mutual friends. SMA leadership took a hard line in defense of their female director, stonewalling IWI during grievance negotiations. This started an escalation; IWI threatened to hire mercenaries to disrupt SMA’s farming, the female director used privileged access to IWI to steal billions in ISK then petitioned CCP that illegal RMT activities by IWI existed. CCP froze the accounts of 14 of IWI casino clerks, but did not touch IWI directly. IWI hired mercenaries to attack SMA. SMA gloated publicly at the infiltration of IWI that resulted in the bans. One of their prominent members, Kyle Aparthos, penned several articles about their spy attack in order to upgrade their reputation as a cunning alliance. SMA also refused help from Imperium allies to beat back the harassing mercenaries, which emboldened other mercs to take contracts from IWI and join the raids. The conflict grew, merging into other efforts to defeat The Imperium that were already underway.
Imperium spy channels buzzed as they helplessly watched the perfect storm form. Major rivals, NC, PL, TEST, and others picked up large contracts and moved North to invade the Imperium. N3 may not have been able to defeat the Imperium, but most of EVE was on its way, even drone region renters formed up as Drone Walkers to help invade. Motive met opportunity as mercenaries challenged The Imperium holdings in Lonetrek, then on multiple fronts. The funding to destroy the Imperium came from IWI, Lenny, and 1ronbank, all associated heavily with fortunes made through online gambling of ISK. The Pax Imperium was over.
Imperium alliances mobilized but were spread too far apart to defend all its territory. A plan was made to fall back and fight on a single front. Some Imperium alliances made plans of their own. FCON paid NC to let them escape the north. Co2, wanting to keep their vast holdings, turned traitor and, according to Imperium spies, set a trap for the Imperium’s super capital fleet. The admiral of that Imperium fleet was feeling uneasy when intelligence reports from scouts and contradicted what Co2 was reporting. The admiral detoured the supers fleet at the last second, avoiding a catastrophic trap with hundreds of waiting dreadnaughts and supercapitals from NC and PL, waiting to jump in. The Mittani announced a change of plans, and The Imperium conceded sov and vowed to fight from the borderlands in low-sec.
Then came Citadel Expansion.
Fights with the new capital ships were happening daily. FC’s were figuring out how to use their new powers. In the war, momentum swung back and forth as the Imperium used Hurricanes to shred the new Force Auxiliaries that protected the super capital ships. Most of the fights were meaningless exchanges, but after some time, The Mittani announced the Imperium would reconquer the north by taking and securing space slowly. Pure Blind region was first.
News from wormhole space reached New Eden; an XL citadel (Keepstar) was built by Hard Knocks Alliance. Weeks later, as the Imperium was making progress in Pure Blind, Darkness Alliance put up the first null-sec Keepstar in Deklein, the former seat of power for The Imperium. Intel that Co2, Horde and NC were going to drop their own citadels was spreading. These fortresses effectively ended the hopes of Reconquista. The Imperium could continue on and take sov, but with massive fortresses living in their space, it would be a useless endeavor. Keepstars were the new sov EVE needed. The Mittani called for a massive move to Delve, far away from the north. This effectively marked the end of a strange war. It was more of a collapse and tactical retreat than a war.
Only TEST alliance followed to keep the fight going. Co2 successfully kept their territory, built a Keepstar, and formed a powerful coalition with TEST, called TESTCO, when they returned from the south. FCON settled in the south. SMA retreated to Outer Ring and mothballed out of existence. IWI bankers were unbanned by CCP. At the end of it all, the invasion only had two major battles, but cost upwards of 30 trillion ISK. The ISK disappeared into the coffers of the merc corps, but no accounts of how the ISK was used has ever been made public. It is assumed all that ISK was spent or is controlled by a few individuals from various alliances. It’s good to be king.
IWI made plans to upgrade the Casino website. 1ronbank left IWI to join EVE Casino. Lenny left IWI to focus his efforts on building the New Eden Trading Company, a network of citadels that would serve as trading posts. Then CCP struck: All gambling sites were banned and any variants of “games of chance” were made illegal. IWI, 1ronbank, and Lenny were banned for RMT and their wealth confiscated. The Imperium celebrated.
Meanwhile Project Mayhem, ally of TESTCO, tried to anchor a Keepstar but NC, PL and others destroyed it, marking the first Keepstar to be destroyed. NC and Horde declared war on Co2 and moved on Co2’s home in Tribute. TESTCO and others repelled NC and Horde for weeks as NC evolved their sov warfare tactics. Their new tactics worked and Pandemic Legion joined in the fight, sealing Co2’s fate. The territory Co2 had traded sides to keep was taken away, and their Keepstar was destroyed, marking the first destruction of a fully operational XL citadel. TESTCO announced they would move south in pursuit of space to build TEST a super capital fleet of their own. The long term goal of TESTCO is to rival the strength of NC, PL.
In Delve, The Imperium conquered the surrounding areas, and made some successful revenge attacks against alliances that had a role in taking their northern territory. The Mittani recently declared war against The New Eden Trading Company, run by Pandemic Legion as a proxy for the banned Lenny. The Imperium attacked and destroyed a NETC Keepstar in Derelik while it was being installed. This came days after PL successfully hot dropped several titans and a Revenant deep in Delve space. Then in Placid, The Imperium and NC, PL faced off again over a Keepstar. Tensions remain high.
At the end of 2016, all signs pointed to a war in the south as TESTCO moves into Stainwagon territory with support from Phoenix Federation (FCON) and Vanguard Coalition (Triumvirate). Stainwagon was the only major group that came to the aid of The Imperium when its sov was under attack, and in return The Imperium is now in full mobilization mode to return the favor. NC, PL and others are on the way too. Their intentions are not yet known.
In 2017, scores will be settled in the south.
A year ago the anti-Imperium sentiment from inside and outside was high, fueling a massive mobilization to kick them from sov before citadels could be dropped – something that might have cemented their “win” permanently. Many players hated the idea of Goons winning EVE. Vast amounts of ISK, mixed with the anti-Imperium sentiment made the “Casino War,” as named by NosyGamer, possible. Some want to call it World War Bee and that fits to a degree, but the anti-goon sentiment has been around for years, it was the Casinos that made this invasion possible and unique. I wrote about the conflict as The Mercenary Wars, but NosyGamer’s war reporting was excellent and his analysis on-point.
Themes of 2016
From my perspective, there were some very interesting themes that ran through 2016.
First there was the Justice theme. I read that Lenny wanted to fund his part of the war to bring back the “old Goons, the non-toxic ones.” That is a stunning idea for EVE veterans who developed an allergic reaction to the toxic 2006-2009 goons. The goons of today are mild in comparison. There are more females, LGBT players in The Imperium than anywhere else. You won’t hear Mittani drop Nazi jokes, or use code speech for racist, sexist, misogynistic themes. Years ago goons had a cultural revolution to get away from the toxicity of their past. They are no saints, and at anytime you can find goons that cross the lines of decency, but I know from watching them they persecute line-crossers aggressively.
In contrast IWI hired Psychotic Tendencies (TISHU) as their first merc, a group that put filled their cargo with 1488 canisters of gas, a Nazi “final solution” symbolism during the Alliance tournament. Thousands of EVE fans were watching TISHU’s leader, Lex Arson, openly tells other players to “kill themselves,” and defended The Mittani’s ugly FanFest wizard hat moment – something the Mittani himself has condemned and disavowed. This is just one example of the “Good Guys.” The irony of “toxic Goons” deserving to die hit its peak when Darius JOHNSON appeared to condemn The Imperium. He coined the phrase “ruin your game” that many refer to as the mindset of The Imperium. DJ was supported by Lenny and 1ronback, and even CCP, to break old goons away from the Imperium.
What goons “deserved” had nothing to do with it – 2016 was about winning, or at least not letting Goons win. Justice was a convenient facade, to shield the “pay to win” reality. That’s why the war was disappointing for the winning side. I have never liked what goons represented in EVE, but that baton was passed to others in PL, TISHU, TEST, Snuff, and so on. NC had aspects of it but Vince Draken smashed it before it took hold. That’s why I live in NC. The maturity level is higher than any other major alliance.
The second theme was how gambling ruled the day. While alliances struggled to find ways for players to enjoy making ISK while actually playing, gambling sites made ISK while players were not playing. It monetized boredom, which EVE has loads of. Gambling had been around since the beginning EVE, but when the ISK became politicized it changed gambling’s relationship to EVE. It represented “unassailable wealth.”
No side of any conflict should have an untouchable income source, especially if a network of trade hubs exists like the New Eden Trade Company. Lenny, the visionary, was a magnate of gambling, moving it towards creating safe logistics to null-sec. Unlimited gambling money generated by the masses bored by EVE would buy endless ships from Jita for whatever groups the trade federation favored – a permanent, reliable logistics program. Why would any alliance fight for a home in null-sec? Why would anyone work the land? Especially if the Casinos had PL on contract, ready with supplies and forts all across EVE. This was not a reality, but it could have been. The banning of gambling, and the banning of Lenny along with the trillions of ISK ended this path, even if Lenny and NETC wanted to create something for the purest reasons. History shows us countless examples where good intention paved a road to hell.KiwiSaver is quite possible the best investment in New Zealand right now. Even better, it is available to all New Zealanders.
For those that don’t know, KiwiSaver is New Zealand’s retirement scheme. Money from your wages, your employer, and the government comes together to make you rich. Yes, you will literally be given free money! In fact your employee and the government will match up to 150% of what you contribute to your own retirement savings.
Let me explain how.
How it Works (and how to get free money)
If you are enrolled in KiwiSaver and work as an employee, then your KiwiSaver contributions will be automatically withdrawn at either 3, 4, or 8 percent of your pay.
If you earn $13,000 a year exactly with 8% deductions you will contribute $1,040 to your KiwiSaver. If you earn less than that, maybe as a student or part-time worker, you will need to make a lump-sum payment to top up the amount to $1042.
If you earn $26,000 a year, then you only need to contribute 4% to reach $1040 invested.
Lastly, if you earn $35,000 a year, then only 3% contribution rate is required.
I used to contribute 8% because psychologically it was easier to save BEFORE getting paid into my bank account.
So why $1042 contributions a year?
Remember how I said the government is literally chucking free money at you for doing the right thing? Here’s how it works.
The government will give you lump sum payment of $521.43 each year if you contribute at least $1042 that year. So you know I’m not making this up, here’s the quote from the official KiwiSaver website:
To help you save, the Government will make an annual [untaxed!] contribution towards your KiwiSaver account as long as you are a contributing member aged 18 or over
If you are over 18, contribute at least $1042 a year, you will get a free $521.43 bonus for doing the right thing. That is a 50% return straight away!
You can get this government contribution even if you are self-employed. Just make sure you make a manual contribution to your KiwiSaver.
But wait there’s more (free money)!
It gets even better.
If you’re a KiwiSaver member making contributions from your pay, your employer also has to put money in.
Remember how your wages are being automatically deducted from your employer each pay cycle. Well, your employer must match your first 3%! That’s a 100% return on your investment! (its actually less as the government now taxes their contributions)
If you chose not to enroll in KiwiSaver, they do not have to pay this money to you (and usually won’t).
But, but, I need this money now to save for a house deposit
Good news, ALL of the free money in your KiwiSaver account can be withdrawn to buy your first home. If that isn’t good enough, there is also extra money available for first home buyers (some conditions do apply).
Summary
Assuming an income of $13,000 a year with 8% contributions, your KiwiSaver account will have received $2605(minus employer tax) in contributions. Of this you only contributed 40%! In addition, you have also saved 20% of your annual income!
I hope by now you are super excited about how good KiwiSaver is!Former UFC women's bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey says she disagrees with Manny Pacquiao's recent comments on homosexuality
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as a source image after the rendering function has returned can lead to undefined behavior. This includes readPixels or toDataURL calls, or using this context as the source image of another context's texImage2D or drawImage call.
While it is sometimes desirable to preserve the drawing buffer, it can cause significant performance loss on some platforms. Whenever possible this flag should remain false and other techniques used. Techniques like synchronous drawing buffer access (e.g., calling readPixels or toDataURL in the same function that renders to the drawing buffer) can be used to get the contents of the drawing buffer. If the author needs to render to the same drawing buffer over a series of calls, a Framebuffer Object can be used. Implementations may optimize away the required implicit clear operation of the Drawing Buffer as long as a guarantee can be made that the author cannot gain access to buffer contents from another process. For instance, if the author performs an explicit clear then the implicit clear is not needed.
OpenGL manages a rectangular viewport as part of its state which defines the placement of the rendering results in the drawing buffer. Upon creation of WebGL context context, the viewport is initialized to a rectangle with origin at (0, 0) and width and height equal to (context.drawingBufferWidth, context.drawingBufferHeight).
A WebGL implementation shall not affect the state of the OpenGL viewport in response to resizing of the canvas element.
var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas1'); var gl = canvas.getContext('webgl'); canvas.width = newWidth; canvas.height = newHeight; gl.viewport(0, 0, gl.drawingBufferWidth, gl.drawingBufferHeight); Note that if a WebGL program does not contain logic to set the viewport, it will not properly handle the case where the canvas is resized. The following ECMAScript example illustrates how a WebGL program might resize the canvas programmatically.
Rationale: automatically setting the viewport will interfere with applications that set it manually. Applications are expected to use onresize handlers to respond to changes in size of the canvas and set the OpenGL viewport in turn.
The OpenGL API allows the application to modify the blending modes used during rendering, and for this reason allows control over how alpha values in the drawing buffer are interpreted; see the premultipliedAlpha parameter in the WebGLContextAttributes section.
The HTML Canvas APIs toDataURL and drawImage must respect the premultipliedAlpha context creation parameter. When toDataURL is called against a Canvas into which WebGL content is being rendered, then if the requested image format does not specify premultiplied alpha and the WebGL context has the premultipliedAlpha parameter set to true, then the pixel values must be de-multiplied; i.e., the color channels are divided by the alpha channel. Note that this operation is lossy.
Passing a WebGL-rendered Canvas to the drawImage method of CanvasRenderingContext2D may or may not need to modify the the rendered WebGL content during the drawing operation, depending on the premultiplication needs of the CanvasRenderingContext2D implementation.
When passing a WebGL-rendered Canvas to the texImage2D API, then depending on the setting of the premultipliedAlpha context creation parameter of the passed canvas and the UNPACK_PREMULTIPLY_ALPHA_WEBGL pixel store parameter of the destination WebGL context, the pixel data may need to be changed to or from premultiplied form.
WebGL Resources
OpenGL manages several types of resources as part of its state. These are identified by integer object names and are obtained from OpenGL by various creation calls. In contrast WebGL represents these resources as DOM objects. Each object is derived from the WebGLObject interface. Currently supported resources are: textures, buffers (i.e., VBOs), framebuffers, renderbuffers, shaders and programs. The WebGLRenderingContext interface has a method to create a WebGLObject subclass for each type. Data from the underlying graphics library are stored in these objects and are fully managed by them. The resources represented by these objects are guaranteed to exist as long as the object exists. Furthermore, the DOM object is guaranteed to exist as long as the author has an explicit valid reference to it or as long as it is bound by the underlying graphics library. When none of these conditions exist the user agent can, at any point, delete the object using the equivalent of a delete call (e.g., deleteTexture). If authors wish to control when the underlying resource is released then the delete call can be made explicitly.
Security
Resource Restrictions
WebGL resources such as textures and vertex buffer objects (VBOs) must always contain initialized data, even if they were created without initial user data values. Creating a resource without initial values is commonly used to reserve space for a texture or VBO, which is then modified using texSubImage or bufferSubData calls. If initial data is not provided to these calls, the WebGL implementation must initialize their contents to 0; depth renderbuffers must be cleared to the default 1.0 clear depth. This may require creating a zeroed temporary buffer the size of a requested VBO, so that it can be initialized correctly. All other forms of loading data into a texture or VBO involve either ArrayBuffers or DOM objects such as images, and are therefore already required to be initialized.
When WebGL resources are accessed by shaders through a call such as drawElements or drawArrays, the WebGL implementation must ensure that the shader cannot access either out of bounds or uninitialized data. See Enabled Vertex Attributes and Range Checking for restrictions which must be enforced by the WebGL implementation.
In order to prevent information leakage, WebGL disallows uploading as textures:
Image or video elements whose origin is not the same as the origin of the Document that contains the WebGLRenderingContext's canvas element
Canvas elements whose origin-clean flag is set to false
If the texImage2D or texSubImage2D method is called with otherwise correct arguments and an HTMLImageElement, HTMLVideoElement, or HTMLCanvasElement violating these restrictions, a SECURITY_ERR exception must be thrown.
WebGL necessarily imposes stronger restrictions on the use of cross-domain media than other APIs such as the 2D canvas rendering context, because shaders can be used to indirectly deduce the contents of textures which have been uploaded to the GPU. WebGL applications may utilize images and videos that come from other domains, with the cooperation of the server hosting the media, using Cross-Origin Resource Sharing [CORS]. In order to use such media, the application needs to explicitly request permission to do so, and the server needs to explicitly grant permission. Successful CORS-enabled fetches of image and video elements from other domains cause the origin of these elements to be set to that of the containing Document [HTML]. The following ECMAScript example demonstrates how to issue a CORS request for an image coming from another domain. The image is fetched from the server without any credentials, i.e., cookies. var gl =...; var image = new Image(); // The onload handler should be set to a function which uploads the HTMLImageElement // using texImage2D or texSubImage2D. image.onload =...; image.crossOrigin = "anonymous"; image.src = "http://other-domain.com/image.jpg"; Note that these rules imply that the origin-clean flag for a canvas rendered using WebGL will never be set to false. For more information on issuing CORS requests for image and video elements, consult: CORS settings attributes [HTML]
The img element [HTML]
element [HTML] Media elements [HTML]
A WebGL implementation must only accept shaders which conform to The OpenGL ES Shading Language, Version 1.00 [GLES20GLSL], and which do not exceed the minimum functionality mandated in Sections 4 and 5 of Appendix A. In particular:
A shader referencing state variables or functions that are available in other versions of GLSL, such as that found in versions of OpenGL for the desktop, must not be allowed to load.
for loops must conform to the structural constraints in Appendix A.
loops must conform to the structural constraints in Appendix A. while and do-while loops are disallowed, since they are optional in Appendix A.
and loops are disallowed, since they are optional in Appendix A. Appendix A mandates certain forms of indexing of arrays; for example, within fragment shaders, indexing is only mandated with a constant-index-expression (see [GLES20GLSL] for the definition of this term). In the WebGL API, only the forms of indexing mandated in Appendix A are supported.
In addition to the reserved identifiers in the aforementioned specification, identifiers starting with "webgl_" and "_webgl_" are reserved for use by WebGL. A shader which declares a function, variable, structure name, or structure field starting with these prefixes must not be allowed to load.
Defense Against Denial of Service
It is possible to create, either intentionally or unintentionally, combinations of shaders and geometry that take an undesirably long time to render. This issue is analogous to that of long-running scripts, for which user agents already have safeguards. However, long-running draw calls can cause loss of interactivity for the entire window system, not just the user agent. In the general case it is not possible to impose limits on the structure of incoming shaders to guard against this problem. Experimentation has shown that even very strict structural limits are insufficient to prevent long rendering times, and such limits would prevent shader authors from implementing common algorithms. User agents should implement safeguards to prevent excessively long rendering times and associated loss of interactivity. Suggested safeguards include: Splitting up draw calls with large numbers of elements into smaller draw calls.
Timing individual draw calls and forbidding further rendering from a page if a certain timeout is exceeded.
Using any watchdog facilities available at the user level, graphics API level, or operating system level to limit the duration of draw calls.
Separating the graphics rendering of the user agent into a distinct operating system process which can be terminated and restarted without losing application state. The supporting infrastructure at the OS and graphics API layer is expected to improve over time, which is why the exact nature of these safeguards is not specified.
Shaders must not be allowed to read or write array elements that lie outside the bounds of the array. This includes any variable of array type, as well as vector or matrix types such as vec3 or mat4 when accessed using array subscripting syntax. If detected during compilation, such accesses must generate an error and prevent the shader from compiling. Otherwise, at runtime they shall return zero or the value at any valid index of the same array.
See Supported GLSL Constructs for more information on restrictions which simplify static analysis of the array indexing operations in shaders.
DOM Interfaces
This section describes the interfaces and functionality added to the DOM to support runtime access to the functionality described above.
Types
The following types are used in all interfaces in the following section.
typedef unsigned long GLenum; typedef boolean GLboolean; typedef unsigned long GLbitfield; typedef byte GLbyte; /* 'byte' should be a signed 8 bit type. */ typedef short GLshort; typedef long GLint; typedef long GLsizei; typedef long long GLintptr; typedef long long GLsizeiptr; // Ideally the typedef below would use 'unsigned byte', but that doesn't currently exist in Web IDL. typedef octet GLubyte; /* 'octet' should be an unsigned 8 bit type. */ typedef unsigned short GLushort; typedef unsigned long GLuint; typedef unrestricted float GLfloat; typedef unrestricted float GLclampf;
The WebGLContextAttributes dictionary contains drawing surface attributes and is passed as the second parameter to getContext.
dictionary WebGLContextAttributes { GLboolean alpha = true; GLboolean depth = true; GLboolean stencil = false; GLboolean antialias = true; GLboolean premultipliedAlpha = true; GLboolean preserveDrawingBuffer = false; GLboolean preferLowPowerToHighPerformance = false; GLboolean failIfMajorPerformanceCaveat = false; };
Context creation parameters
The following list describes each attribute in the WebGLContextAttributes object and its use. The default value for each attribute is shown above. The default value is used either if no second parameter is passed to getContext, or if a user object is passed which has no attribute of the given name.
alpha If the value is true, the drawing buffer has an alpha channel for the purposes of performing OpenGL destination alpha operations and compositing with the page. If the value is false, no alpha buffer is available. depth If the value is true, the drawing buffer has a depth buffer of at least 16 bits. If the value is false, no depth buffer is available. stencil If the value is true, the drawing buffer has a stencil buffer of at least 8 bits. If the value is false, no stencil buffer is available. antialias If the value is true and the implementation supports antialiasing the drawing buffer will perform antialiasing using its choice of technique (multisample/supersample) and quality. If the value is false or the implementation does not support antialiasing, no antialiasing is performed. premultipliedAlpha If the value is true the page compositor will assume the drawing buffer contains colors with premultiplied alpha. If the value is false the page compositor will assume that colors in the drawing buffer are not premultiplied. This flag is ignored if the alpha flag is false. See Premultiplied Alpha for more information on the effects of the premultipliedAlpha flag. preserveDrawingBuffer If false, once the drawing buffer is presented as described in theDrawing Buffer section, the contents of the drawing buffer are cleared to their default values. All elements of the drawing buffer (color, depth and stencil) are cleared. If the value is true the buffers will not be cleared and will preserve their values until cleared or overwritten by the author. On some hardware setting the preserveDrawingBuffer flag to true can have significant performance implications. preferLowPowerToHighPerformance Provides a hint to the implementation suggesting that, if possible, it creates a context that optimizes for power consumption over performance. For example, on hardware that has more than one GPU, it may be the case that one of them is less powerful but also uses less power. An implementation may choose to, and may have to, ignore this hint. failIfMajorPerformanceCaveat If the value is true, context creation will fail if the implementation determines that the performance of the created WebGL context would be dramatically lower than that of a native application making equivalent OpenGL calls. This could happen for a number of reasons, including: An implementation might switch to a software rasterizer if the user's GPU driver is known to be unstable.
An implementation might require reading back the framebuffer from GPU memory to system memory before compositing it with the rest of the page, significantly reducing performance. Applications that don't require high performance should leave this parameter at its default value of false. Applications that require high performance may set this parameter to true, and if context creation fails then the application may prefer to use a fallback rendering path such as a 2D canvas context. Alternatively the application can retry WebGL context creation with this parameter set to false, with the knowledge that a reduced-fidelity rendering mode should be used to improve performance.
getContext. It assumes the presence of a canvas element named "canvas1" on the page. var canvas = document.getElementById('canvas1'); var context = canvas.getContext('webgl', { antialias: false, stencil: true }); Here is an ECMAScript example which passes a WebGLContextAttributes argument to. It assumes the presence of a canvas element named "canvas1" on the page.
WebGLObject
The WebGLObject interface is the parent interface for all GL objects.
Each WebGLObject has an flag, which is initially unset.
interface WebGLObject { };
WebGLBuffer
The WebGLBuffer interface represents an OpenGL Buffer Object. The underlying object is created as if by calling glGenBuffers (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.9, man page), bound as if by calling glBindBuffer (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.9, man page) and destroyed as if by calling glDeleteBuffers (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.9, man page).
interface WebGLBuffer : WebGLObject { };
The WebGLFramebuffer interface represents an OpenGL Framebuffer Object. The underlying object is created as if by calling glGenFramebuffers (OpenGL ES 2.0 §4.4.1, man page), bound as if by calling glBindFramebuffer (OpenGL ES 2.0 §4.4.1, man page) and destroyed as if by calling glDeleteFramebuffers (OpenGL ES 2.0 §4.4.1, man page).
interface WebGLFramebuffer : WebGLObject { };
WebGLProgram
The WebGLProgram interface represents an OpenGL Program Object. The underlying object is created as if by calling glCreateProgram (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.10.3, man page), used as if by calling glUseProgram (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.10.3, man page) and destroyed as if by calling glDeleteProgram (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.10.3, man page).
interface WebGLProgram : WebGLObject { };
WebGLRenderbuffer
The WebGLRenderbuffer interface represents an OpenGL Renderbuffer Object. The underlying object is created as if by calling glGenRenderbuffers (OpenGL ES 2.0 §4.4.3, man page), bound as if by calling glBindRenderbuffer (OpenGL ES 2.0 §4.4.3, man page) and destroyed as if by calling glDeleteRenderbuffers (OpenGL ES 2.0 §4.4.3, man page).
interface WebGLRenderbuffer : WebGLObject { };
WebGLShader
The WebGLShader interface represents an OpenGL Shader Object. The underlying object is created as if by calling glCreateShader (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.10.1, man page), attached to a Program as if by calling glAttachShader (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.10.3, man page) and destroyed as if by calling glDeleteShader (OpenGL ES 2.0 §2.10.1, man page).
interface WebGLShader : WebGLObject { };
WebGLTexture
The WebGLTexture interface represents an OpenGL Texture Object. The underlying object is created as if by calling glGenTextures (OpenGL ES 2.0 §3.7.13, man page), bound as if by calling glBindTexture (OpenGL ES 2.0 §3.7.13, man page) and destroyed as if by calling glDeleteTextures (OpenGL ES 2.0 §3.7.13, man page).
interface WebGLTexture : WebGLObject { };
WebGLUniformLocation
The WebGLUniformLocation interface represents the location of a uniform variable in a shader program.
interface WebGLUniformLocation { };
WebGLActiveInfo
The WebGLActiveInfo interface represents the information returned from the getActiveAttrib and getActiveUniform calls.
interface WebGLActiveInfo { readonly attribute GLint size; readonly attribute GLenum type; readonly attribute DOMString name; };
Attributes
The following attributes are available:
size of type GLint The size of the requested variable. type of type GLenum The data type of the requested variable. name of type DOMString The name of the requested variable.
WebGLShaderPrecisionFormat
The WebGLShaderPrecisionFormat interface represents the information returned from the getShaderPrecisionFormat call.
interface WebGLShaderPrecisionFormat { readonly attribute GLint rangeMin; readonly attribute GLint rangeMax; readonly attribute GLint precision; };
Attributes
The following attributes are available:
rangeMin of type GLint The base 2 log of the absolute value of the minimum value that can be represented. rangeMax of type GLint The base 2 log of the absolute value of the maximum value that can be represented. precision of type GLint The number of bits of precision that can be represented. For integer formats this value is always 0.
Vertex, index, texture, and other data is transferred to the WebGL implementation using the ArrayBuffer and views defined in the Typed Array specification [TYPEDARRAYS].
Typed Arrays support the creation of interleaved, heterogeneous vertex data; uploading of distinct blocks of data into a large vertex buffer object; and most other use cases required by OpenGL programs.
var numVertices = 100; // for example // Compute the size needed for the buffer, in bytes and floats var vertexSize = 3 * Float32Array.BYTES_PER_ELEMENT + 4 * Uint8Array.BYTES_PER_ELEMENT; var vertexSizeInFloats = vertexSize / Float32Array.BYTES_PER_ELEMENT; // Allocate the buffer var buf = new ArrayBuffer(numVertices * vertexSize); // Map this buffer to a Float32Array to access the positions var positionArray = new Float32Array(buf); // Map the same buffer to a Uint8Array to access the color var colorArray = new Uint8Array(buf); // Set up the initial offset of the vertices and colors within the buffer var positionIdx = 0; var colorIdx = 3 * Float32Array.BYTES_PER_ELEMENT; // Initialize the buffer for (var i = 0; i < numVertices; i++) { positionArray[positionIdx] =...; positionArray[positionIdx + 1] =...; positionArray[positionIdx + 2] =...; colorArray[colorIdx] =...; colorArray[colorIdx + 1] =...; colorArray[colorIdx + 2] =...; colorArray[colorIdx + 3] =...; positionIdx += vertexSizeInFloats; colorIdx += vertexSize; } Here is an ECMAScript example showing access to the same ArrayBuffer using different types of typed arrays. In this case the buffer contains a floating point vertex position (x, y, z) followed by a color as 4 unsigned bytes (r, g, b, a).
The WebGLRenderingContext represents the API allowing OpenGL ES 2.0 style rendering into the canvas element.
Before performing the implementation of any method of the WebGLRenderingContext interface or any method of an interface returned by the getExtension method, the following steps must be performed:
If the [WebGLHandlesContextLoss] extended attribute appears on the called method, perform the implementation of the called method, return its result and terminate these steps. Let use default return value be false. If the webgl context lost flag is set, let use default return value be true. If any argument to the method is a WebGLObject with its invalidated flag set, generate an INVALID_OPERATION error and let use default return value be true. If use default return value is true, perform the following steps: If the return type of the called method is any or any nullable type, return null. Terminate this algorithm without calling the method implementation. Otherwise, perform the implementation of the called method and return its result.
See the context lost event for further details.
[NoInterfaceObject] interface WebGLRenderingContextBase { /* ClearBufferMask */ const GLenum DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT = 0x00000100; const GLenum STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT = 0x00000400; const GLenum COLOR_BUFFER_BIT = 0x00004000; /* BeginMode */ const GLenum POINTS = 0x0000; const GLenum LINES = 0x0001; const GLenum LINE_LOOP = 0x0002; const GLenum LINE_STRIP = 0x0003; const GLenum TRIANGLES = 0x0004; const GLenum TRIANGLE_STRIP = 0x0005; const GLenum TRIANGLE_FAN = 0x0006; /* AlphaFunction (not supported in ES20) */ /* NEVER */ /* LESS */ /* EQUAL */ /* LEQUAL */ /* GREATER */ /* NOTEQUAL */ /* GEQUAL */ /* ALWAYS */ /* BlendingFactorDest */ const GLenum ZERO = 0; const GLenum ONE = 1; const GLenum SRC_COLOR = 0x0300; const GLenum ONE_MINUS_SRC_COLOR = 0x0301; const GLenum SRC_ALPHA = 0x0302; const GLenum ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA = 0x0303; const GLenum DST_ALPHA = 0x0304; const GLenum ONE_MINUS_DST_ALPHA = 0x0305; /* BlendingFactorSrc */ /* ZERO */ /* ONE */ const GLenum DST_COLOR = 0x0306; const GLenum ONE_MINUS_DST_COLOR = 0x0307; const GLenum SRC_ALPHA_SATURATE = 0x0308; /* SRC_ALPHA */ /* ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA */ /* DST_ALPHA */ /* ONE_MINUS_DST_ALPHA */ /* BlendEquationSeparate */ const GLenum FUNC_ADD = 0x8006; const GLenum BLEND_EQUATION = 0x8009; const GLenum BLEND_EQUATION_RGB = 0x8009; /* same as BLEND_EQUATION */ const GLenum BLEND_EQUATION_ALPHA = 0x883D; /* BlendSubtract */ const GLenum FUNC_SUBTRACT = 0x800A; const GLenum FUNC_REVERSE_SUBTRACT = 0x800B; /* Separate Blend Functions */ const GLenum BLEND_DST_RGB = 0x80C8; const GLenum BLEND_SRC_RGB = 0x80C9; const GLenum BLEND_DST_ALPHA = 0x80CA; const GLenum BLEND_SRC_ALPHA = 0x80CB; const GLenum CONSTANT_COLOR = 0x8001; const GLenum ONE_MINUS_CONSTANT_COLOR = 0x8002; const GLenum CONSTANT_ALPHA = 0x8003; const GLenum ONE_MINUS_CONSTANT_ALPHA = 0x8004; const GLenum BLEND_COLOR = 0x8005; /* Buffer Objects */ const GLenum ARRAY_BUFFER = 0x8892; const GLenum ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER = 0x8893; const GLenum ARRAY_BUFFER_BINDING = 0x8894; const GLenum ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER_BINDING = 0x8895; const GLenum STREAM_DRAW = 0x88E0; const GLenum STATIC_DRAW = 0x88E4; const GLenum DYNAMIC_DRAW = 0x88E8; const GLenum BUFFER_SIZE = 0x8764; const GLenum BUFFER_USAGE = 0x8765; const GLenum CURRENT_VERTEX_ATTRIB = 0x8626; /* CullFaceMode */ const GLenum FRONT = 0x0404; const GLenum BACK = 0x0405; const GLenum FRONT_AND_BACK = 0x0408; /* DepthFunction */ /* NEVER */ /* LESS */ /* EQUAL */ /* LEQUAL */ /* GREATER */ /* NOTEQUAL */ /* GEQUAL */ /* ALWAYS */ /* EnableCap */ /* TEXTURE_2D */ const GLenum CULL_FACE = 0x0B44; const GLenum BLEND = 0x0BE2; const GLenum DITHER = 0x0BD0; const GLenum STENCIL_TEST = 0x0B90; const GLenum DEPTH_TEST = 0x0B71; const GLenum SCISSOR_TEST = 0x0C11; const GLenum POLYGON_OFFSET_FILL = 0x8037; const GLenum SAMPLE_ALPHA_TO_COVERAGE = 0x809E; const GLenum SAMPLE_COVERAGE = 0x80A0; /* ErrorCode */ const GLenum NO_ERROR = 0; const GLenum INVALID_ENUM = 0x0500; const GLenum INVALID_VALUE = 0x0501; const GLenum INVALID_OPERATION = 0x0502; const GLenum OUT_OF_MEMORY = 0x0505; /* FrontFaceDirection */ const GLenum CW = 0x0900; const GLenum CCW = 0x0901; /* GetPName */ const GLenum LINE_WIDTH = 0x0B21; const GLenum ALIASED_POINT_SIZE_RANGE = 0x846D; const GLenum ALIASED_LINE_WIDTH_RANGE = 0x846E; const GLenum CULL_FACE_MODE = 0x0B45; const GLenum FRONT_FACE = 0x0B46; const GLenum DEPTH_RANGE = 0x0B70; const GLenum DEPTH_WRITEMASK = 0x0B72; const GLenum DEPTH_CLEAR_VALUE = 0x0B73; const GLenum DEPTH_FUNC = 0x0B74; const GLenum STENCIL_CLEAR_VALUE = 0x0B91; const GLenum STENCIL_FUNC = 0x0B92; const GLenum STENCIL_FAIL = 0x0B94; const GLenum STENCIL_PASS_DEPTH_FAIL = 0x0B95; const GLenum STENCIL_PASS_DEPTH_PASS = 0x0B96; const GLenum STENCIL_REF = 0x0B97; const GLenum STENCIL_VALUE_MASK = 0x0B93; const GLenum STENCIL_WRITEMASK = 0x0B98; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_FUNC = 0x8800; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_FAIL = 0x8801; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_PASS_DEPTH_FAIL = 0x8802; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_PASS_DEPTH_PASS = 0x8803; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_REF = 0x8CA3; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_VALUE_MASK = 0x8CA4; const GLenum STENCIL_BACK_WRITEMASK = 0x8CA5; const GLenum VIEWPORT = 0x0BA2; const GLenum SCISSOR_BOX = 0x0C10; /* SCISSOR_TEST */ const GLenum COLOR_CLEAR_VALUE = 0x0C22; const GLenum COLOR_WRITEMASK = 0x0C23; const GLenum UNPACK_ALIGNMENT = 0x0CF5; const GLenum PACK_ALIGNMENT = 0x0D05; const GLenum MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE = 0x0D33; const GLenum MAX_VIEWPORT_DIMS = 0x0D3A; const GLenum SUBPIXEL_BITS = 0x0D50; const GLenum RED_BITS = 0x0D52; const GLenum GREEN_BITS = 0x0D53; const GLenum BLUE_BITS = 0x0D54; const GLenum ALPHA_BITS = 0x0D55; const GLenum DEPTH_BITS = 0x0D56; const GLenum STENCIL_BITS = 0x0D57; const GLenum POLYGON_OFFSET_UNITS = 0x2A00; /* POLYGON_OFFSET_FILL */ const GLenum POLYGON_OFFSET_FACTOR = 0x8038; const GLenum TEXTURE_BINDING_2D = 0x8069; const GLenum SAMPLE_BUFFERS = 0x80A8; const GLenum SAMPLES = 0x80A9; const GLenum SAMPLE_COVERAGE_VALUE = 0x80AA; const GLenum SAMPLE_COVERAGE_INVERT = 0x80AB; /* GetTextureParameter */ /* TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER */ /* TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER */ /* TEXTURE_WRAP_S */ /* TEXTURE_WRAP_T */ const GLenum COMPRESSED_TEXTURE_FORMATS = 0x86A3; /* HintMode */ const GLenum DONT_CARE = 0x1100; const GLenum FASTEST = 0x1101; const GLenum NICEST = 0x1102; /* HintTarget */ const GLenum GENERATE_MIPMAP_HINT = 0x8192; /* DataType */ const GLenum BYTE = 0x1400; const GLenum UNSIGNED_BYTE = 0x1401; const GLenum SHORT = 0x1402; const GLenum UNSIGNED_SHORT = 0x1403; const GLenum INT = 0x1404; const GLenum UNSIGNED_INT = 0x1405; const GLenum FLOAT = 0x1406; /* PixelFormat */ const GLenum DEPTH_COMPONENT = 0x1902; const GLenum ALPHA = 0x1906; const GLenum RGB = 0x1907; const GLenum RGBA = 0x1908; const GLenum LUMINANCE = 0x1909; const GLenum LUMINANCE_ALPHA = 0x190A; /* PixelType */ /* UNSIGNED_BYTE */ const GLenum UNSIGNED_SHORT_4_4_4_4 = 0x8033; const GLenum UNSIGNED_SHORT_5_5_5_1 = 0x8034; const GLenum UNSIGNED_SHORT_5_6_5 = 0x8363; /* Shaders */ const GLenum FRAGMENT_SHADER = 0x8B30; const GLenum VERTEX_SHADER = 0x8B31; const GLenum MAX_VERTEX_ATTRIBS = 0x8869; const GLenum MAX_VERTEX_UNIFORM_VECTORS = 0x8DFB; const GLenum MAX_VARYING_VECTORS = 0x8DFC; const GLenum MAX_COMBINED_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS = 0x8B4D; const GLenum MAX_VERTEX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS = 0x8B4C; const GLenum MAX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS = 0x8872; const GLenum MAX_FRAGMENT_UNIFORM_VECTORS = 0x8DFD; const GLenum SHADER_TYPE = 0x8B4F; const GLenum DELETE_STATUS = 0x8B80; const GLenum LINK_STATUS = 0x8B82; const GLenum VALIDATE_STATUS = 0x8B83; const GLenum ATTACHED_SHADERS = 0x8B85; const GLenum ACTIVE_UNIFORMS = 0x8B86; const GLenum ACTIVE_ATTRIBUTES = 0x8B89; const GLenum SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION = 0x8B8C; const GLenum CURRENT_PROGRAM = 0x8B8D; /* StencilFunction */ const GLenum NEVER = 0x0200; const GLenum LESS = 0x0201; const GLenum EQUAL = 0x0202; const GLenum LEQUAL = 0x0203; const GLenum GREATER = 0x0204; const GLenum NOTEQUAL = 0x0205; const GLenum GEQUAL = 0x0206; const GLenum ALWAYS = 0x0207; /* StencilOp */ /* ZERO */ const GLenum KEEP = 0x1E00; const GLenum REPLACE = 0x1E01; const GLenum INCR = 0x1E02; const GLenum DECR = 0x1E03; const GLenum INVERT = 0x150A; const GLenum INCR_WRAP = 0x8507; const GLenum DECR_WRAP = 0x8508; /* StringName */ const GLenum VENDOR = 0x1F00; const GLenum RENDERER = 0x1F01; const GLenum VERSION = 0x1F02; /* TextureMagFilter */ const GLenum NEAREST = 0x2600; const GLenum LINEAR = 0x2601; /* TextureMinFilter */ /* NEAREST */ /* LINEAR */ const GLenum NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST = 0x2700; const GLenum LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST = 0x2701; const GLenum NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR = 0x2702; const GLenum LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR = 0x2703; /* TextureParameterName */ const GLenum TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER = 0x2800; const GLenum TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER = 0x2801; const GLenum TEXTURE_WRAP_S = 0x2802; const GLenum TEXTURE_WRAP_T = 0x2803; /* TextureTarget */ const GLenum TEXTURE_2D = 0x0DE1; const GLenum TEXTURE = 0x1702; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP = 0x8513; const GLenum TEXTURE_BINDING_CUBE_MAP = 0x8514; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_X = 0x8515; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_NEGATIVE_X = 0x8516; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_Y = 0x8517; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_NEGATIVE_Y = 0x8518; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_POSITIVE_Z = 0x8519; const GLenum TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP_NEGATIVE_Z = 0x851A; const GLenum MAX_CUBE_MAP_TEXTURE_SIZE = 0x851C; /* TextureUnit */ const GLenum TEXTURE0 = 0x84C0; const GLenum TEXTURE1 = 0x84C1; const GLenum TEXTURE2 = 0x84C2; const GLenum TEXTURE3 = 0x84C3; const GLenum TEXTURE4 = 0x84C4; const GLenum TEXTURE5 = 0x84C5; const GLenum TEXTURE6 = 0x84C6; const GLenum TEXTURE7 = 0x84C7; const GLenum TEXTURE8 = 0x84C8; const GLenum TEXTURE9 = 0x84C9; const GLenum TEXTURE10 = 0x84CA; const GLenum TEXTURE11 = 0x84CB; const GLenum TEXTURE12 = 0x84CC; const GLenum TEXTURE13 = 0x84CD; const GLenum TEXTURE14 = 0x84CE; const GLenum TEXTURE15 = 0x84CF; const GLenum TEXTURE16 = 0x84D0; const GLenum TEXTURE17 = 0x84D1; const GLenum TEXTURE18 = 0x84D2; const GLenum TEXTURE19 = 0x84D3; const GLenum TEXTURE20 = 0x84D4; const GLenum TEXTURE21 = 0x84D5; const GLenum TEXTURE22 = 0x84D6; const GLenum TEXTURE23 = 0x84D7; const GLenum TEXTURE24 = 0x84D8; const GLenum TEXTURE25 = 0x84D9; const GLenum TEXTURE26 = 0x84DA; const GLenum TEXTURE27 = 0x84DB; const GLenum TEXTURE28 = 0x84DC; const GLenum TEXTURE29 = 0x84DD; const GLenum TEXTURE30 = 0x84DE; const GLenum TEXTURE31 = 0x84DF; const GLenum ACTIVE_TEXTURE = 0x84E0; /* TextureWrapMode */ const GLenum REPEAT = 0x2901; const GLenum CLAMP_TO_EDGE = 0x812F; const GLenum MIRRORED_REPEAT = 0x8370; /* Uniform Types */ const GLenum FLOAT_VEC2 = 0x8B50; const GLenum FLOAT_VEC3 = 0x8B51; const GLenum FLOAT_VEC4 = 0x8B52; const GLenum INT_VEC2 = 0x8B53; const GLenum INT_VEC3 = 0x8B54; const GLenum INT_VEC4 = 0x8B55; const GLenum BOOL = 0x8B56; const GLenum BOOL_VEC2 = 0x8B57; const GLenum BOOL_VEC3 = 0x8B58; const GLenum BOOL_VEC4 = 0x8B59; const GLenum FLOAT_MAT2 = 0x8B5A; const GLenum FLOAT_MAT3 = 0x8B5B; const GLenum FLOAT_MAT4 = 0x8B5C; const GLenum SAMPLER_2D = 0x8B5E; const GLenum SAMPLER_CUBE = 0x8B60; /* Vertex Arrays */ const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_ENABLED = 0x8622; const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_SIZE = 0x8623; const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_STRIDE = 0x8624; const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_TYPE = 0x8625; const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_NORMALIZED = 0x886A; const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_POINTER = 0x8645; const GLenum VERTEX_ATTRIB_ARRAY_BUFFER_BINDING = 0x889F; /* Read Format */ const GLenum IMPLEMENTATION_COLOR_READ_TYPE = 0x8B9A; const GLenum IMPLEMENTATION_COLOR_READ_FORMAT = 0x8B9B; /* Shader Source */ const GLenum COMPILE_STATUS = 0
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work together to help Riley process the turmoil of adjusting to her new life. Inside Out is a clever, modern and well-made film that puts mental health into a new context.
Hopefully, as we continue to spread awareness and education, Hollywood will continue to make movies like the ones in this list that show what mental illness is really like.
Laura Greenstein is communications coordinator at NAMI.
Note: An earlier version of this blog appeared on NAMI.org in December 2015.President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE on Monday marked Memorial Day, honoring those “who made the ultimate sacrifice” defending the U.S.
Honoring the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to America. Home of the free, because of the brave. #MemorialDay — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2017
Today we remember the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in serving. Thank you, God bless your families & God bless the USA! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2017
Trump also said on Twitter he looks forward to an appearance later Monday at a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, his first public event since returning from his first overseas trip as president.
I look forward to paying my respects to our brave men and women on this Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery later this morning. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2017
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Trump on Saturday concluded his first foreign trip, stopping in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Italy and Belgium.
He returned to a handful of domestic controversies surrounding him and top administration officials.
His White House has been beset by the leaks to the media, and increased scrutiny over possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The Washington Post on Friday reported that Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner sought to establish a backchannel line of communication between the president’s transition team and Moscow.
Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, reportedly made the move during a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Trump since his return to Washington has become increasingly more combative on Twitter, railing against leaks in his administration and "fake news."
"The Fake News Media works hard at disparaging & demeaning my use of social media because they don’t want America to hear the real story!” he said on Sunday.
“It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media,” Trump added in an earlier post.
“Whenever you see the words ‘sources say’ in the fake news media, and they don’t mention names…it is very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!”obscurevideogames:
t-rex - Aztec (Paul Stephenson/Datamost - C64 - 1982)
My favorite C64 game is actually a really ugly port of an Apple II game. The setting is totally Raiders of the Lost Ark, but this is way better than the officially-licensed 2600 game which also came out that year. What makes Aztec brilliant is that it takes the randomized dungeon crawl aspect of the Roguelikes and brings it to an action-adventure with wonderfully animated characters. Spelunky did something similar recently, but this was made 30 years before! The random levels make the game incredibly glitchy, but that ends up being part of the charm. You really never know what’s going to happen, and it keeps things exciting. The game holds up incredibly well compared to most C64 games – though I could see how someone who didn’t grow up playing games from that era would have difficulty appreciating it. A warning if you’re thinking about trying it – there is no joystick support, and it’s almost impossible to come up with a good mapping. There are literally almost 20 keys used, which is ridiculous for an action game like this.[quote]***************************2019 edit*************************** [url=http://halo.bungie.net/forums/posts.aspx?postID=43235214]C̶l̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶v̶i̶e̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶o̶r̶i̶g̶i̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶m̶a̶t̶[/url] This link no longer works because, unfortunately, the b.net web team decided to delete the archived forums on halo.bungie.net in 2018. [url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180623111755/http://halo.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=43235214&postRepeater1-p=1]Click here to view this thread in its original format on archive.org.[/url] Every page in this thread is archived. By reading the comments in order, you can see how this story unfolded on a day-by-day basis. This thread is completely dead now. But for historical purposes, I wanted to give one last update in order to post the archive. Thank you.[/quote] [b]12/24/2014-Final Update:[/b] Wow, I can't believe it's been nearly 5 years since the original Halo 2 servers were shut down (and over 10 years since Halo 2 came out!). It's amazing how much has changed since then. With the release of Destiny, bungie.net is a completely different entity than it was when this thread was created. We are in a whole new generation of gaming, so it's not surprising to see how different the community is here now. I know some of you have stuck around since before the darkness; this thread is mostly for you guys. This thread was originally meant to be sort of a protest to the discontinuation of Halo 2 XBL matchmaking, but now this is no longer necessary. The Master Chief Collection has given Halo fans what we have been wanting since the servers were shut down. Halo 2 really set the standard for what competitive online gaming should be like, and I'm so glad that the current generation of gamers will be able experience what made the previous generations so great. I wanted to personally thank all of the people who have kept this thread somewhat alive over the years. You guys have proven that Halo is more than just a game. Not many things in this world can create such a deeply shared passion by so many people across the globe, but Halo proved to be one of those things. So many unlikely friendships were formed, so many memories were made, and so much fun was had. Refusing to let Halo 2 die was my way of thanking the community and thanking Bungie for the good times you have given me. The nostalgia I have of the early Halo days will never go away, but the MCC will allow us to relive those memories once again. So, once again, I wanted to thank Bungie and 343 Industries for making this possible. And I wanted to thank the Halo and Bungie community for sharing this passion with me. (If you guys ever want to play some swords and snipes on lockout, add me on XBL: Agent Windex. Hopefully, I'll have an Xbox One sometime next year) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [quote][b]The original thread is posted below. I hope it brings back some good memories and lots of nostalgia. Thanks guys![/b][/quote] As all of you know, the Xbox Live servers were shut down for all Xbox original games on April 14, 2010. A small, dedicated group of Halo 2 players didn't agree with this, and did everything they could to not let the game die. As long as we didn't shut off our Xboxes, or lose connection in any way, we would still be able to play Halo 2 online. At first there were over 500 people that had kept their Xboxes on after the servers were shut down, but that quickly decreased to less than 100. Many players had lagged out, and some players Xboxes actually overheated. In the end, were able to keep Halo 2 alive for nearly 1 month longer than it should have been. You may ask why we did this. Everyone has their own reason, but mostly it was for the love, and memory, of Halo 2. For some, it was to show their disapproval to Microsoft for shutting off Halo 2 so we could have more friends on our friends list. (Which is apparently why they shut down the servers, and that update still hasn't happened!) A lot of us became really good friends. For a while, we had 'T0 Be Continued' live streaming all of our games, until her xbox regrettably froze while playing custom games. Then, 'Mr7ankjump' did a live stream, but he lagged out only 4 hours later. 'Z0mbie Stench' was doing a live stream every day after those 2 lagged out, but sadly she was kicked off because of connection trouble. XXBooker DXX was the final live streamer. I would like to thank everyone who followed our story, all of your support really inspired us to stay on as long as possible. Also, I would like to thank all of the Final Few, you guys are awesome and it was an honor playing with you. Also, I would like to thank [url=http://www.GamesRadar.com/]GamesRadar.com[/url] for giving out F&F beta codes for the final 12. There are no longer any Halo 2 players online. Here are the names of the Final 52, in order of not being kicked offline. 1.APACHE N4SIR 2.Agent Windex 3.Lord Odysseus11 4.xxMAKDADYxx 5.DirtyCajun 6.Aforeignobject 7.XXBooker DXX 8.HiredN00bs 9.Rob2D 10.Z0mbie Stench 11.H20 Shoagie 12.Sherlok 1 13.SieferSword 14.Detenn 15.WGL Gonzo 16.MangledRex 17.XYOX 18.Anelf3 19.DeadlyChippy 20.Bond WM 21.Lockepyker 22.BillFromChicago 23.Mr7ankJump 24.NoName Nomad 25.T0 Be Continued 26.Family Fry 27.Hal0 HuLk 28.slater ohm 29.Dustyn1001 30.Milhouse06 31.Se7enUpMustang 32.TS Smokz 33.HummpaDummp 34.Crazy Kai 35.Wopsle 36.RomeoDude 37.xxxPuNiiSheRxxx 38.A Snoopkat 39.Keneken 40.xzzy 41.Nedge 42.TubbyKarma304 43.Lucky v1 44.Dragonslayer91 45.vxv frosty vxv 46.coppertop101 47.Osgray 48.MazeltovKoktail 49.Envoyyy JG 50.ssr14 51.Trent4now 05 52.One Eyed Monky 27-52 are complete guesses, I just wanted to make sure their names were listed. Feel free to correct anything on this list. Our message was heard throughout all of the internet. There were many articles written about what we did, on almost every gaming website. Here are some of the articles: [url=http://www.slashgear.com/dedicated-halo-2-players-keep-online-gaming-going-2783371/]Slash Gear's Article[/url] [url=http://www.gamestooge.com/2010/04/26/never-say-die-halo-2-fans/]Game Stooge's Article[/url] [url=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042310-halo-2-players-keep-original.html]Network World's Article[/url] [url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100219-Halo-2-Players-Refuse-to-Leave-Xbox-Live]Escapist Magazine's Article[/url] [url=http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/214933/dozens-of-halo-2-players-keep-original-xbox-online-gaming-alive/]Game Pro's Article[/url] [url=http://www.games-inet.com/news-dozens-of-halo-2-players-keep-original-xbox-online-gaming-alive_369.html]Games Inet's Article[/url] [url=http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20003533-17.html]Cnet's Article[/url] [url=http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/people-still-playing-halo-2-somehow]Eurogamer's Article[/url] [url=http://www.maxconsole.net/content.php?39820-LOL-Halo-2-players-refuse-to-quit-Xbox-LIVE-keep-playing-until-consoles-freeze]Max Console's Article[/url] [url=http://kotaku.com/5525837/fourteen-halo-2-fans-refuse-to-let-it-die]Kotaku's Article[/url] [url=http://thegamingliberty.com/index.php/2010/04/28/halo-2-fans-refuse-to-let-halo-die/]The Gaming Liberty's Article[/url] [url=http://slashdot.org/story/10/04/28/0754207/Dedicated-emHalo-2em-Fans-Keep-Multiplayer-Alive]Slashdot's Article[/url] [url=http://www.videogamer.com/news/halo_2_players_keep_game_alive.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter]VideoGamer.com's Article[/url] [url=http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/704188/halo-2-refuses-to-die-gamers-still-playing-over-xbox-live.html]G4 TV's Article[/url] [url=http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3179031]1up's Article[/url] [url=http://gizmodo.com/5526334/halo-2-superfans-refuse-to-let-the-dream-die]Gizmodo's Article[/url] [url=http://tweakers.net/nieuws/67039/fans-houden-xbox-game-halo-2-online-in-leven.html]Tweaker's Article (Dutch)[/url] [url=http://www.switched.com/2010/04/27/gamers-refuse-to-turn-off-xboxes-keep-playing-halo-2-online/]Switched's Article[/url] [url=http://www.freexboxcheats.com/halo-2-lives-on-with-the-help-of-14-gamers]Free Xbox Cheats' Article[/url] [url=http://www.onenewspage.com/news/Technology/20100427/10444016/Gamers-Refuse-to-Turn-Off-Xboxes-Keep-Playing.htm]One News Page's Article[/url] [url=http://www.gamespot.com/news/6260513.html]Gamespot's Article[/url] [url=http://www.gamereactor.de/Blogs/christian+gaca/279]Game Reactor's Article (German)[/url] [url=http://www.joystiq.com/2010/04/29/halo-2-still-kinda-alive-thanks-to-some-fans/]Joystiq's Article[/url] [url=http://www.xbox-news.com/e9490.html]XNews' Article (Japenese)[/url] [url=http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/204921.asp]Seattlepi's Article[/url] [url=http://xboxlive.ign.com/articles/108/1086645p1.html]IGN's Article[/url] [url=http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/stay-in-the-fight-halo-2-superfans-keep-game-alive/1397830]Yahoo's Article[/url] [url=http://www.gamesradar.com/f/exclusive-interview-halo-2s-final-players-share-their-stories/a-2010051415103021070]GamesRadar Interview[/url] Halo 2: Final Few Montages: (Thanks to Slater Ohm) Amazing videos, some of the last Halo 2 montages ever made. [url=http://youtu.be/BYthxCUE7dw]Episode 1[/url] [url=http://youtu.be/Zb6Q6ZbB5HE]Episode 2 (no audio)[/url] [url=http://youtu.be/2Hegzh2gS5s]Episode 3[/url] [url=http://youtu.be/gp9qOMTfAMU]Episode 4[/url] [Edited on 02.04.2012 11:25 PM PST] [b][/b] [b][/b] [url=http://www.bungie.net]link[/url] [url=http://www.bungie.net]link[/url] Edit: This thread was moved to the OffTopic forum because #Gaming was removed from Bungie.net.
Post History Loading, please wait. This may take some time... Revision Date Edited Edited By Subject Link Category Flags Subject BodyTeach for American founder Wendy Kopp (The Washington Post)
Of all the education reform initiatives taking place in the United States., perhaps none is as controversial as Teach for America.
The nonprofit, which places high-achieving college graduates without traditional teacher qualifications in classrooms in underserved areas of the country, has drawn criticism from teachers' unions and others who doubt that its participants can match the effectiveness of regularly certified teachers. A new study suggests that the TFA educators can match it, and, what's more, they can match it for students of all ability levels.
A vocal minority has long resisted the idea that TFA teachers could be this effective. A 2005 study lead by Stanford's Linda Darling-Hammond, who was considered a candidate to become secretary of education when President Obama first took office, found that having an uncertified TFA teacher reduced student progress by between 1/2 month to 3 months. A 2002 study by Georgia State's Lorene Pilcher and Donald Steele found that regular teachers outperformed first-year TFA teachers via their students' average reading, English and mathematics test scores.
But most researchers came to the opposite conclusion. In 2008, economists Thomas Kane, Jonah Rackoff, and Douglas Staiger found that TFA teachers in New York City did not differ much in performance from regular teachers, and may even have outperformed their traditionally certified peers on math instruction. A 2001 evaluation by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford found that students of TFA teachers outperformed students of regular teachers across all categories, though the differences were never statistically significant.
Students in a Memphis classroom (Lance Murphey / The Washington Post)
More recent studies have backed this up. Evaluations by or done in collaboration with the state governments of Tennessee, Louisiana and North Carolina in recent years have shown positive gains for TFA teachers in at least some categories, as did a follow-up study of New York City by Harvard's Will Dobbie, who found gains in math but not reading. Most significantly, the consulting group Edvance did an evaluation in Texas released in 2012 with a very large sample of 27,076 students taught by TFA teachers and 320,225 taught by non-TFA teachers. They found no significant impact on reading or elementary school math, but middle school math scores were significantly higher in TFA classrooms.
But all of those studies were conducted after the fact, and each tried to isolate the effects of TFA by controlling for the racial and socioeconomic composition of the classroom, class size, the education level of the teacher and other observable factors. That method will work in a pinch, but it's easy for such studies to miss factors that matter in the end. The only way to know for sure if TFA teachers and regular teachers differ in quality is to randomly assign students to classrooms and then see if the students taught by TFA teachers outperform or underperform the others.
A new evaluation did just that. Claremont McKenna's Heather Antecol and Serkan Ozbeklik, along with Louisiana State's Ozkan Eren, set about analyzing data from a trial conducted by TFA and Mathematica Policy Research between 2001 and 2003. The trial randomly assigned 1,900 students to either TFA or regular teachers and then tracked the results. The Mathematica researchers were also careful to check that students didn't switch between classrooms, which would have negated the random assignment.
The initial Mathematica review of that evaluation found that TFA teachers performed no worse than regular teachers at reading instruction, but significantly better at teaching math. "The impact translates into about 10 percent of a grade equivalent, suggesting that the advantage to TFA students corresponds roughly to an additional month of instruction," the Mathematica authors concluded.
But, as Antecol and her coauthors note, the Mathematica review only looked at the average effect of a TFA teacher. It didn't show whether the teachers only help high-achieving students, or only low-achieving students, or if they even hurt some categories of students while helping others. So they set about trying to figure out how having a TFA teacher affects each category of student.
Like the initial Mathematica study, Antecol and colleagues found no effect in either direction on reading instruction. But they found that the positive gains on math scores hold regardless of how well a student was doing before being assigned to a TFA teacher. "These results suggest that allowing highly qualified teachers, who in the absence of TFA would not have taught in these disadvantaged neighborhoods, should have a positive influence not just on students at the top of the achievement distribution but across the entire math test score distribution," the authors conclude.
TFA representatives tout this as demonstrating that a consensus is forming around the position that TFA students are at worst equivalent and, at best, better than traditional teachers. "The data clearly, if you put it on a scale, is weighted toward demonstrating that TFA teachers, compared to other new teachers, are clearly effective at increasing student achievement," spokesman Steve Mancini says.
A student and teacher in South Korea, whose educational system is often invoked by critics of TFA-style education reform. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)
Critics, unsurprisingly, dispute this. Julian Vasquez Heilig, an associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin and a coauthor of the critical Linda Darling-Hammond paper, notes that the Mathematica sample compares TFA students both to traditionally certified teachers and to other teachers trained in alternative certification programs, some of which require as little as 30 hours spent on an online program before being sent into the classroom.
"Let's say you go to Reagan airport, and Delta says you have three options: one pilot who has had 30 hours of training, another who's had five weeks of training, and another who's been piloting for five years and has been piloting this plane for a whole year. Which pilot do you want?" Vasquez Heilig asks. "When they compared the TFA teachers to the certified teachers, they weren't better. There's no significant result. So they're comparing five weeks to 30 hours."
Of course, Teach for America's allies would say that that's just the state of American education, where school districts have to choose between bad teachers or inexperienced TFA candidates. Vasquez Heilig thinks the better question to be asking is why that's the case to start with. "Why do we have the word 'hard-to-staff schools'?" he asks. "Does Finland? How about Korea? We aren't doing what we need to be doing in terms of providing teacher quality." Real teacher quality improvements, he argues, require money that politicians aren't willing to spend.
Su Jin Gatlin Jez, an assistant professor at Cal State Sacramento and another Darling-Hammond coauthor, also notes that the United States doesn't, in fact, have a teacher undersupply issue at the moment. Because of layoffs, we actually have too many teachers for spots available. "We're laying off experienced teachers," she says. "So the problem it's solving may not be existing even at all."
Overall, Jez concludes that the consensus on TFA among researchers would likely go something like, "They may be better than other teachers in math, but there's no evidence they're very good at reading, and definitely not compared to experienced teachers." That seems fair, if a bit pessimistic. The evidence seems overwhelming that compared to other teachers in their districts, TFA teachers outperform them on math instruction and match them on reading. But when TFA teachers are compared to experienced teachers, the result is less clear.Women who want to use the abortion pill Mifegymiso can now take it farther along in their pregnancy, Health Canada said Tuesday in announcing changes to how the medication is prescribed and dispensed.
The federal department said the abortion pill can now be prescribed up to nine weeks into a pregnancy, rather than the previous limit of seven weeks.
As well, the drug that was initially known as RU-486 can be dispensed directly to patients by a pharmacist or a prescribing health professional. Prior to Health Canada's statement, there had been some confusion around who could prescribe and dispense the pill.
Mifegymiso is a combination product containing two medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in sequence to terminate a pregnancy.
Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, one of several organizations that has been calling for more accessible abortion in Canada, lauded the changes by Health Canada
"There is decades worth of evidence from use in over 60 countries proving how safe and effective this medication is, yet Mifegymiso is more regulated than controlled substances in Canada," Sandeep Prasad, executive director of Action Canada, said in a statement.
Prasad said Mifegymiso has the potential to significantly improve access to abortion, especially for women in rural and remote areas who are forced to travel hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometres, to find an abortion provider.
"Abortion access shouldn't depend on your postal code or income bracket," he said. "It's the responsibility of all levels of government to address two-tiered access."
Approved in 2015
Health Canada said women will no longer be required to provide written consent to take Mifegymiso, nor will health professionals need to register with the drug's distributor, Celopharma, to prescribe or dispense it.
While medical professionals should have appropriate knowledge about the drug before prescribing it, the federal department said they will no longer be required to first complete a formal education program in its use.
However, one carry-over from the previous version of Health Canada's prescribing guidelines is the mandatory requirement that women have an ultrasound to ensure they don't have an ectopic pregnancy — one outside the uterus — and an assessment of the length of gestation.
Prasad said that could lead to serious delays in administering Mifegymiso, especially in regions where ultrasound services are limited, accessible only in hospitals or burdened by long waiting lists.
The Society of Obstetrician and Gynecologists of Canada has recommended the use of Mifegymiso as a safe alternative for early termination of a pregnancy when access to a surgical abortion is difficult.
Health Canada originally approved Mifegymiso in July 2015. The medication became available to Canadian women in January and its cost is now covered by several provinces.The son of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE's pick for national security adviser, on Sunday appeared to spread a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE and her campaign chief ran a child-sex ring in a back room of a D.C. pizza shop.
Michael Flynn Jr. on Sunday tweeted about the false story after an armed man entered Comet Ping Pong in Northwest D.C. and claimed to be investigating the story.
“Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story," Flynn Jr. tweeted on Sunday.
"The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it,” he added, referring to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Internal campaign emails allegedly from Podesta's account were published in batches by WikiLeaks in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it. https://t.co/8HA9y30Yfp — Michael G Flynn(@mflynnJR) December 5, 2016
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The tweet linked to a post from the account of Jack Posobiec, who says he is the special projects director of a group called Citizens4Trump.
He described the incident on Twitter as a "false flag."
“Planted Comet Pizza Gunman will be used to push for censorship of independent news sources that are not corporate owned,” Posobiec tweeted.Students at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) have repeatedly covered a statue of Thomas Jefferson with Post-It notes that include insults like, “Racist,” “Rapist,” “Abuser,” “Sexist,” and “Slave Owner.”
The statue, located on the east side of the Francis Quadrangle, has been covered in Post-It notes several times even after some students removed the notes.
"It's a shame to see the Founding Father who fought for the prohibition of slavery, get defaced by the very students for whom he fought for.”
The Missourian, Mizzou’s on-campus newspaper, reported that the statue was a gift from the Jefferson Club, which consists of a board of trustees and donors. The club donated the statue in 2000 to commemorate Jefferson and the history of Mizzou.
According to The Missourian, grad student Maxwell Little created a petition in August which said “The Thomas Jefferson statue that sits on the quad of the University of Missouri campus delivers a nonverbal code” that affects him “emotionally and psychologically.” The petition says the statue must be removed in order to “project a progressive environment.”
While the petition gained little support, Maxwell teamed with several students to create the hashtag #PostYourStateOfMind to “engage people in a critical conversation about sexual assault and racism.”
Bryant Hill, another student involved in the creation of the initiative said in an interview with The Missourian, that they weren’t trying to “completely shove that down anybody’s throat, but just the idea of open dialogue and becoming more knowledgeable about the situation is important.”
Although the group has garnered minimal support, many students have voiced that they feel the initiative is “childish and spiteful.”
Cody Layton, a sophomore at Mizzou, told Campus Reform that he feels “defacing anything is in no way a peaceful type of protesting even if it is just sticky notes.”
Chair of the University of Missouri College Republicans, Skyler Roundtree, voiced a similar sentiment, telling Campus Reform that while he respects students rights to exercise free speech, he doesn’t believe the statue should be defaced during those expressions.
“I think it's great that students here practice their rights of free speech. But it's a shame to see the Founding Father who fought for the prohibition of slavery, get defaced by the very students for whom he fought for.”
Statues have been a prominent issue recently on college campuses, with the removal of the Father De Smet statue on St. Louis University’s campus and the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue on University of Texas’ campus.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @ChrisNuelleNEW YORK—The entire fashion industry entered a severe crisis of conscience on Thursday after an online image revealed the manipulation of a photograph to enhance a model’s apparent youth and beauty. “My God…all these years. What savagery have we been perpetrating upon women’s self-esteem?” shouted graphics editor Mitch Collins of Elle magazine moments after viewing the side-by-side comparison of the original session photo with an altered version in which wrinkles were erased, the waist narrowed, and legs elongated. “We’ve concocted an unattainable standard of outer beauty and tacitly pressured women everywhere to conform to it at all costs. We’re monsters.” In response to the exposé, all major fashion companies have withdrawn their entire spring lines, donated all 2013 profits to charity, and shut down operations in order to personally apologize to every woman who has suffered because of their “barbaric photo editing.”
Advertisement(Sydney White) On the 18th of October, the crowd in the book store was overflowing to the doors. The enormous cake for the 72nd birthday of Lee Harvey Oswald was in the centre and Judith Vary Baker stood over it, ready to cut the first piece. She had kept her promise to Lee, that she would clear his name and let his children know that he was not the killer of President Kennedy but a young man who had tried to stop it. Her book, “Lee and Me” was selling like the proverbial hotcakes, and the line-up for autographed copies lasted two hours.
I bought a copy and read it before my interview with her on Friday, October 21st.
Over the next two days, I was drawn so completely into the book that I cancelled two events and several chores. It was not written like a textbook or an affidavit, but was more a diary of what happened to a naive school girl caught up in a conspiracy that was beyond her experience. She was a student with an aptitude for science who wanted to find a cure for cancer. She was twenty and Lee was twenty-three, when they met, fell in love and were both used and abused by those determined to kill Kennedy and/or Castro.
I arrived at the hotel around 4 on the 21st and was invited by Judith to her “celebration” family dinner where she said we could talk in an informal atmosphere. Little did I know our conversation would be cut short. She asked that I sit next to her at the head of the table where she related conversations with Lee, as if they were yesterday… “Lee said that you could never own your own house, because they could take if from you for taxes.” She loved the health care system in Sweden. She would love to get another dog but “would not outlive another dog”. I replied that of course she would. She replied “No, I would not.”
I looked away, at the dozen people enjoying the dinner, laughing, toasting, family that Judith had not seen in years. It was not safe for her to bring them into her life. Some of her relatives did not want to have her in their lives, she explained, understanding their fear. Suddenly she said, “I think my gum is bleeding”. As I stared, she put her finger in her mouth and brought out a pointed piece of glass. I took it from her as she reached in again and removed another small piece of glass. She said “There’s something in my throat”. I called the waitress over and told her to get the manager; I showed her the pieces of glass on the table.
The celebration was still going on; they could not see or hear what had transpired at the head of the table. They only realized what had happened when they heard me ask the manager to call an ambulance. There was obviously glass in Judith’s throat and possibly in her stomach. In fact, there were smaller sand sized pieces of glass throughout the meat on her plate. I explained to the manager that this lady was not a Canadian and had no health insurance here. After a slight hesitation he said that the hotel would pay for her emergency care.
Judith anxiously asked that I come in the ambulance with her; the family were told where she was going so they could meet her at the hospital. Her reunion celebration ended as daughters, sons, grandchildren and her stepfather, shocked, went to their cars. In the ambulance, she had some difficulty swallowing as there seemed to be glass stuck in her throat. At the hospital, she was immediately taken to the triage room where her daughter was the only one allowed to sit beside her. The room was full. In spite of this frightening end to the reunion she had looked forward to for so long, Judith was determined to get to her book signing in Montreal the next day. I wondered, as her son drove me home, how this night would end.
I heard from her agent on the weekend, that indeed, this determined lady was in Montreal the next day. I salute you Judith for your honesty and your true grit.
Sydney White
Investigative Reporter
Studies in Propaganda
The Free University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Canada.
LISTEN TO POPEYE’S TWO (2) HOUR INTERVIEW WITH JUDYTH ON 07/17/2011 BELOW:A former supplier of McDonald's chicken has been charged with animal cruelty. (Photo11: Mark Duncan, AP)
A former McDonald's chicken supplier in Tennessee has been charged with animal cruelty, according to court documents filed Thursday.
McDonald's cut ties with the farm, T&S Poultry, last month after undercover video shot by an animal rights group was released showing employees severely abusing chickens and clubbing them to death.
Charges were filed in Weakley County, Tenn., against farm operators Thomas Blassingame and Susan Blassingame. The documents say that between July 28 and August 23, the two "knowingly tortured and maimed some of the chickens by stabbing them with a large spike attached to a pole and failing to promptly and properly euthanize the chickens."
The farm contracted with Tyson Foods, one of the main suppliers of chicken for McDonald's. Tyson Foods said after the video came out in August that it was terminating its contract with the farm.
Mercy for
|
a figure to arbitrarily hate -- which is basically what being a fan of sports fan is all about -- he's a good person to start with:
Tim Duncan
Tim Duncan is the leader of the Spurs and is widely considered one of best and most respected players in the NBA (also, the quietest). Off the court, he's sort of an enigma. Duncan says he loves Renaissance fairs and the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. He once said he was "just a taller, slightly less hyperactive version of the Damon character" in Good Will Hunting. So yeah, just your average celebrity athlete.
Oh also, there's an 8 or 9 percent chance that Tim Duncan is an alien inhabiting a human's body. Think K-Pax. It may not be likely, but there is a palpable chance.
Exhibit A: Tim Duncan discovers he has arms:
Exhibit B:
Tim Duncan is super confused by Gatorade:
But once again, let me re-iterate that there is a very small, only roughly 10 or 11 percent chance (it went up slightly since we re-watched this Gatorade clip), that Tim Duncan is in fact a Martian sent to infiltrate the NBA and (very) quietly steal the powers of capable players so that they may be infused into alien bodies, which will in turn entertain the masses at an amusement park in another universe.
And Bill Murray will have a cameo.
Erik Spoelstra
Erik Spoelstra is the coach of the Heat. To a non-NBA fan, the most notable thing about him is that he looks exactly like actor and comedian John Leguizamo.
Are we wrong here?
Spoelstra began coaching the team in 2008, and his first two seasons in the league were largely mediocre. Then in 2010, miraculously, the Heat became very good and have now made it to the NBA Finals three seasons in a row. This is probably because Spoelstra altered his coaching tactics and made his team believe in the system.
Lol! Just kidding, it's because they suddenly had two future Hall of Famers on their team and a bunch of money to trade for a supporting cast, including the best three-point shooter in NBA history (Ray Allen).
In conclusion, Erik Spoelstra is completely inconsequential to the final result of the series.
Gregg Popovich
Pretty much the complete opposite of Erik Spoelstra in every respect and quite possibly the long lost brother of the late actor Pete Postlethwaite.
Gregg:
Peter:
Things You Can Say to Sound Like You Know What You're Talking About
Sports fact: Every conversation at a sports bar is legally required to include vigorous comparisons of LeBron James to Michael Jordan. You didn't hear? It's in the Constitution, under the little known 28th Amendment, passed into law in roughly 2005, despite a challenge from Justice Scalia and Larry Bird.
Sure, the debate is useless because it lacks context, the two players don't even really play the same position, basketball is constantly changing, and the sands of time obscure frail human memory, but this the law. We must blindly respect it.
The good thing, for your purposes, is that it's very easy to become involved in this conversation and offer broad and far-reaching points without knowing what you're talking about. (Hell, if you can do this on a regular basis, people will start calling you a "Skip Bayless.")
Step 1: The impossible rhetorical: A trick one of our non-sports-inclined friends would use when involved in conversations about basketball with his work colleagues was to wait for one of them to bring up LeBron James and then casually say, "Yes, but is he better than Michael Jordan?" You've planted the seed -- just sit back and watch the fireworks.
2. Blanket statements: There are easy blanket statements you can use for either side of the argument. For example, if the person is pro-Jordan you can take the other side of the argument by saying:
"Yes, but Jordan had Pippen all those years." (Pause and wait for them to say "But LeBron has Dwyane Wade!" which, they definitely will, then respond, "You're seriously comparing Dwyane Wade to Scottie Pippen?")
And rabble rabble rabble.
3. Diversionary tactics: When in doubt, send the conversation down the basketball rabbit hole. For instance, if someone is pro-LeBron, just calmly respond: "It's all about the rings."
This is a statement that doesn't really mean anything but will probably result in another 30 minute sub-debate between NBA fans. Don't be surprised if people get embroiled in a sub-sub debate about whether Shaq or Kobe needed the other guy more. If someone mentions Pat Riley, just make a comment about hair gel.
4. Gross hypotheticals: Like this one: "Are the Spurs the best dynasty of the 2000s?"
Who knows, but this is another rhetorical question that will likely result in hours and possibly days of debate.
5. Things you can say whenever you want that will just be accepted: Not to be confused with blanket statements, which are meant to be used during games, these phrases are more universal maxims that can be said at really any time during your day-to-day life and will be accepted without much protest:
"Lebron James is unstoppable!"
"The Spurs are so boring."
And finally:
"I f---ing hate the Heat! Seriously, they're the worst thing ever. Their very existence is offensive to me and serves as metaphor for the larger greed and selfishness whose strangle-grip on the moral fabric of our society threatens to erode our very capacity for empathy for our neighbor."The march towards our next major objective: STAGE 3 - The Extended Mercenary Campaign, continues! Today, our valiant heroes unlocked our next Funding Goal: 3D MechWarrior Portrait Customization!
Thanks to your funding, we'll build a complete 3D portrait customization system so you can tailor the look of your MechWarriors and your own Mercenary commander.
Each new recruit you hire will have a procedurally generated name, stats, and 3d portrait - but when you customize your crew, we'll never have to "cycle" MechWarrior appearances in your game.
You’ll have access to a range of customization options you can use to create a merc crew that looks just the way you want them (you can name and model the likeness of all your mercs after your friends, for example).
New Option for the Noble House Scion Level
We’ve received feedback that some folks want to support the project and wear some cool swag, but don’t want to show allegiance to one of the Great Houses. So, we’ve added a 6th Option to the Collection of Noble House Heraldry you can choose from at the $125 Level - in addition to Davion, Kurita, Liao, Marik, or Steiner, you can now choose BATTLETECH.
Some folks have also been wondering what the sets for the other Houses look like - check out the concepts for all 5 Great House heraldry sets below.
We had a couple requests regarding the Flight Jacket and, after looking into it, have decided to offer a few more options than we did initially.
We will now offer the jacket in Gun-Metal Gray OR Black.
OR. We've added additional sizes so jackets will now be available in sizes S - 5XL. A measurement chart will be available when you choose your size.
(Note: You will designate both the color you want and the size in our pledge management tool after the Kickstarter ends.)
We think the outside of the jacket is incredibly cool, but it's the inside that makes it really special! When you open the jacket, you'll find a COMSTAR "BLOOD-CHIT" declaration promising the capturer or assister of the MechWarrior wearing this jacket a reward for safe delivery to the nearest ComStar facility.
Here’s Mr. Weisman modeling the black flight jacket and a look inside at that “Blood-Chit”.
The text reads: "This MechWarrior is a member of a Noble House or Mercenary Outfit which has paid ComStar to arrange safe passage back to their current staging area. If you have captured this MechWarrior in combat, or are attempting to assist them: please safely deliver this person to the nearest ComStar HPG facility. You will be paid a ransom in C-bills based upon their rank and/or noble title.”
What's Next?
Tomorrow, we'll transmit Jordan's next WEEKLY BONUS MISSION video update! Until then, we march for STAGE 3!
- HBSRumuors this week that a segment of the Wall would be torn down to make way for a block of flats were confirmed by Franz Schulz, mayor of the city's eastern district of Friedrichshain, daily Die Welt wrote on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, several petitions circulating online demanding an end to the project have collected thousands of signatures.
"The longest remaining part of the wall on the former death strip, along with the public river bank would be completely and permanently destroyed," read one petition, placing the blame squarely on developers of luxury flats.
The East Side Gallery is a 1.3-kilometre stretch of the Wall marking the former border between East and West Berlin. Now covered in murals by artists from around the world, it is the second most popular visitor attraction in the German capital after the Brandenburg Gate.
Some estimates put the average number of visitors at 1,000 a day, while up to 10,000 people are thought to walk along the former death strip on the banks of the Spree River on sunny days in summer.
Several years ago, a 50-metre segment of the Wall was removed to provide access to a boat landing area for the o2 arena opposite, and moved so that it now stands between the water and the rest of the Wall.
Now, construction is due to begin this spring on "Living Levels," a 63-metre-high tower to be built on the narrow stretch of land between the Wall and the river bank.
Several further concrete segments will be removed to provide access to the 36 new private luxury flats, which will be sold for anything between €2,750 and €7,000 per square metre.
But, said Schulz, the segment of Wall also needs to go so that pedestrians can make use of a new bridge to be built across the river connecting East and West Berlin.
Click here for The Local's property listings
Work is expected to begin in 2015 on the new "Brommybrücke," which will connect Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain for cyclists and pedestrians. It will be built on the site of an old vehicle bridge of the same name which was destroyed by bombing in 1945.
Tearing down part of the Wall, Schulz told the paper, is the only "way to link the planned Brommy bridge over the Spree with Mühlenstraße."
Vocal protests from citizens groups against the plans to develop the Spree bank have been backed by nearby giants of the Berlin clubbing scene, including Kater Holzig, Sage Club, Watergate, Tresor and Lido.
The Local/jlbIn a press release issued by the Miami Heat today it was announced that the Heat will be hosting a "Red, White & Pink Game". This scrimmage, presented by the Baptist Health Breast Center, will occur on Wednesday, October 1st at 7:00pm at Miami's home court, the AmericanAirlines Arena. The game will of course include Miami's current 2014-2015 roster, and play out like a traditional NBA game.
Miami's use of the color pink is to honor Breast Cancer Awareness month. Heat players will be wearing limited edition red, white and pink shooting shirts that will be auctioned off by the Baptist Health Breast Center on Thursday. Proceeds from the auction will go towards Breast Cancer research. Miami is also set to present a special halftime show honoring local survivors of breast cancer.
What's interesting about this event, which is being presented free for fans, is that tickets will need to be reserved on Ticketmaster as they will not be at the box office. The game will of course parallel a traditional NBA game complete with the national anthem, performances by Heat cheerleaders, Burnie and the Xtreme team.
Breast cancer is an enormous issue that plagues many, and it's commendable that Miami add the color "pink" to their annual "Red and White" scrimmage. If you have the chance and live in the South Florida area, this would be a great way to get your first look at this season's roster as well as donate to help fund cancer research. If you do attend the scrimmage, please post a comment in the comments section or message us on Twitter @hothothoops to tell us about your experience. The season is just around the corner. Let's Go Heat!
From the Miami Heat press release:One of my favorite French recipes is Poulet au Pot – chicken in a pot, simmered in broth until it falls off the bone. This is my weeknight version, when I need to get dinner on the table with as little actual work as possible. A pack of chicken legs, some dried herbs, and a half cup of water, and I have dinner on the table in about an hour, with most of the time spent staring at the pressure cooker.
Now, when I said “the least amount of work possible”, there is one part of this recipe that takes a little work – browning the legs. You can skip this step, but I don’t recommend it. Browning makes the skin taste much better, the browned bits on the bottom of the pot make a rich sauce, and browning renders some of the fat in chicken legs. It’s worth the extra 15 minutes.
For those of you asking “can I substitute chicken breast?” – eh, if you insist, but chicken legs are perfect for this recipe. I’ve said before, I’m a fan of the dark side of the chicken. Chicken legs are best when they’re fall off the bone tender; chicken breast is overcooked and a little stringy. (Also, chicken legs are shockingly cheap when I can get them on sale at my grocery store.)
Video
Recipe: Pressure Cooker Chicken Legs with Herb Rub
Equipment
6 quart or larger pressure cooker (I love my Instant Pot electric PC)
Pressure Cooker Chicken Legs with Herb Rub ★★★★★ 5 from 12 reviews Author: Mike Vrobel
Prep Time: Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: Cook Time: 55 minutes
Total Time: Total Time: 1 hour
Yield: Yield: 6 chicken legs
Category: Category: Pressure Cooker
Cuisine: Cuisine: American Print Recipe Pin Recipe Description Pressure Cooker Chicken Legs with Herb Rub recipe – hands off chicken legs with pan sauce from the pressure cooker. Ingredients 6 chicken legs (aka “chicken leg quarters”)
3 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt (1/2 teaspoon per leg)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried Italian Seasoning (1/4 teaspoon per leg)
3/4 teaspoons garlic powder (1/8 teaspoon per leg)
3/4 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper (1/8 teaspoon per leg)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup water (or chicken broth) Instructions Season and brown the chicken legs: Sprinkle the chicken legs evenly with the salt, Italian Seasoning, garlic powder, and fresh ground black pepper. Heat a tablespoon of oil in the pressure cooker over medium heat (sauté mode in an electric pressure cooker) until shimmering. Brown the skin side of the chicken legs in batches – each leg should lay flat in the pot. In my 6 quart Instant Pot, I can fit two legs in the pot, skin side down. Cook each set of legs until the skin is browned, about 4 minutes. Move the browned legs to a bowl, then repeat with the remaining legs. Pour the chicken fat out of the pot. Pressure cook the chicken legs: Pour 1/2 cup of water into the pressure cooker pot. Over medium heat (or sauté mode), bring the water to a simmer, scraping any browned bits on the bottom of the pan into the liquid. Once all the browned bits are scraped up, add the chicken legs and any chicken juices in the bowl. Lock the lid and pressure cook on high for 30 minutes in an electric pressure cooker, 25 minutes in a stovetop PC. Let the pressure come down naturally, about 15 more minutes. Serve, passing the liquid in the pot on the side as a sauce.
Notes
If you have the time, de-fat the sauce. Pour the liquid from the pot into a fat separator and let it rest for a few minutes, so the fat floats to the top. Then, pour the de-fatted sauce into a serving bowl.
What do you think?
Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.
Related Posts
Pressure Cooker Chicken Broth and Shredded Chicken
Pressure Cooker Chicken Stew
Pressure Cooker Chicken Tacos – Tinga de Pollo
My other Pressure Cooker Recipes
Enjoyed this post? Want to help out DadCooksDinner? Subscribe to DadCooksDinner via eMail or RSS reader, recommend DadCooksDinner to your friends, and buy something from Amazon.com through the links on this site. Thank you.A startup called Proterra has been working on electric buses for years, and its latest model has a pretty impressive range. Its Catalyst E2 Series buses can drive up to 350 miles on a single charge, which means it can go a quite a bit further than Tesla's top-tier Model S that already boasts a 300-plus-mile range. The vehicle can also outlast its predecessor that can only go for 258 miles. As Wired notes, electric buses might even be better than cars, since they don't need a huge network of charging stations. They drive a set route, so cities can simply install some where they're bound to pass -- the E2 might not even need to recharge until the end of the day. Further, not everyone can afford an electric vehicle, but most people can afford to ride a bus.Samson refused to be interviewed for inquiry into closure of traffic lanes leading to the George Washington bridge last year
The governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, announced the resignation of his most senior appointee on a regional transport agency on Friday, in an attempt to bury a scandal that has battered his administration and undermined his presidential ambitions.
Christie said he had accepted the resignation of David Samson, the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, hours before his first press conference in two months. Samson was "74 years old and tired", the governor said.
Samson refused to be interviewed for an inquiry commissioned by Christie over the closure last year of traffic lanes leading to the George Washington bridge, a key link between New Jersey and New York that comes under the control of the Port Authority.
It has been repeatedly suggested that the lane closures were ordered to punish the mayor of the nearby town of Fort Lee, who failed to endorse Christie in his bid for re-election as governor of New Jersey. The realignment of access lanes caused days of traffic chaos in the area in September last year.
Samson's resignation comes a day after the publication of a 360-page report by lawyers hired by Christie to conduct an investigation into the scandal. The inquiry, by the law firm Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, published on Thursday, recommended that the Port Authority be reformed.
The review heaped blame for the scandal squarely on Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s then deputy chief of staff, and David Wildstein, a Christie appointee on the Port Authority who orchestrated the closures. Christie fired Kelly after the extent of her involvement came to light, and Wildstein resigned from the Port Authority.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Samson: stepping down. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
But the inquiry left unanswered questions over the role of Samson in the lane closures and their aftermath. Randy Mastro, the partner at Gibson Dunn and Crutcher who supervised the inquiry, said in a news conference on Thursday that the chairman had "denied any prior knowledge" of the incident in previous statements, "but we did not have the opportunity to interview him".
The report exonerated Christie over the decision to realign access lanes to the bridge. It also said that while Wildstein may have told Christie about the lane closures when they were in place, the governor did not recall being informed and would not have realised their significance. “Governor Christie did not know of the lane realignment beforehand and had no involvement in the decision to realign the lanes,” it concluded.
Christie's report did not resolve they key question of why the lanes were closed in the first place. "I don't know if we'll ever know what the motive is," Christie told reporters on Friday.
The governor said that Samson had made it clear to him more than a year ago that he was ready to leave the Port Authority, but stayed at the governor's request. Christie said Samson's resignation takes immediate effect.
In a statement released after Christie's press conference, Samson said: "Over the past months, I have shared with the governor my desire to conclude my service to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The timing is now right, and I am confident that the governor will put new leadership in place to address the many challenges ahead."
Friday's announcement came after federal prosecutors widened their investigation of the bridge scandal to include a possible conflict of interest involving Samson and the awarding of almost $3bn worth of construction contracts relating to other bridges. In recent weeks, prosecutors have reportedly subpoenaed the Port Authority for records relating to two contracts Samson helped steer to towards companies with links to his own law firm, Wolf and Samson.
The $1.5bn and $1.3bn projects to amend or renovate the Bayonne bridge and Goethals bridge, both of which link New Jersey to Staten Island, were awarded in part to companies that were clients of Samson's law firm. Samson chairs the 12-strong board of commissioners that voted to award the lucrative contracts.
The Asbury Park Press recently reported that Wolf and Samson, and a related lobbying business Samson also runs, more than doubled their earnings from government contracts since Christie came into office and appointed him to run the Port Authority. There is no evidence any of the other contracts are currently under investigation.
Samson is also connected to the controversy that flared in the wake of the "bridgegate" scandal, involving distribution of hurricane Sandy relief funds. Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of the New Jersey city of Hoboken, alleged in January that the Christie administration leaned heavily on her to pave the way for a lucrative development project by the Rockefeller Group, which was represented by Wolf and Samson.
Samson is not accused of directly intervening in the affair. But Zimmer claimed other Christie officials quietly warned her that Hoboken would be starved of aid money unless she got behind the development project backed by Samson's law firm.
As well as tainting Christie's associates, the George Washington bridge scandal has also hobbled the governor's 2016 presidential ambitions. He told reporters on Friday the scandal is "of no moment" to his presidential campaign, should he choose to run. On Thursday, Christie told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in a televised interview: "What has happened in last 10 weeks … I think will ultimately make me a better leader, whether it's governor of New Jersey or any other job I might take in the public or private sector."
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
After his news conference, Christie was reportedly scheduled to travel to Las Vegas to woo casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The billionaire Republican donor, who invested more than $90m into the 2012 presidential elections, is meeting Christie and a handful of other GOP presidential hopefuls, as he decides which to support. Christie supported a bill that legalised online gambling last year, saying it would raise about $1.2bn in revenue by July. But from the end of last November to February, it had only attracted $27.2m.
During the hour-long press conference on Friday, Christie repeatedly defended the tenacity of the report that cleared him of prior involvement in the bridge scandal. "I told them to find the truth, no matter where it led," he said of the investigation. He added: "I think this report will stand the test of time … and it will be tested."
Christie called the report "exhaustive", and said the attorneys were given enormous access to roughly 250,000 documents as well as other electronic records, including text messages and emails stored on Christie’s iPhone. The attorneys also interviewed nearly 70 people from Christie’s office and the Port Authority.
In combative exchanges with reporters, the governor brushed off criticism that the objectivity of the report was tainted by ties between the law firm that conducted the review and the Christie administration. "No matter who I chose to do this, questions would have been raised," he said.
Christie also sidestepped questions from reporters pushing the governor to comment on criticism that the report is sexist. Although Kelly was not interviewed for the report, it described her as "emotional" and "erratic" and disclosed – some say gratuitously – a relationship between Christie's former campaign manager Bill Stepien and Kelly. “By early August 2013, their personal relationship had cooled, apparently at Stepien’s choice, and they largely stopped speaking,” the report said.The stink of exhaust, the mind-numbing tedium of traffic, parking lots blighting central city real estate. The urban sins of the automobile are numerous indeed.
As more people move to cities and gain the economic wherewithal to purchase an automobile, will we be increasingly dependent on cars for our transportation and status symbols?
A new thought experiment on display at the Center for Architecture in New York City offers an alternative vision for the cities of 2030. By that time, more than 60 percent of humanity—five billion people—may live in cities.
The architects recommend careful use of express bus rapid transit—the cheapest public transportation option—and increased capacity for bicyclists and pedestrians. That may help alleviate problems like highways blocking access to waterfront in cityscapes from Ahmedabad to Rio de Janeiro.
For example, in China simply expanding the city of Guangzhou's bus rapid transit system, which already carries 800,000 passengers a day, could help re-create what used to be a vibrant shopping district before an elevated highway shrouded it in gloom.
Some form of the automobile will likely be around in 2030, but that doesn't mean we have to build our cities for its comfort instead of ours.
—David BielloA little while ago I wrote a quick movie list about very silly Heavy Metal movies. At the time, I mentioned that I’d originally planned to write (relatively) sensible post on the same subject. And against the odds, I’ve actually followed through on that promise. This is the great heavy metal movie vanishing act.
A couple of years ago, you may remember the wave of internet-driven nausea that followed announcements of a Bill & Ted reboot, and the similar wave of genuine excitement at the announcement of a Keanu-and-Alex-starring third instalment. This is unusual, because neither of the original movies were what you’d call blockbusting. But over the years, they’ve gained a well-deserved cult following.
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure is, if not one of the best, then at least one of the most endearing movies ever made. Funny without the need for gross-out, it emanates a likeability that’s infectious. While his Zen method may have worked in The Matrix (and let’s not forget The Day The Earth Stood Still), this is Keanu’s finest role by far, Bill S. Preston Esq. perfectly suited to his unique brand of spiritually-centred acting.
After recently revisiting Excellent and Bogus Journey I was suitably re-entertained, but unfortunately the whole experience was tinged with melancholy. What slow dawning horror could knock the general dude-type good vibes emanating from your ancient TV screen you ask? The truth is, I was troubled by the realisation that the Rock Movie is a form sadly lacking from today’s cinemascape.
Now, I’m not talking about nostalgia trips like Almost Famous or Rock Star, or the risible likes of The Rocker. I’m talking about the really gnarly flicks that veer off into weird fantasy and horror territory, backing it up with ridiculous heavy metal soundtracks and ending up all the more brilliant for it. Films like The Wraith, a 1983 Charlie Sheen vehicle. Literally. The erstwhile Two and a Half Men star taking revenge on small town bullies by transforming into a Dodge MS4 concept car and running over Ron Howard’s rat-faced brother!
The Wraith, like others of its ilk, has an internal logic all it’s own. Most of these films are early-to-mid 80s movies, a sub-sub-genre that brightened many a trip to the VHS rental outlet before Blockbuster took over and banished stupid horror by forcing it to be multi-demographic.
One of the main problems of late is that ‘entertaining’ horror has become too teen-centric, and while the odd cerebral horror like It Follows may break the mold, it’s truly difficult to find a genuinely fun and scary horror for anyone over the age of 15 these days. Remakes abound, and if a movie isn’t suffering from a glut of over-familiarity, then it’s just too far up it’s own arse.
Likewise fantasy, where Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings have seen the entire once-promising genre devolve into tweenage romantic epicness backed up with terrible special effects. In effect, we have a legion of Krulls with all the fun parts (gratuitous nudity, extreme violence, state officials screaming at mad gods) taken out and replaced with wistful glances and sub-par indie soundtracks.
The best part of the 80s Rock Horror is that it just doesn’t give a fuck. Like the musical genre that spawned it, it’s well aware of it’s own inherent ridiculousness, and happy to take it as far as possible. How can you argue with a movie where the protagonist sells his soul to become a rock star? Or indeed, where Billy the Kid hits on Joan of Arc?
Of course, fashion plays it’s part in this. These days watered down versions of Hard Rock’s softest hits – I’m looking at you Journey – are all the rage. In the old days the metalhead was usually the weird outsider/nerd who got to defeat the monster/put on a concert, in order to get girl/defeat jocks.
The trouble is that these days, everyone is a nerd. We all support and love underground culture. Jocks no longer bellow the ever-amusing classic “get your hair cut” at kids at school, and while it’s a truly great thing that open expression has become more tolerated, it does also deprive the victim of the chance to retreat into a fantasy world and practice guitar for 18 hours a day, finally emerging with a multi-platinum album at the end of it.
Check out the awesome rock facial expressions in the clip below. These can only be achieved by sitting in a dark bedroom for four years, squinting at TAB sheets and masturbating yourself silly whenever your mum goes to the shops.
This is obviously a problem, because these kids were generally pretty nice people who just couldn’t be bothered to wear fashionable clothes, and didn’t like pop music. At this point I should add that if you’re old enough, look at a picture of yourself in the 80s… if you have a bubble perm/mullet and are wearing a skinny tie, and you own any Nik Kershaw albums, you’re probably pretty embarrassed about it right? If you had long hair and jeans, and own ‘Powerslave‘ then you probably look pretty much the same and are off to see Maiden’s next tour.
This has also left an unfortunate vacuum full of real nerds – the guys in shirts with pictures of wolves on them. Whatever your opinion of the movies/books, there can’t be any argument that owning merchandise with a picture of R-Patz on it puts you well and truly in the social outcast category. You may as well be wearing a latex Klingon forehead.
Rock Horrors need an outsider hero. He may be dorky, but guaranteed he’ll pull off some awesome guitar licks or turn out to be the son of an ancient warlock by the end of the film. Nobody wants to see normal people doing this. You need a borderline headcase to start with, if only so that you believe that the person on screen is exactly the type who’d believe a vampire had moved in next door.
Unfortunately today’s really popular music just doesn’t have the sense of fantasy that ties in perfectly with these often wilfully stupid plots. Can you really see yourself sitting down to watch Taylor Swift fight off a werewolf? Or see 2Pac coming pack from beyond the grave to possess his number one fan using a haunted Spotify track? Actually, that last one is pretty good. Remember where you read it first.
The point remains. If there’s a nerd at the centre of the action then the Metal fanbase can happily connect, while other demographics can watch the cool gory effects and cheer when the harridan-like sociology teacher gets it in the neck halfway through.
There’s also the bleed-through effect these films had. With big-barneted rock gods causing havoc in the rentals market, studios began to sit up and let Tim Burton put Twisted sister into Pee-Wee Herman movies. It may not have been the most auspicious of starts, but it certainly played a big part in films like Wayne’s World being greenlit.
Bill & Ted and their ilk can eschew the boring, overly earnest posturing that films like Notorious felt the need to cram in. Part of the trouble being the lead’s desire to showcase their ability to actually act. Say what you like about Gene Simmons, but he’s never felt the need to prove himself as a thespian, despite turning in a surprisingly earnest and down to earth performance as all-night DJ Nuke in 1986′s Trick or Treat, anchoring the fantastically bizarre plot and actually enabling you to ignore his rock star status and concentrate on the ‘Heavy Metal from hell’ plotline.
By taking the Cher route and giving the rocker some downbeat acting to do, rather than just furiously emoting for the Oscar panel, rock films allow providence free reign and make more room for inspired silliness or scares.
Likewise Michael Angelo Batteo (yes really) of Nitro infamy. While his acting talents were limited to gurning like a loon and he was justifiably never heard from again, his superlative shredding as the devil in ‘91 super-shlocker Shock ‘Em Dead is both ridiculous and ridiculously fun.
With B&T fast heading for their 30th anniversary it may finally be time for one more tour of cinema screens everywhere, and if there are any low budget horror makers reading – and let’s face it, at any given time 98% of the film-making world is comprised of low budget horror makers – then you could do a lot worse than dusting off some old W.A.S.P albums for inspiration. Only you can save rock n’ roll.
Otherwise, ladies and gentlemen, we’re history.
Check out more freaked-out movie craziness in our cult films section.We have become accustomed to the scene of great high school athletes behind a table with multiple college hats in front of them in order to announce where they plan to play the following year. Often these events are slickly produced and in some cases are broadcast on local or national news. Signing Day is a celebration of the accomplishments of great young athletes and an indication of how much importance we now place on college athletics and the young men and women who participate in them.
The Norwalk (IA) Community Schools have produced a number of great athletes in recent years and, like many schools, annually hold events to celebrate the signing of their young athletes to college scholarships. This year they decided to do something unique. The folks in Norwalk decided that they should celebrate the eight young men and women who have decided to become teachers from their graduation class of 2017.
On May 2nd the Norwalk Schools gathered these eight young future teachers and invited them to sign Letters of Intent in front of family, friends, and the media. It is great to see these outstanding young people being recognized as the superstars that they are. There are no athletic shoe endorsements in their futures, they won’t be performing in front of stadiums of adoring fans, and they certainly aren’t going to become rich and famous as a result of their decision to become teachers. Instead of fame and fortune these young people will influence the lives of our next generation of learners.
The eight young scholars who were celebrated in Norwalk are entering the teaching profession at a critical moment. Enrollment in teacher preparations has dropped by a third since 2009, the current teaching force is aging rapidly, and student enrollment will increase 5 percent by 2021. In addition, these future educators are entering a profession that is facing unprecedented challenges. Students are coming to our schools with higher rates of poverty than ever before and our federal and state legislators continue to shift dollars from our public schools to for-profit charter schools or voucher systems that have proven ineffective throughout the country. Public schools are being asked to do more than ever before with increasingly limited resources.
It isn’t an easy time to declare that you want to become a teacher, which is why it so important to celebrate these future leaders. They need to know that for all of the challenges that are facing teachers today, there is no profession with greater rewards. The opportunity to work with young people and watch them learn and grow is a privilege that teachers never take for granted.Update: Motorola has launched the Moto G5S and Moto G5S Plus in India. The Moto G5S is priced at Rs. 13999 while the Moto G5S Plus is priced at Rs. 15999 in India and currently exclusively available on Amazon India.
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Moto has given their official statement on Moto G5S and G5S Plus about their specifications and pricing. They have already announced the smartphones in the European markets with a mid-range price tag. The internals of these smartphones is same as their predecessors G5 and G5 Plus.
On the software side both devices with come with latest Android 7.1.1 Nougat and will get the Android O update too. NFC and other connectivity features are all mentioned in the rumors were all correct. The smartphones are ready to hit the Indian and Global markets very soon.
The ‘S’ letter on the Moto G5 series is going to symbolize premium variant of the device. Let us have a look at the specifications of both of the handsets which have come out till now and also a quick glance on pricing and availability.
Deal alert: Check out the best Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus deals available right now.
Moto G5s Specifications
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Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Rosario Tumino, MD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Bas Bueno-de-Mesquita, MD, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Peter Siersema, MD, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Max Leenders, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Joline W.J. Beulens, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Cuno U. Uiterwaal, MD, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Peter Wallström, MD, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Lena Maria Nilsson, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Rikard Landberg, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Elisabete Weiderpass, MD, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Guri Skeie, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Tonje Braaten, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Paul Brennan, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Idlir Licaj, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
David C. Muller, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Rashmi Sinha, PhD
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Nick Wareham, PhD, MBBS
From International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France; Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France; German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal, Germany; Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark; Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Frederiksberg, Denmark; Public Health Directorate, Asturias, Spain; Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain; Andalusian School of Public Health, Granada, Spain; Public Health Division of Gipuzkoa, Basque Regional Health Department, San Sebastián, Spain; Murcia Regional Health Council, Murcia, Spain; Navarre Public Health Institute, Pamplona, Spain; University of Cambridge and MRC Epidemiology Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Hellenic Health Foundation, Athens, Greece; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Cancer Research and Prevention Institute–ISPO, Florence, Italy; Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy; Federico II University, Naples, Italy; “Civic - M.P. Arezzo” Hospital, ASP Ragusa, Ragusa, Italy; National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Malmö University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden; University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway; and National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.
Elio Riboli, MD, ScMPurdue University Department of Agronomy
Corny News Network
May 2013
URL: http://www.kingcorn.org/news/timeless/Roots.html
Root Development in Young Corn
uccessful emergence (fast & uniform) does not guarantee successful stand establishment in corn. The next crucial phase is the establishment of a vigorous nodal root system. Success is largely dependent on the initial development of nodal roots from roughly V2 (two leaves with visible leaf collars) to V6.
Corn is a grass and has a fibrous type root system, as compared to soybeans or alfalfa that have tap root systems. Stunting or restriction of the nodal root system during their initial development (e.g., from dry soil, wet soil, cold soil, insect damage, herbicide damage, sidewall compaction, tillage compaction) can easily stunt the entire plant’s development. In fact, when you are attempting to diagnose the cause of stunted corn early in the season, the first place to begin searching for the culprit is below ground.
To better understand rooting development and problems associated with root restrictions, it is important to recognize that root development in corn occurs in two phases. The first phase is the development of the seminal or seed root system. The second phase is the development of the nodal or crown root system.
Corny Trivia: Sometimes you may hear the seminal root system referred to as the primary root system and the nodal root system as the secondary root system. This classification was described by Cannon (1949) and certainly makes chronological sense but always confuses me from the standpoint of importance to the plant.
The Seminal (Seed) Root System
Seminal (seed) roots originate from the scutellar node located within the seed embryo and are composed of the radicle and lateral seminal roots. Even though the seminal roots technically are nodal roots, they are traditionally discussed separately from the nodal roots that develop later from the crown area of the seedling.
The radicle root emerges first from near the tip end of the kernel (Fig. 1) and initially elongate in that direction. The lateral seminal roots emerge later from behind the coleoptile (Fig. 2) and initially elongate in the opposite direction of the radicle root. However, soon both sets of seminal roots begin to elongate downward in response to gravity (Fig. 3).
The seminal root system helps sustain seedling development by virtue of water uptake from the soil, but a young corn seedling depends primarily on the energy reserves of the kernel's starchy endosperm for nourishment until the nodal root system develops later. Once a seedling has emerged (growth stage VE), the rate of new growth of the seminal root systems slows down dramatically as the nodal root system begins to develop from nodes above the mesocotyl.
Fig. 1. Radicle root and coleoptile of pre-VE seedling. Fig. 1. Radicle root and coleoptile of pre-VE seedling.
Fig. 2. Lateral seminal roots, coleoptile, and radicle root of pre-VE seedling. Fig. 2. Lateral seminal roots, coleoptile, and radicle root of pre-VE seedling.
Fig. 3. Seminal root system of VE seedling, but no evidence yet of nodal root system. Fig. 3. Seminal root system of VE seedling, but no evidence yet of nodal root system.
Even though the seminal root system contributes little to the season-long maintenance of the corn plant, early damage to the radicle or lateral seminal roots can stunt initial seedling development and delay emergence. Such damage will not necessarily cause immediate death of the seedling as long as the kernel itself and mesocotyl remain healthy, but may result in delayed emergence (Fig's 12 - 16) or the seedling leafing out underground. As more and more nodal roots become established over time, damage to the seminal root system will have less and less impact on seedling survival.
Examples of seminal root damage include imbibitional chilling injury (Nielsen, 2012), post-germination injury from lethal or sub-lethal cold temperatures (Nielsen, 2012), and “salt” injury from excessive rates of starter fertilizer placed too close to the kernel. Symptoms of such root damage include retarded root elongation, brown tissue discoloration, prolific root branching, and outright death of root tissue. If the radicle root is damaged severely during its emergence from the kernel, the entire radicle root may die. Once the radicle has elongated a half-inch or so, damage to the root tip will not necessarily kill the entire root, but rather axillary root meristems may initiate extensive root branching in response to damage to the apical meristem.
The Nodal Root System
Nodal roots develop sequentially from individual nodes above the mesocotyl, beginning with the lowermost node in the area of the young seedling known as the "crown". Once a seedling has reached the V1 stage of development, one can usually identify the first set of nodal roots beginning to elongate from the lowermost node. By the V2 stage of development, the first set of nodal roots are clearly visible and the second set of nodal roots may be starting to elongate from the second node of the seedling. Each set or "whorl" of nodal roots begins to elongate from their respective nodes at about the same timing that each leaf collar emerges from the true whorl of the seedling.
Regarding Seeding Depth & Rooting Depth: Some folks believe that planting corn deeper encourages deeper rooting and vice versa. This belief is mostly myth with a slight hint of truth mixed in. It certainly is true that the depth of the seminal root system is influenced by seeding depth. However, the nodal root system that develops from the crown of the plant is not influenced much at all by seeding depth. This is because the depth of the crown is fairly constant regardless of seeding depth. During emergence of the seedling, the mesocotyl elongates and elevates the coleoptile and crown towards the soil surface. As the coleoptile nears the soil surface, changes in the ratio of red to far red wavelengths of light causes a change in the supply of one or more growth hormones from the coleoptile to the mesocotyl tissue and mesocotyl elongation consequently comes to a halt (Vanderhoef & Briggs, 1978). Since the depth at which the emerging seedling senses the change in red to far red light is fairly constant, the resulting depth of the crown (base) of the coleoptile is nearly the same (1/2 to 3/4 inch) for seeding depths of one inch or greater.
Fig. 4. V1 corn seedling. Fig. 4. V1 corn seedling.
Fig. 5. First set of nodal roots elongating from lowermost node of crown area of V1 corn seedling. Fig. 5. First set of nodal roots elongating from lowermost node of crown area of V1 corn seedling.
Fig
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because suicide is more likely to happen to those from more socio-economically deprived backgrounds.
“Recession and financial stress does have an impact on suicide figures and emotional wellbeing. What’s been noticeable about this recession is that there isn’t the same kind of safety net for those who are struggling,” she told Channel 4 News. “Having both happen in one go, is quite a lot for those living in lower socio-economic groups.”
She added: “suicide is an inequality issue. It’s an avoidable difference in health and length of life, that results from being poor and disadvantaged and which disproportionally affects men.”
You can contact The Samaritans at any time by calling 08457 909090. For more information, visit www.samaritans.org
Why men?
As well as being more common among those from a more deprived background, suicide is also much more common among men than women: men accounted for 77 per cent of those who took their own life in 2012.
Men in their 30s, 40s and 50s are at the highest risk, and a 2012 study by The Samaritans put this down to a number of factors, including the changing nature of the labour market and the decline of traditionally male industries, as well as changing relationships: men have tended to rely on a female partner for emotional support, but now, men (and women) are likely to have more than one partner, and go through periods of being alone.
As for 20-year-old Martin, coroner Simon Nelson said that he “intended the consequences of his actions”, but called for more openness, and less pride, among those who are struggling with whatever they are going through:
“Young men in particular tend to act or react impulsively to life’s events. The way of trying to come to terms with life’s events is talking it through – even if you do not realise it at the time.”My Name is Mitch M c Connell and I Owe Thanatos, the God of Death, 22 Million Human Souls
Dear America,
My name is Mitch McConnell and I am the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. As you may have heard, the health care bill I secretly drafted would result in 22 million Americans losing their health care coverage. I understand your frustration with the bill, but you also have to understand my side of things. I’m in a serious bind here. I owe Thanatos, the God of Death, exactly 22 million human souls and he’s come to collect.
My relationship with the God of Death began as these things typically do: I met him at a Republican donor event. We bonded over our mutual love of back deals and being drunk with power. Before I knew it, I had agreed to trade 22 million human lives in exchange for a sizable donation to several GOP congressional candidates. I made a terrible deal from which I cannot be unbound.
Ah, jeeze. You’ve really done it this time, Mitchy. If this were one or two lives that I owed to the God of Death, I could close out my tab the old-fashioned way: by murdering a couple of my summer interns. But, this is 22 million lives we’re talking about. That’s a sizable portion of the country, so the only way I’m going to kill that many people is through cruel, heartless, and targeted legislation.
Look, I get it. I really wish I could present a reasonable, fiscally-conservative alternative to the Affordable Care Act. But, I promised a boat-load of lives to an angry, merciless demon-god of the underworld. That means I have to put forth a bill that’ll take healthcare away from poor people, disabled people, senior citizens, children, new mothers, and people hit hard by the opioid crisis. The streets must run red with blood for the pact to be complete. America shall be one big graveyard and then Thanatos will be pleased.
I wish there were another way, I really do. I’ve read many health care proposals from conservative think tanks that would provide a tax break to the wealthiest Americans while also providing coverage to those who need it. I could easily pass any of those bills with enough bipartisan support in the House and Senate. But, those bills won’t provide me with the death count I need to escape the grip of Thanatos and his sinister bargain. Boy, oh boy. What a pickle I am in.
So, I’d ask that you please cut me a break. Stop calling your senators about how bad this bill is. Please stop writing articles about it too. I cannot afford to postpone things again. Thanatos grows impatient with every moment. Let this evil piece of legislation go to a vote so I can lift the pox on my house.
Sincerely,
Mitch McConnell
United States Senator, Obstructionist, Temporarily Bound to the God of DeathJon Gjerde is a world champion in aerobatic hang gliding. The 51-year-old Norwegian is no stranger to the skies. But last week during the Norwegian "Ekstremsportveko" festival—that is "Extreme Sports Week"—he had a brush with death. Fortunately, thanks to a parachute and a cool head, he came out relatively unscathed. But the footage is haunting.
As you can see right around the 30 second mark, his hang glider gave way just as he came out of a loop. Following a disorienting series of twists and turns, he was able to deploy a parachute and slow his ascent into the lake below. It was a much better alternative to slamming into the ground at full speed, but he's lucky he didn't drown.
Here's a clip of the crash from a GoPro attached to the glider's frame:
According to Bergensavisen, a Norwegian newspaper, Gjerde escaped with fairly minor injuries, though a bit worse for the wear. The newspaper includes a photograph of his face after the accident, complete with vicious bruising and blood-red eyes; it's not a pretty sight. He is, however, alive.
Unlike typical parachutes which are attached to a person, hang gliding parachutes tend to be affixed to the frame of the glider itself. As you can see in the second video, there's nothing on Gjerde's back directly. Deploying such a 'chute is not necessarily easy either, especially when you are spinning out of control. The process generally involves snagging a bagged parachute mounted to the glider's frame, and then throwing it clear of actual craft in order achieve a tangle-free deployment.
Wills Wings, a hang glider and paraglider supplier, describes the process as going a little something like this:
LOOK for the handle, GRASP the handle, PULL the deployment bag from the container (with most systems a down-and-out at about 45 degrees works best), LOOK for clear air, THROW towards clear air and with the direction of the spin, PULL the bridle (reach back to your main support strap to locate it) to clear the 'chute from the deployment bag and accelerate the deployment sequence. If the parachute does not open, pull it back and repeat the throw.
You can see it all pretty clearly in this slightly lower-intensity and unrelated parachute deployment from 2013:
It was no small feat, as Gjerde describes in a post on Facebook. "My vision failed," he says. "I struggled hard against g-force to get my rescue out."
He's lucky to be alive.
Source: Bergensavisen via RedditInter freeze out Schelotto
By Football Italia staff
Ezequiel Schelotto and Matias Silvestre have not been called up for Inter’s pre-season training camp, so must find another club.
The news is a particular blow to Schelotto, who only arrived from Atalanta in January and today expressed how “excited” he was about the new season.
Defender Silvestre has been on the market for some time, but turned down the Parma option as part of an exchange for Ishak Belfodil.
Of these players listed below, Yuto Nagatomo and Alvaro Pereira will be later arrivals due to international duty.
Also included are youth team players Isaac Donkor, Leonardo Longo, Patrick Olsen, Morten Knudsen, Niccolò Belloni and Matteo Colombi.
Goalkeepers: Samir Handanovic, Luca Castellazzi, Juan Pablo Carrizo
Defenders: Walter Samuel, Cristian Chivu, Andrea Ranocchia, Juan Jesus, Jonathan, Ibrahima Mbaye, Hugo Campagnaro, Marco Andreolli, Yuto Nagatomo, Alvaro Pereira
Midfielders: Esteban Cambiasso, Ricky Alvarez, Mateo Kovacic, Gaby Mudingayi, Joel Obi, Fredy Guarin, Zdravko Kuzmanovic
Forwards: Rodrigo Palacio, Diego Milito, Samuele Longo, Ishak Belfodil, Mauro Icardi0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Tea Party Candidate Joe Miller Has 24 Hours To Fess Up
The clock is ticking. Joe Miller has until tomorrow to respond to the Fairbanks Borough lawyer’s request that he release his personnel records for the purpose of correcting the misrepresentations Joe’s been making regarding why he won’t release the documents. Uh-oh. Looks like what we have here is another Palin pick gone bad.
The Alaska Dispatch reports:
“His campaign manager, Paul Bauer, also told reporters: “Joe Miller is happy to sign a release as long as the borough will waive attorney-client privilege so that he can fully describe why he voluntarily left employment. Joe Miller and the campaign will not allow the borough to hide behind the attorney-client privilege when he needs to describe the reason why he voluntarily left.”
But the borough says it has always been Miller who won’t agree to the release.”
So the Borough called Miller’s bluff and gave him until tomorrow to sign a release for his personnel files.
Joe Miller’s been pulling a Palin by blaming both the “leftist administration” and the Republican candidate Lisa Murkowski for “dirty politics” while he ducks the real issue regarding his own dishonesty. Sadly for Joe, it seems Alaskans wised up after Palin and when they hear a candidate blaming the “leftist administration” for their own troubles, it probably brings back the Post-Palin Traumatic Stress Syndrome Disorder they’ve barely recovered from.
What are these dirty politics of which Miller speaks? Why, evil political operatives (aka: voters) wanted to know why Joe Miller left his job as part time attorney for the Borough. Joe kept saying he’d love to tell them, but the mean old Borough wouldn’t let him.
Guess what? That wasn’t true. Oh, say it ain’t so, Joe.
I know, you’re shocked. You’re probably still waiting for Nikki Haley to come clean about her previous employment that she also left under mysterious circumstances. Or maybe you’re waiting for Christine O’Donnell to explain why she thought it was OK to pay her personal expenses from her campaign money. Instead, you get finely honed paranoid references to “political operatives” and “I am not a crook” toned denials. Nixon would be so proud.
Sarah’s hometown boy (who’s not really from Alaska, but that’s another story) has been ducking and dodging this question almost as long as he’s been ducking and dodging requests for his financial disclosures but not as long as he’s been ducking and dodging requests for his military records. Gosh, it just gives me the warm fuzzies when I think of such an open and transparent candidate.
Why, it takes me back to November 2008, the night before the election when Sarah Palin finally disclosed an odd faxed medical letter meant to suffice for her medical records. A government of the people by the people and for the people, just like the Tea Party said they wanted. Changin’ the way they do stuff in DC, alright!
You know, if you hadn’t asked any questions, they wouldn’t have been forced to lie to you. So in a way, this is your fault. Evil voter.
The Alaska Dispatch continues:
“In a letter sent Thursday to Miller’s attorney, Ward Merdes, borough attorney Jill Dolan also asks that Miller “retract and correct repeated misrepresentations he has made regarding his records,” including postings on his campaign website that suggest it’s the borough, not Miller, that is blocking release of the records.
Dolan sent the letter on behalf of the borough after being contacted by an attorney for Alaska Dispatch with a request that the borough disclose additional documents related to Miller’s departure from his job as a part-time borough attorney.
Miller’s employment with the borough has been under scrutiny since earlier this summer when questions surfaced about whether he resigned voluntarily or was forced out.”
Palin must be proud of Joe for taking this so far as to blame the Borough and accuse them of hiding behind attorney-client privilege. Good goin’, Joe. The best defense is a good offense!
This is Palin circa 2009, right before she quit. There’s a forest fire of unanswered questions and cover-ups, but the original crime doesn’t seem that bad. The documents already released show he was not fired. He left due to a “difference of opinion” regarding a vacation he wanted to take to go elk hunting.
Why all the skulking around, Joe?
We should all just trust Joe that while he may not be transparent and accountable now, surely after he gets elected to the senate and has all that power, he will be. Cough. Desperate Alaskans may want to check out Scott McAdams (D-AK). He actually cares about jobs and he isn’t covered in oil slime like Murkowski or running under a blanket of fog like Miller.
When Sarah Palin endorses a candidate, the first thing we should do is ask for all their financial and background records; there are sure to be plenty o’secrets afloat. After all, Sarah Palin just sorta goes with lies, secrecy, cover-ups and rampant paranoia. There’s no clownin’ about in the thug department for Mama Grizzly.
My advice to Joe is to start up a trust fund to defend himself against the “leftist administration”. Seriously, Joe, it’s all the rage these days. You will get big dollars from those people who don’t know anything about the real you in the lower 48. And remember, Joe, it’s not the crime that kills you, it’s the cover-up. Something to contemplate as you take your stellar ethics to DC, where temptation to fudge even more than you are already will become as enticing to you as it was to your mentor.
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:Linda P.B. Katehi recently mentioned via email that she would like to hear about hate crimes occurring on our campus. To stop further hate crimes, I demand that she disband police patrols, stop student surveillance and fire Officer S.R. Terry.
The following occurred Thursday, March 6 between 7:15 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. on Orchard Park Road.
I heard shouting outside on the street. I went outside and saw two police cars and a police bicycle; five cops total. A Hispanic male student (whom we shall refer to as “C”) was being held in front of the nearest car with two police officers trying to question him. He was not cooperating and was shouting that his rights were being violated. He was demanding to speak to a lawyer, shouting for help. I later found out that he and his companion had been stopped because they were smoking Swisher Sweets, and Officer S.R. Terry allegedly smelled marijuana. Though even after a thorough search of both victims and the premises, it was not evident that any was actually found.
The other officers put C’s companion, an African Muslim student (whom we shall refer to as “P”), in the back of the second squad car and came over to help search C. They forced him onto the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was shouting in pain, and they tasered him. He had five officers on top of him as they tried to remove his backpack, go through his pockets, and take his shoes. When he got up there was blood on the sidewalk from the police beating him to submission. They put him in the squad car, and waited until the fire department and an ambulance arrived.
Another passerby saw the incident and asked what was going on. He tried to talk to P but one of the cops said “It’s against the law to talk to prisoners,” and told him to leave. This is a lie and an abuse of police power to intimidate the public.
A medical examination was performed on C. The paramedics gave him a neck brace and put him on a stretcher; they moved him to the ambulance and drove away escorted by the first police car. The paramedics also wiped up the blood from the sidewalk. The second car stayed behind and the officers searched the area.
While P was in the car, I heard the bike cop S. R. Terry make several racial slurs including “He’s shouting jihad” (in reference to P speaking in Arabic). Eventually they let P out of the squad car and had him sign a citation for marijuana possession, even though he had none.
Two police officers approached me separately to ask if I had witnessed anything; I refused to speak to them.
The second car and the bike cop left with no sign of the injustice that had been committed except a small drop of blood that the paramedics missed.
With the law on their side, it seems like the police are entitled to do whatever they want. I feel powerless, I’m scared, and I don’t feel safe around the people who are supposedly here to protect and serve.Last evening, Nas and renowned sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson sat down for a discussion about hip-hop at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall. Their conversation was moderated by James Peterson, director of Africana studies and associate professor of English at Lehigh University.
Topics explored during their hour-plus conversation included Nas' Illmatic and its legacy 20 years later, as well as the current state of hip-hop. Nas and Dyson share a rich history together, including attending previous panels that focused on hip-hop and its influences. Dyson also co-edited the book Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic, which features a collection of essays and documents that present Nas' debut album from an academic perspective.
Nas will be performing Illmatic in its entirety tonight and Saturday evening at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. for "One Mic: Hip-Hop Culture Worldwide." Illmatic XX, the 20th anniversary edition of Nas' debut album, will be released April 15. Pre-order it on iTunes here.
[via Georgetown University]
RELATED: Check Out This Rare Remix of Nas' "It Ain't Hard to Tell"
RELATED: Nas Preps "Illmatic XX" 20th Anniversary Edition, Plans to Perform Whole Album on Tour
RELATED: Watch Nas' Harvard Hip-Hop Fellowship In ActionDEATH: Police cordon off the area where the body was found.
A man in his 70s was found dead in Jurong Lake yesterday.
The body, which was found at Jurong Lake Park near Yuan Ching Road, is the second one found in the Jurong area this month.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force was alerted around 2.10pm and sent a fire engine and an ambulance.
The body was close to the bank of the lake, and the SCDF team pulled it out of the water manually. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.
DEATH: Police cordon off the area where the body was found. TNP PHOTO: PHYLLIS LEE
The police are investigating the unnatural death.
Mr Muhamad Halin, a security officer in his late 30s, called The New Paper's hotline when he saw police cars and an ambulance near the lake on his way home.
When TNP reached the scene at 3.15pm, a police tent had been set up to cover the body.
The area, near Lakeside MRT station and Yuan Ching Secondary School, was quiet, with only a few curious passers-by and cyclists stopping to take a look.
A resident of a condominium near Jurong Lake, who wanted to be known only as Madam Monika, 35, told TNP: "This is a nice neighbourhood. It (the body found) is not scary, just strange and curious."
The freelance writer added that she may avoid the lake area for a few days.
A cleaner working at a nearby housing estate, who declined to be named, said he was not shocked as there had been another body found in the vicinity recently.
Three weeks ago, the Chinese Garden, which sits across the lake from Jurong Lake Park, closed after the decomposed body of a 42-year-old woman was found floating near it.Facebook has rolled out an update to its Messenger.com client for instant messaging that allows users to search for text in individual conversations.
The feature became available to everyone “a few months ago,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email. Facebook on the web has had this feature for a few years, and now it’s available in the standalone Messenger web app, too.
The Facebook spokesperson wouldn’t specify whether the feature is coming to Facebook’s Messenger apps for Android, iOS, and Windows 10. But it would be helpful for users who maintain long, ongoing conversations.
There are two ways to access the feature on Messenger.com:
Click inside the “Search Messenger” box on the left rail of the browser window, and type in a search term, such as “chicken.” You can select contacts, more people, and businesses, or you can click the option at the top of the search results, which says “Search messages for ‘chicken.'” From there, you can see all references to the search term in conversations with all of your friends. While you’re in a single conversation — it can be with a single Facebook friend or a group conversation — click the “i” icon in the top right corner of the window to reveal the right rail, which has several options, including the new “Search in Conversation.” Click that, and then type a search term in the “Search messages” box at the top of the conversation. You can toggle between references to your search term with the up and down arrows at the top of the conversation.
The feature works for bots, which have been a big focus area for Facebook’s Messenger platform this year.
It’s possible to search in conversations in Google’s Messenger app for Android, Apple’s Messages app for iOS and macOS, LinkedIn’s web and mobile apps, and Facebook’s own WhatsApp on web and mobile.
Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook-owned Instagram don’t currently have an easy way to search for text in conversations.Today I am going to leave the technical stuff on the side and take a wider look at the Software industry. By reading the news you might get the impression that everything is nice and well in IT Land. Between success stories of startups worth millions or even billions of dollars and computer guys making a six-figures just by typing on a keyboard, it might seem like Software is the New Eldorado. Coding bootcamps and other programming schools are on the rise, promising that you will become a Web Developer in under 3 months! and live the millionaire life in just double that time.
Well, today I want to focus on the other side of the coin, and talk about a scary, yet very real aspect of our industry: project failures. If you type ‘software project failure rate‘ in your favourite search engine, you’ll find a lot of interesting statistics that seem to repeat over the last 10 to 15 years. Here are some of the crispy bits that I found:
only 39% of all projects succeed (delivered on time, on budget, and with required features and functions).
One in six IT projects have an average cost overrun of 200%.
75% of IT executives believe their projects are ‘doomed from the start‘.
Only 2.5% of companies successfully complete 100% of their projects.
The United States economy loses $50-$150 billion per year due to failed IT projects.
That doesn’t look good at all. if the sight of those statistics makes your legs weak and palms sweaty, perfect. That was the desired effect. If not, you might want to read those once again. The message is pretty clear: Software development is hard. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying. It requires a lot to get it right. It takes very little to get it wrong.
Tell us why, Johnny! Why is this so hard to make software?!. Rest assured, for the past decades Mankind has spent a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money trying to answer this question. So what are the usual suspects? First, Let me give you my personal take on the matter (caution, touches of satire ahead).
Business vs IT
Those two main actors of almost any significant Software project seem to find an endless source of joy in making each other’s life miserable. The business will often report production issues at 5pm on Fridays and make constant and meaningless requests for things they won’t be using after all. Meanwhile, IT will plan a full upgrade of all servers right in the middle of the month-end closing and devise vague error messages because… Well because they can.
How IT views Business…
and how Business views IT!
Methodologies
– My Scrum is better than your Kanban!
– Nah, my Waterfall is stronger and it will kick your Agile right in the n…!
Software development methodologies have been seen by many as Silver Bullets, the Holy Grail of IT that would solve all our problems. In practice though, they do not always prevent projects from failing.
Management
This is a tough one. Where to start?
– Office politics and people undermining the project to serve their own interests? Check
– Favoring reporting work over doing work (time-sheet hell)? Check
– Decision makers completely out of touch with the realities of Software development? Check
– Refusal to invest in tools and better processes? Check
– Fear of change? Check
And the list could go on…
But more seriously though, let’s have a look at some other figures I extracted from this source:
Most Common Causes of Project Failure:
Changing priorities within organization – 40%
Inaccurate requirements – 38%
Change in project objectives – 35%
Undefined risks/opportunities – 30%
Poor communication – 30%
Undefined project goals – 30%
Inadequate sponsor support – 29%
Inadequate cost estimates – 29%
Inaccurate task time estimate – 27%
Resource dependency – 25%
Poor change management – 25%
Inadequate resource forecasting – 23%
Inexperienced project manager – 20%
Limited resources – 20%
Procrastination within team – 13%
Task dependency – 11%
Other – 9%
There are a few interesting observations we can make based on that list.
Project failures seem very rarely caused by technical problems! Isn’t it surprising, considering the very nature of Software development? Those damn developers watching cat videos during work hours might not be totally responsible for that disaster, after all.
Project management issues are omnipresent. Failure to plan, adapt, or communicate is all over the place. According to this article from Joseph Gulla, a former IT specialist at IBM, ‘ 54 percent of IT project failures can be attributed to project management, whereas only 3 percent are attributed to technical challenges’.
The third point is curiously something that people very often tend to forget about: the lack of discipline in capturing requirements. Look again at those items: Inaccurate requirements – 38% Change in project objectives – 35% Undefined project goals – 30% Poor change management – 25%
. Look again at those items:
This last point is the most striking to me for two reasons. First, requirements are the foundations upon which a project is built up. You probably know what would be the expected consequences of building a house foundation in a swamp. The results are not much different in the Software world.
Secondly, it is astonishing that such a fundamental part of the project is so frequently overlooked, and sometimes even simply ignored. People keep repeating the same mistakes again and again.
Now, it would be very presumptuous of me to criticize without at least suggesting a few ways to improve the current state of things. This is why I will be following up shortly with another post dedicated to capturing requirements and helping your programmers get their Software right.
Did you also encounter IT project failures during your career? Don’t hesitate to share them with us in the comments below!
Till next time!A new group with strong ties to the Trump administration is pushing the legal envelope in its efforts to register voters in Trump country.
The organization, Look Ahead America (LAA), has already drawn the attention of legal experts, who have questioned whether it should be given preferential tax-exempt status reserved for apolitical organizations. LAA has been classified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit since its launch announcement last week and is being billed as an “ACORN of the right,” a reference to the defunct left-wing community organizing group. Like ACORN, it is legally required to remain nonpartisan.
But critics view the organization as a political arm for the White House. On Monday, a LAA spokesman said that its tax-exempt status is currently pending. After The Daily Beast inquired about that status, LAA removed a solicitation from its website asking for “a tax-deductible contribution,” further drawing the attention of its critics.
“Look Ahead America may not cross a line but they’re going to walk right up to it,” Austin Evers, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, said in an interview.
LAA insists that language regarding tax-deductions was removed not because it was legally out of bounds, but in order to avoid confusion about its tax status. It’s not actively courting donors through its website anyway, said Matthew Braynard, its executive director. “We’ve raised exactly zero so far through the site,” Braynard told The Daily Beast. “We’re 100 percent collecting and pitching large dollar right now.”
Still, the subtle change in the language of its financial solicitations highlights the tightrope the group is already having to walk in order to remain on the right side of federal tax laws.
The newly formed organization seeks to register voters in parts of the country that supported President Donald Trump last year. To do so, The New York Times reported last week, it will engage in what it calls “psychographic modeling,” using commercial and government data to target potential voters who are likely to support candidates more amenable to its political and ideological preferences.
LAA also told the Times that it will deploy poll-watchers with cameras to monitor polling places to discourage illegal or fraudulent voting. The group plans to roll out a “pilot program” in Virginia this year ahead of the state’s 2017 gubernatorial election.
As a 501(c)(3), LAA’s activities will have to remain strictly nonpartisan. But its roots and current structure make it vulnerable to charges that it’s doing the president’s bidding. The group was founded by a pair of former Trump campaign staffers, and its staff is comprised entirely of former Trump campaign operatives. Braynard ran data operations early on in the campaign. Witold Chrabaszcz, the group’s strategy director, also helped run the campaign’s data efforts. According to its website, LAA’s advisory board “is comprised of nearly forty former Trump for President Campaign staffers.”
Apolitical nonprofits are legally permitted to register voters and encourage them to turn out on Election Day. But the Internal Revenue Service strictly forbids any effort to selectively register or turn them out in a way that benefits a certain candidate or political party.
LAA insists its activity will fall within those legal bounds. “Our targeting is not based on political party affiliation or to benefit any particular candidate,” the group said in documents reported by the Times.
But according to Evers, initial descriptions of LAA’s work suggest it will push the envelope of permitted activity. “A (c)(3) organization can violate those rules without saying the name of a candidate, without saying the word Republican, without saying the word Democrat,” Evers said. “Based on how the organization has presented itself to the media, they are going to have to be very careful about how they execute their mission.”
For Evers and others scrutinizing legal issues surrounding LAA, the issue is how specific the group will get in its voter targeting. If it eyes certain neighborhoods or precincts, even ones that lean heavily toward Trump or other Republicans, it will likely be legally safe as long as it doesn’t do so with an eye toward advantaging a certain candidate or political party. But if it gets more specific, targeting individual voters based on their presumed candidate preferences, the group could face pushback.
“The fact that Look Ahead America is staffed by former Trump campaign staffers and fundraising from Trump donors—and apparently targeting potential Trump voters—may cause the IRS to take a careful look at the group’s activities,” according to Brendan Fischer, the director of federal and Federal Election Commission reform efforts at the Campaign Legal Center, another watchdog group. “So Look Ahead America will have to tread carefully to avoid violating the law.”
LAA is already working with an attorney and has applied for tax-exempt status, Braynard told The Daily Beast. He expects that it will be approved in due course.
But that wasn’t the impression that the group gave after its official launch last week. LAA’s official Twitter account repeatedly invoked its tax status in tweets directed at Huffington Post reporters who wrote about the group.
“We’re a fully accountable 501c3,” the group wrote, “not a ‘scam pac.’”Washington state parks is gearing up for next year's centennial celebration by launching two new social media platforms and by overhauling the Discover Pass program.
A bill awaits signing into law by Gov. Christine Gregoire that would affect the Discover Pass, which was rife with confusing elements when it was implemented a year ago.
The main features of the Discover Pass overhaul are:
The $30 pass would be transferable between two vehicles, retroactive immediately. (This is an annual pass for day use recreation at Washington state parks, natural resource area and fish and wildlife lands).
There is a new $50, universally transferable Discover Pass.
Lets Discover Pass purchasers choose a start date for their Discover Pass.
Read more about it on the Washington Trails Association website.
In news from the Washington parks system:
In celebration of its 99th birthday on March 19, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission has announced the addition of two new online information sources for visitors – a new Facebook page and a recently completed mobile website that provides visitors access to information from their mobile devices while they are on the move.
Also, day use fees are not charged at Washington state parks on March 18-19, in celebration of the park system's birthday. For Portlanders, Sunday would be a good day to visit Beacon Rock State Park, if the rain ever lets up.
As Washington's park agency moves into its 100th year and the celebration of its Centennial in 2013, the state park system invites the public explore state parks through these two newest online services that provide information about more than 100 state parks all over Washington.
Facebook, a social networking site, is the third social media tool used by state parks, preceded by YouTube and Twitter.
Social media connects visitors to state parks and provides online resources about recreational, educational and overnight opportunities at state parks, details about Centennial 2013 kickoff events and special programs in state parks across Washington.
Facebook users will get direct news and announcements, event information and tips about state parks. Visit the Washington State Parks Facebook page at www.facebook.com/WashingtonStateParks.
The state parks mobile website, found at m.parks.wa.gov, helps state park visitors get the information they need while on the go. The site works on desktop browsers, but was specifically designed and tested to accommodate mobile devices. It allows park visitors access to detailed information about state parks, including reservations, news, events and alerts.
Visitors may now check the time of a park event and get driving directions directly from their Apple, Android or other handheld device. The mobile site also allows easy navigation to the Discover Pass website, which also is available in a mobile format.
Other social media sites are www.twitter.come/WaStatePks_NEWS and www.youtube.com/WashingtonStateParks.
The Discover Pass gives visitors access to nearly 3 million acres of Washington state-managed recreation lands – including state parks, water-access points, heritage sites, wildlife and natural areas, trails and trailheads. For more information, visit www.discoverpass.wa.govIf you want to understand what is happening in this scene, I recommend you to read the fanfic... But if you don't have the time, you can still deduce what's happening because there is fairly obvious clues at your disposal in the illustration XD
This fanfiction is the sequel of his first very impressive story, A Different Kind of Predator, that you should definitively read : www.fanfiction.net/s/11963799/… If you want to understand what is happening in this scene, I recommend you to read the fanfic... But if you don't have the time, you can still deduce what's happening because there is fairly obvious clues at your disposal in the illustration XD
This art was commissioned by
to help my wife, Mimiko, and me, to financing her medical care :
A funny commission drawn for for his fanfiction "Trials and tribulations of a different kind", that you can read here : www.fanfiction.net/s/12463911 It was very funny for me to draw such a scenery...So thank you very much for your help, my dear friend! Always happy and proud to draw for such a great person!Have a nice day,Zieg'Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Thrill-seekers screamed with terror while they were trapped on a new Alton Towers rollercoaster when it broke down yesterday.
A group of 16 journalists was stranded on the £18million ride, which has a world record 14 loops, for around 30 minutes.
They were left dangling at a steep angle as they tried out the 50mph rollercoaster – called The Smiler – before it opens to the public next week.
Octavia Lillywhite, from our sister paper the Sunday Mirror, was one of the panicking group that was stranded.
She said: “It was a terrifying experience for all the wrong reasons.
“My friend was flipping out. She was screaming for help.”
Octavia, 34, said they had gone round the first loop before the car they were strapped in ground to a halt at a 50 degree angle as it started to climb again.
Rescuers wearing yellow boiler suits took everyone off the ride and led them away down metal steps at the theme park in Staffordshire.
Alton Towers said there had been a technical fault which had not yet been fixed.
The Smile is set to open on May 23.
Video: How the ride will
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– Allows a variety of ways to view the calculator's results. Fractional resolution is selected by radio button. The options are:
Table Salt – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons. Kosher Salt – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons. Sea Salt – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons. Instant Yeast – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons. Lecithin – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons. Wheat Gluten – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons. Generic – Displays the result in fractional teaspoons based on the grams/teaspoon value. Fraction Ounce – Displays the result in ounces and fraction of an ounce. Decimal Ounce – Gives the result in decimal format down to 0.01 ounce. Grams – Gives the metric result in grams (down to 0.1 grams). Radio Buttons Allows the user to select how fine a fractional measurement to make. The choices are: 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32. The calculator will display the fractional result that comes closest to the calculated value. The default value is 1/8.The Earth was so young 300 million years ago, the first land animals had yet to evolve into dinosaurs, most scientists believe.
If that's the case, how do you explain the discovery in Russia of a piece of a gear shift -- a common machine part -- embedded into a hunk of 300-million-year-old coal. Has this artifact been correctly identified? And if so, who could have made this thing? And for what purpose?
According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, a resident of Vladivostok -- near the borders of China and North Korea -- named Dmitry, recently noticed something odd about a hunk of coal he had obtained to heat his home during the winter.
A metallic-looking rail or rod was pressed into the coal, prompting Dmitry to contact biologist Valery Brier, in the seaside Primorye region.
Initial examination of the strange object led researchers to assert it looked "very much like a toothed metal rail, created artificially. It was like parts [that] are often used in microscopes, various technical and electronic devices," wrote Komsomolskaya Pravda.
The piece of coal in question originated from the Chernogorodskiy mines of the Khakasis region. The Voice of Russia, an international Russian broadcasting service, reported that since the coal deposits in this region of the country can be dated to 300 million years ago, experts are suggesting that the odd piece of metal found in the coal must be that old as well.
The Voice of Russia also said, "When geologists broke the piece of coal in which the metal object was pressed into and spot-treated it with special chemical agents, it turned out the the metal detail was unusually light and soft.... [It] was found to be composed of 98 percent aluminum and 2 percent magnesium," which led to the implication that the metallic object was created artificially.
Another important property of the object that intrigued the researchers was "its distinctive shape, which was reminiscent of a modern tooth-wheel," according to The Voice of Russia. "It is hard to imagine that an object could take [the] regular shape of a tooth-wheel with six identical 'teeth' naturally."
But who created this seemingly metallic piece 300 million years ago, presumably when there were no humans walking the Earth? Even Komsomolskaya Pravda implied that this piece of metal has an alien origin.
One scientist, geologist Sharon Hill, who goes by the name "idoubtit," says this entire story is "laughable." Writing in Doubtful News.com, Hill insists "there are so many red flags, you should discard it entirely."
Among the red flags Hill wonders about are, "Why is it not published in a journal? We have to accept the man's word for it, where he found it and how he discovered it? Why speculate on the alien origin of aluminum?"
Hill adds that "It's not part of a gear. It's a natural crystal formation I'd say.... But as following the typical template for these stories, the extreme speculative and dramatic interpretation is hyped over any consideration of an actual explanation. That's sad because it could be cool."
The Voice of Russia says that Russian scientists won't jump to conclusions and will run more tests on the metal object.
Here are many other ancient discoveries found around the worldThe March international break is an early interruption for MLS, but in Europe it's a chance for top-flight clubs to regroup for the final stretch of the season. Matt Miazga's Vitesse lost its last game before the break, 1-0 to PSV. Nonetheless the team is well-positioned for its 2017 run-in: with seven games left to play in the league, it lies seventh in the Eredivisie and it is in the top seven that Vitesse will hope to finish this campaign. The top-three spots will be contested by Feyenoord, Ajax, and PSV, but there is still a relatively open battle for places fourth to seventh - which offer entry to next season's Europa League (via the qualifying rounds).
Vitesse needs points to consolidate its fragile hold on a top-seven place (it is just two points above Heerenveen), but it's close to being able to count the season as somewhat successful. And it has a Dutch Cup final to look forward to on April 30. So there is reason for optimism in the Vitesse camp, especially perhaps for Matt Miazga.
On loan from Chelsea, Miazga has been a regular starter since Maikel van der Werff was injured in mid-February. The 21-year-old defender had won and lost a place in the starting lineup when van der Werff was sidelined earlier in the season, but he appears to have learned quickly from that experience and has held on to his place during the latest opportunity for an extended run as a starter. And he was part of the team that saw Vitesse into its first Dutch Cup final since 1990.
All encouraging for a player regarded by some as having lost his way a little since moving to Chelsea in January 2016. The transfer came on the back of an extraordinary 2015 season: Miazga played for the USA U-20s at the CONCACAF U-20 Championship and FIFA U-20 World Cup, then contributed to the USA U-23s' ill-fated Olympic qualifying campaign, and earned his first full Men's National Team cap in November, 2015. He was the 2015 US Soccer Young Male Athlete of the Year. And in MLS, he was a first-choice starter for the Supporters' Shield winners, the New York Red Bulls.
Miazga was one of the success stories of the Jurgen Klinsmann USMNT era, a poster-boy for Klinsi's oft-stated preference that the best players in the national team pool test themselves against the best players in the world by finding gigs with top European clubs.
But Miazga fell off the national team radar when, perhaps predictably, it turned out that a single season as a starter in MLS wasn't quite enough to turn a player into a first-team regular for Chelsea. He was loaned out to Vitesse at the end of August, 2016, when it was quite clear that he would not be considered for any role with Chelsea's first team during the current season.
Still, in an interview with Elf Voetbal, Miazga suggested he had few regrets about his decision to make the jump to Europe:
I miss it, yes, sure. The States is my home. But my purpose and plan was always to come to Europe, to show me here at the highest level.
For better or worse, Miazga is where he wants to be, enjoying the challenge he hoped to experience.
He did, however, admit to one adverse effect of his effort to prove himself in Europe: he is now seemingly out of the USMNT picture entirely.
When Klinsmann was in charge, it had seemed Miazga was a highly-rated national team prospect being fast-tracked through the youth international ranks with maybe more than half a hope of raising his profile sufficiently to win him the chance to bolt MLS for a big Euro club.
But even Klinsi couldn't pick Miazga for the senior team when he wasn't getting much playing time at club level. And new USMNT head coach Bruce Arena has been hired with one priority: get the team to the 2018 World Cup. Arena doesn't really have time to indulge the sort of player development projects Klinsmann enjoyed.
Miazga told Elf Voetbal he has had no word from Arena since the USMNT's regime change:
I have not spoken to him since his appointment in December. With Jurgen Klinsmann I spoke a lot, but unfortunately he was fired.
It's unlikely Miazga would have featured much in World Cup qualifying for Klinsi either, but at least they were talking.
As with any player out of favor or simply not doing enough to be noticed, Miazga indicated he knows he simply has to focus on his job for his club - with regular time will come better performances and maybe that will inspire Arena to pick up the phone one day.
Until then, Miazga has work to do with Vitesse and a future to decide at the end of the season:
The focus is to play as much as possible with Vitesse. After the season, I talk to Chelsea and my agent and we'll see what's next.
In his interview with Elf Voetbal, his comments about Thierry Henry's influence on him during their time together at RBNY were picked up and reported widely in the British press:
Henry is obviously one of the best ever. As a young player, I have learned a lot from him. If I ever needed advice, he was there for me. And when I broke through, he was there to encourage me, to make me better.
But he also advised that Chelsea is keeping in close contact with him during his stint with Vitesse:
At Chelsea, they keep an eye on me. After every game I get videos sent of good and negative moments. They are very helpful. I speak every three weeks with them on my progression.
The remaining weeks of this season will be important to Miazga's progress, both in terms of where he'll play his club soccer next season and whether he can win the attention of Bruce Arena and USMNT.Last February, a study published in the journal Science estimated that in 2010 between 4.8 and 12.7 million tons of plastic rubbish were dumped in the world’s oceans. Although this is a frightening number, it is only a small part of the 275 million tons that were generated that year in 192 coastal countries. World production of plastics has increased some 500% since 1980, and these materials represent between 80% and 90% of maritime pollution. However, most of it stays on land, and it is in developing countries with poorer sanitation and recycling systems where the problem of plastic pollution is of particular importance. In fact, developing and emerging countries are mainly responsible for plastic pollution; according to the study in Science, of the 20 most polluting countries only the twentieth is a western developed nation, the United States.
Is it possible to conceive of a future without plastic? Some predict that the future depletion of fossil fuels will force it and that it will be necessary to develop substitutes. But even if this comes about, the end of plastics would not mean their disappearance from the Earth due to the very slow degradation of these polymers, and thus it will be necessary to also address means of decontamination. This is the background for the efforts toward the goal of achieving a world without plastic.
Living without plastic
Some media campaigns and blogs, such as MyPlasticFreeLife.com, offer hints and tips on how to minimize the consumption of these materials and keep track of one’s personal plastic footprint. Attempts to live without plastic are based mainly on choosing purchase options that are limited to the use of traditional materials such as glass, paper, metal, ceramic or stone.
But it is not easy; synthetic resins are present, one way or another, in most of what we buy, consume and discard. The reason for this is that oil polymers allow for great flexibility and diverse properties, and making the reverse journey toward materials of natural origin does not seem to be a universal solution. In addition, life without plastic is more expensive. Monitoring and reducing the use of plastic is the mission of organizations like Plastic Disclosure Project and Plastic Pollution Coalition. The latter bases its objectives on its motto of the four Rs: refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle.
Ban plastic?
Beyond the personal or non-governmental initiatives, authorities in some countries have decided to take legal measures to cut the consumption of plastics. In 1990, the island of Nantucket became the first place in the US to ban single-use bags. Other cities and counties then followed suit, and last August California became the first state to pass similar legislation. In China, the decision that stores must charge consumers for disposable bags, introduced in 2008, managed to reduce the amount of this type of plastic by 50%. Some developing countries have banned plastic bags altogether, although the implementation of these measures is sometimes problematic.
The European Union has not yet implemented a general prohibition, but has agreed to impose on member states the obligation to reduce by 80% the use of the lightest bags over the next decade –shifting from over 170 bags used each European per year to just 40 in 2025– or heavily tax their use from 2018. Some countries have already surpassed this: Italy was a pioneer in eliminating non-biodegradable bags in 2011, while France last year passed a law that will ban single-use bags in 2016.
Biodegradable plastics and bioplastics
The first step in attempting to reduce the plastic footprint of the human being is producing biodegradable polymers by using additives. However, this does not solve the problem of its petrochemical origin, which still involves the use of a non-renewable resource. Therefore, the next step is to obtain substitutes that do not depend on oil.
Steady progress is being made in the manufacture of bioplastics based on materials such as starch or cellulose. An example is polylactic acid, a bioplastic similar to polystyrene produced from the same compound that causes tooth decay. But it should be noted that not all bioplastics are biodegradable. Polyethylene, the plastic of bags, has a biological version obtained from the fermentation of cultures, but just like the plastic derived from petroleum, it is not biodegradable.
Among the researchers experimenting with new plastics from a biological source and with easy biodegradation is a team at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, led by Ilker Bayer and Athanassia Athanassiou. These scientists work on the production of plastics from edible vegetable waste, such as parsley, spinach stems and the husks from rice or cocoa pods. The advantage of the method is that it allows for a wide range of cellulose bioplastics, from the most rigid to the soft and bendable. “The comparison of their mechanical properties with those of several synthetic petroleum-based polymers indicates that these bioplastics have mechanical properties that are equivalent to those of the non-degradable type,” the scientists wrote in a study published last year.
Microbes that eat plastic
Even in an ideal situation, with petrochemical plastics limited to those applications where there was no other option and always in durable applications, with all disposable uses covered by biodegradable bioplastics, and with extensive recycling … even then there would still be millions of tons of plastic waste to be eliminated. What to do with it all? Almost all eyes are on biotechnology, the use of microorganisms capable of degrading plastics. There are bacteria, such as the soil microbes of the genus Pseudomonas, and even fungi like those that grow on wood, that can digest plastics naturally. The downside is that the biodegradation of plastics in this way usually requires special conditions, such as high temperatures or ultraviolet light.
Recently, a team of researchers from the Beihang University Beijing (China) has found a route that avoids the need for laboratory conditions. The scientists observed that the caterpillar of a particular type of moth usually feeds on food containers. Upon examining their gut, they found two kinds of bacteria that break down polyethylene without the need for other treatments. According to researchers, it is “promising evidence for the degradation of polyethylene in the environment”.
Reverse recycling
In developed countries, efforts are focused on increasing recycling rates for plastics. However, experts warn that recycling is not a panacea: contrary to what happens with glass containers, those of plastic are not used to make other similar ones, but rather very different objects that may end up in landfills.
An interesting alternative comes from India. Since plastic is produced from oil, why not turn it back into a liquid fuel? The method designed by the chemist Achyut Kumar Panda of the Centurion University of Technology and Management in Odisha, and chemical engineer Raghubansh Kumar Singh of the National Institute of Technology in Orissa, uses heating to 450 degrees centigrade in the presence of a catalyst to convert polyethylene bags into a liquid fuel similar to gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel. For each kilo of plastic 700 grams of fuel is produced. In their study, the researchers stress that the procedure would help to “reduce the waste problem”, which would be especially interesting in developing countries.
Bonus video: Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic (by VICE)
By Javier Yanes for Ventana al Conocimiento
@yanes68Video Offers Glimpse of Biosafety Level 4 Lab Science webcast “threads the NEIDL”
Security concerns at laboratories doing research on infectious diseases mean that most of us will never get a look at the inner workings of such labs, the most secure designated as Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4). But because its BSL-4 lab is not yet operational, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories on the Medical Campus has welcomed a professional video team to tour its inner sanctum. The result is Threading the NEIDL, a one-hour documentary posted today on This Week in Virology, an American Society for Microbiology webcast with about 100,000 regular viewers.
“There is no other facility in the United States that we could have toured in this manner,” says TWIV host Vincent Racaniello. NEIDL is one of just two BSL-4 labs based at academic centers. The second academic facility is at Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, and others are operated by the National Institutes of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I was amazed at the NEIDL,” says Racaniello, who toured the $200 million facility with cohosts Alan Dove and Rich Condit. “The safeguards in place are impressive, and after touring the NEIDL, I was convinced that it is the safest place on Earth to work on dangerous viruses like Ebola and Lassa.”
In the video, Racaniello, Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University, Dove, and Condit are accompanied by Ronald Corley, a NEIDL associate director and a School of Medicine professor and chair of microbiology, together with Paul Duprex and Elke Muhlberger, associate professors of microbiology and NEIDL investigators. They begin on the building’s perimeter, where “embassy standard” barriers are strong enough to prevent a 15,000-pound truck going as fast as 50 miles an hour from entering the grounds. All the fences are wired for motion detection. After an iris scan (“Dead eyes are unreadable,” says Corley), the team passes through the equivalent of airport Transportation Security Administration–scanning and then makes its way to the BSL-4 level, a building within a building with 12-inch-thick walls and 14-inch heavily rebarred concrete flooring.
When Racaniello asks about the risk of earthquakes, Corley’s response is reassuring. While the greater NEIDL structure is built into the bedrock, the BSL-4 floors are flexible and can move with a different frequency than the main structure. If there is any contamination—a leak, or spill—the rooms fill with vaporized hydrogen peroxide or vaporized formaldehyde, he explains, and the thick walls are coated with multiple layers of epoxy resin to ease cleanup.
Environmental health and safety expert and trainer John Tonkiss coaches the team as they wriggle into cumbersome protective suits and boots, and helps them practice moving from ventilating hose to hose—an unhooked hose can become “a missile,” he says. Lost in the suits and tethered to the hoses, the team has difficulty with simple movements, like settling into a chair. Rancaniello speaks through the whoosh sound of the suit (“You need to expel the air in the suit to feel comfortable,” Tonkiss says) and gets the feel of the gloves as he cradles a pipette. Actual BSL-4 researchers undergo “full suit training,” which is far more rigorous.
The group winds its way through the animal rooms, including a procedure room and a holding room. The rooms are likely to accommodate a range or rodents as well as nonhuman primates, according to Duprex. Corley later leads the group, unsuited and once again mobile, up and into a dense, hissing forest of pipes—the HEPA filters and compressors in the “box within a box” of that protected shell. It’s as if the entire BSL-4 lab were on advanced life support.
Corley, along with MED colleagues Duprex and Muhlberger, sat down for a video interview with Rancaniello last September for TWIV’s 200th webcast. “We thought that because NEIDL’s BSL-4 area wasn’t open this might be a good opportunity for the video tour, because it can’t be done once the lab is open and functioning,” he says. The TWIV television crew spent two days at the site, and Corley hopes the webcast’s “unprecedented view” will serve as “an education piece.” The shoot was also “a lot of fun,” he says. The film was vetted by NEIDL’s security group, which identified certain scenes that might pose a security risk, and Corley says those scenes were deleted from the footage.
BSL-4 clearance is required for labs that work with pathogens that pose a risk of life-threatening disease. In the most recent development on its way to full operation, last week NEIDL received BSL-3 and BSL-4 approval from the Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs. The agency issued a Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) certificate on March 2, clearing the way for the issuance of final state permits for the project. Boston University will now request permission from the Boston Public Health Commission to transfer ongoing BSL-3 research from an existing BSL-3 lab on the Medical Campus to the NEIDL. BSL-4 research will not begin until some additional regulatory and judicial determinations are made.Canada’s Ban on Oil Tankers Could Be the End of Controversial Pipeline
Campaign promises often fall by the wayside once politicians make it to office, but not for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Less than a month after his election, Canada’s head of state has put his pledge to ban oil tanker traffic into motion.
In a letter published Friday, Trudeau asked his Minister of Transportation to “formalize a moratorium on crude oil tanker traffic on British Columbia’s North Coast,” the Calgary Herald reports.
Such a ban could potentially shut down the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline, in which crude oil from Alberta would be piped up to north to British Columbia and then shipped overseas. A coalition of environmental groups and aboriginal advocates applauded Trudeau’s decision.
“This ban ends the dangerous Northern Gateway pipeline proposal,” said Karen Mahon, advocacy director for environmental group ForestEthics. “Without tankers, crude oil has no place to go, and that means no pipelines, no oil trains moving tar sands to the northern B.C. coast.”
The $6.5 billion project from storage and transportation company Enbridge Inc. was approved in 2014 under 209 conditions. Enbridge spokesperson Ivan Giesbrecht said the company would add “any improvements deemed necessary” to ship the products and that the company looks forward to discussing it further with Trudeau and his team. Enbridge officials estimate that the project would raise Canada’s gross domestic product by $300 million over 30 years.
Much like opponents of the recently squashed Keystone XL pipeline, environmentalists fear potential spills from Northern Gateway could cause catastrophic damage and that the project would increase extraction from the oil sands, thereby fueling climate change.
Related stories on TakePart:
• Is a Pipeline Explosion Coming to Your Neighborhood?
• Canada’s ‘Great Migration’ of Tar Sands Oil Isn’t Funny, but This Spoof Video Is
• We Might Avert Climate Catastrophe With This One Radical Choice
Original article from TakePartCurrent Django Books
This page is a complete list of Django web framework published books that are current, deprecated, and outdated. This is a listing of all Django books, not just selected ones that we recommend. By books, we mean complete, published reference works available in print with an ISBN. Links generally lead to Amazon, but are "internationalized", meaning US readers go to amazon.com, UK readers go to amazon.co.uk, and so forth. If there are any books not on this list, please let us know.
Out of these published references, only % are for supported versions of Django. Which versions of Django that are supported is specified on the official Django downloads page.
Current (Django 2.0, 1.11) - books
Outdated (Django 1.10 or lower) - books
Listed here for historical reference only. Books in this section are for Django versions no longer receiving security updates. Therefore, we strongly and emphatically recommend not purchasing or using books in this section.
Outdated Books With Updated Versions
Listed here for historical reference only. Books in this section have newer editions and are not included in the total list of books.
We strongly and emphatically recommend purchasing the updated versions.GamesTM Exclusive: Resi 6 to feature 3 campaigns
By Zaid at Wednesday, April 11, 2012 9:32:09 AM
Talking exclusively to games™, Resident Evil 6 executive producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi and director Eiichiro Saski discuss the implications of the sequel’s splintering narrative.
“To start, the three characters each have their own story and you can choose whichever one you want and play that story,” says Saski. “In terms of length, each character’s story is a little bit less than Resident Evil 5 but when you combine them together you’re getting something that is much longer. While each character’s story stands alone, all of the characters wind up in the same area of the game, in China, so there is a certain level of overlap. They stand on their own but they do overlap in certain areas. You don’t have to play them all, of course.”
When talking with Sasaki later, he does expresses concerns that people prefer shorter games these days – about 5 hours. He says Resident Evil 6 should last around 30 hours, but because of the separate character stories it remains digestible to modern audiences. Executive producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi talks about some of the themes found in each character’s story.
“There are a couple of ways we’re trying to differentiate the stories in the game,” states Kobayashi. “For example, we’re trying to incorporate horror elements into all the stories. But as you know horror is a big genre and there are different types of horror. So Leon’s story is more traditional Gothic horror, Chris is in battle and as he fights his way and moves forward the things that he encounters are horrific in their own way. Jake [new character, son of Albert Wesker] as mentioned is trying to escape from the country he was in, so he’s being chased and followed. So there’s that certain tension and horror element to his story that is different to that of Chris or Leon. So we’re trying to present a different iteration of horror in each of the stories. As far as gameplay goes, there are the core gameplay concepts but each character has their own unique gameplay features. So when you play as a different character you’ll be able to do different things that you couldn’t do with others.”While Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of the most revered characters in the popular Star Wars franchise, the actor who first brought him to life didn't think too much of the role.
A letter written by actor Alec Guinness to a friend details his experience on the set of George Lucas' first installment in space epic, and he doesn't sound too happy about it. The letter was recently posted to Reddit, offering some insight into the legendary actor's thoughts about Star Wars.
The letter reads:
My dear Anne,
I have returned to London this evening for my stint at the studio for the rest of the week. Can't say I'm enjoying the film — new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wages of pink paper — and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me keep going until next April even if 'Yahoo' collapses in a week.
I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet, — and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can't be right) Ford — Ellison (? — No!*) — well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety — and treat me as if I was 106.
Love,
Alec
*Harrison Ford — ever heard of him?
Guinness sure seems like he was a pleasant fellow!
His complains about Lucas' dialogue are hardly new or unique. Both Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford have spoken at length about how hard it is to say these lines and have the execution come off naturally.
Both Ford and Hamill even ribbed Lucas himself this last summer at Star Wars Celebration's 40th anniversary panel.
But Guinness' complains about Ford are pretty interesting, considering the Han Solo actor went on to become one of Hollywood's icons. It's interesting to see this glimpse into how Guinness viewed the Star Wars film before it became a phenomenon, and goes to show that these instances are hardly new in the long-running franchise.Infants
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As part of the JetPaws™ Pet Program, JetBlue gladly accepts small cats and dogs in the aircraft cabin on both domestic and international flights (no other animals are allowed). There is a non-refundable pet fee of $125 each way. To book your pet, go online at www.jetblue.com or you can call 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583). Customers with hearing or speech impairments can call our toll-free TTY/TDD telephone number, 1-800-336-5530. See a complete list of requirements for traveling with a pet. Get more information about traveling with a certified service animal or emotional support animal.
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If you are a traveler of size or would like an empty seat next to you, you may book an extra seat. To do so, select the number of travelers (including your extra seat) when identifying the number of adults or children. An extra seat may only be selected for the same traveler type (i.e. a kid traveler cannot be an extra seat for an adult traveler). On the traveler details page, click the checkbox next to the traveler requiring the extra seat. You must also select that traveler from the dropdown menu. Name changes will not be permitted post-purchase.A shooting that left a gay man critically wounded at a Columbia Heights restaurant last weekend has been classified as a hate crime, but further details about the incident are still under investigation, police spokesman Officer Araz Alali said Friday.
The shooting occurred at an IHOP restaurant at 14th and Irving streets NW around 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Police said earlier this week that the shooting happened after the victim had argued with another man, who was accompanied by two other men and a woman. A reward of $1,000 has been offered for anyone offering information leading to an arrest, and a description of the suspects is here.
Police said at a news conference Thursday that there was no connection between the IHOP shooting and the severe beating and robbery of a gay man March 12 at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Irving Street NW. There also was no connection with an assault that knocked a transgender woman unconscious at West Virginia Avenue and Mt. Olivet Street NE one day later. However, both crimes are being also being categorized as crimes against the gay and transgendered community according to The Washington Blade.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), have spoken out publicly about the attacks.
“This cannot and will not stand in the District of Columbia,” Gray said in a statement released Thursday, “where all of our residents have the right to walk the streets of our neighborhoods free of fear, regardless of their identities, beliefs or characteristics.”
Graham e-mailed constituents in his ward Friday and called the crimes deplorable.
“I am prepared to work with all the victims, and other stakeholders, to see that justice is done here,” Graham wrote.
A march for the victims will be held March 20 at 7 p.m. and will begin at the IHOP, according to a Facebook event page titled “Silent March for Victims of GLBT Violence.”Destined to be the NHL’s all-time leading outdoor scorer.
Ever since Mike Knuble left the Caps– and possibly even before– hockey geeks have wanted one name above all others on the top line with Alex Ovechkin and Nick Backstrom. Eric Fehr, the 29-year-old country music fan from Winkler, Manitoba, seems to have finally gotten the nod.
Fehr is expected to play right wing on the Capitals’ top line to start the season. Your boy Chuck Gormley reported it first.
Trotz has Eric Fehr penciled in as his top-line RW. Says he can use Laich there as well. #CapitalsTalk — Chuck Gormley (@CharlesAGormley) October 1, 2014
This is excellent news.
Fehr began his pro career as a blue-chip draft pick, selected 18th overall in 2003. A prolific scorer for the Brandon Wheat Kings in the WHL, Fehr never really materialized at the NHL level. He cracked 20-plus goals in 2010, but a pesky shoulder injury kept Fehr from becoming the player many expected him to be.
After spending a year back home with the relocated Winnipeg Jets, Fehr returned to the Capitals, where he established himself as the single best possession forward under the Oates regime. Fehr’s strong underlying numbers made him a regular stud in the Sunday snapshot series here on RMNB, despite playing deep in the lineup for most of the year.
Plus he scores goals like this:
Like a video game.
Alex Prewitt of the Washington Post says Trotz’s discussion of Fehr as 1RW was peppered with equivocations, but all signs seems to point to Eric Fehr finally getting his chance on the top line.
As the missing piece on Ovechkin’s opposite wing, Fehr is poised to do what hockey geeks and Fehr fans have been expecting for years: crash the net. Adam Stringham made the case concisely on Japers Rink earlier this week. In limited time with Ovechkin over the last two seasons (just 112 minutes), Fehr managed to see the Caps win 54.2 percent of the shot attempts and 66.7 of the goals. On the individual level, no forward saw a bigger increase in shooting percentage and individual shot attempts when playing with Ovechkin— a stark contrast to Marcus Johansson, who was notoriously shy to shoot and unlucky while skating with Ovi during 5v5.
(For his part, Johansson is now expected to play at wing on one of the bottom three lines, though his precise destination is not clear yet.)
Fehr’s biggest challenge may be the adjustment. Fehr has rarely skated more than 18 minutes a night over the past few years while serving depth roles. Now on the top line, he’ll likely average over 20 minutes per game. Fehr’s fitness and resilience will be challenged, particularly when going to the places on the ice Backstrom and Ovechkin will need him (i.e. the net).
But Fehr’s eagerness to shoot, his accuracy as a shooter (10% over his career), and his acumen for getting the puck to Ovechkin should make the Capitals’ top line positively lethal.
In my geeky corner of the hockey internet, this is very welcome news.
@Stringhama @FedFedRMNB Ovi Backstrom Fehr seems to be blogger consensus — Good Tweet Pete 🌮 (@peterhassett) September 26
|
again after dinner. Crack back open your email inbox, chat apps, and cell phone messages and clear out as many easy tasks as possible. Personally, I find this is a good time to run some numbers for marketing reports and other things that don’t really require me to think too hard.
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Keys for Stage 3: Answer emails and chat messages.
Do some more mindless tasks. Stage 4: 8 p.m.–Midnight Here’s the part of your day when you really know you’re working longer than you should be. But because you’ve just spent the past couple of hours plugging away at easier tasks, you’re more likely to have enough morale and energy to give another run at some of the more difficult work you’re facing. This probably isn’t the best idea, but I usually end up drinking another small cup of coffee around this time in order to stay focused. Use this time to really hammer out tough projects that require your full attention. This is the stretch of time when it really hits you that you’re in the trenches–so keep in mind that it’s an extreme case, and make it count. Tune out any distractions again and do the best you can. Keys for Stage 4: Dig back into the tougher projects.
Return to your batching technique of choice in order to stay on task.
Eliminate distractions.
Grab another coffee if necessary. Stage 5: After Midnight There are some problems that just require a more creative mindset, and the hour or two after midnight–if you’ve got any remaining energy–is the time to tackle them. When you get tired, your brain shuts off dopamine to the frontal cortex, which makes you less task-oriented. So no matter how hard you try to complete tasks this late, you almost always fail. But that can be an advantage, freeing up the final burst of your cognitive resources to think about things in a completely different way. When you get tired, your brain shuts off dopamine to the frontal cortex, which makes you less task-oriented. Remember all those tasks that you just couldn’t figure out the right solution to earlier in the day? Pick one. Sit back in your chair, and just start brainstorming ideas. Use a whiteboard if that’s your thing. Just be willing to let your mind come up with crazy ideas and solutions. Don’t evaluate them. Wait until tomorrow and see what makes sense when you are back in task-mode.
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Keys for Stage 5: Step away from getting things done.
Brainstorm creative approaches to problems that stumped you earlier in the day—but don’t try to solve them completely. Working 80 or 100 hours a week isn’t fun, heroic, or advisable, but sometimes it may be necessary. There are times when you’ll want to throw a coffee mug on the ground and smash it to pieces (but you hold back because you can’t imagine not being able to drink coffee). Your friends and relatives will hate you, but hopefully that’ll be as temporary as your work-slog. You can get through it. In fact, I managed this routine for four months–months I never, ever want to repeat (and don’t want you to experience, either) but that I survived. William Harris is the CEO and growth marketer of Elumynt, LLC., VP of marketing and growth for a top 700 online retailer, and former head of marketing for When I Work, a VC-backed SaaS company. Follow him on Twitter at @wmharris101, LinkedIn, and Google+.© The Associated Press Sandra Grazzini-Rucki appears in court during her sentencing, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2016, in Hastings, Minn. Grazzini-Rucki was convicted in July of felony deprivation of parental rights…
HASTINGS, Minn. — A Minnesota woman chose Wednesday to serve time in prison after being found guilty of hiding her two teenage daughters from their father for more than two years.
Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, 50, of Stillwater chose to serve up to eight months in prison instead of six years of probation and staggered jail time. With time off for good behavior, Grazzini-Rucki likely will be released from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee after five months, the Star Tribune ( Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, 50, of Stillwater chose to serve up to eight months in prison instead of six years of probation and staggered jail time. With time off for good behavior, Grazzini-Rucki likely will be released from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee after five months, the Star Tribune ( http://strib.mn/2djQ8QF ) reported.
Judge Karen Asphaug initially sentenced Grazzini-Rucki to 34 days in jail this year along with an additional 15 days in each subsequent year until 2022. She was to report each year on Nov. 18, the anniversary of the day her daughters were found last year.
But after the hearing, Grazzini-Rucki chose instead to execute her entire sentence at once. While an additional court hearing will have to be held, Grazzini-Rucki is allowed to make the request under law, Dakota County Attorney James C. Backstrom said. She was immediately taken into custody after Wednesday's hearing.
Grazzini-Rucki also was fined $944 for each of her daughters, which represents $1 for each day her two daughters were missing. She also was ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to the Minnesota Crime Victims' Reparations Board for family reunification efforts in the case as well as any future counseling expenses for her daughters.
In July a jury convicted Grazzini-Rucki on six counts of deprivation of custodial or parental rights. She was acquitted on two counts of causing minors to be runaways. She could only be sentenced on two of those counts — for depriving the girls' father and aunt of their custodial or parental rights.
The teens were found at a horse ranch in western Minnesota. Prosecutors say Grazzini-Rucki drove the then-13- and 14-year-old girls almost 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Lakeville, where they were living, to the ranch near Herman to hide them during a bitter divorce.
The girls moved back in with their father late last year.
The owners of the White Horse Ranch, Doug and Gina Dahlen, are facing felony charges in the case. They've said they took the girls to restaurants, garage sales, church and shopping trips and didn't try to hide them. The Dahlens said the teens had access to computers and cellphones and could have gone home.
Before the girls disappeared in April 2013, they repeatedly accused their father of abuse. But a court-appointed psychologist concluded Grazzini-Rucki had brainwashed them and a judge granted full custody to the girls' father, David Rucki, after finding there was no credible evidence of abuse.
___As one of the finalists in the Dangerous Games, it's time to get to know the Elite Diplomatic Corps
- Tell us a little but about what the Alliance Elite Diplomatic Corps get up to.
The members of the Alliance Elite Diplomatic Corps are involved in many activites designed around the end goal of "turning the galaxy green." As that suggests we are interested in bringing star systems into the Alliance through the mechanics of the background simulation. However, we do not enforce any certain play style on any of our members. Pilots are free to engage in what activities they find enjoyable. That said, we do require that you show respect to your Alliance comrades and that you be civil. We provide daily objectives to swing influence values in our operational areas and help give Pilots a more tangible goal than just the accumulation of credits and/or ships.
- How did the Alliance Elite Diplomatic Corps start out. Tell us a little bit about your group's history?
Our group started out when a Pilot named Knac put a thread up on the "Dangerous Groups" forum we have come to call internally "Knac's Call." From this a dedicated group of Pilots have banded together to help further the Alliance's influence in civilized space. For our group, we all feel the Alliance most appeals to our desire to go about our own business and allow others to do the same. None of us are forced into any of our operations and we are extremely grateful to our Pilots for their continued efforts on behalf of the Alliance and the AEDC.
- What exactly do you get up to for the Alliance Elite Diplomatic Corps? Did you start the group?
How our members spend their time in space is really up to them. Many of us, myself included, spent a significant time exploring outside of civilized space, even enough to achieve Elite in Exploration. Though when we do return, our accumulated exploration data makes for significant gains in pushing the factions we want in our operational area(s). Alas, I am not Knac. I joined in April of 3301 and have lent my support in a few ways. From participating in a community goal to allow Diamondback Scouts and Explorers to be built and sold at a station in our operational area (during which I was taken hostage by pirates), to writing blog posts on our group's site, elitediplomats.com.
- What is it about Elite Dangerous that keeps you coming back?
I can only speak for myself, but I keep getting drawn back because of the people involved and how each of us contributes not only to spreading freedom throughout civilized space. Our members reside in many different countries. I have had the opportunity to hear perspectives from France, Russia, Germany, South Africa, and Australia. Each of these people help to make the group the fun and relaxed place it is.
- What are your thoughts about the Elite Dangerous Community?
I am continually impressed by the marked civility and creativity expressed by the Elite community. Even those players that play as pirates or "psychopaths" usually end up being quite agreeable. What threads I do get to read on the Elite forums and/or Reddit rarely devolve into cesspits of name-calling and other trollery. In addition, the community shares exciting encounters, drafts compelling personal stories, and captures stunning vistas and actions through screenshots and videos. Truly, in my opinion, the Elite community is one of the best around.
- What events or notable activities have the Alliance Elite Diplomatic Corps been involved in?
Our actions go back to 3301. For a time we were locked in a seemingly perpetual conflict in the Lave cluster for control over the Reorte system. At first we focused on supporting the Reorte Pro-Alliance League. Though after PowerPlay started we shifted focus and helped lift the Reorte Mining Coalition to ruling status as their corporate ties help Prime Minister Mahon keep influence in the region. When PowerPlay was launched, we worked feverishly to help build the strong economic foundation that Prime Minister Edmund Mahon still enjoys today. Systems such as, Leesti, Tau Bootis, Mullag, and Bonitou were brought under the Prime Minister's trade protection through our efforts. As mentioned before, a Community Goal was held in one of our operational systems (to build and sell Diamondbacks) and was a large focus for us. Even a couple of our members took the top spots in that Goal. It was during this goal that Victoria Wolf, First Merchantress of Wolf 406 Transport and Co. first lifted the ban on Wolf 406 Water Purifiers. While the system of Cupinook largely benefited from this, from there the word of the amazing properties of the Purer Water(tm) started to spread to other parts of Alliance space. Lately we have largely kept to ourselves, slowly working to further advance Alliance interests as well as expand the influence of our adopted factions. In fact, recently we achieved, as far as we know, the second system aside from Alioth in civlized space to contain nothing but Alliance affiliated minor factions. Intrepid fact-checkers can scout out Lahasim for themselves to validate this claim.
- What's next for the Alliance Elite Diplomatic Corps?
First we continue to promote our adopted factions throughout Alliance space. With these efforts come continued testing and validation of the function of the background simulation. What we discover with our experiments helps us draft up efficient operations to achieve our stated goals. Aside from this, our culinary scientists have been hard at work over the last couple of months devising a delicious new cake recipe. They assure me the sweetness will only be complemented by the hint of sodium chloride content.
- Anything you’d like to tell the community about?
As a group, we are spearheading an exploration initiative and faction expansion initiative. The first is an ambitious goal to fully explore and tag every astronomical body in the Dumbbell nebula. We have collated a significant amount of data and high-value planets to be scanned for those looking for some easy exploration credits. In addition, this is, as far as we know, the largest exploration initative to date open to the community. More information can be found by pointing your galactic information feed at https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=223660&highlight=dumbbell+sector. The other program we have begun is an effort to develop Alliance factions on the fringe of Alliance space and help expand toward (and perhaps beyond) the border of civilized space. Please visit this link for more information: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=234031.
Also, support your local Alliance anarchy faction!Get the biggest Aston Villa FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
As you may be aware, the last time Aston Villa lifted the FA Cup was on May 4 1957.
Villa fanatic John Russell, who down the years has prided himself on chronicling the history of the club, was there at Wembley as a 17-year-old that day to witness the famous 2-1 victory over Manchester United.
Here, with recollections as vivid as if the showpiece occasion happened yesterday, not more than half a century ago, John goes on a triumphant trip down memory lane to tell the story of the day.
Tickets please
For me, the 4th May 1957 had got off to an unusual start. That very morning the postman delivered a package from Villa Park returning the away match programmes I had sent as evidence that I had attended 25 of the 26 away matches that season.
It came with the sardonic note that, “this was not enough to qualify me for a final ticket”. Fortunately I had got one by using vouchers but this only entitled me to the cheapest terrace ticket.
Dressed to impress
There were no replica shirts in those days. I wore my best blazer and flannels, plus the essential scarf, hat and rosette. And I carried the obligatory rattle. Most were plain wood but I had lovingly painted mine in the famous colours.
Travel in style
If I was condemned to a long distance view of the action at least I was going to get to Wembley in style. Travel by car was an option available to very few in those days and coaches were still called charabancs.
British Railways produced a claret and blue brochure describing the 19 special trains they were running to London for the final. Proper trains of between 12 and 16 coaches long. Three of them included dining coaches and I was going on the most exclusive of them from Snow Hill to the steps of the stadium at Wembley Hill.
Food for thought
The fare for all the trips was just over one pound but for precisely 1p more it was possible to have a four course lunch on the outward journey and a four course dinner on the return.
Perhaps I sensed then that it was going to be a once in a lifetime chance to indulge myself on a Villa excursion. My Civil Service salary was close to four quid per week.
The Barn Social Club on Brookvale Road had booked an entire dining coach to themselves on the previous cup trains and I was not going to miss out on this special day. I was especially privileged because I was the only person under drinking age allowed to go with them.
It’s a long way to Tipperary
This First World War tune rang out around Wembley Stadium that day. It was adapted by Villa supporters in mocking response to the Harry Lauder theme, ‘Keep Right on to the End of the Road’ sung by the Blues fans the year before.
Reading matter of choice
The train arrived at Wembley Hill station at 1.30pm and from there it was a few yards into the stadium. I do not even remember encountering any United supporters although I did buy the souvenir Manchester Evening News, apparently flown in by air, to go with the morning edition Mail and Sports Argus.
Admission
Admission was what now seems a derisory 17p but this was almost double the cost of standing at the Witton End at Villa Park back then. The price included tax. Over the intervening years I have often quoted the fact that the Villa played in the last FA Cup Final at which spectators were charged entertainment tax.
Telegram
There was never any doubt that the Villa were going to win. After all, just as they were leaving Birmingham the team had a telegram from a certain ‘FA CUP’ saying how much he was looking forward to being with them again on Saturday! Nobody in Manchester had the sense of humour to send one to their team!
Journey home and celebrations
The return train left Wembley at 17.44 and it was not the first to depart. Chaos would have resulted if United had equalised in those fraught last few minutes but in truth nobody expected the cup final to go to extra time in those days of the W formation. Every man behind the ball belonged to the rugby codes.
The train was time-tabled to take three hours to get back to Birmingham, allowing plenty of time for dining and wining. Except that most people would have preferred to be celebrating at the Social Club.
Even when they did get back there it was not long to go before last orders. Although being underage I was not even allowed into the club and simply went home. Soberly and reverently we returned to Villa Park next day for the march past.
Hands on the cup
This was something very few Villa supporters were able to do except at a cricket match against the Albion. It never occurred to anybody then to make money out of displaying it.Yesterday, we took a look at what Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is all about, and today I’m ready to deliver my initial impressions of Blizzard’s latest title. But before we get into that, I must admit that I was not one of those people to be overly excited when the game was first announced. Naturally, every game by Blizzard gets my attention, but I didn’t bother digging deep into what Hearthstone was all about, believing that it was essentially created for its TCG fans. You see, the last time I played any form of CCG was the Star Wars CCG, which was introduced in 1995. As much as I tried to get into Magic: The Gathering and even the World of Warcraft TCG, I felt customizable (or collectible) card games and their rules were too overwhelming to grasp. Does this sound like you? You should probably read on before you miss out on a great game.
This past Friday, the Internet and Twitterverse exploded when beta keys for Hearthstone were sent out. At that point in time, there were essentially two groups of gamers left on this planet: those that were begging for keys, and those that were expressing how great the title was. It didn’t seem like there was a group that just didn’t care, or even thought the game was bad. And maybe there were those other groups of gamers, but they’d eventually fall into the first group of wanting a key once their friends shared their experiences, or they caught a glimpse of the game in a livestream.
So truth be told, I fell into the former category. But the game piqued my interest, despite the fact that I was very much looking forward to the open beta of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. So much so in fact, that it covered up the wounds that I didn’t initially receive a beta key for Hearthstone. But throughout the day Friday, I watched more and more livestreams, read more and more about the game, and suddenly I thought, “I really need to get my hands on a beta key.” The great folks at Blizzard obliged and suddenly the MMORPG I had so anxiously been waiting to play for literally years, got shelved for a game I originally had no interest in.
Hearthstone‘s build-a-deck assistant is a great way to start learning how to build a deck
Would it be possible that Hearthstone would tug at my inner child? The one that grew up playing the original Warcraft: Orcs & Humans when 11-year-old me was supposed to be asleep? I mean, I hadn’t even been back to Azeroth since Cataclysm, no thanks to the release of Diablo III, which I ultimately sunk over 1,300 hours into.
Then Hearthstone loaded up and in true Blizzard cinematic form, I felt like a child again. Not because I loved CCGs, or Warcraft in general, but from the outset of the game, you know it’s going to be light hearted with one thing in mind: fun. Dare I say it, it felt like Blizzard of old. The game immediately tosses you into a series of tutorial matches that has you competing against some of Warcraft‘s most memorable characters. “Hah! It’s Hogger!” I thought to myself. And that’s when you notice it. Hearthstone has amazing production value for a game that’s goal is to be free-to-play. It simply pays homage to the Warcraft franchise in a classy fashion, from quotes like “Back to the Stockades with you, Hogger,” to battling Hemet Nesingwary, Hearthstone blasted me in the face with all the fond memories I had playing World of Warcraft. From the gorgeous and colorful maps that take you back to some of Azeroth’s most memorable places such as Stormwind and Orgrimmar, to the fireworks display at the end of a victory, Hearthstone felt nothing like a beta should.
Now it’s no surprise that a Blizzard product is polished. But this polished in beta? As I stepped through each tutorial battle, learning more and more about the mechanics to the game, I thought to myself, “This might be too simple for hardcore CCG fans.” In fact, I shared that sentiment with a fellow staff member on Ventrilo, wholeheartedly believing that Hearthstone was that simple of a game. But therein lies the beauty to every Blizzard product. Some way, somehow, Blizzard always finds a way to balance simplicity with fun, and is truly one of the few developers that can embrace the cliché of “easy to learn, difficult to master.” Whether it’s World of Warcraft, or StarCraft II, you always feel as if you can learn how to be good at a Blizzard title right from the beginning
Hearthstone offers a great way to learn the game by battling against the UI with varying difficulties
After the quick tutorial battles, where Blizzard succeeds in teaching you the basic fundamentals of the game, you’re introduced to playing against the AI in order to unlock the rest of the classes. Reprising the role of the Lady Jaina Proudmoore, Mage of Azeroth, you’re armed with your basic deck and you select one of the eight remaining classes to do battle against. As a Mage, I thought battling a Priest would be a good way to get my feet wet, so I challenged good ‘ol Anduin Wrynn and promptly saw what it’s like to be overconfident and to lose a game. “I take it back, this game isn’t that simple,” I blurted out in Ventrilo.
And that’s where I got hooked. Hearthstone, and admittedly CCGs, aren’t just for people that like to play with cards. There’s a degree of complexity and strategy involved that makes your brain tick in a way that few other genres can offer. That was even before I scratched the surface of trying to build a deck of my own. Playing Hearthstone is like gambling while playing Chess. Different players will have different ways of playing, whether it’s being aggressive or defensive, but where the game shines is that there’s no wrong way to play. You want to build a deck a certain way? There’s a good chance you can win with it. There’s also a good chance you can lose with it.
But that’s what makes Hearthstone so fun: losing. Sure it’s always frustrating to lose a game, and the most competitive gamers (myself included) have a certain distaste to failing. However, even when you lose in Hearthstone you feel if you had only just played that one card at a different time, or your luck was on your side and you drew a better hand, you could have won. I supposed that’s the intrigue of the entire CCG community, but I’ll be the first to admit that I have no clue what that’s like. What I do have a clue of is how much fun Hearthstone is, even if you’re not winning every single match.
The CCG genre may not be for everyone, with its barriers to entry in terms of cost and time. But Hearthstone is able to take everything that’s enjoyable about CCGs, strip away the complexities, and leave you with a game that’s just simply fun. I have a feeling that even the most hardcore of CCG players will find Hearthstone appealing, even when they’re losing.
Even in beta, Hearthstone has more polish than certain games that were recently released
Of course there’s a lot of unknowns about the game so far, especially since it’s still in closed beta. If Diablo III can be taken as an example, Blizzard could make drastic changes to Hearthstone based on community and player feedback. But I honestly find it hard to believe that the team will make any monumental changes to the core of Hearthstone. It appears that the team would rather focus on finding ways to polish the game while balancing the heroes and cards in the game. Then there’s the question of whether or not Hearthstone will become a game that’s simply pay-to-win. Let’s be honest here, Blizzard is a video game developer, and as a video game developer, they need revenue to survive. This is however, Blizzard’s first free-to-play game of this scale, so it’ll be interesting to see how careful it treads in balancing between free-to-play and play-to-win.
As a closing note, it’s refreshing to play Hearthstone for one major reason. The past few years haven’t been the best for Blizzard when it comes to their hardcore fans that grew up playing the original Warcraft and Diablo games. Diablo III, by all means is a great game, if it stood on its own. Diablo II fans for the most part, found the changes in the game to be frustrating, and as a result, didn’t live up to expectations. World of Warcraft has certainly lost some of its luster with its core fan base as well, as Blizzard tries its hardest to balance between casual and hardcore gamers. And that’s where I believe Hearthstone will succeed. It’s a game that’s not just designed to appeal to CCG fans, it’s designed to appeal to everyone. As someone that simply enjoys playing fun games, Hearthstone is exactly that.
Please note that this isn’t a review of Hearthstone by any means, but rather my first, honest impressions of the game. It does have its faults, but a more thorough post on that will come in the near future. It deserves more playtime before I begin to criticize it.FreedomPop has announced the first free mobile service plans for the iPhone. Last year the company launched the only free mobile phone service on select Android devices and now it's available on the iPhone. The free plan only includes 200 voice minutes, 500 texts, and 500MB of data per month, but it's hard to compete with free if you have modest needs.
Naturally, there are a couple of strings attached to the deal: Free plans are distributed by location and you have to enter your zip code, email, and physical address to see if you qualify. If you do, you can either purchase a refurbished 16GB iPhone 5 for $349 or bring your own Sprint-compatible iPhone 4, 4s, or 5 to one of FreedomPop's BYOD plans.
If you purchase the FreedomPop iPhone 5, you can choose from two plans:
Basic 200 Voice and Text – 200 voice minutes, 500 texts, 500MB of data – free Unlimited Monthly – unlimited voice, text, 500MB data – $5/month
If you already own a Sprint-compatible iPhone 4, 4s, or 5, the BYOD plans are:
Basic 200 Monthly – free – 200 voice minutes, 500 texts, 500MB of data Unlimited Monthly – first month free, $11/month – unlimited voice, text, 500MB data Unlimited Annual – $80/year ($6.67/month) – unlimited voice, text, voicemail 500MB data
FreedomPop has to create revenue to offset its free plans so brace yourself for a lot of up-sell offers, including rollover minutes ($4/month), usage alerts ($2/month), Premium 1GB ($10/month) and automatic top-up. Additional voice minutes and texts cost $0.01 each and additional data costs $0.025 per MB.
The most interesting new product is the FreedomPop Free Voice and Text app for iOS (free, App Store), which provides free voice, text, and voicemail service. Unfortunately, the app only works in the US currently, porting is "coming soon," and incoming text messages "might take up to 30 minutes to arrive."
Check out FreedomPop products and coverage map if you're looking for a free plan for a second smartphone, but read the fine print and make sure that you know what you're signing up for. I still think that T-Mobile's secret $30-per-month voice and data plan is the most cost-effective mobile voice and data service, but it isn't available for the iPhone.Risks and challenges
As with any manufacturer, if we are hugely successful then the
problem is keeping up with the demand for our product.
1. We have made the necessary preparations so we will be able to meet any scale of manufacturing needs.
2. Our product dies and molds have been tested and are ready for production, reducing lead time by 75% on product delivery. The manufacturing lines are in place and are ready to start assembling units immediately after this kickstarter campaign ends.
3. We have over 25 years of design and manufacturing experience making the highest quality of parts for companies in electronics,
automotive and green energy industries.
4. We are proud to manufacture this product in the USA. Creating new jobs and keeping them in the USA.
5. All prototypes were made by Transforming Designs Inc
manufactured in Chicago IL. This is where we plan to have all
the sub assemblies delivered, and where the final QC and assembly will take place.Barcelona are set to make a stunning?35million bid for Tottenham superstar Gareth Bale.The Spanish giants sent chief scout Albert Valentine to see the Wales international star in Tottenham's 3-1 win at Fulham on Sunday.Brace yourself: Tottenham are preparing for a bid from the European championsAnd reports in Spain say manager Pep Guardiola is now considering a firm offer for the winger.Bale is under contract at White Hart Lane until 2015 after penning a new deal in March.But the north London club's resolve is likely to be tested if the European champions submit a firm offer.Enter the dragon: Bale training with Wales earlier this weekDeep purple: Bale scored and set one up in the win over FulhamTottenham chairman Daniel Levy held firm in Chelsea's?40m pursuit of Luka Modric in the summer - and Spurs fans will be hoping for more of the same with Bale.A move to the Catalan giants however, would signal a difficult period for north London after rivals Arsenal reluctantly sold captain Cesc Fabregas in the summer.The 22-year-old has attracted interest from Real Madrid and Inter Milan in the past, but could find a move to the European champions difficult to resist.Although Bale operates the left wing at Tottenham, Guardiola sees the Wales star as an attacking left-back and the ideal replacement for Maxwell, Eric Abidal and Adriano, who are all seen as weak links.The Tottenham man's pace and ability to deliver to the killer ball from out wide would also mirror that of Dani Alves on the right.Bust-up: Liverpool are monitoring the Villa situationAccording to reports Barcelona are considering selling David Villa following an alleged bust-up with Lionel Messi.And Guardiola could use the cash from the sale of the Spain hitman, who on Thursday was linked with a move to Liverpool, to land Bale.Redknapp wants giant Llorente to lead Tottenham's attack after missing out on Damiao Liverpool plot sensational swoop for Villa amid rumours of Barca bust-up with Messi Managerless Leicester take Tottenham target Lavery on trial
Source: Daily_MailEarlier today, Castro neighborhood group Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza announced the final three designs for a reimagining of the plaza, one of the last stages of an international design competition.
During the next two weeks, community members will also have an opportunity to chime in on the design proposals.
The finalists are Berkeley-based Groundworks Office, San Francisco-based Kuth | Ranieri Architects and Perkins Eastman, also of San Francisco.
Redesign features include a permanent glass soap box skylight that casts a pink triangle onto the underground station below, a field of candle-like light fixtures and the word “hope” spelled out across the plaza grounds.
As we reported earlier this year, the city is required to make the plaza surrounding the Castro Muni Station compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). However, those plans were pushed back a year so project plans could also take the plaza’s historical significance into consideration.
PHOTO: SHANE DOWNING/HOODLINE
Working with the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza hosted two community meetings earlier this year and coordinated an international design competition.
33 designs were submitted, coming from as far away as Mobile, Alabama and Sweden.
In June, a panel of architects and technical advisory jurors—city employees who could weigh in on whether designs were feasible with city infrastructure—whittled those applications down to three.
A rendering from Perkins Eastman, one of the three finalists.
According to Andrea Aiello, the director of the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District and president of the Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza, the panel has already shared initial feedback with each of the three finalists earlier this summer.
She said she was also excited to share the shortlist with the larger community for additional comments.
A rendering from Kuth. | Image: Ranieri Architects
Each finalist is featured on a Neighborland site that includes videos, design renderings and survey questions for every proposal.
Rather than voting for their favorite design, community members are encouraged to leave feedback and comments on all three designs instead.
“The winning design will be selected based all of the comments,” Aiello said.
A rendering from Groundworks Office.
On September 21st, community input will end, and Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza will select the winning design.
The San Francisco Arts Commission, however, has the authority to make the final decision on the space’s eventual redesign.
Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza will also share the chosen design with SFMTA at the end of the month. The larger project, known as the Harvey Milk Plaza Accessibility Improvements Project, is scheduled to begin construction in 2020.
According to a press release, the design competition and subsequent plaza development were supported by a $500,000 donation from an anonymous community member.
Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza is also raising funds to secure an additional $10 million required to fund the plaza’s redesign, construction and maintenance.
“We have some really great proposals,” Aiello said, “but what we really need now is for the community to give us their feedback—what they like and what they don’t like, weaknesses and strengths.”Nexus 6 pre-orders have been a bit of a mess here in the U.S., with the majority of users still not able to throw their money at Google in exchange for this massive and elusive device. With everything running so, uh, smoothly (?), it's only logical that Google releases it to a dozen or so other Play Stores, right? Right.
OK, maybe I'm being a little overly-cynical here. It's not actually available anywhere else yet. It's just starting to show up in about 12 other countries (we'll update the pricing as we see it):
Australia – $869 w/tax (32GB) $929 w/ tax (64GB) Belgium - 649€ )32GB); 699€ (64GB) Canada – $749 (32GB); $799 (64GB) France – €649 (32GB); €699 (64GB) Germany – €649 (32GB); €699 (64GB) India – Rs.44,000 (32GB); Rs.49,000 INR (64GB) Italy – €649 (32GB); €699 (64GB) Japan – ¥75,150 (32GB); ¥85,540 (64GB) Netherlands Spain – €649 (32GB); €699 (64GB) Sweden – 6295 SEK (32GB); 6795 SEK (64GB) United Kingdom – £499 (32GB); £549 (64GB)
So yeah, it's big, it's expensive, and you still can't buy it. But at least you can look at it, right? Maybe everything will be in order soon.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Milk can go bad four hours into a blackout, even if it's kept in a closed refrigerator. But rather than letting a power outage make us feel powerless to store food, or otherwise live our lives, we can usually find inspiration among the timeless life hacks our ancestors passed down from simpler eras.
Some are obvious, like burning candles for light, burning wood for heat and wearing cotton to stay cool. Others, however, require a longer leap of faith. If you really need to preserve milk in a lengthy blackout, for example, you could try the old Russian and Finnish trick of dropping in a live frog.
People in Russia and Finland did this for centuries before modern refrigeration, and the technique reportedly survived into the 20th century in some rural areas. Yet iceboxes and electric refrigerators eventually made it obsolete, letting it fade from use and become seen as an old wives' tale.
Thanks to modern science, we now know the frog-in-milk method works — and why. Of course, science has also taught us about zoonotic diseases, so preserving milk with frogs isn't wise unless it's somehow a matter of survival. But even if this trick is too extreme for most power outages, the things we learn by studying it might still end up providing a big boost for both humans and frogs.
Amphibian pharmacists
In 2010, researchers from the United Arab Emirates reported finding more than 100 antibiotic substances in frog skins from around the world. Called peptides, these compounds make up the majority of frogs'
|
uffed the notion that he didn’t support enough African-American-driven measures: “If I go out there saying ‘black, black, black,’ do you think that will help black people?” he remarked to several black leaders in 2011.
Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the black community — perceived as ambivalent at best and pernicious at worst — has snarled the narrative of her political stance for much of the current campaign. In 1994, she ardently supported her husband’s intensely punitive crime bill, which disproportionately affected African-Americans, and echoes of that era reverberated during the tense primary season. She’s also been haunted by a 1996 speech where she engaged in the duplicitous game of dog-whistle politics. Latching on to coded language to describe black youth, she said: “They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators, no conscious, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.” No wonder some questioned her commitment to black America.
Who could have guessed that the man once dubbed “the first black president” would find himself in a such a racialized quandary? Yet there Bill was, so he apologized for the crime bill in an address to the NAACP in July 2015 — and because our society dictates that wives ought to accept equal blame for their husband’s actions, Hillary apologized as well during a primary debate.
But the seed had been planted. Though Hillary is wildly popular among older black voters, millennials are finding her a tough pill to swallow. By the end of May, she had amassed a lead over Bernie Sanders that ranged from 85 to 89 percent among black voters 45 and older, but lost the 29-and- under vote to Sanders. When it became clear she would become the party nominee, the Twitter generation vocalized their reluctance in hitching their support to her campaign with the hashtag #GirlIGuessImWithHer.
“Millennials don’t necessarily remember the Clinton administration in the ’90s in the way that you remember how much they attacked Hillary Clinton then,” notes Zerlina Maxwell, Hillary’s director of progressive media. “You know how we always talk about the concept of receipts? She has them — real, tangible working results that she’s worked toward to get for our community.”
Like Harris, Maxwell went to law school before immersing herself in the rippled pool of politics. She was a field organizer during Obama’s 2008 campaign and was elevated to social-media celebrity during the 2012 election when her informed political tweets took flight. In the off-season, she grew her profile by functioning as a political analyst on cable news and a contributor to publications like the Washington Post, Essence, and Feministing.
Maxwell’s well-documented advocacy against sexual assault is both potent and prescient. During a 2013 appearance on Fox’s Hannity, she presented the audacious suggestion that men ought to be taught not to rape as a practical tool in preventing sexual assault. Hannity was incredulous. His suggestion: Arm women with guns — never mind, as Maxwell pointed out, that most sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim already knows.
Maxwell’s role in the Clinton campaign places her firmly in her old stomping grounds. She relays key campaign messaging to “influencers,” as she calls them, such as popular feminists on social media, and she also pitches progressive media outlets for coverage. “Being a black woman in this campaign, it’s a lot, especially given what’s going on all in the news with black people, and especially when you’re running against Donald Trump, which can sometimes be emotionally exhausting. But that just makes the work here more important.”
“Did you send a message to Black Girl Magic?” Maxwell asks, looking at two colleagues to her left and right. “Yeah, one responded. They all know when to come for their photo.”
The Black Girl Magic email group is the glue that connects the sisterhood within Hillary for America. Not sisters in womanhood — that’s a different dynamic altogether — but sisters in blackness. The email group allows the women to do everything from share news articles to quickly informing all the black women in the office that they need to file into a conference room for a photo shoot for the Cut.
A member of that group is Brynne Craig, who serves as the national deputy director of state campaigns and political engagement. If you ask her what it means, she’ll tell you it means she does a little bit of everything, including overseeing individual state campaigns and Hillary for America’s political shop. It’s not her first campaign — she worked for Clinton during her 2008 run — but this one feels much different to her. “Black women are in all departments,” says Craig. “Sometimes on campaigns you only see the black people working on the political side, but we’re everywhere here, from design to finance. We’re in every facet of the campaign which is remarkable.”
For Craig, the campaign’s diversity also strikes a match to the beacon of hope for future elections. “Being in the room with many women who look like you and have a shared experience — it’s something that doesn’t often happen, but it’s very rewarding and gratifying,” she says, adding, “for a lot of people here, this is their first campaign. Hopefully they see this as normal.”
Of course there’s nothing normal about this election. The Democratic party’s first female presidential nominee stands a reasonable chance at holding court in the Oval Office. A former U.S. president might become the nation’s First Gentleman. Potentially, there will be 12-year-olds who will never know what it is to have a sitting white male president.
And then there’s Donald Trump. Working on the communication’s surgical “rapid-response” team, Crystal Carson pores over every tweet, speech, and message that is hurled from Trump’s side. Her job mandates that he is her daily obsession. After garnering enough intel about his latest campaign diatribe, she and a small team prepare responses on behalf of the campaign. “No day is typical because Donald Trump says something different … yeah, it’s hard to keep up,” Carson says.
To work for Hillary, Carson parted ways with her communications course of study at Georgetown University, though she plans to return after the election. For now, though, between responding to the latest exclamative tweets lobbed by Trump, she’s found a sense of joy working with the black women of the Clinton campaign. “We band together to talk about our frustrations and what we’re working on, and we’re learning from each other all the time.”
When you’re a woman and you’ve attained a level of success, the insults whirl. The Clinton women are intimately familiar with unsuppressed vitriol. Hillary is routinely pegged as a calculated robot, bankrupt of an authentic personality and innate likability. If that’s true, then the leader’s icy demeanor doesn’t trickle down to her staff. The black women within the campaign acknowledge that election life is hard, but they’ve grown to become family, “and I’m very protective of my family,” says Alexandria Phillips, one of the campaign’s media-relations foot soldiers.
In the waning weeks of the campaign, reports have suggested that black voters in the swing state of Florida lack the necessary enthusiasm to head to the polls in November and rally around Clinton. Is it frustrating to see black voters continue to doubt Clinton? “I’m an eternal optimist,” Harris says. “There’s too much at stake and she has too much to offer to get frustrated. There’s no time to waste.”
Photo: Bee Walker
Denise Horn
Director of African-American Media
Photo: Bee Walker
Brynne Craig
National Deputy Director of State Campaigns and Political Engagement
Photo: Bee Walker
Zerlina Maxwell
Progressive Media Director
Photo: Bee Walker
Neisha Blandin
Deputy Women’s Vote Director
Photo: Bee Walker
Ida Woldemichael
Senior Designer
Photo: Bee Walker
Maya Harris
Senior Policy AdvisorTwo of the best players in the NHL are currently mired in two of the worst goal-scoring slumps of their career, and they're starting to get quite a bit of attention for it.
In Philadelphia, it seems as if things are starting to get ugly for Claude Giroux following a run-in (well, perhaps it was more of a non-run-in) with the local media after he extended his current goal drought to 21 games (six games to end last season, 15 games to start this season) in a 3-0 loss to the New Jersey Devils. In that game, Devils enforcer Cam Janssen managed to pass Giroux on the goal-scoring leader board this season with his first of the season.
In Pittsburgh, Evgeni Malkin hasn't scored in his past nine games and while things aren't getting confrontational, they're just getting... well, let's call it emotional as the local press tries to read his "nonverbal signals," whatever the hell that means.
Consider this from the Tribune-Review's Rob Rossi following Pittsburgh's 4-2 loss in New York on Wednesday night.
Still, this Evgeni Malkin slump is a real concern. (Clearly, as was evident by the direction of that Game Story – and coach Dan Bylsma’s acknowledgment that it is a factor going forward.) Malkin declined comment Wednesday night after a ninth consecutive game without a goal. Do not read too much into that, as Malkin is not one to speak daily or after every game. That said, for as much as a reporter can, this reporter feels he is best positioned to read Malkin’s nonverbal signals, and the ones he is sending are disconcerting. He appears completely flummoxed over his inability to dominate – and the read here is this is not just about the 3 goals-14 points start to this season.
How dramatic. No word yet on what exactly it is about. But rest assured, it's something.
For some reason this always seems to happen with Malkin, and whenever he goes a few games without a goal there always seems to be a search for some deeper meaning, as if there's something else going on other than a great player not being able to buy a goal for a stretch. It's not the first time Malkin has experienced a slump like this, and he's always managed to bounce back. This isn't even the longest goal-scoring drought of his career. During the 2009-10 season he went 11 straight games without a goal and followed that up with an 11-game stretch where he scored eight goals.
That's how the game works sometimes. It wouldn't be unfair to call a player like Malkin or Giroux a streaky goal-scorer because every player in the NHL is a streaky goal-scorer. They score in bunches, and they sometimes go long stretches where nothing goes in.
It's sometimes very easy to forget that these types of streaks are very common throughout the NHL because we expect our great players to always be great. When these types of streaks involve some of the best players in the league -- and some of the highest paid players in the league -- they tend to get a lot of attention.
But they happen all the time, every season, and nobody, not even the best players in the league, are immune to them.
For Malkin, this is the fifth time in his career he's gone seven or more games without a goal. It's the ninth time Giroux has had such a streak. That might seem like a lot for players of their standing around the league. But it's not. It's not even close to being a lot.
Consider the table below which includes the top-15 goal-scorers in the NHL since the start of the 2006-07 season, and how many times they've gone five or more games without a goal over that stretch, how many times they've gone more than seven games without a goal, as well as the longest goal drought during that time.
These are some of the best and most productive players in the world over the past seven seasons, and every one of them, with the exceptions of Kovalchuk and Ovechkin, has struggled through at least one stretch of 10 or more games without a goal.
Most of them have experienced one or two seven-game (or more) stretches without a goal per season. They don't appear on the table above, but does anybody remember the time Ryan Getzlaf scored one goal over 20 games? Or when Anze Kopitar went 26 games last season with only one goal?
It happens.
If these guys experience slumps like this, imagine what it's like for the second, third, and fourth liners of the league.
Hockey's a weird game sometimes. It's a fast, physical, fluky series of event that can produce crazy results in individual games or small stretches throughout the season. You have players flying around the ice, chasing a puck that's wildly bouncing off the walls as they try to pick a corner on the net that's the size of a coffee can. Sticks get in passing and shooting lanes. Deflections go wide. Shots ring off the post or crossbar a quarter of an inch from being in the back of the net.
There's only so many goals to go around, and sometimes no matter how hard you try, how hard you play, or how well you play, the puck just isn't going to go in for you. It's true on a team level and an individual level.
If these streaks happen in the middle of February, they probably don't get as much attention
If these streaks happen in the middle of February when there is a large sampling of games around them they probably don't get as much attention. But because they're happening at the beginning of the season it stands out a little more. Claude Giroux doesn't have a goal yet? Outrageous. Evgeni Malkin only has three goals and is only averaging a point per game? Something must be wrong!
The thing about Giroux and Malkin right now is that they're not really that far off from their normal career levels.
Even during his peak year, the 2011-12 season when he was competing for the scoring title, Giroux was never a huge goal-scorer. His 28 goals that season not only didn't even lead his own team (that was Scott Hartnell), but they placed him 37th in the league, sandwiched between Alex Burrows and Andrew Ladd. Very good. Top-line material. But hardly a contender for the Rocket Richard award. Goal-scoring has never been the biggest part of his game.
Based on his shot totals this season and career shooting numbers Giroux is really only about three goals behind where you would expect him to be at this point in the season. That's hardly a huge drop. One or two bounces go his way over the past 15 games and it's probably an entirely different situation for him (maybe that doesn't make a huge difference in the standings -- because it wouldn't, but at least he wouldn't be getting dogged about a huge slump). At some point this season he's probably going to have a hat trick, or a six or seven game stretch where he puts five shots in the back of the net and everything balances out.
The same is true for Malkin, as he is only two goals behind his expected goal output at this point based on his career shooting numbers. Though, with Malkin his shot numbers are a bit down to start the season as he averages 2.81 shots per game. His career average is 3.66. Some of that could be attributed to the revolving door of mediocrity that has been the Penguins' second line this season as they try to find replacements for the injured James Neal and Beau Bennett. Jussi Jokinen has filled in admirably, but they've been forced to try the likes of Chuck Kobasew and Jayson Megna on his line, as well as double shifting him at times on the fourth line with Tanner Glass and Craig Adams, and it's just not the same.
Yes, these guys are fighting it right now and the puck isn't going in for them. It's happened before, and based on their track records in the NHL it's probably not going to be long until they bust out of it.
More from SB Nation NHL:
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• NHL could change rules after Caps-Flyers brawl
• The Sabres could be historically bad
• College puck coverage at SBN College Hockey
• The Goal: The rivalry between two high schools where hockey is lifeMore than 221,000 students applied for undergraduate admission to the University of California for next fall, shattering records for the 13th straight year and fueling concerns that qualified students won’t have a shot at getting into the campus of their choice.
Five of the campuses received more than 100,000 applications each, as students apply to more and more schools — some more than two dozen — out of fear their top choices won’t say yes.
Related Articles The University of California is 150 and nationally ranked – and continues to raise tuition “A lot of us are scared we’re going to get rejected,” said 17-year-old Melissa Burger, of Hayward, who is applying to about a dozen schools, including six UCs, and that’s typical among her friends.
UC got 119,626 freshman applications from high school seniors in California and 34,347 applications from students hoping to transfer from California community colleges.
The figures, released Thursday by the UC Office of the President, show a 5.7 percent overall increase in applications from last year, with each of the nine campuses that educate undergraduates posting gains — ranging from 4.6 percent at Berkeley to 12.4 percent at Riverside.
The most popular campuses among California residents are UCLA, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara.
UC declined to make an official available for a phone interview.
But Stephen Handel, associate vice president of undergraduate admissions, said in a statement: “Marked increases in California applicants from throughout the state and from a range of backgrounds demonstrate that the university’s efforts to get the word out about the accessibility of a UC education are clearly paying off.”
Yet many of the schools aren’t particularly accessible to students. After rising in 2016 by more than 15 percent, the number of in-state freshmen admitted for this fall dropped 1.7 percent.
It’s unclear what the admission rate will be for next fall, but the rate for in-state students at Berkeley in 2017 was 19.7 percent. At UCLA, it was just 14.6 percent, well below the overall 23.3 percent admission rate for out-of-state students.
“Enrollment is not keeping pace with applications now,” said Wei-Li Sun, a UC Berkeley graduate who now helps students apply for admission to UC. “There’s not enough room for students.”
Sun said some of the students she advise now apply to as many as 25 schools to try to maximize their chances of getting into a highly ranked university. And with the UCs becoming increasingly competitive, some ultimately choose to go out of state, lured by good scholarships and the promise of admission to competitive majors such as engineering.
“I think the competition has definitely gotten much worse,” she said, adding that a 4.2 GPA used to give a student a pretty good shot at UCLA or UC Berkeley. But now those can be “reach” schools, she said.
Nithin Ravi, a 17-year-old senior from Glendale, Arizona, has applied to around 20 schools, including several UCs.
“I can maximize my chances” by applying to schools across the country, he said. “Admission rates are so low nowadays.”
While he’d like to go to school in California, he appreciates the challenge of being a California student hoping to go to school in his or her home state.
The acceptance rate at the University of Arizona, he noted, is nearly 80 percent. But not a single UC campus is that accessible to California residents.
After a state audit suggested last year that UC lowered its admission standards for out-of-state students, the UC regents who oversee the system took action. They voted to cap the percentage of out-of-state and overseas students at each campus to 18 percent (with a few exceptions for campuses already above that limit) for the first time in the system’s nearly 150 year history.
And amid pushback from California families who say their students have been pushed out of the competitive system, UC agreed to add 10,000 more California students by 2018-19. The system says it’s on track to meet the overall goal.
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Embattled Peralta College chancellor takes ‘early retirement’ In 2017, the middle half of freshmen admitted to UCLA had high school GPAs between 4.13 and 4.31 and ACT composite scores of between 30-34. UC Berkeley’s scores were similarly high.
“I think a lot of kids in high school are really stressing themselves out to the point that it’s not good for their mental health,” said Melissa Burger, who asked to use her middle name because acceptances haven’t been sent out and she doesn’t want to jeopardize her chances. “But they still do it.”Recently I decided to give Julia a try. Julia is a relatively new scientific programming language that is free, open source, and fast. Besides the huge appeal of a performant high level scripting language, Julia intrigued me because the language actually has a reasonable type system and seems to be well-designed (unlike Matlab, which Julia is quite similar to). I recently implemented low-rank matrix approximations (in Matlab) for my numerical linear algebra class, so I figured reimplementing part of the algorithm in Julia would be a good way to get my feet on the ground in Julia land.
Rather than implementing all of the routines required to compute the low-rank approximation to a matrix, I just implemented the QR decomposition of a tridiagonal matrix using Householder reflections. To learn more about this algorithm, I highly recommend checking out section 3.4.1 of "Applied Numerical Linear Algebra" by Demmel. I was quite interested in the performance of Julia, so I iteratively optimized my algorithm and compared each version to an implementation of the same algorithm using Python and numpy.
Super-naive QR decomposition This extremely inefficient implementation mainly serves to illustrate how to compute the QR decomposition of a matrix using Householder projections. function td_qr1 ( T ) # naive as possible implementation Qt = eye ( size ( T )... ) R = copy ( T ) I = copy ( Qt ) for i in 1 :( size ( R, 1 ) - 1 ) u = [ zeros ( i - 1 ), householder! ( R [ i : end, i ])] P = I - 2.* u * u'R = P * R Qt = P * Qt end Qt ', R end In iteration $i$ of the loop, the Householder projection $P$ makes elements below the diagonal of column $i$ equal to 0. This leads to $R$ being upper triangular by the end of the loop. Note that this loop explicitly forms the full $P$ matrix in memory. This leads to the poor performance of this implementation: ~0.31s for 200x200 matrix. We can slightly optimize this implementation by noting that P * R == (I - 2.* u * u') * R == R - 2.* u * u' * R (and the same logic applies for Qt ). This lets us replace P = I - 2.* u * u'R = P * R Qt = P * Qt with M = 2.* u * u'R -= M * R Qt -= M * Qt This very small "optimization" caused no significant change in run-time.
Cutting down the number of FLOPs Here we'll take advantage of the tridiagonal form of input matrix $T$. To recall, a matrix is tridiagonal if it is 0 everywhere except for its superdiagonal, main diagonal, and subdiagonal. Because of the tridiagonal form of $T$, the column vector $u$ in the above iterations only contains 2 non-zero elements (the diagonal and the subdiagonal). This means $P = I - 2uu^T$ is equal to $I$ on all rows except for 2. Thus, on iteration $i$ of the algorithm, we only need to multiply rows $i$ and $i+1$ of $R$ and $Q^T$. Here is this optimization implemented: function td_qr3 ( T ) Qt = eye ( size ( T )... ) R = copy ( T ) for i in 1 :( size ( R, 1 ) - 1 ) # now M is 2x2 u = householder! ( R [ i : i + 1, i ]) M = 2.* u * u'# P = I - M # only operate on rows i and i+1 R [ i : i + 1, :] -= M * R [ i : i + 1, :] Qt [ i : i + 1, :] -= M * Qt [ i : i + 1, :] end Qt ', R end This optimization gives huge performance gains both in terms of forming the matrix $M$ (as it is just $2 \times 2$ rather than $n \times n$) as well as the matrix multiplications by $R$ and $Q^T$. This implementation takes only ~0.005s for 200x200 matrix, making it ~23 times faster than the previous implementation. As the code just became much faster, all future benchmarking will be done with 1500x1500 tridiagonal matrices. This implementation takes ~0.36s for 1500x1500 matrix. Let's take even more advantage of the tridiagonal structure of $T$. Our previous optimization only depended on the fact that $T$ was zero beneath its first subdiagonal, but we can still improve our performance by exploiting that $T$ is also zero above its first superdiagonal. Namely, on iteration $i$ of the main loop, only the first $i+2$ columns have at least one non-zero element in rows $i$ and $i+1$. This means on iteration $i$ we only need to deal with exactly 2 rows and $i+2$ columns of $R$ and $Q^T$. Here's what the updated code looks like: function td_qr4 ( T ) Qt = eye ( size ( T )... ) R = copy ( T ) for i in 1 :( size ( R, 1 ) - 1 ) u = householder! ( R [ i : i + 1, i ]) M = 2.* u * u'# only multiply the columns we need to multiply upper = min ( i + 2, size ( R, 2 )) R [ i : i + 1, 1 : upper ] -= M * R [ i : i + 1, 1 : upper ] Qt [ i : i + 1, 1 : upper ] -= M * Qt [ i : i + 1, 1 : upper ] end Qt ', R end Profiling this code gives ~0.19s for 1500x1500 matrix.
A brief Python interlude For comparision purposes, I implemented the exact same algorithm in Python with numpy. Here's the code: def tridiag_qr ( T ): R = T. copy () Qt = np. eye ( T. shape [ 0 ]) for i in xrange ( T. shape [ 0 ] - 1 ): u = householder ( R [ i : i + 2, i ]) M = np. outer ( u, u ) R [ i : i + 2, :( i + 3 )] -= 2 * np. dot ( M, R [ i : i + 2, :( i + 3 )]) Qt [ i : i + 2, :( i + 3 )] -= 2 * np. dot ( M, Qt [ i : i + 2, :( i + 3 )]) return Qt. T, R One small difficulty I had with this translation was the difference in indexing between Julia and Python. Slicing in Python does not include the end index, but slicing in Julia does. Profiling this codes gives ~0.16s for 1500x1500 matrix (edit: This previously read 0.25s, that was for numpy.linalg.qr). This is quite similar to the 0.19s from the equivalent Julia code, and this is not surprising due to most of the run-time being spent in BLAS calls. I do not know of anyway to speed up this Python code (without using either another language or an external library). The optimizations that I make to the Julia code below would not work with Python due to the lack of JIT (and relatively poor performance) of Python.
JIT == Awesome I've heard that most linear algebra libraries are particularly well optimized for very rectangular matrices (such as the $2 \times n$ matrices we are using) and also that unrolling loops often speeds up Julia code due to Julia's JIT. This convinced me that there might be some performance gains if I unroll the matrix multiplication. Here's the new code: function td_qr5 ( T ) Qt = eye ( size ( T )... ) R = copy ( T ) for i in 1 :( size ( R, 1 ) - 1 ) u = householder! ( R [ i : i + 1, i ]) M = 2.* u * u'# inline the multiplication for j in 1 : min ( i + 2, size ( R, 2 )) tmp = M [ 1, 1 ].* R [ i, j ] + M [ 1, 2 ].* R [ i + 1, j ] R [ i + 1, j ] -= M [ 2, 1 ].* R [ i, j ] + M [ 2, 2 ].* R [ i + 1, j ] R [ i, j ] -= tmp tmp = M [ 1, 1 ].* Qt [ i, j ] + M [ 1, 2 ].* Qt [ i + 1, j ] Qt [ i + 1, j ] -= M [ 2, 1 ].* Qt [ i, j ] + M [ 2, 2 ].* Qt [ i + 1, j ] Qt [ i, j ] -= tmp end end Qt ', R end Besides the hopefully optimized machine code the JIT is generating, inlining the matrix multiplication also allowed me to fuse the loops required for the two seperate matrix multiplications. The profiler confirms that Julia's JIT did a good job, as this implementation takes ~0.05s for a 1500x1500 matrix. This is a 4x speed increase just from unrolling a loop!
Final step: Cache optimality Julia arrays are stored in column-major order. This means that A[i, j] is directly next to A[i+1, j] in memory and that we want to iterate over columns rather than rows whenever possible to take full advantage of CPU caching. In both the computation of $R$ and $Q^T$, I was iterating over rows. However, I really want $Q$, not $Q^T$. Thus I can have the double-win of getting to iterate over columns rather than rows, and not needing to compute transpose $Q^T$ to get $Q$ after finishing the loop. Here's the new code: function td_qr6 ( T ) Q = eye ( size ( T )... ) R = copy ( T ) for i in 1 :( size ( R, 1 ) - 1 ) u = householder! ( R [ i : i + 1, i ]) M = 2.* u * u'for j in 1 : min ( i + 2, size ( R, 2 )) tmp = M [ 1, 1 ].* R [ i, j ] + M [ 1, 2 ].* R [ i + 1, j ] R [ i + 1, j ] -= M [ 2, 1 ].* R [ i, j ] + M [ 2, 2 ].* R [ i + 1, j ] R [ i, j ] -= tmp # now cache optimal and no need to transpose tmp = M [ 1, 1 ].* Q [ j, i ] + M [ 1, 2 ].* Q [ j, i + 1 ] Q [ j, i + 1 ] -= M [ 2, 1 ].* Q [ j, i ] + M [ 2, 2 ].* Q [ j, i + 1 ] Q [ j, i ] -= tmp end end Q, R end Benchmarking this code shows each iteration takes ~0.03 seconds for a 1500x1500 matrix. This is about ~2x as fast as without cache optimizations, and about 6x as fast as td_qr4, which performs the exact same math.IN AN EMPHATIC speech at Dublin Castle today, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that Ireland’s EU Presidency will bring new hope, new possibility and new confidence to Europe’s citizens.
He said the first six months of 2013, when Ireland holds the Presidency, will be about three “simple but crucial words” – stability, jobs and growth.
“Today, Europe is working hard to move beyond the recent economic crisis which has affected so many citizens’ and families’ lives.
“We know all too well here in Ireland the huge sacrifices the crisis has meant. The people of Europe and Ireland need to know there is progress. That there is a next step to recovery.”
Kenny spoke during an official ceremony which saw the EU flag hoisted above Dublin Castle to mark the start of the EU Presidency, the 40-year-anniversary of Ireland’s membership of the Union and the beginning of the European Year of Citizens. The Irish tricolour was also raised.
Comparing today to 1973, when Ireland’s accession was completed, the Taoiseach noted that the number of people in third-level education is six-times greater and the number of women working outside the home has increased almost three-fold.
“Since 1973 our Union has strengthened, deepened and our proud European family has grown,” he added.PHILADELPHIA -- Defensive line coach Jim Washburn was fired Monday, the latest shakeup for the sinking Philadelphia Eagles.
Coach Andy Reid dismissed the abrasive Washburn just hours after the team's eighth straight loss, 38-33 at the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. Former defensive line coach Tommy Brasher will replace Washburn.
This was the third major move on defense in seven weeks. Defensive coordinator Juan Castillo was fired on Oct. 16. Two-time Pro Bowl defensive end Jason Babin was released last week.
The Eagles (3-9) are mired in their worst losing streak since 1968 and searching for answers after opening the season with Super Bowl aspirations.
"I think it's the best thing for the Philadelphia Eagles and this football team that I made that move," Reid said. "This was a move that I made. Nobody else made this move. This isn't a move to save my job. This is a move that I think needed to be done now, and so I did it now."
Reid is assured of just his third losing season in 14 years, and could be coaching his final games in Philadelphia. Owner Jeffrey Lurie already said the Eagles needed to make "substantial improvement" after going 8-8 last year and that a similar record would be "unacceptable."
Regardless, Reid has one year left on his contract and is proceeding with important decisions. After firing Washburn, Reid said rookie Nick Foles would be the starting quarterback the rest of the season, even when Michael Vick returns from a concussion.In a bizarre, Soviet-style move, the White House has threatened to veto the intelligence budget unless everyone accepts the FBI frame up of Dr. Bruce Ivins. As Bloomberg writes:
President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.
A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies' inspector general "would undermine public confidence" in an FBI probe of the attacks "and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions," Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees. Given that an FBI investigation into a specific crime has nothing to do with the budget or any of OMB’s other core responsibilities, it seems that Orszag simply drew the short straw for this little assignment.
As I wrote Thursday:
The FBI says that the anthrax case is closed, and that they have proved that Dr. Bruce Ivins did it.
But Congress is not convinced.
On March 3, 2010, Representative Holt called for a new investigation:
Last week, [Congressman Holt] succeeded in including language in the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill that would require the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community to examine the possibility of a foreign connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks.
"The American people need credible answers to all of these and many other questions. Only a comprehensive investigation--either by the Congress, or through the independent commission I've proposed in the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act (H.R. 1248)--can give us those answers," Holt said in a letter to the Chairmen of the House Committees on Homeland Security, Judiciary, Intelligence, and Oversight and Government Reform.
[Here's the letter.]
Dear Chairmen Thompson, Conyers, Reyes, and Towns,
I am writing to ask that your committees, either individually or jointly, conduct a probing investigation of our government's handling of what has been known as the "Amerithrax" investigation.
As you are aware, last week the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it was formally closing its investigation into the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, commonly known as the "Amerithrax" investigation. The Bureau has maintained since his suicide in 2008 that the late Dr. Bruce Ivins was their principal suspect in the attacks, a conclusion reaffirmed by the FBI when it closed the case last week--despite the fact that the FBI's entire case against Ivins is circumstantial, and that the science used in the case is still being independently evaluated.
To date, there has been no comprehensive examination of the FBI's conduct in this investigation, and a number of important questions remain unanswered. We don't know why the FBI jumped so quickly to the conclusion that the source of the material used in the attacks could only have come from a domestic lab, in this case, Ft.
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“You have to decide where your priorities lie; in football there is an enormous amount of pressure to spend it all on the players.” Parish describes the hype that accompanies the transfer window as “a kind of false prophecy that occurs about a ‘who spent what’ league table, and fans now believe that this table is where you are going to end up and that somehow, because of this chase, if I spend more money than all of them therefore I will do better, but it’s just not a correlation.”
Parish warns that clubs “can blindly follow that plan to oblivion” and that plans must be flexible. “You have to be prepared to react, there may be a need to divert funds in January. The absolute priority is to stay in this division.”
Beyond this, he lists the rebuilding of the main stand, improving the ground and the academy as vitally important. “Our fans care about the make-up of the team, they want to see local boys playing in the team.” One of the most notable products of the academy in recent years has been Wilfried Zaha and Parish identifies the emergence and development of Zaha as the tipping point for Palace.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wilfried Zaha celebrates with manager Alan Pardew after scoring for Crystal Palace against Liverpool. Photograph: Carl Recine/Reuters
Zaha made his full debut in the first match of Parish’s reign in August 2010 and he marked his arrival with a goal. The youngster has been a sort of talisman for the improvements in the club’s position. “We felt like we had a star who we could build something around so we upped the budget slightly and then we got into this division with a relatively low wage bill, which gave us the high margin which in turn gave us the cash surplus.”
Parish admits it was a gamble that paid off in the end. “In every business where you are miles behind, if you want to do it quickly you need to pull a rabbit out of the hat. You can either throw lots of money at it or you can put together a plan with some kind of acumen and a bit of luck that you can beat the system slightly.”
The faith shown in Zaha was vindicated as he was instrumental in getting the club promoted in 2013, scoring both goals in the play-off semi-final and earning the match-winning penalty in the final. There was a twist in the plot as Zaha was sold to Manchester United in January 2013, becoming Alex Ferguson’s last ever purchase, but he was instantly loaned back to Palace for the rest of the season. His time in Manchester United was a struggle as first David Moyes and then Louis Van Gaal did not include him in their plans. Eventually he returned to his original club a bit battered and bruised by his experience at Old Trafford.
But Zaha is Palace’s outlier, the only academy player to have made the grade in the first-team in the last five years. It is fascinating to hear how one player’s development was so critical to the club’s fortunes and it also highlights one of Parish’s deep frustrations with the business of football. While he maintains that the current Palace squad are “a good bunch of lads who don’t cause too many problems” he admits that “you do get situations that are very frustrating because you don’t feel like you have got any tools to deal with them”.
“The biggest difference between running my advertising business and a football club is that I had a labour force where there was nobody who was absolutely intrinsic to my business. If somebody left, they left and you could control your wages and costs much more. In football all of the power is with the players and the agents and very little with the club. We have very little control over our assets.” And so, when asked what one thing he would do to improve football, he demands more transparency. “I would publish all the transfer fees and all the agent fees on every deal. The clubs should have more knowledge.”
Having enjoyed the ride so far, he is still very much a hands-on chairman, insisting on going to every match. “I need to be there, so I’m very circumspect about missing any game.” Having helped to restore a sense of pride to the club he loves, Parish is hoping to take them to the next level. He will have to avoid the trap so many other businesspeople have fallen into in the past and ensure the fans in charge of Palace do not lose their minds.
• This article is from The Agony and the Ecstasy
• Follow Richard Foster on TwitterSEATTLE — Grenada is a Caribbean island and one of the smallest independent countries in the western hemisphere. It is known as the Spice island due to being the world’s second-largest producer of nutmeg, as well as being a major manufacturer of mace, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. The most impressive aspect of its independence is the government’s focus on taking women’s issues seriously and finding ways to protect them from any violence that may arise.
Specifically, the Grenada National Organization of Women (GNOW) was launched on April 23, 1995, to address equality and women’s empowerment in Grenada. It is a non-governmental organization promoting women and is involved in the development of economic, social and political dimensions. Predominately, its mission is to “create a change in the socialization and culture of power relations between women and men.”
GNOW has worked to reform the narrative of gender-based violence. In 2005, several projects were launched that focused on gender, sexuality and HIV/AIDS projects. This was a “behavior modification and awareness programme aimed at changing the gendered ideologies about sexuality and empowering women to negotiate safe sex.”
Since then, GNOW has created a support network for all types of gender-based violence, beginning with the “formation and maintenance of an informal Community Support Network of Volunteers” expanding through Grenada and northeast towards the Grenadine Islands. Specifically, Carriacou police officers were trained on how to respond to domestic violence, and legislation was passed detailing the intricacies of sexual harassment, leading to protocols on handling domestic and sexual violence by both police officers and medical personnel.
In the government’s 2006-2009 Strategic Plan, the fundamental priority was women’s empowerment in Grenada. The goal was to eradicate poverty and hunger among women, as that is the only way they can realize their full potential. By having the same access that men have to economic opportunities to provide for their families, women can select where they want to work without the fear of sexual harassment.
As women were becoming a leading voice in the country, International Women’s Day (March 8) and the Days to Protest Violence Against Women (November 25 – December 10) became important events to commemorate the activism for women’s empowerment in Grenada. This past year on International Women’s Day, Lorice Pascal, the project coordinator for GNOW, revealed the launch of a two-year projected called Empowering Rural Women Through Horticulture for Sustainable Livelihood. Approximately 120 women between the ages of 18-60 would be trained to plant and grow exotic flowers.
As the project was funded by the Commonwealth Countries League of Women in the U.K., Pascale strove to create a link between Grenada’s winning streak at the Chelsea Flower Show and the ability to maintain an economical and conservational regime by empowering women through this interactive project, with the main purpose being the alleviation of poverty among these women.
The greatest achievement of women’s empowerment in Grenada has been representation in leadership roles. Currently in Parliament, 33 percent of the members of the House of Representatives are women. This is a large increase from the 13 percent of women in the last Parliament. In the Senate, two of its 13 members, including the President of the Senate, are women. In 2013, Cecile La Grenade was sworn in as Governor-General, becoming the first female head of state in Grenada’s history.
These equal opportunities for women have reduced sexual harassment and violence, as women are treated as human beings and capable of being leaders. Through a continued focus on women’s empowerment in Grenada, women can garner respect and help advance the country as a whole.
– Nicole Suarez
Photo: FlickrIn a three-minute segment on your Monday episode of “The Herd” you managed to take aim at your employer, the video game community and everyone involved in producing the “Heroes of the Dorm” tournament, which was broadcast on ESPN2 over the past weekend. Rather than fight your antipathy with anger, I challenge you. I challenge you to give competitive video games a chance.
The following is a response to Colin Cowherd who on April 27 addressed “Heroes of the Dorm” on his ESPN Radio program “The Herd.” “Heroes of the Dorm” was a televised tournament of Blizzard’s PC game “Heroes of the Storm.” The competition aired on ESPN2 on April 26. Cowherd’s comments can seen in the video at the end of the letter.
I ask this of you because I enjoy “The Herd,” but your closed minded approach to competitive video games is out of character. You can either embrace change or be the “get off my lawn” guy you often refer to. Professionals in this industry who have little interest in considering change or looking toward the future lack value. I don’t want to see ESPN leave you in the past if the unlikely day comes when your superiors send you to cover a “Call of Duty” tournament.
Change has been alive and well in sports within your lifetime. The NBA adopted the three-point line. Professional football and baseball accepted instant replay. Popularity of the World Series of Poker exploded in the early 2000s partially because of ESPN’s support. Now competitive gaming is more popular than ever, which is why your employer sees it as viable programming. Do you really want to be the voice that speaks against sports’ natural progression? Those who don’t embrace change are likely to be shouting on the sideline while the medium continues to charge forward.
What does it hurt by accepting competitive gaming? Your negativity towards the scene was clear. You didn’t care enough to even get the name of the game right. Rather than approaching this content with vitriol, try consideration. How can it negatively impact your career by embracing video game-related content, or at the very least tolerating it?
Being bullied by the sports community is nothing new to video game lovers. We’ll get over it. Rather than getting involved in a shouting match that would be a good fit for your show, treat this as an opportunity to broaden your horizons. I challenge you to make an effort. Do some research. Find out why the commentators you mocked were so appropriately enthusiastic about what they were covering. Discover why this event was substantial enough to be aired on your network, or why it was held in a sold out venue.
The definition of “sports” has evolved even in ESPN’s 36-year history. That’s why having one network isn’t enough anymore. ESPN2, ESPN News and ESPN3 online are needed to encompass today’s broad term of “sports.” What’s gained by locking out competitive gaming when there’s clearly room for it? Or perhaps the better question is, why are you willing to retire because it’s here?
Your listener,
Max ParkerOn purchasing ‘flying’ Argentinian winger ‘Jonas’ from Real Mallorca in 2008, manager-at-the-time Kevin Keegan was quoted as saying:
[quote] “He’s an exciting player and I’m sure our fans will love watching him… He has got it in him to be thought of every bit as much as David Ginola, definitely!”[/quote]
Keegan signed Gutierrez with his typically attacking-minded tactics in place, expecting the wide man to get ‘bums off seats’ and give Newcastle the balance and forward threat they had craved for so long. And, in his earlier performances, the boy didn’t disappoint!
Toon fans soon got to see what he was capable of – that drive and guile to take players out of the game so easily, skilfully manoeuvring past full-backs and producing (arguably temperamental) crosses for the frontmen.
However, his approach to English football has since changed. Whether by his own doing or down to management, Jonas is not considered a real attacking option at Newcastle these days, playing a more central role in midfield and rarely taking options to get into the final third.
Jonas Gutierrez Premier League Career
NUFC_Stats looked into the numbers to see exactly what has changed since Gutierrez’s first season in English top flight football.
It is very clear that, despite being brought to the club with attacking premises in mind, Gutierrez has very much flattered to deceive on the goal-scoring and assist front – just 5 goals and 10 assists in 99 Premier League since his arrival from Spain!
In terms of creating chances, Jonas has been somewhat inconsistent, but a chance created every 86 mins of a game on average is hardly worth shouting about, which explains the low number of assists in his game.
Jonas’ cross production and accuracy has been inconsistent also, but what can be seen to have deteriorated is his production of successful dribbles per game – starting at over 2 per game in his first season to less than 1 per game on average this season.
However, where it gets pretty ‘meaty’, is when pondering his ‘dueling’ statistics. In his first season in the Premier League, Gutierrez was throwing himself into everything – 3 tackles, 1 aerial and 18.3 ground duels per game. Over the next 2 seasons, those figures gradually depleted, until recently, where, not only have some reached their highest summits, but Jonas Gutierrez’s win percentage of his ‘battles’ have reached very pleasing heights. Throw into that an increase in pass accuracy over the years, and the criticism of a Newcastle winger slowly begins to transform into praise of a Toon combative midfielder!!
The days of Jonas beating full backs and creating hatful’s of chances (if ever) have dispersed into the thick of the Tyne Fog, leaving a Pardew-coached, battling midfielder who slows the tempo of the game down when necessary, keeps possession and wins countless free kicks through superb shielding of the ball, balance and strength (Gutierrez was the most fouled player in the League last season and is again this season).
Gutierrez has been deployed of late as part of a holding midfield unit in the 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 shapes Pardew uses, with his instructions blatantly similar to that given to the likes of Tiote and Anita in terms of pitch coverage.
In his 5 games this season, Jonas has barely ventured into the opponents half and the below ‘heat map’ graphics of Jonas’ possession highlight that exact notion. There will be those that argue that as a left midfielder in a 4-4-2, Gutierrez should be playing higher, creating more – but, this is a player Pardew has obviously worked on behind the scenes on a new role, something he’s not going to change for 1 game.
This is mostly applicable when Hatem Ben Arfa (HBA) is in the same team – HBA is not a ‘tracking’ player and Newcastle need all they can get out of their mercurial Frenchman, so in set ups such as 4-4-2, there will be the license for him to get forward as much as possible. There must be compensation though and that’s where Jonas fits in.
The ‘heat maps’ of Jonas’ first 6 Premier League games in the 2008/09 season compared to his last 6 are fairly startling! The Argentinian was very much a ‘loose cannon’ on his arrival, his play and position was sporadic and he ventured into the opposition’s half at every opportunity.
Of late, ‘SpiderMan’ rarely gets possession any further than the half way line – the graphic highlighting his transformation from a flying winger to a more combative and defensive minded midfielder.
So, what have we proved? Well, quite simply, it’s time to stop looking at Jonas as a provider. Alan Pardew has spotted traits in his South American that he has used to mould him into a more disciplined, stable player. Gone are the days, especially in the league and away from home, that Gutierrez will be expected to play as wide support to the likes of Ba and CIsse – Jonas is now an integral part of Newcastle’s central midfield and/or cover and support to Davide Santon when playing more left afield.
It’s time to stop glancing at the goals & assists stats where this one is concerned – look instead at his position holding, passing, and more combative numbers.
Images and Table courtesy of NUFC_Stats× Federal Government’s Ban on Medical Marijuana Quietly Ended
Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government’s prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy.
The bill’s passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates. It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana.
Under the provision, states where medical pot is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations. Agents would be prohibited from doing so.
The Obama administration has largely followed that rule since last year as a matter of policy. But the measure approved as part of the spending bill, which President Obama plans to sign this week, will codify it as a matter of law.
Click here to read the full story on LATimes.com.MEDINA – An outsider might assume the reason Jalin Cooper has so many people in his corner since moving to Medina six years ago is because of what he can do with a football or basketball in his hands.
They'd be wrong, of course.
The Mustangs' senior wide receiver and University of Toledo football commit had folks pulling for him to go all the way long before he scored his first touchdown, long before he threw down his first booming dunk and long before he won his first track-and-field championship.
The reason is simple.
"He's a super-caring kid; he goes out of his way to help people," said Eric Hellwig, Medina assistant football coach and Cooper's legal guardian. "He's somebody who makes a really strong first impression. Then after you get that first impression and you see in school that he's acting that way not just with you but with everybody else in the school, kids and teachers and custodial and cafeteria workers, now it's genuine."
"He was always a well-adjusted kid, a very kind person," said Libby Woodroe, who became friends with Cooper several years ago when he had an after-school job at a local insurance office. "He would do anything to help anybody and anybody would do anything to help him. He's just been a friend to everyone and everyone has been a friend to him."
Jalin Cooper is the son of Robin Cooper and Roscoe Chambers. He is also the son Eric and Sandie Hellwig, and he's the unofficial son of many more in this tiny Orleans County village located between Buffalo and Rochester.
Cooper is 6-foot-4, has run the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds and has a vertical leap of 37 inches. The 2016 second-team All-Western New York selection is coming off a season in which he had a team-leading 16 touchdowns and 1,213 all-purpose yards, rushed for 403 yards and seven scores, and had 339 yards and six TDs as a receiver.
He also earned fourth-team All-WNY in basketball and repeated as Section VI Division II champion in the 100- and 200-meter dashes.
Cooper is an electrifying athlete, but those feats pale in comparison to the intangibles that put him on the path toward becoming a success story in life.
Cooper is smart and well-spoken. He's an optimist. He isn't afraid of hard work. He's mature beyond his years (something that developed out of necessity, but more on that later).
Cooper is a fine young man -- a credit to what he's learned from Robin Cooper and his grandmother Glory Chambers, Hellwig said.
Jalin's character is the reason he's received assists from many along the way, with most of the help being provided before the skill set that netted him 11 Division I offers even came to the surface.
"I really can't put it into words," Jalin said. "It's unbelievable.... It's just great to know there are people out there like that (willing to help others).
"I wondered 'Why me?' There's nothing about me. I'm just another kid out there. I knew what people said: 'He has a great attitude.' That's why I think so many people are out there to help me. I'm willing to go out there and work with the (young) kids. Some people in my position don't want to offer to help anyone else. I think that's why people help me because they know I would help them in a heartbeat."
Cooper's sunny disposition has persevered despite many challenges. There's been tragedy. His biological father received a long prison sentence. A house fire in Medina destroyed his home and possessions. Situations in his home life forced him to grow up sooner rather than enjoy being a kid. He even knows what it's like to be homeless, carrying possessions around in a trash bag.
Cooper is a Midwesterner, originally from Chicago, who lived in an area where gangs and drugs were prevalent.
Chambers was involved in that, giving Cooper a first-hand look at that kind of life when he lived with his father for a short period of time. Cooper seemed to be heading down a road in which gang life, not college life, would be his future. Circumstances resulted in Cooper returning to his mother before that happened. Chambers, who at times would hide his own drugs in his son's coat, later was arrested on federal drug charges.
Cooper, his mom and six of his eight other siblings moved from Chicago to Medina roughly six years ago into a house owned by the mother of Jalin's stepfather, Dion Cheatham. They did so to get away from the violent neighborhood -- to make sure Jalin and others in the family didn't fall into the trap of gang life.
"It was just a thought (that turned into action)," Jalin said. "They wanted their children to have a safer life."
Welcome to Medina, where it's common to see kids playing outside or riding around on bicycles.
"When I first came here I thought it's a small country town. I was very confused," Jalin said. "I thought it was one road that led to everything. The first week or two I started school, I said 'I can't do this. Everybody keeps staring at me.' It felt weird. It made me miss Chicago."
It was a culture shock, but one Cooper got over it. Especially when he realized folks were looking at him not only because he was the new kid in school – which commanded attention – but he also was a skinny, 120-pound sixth grader who happened to be nearly 6-feet tall, which commanded even more attention.
"They had to look up to me," Cooper said of his shorter classmates.
Lydia Valley, the daughter of his future football coach, Eric Valley, was the first person to ask Cooper to be her friend.
"In Chicago you didn't have people run up to you like that," he said. "That was a big difference."
Cooper soon realized the move to Medina was a good thing.
"You see no violence," he said. "You see the kids talking a lot. You can walk around town without turning around every 10 seconds" to watch your back because of the neighborhood.
The move to Medina led to Cooper trying his hand in sports, but a natural he was not.
The biggest positive of Cooper's first junior varsity basketball experience as an awkward seventh-grader was meeting the person he would later call dad, Hellwig – the team's coach.
He kept Cooper on the roster as a favor to varsity coach Tom Forrestel. While family responsibilities led Cooper to quit before the end of the season, Jalin's time with the team gave Hellwig a chance to get to know the lad with the 1,000-watt smile, positive attitude and quality work ethic.
They crossed paths again when Cooper went out for football for the first time as an eighth-grader. Although he wanted to quit after the first junior varsity practice he stuck it out.
"He was really intimidated by the size and speed of some of the kids even on JV," Hellwig said. "He didn't think he'd ever be able to catch on to all the terminology and be able to run routes the right way. Even just running and catching the football at the time was difficult.
"The physical was definitely not there. It was the other attributes like the work ethic and the personality he has that caught my attention. He has terrific manners and he always greets everyone with a smile. He looks them in the eye and shakes their hand. … He's also a super-caring kid."
It was during that football season that a fire destroyed Cooper's home and all of the family's possessions.
Coach Valley and the football team held a fundraiser to raise money for Cooper's family while others in the community donated items, including appliances, to help the Coopers get back on their feet. Family members stayed with different people in the community until Robin Cooper found a house to rent.
"I didn't expect that," Jalin said. "The people in the community have helped me so much."
While Cooper regularly speaks with his mother and says he's on good terms with her, they hit some rough patches after the fire as a stressful situation led to arguments. Cooper declined to discuss the subject of the disagreements but the family's search for a new permanent home didn't help matters. After one quarrel prompted Cooper to leave home, he returned to find out his mom wasn't there. He had no idea where she and his siblings went. Cooper stayed a couple days with Mason Lewis and then with Woodroe for nearly a week before finding out from one of his sisters the family had moved to Lockport.
An upset Cooper came to the weight room at the high school and told Valley what was going on.
Cooper did not want to move to an unknown city, even if it was roughly only 25 minutes away from Medina.
"I didn't know anything about Lockport," he said. "I loved exactly what I had here."
Valley, who was about to go on a trip out of town when Cooper found him, discussed the situation with Hellwig, who was supervising a workout. That led to Hellwig's son Jason, Jalin's friend and the varsity quarterback at the time, asking his father to let Cooper stay with them.
"It started out as being where we were in a situation just to help a kid for the short term," Eric Hellwig said. "We really didn't think it would be a long-term situation."
Cooper considered moving back to Chicago and living with his grandmother, Glory, who he is close with, but going back to Chicago would mean going back to the problems the family looked to escape in the first place. Also, his grandmother was battling cancer (she beat it, although it took a toll), creating another unknown variable.
As Cooper and the Hellwigs got comfortable living with each other, Eric talked with his wife, Jason and older son Adam, who also coaches at Medina, about what they thought of asking Cooper if he wanted to stay with them.
They were all for it, but was Cooper?
"He broke down a little bit and got a big smile on his face and said yes," Hellwig said. "That led to him being with us going on four years."
Why did the Hellwigs do this?
"Really, looking back on those past experiences with him put in my mind that he was somebody I thought had a bright future and would be able to flourish if he was in the right environment," Hellwig said. "Fortunately we were in a position where we could provide that stability for him and provide opportunities for him."
Cooper regularly sees his siblings in Lockport, including his 16-year-old brother Joshua, who plays receiver for Lockport. While Cooper's mom initially was upset with his decision to not follow the family to Lockport, Jalin says Robin respects the decision.
"She told me this was probably the best decision to help me grow as a man and as a person," he said. "She loves that it keeps my little brothers and sisters motivated to do great things too. Me and her, we're really close. … She makes it to the games she can now."
Robin Cooper did not return a message left for her, but Joshua says Jalin does what he can to be a positive influence in his siblings' lives.
"He still comes out and hangs out with us, tries to make us play sports, tells our mom she should be making us do this and that," Joshua Cooper said.
That's because sports, even if it doesn't lead to a college scholarship, can help teach life lessons that impact the development of young people. It's something Hellwig preaches.
However, even he didn't see what would happen next with Jalin Cooper.
That uncoordinated, lanky basketball player worked on his game in the YMCA, studied how others played and mimicked what he saw. He went from being a decent eighth-grader to one of the Mustangs' top players. From that, he developed into one of the top players in the area, good enough to play on an AAU circuit on a Rochester-based team coached by former Niagara University star James Reaves.
The Hellwigs thought Cooper had a chance to play in college, but it was during his time on the AAU circuit that Cooper came to his own realization regarding his basketball future. He's a 6-4 slasher who can dunk, but there are other more skilled 6-4 players out there. There also are taller players out there (thus more attractive hoops recruits) who can do what Cooper does.
Coach Valley said Cooper started figuring things out in football during his sophomore year, blossoming to the point where he could take over games.
"It was when we played Tonawanda his sophmore year, maybe mid to end of the season," Valley said. "It was like all of the sudden his game speed changed. Things started happening more instinctively, he was playing more and thinking less.
"It happened naturally. I remember watching the film being taken aback at how fast he started playing.... I was like, wow.
"Prior to that he was still a good football player but was limited because he was still a little green... didn't fully understand the game. That was the turning point where we knew we had something special on our hands."
During that offseason, the Hellwigs took Cooper to a few football camps. While there were plenty of 6-4 dunkers in basketball, there aren't too many 6-4, speedy receivers. After he started catching the attention of coaches by having success against highly ranked recruits at the Nike Camp in Berea, Ohio, and an Under Armor camp in New Jersey, Cooper realized he'd be crazy if he "didn't jump on football."
Last year, Cooper played a key role in a talented Medina team winning its first division title in football since 1997.
Defending a title is a nice motivator for any team and should fuel the Mustangs, who have a few other talented receivers in addition to Cooper on the roster. They also have a good quarterback in Izaiah Rhim. Cooper's approach to the season is simple.
"Bring energy to the team," he said. "I can bring that mentality that if we want to win if we want to get better then we have to work hard. It's leading like that.
"Football is a stressful sport. You're going to get beat up. You're not going to win every game but knowing other players around me are working hard while enjoying it is fun to me. Seeing someone who couldn't run a route and run it better the next day, that's fun to me."
Would this have happened had Cooper returned to Chicago, had he not stayed in Medina?
"That's a really good question," Hellwig said. "I want to say yes because of the person he is but then again I know that he probably wouldn't have been to Toledo already five times this year. He wouldn't have been able to make trips to Rutgers. He wouldn't have been able to go down to Wake Forest. That's pretty tough on families to be able to do that time-wise and financially. … We're very fortunate to be able to provide those things for all three of our boys now."
Cooper doesn't think his athletic success would have happened had he gone back to Chicago. He definitely wouldn't have learned that being a good person can be a rewarding experience.
He is appreciative with how things worked out.
"The people in this community have helped me so much," Cooper said. "The Hellwigs, they've given me a house, everything and a family … and a place to grow not only as an athlete but as a person.
"That amazes me. It just amazes me people could do that for me even though I was just a kid with a big smile. To see the things they have done for me is unbelievable and it motivates me every day. … It's just great to know there are people out there like that."FILE - In this March 18, 2015 file photo, former Associated Press Vice President and Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes poses for a photo at AP headquarters, in New York. Oreskes, current vice president of news and editorial director at National Public Radio, Oreskes has resigned as chief of NPR’s newsroom following accusations of sexual harassment that dated back to the 1990s. (AP Photo/Chuck Zoeller, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Oreskes was ousted Wednesday as National Public Radio’s news chief following sexual harassment accusations, some dating to when he was Washington bureau chief at The New York Times in the 1990s.
Oreskes had been placed on leave by NPR following a report in the Washington Post Tuesday about two women who said that he suddenly kissed them when they were discussing job prospects at the Times. Subsequent to that story, NPR received another complaint about Oreskes’ behavior at the radio network from a current employee, said Jarl Mohn, the company’s president and CEO.
Mohn asked for and received Oreskes’ resignation Wednesday morning. Chris Turpin, NPR’s vice president of news programming and operations, was appointed temporary leader of the radio network’s newsroom.
Oreskes said in a statement that he was deeply sorry to the people he hurt.
“My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility,” he said.
One of the women who complained about Oreskes’ behavior at The Times reported it to NPR last year, and the second did last month, Mohn said in an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” The two women spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity. Following the newspaper’s report, NPR said that Oreskes had been reprimanded after a separate incident in 2015 in which a female producer complained she was made to feel uncomfortable during a dinner when Oreskes talked about sex and asked about her personal life.
Mohn would not discuss details of the new case. But he said on a scale that ranges from the harassment and assault complaints against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to the 2015 NPR incident, he said it was more along the lines of an uncomfortable conversation.
Mohn said that nothing along the lines of what happened at The Times, with the physical contact, had been reported by employees at NPR, he said.
“Had that happened at NPR we would have had a very different reaction to it,” he said.
Mohn said he’d been asked why it took published news reports for NPR to take action. “The answer is that it did not,” he said. “We have been acting. Some of the steps we took were visible and others weren’t. We have a process in place and we followed that process.”
The Times said through a spokeswoman Wednesday that it was not aware of any other complaints against Oreskes, who had several assignments for the newspaper. Oreskes was a vice president and senior managing editor at The Associated Press from 2008 until he joined NPR in 2015. A spokeswoman from the AP would not discuss whether there had been issues raised about Oreskes’ behavior while he worked there.
Illustrating the issue’s sensitivity, the AP’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, circulated through the newsroom Wednesday to remind groups of employees about the news organization’s policy on sexual harassment and to encourage them to report any episodes that they have encountered.
Oreskes was one of several media figures to face harassment allegations in recent weeks. NBC News on Monday fired political contributor Mark Halperin following allegations of inappropriate advances by women when he worked at ABC. The president and publisher of the New Republic, Hamilton Fish, has been placed on a leave of absence following charges against him, and Leon Wieseltier, contributing editor at The Atlantic, was dropped after numerous women said they had been sexually harassed by him.A slight earthquake near Montreal shook up residents almost 75 miles away in Burlington, Vt., just after midnight Wednesday, officials said.
“Geology doesn’t care where the international borders are,’’ said John Ebel, a seismologist and director of Boston College’s Weston Observatory. “An earthquake centered in Canada could potentially give us damage. We have to pay attention to them.’’
The epicenter of the earthquake was about 20 miles east of Montreal, in Beloeil, Quebec, the US Geological Survey said. The US agency reported the quake as having a magnitude of 3.9, while Canada’s natural resources agency reported a magnitude as high as 4.5.
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“There isn’t a surefire way to measure an earthquake,’’ Ebel said, adding that the magnitude scores are within the same range.
In New England, about 20 earthquakes are detected each year but only half are felt. Last week, a minor 1.3-magnitude earthquake was felt by a few people near Milford, N.H. Typically, anything above magnitude of 2 is felt, unless the earthquake is focused just below the earth’s crust, Ebel said.
A 2.5-magnitude earthquake was also reported in Huntingdon, Quebec, a few hours after the Milford, N.H., quake.
“Some years, there are more, some fewer,’’ Ebel said. “There’s always this feeling that there’s more [earthquakes] now than before, but it’s been an average year.’’
New England stands at a much lower risk of major earthquakes than California, which sits atop major geologic fault lines.
But that doesn’t mean damaging earthquakes are unheard of in the Northeast. In August 2011, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit Virginia and was felt all the way up the East Coast and into Canada. It left an estimated $100 million in damage, prompting precautionary repairs in case of future incidents. The Washington Monument was closed after cracks were found, with repairs not expected to be complete until 2014, according to the National Park Service.Between 2008 and 2013, Miami Gardens Police ran what one public defender called "New York City stop-and-frisk on steroids
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“varied,” and inspired by old newsreels and “Arrested Development.” Chaudhary is “part documentarian, part White House-message-machine,” with an “artsy bent.” He’s even referred to as a “reporter.” I suspect we won’t get a Times feature on McEnany’s “job that [s]he is creating and redefining anew daily.”
Like “Trump TV,” Chaudhary’s clips were made to look like real news, but unlike Trump’s version, national newscasts and packages actually used Chaudhary’s work as real news. For some moments, his camera was the only one around, while national press was shut out, literally replacing the news as Olbermann fears McEnany will.
As usual, tactics that were covered under Obama as a story of evolving technology used cleverly by an innovative press shop are covered as terribly threatening under Trump. And as usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle, not wholly dependent on which president is doing it. “Trump TV” isn’t more threatening than “West Wing Week;” it’s just more obvious about what it’s doing, and doesn’t have the admiration of much of the press abetting it. Let’s stop pretending we’ve never seen anything like it.Is it not too risky for Australian retail investors to part with their after tax dollars buying pools of debt which would then be leveraged by a Delaware trust to buy more debt? Neuberger was keen to disavow us of this notion of excessive risk, and opacity. As the Public Disclosure Statement for the float points out (that's the fat, uninteresting bit in front of the Application Form), US mortgages are not as risky as they used to be. Under 2014 reforms they now have to be secured against an actual property. So yes, lending standards are more stringent. In 2014, Ben Bernanke said he was even having a hard time refinancing his own home loan. The former chairman of the US Federal Reserve told a conference, "I recently tried to refinance my mortgage and I was unsuccessful in doing so." And as Neuberger reps pointed out to Fairfax Media, they are floating assets which are secured by property. In contrast, the local Big Four bank hybrids which trade on the ASX could arbitrarily cut their distributions or convert into equity at any time. Indeed some were already trading at a suspicious discount to their stated asset backing.
But what though is on sale here? We don't know for certain as the exact assets are yet to be purchased. The money must be raised first. Once raised, let's say they raise the maximum $250 million, that $250 million can be geared four times (Net Asset Value) to $1 billion. As fees are a percentage of net assets, the temptation to borrow towards the ceiling will be hard to resist. Investors will own an ASX-listed trust (managed investment scheme) which has an investment in a Delaware partnership which they call the Underlying Fund, the US Residential Property Income Fund I LP. That fund will buy pools of US mortgages and US Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) and derivatives – both exchange-traded and OTC (over-the-counter like CDOs, well not really CDOs, or maybe a bit but definitely not actual CDOs like in the bad old days). "The Investment Manager (Neuberger) may invest in such other U.S. real estate-related assets, and engage in such other investment activities, associated with the U.S. home loan market as it deems appropriate provided such investments and/or activities are consistent with the Underlying Fund's investment objective and its Investment Strategy," says the PDS.
"The Investment Manager does not actively seek to invest in Home Loans categorised as'subprime'." (Thank goodness for that). A yield of 6 per cent is mighty nice in this environment. Term deposits are half that. And it's a very strong selling point for Neuberger, whose people were out and about last week doing the rounds of the stockbroking shops. Admittedly you can do a lot better than 6 per cent. If one were to be egregiously hairy-chested, one might purchase some debt in US coal company Peabody with a yield-to-maturity of more than 300 per cent (it's a wonder the shares are still trading with bond prices like that). It's hard to argue with a return of 300 per cent. Even this peon of the Fourth Estate, ramshackle and barely solvent, would somehow scrounge up the readies to invest at 300 per cent. But of course, the sheer radiance of such a yield is telling you something – or screaming it at you – that is, the bond market reckons there is Buckley's chance that Peabody will survive long enough to pay you back. Neuberger's offer might act as an acid test for the market. If the former Lehman Brothers' business gets this away, there may be a float of this stuff and structured finance will be, once again, on for young and old … and solvent and broke.Paul Hanna / Reuters An agent of the bomb squad in protective clothing stands in the area near the finishing line of the men's cycling road race at the 2016 Rio Olympics after they made a controlled explosion, in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil August 6, 2016.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - The Rio Olympic Games got off to a shambolic and nervous start on Saturday, with organizers apologizing to angry fans kept waiting for hours at security checkpoints to enter venues while, outside, shootings and bomb scares kept visitors on edge.
Athletes competed in front of empty stands early on the first day of full competition as spectators complained of missing their events while queueing for security clearance.
The morning after a dazzling opening ceremony, organizers admitted to dropping the ball, with only a few hundred spectators making their way into venues such as the gymnastics arena and the beach volleyball on iconic Copacabana beach.
Outside, lines stretched for several blocks as fans stood in full sun and security staff struggled. Organizers blamed a lack of coordination between security personnel, including the police, Games staff and private security firms.
Gymnasts performed in front of swathes of empty seats in an arena that can seat 13,500 people. The boxing venue also had many empty seats as the first professionals in Olympics history entered the ring.
“I don’t believe it. It’s absurd, ridiculous,” said Rio resident Natalia Carvalho, 28, who missed seeing Brazilian gymnast and medal hopeful Arthur Zanetti compete on the rings as she waited with thousands of others to enter the Olympic park.
“It’s a lack of respect for the fan that bought tickets. It’s a shame,” she said.
Andrew Winning / Reuters Long lines form at the security check point leading into the press and broadcast centre at the Olympic Park.
What should have been a celebration of the start of South America’s first Olympics turned into a damage-control operation, with Games spokesman Mario Andrada vowing an immediate improvement.
“We apologize for everybody standing in line outside the venues,” he told reporters. “Within the next hours we will be in much better shape.”
At the tennis center, where former world number one Ana Ivanovic played in front of virtually empty stands in the first round, fans had to wait more than 20 minutes to buy water.
Spectators encountered similar situations at the rowing and the rugby venues as temperatures hit 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).
Murad Sezer / Reuters A security guard stands by the Lagoa rowing venue.
SECURITY JITTERS
Security has emerged as a top concern after a string of killings, kidnappings and robberies in recent days.
Spectators leaving the Olympics opening ceremony at the famed Maracana stadium on Friday night were confronted by the body of a 22-year-old man shot dead by police in the street.
Police said the man had robbed several people in the area, but did not give further details.
A 51-year-old Brazilian woman was also shot dead during a robbery on Friday in the renovated “Marvelous Port” area meant to be a main attraction for Olympic tourists.
That came a day after police confirmed that a man sitting in a car had killed a suspect who tried to carjack his luxury automobile in the main Olympic area of Barra. The Russian consul denied media reports that the man was a consulate employee.
On Saturday, a bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion of an unattended bag, believed to belong to a homeless man, near the finish line of the men’s cycling road race on Copacabana’s sweeping boulevard.
There have been several controlled blasts in recent days as organizers have tightened security around venues, amid concerns the Games could be a target for militants.
Brian Snyder / Reuters Security personnel walk along Copacabana beach.
Brazil detained 12 people for suspected links to Islamic State last month. It says the risk of an attack is minimal, with authorities having deployed 85,000 police and military to guard the Games, roughly twice the number at the 2012 London Olympics.
Lorie Schmetterling, who traveled from Moorestown, New Jersey with her husband Eric to cheer on their daughter Laura, a U.S. rower, was disturbed to learn about the bomb scare a few hundred meters from where she was staying.
“You hear all these terrible things about how it is going to be and then you get here and it seems fine,” she said. “Then this happens and you feel it, you go on high alert again.”
Journalists covering equestrian events in the Deodoro Olympic zone got a fright on Saturday when a stray bullet cut through the plastic roof of the equestrian media center. The bullet flew above the head of the New Zealand team’s media attache, according to the team’s chef de mission, Rob Waddell.
No one was injured in the incident. The equestrian venue is sited next to a military complex, though police are still trying to discover who fired the bullet and from where, a spokesman for the Rio 2016 organizing committee said.
Other robberies and thefts have targeted tourists and media in Rio. Some 500,000 foreigners are expected to pass through the city during the Games that run until Aug. 21.
Three Swedish tourists were briefly kidnapped on Wednesday by an armed man as they pulled off on a highway near a slum to take photos. They were quickly released unharmed after the gunman checked the photos they took.September 19, 2008, 8:23 am
Someone noticed that just before certain stocks crash in value, there is a lot of short-selling. So the US government has banned short-selling, at least temporarily. Classic cargo-cult logic.
Boy this sure makes perfect sense in a time when we are concerned about speculative bubbles -- let's ban one of the most important tools that exist for bubbles to be shortened and made less, uh, bubbly. Here is why (very briefly and non-technically) short-selling takes the edge off speculative excesses.
At the start of the bubble, a particular asset (be it an equity or a commodity like oil) is owned by a mix of people who have different expectations about future price movements. For whatever reasons, in a bubble, a subset of the market develops rapidly rising expectations about the value of the asset. They start buying the asset, and the price starts rising. As the price rises, and these bulls buy in, folks who owned the asset previously and are less bullish about the future will sell to the new buyers. The very fact of the rising price of the asset from this buying reinforces the bulls' feeling that the sky is the limit for prices, and bulls buy in even more.
Let's fast forward to a point where the price has risen to some stratospheric levels vs. the previous pricing as well as historical norms or ratios. The ownership base for the asset is now disproportionately
made up of those sky-is-the-limit bulls, while everyone who thought
these guys were overly optimistic and a bit wonky have sold out. 99.9% of the world now thinks the asset is grossly overvalued. But how does it come to earth? After all, the only way the price can drop is if some owners sell, and all the owners are super-bulls who are unlikely to do so. As a result, the bubble might continue and grow long after most of the world has seen the insanity of it.
Thus, we have short-selling. Short-selling allows the other 99.9% who are not owners to sell part of the asset anyway, casting their financial vote for the value of the company. Short-selling shortens bubbles, hastens the reckoning, and in the process generally reduces the wreckage on the back end.
Update: From Don Boudreaux:When AMD introduced its Fiji GPU family, the company said that the innovations put into the GPU will give solid performance in applications of today, but that they will ‘kick ass’ as soon as future applications begin to appear. Precisely, two high ranked AMD executives we talked to openly discussed their focus on DirectX 12 and Virtual Reality. As Fiji approached the launch date, NVIDIA countered by launching GeForce GTX 980 Ti, i.e. a $1000 Titan X card with half the memory – for 35% less.
Overall winners were gamers, who got an incredible choice, high performing parts for (more) affordable prices. Depending on who you like, you could build an almost future-proof system today. How will it perform? Russian website GameGPU released benchmark results for upcoming 2016 edition of DOOM, an upcoming hit-title from id Software / Bethesda Softworks. The site got a hold of DOOM Multiplayer Alpha build, released to crash-proof the mutiplayer servers.
The game will launch in just a bit over two weeks, and id Software promises this time they will ‘crank the volume to 11’. In a series of blogs, developers promised they will deliver bleeding edge tech and utilize everything OpenGL/Vulkan-based idTech 6 engine can deliver.
“We want players to wonder how DOOM and idTech 6 games can be so visually stunning at 60 frames-per-second at 1080p on all platforms, when other titles cannot even achieve a similar look at 30 frames-per-second,” says Lead Project Programmer Billy Khan. “Our goal is to be the best-looking game at 1080p at 60fps.”
“Many on our tech team worked at Crytek before, so we’ve known and worked with each other for some time,” says Lead Render Programmer Tiago Sousa, who’s been with id for a year-and-a-half. “It’s been an interesting and productive venture, learning about idTech foundations and researching where and how we will take it to new levels. My hope is not a very humble one, but I’d like to help bring idTech back to the forefront of technology once again.”
Typically, we would refrain from commenting on Alpha benchmark results but given that all hardware vendors regularly quote the said performance in their email blasts to us, from today we will be covering as much game titles as we can.
Onto the benchmark results. GameGPU site tested the hardware using a variety of hardware configurations, including Intel Core i7-5960X (Haswell-E) and AMD’s FX-8350. Do note that the CPU was overclocked to 4.6 GHz in order to remove any potential CPU-related bottlenecks.
DOOM Multiplayer Closed Alpha – Full HD, 1920×1080
As you can see in results above, the framerate is capped at 60 Hz / fps. Quite surprisingly, majority of AMD hardware simply flies in the benchmark, achieving 60 fps for both minimum and average frames per second. What is interesting to see is that AMD Radeon R9 290, and R9 290X – almost three year old hardware is capable of achieving 60 fps. When we look at the difference between R9 290 and its competitor of the times, GeForce 780 Ti – the difference probably comes not just from maturity of the OpenGL drivers, but also from efficiency of the internal architecture.
From the other hand, do not expect multi-GPU scaling, as it only creates an overhead with this build.
Do note the width of memory controller on all tested parts. R9 290 and R9 290X score substantially higher than contemporary R9 300-series cards, probably due to integrated 512-bit memory controller being able to feed the units faster than the 256-bit memory controller on the 300 series. Do note that there is an apparent error in this graph, where R9 280X 3GB scores 61 fps (Average FPS) in a benchmark where the maximum is 60.
DOOM Multiplayer Closed Alpha – 2560×1440
The difference really starts to show in 2560×1440 resolution, which alongside 3440×1440 is becoming increasingly popular among the gamers worldwide. Regardless of who is your GPU vendor of choice, it is clear that NVIDIA has a lot of work to do with their drivers. A single, three year old R9 290X is beating a contemporary GeForce GTX 980 Ti in both single and multiple-GPU configuration (SLI). Based on our experience with Bethesda, CryTek, and idSoftware – it is hardly believable that NVIDIA did not work hand in hand with the AAA-level developers which often released titles that perform superbly on NVIDIA hardware. The question is, did someone slept on its laurels?
DOOM Multiplayer Closed Alpha – 4K, 3840×2160
4K is the new frontier for gamers who want ultimate fidelity. Pushing eight million pixels per frame is a challenge for any computer out there, yet alone when we look at the performance of these cards. Radeon R9 Fury X in Crossfire mode is capable of pushing over 340 million pixels per second, same with the single card – AMD is in need of some serious multi-GPU optimization, and this perhaps is one of reasons why a single board with two Fiji GPUs (R9 Fury X2, R9 ‘Gemini’) hasn’t seen the light of day. But if we look at single GPU performance, R9 Fury delivers the same 320 million pixels as the dual board one. Perhaps the most impressive board is R9 Nano, which for $499 gives serious performance, single-handedly beating a $1,339.98 configuration from NVIDIA. Given how good the board is, perhaps R9 Nano is the best gaming card on the market.
Top 10 Graphics Cards for DOOM – Who Delivers the Most?
In order to calculate the results above we took the worst-case scenario, which is the 4K resolution, and calculated the number of pixels each GPU was capable of pushing through the display output.
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X – 340.07 MPixel/sec AMD Radeon R9 Nano – 298.59 MPixel/sec NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti – 282.01 MPixel/sec AMD Radeon R9 295X2 – 273.72 MPixel/sec AMD Radeon R9 290X – 273.72 MPixel/sec AMD Radeon R9 290 – 248.83 MPixel/sec AMD Radeon R9 280X – 215.65 MPixel/sec NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 – 199.07 MPixel/sec ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 7990 – 199.07 MPixel/sec ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 7970 – 199.07 MPixel/sec
The results above show a direct vindication of my recommendations since I joined the industry. I have always firmly believed that when you build your system, you need to build the top end graphics card, followed by as much system memory and fastest storage you can buy.
ATI Radeon HD 7970 debuted in December 2011, which is four and a half years ago. Yet, this card offers better performance than hardware you can buy in 2016 – note that AMD’s 300 series disappeared from the top 10, i.e. was incapable of reaching 200 million pixels per second. Same story goes for NVIDIA – unless you have GeForce GTX 980 or 980 Ti, you’re SOL when it comes to DOOM. Given that the authors from GameGPU did not had access to TITAN X, or the regular Fury – we can only guess how would the Top 5 GPUs list end up looking like, but it is safe to bet that TITAN X and Fury would probably push the 295X2 and 290X out of Top 5.
DOOM is coming out on March 15, 2016 – and we’ll follow up with our in-house testing when the game gets released. Clock is ticking, and let’s see what can change in two weeks. NVIDIA and AMD sure need to fix their multi-GPU scaling (if possible), and NVIDIA needs to ramp up the performance across the board. Otherwise, it could be a second big loss in as many weeks (after loosing to AMD in DirectX 12 benchmark Ashes of the Singularity).At this point in the season, only the most manic viewers of the Lakers believe there is any point in the team going out of their way to win games. The team itself has finally accepted this reality, benching most of their motley crew of veterans in favor of whatever young players they have available. Needless to say, this has greatly helped what was once an uncertain hope that the Lakers would retain their own first rounder. As of this writing, the Lakers occupy a fairly safe fourth spot in the tank rankings, giving them a comfortable 82.8% chance of keeping what should be a top five pick in a strong draft. It is also all but assured that the team will get a first rounder from Houston and keep their own second rounder since the latter will fall somewhere in the 31-40 range.
Now that we're roughly certain of the draft picks the Lakers will end up with and the other salary commitments they will have to deal with, we can also start painting a picture of the Lakers' cap flexibility this summer and how this might impact their offseason plans. Let us start with all the players that will be under contract -- including those with non-guaranteed deals -- presuming for the moment that the Lakers will decline all available team options and that those prospective free agents with player options will decline them as well:
Before you get excited at that cap space projection, we unfortunately will have to bring you back to reality by reminding you that the moment Adam Silver announces the name of whomever is hopefully one of the Lakers' new franchise cornerstones on draft night, the Lakers automatically will accrue a cap hold equal to 100% of that player's rookie scale slot. As such, the higher in the draft the Lakers pick, the more they have to pay that rookie. In addition, they will have to pay the slot value for the first rounder they will get from Houston. Unsigned second round picks, however, are not included in this calculus.
For the purposes of this exercise, let us give the Lakers the maximum amount of cap space they could possibly get and project the fifth and thirtieth overall picks going to them on draft night:
Fifth overall pick rookie scale slot $3,117,900 30th overall pick rookie scale slot $943,300 Total $41,808,325 Minimum cap holds (x3) $1,575,279 Cap space $24,616,396
As noted, you could easily add $1-2 million onto that total salaries figure; drafting first overall would add $1.6 million, for instance. At any rate, this is a fairly robust figure and definitely more than enough to offer the 25% ($17 million) or 30% ($20 million) maximum this summer, meaning that for essentially whatever free agent the Lakers deign to pursue, they can pay as much as any other team on the market that is not the relevant free agent's original team. The question of which specific free agents to pursue aside, a topic we'll talk plenty about between now and the free agency period, this projection is good for the Lakers' offseason prospects.
There are two spanners to throw into the works here: Jordan Hill's team option and the fact that the Lakers probably would be interested in bringing back Ed Davis, who has been on record saying he will decline his player option for next season. This past summer, the former was viewed as a formality, as it appeared that the Lakers would likely include Hill in a trade sometime this season. Needless to say, that hasn't happened, so we at least have to consider the possibility that the Lakers will exercise Hill's team option, if only to use him as possible trade collateral near the draft or moving forward:
Jordan Hill '15-'16 team option $9,000,000 Total $50,808,325 Minimum cap holds (x2) $1,050,186 Cap space $16,141,489
Again, remember that this is the most optimistic projection you can make for the Lakers' cap situation, and they could easily have as low as $14 million if their draft position is better (and it probably will be). To be sure, $14-16 million is still quite a bit of cap space and LA could certainly be competitive for the gamut of 25% max options even if they can't pay the full max. You very well could think that the Lakers don't have a good shot at the panoply of 30% max options such as Goran Dragic, DeAndre Jordan, or Marc Gasol, so maintaining maximum cap space could arguably be considered less of a concern.
Davis' situation, however, complicates this calculus because depending on what his market looks like, there is a decent chance the Lakers will re-sign him. He's a very productive two-way big and those aren't commonly available, so taking advantage when one such player declares that he would be receptive to a long-term deal in LA would be appropriate. That noted, doing so would be rather difficult if the Lakers exercise Hill's option since even with a conservative calculation of Davis' value at say $4-5 million a year, paying Davis will cripple the Lakers' ability to offer competitive contracts for max-worthy players this summer.
As such, it is a fair statement that the Lakers would have to choose between one of Hill or Davis this summer, the third option of bringing back neither notwithstanding. Mind you, the team could very well end up drafting Jahlil Okafor or Karl Towns and make this a moot point, as the team would then have a full (and very young) frontcourt of Randle, Kelly, Black, Sacre, and their top pick. Even drafting a center such as Robert Upshaw or Dakari Johnson with one of their later picks could have a similar chilling effect on the Lakers' decision-making process with Hill and Davis.
The "correct" decision here is thus hard to ascertain since we just don't have a good grasp on the free agent market this summer and who might realistically be available. By the same token, the Lakers might have gotten a good idea of Hill's trade market this past deadline and can gauge what the likely returns could be this summer. It very well might be the case that the assets the Lakers could get are sufficiently marginal as to make the issue of Hill taking up a big chunk of cap space unnecessarily burdensome. Analogous to the draft pick situation above, the Lakers could also be targeting a big man such as Greg Monroe as one of their primary options, further making the issue of Hill's team option moot, although the Lakers have a greater risk of being left out in the cold with nothing here as opposed to if they end up drafting a center.
Regardless of how this plays out, the Lakers do stand to have considerable flexibility this summer and that's an encouraging prospect for a team that has been on the bottom for the past two years. As the last year before the cap explodes because of the NBA's new media deal and some truly gargantuan contracts start to be thrown around, it will be quite difficult for the Lakers to overpay anyone this summer, behooving them to throw this money at someone. Parsing out who that someone is will be one of the more fascinating storylines to follow this offseason.
Follow this author on Twitter @brosales12.Norwich City transfer rumours: Canaries interested in Nuremburg midfielder Hanno Behrens
City head coach Daniel Farke is reportedly interested in Nuremburg midfielder Hanno Behrens. Picture: Focus Images ©Focus Images Limited www.focus-images.co.uk +447814 482222
Norwich City are interested in Nuremburg midfielder Hanno Behrens according to reports in Germany.
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The Canaries are ready to plunder the German market once again this summer according to newspaper, Bild, after bringing in Mario Vrancic, Christophe Zimmermann and Marcel Franke already this summer.
Behrens, 27, is a defensive midfielder who has spent the majority of his career in Bundesliga II with Nuremburg and previously Darmstadt.
Behrens is apparently aware of City’s interest in him. “Anyone who knows me knows that I’m open-minded,” he said. “My agent told me about the interest from England but my first port of call remains with FC Nuremburg.”
City, who have already made seven signings this summer, could be ready to re-enter the transfer market with their coffers swelled by Jacob Murphy’s imminent £12.5m move to Newcastle United.
United agreed a fee with the Canaries on Monday and the player flew from City’s German training base to discuss personal terms with the Premier League outfit last night.More and more Ahmadis are leaving Pakistan and seeking asylum overseas as persecution in Pakistan increases. Sources within Pakistan and stats released by the U.S. indicate that Ahmadis are the largest asylum seeking group from Pakistan.Newly published statistics by Germany, U.K., and the US revealed that over 10,000 Pakistanis had sought asylum in these three countries over the past year.
Data from US Department of State which classified refugees by religion showed that most of the 376 Pakistanis who applied for refuge in 2016 were Ahmadis. Throughout the last five years, Ahmadis were the single largest group of Pakistanis seeking refuge in the US. Ahmadis accounted for over half of all Pakistani asylum applicants with 746 claimants. The data further revealed that 240 Christians and 66 Shias also sought refuge.
Meanwhile, Germany received the highest number of asylum application from Pakistanis. Data from the German interior ministry showed that 9,185 Pakistanis applied for asylum from January to July 2016. This was in contrast to just 2,546 applications in 2015. Sources within the Ahmadiyya community say, most of those applicants were Ahmadis.
Similarly, in the UK, 2,992 Pakistanis applied for asylum from June 2015 to June 2016, however only 16 percent of the applications were accepted.
Europe and U.S. are not the only destinations for Ahmadi asylum seekers. Many have even fled to South East Asia and remote parts of Africa. Countries with a significant Ahmadi refugee population include Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Uganda and Ghana.
The Ahmadiyya sect of Islam is practically banned in Pakistan. Ahmadi Muslims are targets of extremist groups who consider them heretics and under the Pakistani law it is a crime for Ahmadis to label themselves Muslims.BOSTON (CBS) — Ray Allen says he never wanted to leave the Boston Celtics.
But when the writing was on the wall that they weren’t committed to him, the sharpshooter had to look out for himself.
Allen sat down with Tencent’s Lisa Hsu while at a celebrity game in Shanghia, China to discuss his career, and said his decision to leave the Celtics via free agency in 2012 and join the rival Miami Heat was one of the hardest decisions he’s had to make. He loved to play in front of the Boston fans and never wanted to leave New England (he lived in Connecticut). But it was clear the Celtics were ready to move on from him, as Danny Ainge had already tried to trade the veteran shooter the season before, and Allen says the team didn’t present the best option for him when he was able to choose his next team.
“That was one of the hardest decisions I had to make because I didn’t want to leave,” said Allen. “There is so much that goes on behind the scenes. Players and organizations understand it. But when I left, what you know is that everybody on one side is going to say everything they need to say to make their side look like they did everything they could. From my opinion, I see something totally different.
“When I realized they weren’t doing me any favors as far as keeping me, or giving me any protections or guarantees going forward, we knew it was time for us to move on,” Allen explained.
In joining the team that had just ousted the Celtics from the playoffs, Boston fans saw Allen as a traitor. His former teammates felt the same way, a feud that has lingered to this day (though it appears Paul Pierce is ready to call a truce). Allen said all he could do was move on, and hopes his old teammates can do the same.
“That’s the thing about sports; you just have to move on. Teams do the same thing. When a team feels like you can’t help them win anymore, they trade you. They think they can leverage you for their future, for someone younger or multiple pieces. When teams do it, everyone says it’s a business. When I did it, I was disloyal and a traitor, all these things. I always wanted to say that I loved where I was. If the team did what they needed to do to keep me, I would be there,” said Allen. “But I didn’t and it was time to go. Among the options I had available, I went to the best option that would help me win a championship and it worked 100 percent.”
Allen said he is proud of both of the NBA Championships he won during his career, and he has no regrets. He hopes fans will someday understand that sports, especially the NBA, is a business.
“There is no loyalty in sports. It’s not about loyalty, it’s about the business,” he said.
As for his former teamamtes, Allen proclaims he has never said anything negative about Pierce, Kevin Garnett or the other former teammates that he won his first title with in Boston.
“I don’t have any ill-will. When I left I was a free agent and it’s disheartening when you hear the things said negatively about you,” he said. “We won together, and when you win together you always share that bond. To me, that never changed.”In 1982, Ashok Sahni, a professor of palaeontology, was attending a seminar in Ahmedabad when a young man came up to him with a rock the size and shape of a coconut. This was Dhananjay Mohabey, an officer in the Geological Survey of India, and he had brought along a “cannonball", one of several discovered during blasting at a cement factory in Gujarat’s Kheda district. So plentiful were these curious spheres that the mine managers used them to line the garden path leading to their site office. When he closely examined the specimen that Mohabey showed him, Sahni discovered it was the fossil of a large egg. Unwittingly, the young geological surveyor had stumbled upon an entire nesting colony of dinosaurs. Right by what is now a state highway, gigantic reptilian females had once laid hundreds of such eggs in neat hollows of mud lined with vegetation.
Such thrilling stories abound in Pranay Lal’s Indica, which describes the first 4,600 million years of the subcontinent. The book brings to life the suspense that palaeontologists must feel when they crouch along a rock face, carefully chipping around a fragment of fossilized bone. And the triumph when they painstakingly piece together these skeletal remains in the laboratory to reconstruct creatures like Barapasaurus tagorei (big-foot lizard), the 18m-long dinosaur that was found in the Adilabad district of Telangana. Imagine the wonder of finding a huge stegosaurus with a mane of triangular bony plates running down its back in the hills near Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh. Or a four-storey-high Titanosaurus indicus near an army cantonment in Jabalpur, along the Narmada. These and other creatures, big and small, comprise the cast of characters in a drama that begins with the Big Bang and closes with the arrival of Homo sapiens, present-day humans, in India some 70,000 years ago.
Indica—A Deep Natural History Of The Indian Subcontinent: By Pranay Lal, Allen Lane, 468 pages, Rs999.
Lal has succeeded in travelling through this enormous territory in time and space without losing the reader. Despite my sketchy knowledge of the physical and biological sciences, my interest was kept up by Lal’s enthusiasm and his remarkably lucid way of explaining the mysteries of plate tectonics, the chemistry of air, genetics, why standing up is an advantage on land, when sex started, and what defines life. The staggering amount of reading and synthesis of research from several specialized disciplines that lies behind this work is revealed in 55 pages of dense notes tucked away at the end.
Lal’s book is also remarkable for making us think of the Indian landscape in a novel and marvellous way. Many of us know that what is now the Thar desert was once under the Tethys Sea, but imagine the wonder of finding jellyfish embedded in the sands near Jodhpur! Or conceive of interior Andhra Pradesh as a region where thousands of cow-sized reptiles “grazed and lazed in the luxuriant fern forests". Or the Kashmir Valley inhabited by hippos, rhinos and giant deer.
How we know that these fantastic creatures were indeed there is a fascinating story of detective work that would do Sherlock Holmes proud. Indica peels away layers of rock to expose fossilized plants and animals and explains how they came to be arranged along an evolutionary timeline. In this unfolding narrative, even coprolites (fossils of dinosaur dung) reveal something as important as the origin of rice, the cereal that sustains much of Asia today. Microscopic traces of pollen, the footprints of frogs and crocodiles, the telltale trail of quartz hand axes and choppers used by early humans and preserved over the ages are the intriguing clues that enable scientists to reconstruct the story of life on Earth. Lal shows us the techniques and reasoning behind such deduction, without underplaying the sometimes speculative and often contentious character of such theorizing.
While fossils provide evidence of early life, equally crucial are the rocks they lie within. The ground beneath our feet reveals an even longer history of how the subcontinent was formed, how it took shape and moved, how it was covered by ice and oceans, and how it came to have coal and diamonds and rubies. Indica excels in describing these processes and interpreting the evidence contained in different kinds of rocks and geological formations. Rounded stones found in Chitradurga, Karnataka, are proof of the glaciers that once covered this region. The distinctive rock at the tip of the subcontinent
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, you don’t lose them forever. It’s also filled with helpful tutorials that are easy to ignore if you’re a long-time fan, but will be much appreciated to those both new to Fire Emblem and to the strategy genre in general.
Aside from touch controls, the biggest difference between Heroes and past Fire Emblem games is how you pay for it. Following Super Mario Run, which used a freemium model that charged players $9.99 to play beyond the first three levels, Nintendo is using a standard free-to-play structure for Heroes. That means the game uses what are called time-gating strategies to prevent players from continuously accessing the most rewarding parts of the app without spending in-game currency. It sounds insidious, and there are certainly some egregious offenders in the mobile game space. Luckily, it seems like Nintendo is taking a fair route with its foray into free-to-play.
In short, Fire Emblem Heroes time-gating and currency system appear relatively straightforward, fair, and easy to understand. There are two elements at play. One is called stamina, which is a numbered meter that informs which missions you are able to play. It replenishes over time at a rate of about one point every 5 minutes to a total of around 50. That’s okay early on, because prologue missions and other beginner portions of Heroes only cost one stamina point to play. However, harder missions and more difficult replays of already completed missions will cost more stamina to initiate.
Orbs can reset stamina and unlock new heroes
The other important element is orbs, the standard in-game currency in Heroes. Orbs can replenish stamina — notably, one orb will replenish your entire stamina meter. But the currency can also be used for a number of other upgradable staples like expanding your castle and, more importantly, unlocking new heroes. Nintendo is calling this process summoning, and it essentially lets you spend a certain number of orbs to unlock new heroes through a randomized system not unlike a collectible toy machine.
You can pay real money for orbs — three orbs costing $1.99 — however, you can also earn them through in-game activities. So how you engage with Heroes’ free-to-play obstacles will ultimately depend on a few factors: how long you want to play per day, whether you care more about advancing in the story or collecting heroes, and how much real money you’d be willing to spend.
If you’re the type of player who loves collecting — Heroes has hundreds upon hundreds of heroes to collect — you may want to spend your orbs building out your roster. Nintendo is employing a star rating system to measure the effectiveness of heroes you unlock through summoning. That means you may have to spend some serious time rolling the dice to get a five-star version of a hero you want, instead of a four- or three-star one that may be more common. Heroes uses a rotating system of five-star heroes for character collections that will have a greater chance of showing up every week, and the percentages are clearly displayed before you decide to spend as many as five orbs to try and obtain one.
In my short time with the app last week, I was unable to determine whether the game supports a wide variety of play styles. It would seem, on the surface, that you could spend orbs to collect new heroes as you advance in the story here and there, so long as you make sure to keep a few orbs around to replenish stamina. I did not encounter any all-or-nothing stipulations or any roadblocks that seemed to blatantly force players to spend real money. But we’ll have to spend more time with the finished game to make a full assessment of how it treats players’ efforts and energy.
That said, Heroes is very clearly a Nintendo game, with the same amount of care and craft we’ve come to expect from the company’s core properties, and nothing about its destination on mobile diminishes these standout qualities. There is Fire Emblem’s trademark anime-influenced art style during the cutscenes, which now feature some prominent voice acting. As for the battles themselves, those are rendered in a clean, 16-bit-inspired style reminiscent of early Nintendo RPGs.
The game is designed to be played in portrait mode, so the entirety of every battlefield will fit on your phone’s screen. Each clash incorporates a neat mix of both art styles simultaneously, and there’s also a great deal of attention paid to the in-game menus and other UI elements, such as the barracks where you can observe your collection of heroes and customize your teams and move sets.
‘Heroes’ carries Nintendo’s care and craft
While this will feel like a proper Nintendo game in the vein of a 3DS title, there are still a few mobile-related quirks that could draw negative attention. Heroes does require an internet connection at all times. “However, the game connects to servers intermittently, and the amount of data used is within the normal range you could expect for smart device games,” a Nintendo spokesperson told The Verge. So if you’re someone who enjoys playing mobile games on the go, but you don’t have a generous data plan or travel often by plane or subway, this news will be a bummer.
Still, Fire Emblem Heroes manages to mix enough of the core franchise’s best elements with a format that feels natural on mobile. And if enough players embrace the free-to-play structure, the formerly niche strategy series could turn into Nintendo's next big hit.Amazon
Amazon's most affordable Kindle e-reader is getting a refresh.
New to the 2016 model are a handful of feature improvements and small upgrades:
It's 11 percent thinner and 16 percent lighter than the previous model
The new Kindle is available in white as well as black.
is available in white as well as black. Its edges and body are slightly rounded, compared to the squared-off look of the previous model.
It adds Bluetooth audio for accessibility, so visually impaired readers can hear VoiceView audio -- automated reading of what's on the page, as well as navigation prompts -- on wireless headphones or speakers. (Note that it does not support Audible audiobooks.)
A personalized home screen adds more integration with Amazon's GoodReads community recommendations.
A new "export notes" feature finally lets you send your notes and highlights to your email.
Otherwise, the 2016 Kindle looks to be pretty much identical to its 2014 predecessor. It's also keeping the same price in most territories. It will ship in the US on July 7 for $80. Customers in the UK and Australia get it on July 20 for £60 and AU$109, respectively.
Head on over to Amazon to preorder (or here for the UK) -- but I'd recommend waiting for a sale, since the company seems to discount its Kindles at least once a month or so. And at that point, paying an extra $20 for the Kindle Paperwhite and its built-in light is a sensible upgrade.
For an overview of that very similar 2014 model, check out our video review below.Devil sperm collected in bid to save species
Posted
In what could be a last-ditch bid to prevent the extinction of tasmanian devils, scientists are collecting and freezing eggs and sperm.
A contagious facial cancer is spreading across Tasmania, and so far scientists have not been able to contain it.
Soon there will be an artificial insemination trial among captive devils on the mainland in an attempt to ensure they do not go the way of the tasmanian tiger
The research is being led by Dr Tamara Keeley, a reproductive biologist at the Taronga Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo in the central west of New South Wales
"These are techniques that can be tricky to develop because every species has their uniqueness in terms of what the sperm looks like, how it functions, even the size and number that are available in each species," she said.
Dr Keeley specialises in collecting and freezing the sperm of black rhinos.
Now she is using her skills to help tasmanian devils, and after four years of trying Dr Keeley has developed a way to freeze their sperm.
"We've had to go through so many different trials to figure out what works best for this particular species," she said.
"And we've managed, for both sperm and eggs, to freeze them down successfully and end up with viable cells after the freezing process."
Collection method
Dr Keeley says sperm and eggs are collected from euthanased devils.
"A lot of what we've done thus far has been rescuing the samples from animals that have been euthanased from the disease," she said.
"Because their health is compromised and they're going to die of the disease anyway, in some cases these animals are humanely euthanased.
"We then extract the ovaries and testicles from the animals and extract the eggs and sperm from those to freeze down."
She says it can also be taken from live devils in some cases.
"What we use is a technique called electro-ejaculation," she said.
"We use an electrode probe that's attached to an electro-ejaculator unit which allows us to very delicately control how much electricity we add to the prostate, which is a very, very small amount; it doesn't actually require a lot, and that allows the stimulation that causes electro-ejaculation.
"We do this all under anaesthesia and it doesn't actually harm the animal."
Critical strategy
Ecologist Dr Menna Jones from the University of Tasmania says the frozen sperm and eggs could become a critical tool for saving the devils.
"We hope we will never need this material," she said.
"But if the species were to get to very, very low numbers with serious loss of genetic diversity, banking sperm and eggs from wild or even important lineage of captive devils would become a critical strategy."
Dr Keeley wants to find out if the frozen sperm can be used in artificial insemination.
"We'll probably identify a few females from the captive population," she said.
"They'll be females of prime breeding age that have already successfully reproduced, so we've already captured their genes and we know that they're really good breeding females.
"We use our knowledge of her reproductive cycle to time when we put the sperm in her and hope for the best."
The artificial insemination trials are expected to start in the next 18 months.
Topics: endangered-and-protected-species, animals, science-and-technology, tas, australiaShare This On Social
Negotiations on the future trade relationship between the European Union (EU) and the UK can only begin after the clarification of all the issues of Brexit, according to the European Commission President (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker. Last night, Britain and the EU began the third round of Brexit talks. Conversations are expected to focus on the rights of EU and UK citizens, the Brussels-London Financial Agreement and the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
“I want to make it clear that we had read all the documents of the British Government with due attention and none of them is satisfactory”, said Jean-Claude Juncker to EU Permanent Representatives in Brussels. He stresses that there are “many issues” that need to be clarified.
“It should be clear that we will not start negotiations on the new economic and trade relations between the UK and the EU before all issues are resolved. It is the divorce between the EU and the UK. We can not mix things”, said also Juncker.
In conclusion, he adds that you must first “settle the past before looking to the future”.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
He's the other half of Everton's managerial dream team but who exactly is Monchi?
The Blues are ready to step up their pursuit in the Sevilla sporting director after closing in on the appointment of Ronaldo Koeman as manager.
Koeman's exploits are well known to Evertonian's but the Spaniard's less so.
Monchi, short for Ramon Rodriguez Verdejo, the transfer maestro has operated largely under the radar for the best part of 15 years.
No longer. After the Spanish club secured their third consecutive Europa League trophy, and their fifth in 10 years, the spotlight has fallen upon the man predominantly in the shadows.
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Monchi, a former goalkeeper at the club, has been sporting director at Sevilla since 2000. He took charge with the club in the second-tier, as well as financial ruin.
Since then, his work – the headline of which is player recruitment and sales – has seen them move back into La Liga, establish themselves both domestically and in Europe, as well as reach 14 finals in 10 years.
But he is now looking to move on; nothing coincidental about his raised profile as he seeks pastures new. Everton, under Farhad Moshiri, are also contemplating appointing a sporting director. Better still, Monchi is close to Blues managerial target Unai Emery, whom has led Sevilla to that treble Europa success.
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A match made in heaven? Perhaps not. Monchi has been told by Sevilla that any club who wants to prise him will have to pay his hefty buy-out clause. Add that to big competition for his signature, and the Blues would have a lot of work to do if they wanted to follow up their interest.
Still, no surprise Monchi would be considered. His record in terms of signing players is superb. Here are some of the stars he brought to Sevilla in the past 15 years.
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Dani Alves
Bought for: £400k from Bahia
Sold for: £26.5m to Barcelona
The marauding right back was snapped up from Brazilian side Bahia in 2003, first on loan, before buying him on a permanent deal. He enjoyed nearly 250 appearances for the club and established himself as his country’s first-choice right back.
Julio Baptista
Bought for: £2.6m from Sao Paulo
Sold for: £15m to Real Madrid
‘The Beast’ arrived after three years in his homeland, and was transformed when joining the La Liga side. Playing as an attacking midfielder, his reputation grew, and his two years there secured him a move to giants Real.
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Ivan Rakitic
Bought for: £2m from Schalke
Sold for: £13.5m to Barcelona
The classy Croatian was an astute signing from the Bundesliga. Despite a solid three-and-a-half seasons in Gelsenkirchen, he was snapped up for a tiny fee. He would go on to become a midfield general in Spain, captaining the club to Europa League glory.
Seydou Keita
Bought for: £3m from Lens
Sold for: £10m to Barcelona
Another player sold to Barcelona, and one who would go on to lift the Champions League with them. The Mali midfielder enjoyed five years with Lens in France, and was handed the armband. That alerted Monchi, who snapped him up, before selling him on after just a season.
Carlos Bacca
Bought for: £5.25m from Club Brugge
Sold for: £22.5m to AC Milan
Two excellent seasons in Belgium, including the 2012-13 campaign which saw him score 25 in 35 league games, secured the Colombian a move to La Liga. He was a revelation there, scoring at a rate of just under 1-in-2 and lifting the Europa League twice. He was a man in demand last summer.
Grzegorz Krychowiak
Bought for: £4.1m from Stade Reims
Sold for: N/A
Polish midfielder has been a key component in the Sevilla side for the last few seasons, establishing himself as one of the best defensive-minded midfielders in Europe. He remains at the club but has been linked with a big-money move away.Lindsay Shepherd says she's glad her supervising professor and the president of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., have apologized.
But she also says she doesn't think they had any other option.
On Tuesday, Laurier's president Deborah MacLatchy issued an apology on behalf of the school to Shepherd. It came after Shepherd, a grad student and teaching assistant, was sanctioned by her supervising professor for showing a controversial video in a tutorial for a communications class.
Shepherd covertly recorded her meeting with her supervising professor Dr. Nathan Rambukkana as well as another professor, Herbert Pimlott, and the manager of Gendered Violence Prevention and Support, Adria Joel. This week, that audio was released to media outlets.
Listen to the audio of that meeting:
The freedom of speech issue at Wilfred Laurier university is picked by the Conservatives as their first question on Wednesday 1:09
"After listening to this recording, an apology is in order," MacLatchy wrote.
"The conversation I heard does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires. I am sorry it occurred in the way that it did and I regret the impact it had on Lindsay Shepherd."
Shepherd told CBC News she didn't see where the university had any other option but to apologize.
"This was their only option," she said, adding, "I didn't expect their apology to be sincere. I don't think that they are sincere."
Lindsay Shepherd says she accepts the apology from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., after she was sanctioned for showing a video of a controversial debate in her classroom. (Twitter)
Complaint over video
Shepherd was sanctioned by Rambukkana after screening an episode of the TVOntario current affairs program The Agenda, which showed a panel discussion that included two University of Toronto instructors — controversial psychology professor Jordan Peterson and Nicholas Matte, a lecturer in the sexual diversity studies program.
Peterson is known for being outspoken on issues, including his views on genderless pronouns.
Shepherd was told one or more students complained about the video and Rambukkana told Shepherd showing the video without denouncing Peterson's views was like "neutrally playing a speech by Hitler."
Shepherd went to the media after that meeting and said she felt the university was being unfair in sanctioning her for the video.
Free speech support
On Wednesday, the issue was raised in the House of Commons as Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer made it the first question of the day.
"Will the prime minister join me in condemning the egregious crackdown on free speech at Laurier University?" he asked.
The prime minister was in Toronto at that time, announcing the Liberals' new national housing strategy. So the question was answered in the House by Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan.
"Our government is committed to creating open spaces for Canadians to debate and express their views," she said.
"In a free society, we may disagree with people's views, but we must defend their right to hold them, unless those views promote hate. Intolerance and hate have no place in Canadian society or in our post-secondary institutions," Duncan said.
The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship wrote a letter of support for Shepherd, saying it's not the university's job to shield students from certain views.
University of Toronto Prof. Jordan Peterson has been outspoken in his refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns. (Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images) "The purpose of classroom discussion, though, is not to bring students into any particular set of beliefs or attitudes, but to help them to make up their own minds," the letter said. "Requiring teaching assistants to condemn views as problematic is in conflict with this purpose, as the teaching assistant would then be pressuring the students to reject certain views."
'Part of a larger concern'
On Tuesday in Ottawa, federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer called the meeting Shepherd had with her professor an "inquisition" and said he couldn't believe what he heard.
Debate is not only supposed to be allowed at university, it's to be encouraged, he said.
Listen to Scheer's comments:
"I think that's extremely disappointing that the administration at that university would proceed in that way," he said.
"I believe it's part of a larger concern that I've witnessed and seen and heard feedback from from students and faculty from around the country that there are more and more impediments to free speech on campus."
Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer says he listened to parts of the meeting Shepherd had with her professor and others and he was surprised by what was said to her. (David Donnelly/CBC)
Issue far from over
Shepherd said the issue is far from over considering Laurier is continuing with its third-party investigation into what happened and a task force to look into how the university can foster "important discussions in a thoughtful and determined way."
Shepherd said she's not clear what that means.
"While they did do damage control because they were profoundly embarrassed, it doesn't really guarantee anything for the future if anyone ever finds themselves in my situation," she told CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris.
"It's kind of unfortunate that they didn't make any long-term commitment to protecting the ability to debate topics in the classroom in the future."
She said MacLatchy has reached out to her and asked to meet in person — an opportunity Shepherd said she will accept.
Listen to Shepherd's interview on CBC K-W's The Morning Edition:
'Not some scary monster'
As for her future at Laurier, Shepherd said she's torn on what to do.
She continues to teach her tutorial and said she is being transparent with students and answering any questions they have.
But she has received next to no support from her classmates or department.
"Zero people in my department or the communications studies department have made a point of supporting me," she said.
When she goes to her graduate class, "no one talks to me, no one even looks at me. It's like, whoa, you guys — you guys have an issue."
"I'm a person. So now it's like I've turned into some sort of Jordan Peterson where my physical body and me being somewhere is some sort of threat on a safe space," she said. "I'm not some scary monster."How I landed that tenure track professorship:
1. Survival of the fittest. The sooner you recognize the deadly competition for what it is, the sooner you will act relentlessly to secure your dreams. Postdocs are playing a game where 1 in 10 get a TT job. There is only 1 job open per 1 dead faculty or retiree. If you are not better than the other 9 people around you, you stand no chance.
Being “Better” means being creative. Another way to say this is that “style points count.” Your project needs to be remarkable. Remarkable means that when someone hears about it, they go to the next person and tell them about it. Only work on something you think is FUCKING AWESOME!!! How many postdocs do you know, who think their project is boring or cannot convey its excitement? Observe as all those postdocs fail to convert to faculty positions.
Here is a personal example of what it means to be “better.” During my undergraduate physiology degree we had to do a research report paper. Most people chose well known topics like muscle functionality (actin-myosin interactions), or brain synapse neurotransmitter function, I did my project on the effects of recombinant snake venom enzymes on blood clotting. I got an A! Style points count! Approach your life this way. You have choices in life, choose something that is fucking cool.
3. Do your own project. Choosing a cool project means picking it yourself and figuring it out yourself. It means not relying on your mentor to think of a project for you. I created my own project during my PhD and I had the choice as a postdoc to leave that project or stick with it. A well known researcher in my field told me at an interview that I could join his lab, but I would have to give up my project and work on his project. I declined that job and found an advisor who wanted me to work on MY project and believed in MY work! This choice paid off for me more than any other. Don’t pursue someone else’s dream. It’s way easier to get a faculty position as the guy who did X rather than being a knockoff of your advisor.
“As a postdoc you are a scientific stud. You are a fine tuned research machine!”
4. As a postdoc you are a scientific stud. You are a fine tuned research machine! Other PI’s fear your competitive hunger and immeasurable energy. Have the self-respect to know that you are capable of answering the biggest questions in your field more than any other person in existence and you are the only one with the time to do it! Think big, You were born for your idea!
5. You must eventually get your idea in a good journal. Even though you are a stud, no one gives a shit about who you are or what you think. No one will believe your idea has any value unless you get it somewhere that gives it value.
6. To get your idea in a good journal you must do a shitload of work. Good science, in my opinion, is achieved by speedily testing as many good micro-hypotheses related to your idea as you can, as quickly as you can. Write your ideas down as they come to you. Keep a running database of ideas. Tirelessly work through that list testing every idea that falls into a priority and figure that shit out!
7. To do a shitload of work you need a checklist! If you do not need a massive full-page checklist you are not working hard enough and are not testing enough hypotheses. To get a good publication you should be working on so many things at once that you literally forget about what you were doing, hence you have developed a checklist! Start your day by spending 20 minutes revising your daily checklist. Worship its organization and beauty. Get that shit done! I even put *complement my wife on my checklist so I don’t forget to do that in the midst of the overwhelming burden of experiments!
8. To do a shitload of work you need boundless energy. Fortunately as a young stud you have boundless ambition and ego, which makes you believe that you can win that Nobel prize, get rich or die trying ect… Ambition is your most precious resource as a young scientist, and there are constant factors seeking to diminish it. Do whatever you need to do to replenish your most ambitious desires. Exercise every day! Unlock your beast and dream big.
9. Burn the boats. You would rather die than fail!
10. Do not talk to that negative person! There is a person in your lab or in your department who makes you want to quit your job. They tell you your experiments will not work, they tell you it is impossible to discover anything new, they tell you all the low hanging fruit is gone, they tell you it is impossible to get funding and a job, they tell you it is impossible to do good science at small institutions, they tell you your competitors will beat you. DO NOT TALK TO THAT FUCKING GUY! RUN AWAY FROM HIM!
*a joke people…11. If you are a man one might consider growing a beard. I didn’t have a beard for my first two campus visits and those did not materialize as offers despite one search committee member telling me it was the best job seminar he had ever heard in his career. I got an offer the first time I interviewed with a beard.
Notes and My stats:
I was a postdoc for 3 years and just accepted a tenure track assistant professor position at a research university at age 29. I have 4 kids and my wife is pregnant. I applied for every job I thought I could do better than others (from FBI special agent, to Chair of Art Departments at Blizzard Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast; to Harvard assistant professor). I accepted the first offer that was right for my research, myself, and my family.
1 search season
45 job applications.
21 in industry, 7 of which were at Monsanto
2 in Government (FBI)
22 Assistant Professorships
Of academic jobs I had 4 phone interviews = 18% call back (I declined 1 interview because it came after I accepted)
3 campus visits with a 100% conversion rate from phone to campus invitation
1 offer, 33% offer rate.
*I think these stats are a bit above average in today’s market, but I had a lower total N than what seems to be standard ~ 100 applications. I agree with the probability hypothesis, that if you have a reasonable publication record, reasonable funding record, and are reasonably normal you can get an offer simply by playing the numbers and applying for at least 40 jobs with a 10% interview rate and a 1 in 4 chance of being offered.
*I really wanted to get a job fast and young. It was very important for me not to get stuck doing a 5-year postdoc. I did not want to spend my most energetic and creative scientific years working for anyone other than myself (Although I love my Mentors and Advisors).The looks-the-part two-wheeler would be fast too, if we were living in that bygone era. But in this century, the 744cc, air-cooled, longitudinally mounted V-Twin whimpers almost embarrassing horsepower figures. Thankfully, as Harley’s proven time and again, you don’t need to go fast to look cool. So grab your pudding bowl helmet and goggles and explore the execution of this retro racer.
By far, the V7 Racer’s most impressive feature is its exemplary appearance. We brought the V7R to a recent Mods vs. Rockers motorcycle/lifestyle event, and this contemporary Guzzi attracted plenty of retro-minded admirers. “Wow, that thing looks tits!” exclaimed one attendee who was definitely in the Rocker camp. “It’s like it just came out of custom shop!”
The Racer has the long, low profile of a vintage V7, and its black outerwear is nicely accented by burgundy-red splashes on its frame, swingarm, wheel hubs and sparkplug wires. Fork gaiters add to the retro theme, as do the spoke wheels with black rims. It all adds up to a sensational and unique appearance that always causes heads to swivel in its direction.
The small-block 744cc V-Twin feels different from Guzzi’s big-block motors, spinning up quicker and exhibiting less of the rotational crank torque that rocks Guzzis to their right side when revved. Although its peak power is modest (about 43 horses at the rear wheel), there’s ample grunt for most street situations.
Peak torque is said to arrive at just 3600 rpm, so the V7 responds with mild authority at lower revs and doesn’t feel truly gutless. But we wished for a livelier motor in this so-called Racer. The left handlebar-mounted manual fuel-enrichener lever (rather than automatically adjusting mixture and idle speed) betrays the EFI system’s 2004 roots, and we’d like to see an updated intake system in the near future, as is the rumor.
The tranny has light but longish throws, and swapping cogs is sometimes imprecise. Pulling the clutch lever takes a surprising amount of effort, especially for the weak-feeling dry clutch. As delivered, clutch engagement was sloppy, but after adjusting cable freeplay we were able to get it to bite solidly. Having only a single-disc front brake, the V7 lacks the stopping power of its modern counterparts, but with a healthy squeeze, the four-piston Brembo caliper grips the 320mm disc and slows the Racer in a manner sufficient for the modest power of its engine.
Clad with grippy Pirelli GP Sport Dragons, the V7 rider never gets to explore serious lean angles because left-side cornering clearance is greatly restricted. The left-side muffler restricts how far up the sidestand can retract, drastically limiting lean angle on that side way too early for a bike in the café-racer mold. The low-mount mufflers are carry-overs from the Café Classic model — which has passenger accommodations the R does not. In addition, the mufflers’ heat shields are excessively big considering there are no passenger legs to protect.
Pity, because this speedy looking modern classic is otherwise an obliging sporting machine. The Racer’s 18-inch front wheel doesn’t turn in as quickly as a 17-incher, but the bike is so light (437-pound curb weight), a rider can always bend it into a corner without undue resistance, and it feels planted and neutral while leaned over, providing there are no large mid-corner bumps.
The V7’s litheness also makes it easy to manage in tight, slow-speed maneuvers, aided by the torquey V-Twin that is always at a strong-pulling part of its powerband. Dual rear shocks feature remote reservoirs and preload- and rebound-damping adjustments, which adds to the V7R’s sporting flavor.
The V7R’s midsection is very narrow, but Duke’s 32-inch inseam vs. the V7R’s 31.7-inch seat height had him just barely flat-footing. The handlebars balance on the comfortable side of too low, which is appropriate for a machine of this style. Pressure on wrists can be alleviated by crunching abdominal muscles. The suede-topped seat proves to be surprisingly comfortable, even after an hour behind the bars. Rear-set footpegs limit the amount of legroom – it was fine for Duke’s small-size frame, but tall folk would best be advised to try it on before buying.
The number-plate/flyscreen provides a modicum of wind protection, and when combined with the forward lean of your torso, combines to make higher-speed freeway travel relatively painless. Longitudinal pavement grooves reveal a minor handling foible, as the front tire is often influenced by these grooves and causes a weave at the bars that is mild but mildly disconcerting.
The metal footpegs and short clip-ons transmit more vibration than expected from the 90-degree V-Twin, but the vibes are low-amplitude and not really bothersome. The sweetly rumbling note from its engine deserves a freer-breathing exhaust system, as emissions requirements force it to speak more softly than we’d like. If it were ours, we’d definitely fit an aftermarket exhaust system, as it would also likely uncork a few extra ponies and allow greater lean angles.
The V7R has several nice details, like the shifter and rear-brake pegs mounted on eccentrics for fine-tuning fitment. There’s a chrome cage on the triple clamp to protect dangling keys from scratching the special-edition numberplate. Twin chrome-ringed gauges are attractive, and the LCD info screen in the tach has displays for time or ambient temperature. The speedo’s LCD screen houses the odometer and a single tripmeter. The California emissions-compliant evaporative canister is nicely tucked away out of sight behind the engine sump.
Upon returning our V7R, we noticed a missing nut from a header stud and a fastener that had gone astray from the exhaust heat shield. This isn’t what we expect from modern motorcycles, but, hey, “It’s a Guzzi!” (See Norge review for euphemism reference.) Thankfully, Guzzis are equipped with two-year warranties.
Judged against semi-sporty machines from the Big Four, the $9790 V7R comes up short on performance and long on price. And yet this baby Goose has a classic appeal nothing from Asia can touch, giving it an appeal like no other current motorcycle. If nearly 10 grand is too steep for you, consider the $8990 V7 Classic, which is mostly identical mechanically but has a considerably less cool factor.
Key to the V7 Racer’s appeal is that its retro looks are authentically linked to the heritage of Moto Guzzi. Guzzis were always a major player in the café-racer movement, especially after the introduction of the V7 in the early 1970s. So here is a motorcycle that attracts both vintage enthusiasts and young hipsters, a feat precious few bikes can match. The Racer would also make a terrific entry-level sportster for beginners thick with style and wallet.
Related Reading
2011 Moto Guzzi California Black Eagle Review
2011 Moto Guzzi Norge 1200 GT 8V Review
2009 Moto Guzzi V7 Cafe Classic Review
2008 Moto Guzzi V7 Classic Review
All Things GuzziHmmn. Need to start looking into if Hot Toys will accept direct deposit. Seems like they can just eliminate the middleman of it going to my wallet in the first place…
“This is heavy doc.” Back to the Future is a pop culture icon and one of the best time-travel films of all time! It remains to be a highly popular movie even decades after the film is first released! Next year marks the 30th anniversary of this classic film and today Hot Toys is very excited to present the 1/6th scale Collectible Figure of the film’s main character – Marty McFly!
The movie-accurate Marty McFly Collectible Figure is specially crafted based on the image of Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly in the movie, featuring the newly developed head sculpt, highly detailed costume and a number of accessories.
Back to the Future fanatics should not miss the opportunity to pre-order this wonderful collectible figure!
Pre-ordering at Ani-Com will include a 1/6th scale guitar as bonus accessory.
Pre-order it from Sideshow Collectibles here: Back to the Future Marty McFly Back to the Future Sixth Scale FigureEqual Employment
“Nebraska workers should be judged on their work performance and not on who they love. Fundamental fairness and business sense dictates that if Nebraska is to remain competitive in the 21st century we must move forward with common sense workplace protections.” - Senator Adam Morfeld
"Saddle Creek and Slowdown support the workplace equality legislation because it mirrors our commitment to providing a diverse, creative and vibrant community in which everyone feels open and able to focus on their jobs." - Jeff Beck, Finance Director of Saddle Creek Records
Second Parent Adoption
“My bill for 2nd parent adoption allows a second parent to share legal responsibility for the financial, spiritual, educational, and emotional well being of a child in a stable, supportive and nurturing environment that can only be in the best interests of that child.” - Senator Sara Howard
“Children of same-sex parents are not treated equally before Nebraska law because both of their parents do not have legal custody of them. For instance, if the parent with custody dies, there is no guarantee that the child or children would remain with their surviving parent. Also, if a parent who did not have custody dies, the surviving child would have to pay inheritance taxes on anything left to them and would not receive Social Security survivors' benefits. The issue of second parent adoption is an issue of treating children of same-sex parents fairly and equally before the law.” - Barbara Baier & Lin Quenzer, Nebraskans and adoptive parents
Foster Parent Legislation
“Discrimination based on sexual orientation is wrong in any context, but it is even worse when it keeps vulnerable foster children from safe and loving families. We must end discrimination for foster placements now.” - State Senator Jeremy Nordquist
“When I retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, I was excited about the possibility of being a stay-at-home dad. My husband, Joel, and I went through foster parenting classes, a home inspection and a background check only
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to 1 km.
Together, the sensors search for drones and when one is spotted will alert operators to its presence.
In many countries, the illegal flight of drones is becoming an issue as the price of the devices gets cheaper and their popularity increases.
In Japan, a hobby drone with trace amounts of radiation recently crash landed on the roof of the prime minister's office in central Tokyo. In January this year, a drone taken on a late-night flight by a government worker crashed onto the White House lawn. And the U.K. just secured what police called their first prosecution against a drone operator for flying over football stadiums.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.Bombay high court has directed union government to decide on banning the manufacturing of plastic Indian flags by November 30. Meanwhile, the court has directed Maharashtra government to issue circulars to all departments and educational institutions stating to refrain from using plastic made flags.
A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Girish Kulkarni directed the state government to constitute a committee at the tahshildar and district collector level to collect and dispose off flags with dignity.
The bench also told the state to give wide publicity before the Independence and Republic Day in all forms of media to inform people to refrain from using flags made of plastic. The directions were given during the hearing of a public interest litigation filed by Hindu Janjagruti Samiti seeking strict implementation of the government resolution (GR) of August 2007, imposing a ban on the sale of national flags manufactured of plastic. The bench also directed the Centre to take the decision by November so that it can be implemented by January 26, 2015.
The state and Central government have been directed to file a compliance report to the court on the steps taken on the issue by December 8. As per the petition, the government had on August 27, 2007 issued the GR imposing a complete ban on the sale and use of plastic national flags as they pollute the environment. The petitioner said it was an insult to the national flag, as it's plastic variants lay strewn on streets after Independence and Republic Day.Truth About It.net’s Key Legislature: a quick run-down and the game’s defining moment(s) for Washington Wizards contest No. 27 versus the Chicago Bulls in Washington, via Conor Dirks (@ConorDDirks) from the Verizon Center.
by Conor Dirks.
After another convincing loss to another good team, answers were hard to come by and flaws were hard to admit. Randy Wittman probably came closest to describing the sheer off-ness of it all, when he said: “You know it just didn’t feel like we got in any kind of rhythm offensively all game. The comfort level of getting in a rhythm. At the start the game especially, we got off, missed a lot of good shots, missed some layups…”
Wittman elaborated further, when asked about Wall’s fourth quarter push: “Pace is of vital importance especially against a team like this. You can’t get into a walkup. Especially our second unit in the first half just walked it up.”
At 95.7 possessions per game, the Wizards currently sit at sixteenth in the NBA in pace factor. This middling speed ranking, enough to keep you far from the Mario Kart podium, will probably offend some, considering the Wizards feature Wall, who may very well be the fastest player in the NBA with the ball in his hands. If we’re talking about rhythm, though, pace is only part of the discussion.
Rhythm is developed by making shots, sure. But how you take them counts, too. It’s finding teammates in spots that they like to take shots and allowing them the time to shoot them. It’s working through a possession like a metronome until you have a window to hit that high note. Rhythm is the melted down product of consistent effort, good decisions, and dictating the pace of the game rather than reacting to it.
From game to game, Washington’s rhythm has been unpredictable. Every night, it’s a different song. And because the Wizards are a good team, they can get away with a show played a beat behind, or on the other end of the spectrum, with frenetic energy better befitting a mosh pit. Without getting tied up in the concept of identity, this team is all over the place, and still figuring out, after one-third of a season, how to score points. Now 17th overall in points per game (counting a 133-point effort against Boston in 2OT), the Wizards feature a dissonant combination of sharps, flats, and major chords.
For the second straight game, Washington’s big men doubled as volume shooters, and long jumpers from Marcin Gortat and Nene were disastrous, shaving points off the board with ill-fated attempts that looked as unnatural as “Any Given Sunday On Ice.” But it’s not just on the men with their fingers on the trigger. Early in the season, Washington’s passing was purposeful, directed, pretty. Against the Bulls, as it was against the Suns, it was perfunctory.
A cautionary tale about exposing a lack of rhythm, which is really a story about a lack of either confidence or competence: a gangly teen arrives at the sixth grade dance, wearing a fleece pullover zipped all the way up to prevent anyone from noticing the lack of an undershirt, dancing to a slow song with his girlfriend for the first time. With no idea how to dance, he puts his hands on her shoulders. She moves them to her waist. Unsure of the proper decorum for distance during slow jams and not confident enough to step back and dance from a distance during a pop song, he’s left with the considerable space in between them, elbows unbent to reach across the chasm, trying to look at the nonexistent horizon behind her right shoulder. She laughs. No one else notices, probably because others are likewise caught in their own personal hells. But it’s clear to her, and to me (surprise!), I have no idea how to dance, or what good dancing feels like at a kinetic level.
I like to think I’ve gained that knowledge in some small regard over the years. Once you know your strengths, and weaknesses, you figure out the appropriate rhythm. I am pretty good at swaying back and forth in time, so instead of trying to be one of those fancy dudes who dips ladies during slow songs, I sway back and forth. It’s what I’m good at! Likewise, a song with a tempo no longer daunts me. I have several registered moves and employ them liberally, but not overwhelmingly, when appropriate. Not winning any awards, but not feeling like I have to transfer to another middle school.
The Wizards haven’t internalized (or militarized) their strengths enough to waltz into many 3-pointers, despite an NBA-best 38.9 percent conversion rate. After this loss (in which the team took just nine 3-point attempts) the Wizards sit at 15.6 3-point attempts per game. Twenty-seven teams shoot more 3-pointers than that. Of the NBA’s top five offenses, the lowest 3-point attempt average is the Toronto Raptors, at 24.8 attempts per game. Wittman’s comment about pace is apt: against the Bulls, 3-point attempts looked easiest to create when Wall was pushing the ball. As TAI’s Kyle Weidie pointed out on Twitter: creating corner 3-pointers is undeniably difficult, but not as difficult as Washington’s drought has made it out to be.
Instead of getting in close to the basket and finding an easy rhythm, or stepping back and showing their stuff from the 3-point line, the Wizards dance in that in-between space, their arms uncomfortably outstretched, not yet capable of consistent competence, or even consistent strategy.
This team’s heart don’t beat normal.
But despite the issues described above, Washington’s defense has kept them in games. As has John Wall.
The Wizards were down 86-75 with 5:41 to play in the fourth quarter when Wall hit the Bulls with a two-minute, ten-point nonpareil guitar solo in a game otherwise sounding a lot like a cell phone ringtone of “Cry Me a River.” Four layups, one 20-foot jump shot. Wall was unstoppable, and part of that was surprising the Bulls by pushing the ball and driving straight to the hoop instead of walking the ball up and getting into a halfcourt set.
And then, inexplicably, he slowed down. Whereas the sudden increase in tempo unlocked Wall’s strengths, taking a foot off the pedal (after taking a one-point lead with 3:44 remaining) doomed the Wizards to the hole they had just clambered out of. And that’s what Randy Wittman was describing, I think. No team can sustain a perpetual fast break, and there are going to be slow possessions. But walking the ball up throughout the first three quarters is not the balance, or the ideal rhythm, that Wittman is trying to achieve. An in-rhythm Wizards team is built around Wall’s speed, opening up the corners by threatening an easy layup, and then opening up the midrange by threatening the long bomb.
Wall, for his part, seemed less convinced that a lack of rhythm was the culprit, politely disagreeing with his coach’s description. According to Wall, it was more a case of missed shots. He’s not wrong, either. Washington had plenty of open looks, and blew the majority of them. On the night, the team knocked down just 38.1 percent of their 42 uncontested shots. One of the biggest culprits, Marcin Gortat (1-for-6 on uncontested shots, 5-for-15 overall), shook his head as he admitted that he had been missing a lot, and added that the Wizards “had a lot of open shots. We just missed them.”
Whether this loss resulted from a hard-to-define amalgamation of game factors or the simple reality of a basketball bouncing off the rim, the Wizards haven’t found an equation that works against the elite of either conference. As Paul Pierce said after the game, commenting on Washington’s lack of free throw attempts, “against a team like Chicago, you have to be the aggressor, you can’t let them get you back on your heels … it takes ball movement and aggressive drives to open up the offense.”
Fortunately, there are still 50-some games to work out the kinks of this suddenly spotlighted offense, even if the Wizards, with their counter-intuitive style, haven’t yet shown that they can smooth things out.
Final Words (via Pierce and Gortat)The number of homicides in Baltimore this year is soaring — reaching 100 before the end of April for the first time in nearly two decades — and the mayor is asking the FBI for more help.
“Murder is out of control,” said Mayor Catherine Pugh, at her weekly news briefing Wednesday. “There are too many guns on the streets. We’re looking for all the help we can get.”
The mayor met recently with the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore office and asked for additional agents to help local police battle violent crime in the city, according to the mayor’s spokesman, Anthony McCarthy. He said that could either mean bringing in more FBI agents from other field offices across the country or reassigning agents already in Baltimore to work with local police investigating violent crime.
Three people were killed in the city Monday — raising the number of homicides this year to 101, according to police. And with the warmer months approaching, it’s only expected to get worse.
“The summers in Baltimore tend to be very violent,” McCarthy said. “And the mayor wants to get a handle on all the murders, the flood of guns on the streets and the gang activity.”
The mayor is also asking the FBI to share its newest crime-fighting technologies with Baltimore Police, according to McCarthy. He said Mayor Pugh is hoping to make an announcement about additional federal resources sometime next week.Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar (Screenshot/The Kelly Files)
Lost in the many revelations and and explanations in the Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar interview with Fox’s Megyn Kelly was a bombshell comment made by Jim Bob Duggar stating that parents they spoke with had experienced “similar situations” within their own families.
As the Duggars explained why they didn’t seek professional help for teenaged son Josh after he admitted to molesting five young girls – four of them his sisters, including one who was reportedly only 5 at the time — they said they reached out to their church and friends for advice.
That was when Jim Bob offhandedly mentioned the feedback he received from other parents –presumably from within their inner circle — as they attempted to keep the potential scandal under wraps.
“It was a very difficult situation,” Jim Bob explained. “But as we talked to other parents and different ones since then, a lot of families have said that they have had similar things that happened in their families.”
According to John V. Caffaro, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles and author of Sibling Abuse Trauma, sibling sexual abuse is more common than people believe, saying it is almost at epidemic levels.
Writing for the Washington Post, he said, “Sibling sexual abuse is the most closely kept secret in the field of family violence. More than one in three cases of sexual assault against children in the U.S. are committed by other minors.”
“A 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that at least 2.3 percent of children have been sexually victimized by a sibling. By comparison, 0.12 percent are sexually abused by an adult family member,” he wrote before admitting that young children are naturally curious about their bodies.
“All children explore their bodies and may engage in visual or even manual exploration of a sibling at times. This is one way that children discover sexual differences between boys’ and girls’ anatomies.”
While that might explain sexual curiosity — such as “playing doctor” — in younger children, Josh Duggar was 14 at the time the series of molestations began.
Watch the clip below, captured by Ifyouonlynews.com:CLOSE Zika virus, which has been linked to thousands of birth defects in Latin America, has spread rapidly and made its way to North America. Here are five things you need to know about the virus. VPC
A bag of donor blood and the questionnaire donors must complete. (Photo11: MARTIN E. KLIMEK, XXX)
In response to the mosquito-borne Zika outbreak, the American Red Cross is asking people to avoid donating blood if they traveled to Latin America or the Caribbean in the past 28 days.
Blood donors who develop symptoms of Zika within two weeks of donating blood should contact the Red Cross within immediately so their blood can be quarantined, the organization said in a statement Wednesday.
“The American Red Cross is dedicated to providing the safest, most reliable blood products possible to patients in need," said Susan Stramer, vice president of scientific affairs at the American Red Cross. "The Red Cross continues to use safety measures to protect the blood supply from Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses."
The announcement comes two days after a similar recommendation by the American Association of Blood Banks, which says the virus is believed to remain in the blood for less than 28 days.
The Canadian Blood Services said Wednesday it is barring people from giving blood within 21 days of traveling outside of Canada, the continental USA and Europe.
Blood suppliers currently test for diseases including HIV, hepatitis, West Nile virus and the parasite that causes malaria. There are no commercial tests for Zika virus, said Anne Winkler, medical director of the transfusion service at Grady Health System in Atlanta.
One advantage to the Red Cross' voluntary approach: it can begin immediately. Changing the questionnaire given to potential blood donors to ask about recent travel to Zika-affected areas would take much longer, since those forms must be reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration, Winkler said.
Unlike the flu, the virus cannot be spread from person to person. Mosquitoes that bite an infected person can spread it to future victims.
Because the virus is not spreading among local mosquitoes in the continental USA, the risk of contracting Zika through a blood transfusion here is "extremely low," said Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
More than 30 Americans have been diagnosed with Zika after traveling to Latin America or the Caribbean. The risk that those travelers could spread the diseases to others is remote because mosquitoes don't bite in the winter, Glatter said.
The Red Cross only collects blood from people who are "healthy and feeling well at the time of donation." But four out of five people with Zika infections experience no symptoms of disease. Those who do often report mild illness, including low fever, rash, pink eye, joint pain and headache, according to the World Health Organization.
During an outbreak of Zika in French Polynesia from 2013 to 2014, doctors found the virus in 3% of blood donors without any symptoms, according to a study published in October in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Scientists in Brazil are evaluating a possible case of Zika virus spread through a blood transfusion, according to the American Association of Blood Banks. Dengue fever, a virus spread through the same Aedes mosquito that transmits Zika, is known to spread through blood transfusion.
Infectious disease specialist Peter Hotez said the Red Cross is taking a "reasonable" approach to reduce the risk of Zika in the organization's blood supply.
Asking people to avoid giving blood within 28 days of travel will reduce the blood supply, but not by much, Winkler said. The policy will reduce summer blood supplies by 1.17% and winter blood supplies by 2.27%, according to the American Association of Blood Banks.
Policies could change as scientists learn more about the virus, said Kristy Murray, director of the Laboratory for Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.
"This is all constantly evolving," she said.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1SYsJlNWith opening day of the State Fair of Texas one week away, our thoughts turn, inevitably, to fried food. We know about the 2015 Big Tex Choice Awards, where carrot cake twist won for best-tasting entry, and the most creative prize went to a drink, the smoky bacon margarita.
Other entries included pretzel-crusted pollo queso, chicken-fried lobster tail, and fried beer-battered buffalo.
But the finalists for the Big Tex Awards are not the only new food items that will appear at the fair. According to a release, concessionaires spent the entire offseason concocting new foods to showcase. Check out some of this year's other new foods:
Coco-Rita. Fresh whole young coconut with a cut-off top. The juice is removed and replaced with a frozen strawberry margarita or pina colada margarita. It's "complemented" with a straw, umbrella, and spoon. The umbrella maybe, but is a straw really a complement? Located at CBP-1 stand.
Deep Fried Bacon Cheeseburger Basket. An "American" cheeseburger with "chunky" bacon, French fries, hand-battered onion rings, and "homemade" fry sauce, deep-fried in a flour tortilla, chimichanga style, served with several dipping sauces. Located at TB-25 stand.
Fried Tailgate Party. Fried treat loaded with tailgate foods — baby back ribs, pulled pork, chicken wings, grilled burger, cheese stuffed with jalapeno wrapped in bacon, grilled sausage — stuffed inside biscuit dough and deep fried. Served in your favorite teams' colored paper, stuck with toothpicks of their emblem. Located at MLK-1 and P-3 stands.
Fried East Texas Sausage and Pepper Jack Cheese on a Stick. Beer-battered sausage and cheddar cheese with a touch of jalapeños, fried on a stick. Yay for food on a stick. Located at FW-27 stand.
Fried Flan Cake. "Homemade" chocolate cake is baked over a creamy caramel flan before being battered and fried, then crowned with whipped cream and "a delightful caramel sauce that will make your mother proud." They don't know my mother. Located at G-45 stand.
Fried Kettle Corn. Described as "a classic fair food just begging to be deep fried." (Can you hear it saying, "Pwease pwease pwease fry me"?) "Homemade" kettle corn is formed into "old-fashioned" popcorn balls (the modern popcorn balls are so inferior), dipped in pancake batter, and fried. Each ball is topped with salted caramel sauce. Located at FW-19, G-6, and MLK-2 stands.
Laredo Dumpling. Ground beef seasoned with Mexican spices, wrapped in an Asian dumpling, and fried, then served with fresh pico de gallo, sour cream, salsa, or smooth creamy cheese sauce. Located at CBP-18 stand.
Limited Edition Oreos. Located at FW-9 and N-9 stands.
Red velvet: dipped in a red batter, fried, and drizzled with cream cheese icing.
Cookie dough: dipped in a chocolate batter, fried, and drizzled with chocolate syrup and chocolate chips.
Cotton candy: dipped in pink and blue batter, fried, and sprinkled with pink and blue candy sugar served with a side of cotton candy.
Machete. Handmade extra-long corn tortilla fried and stuffed with melted cheese and your choice of meat (pork, spicy chicken, or ground beef). Located at G-32 stand.
Milk Chocolate Bacon on a Stick. A quarter-pound of bacon threaded on a wooden skewer, deep fried, finished on the grill, and dipped in cacao milk chocolate. Located at TB-22 stand.
Pulled Pork Mash. Pulled pork combined with layers of mashed potatoes and a dill or banana pickle slice. Located at TB-3 stand.
Pumpkin Spice Doughnut Chip. Deep-fried crisp doughnut chip coated with pumpkin spiced glaze, served with ice cream smothered with cinnamon candied maple bacon. Located at M-19 stand.
S'more Beer. Ice cold cup trimmed with chocolate and graham cracker crumbs and filled with imperial milk stout beer with vanilla and a thick rich milk chocolate head. It's topped with a large marshmallow. Located at FW-9 and N-9 stands.
Texas Fried Bacon Jalapeño Bites. "Fresh crisp" jalapeños combined with apple-smoked bacon, cream cheese, spicy sausage, and aged Parmesan. It's all coated in jalapeño bread crumbs and fried. Served with a jalapeño lime ranch sauce. Located at FW-5 and TB-12 stands.
Texas Bull Horn. Beef and pork sausage infused with jalapeño and cheddar cheese, stuffed in a "360-degree" hand-cut potato shell and deep fried on a stick. Hot dog and fries in one hearty bite. Located at TB-8 stand.
Tropical Shrimp Kabob. Onion, pineapple, and shrimp grilled with the "perfect blend" of island spices and tropical glaze. Located at FW-5 and TB-12 stands.There have been a lot of really stupid things said about the oil spill that is quickly turning into our nation's worst environmental disaster. Treehugger collected seven of them, rounding out both the bottom AND top of the list was Mr. Limbaugh with his forehead-slappingly inane assertions that environmentalists probably blew up the oil rig to drum up support for the cap-and-trade bill and that the oil gushing out from more than a mile under the surface is "as natural as ocean water is".
No one should be surprised at this. Rush Limbaugh gets paid a lot of money to say stupid things to his stupid audience. You could easily lose a day on the internet trolling through the various lists of the "Top X stupid/racist/ignorant things Rush Limbaugh has said".
My friend Michael over at Treehugger did a pretty bang-up job of ripping apart Rush's ludicrous statement about oil being as natural as ocean water, for all the good that it'll do. Anyone who believes anything that comes out of Rush's mouth probably isn't going to be swayed by, you know, actual facts and figures. Reality has a nasty liberal lean.
It'd be comical if it weren't for the size of Rush's audience. There is a frightening number of people out there right now blustering about how the liberal lefties are using this oil spill to further advance Obama's hidden agenda to enslave your grandparents to run human-powered renewable energy farms.
Or something like that. Scared yet?
This just in: Texas Gov. Rick Perry appears to give Rush a run for his money when he recently called the oil spill an act of God while warning against stopping off-shore drilling. Facepalm
Are you on Twitter? Follow me (@sheagunther) there, I give good tweets.
And if you really like my writing, you can join my Facebook page.
Rush Limbaugh: Oil spill 'as natural as ocean water'
Rush Limbaugh thinks environmentalists probably bombed the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and that the oil spill is nothing to worry about. Don't you feel better?Last season's League Two play-off finalists Exeter opened the new season with a comfortable win against Cambridge at St James' Park.
The only goal of an entertaining game came from Reuben Reid in the fifth minute after Jordan Moore-Taylor's long ball was needlessly handled inside the penalty box by Jake Carroll.
Although Reid saw his penalty saved by David Forde, the ball came straight back to him to tap in the rebound.
David Wheeler saw a header come back off the inside of the post, while Cambridge almost levelled when Exeter goalkeeper Christy Pym completely missed a kick, but he managed to get back to scramble Luke Berry's shot off the line.
Liam McAlinden then missed a golden chance for Exeter, heading wide from six yards, before Lloyd James skied another glorious chance for Exeter high from 10 yards with just Forde to beat.
McAlinden skied another great chance high shortly after half-time before being denied by Forde, while a rare Cambridge attack saw Berry volley over after good work by Uche Ikpeazu.
Match report supplied by the Press Association.A fire that killed 111 textile workers in Bangladesh was caused by "an act of sabotage", authorities said, as protesters and factories workers across the country took to the streets for a second day to express their anger over the tragedy.
Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, the interior minister, said on Tuesday that according to a preliminary inquiry, the fire at Tazreen garment factory in Dhaka over the weekend was the result of arson. He promised to bring the culprits to justice.
"We have come to the conclusion that it was an act of sabotage. We are finding out as of now who exactly the saboteurs
are and all culprits will be brought to book," Alamgir said.
Earlier, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she suspected the fire was an act of sabotage, but she did not identify any suspect or say why she thought the cause might have been arson.
More than 1,000 workers, some carrying black flags, demonstrated in the Ashulia industrial belt on the outskirts of
the capital where the factory is located.
They blocked traffic moving on a highway and vowed to avenge the deaths of their colleagues, witnesses said.
"Never shall we give up demands for punishment for those responsible for the tragedy," one worker said.
Habibur Rahman, Dhaka district police chief, told Reuters news agency that his men were investigating complaints from some survivors that factory managers stopped workers from running out of the building when a fire alarm went off.
Representatives of the Tazreen Fashions factory, including the owner, were not available for comment.
'Violation of policies'
The developments in Bangladesh came a day after the US retail giant Walmart said it had ended its relationship with an unnamed supplier who sourced garments from the Tazreen factory.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she suspected the fire was an act of sabotage, but she did not elaborate [AFP]
The multinational company severed ties with its supplier as anger over safety standards in Bangladesh's clothes manufacturing industry mounted. Bangladesh offers cheap labour to many Western apparel brands for manufacturing.
In a statement issued on Monday, Walmart expressed its condolences to the victims' families and said: "The fact that this occurred is extremely troubling to us, and we will continue to work across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh.
"A supplier subcontracted work to this factory without authorisation and in direct violation of our policies. The Tazreen factory was no longer authorised to produce merchandise for Walmart. Today, we have terminated the relationship with that supplier."
C&A, a European high-street name, and the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung, which also procured orders at the Tazreen factory, have separately expressed condolences.
Prominent fashion brands are likely to distance themselves from the scandal which could spell an imminent PR disaster.President Trump speaks during a news conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan, not pictured, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Wednesday. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
The dig against liberals is that they love humanity but hate people. President Trump, on the other hand, hates humanity but loves people. One on one he charms, seeking approval and love. More important, when presented with individual human cases of suffering, his amoral, inhumane stances seem to melt.
Recall during the campaign when he agonized over just how many people he wanted to deport. Appearing with Sean Hannity, he asked the crowd, “So now we have the person, 20 years, upstanding person, the family’s great, everyone’s great. Do we throw them out or try and work with them. Ready? Number one, we’ll say throw them out, number two we say work with them. Ready? Number one!” Sure he wants “everyone” here illegally to get out, but the grandma here for 30 years? Well, not her. Likewise, for the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) young people, he cannot bring himself to follow his policy to its logical conclusion. “I actually have a big heart. Something that nobody knows. A lot of people don’t understand that. But the dreamers, it’s a tough situation,” he told Dana Bash. “We’re going to do something. … I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal.” The policy makes no sense, but Trump cannot envision himself as the villain when he has a particular victim, or group of victims, clearly in his head.
Conversely, no matter how many statistics confirm that immigrants are overwhelmingly law-abiding and commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, anti-immigrant groups have been hugely successful in parading family members of specific victims whose death may (or on closer examination, may not) be caused by illegal immigrants. Yes, Trump uses such cases to manipulate our emotions, but by the same token, the groups, who for years have spouted phony statistics and bogus data to demonize immigrants, can claim to have successfully manipulated him.
Likewise on Syria, Trump throughout the campaign decried the notion that we had any interest in Syria. The horde of immigrants was a threat, in his mind. Bashar al-Assad was better than the alternative, he insisted. Then came the pictures and the videos this week. You could tell how uncomfortable, repulsed even, he was. Asked whether the latest attack was a red line, he responded: “It crossed a lot of lines for me. When you kill innocent children, innocent babies — babies, little babies — with a chemical gas that is so lethal — people were shocked to hear what gas it was — that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line. Many, many lines.” As he said the phrase “babies, little babies,” you could see his face contort with genuine revulsion. The specific images showing individual victims plainly moved him. ” And I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me — big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing,” he said. “And I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that.”
To some degree, this is human nature. Joseph Stalin (who was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russians) said, “A million deaths is a statistic; one death is a tragedy.” Likewise, the world shrugs when 450,000 Syrians die but recoils in horror at the image of a victim of the Aleppo bombings, 5-year old Omran Daqneesh, caked in blood and dirt and sitting in an ambulance.
The bias in favor of individual cases over generalized data is more acute with Trump because he has so little understanding of or intellectual curiosity about the world. A man who tweets headlines from Fox News in place of reading briefing papers remains remarkably ignorant, easily moved by one image or one hard-luck case. He’s a tabula rasa of sorts, so when a dramatic image breaks through, it may be the only particularized knowledge he has of a given situation.
In his thirst for approval and distorted self-image, Trump needs to be seen as beneficent (why else lie about charitable donations?). Accordingly, advisers, activists and commentators who want to appeal to his desire to be praised as some kind of humanitarian would do well to deal in the concrete, the particular. He’s unmoved by a statistic (24 million people will lose insurance) but may be greatly moved by the plight of a single person denied coverage.
Trump’s intellectual weakness and emotional neediness leave him vulnerable to manipulation. (Vladimir Putin has figured that out.) The danger is that policy decision-making becomes the battle of sob stories, each side trying to find the most extreme and poignant tale. On the positive side, if he can be shown the human consequences of ill-conceived policy stances, Trump might, as he prides himself for doing, be “flexible” enough to change his mind.A fiercely committed ensemble and an exquisite sense of historical detail conspire to cast a highly atmospheric spell in “The Witch,” a strikingly achieved tale of a mid-17th-century New England family’s steady descent into religious hysteria and madness. Laying an imaginative foundation for the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials that would follow decades later, writer-director Robert Eggers’ impressive debut feature walks a tricky line between disquieting ambiguity and full-bore supernatural horror, but leaves no doubt about the dangerously oppressive hold that Christianity exerted on some dark corners of the Puritan psyche. With its formal, stylized diction and austere approach to genre, this accomplished feat of low-budget period filmmaking will have to work considerable marketing magic to translate appreciative reviews into specialty box-office success, but clearly marks Eggers as a storyteller of unusual rigor and ambition.
A New England-born, Brooklyn-based talent who started out in the theater, Eggers has several film credits as a production/costume designer and art director, as evidenced here by his subtle yet meticulous visuals and bone-deep sense of place. The verisimilitude is striking: Produced in the abandoned lumber town of Kiosk in a heavily wooded region of Northern Ontario, and lensed by d.p. Jarin Blaschke in beautifully muted, mist-wreathed shades of gray, “The Witch” (which bears the subtitle “A New-England Folktale”) confines most of its fleet 92-minute running time to a small farm at the edge of a dark forest circa 1630 — a setting whose atmosphere of mystery and menace is no less unsettling for being possibly imagined.
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This isolated backdrop is no place to build a home or raise a family, yet that is what farmer William (Ralph Ineson) is forced to do after being banished from his plantation for some vague but religiously motivated clash of wills. Now he lives in exile with his severe wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie), and their five children, each of whom will have his or her part to play in the tense, sparely plotted drama that unfolds — starting with the youngest, the infant Samuel, who suddenly vanishes from the farm while being watched by his sister, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). Almost immediately we glimpse a disturbing image of the boy’s fate in the form of some unspeakable blood rite, though it’s unclear whether something satanic is actually taking place, or whether these are merely the nightmarish visions of William and Katherine, who fear that their unbaptized son is not just lost but damned.
As the firstborn child and the one ostensibly to blame for Samuel’s disappearance, the suggestively named Thomasin quickly becomes the family scapegoat, as well as a convenient symbol of female iniquity. When the inconsolable Katherine isn’t burying herself in weepy, wailing prayers for Samuel’s soul, she’s bitterly lashing out at Thomasin for her perceived negligence, despite the girl’s protests that she has done no wrong. William, though no less intense in his Christian devotion, is somewhat more forgiving, not least because he’s acutely aware of his own failings as a husband and father; it’s because of his stubborn pride that he and his family are now forced to fend for themselves, with a failing crop and no community support to help get them through the difficult months ahead.
Striving to help out as best he can is the second eldest child, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), a God-fearing lad who’s not too afraid to venture into the nearby woods in search of food and animal pelts. But if there’s a thematic constant here, it’s that even the most good-hearted children are susceptible to impure thoughts and worldly temptations. Certainly that’s true of the younger twin siblings, Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), two pint-sized mischief makers who become convinced that Thomasin is the Devil’s handmaiden, even as they seem to have formed a rather unhealthy attachment to the family goat, the ominously named Black Philip.
The goat, of course, is a widely recognized symbol of Satan, and the presence of Black Philip is but one of many winking horror tropes that Eggers skillfully puts into play here: Between the bad-seed moppets and the ruined harvest, the mysterious disappearances and the frightening instances of animal misbehavior, “The Witch” is rife with intimations of inexplicable evil, of something deeply twisted and unnatural at work. At the same time, the film grippingly ratchets up the family tension on multiple fronts, to the point that it could almost be read as a straightforward portrait of emotional and psychological breakdown — exacerbated by the parents’ certainty that every setback is a test from the Lord. “Place thy faith in God,” William instruct
|
be failing.
Finally, given a generation of environmental propaganda, a presidential science adviser (John Holdren) who has promoted alarm since the 1970s, and a government that proposes funding levels for climate research about 20 times the levels in 1991, courage seems hardly the appropriate description – at least for scientists supporting such alarm.
Richard S. Lindzen
Cambridge
The writer is Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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RedditI’m not usually one for predictions but I can foresee Daniel Abt breaking his Formula E duck this season. And I’m in good company.
Allan McNish agrees with me, so even if Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler has even a morsel of the advantage some think they will have in Season Four, Abt may even become a multiple winner.
So why do we think that Abt, very much the number two driver in the team so far and a man who has not won a race since he triumphed in a long forgotten GP3 encounter at Monza in 2012, will emerge as a contender?
It would be disingenuous to state that the predicted competitiveness of the Audi e-tron FE04 will make this prediction “an easy call.”
Abt is much better than his results in Formula E demonstrate.He missed out on podium positions last season because of poor luck and the occasional mistake from his team.
When Abt does win a race, it will be unfair if it’s labelled with the “anyone could win in a car that’s so dominant.” If, indeed the advantage is what some are suggesting, Abt will have contributed to its status handsomely.
His qualifying in previous seasons have been described by some, even within his team, as better than di Grassi’s.
The stats, though, don’t back this up, as eventual champion di Grassi out-qualified him by eight to four.
This included Mexico City, where Abt claimed pole but was then sent to the back of the grid for a tire pressure irregularity. But di Grassi generally had the upper hand.
What’s more pertinent is that Abt failed to score points in at least three races due to circumstances beyond his control. This included a cruel penultimate lap problem while in line for a podium in the first New York race.
Abt’s new team principal McNish is a shrewd judge of character.
The three-time Le Mans winner has worked with drivers from Ayrton Senna and Tom Kristensen to less-celebrated talents such as Andy Pilgrim and Laurent Aiello.
“Daniel came very good in the second half of the year but I felt sorry for him, especially in races like Paris and New York, especially the last lap with safety cars,” McNish said.
“He had technical problems with the battery which was nothing he could do about in New York. But he drove very well and there was a podium going begging there.”
The team player element is something McNish was a master of in endurance racing and a strand of the job which he believes Abt excels in.
“Daniel is an extremely good team player and backed up Lucas very well in the final races in Montreal,” he said.
“What he brings to the team is much more than what is just seen on race weekends. He is a genuine and engaging presence and this is reflected with his relationships within the team.
“His results, on paper, certainly did not reflect his capability and I think he could be a good strong surprise package this year.
“We know that the guys have consistently been at the front, winning races, but I think that he is the driver that will get his first race win on the board in Season Four.”
The predictions may add a slight amount of pressure to Abt’s maturing shoulders but this is small fry compared to his recently secured Audi factory driver status and the internal scrutiny that will bring.
The indications are that the 24 year-old German will deliver and surprise many.
There will be those that will be startled should he produce such results. Short memory syndrome is has always been rife in this business.
So, let us remember that this is the same Daniel Abt who finished a close second to fellow Formula E competitor Mitch Evans back in 2012. Among those he beat that season was another lauded Formula E talent, Antonio Felix da Costa.
“Every season is an important one,” McNish said. “Daniel is a pro and we know that when everything is aligned he has the potential to deliver some great results. We believe in him.”Rust is a systems programming language that comes with an awesome package manager Cargo, which hooks into the crates.io registry as one of its possible sources of packages. The packages can have dependency relationships between each other, making the database into a natural directed graph.
Rust as we have it today is still relatively new, Cargo is even newer, and crates.io is newer still, so the package ecosystem is small: at the time of writing, only 681 crates exist on crates.io (compared to 115 thousand for node.js’ npm). I’m sure this will quickly pick up with as Rust moves to 1.0 and beyond, but at the moment the network of crates and their dependencies is still easily small enough to be handled globally with simple means like the graphviz suite of tools and naive Rust programs. Which is exactly what I did.
The graphs
The “full” graph of the ecosystem, as rendered by graphviz’s fdp, is busy, very busy:
Click for the rest of the much larger graph as an SVG with clickable package names, sized according to the number of dependent packages. You may wish to zoom out to get your bearings.
That’s not even the complete package graph: development dependencies are completely ignored (they can cause cycles), and any crates with no dependencies and no dependent crates are not shown, since they’re not yet interacting with the ecosystem at all; but even so, the graph is fairly useless.
The suck is mainly due to the most popular crates like time and rustc-serialize, which pull most clusters into the very center of the graph. Eliminating them (specifically, crates with 15 or more dependent crates) gives a more reasonable graph.
(Click for bigger.)
That graph makes it clearer that there’s a few distinct clusters. The left has a lot of web-development functionality, clustered around hyper, conduit and openssl. The right has a lot of game-development and computer graphics libraries, with many components (that’s not all of them) from Piston and many from RustAllegro. Spread around are smaller clusters, like epsilonz, and a variety of numerical projects (of which some use num, and others do not).
It’s not a cluster so much, but there are a lot of examples of some crate $foo depending on $foo-sys : people following the convention for publishing FFI bindings.
Collecting the data
crates.io uses a git repo for distributing information about the registered crates. Each one gets a file containing a series of JSON objects (one per line) looking a lot like:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 { "cksum" : "665e3764d2f654d77382ec6ed40a2faf5a114a6e41e2d1c307ff97916924ec64", "deps" : [ { "default_features" : true, "kind" : "normal", "name" : "num", "optional" : false, "target" : null, "req" : "~0", "features" : [ "" ] } ], "vers" : "0.1.5", "yanked" : false, "name" : "slow_primes", "features" : {} }
That’s the info for version 0.1.5 of slow_primes ; it contains the key piece of information that we need: the dependencies, in the deps field. The simplistic analysis I’m doing here means that the only facts of interest are the name of the dependency and whether it is a dev-dependency ( kind == "dev" ).
The fixed format of the JSON makes it ameniable to #[derive(RustcDecodable)], an attribute that will automatically create deserialization code that does the right thing:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 # [ derive ( RustcDecodable )] struct CrateInfo { name : String, vers : String, deps : Vec < DepInfo >, cksum : String, features : HashMap < String, Vec < String >>, yanked : bool, } #[derive(RustcDecodable)] struct DepInfo { name : String, req : String, features : Vec < String >, optional : bool, default_features : bool, target : Option < String >, kind : Option < String > }
The graph is based on the most recent version of each package, so I just take the last line in each crate’s file, run it through json::decode and get back a CrateInfo. A few tens of lines later, the code knows about every crate and about every dependency link and can print it all out to a graphviz DOT file. (Unfortunately the neat graphviz library doesn’t offer the flexibility I wanted for setting arbitrary attributes, so I had to resort to manual printing.)
There is one trip-up: a crate can depend on another crate multiple times, with different configurations (most commonly, differing target s), so some deduplication is required to avoid double counting and cluttering the graph with multiple lines. Other than that, the details of the implementation aren’t very interesting, but the code is publicly available at github.com/huonw/crates.io-graph.
Thanks to cmr, acrichto, FreeFall and tomaka in #cargo for help/suggestions/copy-editing/catching bugs.Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE adviser Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday defended a move by House Republicans to gut an independent congressional ethics office.
Conway said she had not discussed the amendment with Trump and that the proposed measures would not impede ethical oversight of lawmakers.
“I don’t want your viewers to be left with the impression that there’s no mechanism to investigate ethics complaints, particularly ethics complaints that come from constituents, which the former office has been entertaining,” she said in an appearance Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“I don’t want people to feel like ethics is gone,” said Conway, who will be the president-elect's counselor in the new White House.
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“I think it caught some people by surprise because it was done through a blind ballot," she added. "But again, the full House has to vote on this today. So the Democrats and others who object, they’ll have an opportunity to be heard.”
The House Republican Conference on Monday moved to adopt a proposal that would remove the Office of Congressional Ethics’ (OCE) independence and establish new limits on its powers.
The full House must now vote on the change, which would replace the OCE with a new Office of Congressional Complaint Review. The new office would report to the House Ethics Committee.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte Robert (Bob) William GoodlatteIt’s time for Congress to pass an anti-cruelty statute DOJ opinion will help protect kids from dangers of online gambling House GOP probe into FBI, DOJ comes to an end MORE (R-Va.) on Monday proposed the ethics amendment ahead of an overall vote on the larger rules package the following day. The amendment would put the OCE under the oversight of lawmakers through the House Ethics Committee.
The proposal bars the ethics office from considering anonymous tips about potential ethics violations and prevents disclosures about investigations.
Goodlatte said in a Monday statement that the measure, if adopted, would ensure due process rights are protected for lawmakers.The man who said he was served a deep fried piece of rat instead of chicken at a California KFC is being called a liar by the company, following a DNA test of the meat.
“Recently, a customer questioned the quality of a KFC product, and this received considerable publicity given the sensational nature of his claim,” the KFC Rodrigo Coronel told FoxNews.com.
On June 12, KFC customer Devorise Dixon posted a now-viral photo of a piece of meat on his Facebook page that appeared to be rodent shaped with a long string of fried breading, resembling a tail.
The image immediately drew skepticism from some while shocking others.
KFC immediately responded to the allegations by sending out pictures that showed how the fried chicken is cooked, saying Dixon's original photo clearly showed white meat and couldn't possibly be a rat.
After initially complaining to the restaurant manager, Dixon reportedly refused to communicate directly to KFC and retained an attorney, who gave the product to the chicken chain on Friday for testing at an independent lab.
Now the results are in and DNA tests confirmed the product was chicken and not a rat as the customer claimed, according to KFC.
“We did an internal investigation and talked to all employees. That statement is false,” Coronel said.
KFC now wants Dixon to “apologize and cease making false claims.”The NBA is concerned about the length of games, which is why I proposed over the summer that the league should cut the game time from 48 minutes to 40 — an idea incoming commissioner Adam Silver is said to be interested in. (Silver informally proposed the 40-minute game, as well as a three-minute overtime, to owners over the last couple of seasons, according to several team sources. The proposals, to be totally clear, were very informal, intended only to gauge opinions.)
Those are dramatic changes, and a segment of fans responded by essentially declaring: “No way! An NBA game is 48 minutes, and that’s that! Who cares how long games are?” The league cares, and so do TV partners that like certainty in broadcast windows and understand how much competition they have for eyeballs — even as TV sports remains perhaps the last DVR-proof “event” television. But fans are right that the league can start by trying smaller changes, especially during crunch time, which can be interminable. The league has already started down that road, mostly by increasing the penalty for intentional off-ball fouls in the last two minutes of regulation. International leagues have gone further by prohibiting live-ball timeouts. The NBA has tweaked on the fringes elsewhere by cracking down on pregame rituals after the introduction of starting lineups and blowing warning horns to hustle teams out of timeouts.
All good ideas, but merely tweaks. They likely won’t move the needle, especially as the league expands instant replay. More dramatic changes may be necessary, which is why it’s always smart to watch what the D-League does regarding game length. Rule changes in the D-League don’t happen by accident, especially rule changes that introduce stark differences between the D-League and its parent league. They happen because the NBA is interested in seeing how they play out.
The D-League is a couple of seasons into a mission to get its games into a two-hour broadcast window, says Dan Reed, the D-League president. But it’s stuck with an average game time around 2:13, and so they’re going further this season than they have before, Reed told Grantland last week.
Two big changes stand out:
• The D-League is slashing the number of timeouts available to coaches from eight per game to seven, Reed says. Each timeout will be a flat 30 seconds, a change that is obviously impossible at the NBA level, since broadcasters need extended timeouts to air commercials. Turning 20-second timeouts, which the D-League has used, into 30-second timeouts, is a canny way of acknowledging that 20-second timeouts are misnamed. The league is also introducing a use-it-or-lose-it rule, so teams that arrive at the last two minutes in regulation with more than two timeouts will forfeit any they have in excess of two.
That’s not such a big deal, because of the mandatory TV timeouts built into D-League (and NBA) games. Those are charged to teams, generally on an alternating basis, meaning teams automatically lose one of their seven timeouts per quarter. The most timeouts a team can have at the two-minute mark of regulation is three, so the use-it-or-lose-it provision can only dock teams a max of one timeout. The NBA already has a similar rule on the books, but NBA games also feature two additional mandatory TV timeouts — those awful stoppages near the nine-minute mark of the second and fourth quarters. The D-League rule change would represent the net loss of one timeout on the parent level as well.
• The D-League, for the first time, is banning a defensive team from calling timeout during an inbounds play if the offense previously called a timeout to set up that play. In other words: no consecutive timeouts. The rule applies for the entire game, not just crunch time, Reed says.
These are big changes, and they did not come easily, Reed says. Coaches, like players, view the D-League as a place to hone and show off their skills, and not all of them were excited about losing a chance to draw up plays. The D-League has discussed other changes, including a FIBA-style ban on live-ball timeouts, and a rule that would eliminate a timeout and replace it with a free advance of the ball. (In other words: You don’t get a timeout, but you can pause the game and start your next possession from midcourt instead of underneath your own basket.) “I’m not sure anything is off the table,” Reed says.
The D-League has also discussed reducing the length of halftime, which is when advertising buys at all levels are cheapest; companies paying for their ads to be broadcast correctly assume fans change channels during halftime. This is one factor that mitigates against the possibility of expanding halftime and cutting one or two in-game ad breaks in exchange, an idea Jeff Van Gundy and others have proposed.
Again: Nothing in the D-League happens without some degree of influence from above. Reed says this is not a case of the NBA directly asking him to implement changes, but he acknowledges the parent league’s interest in cutting game length. “They are certainly interested in learning if there is anything to apply down the road,” Reed says.
Networks that air D-League games are in favor of the changes, even though it could reduce broadcast windows by 15 minutes, Reed says. “They like high ratings at the end of the day,” he says. “And an exciting game that fans can more easily fit into a busy schedule makes it more likely they will want to tune in. We recognize we are in a world where people have more demands on their time. There are more distractions, more obligations, more media out there to consume.”
Broadcasters also like the idea of knowing, with some degree of certainty, how long a block of programming will take. It makes it easier to sell and price ads, and shorter games might generate more stickiness with viewers. Ratings aren’t just about how many people are watching a game at any one moment. They are also about how long the average viewer stays on a discrete piece of programming before flipping elsewhere.
It’s popular, and very easy, to say the NBA will never consider reducing game length (or the 82-game schedule, a separate but connected debate) because it will reduce commercial time, or ticket prices, or some other variable that helps determine the size of the league’s TV deal (due for renegotiation now) and its general financial health. But that equation — more = better — may not hold in perpetuity.LONDON – MMAjunkie was on scene and reporting live from today’s early and official UFC Fight Night 107 fighter weigh-ins, which took just 32 minutes – the fastest such proceeding in the promotion’s history.
The early weigh-ins, which precede the day’s ceremonial affair, took place at the Hilton Canary Wharf, which served as the UFC host hotel in London. The UFC Fight Night 107 ceremonial weigh-ins take place at 11 a.m. ET at O2 Arena in London, the same venue that hosts Saturday’s event on UFC Fight Pass.
Among those weighing in were headliners Corey Anderson (9-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC) and Jimi Manuwa (16-2 MMA, 5-2 UFC), who meet in the light heavyweight main event.
Additionally, Brad Pickett (25-13 MMA, 5-8 UFC) steps into the octagon for the final time on Saturday night when he meets late replacement Marlon Vera (8-3-1 MMA, 2-2 UFC) in a catchweight contest at 140 pounds. Vera took the fight on short notice and alerted his opponent overnight that he wouldn’t be able to miss weight, but “One Punch” accepted the bout anyway.
Leglock expert Ian Entwistle (9-3 MMA, 1-2 UFC) missed weight, registering 139 pounds. His opponent, Brett Johns (13-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC), accepted the fight as a catchweight affair and will receive 20 percent of Entwistle’s purse.
UFC officials recently adopted the early weigh-ins to allow fighters more time to rehydrate before the event.
The full UFC Fight Night 107 weigh-in results include:
MAIN CARD (UFC Fight Pass, 5 p.m. ET)
Corey Anderson (205) vs. Jimi Manuwa (205)
Alan Jouban (170) vs. Gunnar Nelson (170)
Brad Pickett (139) vs. Marlon Vera (140)
Arnold Allen (145) vs. Makwan Amirkhani (146)
PRELIMINARY CARD (UFC Fight Pass, 1:30 p.m. ET)
Joseph Duffy (155) vs. Reza Madadi (155)
Francimar Barroso (204) vs. Darren Stewart (206)
Timothy Johnson (264) vs. Daniel Omielanczuk (240)
Marc Diakiese (155) vs. Teemu Packalen (155)
Oluwale Bamgbose (184) vs. Tom Breese (185)
Leon Edwards (169) vs. Vicente Luque (169)
Ian Entwistle (139)* vs. Brett Johns (136)
Scott Askham (185) vs. Brad Scott (185)
Lina Lansberg (135) vs. Lucie Pudilova (133)
* – Entwistle forfeits 20 percent of his purse, which goes to Johns
For more on UFC Fight Night 107, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.“Look over there, another woman with only one boob!”
Screamed the sarong-clad stranger standing next to me.
I was puzzled and turned to her and asked, “What do you mean?” She pulled down her sarong and showed me her chest, on one side a breast, the other side a scar. I peered in the direction she had pointed, and another woman with a similar appearance was proudly walking out of the water.
I watched as two complete strangers joyfully connected with one another. No words were required, just one look of recognition, a smile and then an embrace. I was in tears, a blubbering mess. It was the purest form of human connection, kindness, courage and love and a story was unfolding before my very eyes.
In the course of one day my life has changed forever. I am a better human being; I have experienced more joy than I’ll ever be able to express. I didn’t get married, I didn’t save someone’s life, nor did I rescue a small animal. I simply took my clothes off and swam in the ocean with more than a thousand strangers.
The Sydney Skinny is an event like no other; it is the world’s largest nude ocean swim and happens each year at the stunning Cobblers Cove in Sydney. The event is a celebration of body acceptance and encourages participants to reconnect with their sense of adventure.
Check out the video here – please note you might see a cheeky bottom or three!
Here’s how the day unfolded for me:
I woke up on Sunday morning feeling slightly uneasy that I had engaged in a hearty feast of curry and chocolate cake the evening before. Seriously Taryn, could you not have shown some restraint on the food front before you partook in a nude swim?
It wasn’t so much the roundness of my tummy that was that bothering me but rather at what stage of the morning I would be “offloading” the previous night’s indulgences.
I arrived at Cobblers Cove early, filled with anticipation, excitement and nerves. Getting my clothes off in front of strangers is not something I’ve ever done. I walked around welcoming people with a smile and an air of assurance that could’ve been mistaken for confidence and bucket loads of experience in the nudity arena. We know this not to be true.
When I got to the beach, the first thing I saw was a penis. Yep, a man’s penis and oddly, it wasn’t my husband’s. Then I saw another, and another and another.
Within minutes, a penis was a penis and a vagina was a vagina, and we were all just human beings. Nothing more: nothing less. Nothing scandalous, nothing dirty or creepy and nothing remarkable.
I eased myself into the water and immediately felt a sense of release, pleasure and freedom. The feeling of the water on my skin as I glided through it was delightful. The endorphin rush of being unclothed and doing something I had never done before was magical. This was life, and I was living it.
I was in the zone that, sadly, we rarely experience. I was out of the comfort zone and basking in what I describe as the sparkle zone. I felt utterly euphoric and deliriously happy.
And I wasn’t alone. I heard people squealing with joy exclaiming, “I never want to swim with clothes on again!” and I saw others joyfully hugging as if they had just been reunited after a lifetime apart. There were high fives, people laughing and people rejoicing.
And of course there were two women chatting, hugging and bonding over their shared mastectomy journey. One of the ladies explained to me how big a deal it was for her to do the swim, to get naked in front of other people and to face her fear. But looking into her sparkling eyes after she had completed the swim, I saw nothing but pride and happiness. When asked if she would do it again, the answer was a resounding YES!
It got me thinking that to effect a transformative change in a person’s life it requires an action to be taken (think Anthony Robbins’ fire walk). Water is an element that has been used as a purifier in many religions. Could participation in the event be the 21st century’s non-religious “psychological cleanse” that helps individuals lay their body image demons to rest? Is it possible to walk into the water with body image worries and walk out with an undeterred commitment to learn to love and respect your body more? I believe so.
Amongst the thousand people who were there on the day, I didn’t hear one person judge another. I didn’t hear one person complain about their stretch marks, cellulite or jelly belly. People were just people; there were no barriers, there was no discrimination or prejudice. People were kind to themselves and kind to each other.
If you want to feel comfortable in the skin you are in then maybe it’s time to take the dip of a lifetime. All you’ll need is a little bit of self-belief, an inkling of courage and your beautiful, bare, pure and authentic skin.
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HAVE YOU EMBRACED YET?
5.7 Million people from across the globe have watched the EMBRACE trailer in just under 2 weeks. Help me create global change by watching the trailer HERE.
To find out more about the Sydney Skinny: CLICK HERENathan, born Nancy, Verhelst, 44, was given legal euthanasia, most likely by lethal injection, on the grounds of "unbearable psychological suffering" on Monday afternoon.
Wim Distelmans, a cancer specialist who carried out the euthanasia, is the same doctor who late last year gave lethal injections to congenitally deaf twins who were frightened they were also going blind.
"I was the girl that nobody wanted," Mr Verhelst told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper in the hours before her death.
"While my brothers were celebrated, I got a storage room above the garage as a bedroom. 'If only you had been a boy', my mother complained. I was tolerated, nothing more."
Mr Verhelst had hormone therapy in 2009, followed by a mastectomy and surgery to construct a penis in 2012. But "none of these operations worked as desired".
"I was ready to celebrate my new birth," he told the newspaper. "But when I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection. I do not want to be... a monster. "
The case will revive Belgium's debate over medical euthanasia as statistics show a steep year on year increase in the number of patients killed by doctors after a request to die.
Belgium recorded a record number of 1,432 cases of euthanasia in 2012, up 25 per cent from the previous year and the country is currently deciding whether to extend "mercy killing" legislation to children.
Professor Distelmans, who carried the euthanasia of Mr Verhelst, is the same doctor who last December gave lethal injections to twins Marc and Eddy Verbessem, 45.
The two brothers were both born deaf and asked for euthanasia after finding that they might also both go blind. After having their request to die refused by their local hospital, Prof. Distelmans accepted on the grounds of 'unbearable psychological suffering'.
"The choice of Nathan Verhelst has nothing to do with fatigue of life," said Dr Distelmans. "There are other factors that meant he was in a situation with incurable, unbearable suffering. Unbearable suffering for euthanasia can be both physical and psychological. This was a case that clearly met the conditions demanded by the law. Nathan underwent counseling for six months."
Last week, figures showed that the number of Dutch people killed by medical euthanasia has more than doubled in the 10 years since legislation was changed to permit it, rising 13 per cent last year to 4,188.
Euthanasia carried out by doctors at the request of a patient is only legal in three European countries, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.Hullabaloo
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
This Could Be You
by digby
Stop resisting:
On June 29, 2009 McFarland and his wife Pearl were returning home from a charity fundraiser just before midnight. McFarland injured himself as he stumbled and fell down the long steps to his front door.
"Mainly it was to my knee and the front of my leg, my shin," McFarland said.
His wife called paramedics, who helped him into the house and treated him. As the paramedics were leaving, two sheriff's deputies arrived.
"All of a sudden, they just showed up, they came in here like there was a fire going on, like a gunfight was going on," McFarland said.
What happened in the following minutes was captured on a camera mounted on the deputy's Taser.
The deputy tells McFarland he is going to take him to the hospital because he may be suicidal.
"We want to take you to the hospital for an evaluation, you said if you had a gun, you'd shoot yourself in the head," the deputy can be heard saying.
McFarland says it was just hyperbole. He was tired and in pain.
The deputy orders him numerous times to get up or else.
"Stand up, put your hands behind your back or you're going to be Tased," the deputy says.
McFarland keeps refusing.
The exchange goes on for about five minutes; his wife keeps pleading with the deputies not to Tase him, saying he has a heart condition.
Then, McFarland tells the deputies in no uncertain terms to leave.
As he gets up to go to bed, McFarland is Tased. Not once, but three times.
[...]
McFarland says he never had any suicidal thoughts. In fact, he considers himself lucky to be alive.
"I'm a survivor of pancreatic cancer; one of 4 percent in this country," McFarland said.
Scott says his client was arrested, jailed and charged with resisting arrest. A judge later dismissed the charge..
No search warrant, no probable cause, inside the man's home with his wife present. Are you feeling nice and free now?
Seriously, that's one of the worst I've seen and I've seen hundreds of these by now. The police entered his home without a warrant or permission and told him they were forcibly taking him to a hospital (presumably because the paramedics had reported the comment) then shot him repeatedly full of electricity when he failed to comply, even after his wife told them he had a heart condition. He broke no law, appeared fully in control, was sitting on his couch talking to the officers. That's something out of an East German nightmare circa 1954.
But I guess you can see why the cops all over the country are saying their privacy rights are being violated by videos of their activities. It really hurts the ball team when stuff like this comes out.
Judging from the comments most people are pretty horrified. But there are always a few authoritarian robots in every crowd:
Peter McFarland should be thanking the sheriffs not suing them. They thought he was a danger to himself and they were going to get him help despite himself. The fact that they held off from using any type of force for as long as they did amazed me. McFarland had ended the dialog with officers the second he became belligerent They showed restraint by patiently waiting and giving him repeated chances to comply. Officers need to be encouraged to ignore the excuses such as "it was just hyperbole".
Just watch the video. You'll especially enjoy the part where they taser him repeatedly while he's screaming and writhing in pain on the ground, as they tell him to "stop resisting."
.
digby 9/01/2010 12:00:00 PMbit of love/pixel perfect
Paint Tool Sai / GraphicsGale / Photoshop 7
pixel by pixel love
//
OH GOD, DEAR TUMBLR FRIENDS, PLEASE SEE A LARGER VERSION (like this or this) OR ALL MY HOURS OF WORK WERE WASTED.
It’s been a long long while, but I’ve decided I should probably be putting things up on Deviantart again! Oh wow, it’s literally been years and years and years. Whoosh. Thankfully(?) I haven’t really drawn all that much in the intervening time, and most of it went the way of the dodo when one of my hard drives failed o.o. I’ll consider backing some of what I’ve drawn up on Dev, but otherwise you can find most of the newer stuff over at my woefully unadorned Tumblr.
This piece was fun, and probably the most time I’ve spent on one single drawing in a long long time. To be more accurate, I didn’t spend that long on the DRAWING bit, pencils and inks in Sai, the pixelly explosion part in GraphicsGale using the NES palette, but the colouring…
The colouring literally kept me up at night. My original thought was to colour it “manually” in Gale using a limited palette, but I had no idea how to make this a functionally working thing. I wanted to give it a real vibrant prismatic rainbow-y look like KEI, Tsukushi, or ami, but of course it’s a lot harder than it looks. After hours and hours of experimenting I ended up using a fixed width hard edged brush with 55 opacity and 40 flow, then the mosaic filter (Pixellate -> Mosaic) at 20 pixel width for most of it. The dress still came out sort of muddy, but I really really like the eyes (which were sort of accidental anyway).
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, I really enjoyed making it.For the 1,000 passengers aboard the Crystal Serenity cruise ship, climate change has brought a luxurious opportunity: to sail into the history books on the largest passenger vessel to traverse the once unnavigable Northwest Passage.
The historic voyage has never before been possible for such a large ship, but climate change has nudged open the door to the Arctic. The arrival of the massive 820-foot ship and its wealthy passengers (each paying from $20,000 to $120,00 for the month-long journey) has brought a flurry of excitement and tourist income to the remote town of Nome, Alaska. But it has also brought intense scrutiny from critics, who say Crystal Cruises is capitalizing on the destruction of the planet.
“As global temperatures soar, wildfires rage and sea ice levels dwindle to record lows, a luxury cruise company has found a way to make a pretty penny off our rapidly changing climate,” Chris D’Angelo writes for The Huffington Post.
That sentiment is exacerbated by a recent report that portrays cruise ships as massive pollution machines that burn through tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel and emit the equivalent pollution produced by millions of cars.
While climate scientists and environmentalists lament the lost of sea ice in the Arctic, for others the opening of the Northwest Passage has meant economic opportunity. In recent years, a great polar rush has unfolded in both poles, as newly opened passage ways have sent such nations as China, Russia, Britain, and Chile scrambling to map previously uncharted sea floors and claim the territorial rights for any fossil fuel stores that may lie below.
“Global warming may have cracked open the door to the poles but worldwide hunger for resources is prying it wider, with greater force,” Douglas Fox wrote in a 2014 cover story for The Christian Science Monitor exploring the great polar rush.
Cruise-ship tourism in both the Arctic and Antarctic began to rise in the early 2000s, with cruise passenger travel to Greenland more than doubling between 2003-2007 and the number of tourists arriving in Antarctica skyrocketing from 1,000 per year in the 1980s to a peak of 46,000 in the 2007-2008 austral summer.
With the rise in tourist traffic has also come an increase in emergency rescues. In 2014, 52 passengers had to be airlifted by helicopter from The Academic Shokalskiy, a research-tourism vessel, after it became stuck in sea ice and a diverted Chinese ship sent to rescue the passengers also became stuck. About half of the passengers aboard the Shokalskiy were tourists paying about $16,
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still contemplating buying these phones, all I have to say is, do yourself a favor and just go for it. The fully covering (Circumaural) ear pads alone is reason enough to get this. This, combined with how comfortable and fatigue less these are over long sessions, combined with the amazing sound quality these provide makes it a real winner in my eyes (or should I say ears? ).
One thing to note is that.. as far as planars are concerned, these headphones are very easy to drive. I was able to get a good quality output from the headphone even without an Amp or a DAC attached. However, you do need a good amp to bring the best out of these headphones. A Modi 2/ Magni 2 combo is an excellent option.. If you are on a budget, just get an amp like the Fiio A3 (which is really awesome for the price btw).
I am just happy that I did go for these headphones and am looking forward to hours and hours of listening and re-discovering all the beautiful songs that I have loved for so many years!The following essay is adapted from a letter the author wrote to his colleagues and students announcing his resignation from the chairmanship of the creative-writing department at the University of California at Riverside.
I spent most of my academic career doing what most of us do—teaching, reading in my field, doing research, writing books and articles, reading graduate applications and theses, holding office hours. I didn't pay much attention to the university and its administration. None of us has that luxury anymore. Budget cut after budget cut after budget cut have left us all painfully aware of how the sausage is made, or not made.
Having served in administrative posts for most of the past five years at the University of California at Riverside, I have come to know the budget issues very well. The University of California system, once the envy of the world, is on a rapid downhill slide that will have profound effects for our state, our families, our country, and our world. As of this budget cycle, we are past the tipping point.
In the space of less than a single lifetime, the University of California at Riverside went from being a small agricultural experiment station to one of the top 100 universities in the country. A dense and elaborate web of specialists across all fields of scholarship, science, and the arts was developed, and it took enormous efforts over those years to make it happen: countless hours in search-committee meetings followed by hundreds of thousands of hours of mentoring and reviewing; getting junior faculty financed; and, through tenure, building departments person by person, career by career. The best energies of thousands of people, year in and year out for 50 years.
In less than the four years that it used to take to graduate, this accomplishment is being destroyed.
My department is a great example of the breadth of vision and dogged effort that made Riverside the exceptional place it has been. There are other creative-writing programs in the country, but not a single one anywhere with the range across genres and fields, the breadth of knowledge in world literatures, the diversity of voices, methods, and styles that we have.
And there is not another creative-writing program anywhere—certainly none with our caliber of professors—that is more truly dedicated to its pedagogical mission at every level. I have now taught at every kind of institution—fancy elite universities, small colleges, Big Ten universities, art schools, and universities abroad. I have never been part of a faculty that was this student-centered, this concerned about the educational experience and prospects of its undergraduate and graduate students.
Three years ago, I was offered a job at the University of Southern California, which is much closer to my house and more prestigious as an academic address, and which was offering me more money. Riverside worked hard and did the best it could to try to match the salary, and I stayed. I stayed because I wanted to be part of this project, I wanted to teach a student body that truly represents the community (31 percent of UC-Riverside students are Hispanic, for instance, of whom 85 percent are first-generation college students), students who come not from the richest families in California but from some of the poorest, students who have a greater likelihood than not of coming from immigrant families and from families where English is not the only language spoken at home. I wanted to remain part of one of the greatest democratic experiments in history, the University of California.
If I got that offer today, though, I'm not sure I could turn it down, and, in fact, many people are not turning down outside offers these days. People who have taught here for more than 20 years are now considering going somewhere else, someplace where the future is a bit more certain. These are people who are the best in their fields, and UC-Riverside, and the educational experience at UC-Riverside, is diminished each time this happens. We can't blame them—they have kids of their own to put through college, they have research projects and labs that require money, they know that to teach the most-complex subjects effectively, they need to run seminars with 15 students sitting around the table, not 150.
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The budget cuts of recent years and the ones we know for certain are coming next year mean a gross deterioration of our university. Those faculty who do leave for better jobs, or retire, or die in harness, are not being replaced. Staff who leave are not being replaced—the positions of those who are left are simply "reorganized." Students at Riverside are having increasing trouble getting the classes they need to graduate, and many of the classes they get will be crowded beyond responsible limits. Departments are being forced to abandon optimal class-size limits for classes two, three, and five times as large.
The library has virtually stopped buying books. We are on a race to become a mediocre university at best, and if the $500-million of proposed cuts in the university system turns into a billion dollars, as they are now discussing in Sacramento, we will be over. The billion-dollar cut translates into thousands of classes across the system. It means creative-writing workshops with 50 students, or, if we insist on maintaining reasonable workshop size, eight or 10 years to graduation for our majors. It means we will cease to be a real university, and will simply become another community-college-level institution at best. Then, maybe, after a few years, with tuition at $30,000 or $40,000 a year, we can begin the slow, arduous rebuilding into a real university, serving a small fraction of the population we now serve.
Why is this happening? Political demagoguery and corruption. Thirty-five years ago, the University of California received 6.6 percent of the state budget and prisons 3 percent. Now the university gets 2.2 percent and the prison-industrial complex gets 7.4 percent. The Legislature is taking the money that should be used to educate the best of its citizens and using it to enrich the people who make a profit from imprisoning the poorest. The percentage of the cost of higher education provided by the state has been cut in half, cut in half again, and is on the verge of getting cut in half a third time.
The people in the Legislature understand the value of public higher education. The vast majority of them have degrees from our state system, and many of them have multiple degrees, all made possible by the legislators who preceded them—and who had more courage.
Today's legislators have adopted a drawbridge position—we got ours, and now we're closing the gates—for a variety of stated reasons, but it is clear that the real reason many do not protect the colleges and universities that made possible their livelihoods and careers is simply this: If they do, they will suffer a flow of conservative attacks and Tea Party racism, the standard price, now, if one stands up for anything that is directly devoted to the commonweal.
In my darkest moments, I think the monied interests working against reasonable taxation are doing so because they consciously, actively seek to make sure we do not have an informed, educated citizenry—the better to extract our collective labor and wealth unimpeded. But such intentionality isn't necessary. Shortsighted, grab-it-now, bottom-line greed explains their destruction of our culture without recourse to any dystopian conspiracies.
The only thing that has a chance of turning this devastation around is student activism. We in higher education cannot spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions the way the prison profiteers or the medical and insurance and aerospace industries do. We need to find other ways to provide a political counterweight. We need to make our voices heard.
As my last act as chair, I wrote to our students, suggesting that their own self-interest should be the catalyst. No matter what happens this year, they will have trouble finding the classes they need, much less the ones they want. And the chance for them to graduate in a reasonable amount of time is already gone. I suggested they think of what this means for their families, their neighbors, their friends, their own kids when they come of age. I suggested they think of what it means that California has reduced its higher-education budget to among the lowest per capita in the nation.
Because of its education system—a system that, until just a few years ago, was considered the best in the world—California had become among the most innovative and significant literary and cultural centers in the country, and because of this education system, too, California had become the economic powerhouse it has been. We had the best educational system because we were willing to pay for it, and our expenditures were among the highest in the nation, too. Those expenditures are now well below the national per capita average (and the national average is itself down). Only a political movement strong enough to buck the corporate money determining our tax policy can change this downward spiral. Only citizens can make it happen.
We at the University of California have been told, from the top, not to expect a return to "the glory days." This year was not the glory days. This year we already have discussion sections that are not discussions, fewer classes, an exploded student/faculty ratio, decimated staff; we are very far from the glory days. One longtime faculty member in sociology told me she had not taught a course with under 80 students in five years. Now that an additional $500-million or $1-billion are getting yanked out of the system, the numbers are easy to predict: She will have no classes with fewer than 120 students.
Students' favorite lecturers will be gone. The class they want won't exist anymore. Teaching assistants will have twice as many students in their sections. Advisers will have 800 or 1,000 students to advise instead of the 300 we all agreed was an absolute maximum two short years ago. This is the end of quality. And why? Because a few very wealthy people are protecting their wealth from taxes, taxes considered reasonable not only everywhere else in the developed world, but also considered reasonable in America until 20 years ago.
I hope the students finally get angry. I hope they get active. I hope hundreds of thousands of them call and write their legislators, get out in the streets, take back their university. Don't, I pleaded with them, don't let yourselves be the last people to have even this chance.Javi Eraso will always be remembered as one of the members of Athletic’s historic squad that won the 2015 Spanish Super Cup. After leaving Bilbao Athletic in 2013 he spent two years at CD Leganes before coming back to play at the San Mames. During his last two years at Athletic he has seen his playing time slowly diminish and it became clear that he could be on his way out of the club this summer. Cuco Ziganda recently confirmed that the player would be making his exit this summer and that became a reality on Monday.
Athletic officially announced that they and Javi Eraso have come to a mutual agreement to terminate the last year of his contract so that he can sign a three-year deal with CD Leganes. The Lions will also retain a buy-back clause on the midfielder as well.
The writing was on the wall towards the end of last season when Eraso was left out of the squad on a weekly basis. There was just took much competition in the midfield for him to play regular minutes and this summer’s additions of Ager Aketxe, Mikel Vesga, and possibly Mikel Merino has made it almost impossible for him to have a role in Cuco Ziganda’s team. Returning to Leganes will give Eraso a familiar home and the chance to play every week as a Primera midfielder.
Moving forward Athletic has plenty of options to utilize in the midfield. Mikel Vesga is now a very real candidate to compete for a starting role alongside Beñat, while Ager Aketxe will provide solid depth behind Raul Garcia. There is still a problem of overbooking though as there isn’t enough room for all the midfielders in the squad. Players like Unai Lopez and Mikel Rico are still competing for their futures at Athletic Club and the potential arrival of Mikel Merino could add another major wrinkle to the team. Despite leaving his boyhood club, Javi Eraso is one of the few Lezama products from the last few decades that can say he won a title with Athletic Club.
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FacebookMr. Wayne Shorter as Carlos Santana lovingly calls him turns 80 years young this year on August 25th. I awoke this morning thinking about his brilliant legacy of jazz compositions and performances.
It’s going to be a rewarding year for us with Mr. Wayne Shorter. I want to share two recent announcements about his career that I am truly excited about. The common chord struck in these events sounded by The Wayne Shorter Quartet.
1) Newport Jazz Festival 2013
Wayne Shorter will be honored at the 59th annual Newport Jazz Festival this year on Saturday August 3rd. There will be an 80th birthday celebration for him. Wayne Shorter will appear with his stunning quartet that includes Danilo Perez (pianist), John Pattituci (bassist), and Brian Blade (drummer). There will also be guest stars and friends playing which includes his close friend Herbie Hancock.
2) The Wayne Shorter Quartet – Without A Net
The Wayne Shorter Quartet recording Without A Net was first brought to my attention by the NPR Jazz blog, A Blog Supreme. It is highlighted that consensus will prove Without A Net as top of the 15 jazz albums to look out for in 2013. We are getting closer to the actual drop date of that recording, February 5th. I hope you feel the electricity for the eminent release of Without A Net.
On February 1, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Quartet will perform four compositions by Shorter alongside works by Beethoven and Ives at Carnegie Hall.
Without A Net is a 9-track musical thrill ride that consists of live recordings from the Wayne Shorter Quartet’s European tour in late 2011, the one exception being the 23-minute tone poem “Pegasus” which features the quartet with The Imani Winds recorded at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The album features six new Shorter compositions, as well as new versions of his tunes “Orbits” (from Miles Davis’ Miles Smiles album) and “Plaza Real” (from the Weather Report album Procession). The quartet also reinvents the title song from the 1933 musical film Flying Down To Rio, which film buffs know as the first on-screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
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Like this: Like Loading...BBC America's adaptation of Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency hits the airwaves this Saturday (Oct. 22nd), the second attempt at a Dirk Gently TV show this decade (BBC Four adapted the comedic detective series in 2010.)
We had a chance to sit down with the cast and creators of the one-of-a-kind show at New York Comic Con to talk about the challenges of adapting an Adams series to the screen — an exercise many have tried and failed before. What makes this Dirk Gently different? Here's what creator Max Landis (Chronicle, American Ultra) had to say...
"Douglas Adams books are not adaptable because Douglas Adams is the main character of every Douglas Adams book," said Landis, who first read a Dirk Gently book at the tender age of 12, while at summer camp. Landis continued:
The way you’re told the story is more interesting than the story itself. You can list the things that happen in Hitchhiker's on one hand in the first book. Five things happen in that entire book. The rest is tangents and meanderings. The same could be said of the Dirk Gently books. What I wanted to do is adapt that tone, to try to do a Douglas Adams TV show rather than a direct Dirk Gently TV show. It’s more of a tribute album than a direct cover.
This is an easy enough insight into Douglas Adams adaptations to make, but how does one solve this adaptation problem? Landis outlined his strategy, saying:
You treat character as the center of the show. Convolute plot to the point that it engages, but almost alienates so that you’re never necessarily waiting to see what the next thing that happens is so much as waiting to see what the characters will do next and what situations they’ll be in moreso than you be pulled along by the plot, like on a show, like Battlestar [Galactica] or even like a True Detective... 'Who killed Laura Palmer?' is not a central figure of this show. It’s more the people and what they do.
Speaking about the 2010 BBC Four Dirk Gently adaptation, Landis said: "For all of its positive features, it's not Dirk Gently. It’s a quirky detective show. Dirk Gently books are not detective books."
Dirk Gently is executive produced by Arvind Ethan David, who brought Landis onto the project. David not only worked with Adams himself, but has been a huge Dirk Gently fan for decades. He even wrote and starred in his own adaptation of the novels when he was in high school. In speaking about David's pitch for the show, Landis said: "He came back to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m trying to do this for TV.’ And I said, ‘Didn’t they just do that for TV?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but I want to do the real version. I want to do the crazy version.’"
We also had a chance to speak with the man who will be bringing Dirk to life on screen: actor Sam Barnett. Echoing Landis' thoughts on Douglas Adams adaptations, Barnett said:
I think Max has rather cleverly thought that you can’t really adapt Douglas Adams. So much of his brilliance lies in his observations of the world and his observations of character and the tone in which he writes. I mean how do you adapt tone? So he’s taken the essence, certainly, of Dirk and and of the world in which Dirk exists — and indeed, as fans of the books will notice, there are loads and loads of little things that Max has taken from the books and incorporated into the show — and I feel he’s really kept the essence and the spirit of the books, and especially of Dirk. Douglas wrote a speech, I think in the first book, about the way Dirk works. And Dirk says, ‘I believe in the interconnectedness of all things.’ And that’s taken word for word and put in the script.
Aside from the eponymous Dirk Gently, the new show doesn't have any of the other characters from the books, though Landis said "some of them might show up later." Instead, Landis and executive producer Robert Cooper focused on translating the tone and making the characters relatable. Cooper said of their strategy: "I think you want to surprise people with the absurd, you know? You want to constantly keep them on their toes and say: This is not what I expected." He added:
I think one of the challenges of doing something that lives in the world of the absurd, like Douglas Adams’ work, is that you have to still make it very relatable. You have to still stay in the story and not sort of get launched off the planet. And that was one thing we really focused on was making sure that you still cared from beginning to end of the show... I think Max has done a really excellent job of making [Dirk] relatable. He’s one of those characters who we knew, when we were casting it, it’s gonna be difficult because he comes off as a very sort of different individual and sometimes annoying, but we wanted someone who we would still understand. One of the tenets of creating great characters is creating pathos and understanding in that person. Who are they? Why are they behaving that way? Even a homicidal maniac. And both Max’s writing and Sam’s performance bring that to the Dirk Gently character in spades.
Intrigued? Check out the NYCC trailer for Dirk Gently and be sure to tune in to BBC America this Saturday, October 22nd at 9 p.m. ET...People are beginning to wonder why the Republican Party can’t get its act together and repeal and replace ObamaCare. The question reveals a category mistake, the assumption that there is such a thing as the “Republican Party.”
In fact, there are three of them, and they’re all distinct. That became clear from a remarkable new analysis of voter preferences by Lee Drutman at the Voter Survey Group. Drutman asked voters to identify whom they voted for and how they felt about various economic and social issues. He then mapped this out in a diagram.
We’ve been told that Republicans are extreme and Democrats moderate. Drutman’s diagram shows that the opposite is true. Democratic voters congregated at the very economically and socially liberal corner. By contrast, the Republicans were all over the place.
The next surprise was the strength of Republican social conservatism. That’s something our “growth and opportunity” Republican establishment, and all the smart people at right-wing think tanks, never figured out. They saw the world only on an economic axis. How fellow Republicans might have felt about same-sex marriage and abortion was simply an embarrassment.
It turns out, however, that the Republican voter, unlike the party establishment, is socially conservative and economically middle of the road. In fact, there are a lot of left-of-center Republicans on economic issues such as free trade and Social Security.
But here’s Drutman’s big surprise. The sweet spot in American politics, the place where elections are won, is the socially conservative and economically liberal quadrant. And the winner is going to be the fellow who’s not going to touch Social Security and who promises to nominate a judge in the mold of Antonin Scalia.
Donald Trump, in other words.
Trump placed himself to the left of the other Republican candidates on a variety of economic issues. And when it came to the socially conservative “values voter,” the Democrats were locked in to their extremely liberal base, particularly with Hillary Clinton as the nominee.
Right now the Democrats know they’re in a bind. They want to learn how to connect with the forgotten voter in the heartland. Drutman’s little diagram tells them how they can do so. And also why they can never do so. They’re never going to be able to walk away from liberal identity politics, from full abortion rights, from the gender-benders. They’re stuck in the loser quadrant.
Catholics in particular are troubled by abortion, and they’re the swing constituency in American politics. Formerly they were an integral part of the Democratic coalition but in 2016 they were plus-7 for Trump. White Catholics were plus-23 for Trump, and were an important reason for Trump’s victories in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Yet new DNC chair Tom Perez has said his party has no room for candidates who don’t share its position on abortion.
But what about the divided Republican Party? Can Trump’s cohort unite with the economic and social conservatives who back Ted Cruz and Mike Lee? That’s what the ObamaCare fight is all about, and we don’t yet know the answer. But I can see the possibility of a compromise, especially if social issues are paramount.
And on economic issues, it would help to realize that we already have one of the most generous welfare systems in the world, and that a country’s economic freedom depends much more on such things as fiscal policies and the size of the regulatory state, issues on which Trump and Cruz Republicans both agree.
That leaves the marginal third Republican Party, the socially liberal but economically conservative world inhabited by libertarians. That’s the home of Charles Koch and of the politicians and academics in his network of support. They make a lot of noise, but they’re playing above their weight, an army of generals without any troops behind them.
So here’s my solution to the ObamaCare debate. The Ted Cruz Party should abandon the narcissism of petty differences. And everyone should turn down the poisoned chalice of Koch support.
F.H. Buckley is a professor at Scalia Law School at George Mason University and the author of “The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America.”We are so excited to bring back our seasonal Pale Ale, Automatic, this June. The beer will be available on draft in early June as well as in 6pks of 12oz cans in late June in both the Athens and Atlanta markets.
Automatic is a modern pale ale (5.2%abv) that features a prominent hop flavor and aroma. A mix of Mosaic and Crystal hops are used to create a delicate balance and give the beer an aroma that features a complex array of berry, citrus, herbal, and pine notes.
The flavor mirrors the aroma with a bit more earthiness and stone fruit, leading to a nicely balanced and moderately bitter finish. Our Co-founders Chris Herron, Adam Beauchamp, & David Stein secured hops from Yakima, WA in 2016 that were used in the beer.
“We went to Yakima in the Fall of 2016 to select hops for our beers for the first time,” says our Co-founder and Brewmaster Adam Beauchamp. “In doing so, we were able to secure some beautiful Mosaic from Oregon as well as some Crystal hops that clearly stood out to all of us as highly aromatic.”
We collaborated with a local artist to design the can label. Athens painter, Michelle Fontaine, was inspired by 1950s American popular culture as well as the origin of our facility – a former 1940s Chevy dealership and later the Snow Tire Company. The label depicts a classic automotive theme.
We are so excited to bring back Automatic and will update our Tasting Room and Events page when we have more details on the onsite release!Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 4, 2016, 3:02 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 4, 2016, 3:02 PM GMT / Source: NBC News By Eric Baculinao
BEIJING — China is trying to capitalize on President-elect Donald Trump’s hardline immigration stance and vow to clamp down on a foreign worker visa program that has been used to recruit thousands from overseas to Silicon Valley.
Leading tech entrepreneurs, including Robin Li, the billionaire CEO of Baidu, China’s largest search engine, see Trump's plans as a huge potential opportunity to lure tech talent away from the United States.
The country already offers incentives of up to $1 million as signing bonuses for those deemed "outstanding" and generous subsidies for start-ups.
Baidu CEO Robin Li. Imaginechina
Meanwhile, the Washington Post last month reported on comments made by Steve Bannon, who is now the president-elect's chief strategist, during a radio conversation with Trump in Nov. 2015.
Bannon, the former Breitbart.com publisher, indicated that he didn't necessarily agree with the idea that foreign talent that goes to school in America should stay in America.
Related: How a Trump Administration Could Reshape the Internet
"When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think...," Bannon said, trailing off. "A country is more than an economy. We're a civic society."
While Trump's unprecedented telephone conversation with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday may worry leaders in Beijing, comments like Bannon's and the president-elect's campaign pledges are music to the ears of tech leaders like Li.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tours a Carrier factory with Vice President-elect Mike Pence in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., December 1, 2016. MIKE SEGAR / Reuters
“I read that an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump openly complained that three-quarters of CEOs in Silicon Valley are Asian immigrants,” the influential entrepreneur said in a recent keynote speech at a state-sponsored conference, a copy of which was provided to NBC News by Baidu.
“Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have expressed worries, especially after Trump’s election, about the harm to the United States’ capabilities in innovation,” Li told the audience at China’s third annual World Internet Conference. “I truly hope that these excellent talents from various countries will migrate to China and help China play a more important role on the stage of global innovation.”
He added: “I hope everybody will come to China, let’s innovate together."
As part of the plan for his first 100 days in office, Trump has vowed to prioritize immigration issues and “direct the Department of Labor to investigate all abuses of visa programs that undercut the American worker.”
Related: Trump May Have Just Built His First Bridge to Silicon Valley
On the campaign trail, he denounced the H-1B visa program, which admits 85,000 foreign skilled workers and graduate students annually — many of whom work in the tech industry and eventually become legal U.S. residents or citizens.
"It's very bad for business … and it's very bad for our workers and it's unfair for our workers. And we should end it," he said.
He sparked more uncertainty by naming Sen. Jeff Sessions, a long-time critic of the skilled-worker visa program, as his pick for attorney general.
Sessions has accused tech firms in Silicon Valley of exploiting the program to pass over American labor for foreign workers to cut technology costs.
China's efforts to attract foreign workers has traditionally been hurt by Beijing's web censorship and strict government control of the internet.
China has around 700 million internet users — who type a mind-boggling 35 billion words every day, according to the latest survey examining the behavior of the country's netizens.
But Li argued that the "global center of innovation is shifting,” describing the world’s second-largest economy as the “biggest and fastest growing internet market.”
A Baidu spokesperson told NBC News that the company has a program to attract “top-tier talent” in China and abroad, to advance “Baidu’s technological leadership in areas including artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning and autonomous diving.”
A Baidu sign is seen during the third annual World Internet Conference in Jiaxing, China. ALY SONG / Reuters
Hugo Barra, a Brazilian computer scientist, stunned the technology world in 2013 by leaving his post as Google’s vice-president in charge of its Android division to join a private Chinese startup called Xiaomi.
As Xiaomi’s international vice-president, Barra has taken charge of global expansion for the smartphone company that has been compared to Apple for its slick marketing and management.
The Beijing-based firm has now become the world’s fourth-biggest smartphone maker and is broadening its businesses to mobile apps, laptops and Wi-Fi-enabled consumer electronics.
Related: Will Trump and Tech Be the 'Disaster' Some People Have Predicted?
Analysts have also noted China’s emergence as the world’s biggest e-commerce market and a leading innovator in mobile services, on the strength of the country’s estimated 600 million smartphone users, which is expected to reach 700 million by 2019.
WeChat, China’s smash-hit messaging app owned by Tencent, the country's most valuable tech company, has also become a mobile payment giant that is chasing market leader Alipay. The two companies had the lion’s share of last year’s mobile transactions of $235 billion, pushing China ahead of the U.S. where the market was $231 billion, according to data provider Euromonitor International.
China is also leading the global innovation race. Of the 2.9 million patent applications worldwide in 2015, about 1 million of them came from China. In comparison, 526,000 applications came from the U.S., according to data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Success stories include Dajiang Innovations (DJI) — the world’s biggest maker of consumer and small commercial drones.
The Chinese start-up boasts three factories in the booming city of Shenzhen, a marketing office in Los Angeles that works with filmmakers, and a Frankfurt office which deals with content partners.
Drones on display at the headquarters of DJI in Shenzhen, China, in April. Stringer / Imaginechina
Paul Pan, DJI’s product manager, saw the potential of the company and moved to Shenzhen from Silicon Valley in 2013.
During a factory visit last year, he demonstrated to NBC News why DJI was an industry leader. From humble beginnings in a dorm room in 2006, the private company is now valued at over $10 billion.
Shenzhen itself is now widely considered “China’s Silicon Valley” and has taken the lead in rolling out a massive subsidy program to attract high-tech talent.
The southern city is currently led by Communist Party boss Ma Xingrui, a space scientist and former chief of China’s moon mission. His ambition is to make the city a leading innovation hub as it sheds its image as a manufacturer of cheap goods for export.
Shenzhen’s recruitment program has attracted 1219 “high-level talents” as of last year, according to Shenzhen Daily newspaper, of which 74 are “foreign experts.”
Under a multi-category scheme updated in October last year, the highest incentive for so-called “Outstanding Talent” — a designation open for foreigners from 24 countries, including the United States, if the individual won a Nobel Prize in economics or physics — is an outright lump sum allowance of close to $1 million or 10 years free housing in a 2,200-square-foot apartment.
A lower category, an “Overseas Talent” who starts a business in the city, can receive a subsidy of up to $150,000.
In the past, Chinese companies could only attract Chinese engineers who studied abroad, Baidu’s Li lamented.
But he pointed out that Trump’s plans have created hope for China to attract “more and more talents from various countries and various nationalities.”The other day I was wondering, how much does the NVIDIA dGPU improve the graphics performance of my Surface Book?
Don’t get me wrong, as a gamer, I think it’s awesome to have an NVIDIA dGPU in my Surface Book’s keyboard portion but is it really any better than the integrated graphics processor (Intel HD 520) that came with the Skylake i7 CPU?
It could be that it’s just an extra bit of marketing hype and doesn’t really contribute anything to system performance? I decided to compare them and find out.
Surface Book dGPU Worth the Cost: Performance Difference
To better compare the performance differences, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to break out 3DMark and the Unigine Haven bench-marking tool and see if I could get my Surface Book to melt. 😉
Graphics Bench-Marking 101
If you’re not familiar with graphics bench-marking tools, they basically make the graphics processor “draw” a complex scene and display it on screen. Even though it may look like a movie, each scene is virtually constructed “on the fly” by combining thousands or hundreds of thousands of individual shapes into one large 3-dimensional “world”.
It may not sound like it but it takes a lot of complex mathematics in order for this to occur. A more powerful graphics processor can do this math faster and results in a higher frame rate (or frames per Second – FPS) and smoother video.
Testing Conditions
In order to have some semblance of scientific rigor, here’s a list of my testing conditions:
I’m using the i7/8GB version of the Surface Book (I figure it’s kind of the middle of the road between the i5 model with a dGPU and the i7/16GB model).
I ran all of my tests (except the video) 5 times and averaged the results.
The Surface Book was fully patched as of 11/5/2015.
The Surface Book was connected to power during all tests.
The Surface Book was restarted between each test and allowed to “settle” for 3 minutes before the test was started to ensure all startup processes were finished.
The Surface Book was NOT connected to an external monitor for the testing and native resolution was used.
connected to an external monitor for the testing and native resolution was used. The Heaven testing was done on “high” settings and 2x anti-aliasing enabled.
Everything else was left at default settings.
Surface Book dGPU: 3D Mark Test Results
Futuremark 3DMark is pretty much the gold standard for graphics bench-marking. Their software is comprised of multiple separate benchmark tests (called Ice Storm, Cloud Gate, Sky Diver, and Fire Strike). You can see the average results of my five benchmark runs below – bigger scores are better:
While some of these scores may look impressive on their own, the Surface Book is hardly a powerhouse gaming rig. In fact, when the results of the Fire Strike test is compared against other systems that have run it world-wide, the Surface Book is only better than 18% of systems and that’s with the NVIDIA dGPU in the keyboard attached!
To help you get your head around that, below is a graph generated by the 3DMark software showing how my Surface Book compared to other systems that ran the test world-wide. As you can see, the Surface Book performs better than an average notebook PC but not quite as well as a 2 year old gaming laptop.
In case you’re wondering, when using the integrated graphics controller and not the dGPU, the Surface Book is only better than about 7% of systems tested world-wide.
Also, if you were paying attention, you may have noticed that during the Ice Storm tests, the integrated graphics controller actually outperformed the NVIDIA dGPU. I was a bit surprised by that too but the result was very consistent.
My theory is that the Ice Storm test is intended to test integrated graphics controllers, such as the one that came on the i7 CPU, it had an edge for that test and that’s why the integrated graphics controller outperformed the NVIDIA dGPU in that instance.
The Ice Storm results aside, overall, it’s obvious the dGPU greatly improves Surface Book graphics performance. On average (excluding the Ice Storm test) when using the dGPU, benchmark performance was 1.8 times better than the integrated HD 520 graphics controller.
During the Fire Strike test in particular (which is the most intensive of the tests I ran) the dGPU resulted in a score that
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than of white families moved out of poverty after the casino opened (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.7; P =.02).
Family Income and Child Mental Illness
We first used the Indian sample to test whether a change in family resources, indexed by moving above the federal poverty line, had an effect on the likelihood of psychiatric symptoms. Analyses then were repeated in non-Indian families who moved out of poverty around the same time. We predicted that we should see similar results, but the hypothesis that these symptoms were caused by the increase in income could not be as strong because of possible confounders.
Table 1 shows the mean number of psychiatric symptoms of any kind in American Indian children, before and after the casino opened, by poverty group. The cells labeled "contrast" present the results of 9 between-group pairwise contrasts of interest. For example, exponentiating the contrast estimate for the comparison between persistently poor vs never-poor groups during the 4-year period before the casino opened (eg, e0.463) gives a difference in log odds of approximately 1.59, suggesting that the odds of having a psychiatric symptom for the persistently poor group are 59% higher than the odds for the never-poor group. Column contrasts compare symptom scores across time within a group.
Children of American Indian never-poor and persistently poor families maintained a steady mean (SD) total number of psychiatric symptoms, low and high respectively, before and after the casino opened. Children whose families moved out of poverty, however, showed a significant decrease in the mean number of psychiatric symptoms after the casino opened (P =.02).
Between-group comparisons by poverty group revealed that over the 4 years before the casino opened, children whose families were to move out of poverty had the same number of symptoms as those who were to remain poor, and both groups had significantly more symptoms than did children whose families were never poor. The situation changed dramatically after the casino opened. Between-group comparisons showed that children of ex-poor families had the same number of psychiatric symptoms as the never poor, and significantly fewer symptoms than the persistently poor. Thus far, the data supported a social causation hypothesis, demonstrating a decrease in symptoms in children whose families moved out of poverty.
We next tested whether the effect of moving out of poverty applied equally to behavioral and emotional symptoms. Across the whole sample, the mean (SD) number of behavioral symptoms was almost the same before (2.0 [2.7]) and after (2.1 [3.2]) the casino opened. Table 2 shows that this increase was restricted to children from persistently poor families, whose mean symptom level rose by 21%. Ex-poor children showed a 40% decrease in behavioral symptoms. Children from never-poor families maintained a steady, low level of behavioral symptoms before and after the opening of the casino. Before the casino opened, children from families destined to move out of poverty had almost as many behavioral symptoms as the persistently poor. After the casino opened, the mean level of behavioral symptoms in children from ex-poor families was almost identical to that of never-poor children, and significantly lower than the mean for persistently poor children (Table 2).
The pattern for emotional symptoms was much less marked (Table 3). Results from the overall Poisson regression showed no significant interaction between poverty group and time.
Replication in Non-Indian Sample
The social causation theory was subjected to a powerful test in the Indian community, because the income from the casino came to every family. No such powerful test of the effect of relieving poverty was available for the non-Indian families. However, some non-Indian families did move out of poverty around the same time, after they had been in the study for 4 years, while others remained poor or were never poor. We repeated the analyses with non-Indian children, testing the same hypotheses. Results were similar to those seen in Indian children (Table 4).
How Does Relief of Poverty Affect Children's Psychopathology?
We ran a series of test for mediators of the link between poverty and psychopathology; that is, factors causally related to the symptoms that could be affected by relief from poverty. A strict mediational model34 requires that the significant effect of changing poverty status on the children's symptoms should become less significant once the putative mediator is entered into the model; the mediator itself must be significantly associated with poverty status.
Potential mediators examined were traumatic life events (eg, parent separation or divorce, sexual or other physical abuse, unplanned pregnancy), neglect, harsh or inconsistent parenting, overprotective or intrusive parenting, lax supervision, and maternal depression. Only 1 stressor met the requirements specified by Baron and Kenny34 as a full mediator: failure of parents to provide adequate supervision. This stressor was coded from parents' answers to a set of questions such as, "How often is [the subject] out without your knowing where s/he is?" Lax supervision is defined as inability to exercise effective control once a week or more often. As required for a mediational model, the 3 main effects analyses all were significant in a series of Poisson regressions: the effect of changing poverty level on the moderator, level of parental supervision (β = −0.59; SE = 0.14; χ2 = 17.2; P<.001), effect of changing poverty level on psychiatric symptoms (β = 0.18; SE = 0.062; χ2 = 8.2; P =.004), and the effect of supervision on psychiatric symptoms (β = 1.07; SE = 0.13; χ2 = 71.2; P<.001). When the mediational model was run, including both supervision and changing poverty status, the effect of changing poverty level on psychiatric symptoms became nonsignificant (β = 0.04; SE = 0.05; χ2 = 0.59; P =.44). The mediating effect of parental supervision accounted for approximately 77% of the effect of changing poverty level on the number of psychiatric symptoms during the 4 years after the opening of the casino. The model produced the same results for both girls and boys.
In a set of exploratory analyses, we examined differences of 26 variables between the 3 groups before and after the casino opened that might explain why parents who were ex-poor were able to maintain better supervision of their children; factors included single-parent or step-parent household, parental mental illness, drug abuse or crime, traumatic life events, and lack of time to spend with child because of other demands (eg, large family or working 2 jobs). Full details can be obtained from the author.
Three of the 26 variables were distinguished among the groups, all having to do with time constraints in the family. In the ex-poor households, the number of single-parent households decreased (χ2 = 4.22, P =.04), the number of households with 2 working parents increased (χ2 = 6.04, P =.01), and a measure of time demands placed on the index parent decreased (χ2 = 6.74, P =.03). For each of these measures, the ex-poor families were significantly different from the never-poor families before the casino opened and were significantly different from the persistently poor household after it opened.
Comment
As Dohrenwend et al10 pointed out a decade ago,10 "Social causation and social selection theories both predict an inverse relation between socioeconomic status and various types of psychopathology. Our problem, therefore, has been to identify circumstances in which the 2 theories make different predictions."
The present study took a longitudinal approach to the problem, arguing that if the reason for the well-established association between poverty and child psychopathology1,4,5,24,35 was the social selection of mentally ill families into poverty, then relieving poverty would leave the association intact. If, on the other hand, poverty had a causal role in the symptoms, then alleviating it would reduce the level of symptoms. An event that substantially increased the income of every man, woman, and child in a community provided a natural experiment that we could use to test these competing models. We found the following: (1) Moving out of poverty was associated with a decrease in frequency of psychiatric symptoms over the ensuing 4 years; by the fourth year the symptom level was the same in children who moved out of poverty as in children who were never poor. (2) Adding to the income of never-poor families had no effect on frequency of psychiatric symptoms. (3) The effect of poverty was strongest for behavioral symptoms (those included in the DSM-IV diagnoses of conduct and oppositional disorder). Little effect of moving out of poverty on emotional symptoms (DSM-IV anxiety and depression) was observed. (4) The effect of relieving poverty was mediated by 1 stressor: level of parental supervision. (5) The same models run using the non-Indian participants showed similar results.
These findings thus support a social causation for behavioral problems. Anxiety and depression symptoms were more common in poor children, but moving out of poverty was not followed by a reduction in these symptoms. There are several possible explanations for this. Anxiety and depression in children and adolescents may be caused by some characteristics of poor families not directly related to poverty; for example, they may carry a higher genetic loading for these conditions, as a social selection hypothesis (gene-environment correlation) would suggest.36 Alternatively, the remarkable speed of the change in behavioral symptoms after poverty was lifted may be specific to those symptoms; it might take longer for the reduction in poverty-induced family stress to be reflected in children's mood and anxiety levels. In fact, surprisingly little evidence is available linking childhood anxiety or depression directly to poverty,4,24,37-39 and it may be that poverty seriously increases risk for anxiety and depression only in adulthood.40,41 Effects on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are not reported here because the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder decreased to 0 in all groups as the children moved through adolescence, so there was a confound between age and the pre- and poststudy design that made the findings uninterpretable.
Theory would predict similar findings in the general population, in this study represented by the non-Indian children, and indeed the findings were similar; when families moved out of poverty we saw a reduction in behavioral symptoms. The problem is with interpretation: did stronger families work their way out of poverty, did moving out of poverty improve the risk environment for children, or both? Only an experimental or quasi-experimental design can disaggregate these 2 possibilities.42
Among the wide range of potential mediators of the effect of poverty on behavioral symptoms, only parental supervision emerged as a mediator. As the study participants moved into adolescence, the number of parents who believed that they provided adequate supervision decreased across the sample, but it decreased less in the ex-poor than in the persistently poor group. With only 50 children in the ex-poor group, the study lacked power to explore the reasons for this decrease. However, exploratory analyses showed that the 3 family characteristics on which the ex-poor families resembled persistently poor families before the casino opening and never-poor families after the casino opening all had to do with the amount of time that the index parent had to pay attention to the child. Like all the other families in the study, the number of households with 2 parents working full time increased over time, but ex-poor families reported a reduction in time demands and in the number of single-parent households (both of which increased in never-poor and persistently poor households). This finding raises the possibility that children's symptoms, particularly those of oppositional and deviant behavior, are affected by economic constraints on parents' ability to devote scarce time resources to supervision. The fact that 3 significant associations are conceptually linked through their relationship to family time constraints suggest that our findings are valid.
The Great Smoky Mountains Study has some advantages for addressing the relationship between poverty and psychopathology. First, the outcomes were measured in children who played little role in generating the family's social status, and therefore offered a fairly clean test of competing theories. Second, the study provided a within-subjects design, following the same children over an 8-year period; a stronger test than is provided by a between-subjects design.43 Third, this was a representative population sample. Fourth, the study included a direct manipulation of a key explanatory variable: an increase in family income in the American Indian families that was not caused by family characteristics that also could affect children's behavioral symptoms.
The study also has important limitations. The sample was not large, and only a small proportion of children (14.4% of Indians, 10.3% of non-Indians) moved out of poverty. The study lacked power for within-group analyses at the level of diagnoses, which required us to test for differences at the level of symptom scales rather than at diagnostic categories. An ethnic difference correlated 100% with the study intervention. We replicated the findings in non-Indian families, as a social causation theory would predict, but this group's income change could not be disentangled from characteristics that might be causally linked to both moving out of poverty and improved child mental health. While the rural setting of the study is in some ways an advantage, in enabling us to disentangle poverty and urban residence, replication in an urban sample would increase the generalizability of the findings. Most importantly, the study examined psychiatric symptoms only at the level of parent- and child-reported phenomena; we could not explore the psychophysiological processes that changed to bring about a reduction in behavioral symptoms when the stress of poverty was relieved.
Selection and causation are both compatible with a genetic basis to psychopathology. Social selection implies a correlation between genes and environment such that individuals with a genetic liability have difficulty climbing out of poverty, while social causation implies an interaction: genetic liability to a disease is expressed under the stress of poverty. Questions about which genes and about the developmental processes that lead to their expression in the form of behavioral symptoms are still unanswered.Researchers on the Indonesian island of Borneo recently captured footage of a Sumatran rhino living in the forests of East Kalimatan, an area where it was thought to have been extinct.
The smallest of all rhino species, the Sumatran rhino has been decimated by poaching. Rhino horn is popular in Chinese medicine, and one kilogram of Sumatran horn can fetch up to $30,000.
Habitat destruction has also been a problem for the species, which do not look like their African and Indian cousins. They are smaller, and their hides are covered in patches of stiff hair. There are only about 300 Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus Sumatrensis) left living in the wild.
Rhinos could go extinct due to poaching
The World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia set up 16 cameras in the forest of Kurai Barat, the only area where they believed the rhino might still live. The cameras rolled for three months.
At this week's Asian Rhino Range States Ministerial Meeting in Lampung, Indonesia, the team released footage that shows their hunch was correct. At least one Sumatran rhino still lives in the forests there.
Captured on June 23, June 30 and August 3, the footage shows one rhino foraging for food and what appears to be a different rhino doing what rhinos are famous for: splashing in a muddy watering hole to cool down. Further research will be needed to confirm if they are actually two different animals.
"This physical evidence is very important, as it forms the basis to develop and implement more comprehensive conservation efforts for the Indonesian rhinoceros," Kalimatan Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said in a press release.
"This finding represents the hard work of many parties, and will hopefully contribute to achieving Indonesia's target of three percent per year rhino population growth," he added.
The team will now try to determine how many Sumatran rhinos are living in Kalimatan, and look into conservation measures. The most important priority is to protect against poachers.
"To ensure the protection of the species, a joint monitoring team from the Kutai Barat administration, Rhino Protection Unit, and WWF have been conducting regular patrols around the area," added Conservation Director Nazir Foead. "WWF calls on all parties, in Indonesia and around the world, to immediately join the effort to conserve the Indonesian rhinoceros."WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Senate panel voted on Thursday to bar drug companies from paying generic drugmakers to delay bringing their cheaper medicines to market.
The Judiciary Committee voted 12 to 7 to forbid such deals.
Lawmakers are seeking to ban the complicated deals that often arise after a generic drugmaker begins the process of bringing to market a cheaper version of a branded medicine. The owner of the patent for the brand name drug often accuses the generic firm of infringement and the result is sometimes a settlement that the Federal Trade Commission calls a “pay for delay” deal.
The pharmaceutical companies argue that they are an effective way to resolve expensive litigation and often result in generic drugs coming to market before patents expire anyway.
The FTC has led the fight against the deals and has filed suit against several of them with mixed success.
The Justice Department, which did not oppose the settlements during the Bush administration, said in July that it considered a payment to a generic company to drop a patent challenge to be “presumptively unlawful.”
President Barack Obama supports a ban. European Union antitrust regulators also oppose the deals.
Consumers, insurance companies and the federal government spend an extra $3.5 billion for prescription drugs every year because brand-name companies pay generic producers to stay out of the market, according to a FTC study released in June.
A branded medicine quickly loses upward of 80 percent of its revenue once cheaper generic versions start flooding the market.
The first known “pay for delay” deal was in 1994, when Bristol-Myers Squibb Co paid $290 million to Schein Pharmaceutical to delay the sale of a generic version of the Bristol-Myers anxiety drug Buspar.
“Pay for delay” bills are being stiffly fought by both the brand-name pharmaceutical and generic drugmakers.It seems like that Anna Paquin's take on Rogue is gone, given the fact that a new generation of the original X-Men are being cast for X-Men: Apocalypse...but that doesn't mean Paquin herself hasn't given a little thought to how to bring the character back, especially with the X-Men: Days of Future Past Rogue Cut coming this summer.
Asked by a fan whether she would consider coming back as Rogue in a future film, Paquin said that she would...as long as she got to fly.
The fan, then, misinterpreted that to mean the answer was no, since Rogue didn't fly in the movies...but Paquin clarified:
@AnnaPaquinFans no I'm saying that comic book rogue gets to fly and I never did. I want to be badass rogue not shy teen rogue — Anna Paquin (@AnnaPaquin) April 19, 2015
No official date is set yet for the extended cut of Days of Future Past, which reportedly includes more than ten minutes of new footage, primarily focused on Rogue and Magneto in the alternate future that bookends the film.We’ve all worked out exactly how Sherlock Holmes survived at the end of the series finale, right? WRONG.
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At our exclusive Radio Times Covers Party last night, co-creator Steven Moffat said there’s something in Sunday night’s episode, The Reichenbach Fall, which everyone has overlooked.
Moffat admitted he had been following the fevered speculation about how Sherlock, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, could appear alive and well in the last scene of the episode, despite having apparently fallen to his death and, indeed, been buried. But according to Moffat, all the fans’ talk of switched corpses and mystery cyclists has been lacking a crucial detail.
“I’ve been online and looked at all the theories,” Moffat told us, “and there’s one clue that everyone’s missed. It’s something that Sherlock did that was very out of character, but which nobody has picked up on.”
What does he mean? Of course we tried to convince him – and fellow Sherlock creator Mark Gatiss, who also attended the party – to elaborate, but Moffat merely smiled and said that was all we were getting!
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Brad Guzan - wide-eyed and full of energy - emerges from the changing rooms at Bodymoor Heath.
He’s pumped up (but isn’t he always?) after a training session and a week-long break with the U.S national team where he is closing in on the tag of America’s No.1.
While he may not admit it, his position as first-choice at Aston Villa is safe as houses and on the face of it his life couldn’t be much better right now.
A happy family man, a trusted member of Villa’s first-team, and the subject of praise recently from assistant manager Roy Keane - Guzan is full of smiles.
At 30-years of age he still feels like a youngster in the goalkeeper’s union which clearly helps to raise his spirits, too.
Villa’s form of late has got his down, though, and when Southampton visit B6 tomorrow he’s desperately hoping for change.
“When you lose six games on the bounce, it’s extremely frustrating,” said Guzan as he reflects back on Villa’s seven-game winless run.
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me, but that’s when you need big characters and guys to step up and say, ‘right okay, I’m going to do everything in my power to get things right’.
“Sometimes you need more than that.
“There are no easy games in this league, I’ve always said that.
“Going on that run of six defeats was tough because it becomes more and more challenging to stop it.
“For us the point at West Ham was massive and we need to build on that.
“From top to bottom we have not been at our best.
“We were not very sharp but in terms of being in the dressing room, sometimes you have to let your voice be heard.
“You need guys to step up and sort the issue at hand out.”
Guzan has made his feelings clear.
While he insists he’s not the type to shout and scream in times of adversity - and despite his seniority he rarely throws around his weight - he has had his say in the dressing room of late.
“I don’t know if I regard myself as a big character,” he said.
“I think of myself as someone who tries to get the best out of my team-mates.
“I like to give my best every day in training and in games. It’s not a question of who are the big characters.
“You just need more players on the day to be on the same page and have good games.
“When you have more players who have good games than not, normally good results come on the back of that.”
Villa are in need of a win to lift the mood but their tough run of fixtures show no signs of easing up.
Tomorrow they take on the high-flying Saints who have won nine of their last ten games and are currently in second place.
Guzan admires the way they have gone about their business this term after losing almost all of their key performers in the summer.
“I don’t know if it’s a problem that they sold half of their team in the summer or not,” he said.
“I guess it’s a good thing when other clubs want your players - it means you’re doing something right.
“That speaks about the season they had last year and the quality of their players.
“I’ve always said, football is about 90 minutes. Whether you go on a run of two games, or six games, or in their case 11 or 12, if you take each game at a time, there’s no reason why you can’t pick up a result one after another.
“That’s what they’ve done.
“Can they carry it on? Who’s to say no.
“Hopefully come Monday night we will take some points off them.”
When asked if Ronald Koeman’s troops are a good example for other mid-table and struggling Premier League clubs like Villa, Guzan said:
“If you put the right people in the right places and you spend money in the right ways and put a good starting XI together, good things can come from that.
“I think they’re a testament to doing that.
“Not only can Villa and other clubs look at that, they can also see how they’ve sold players onto big European clubs.
“But do I think the club is bigger than Southampton? Probably, yes. I’d like to think so.
“At the moment, obviously we are at a different point in terms of spending money and bringing players in, for whatever reasons.
“My job is to be goalkeeper. I don’t know the reason why that is in terms of them doing that and us whatever.
“But again, you have to bring in the right players into the right situations. But even then, sometimes if you bring in the right players they might be homesick or whatever. There are so many things that have to come together.
“We could have this conversation again in six or seven weeks’ time and there’s been a change.
“If they go through this next run of games and they’re still second, you tip your hat to them because they are the real deal.
“For us, it’s not so much about them as it is us. We need to make sure that come Monday night we have enough guys on the pitch who have a good night because I know we’ve got enough quality.
“Look at the fixtures where we took some points off the big teams last year. We know we have got that in the bag.
“We know we have the ability to win games, whether it’s against a top team or a bottom team. It’s all about on the day getting three points.”
Like our Villa Facebook pageTHERE'S shock value on TV, and then there's this guy who thought it was a brilliant idea to try an audience member's breastmilk in front of thousands of viewers.
Dutch TV host Paul De Leeuw made a boob of himself during filming of his chat show Langs De Leeuw, which focused on breastfeeding.
The audience was made up of breastfeeding mothers who donate excess milk to women who are unable to produce enough of their own.
The openly gay comedian was asked if he wanted to taste the milk from one audience member who had expressed milk into a bottle, The Sun reported.
But De Leeuw joked to the woman, known as Wendy, that he would rather try it direct from the source.
Wendy, then unhooks herself from the pump and tells him he can "so long as he doesn’t bite".
Video footage then shows him suckling from one breast and then the other before telling Wendy: "I find the second one better tasting, but I can taste that you've eaten asparagus yesterday."
But the stunt sparked outrage across the largely liberal nation with people saying it was disgusting.
It is the latest in a series of outrages across Europe.
In Sweden, adverts for flannel shirts featuring naked and semi-naked women in suggestive poses sparked howls of outrage int he normally-liberal country.
And in Denmark, a TV show which features features two middle-aged men judging the bodies of women who stand naked before them, caused a storm, with many labelling it a sexist humiliation of women.Dan Muses About Authorial Intent
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When I told my mother I was getting married, she cried
I told my mother I was getting married
This is an article I've been meaning to write for over a year, but have never quite got around to. I've been partially inspired by the recent comments on my old article about canon Here at Ferretbrain we tend to be fairly strict proponents of the Death of the Author, as well as being dedicated anti-presecriptivists and generally opposed to anything which vests authority in some (possibly mythical) historical figure, be that history, tradition, or the author of a particular text.On the other hand, here at Ferretbrain we also spend an awful lot of time thinking about what people are trying to say with their work, which on its surface seems contradictory. One of the most common criticisms Kyra and I have of texts (be they books, television shows, or whatever) is "I didn't know what I was supposed to think of this character" which, for people who staunchly insist that what the author intends us to think of a character doesn't matter seems to be a peculiar reaction.What I've been mulling over for nearly a year is whether it's a peculiar reaction at all, or whether it's actually entirely self-consistent.There's an old stereotype that people who are pro-life are also in favour of capital punishment (to which the left cries "if you care about life so much, why are you so fond of killing people") while people who are pro-choice tend to be against it (which leads to the right shouting "why do you care about the rights of murderers and paedophiles, but not about the rights of unborn children").Ironically, both sides characterise theside's position as contradictory, and fail to notice that their own position contains exactly the same supposed contradiction. In both cases, the answer is simply that people's beliefs are far more complicated than they seem, and cannot be reduced to a single rule.(Of course I'd also point out that there are lots of people who are pro-choice and in favour of capital punishment, or pro-life but against it, but those aren't the oh-so-popular stereotypes).The Death-or-Otherwise of the Author creates a similar dichotomy. People like Kyra and me insist that authorial intent is of no importance, and spend all our time trying to work out what the hell the author is saying. By contrast, people who believe in Authorial Intent (who, eschewing the spirit of impartiality, I shall refer to hereafter as "author cultists" for brevity) tend to hang on everything an author says in interviews and essays, but have no interest in analysing the things the author is actually saying through the text. Again both of these positions seem to contain contradictions – if I'm so dismissive of the author, why do I care what they're saying? If the cultists are so interested in the author, why aren't they interested in the author's presence in the text?Of course in fact both positions are entirely self-consistent, and the self-consistency is somewhat easier to see in the position of the Author Cultists, which is why I'm putting them first.Starting from the assumption that you do, in fact, believe in Barthes' Author God you can work your way fairly easily to a position where questions like "what is the author telling us about this" are moot because the Author God, unlike the real God, is quite likely to give interviews. If you're not sure about a particular point in a text, you can simply check and FAQ or if the author is alive – which they are in most big fandoms – send them an email or leave a comment on their website. If you make the author your authority on textual interpretation, there's no need for you to make those kinds of analysis of the actual text.If you accept the existence of an Author-God, then the text becomes a wholly ineffective means to communicate. There's nothing the author can say in the text which they cannot say more effectively in an interview or a blog post. The text becomes a kind of sugar coating over the author's description of their intent, a way of making it more palatable, or of deriving some entertainment from consuming it. Analysing the text is a meaningless exercise, becuase it's always quicker and less ambiguous to go to the Author-God. As a result the important exercise instead becomes absorbingabout the text, which of course includes the words of the Author-God because, hey it's their story, they invented it.Another way of looking at the issues of authorship and authority is in terms of the difference betweenand. Reading comprehension is an important skill, and one which children are tested on at primary school. Consider the sentence:There are a great many things about that sentence which are clearly questions of comprehension. Who is getting married? The narrator is getting married. What did the narrators mother do when she was told that the narrator was getting married? She cried.Of course there is also room forof the text. Is the narrator's mother crying because she is happy or sad? Crying could indicate either, but which it indicates is something that would need to be judged from context. Crucially, though, it can be reasonably assumed to indicate- which is what makes interpretation diffierent from speculation.There's a lot to speculate about in this example sentence. Who am I marrying? Am I a man or a woman? Is the person I ama man or a woman? All of these questions are implied by the text – insofar as we can assume that the narrator has a gender and the person they are marrying has a name – but none of them can be answered by referencethe text, they all exist in the realm of speculation. Further, there is nothing in the text (limited as it is) to suggest that the answers to any of these questions matter.A lot of arguments about "canon" or authorial intent, or the extent to which an author's interviews are part of the text can – I think – be traced back to people confusing the three things. To stick with Harry Potter as the most tried and tested example: "Harry Potter is the Chosen One" or "Albus Dumbledore spent a summer in the company of Gellert Grindelwald" are questions of comprehension. They're simple facts which are stated unambiguously in the text. "Ron eventually gets a job with the Ministry of Magic" is a question of speculation. There is no evidence in the text at all to say what Ron does after he leaves Hogwarts other than that he apparently takes a Muggle driving test and cheats. Questions ofon the other hand are usually more abstract – questions like "why did Dumbledore find the idea of world domination so attractive" or "to what extent can the events of the books to be said to resolve the flaws in wizarding society."One of the big differences, I think, between those who care about authorial intent and those who do not is whether we considerto be remotely interesting. I literally cannot imagine a reason that somebody would care what Harry Potter does after the books finish. I understand the desire fanficcers have toa post-epilogue world as a way of interacting with and interpreting the text but I cannot begin to understand people wanting to know the "real" answer to those sorts of questions.What interests me is interpretation, looking at the text and asking why characters behave a particular way, what this tells us on anorlevel about the world they live in. When Buffy beats up a vampire, I don't care what it implies about the relative capabilities of slayers and vampires in the Buffyverse (I don't even particularly mind how much weaker the Ubervamps got in series seven, although it did stretch my suspension of disbelief a little bit when Anya and Giles were one-shotting them) I care that it tells us thatTo be able to properly interpret a text, one requires interpretive space. "Space" – in any context – is a difficult idea. It isn't simply the absence of concrete information, there needs to be enough of a framework to build something around, but not so much that it excludes too many possible interpretations. Taking our very simple sample text, if instead the sentence was simply:Then there would be no space for interpretation in the text. Yes, my hypothetical mother presumably still had an emotional reaction to my telling her I was getting married but there is now no indication in the text that it is important, putting the whole issue into the space of speculation rather than interpretation.For a more specific example (and again I'm still going with Potter, sue me) look at Severus Snape. In the early books, there is a great deal of space to interpret his character and the character is interesting and subtle – both loyal to the side of Good and basically horrible. There was a lot to work with in early-book Snape. Unfortunately the progression of the character eventually closed down a lot of the space the reader originally had to interpret him – his reasons for protecting Harry so zealously were defined and narrowed, and many features of his character were simplified to the point at which they became uninteresting.Of course this is an inevitable part of any long-running series – characters lose potential far more frequently than they gain it, and it's inevitable that when "the truth" comes out it's going to close off people's favoured interpretations. Where it becomes a problem is when an interpretation which is closed off by the text is one which was allowing you to not hate something. The most common issue here is when a particular character, plotline or other element of a text is in some way disturbing or offensive, and the text does not provide you with the imaginative space to read itdisturbing or offensive. Twilight would be a much less problematic book if there was space within the text to read Bella and Edward's relationship as unhealthy, if there was interpretive space to read the book as being about two people in a mutually destructive relationship.When Kyra and I, or people like us, talk about how we are "supposed" to interpret something, what we are really talking about is what we feel that there isto take from a text. Interpretive space can be created or closed in a variety of ways, by mentioning things or not mentioning them, by the consequences events in a narrative have or are shown as having. Amusing as it is to interpret Star Wars as being about a group of terrorist religious fanatics who overthrow a legitimate progressive government to restore an unelected monarchy, that interpretation is not supported by the text. Even though tens of thousands of people died on board the Death Star, it is not a legitimate reading of Star Wars to see its destruction as an act of mass murder, there is no space in the film to read Luke Skywalker's actions as anything but heroic.In my previous article on canon, I pointed out that the question "who is Harry Potter" was a complicated one, that Harry Potter was not somebody who lived in J.K. Rowling's head, but rather was a composite entity created by Rowling, Daniel Radcliffe, and for that matter fandom.What's interesting is that I could make the same statement about J.K. Rowling.I've written a lot about Rowling on this site, and my attitude towards her has veered between "grudging respect" (that one letter she wrote to the Guardian about single parents was genuinely awesome) and "outright hostility" (muttermutterdumbledoreisgaymuttermutter). Actually, though, a lot of the time itJ.K. Rowling that bothers me, rather it's theof the Potter books.To take a concrete example, there's a – well celebrated isn't the right word – there's a bit in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince where Dumbledore exposits the backstory of Voldemort's mother Merope Gaunt, and indulges in some skeevy victim-blaming, talking about how she didn't love her son enough to stay alive for him, and then
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highlighted the disorder that has been wrought in the region by American policies and actions – some more darkly than others. Sameera bin Rajab, Special Envoy for the Royal Court of Bahrain, noted that US policies have resulted in a reality in the region that doesn’t serve the interests of any of the local states.
Bin Rajab pointed to strategic US initiatives that resulted in the formation of terror groups, and to wars started by the US that left the countries they were waged in – Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, for example – in utter disarray. Iraq is significantly worse off in terms of its economy, its educational system and its social structure than it was before the war, she noted. These nations were “pushed into failure”, she said.
Under Trump the US is playing a role in cultivating new confrontations in the region, such as those involving Saudi Arabia. “The [powers] of the region are opposing each other, but not for their own interest,” she said.
To combat that, Islamic nations must identify themselves as states first, and not as Sunni or Shia, Moussa said. Otherwise, “we’re playing in the field that they want us to”, he said.
At its base, the US policy in the region is “Israel First”, said Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian government official and current scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Today, Saudi Arabia and Iran are the two major forces in the region with Israel “sitting between them”.
“I believe this trajectory also will bring a lot of changes to the region because now Israel has been successful not to bring only the US on board but some Muslim countries on board to fight Muslim countries,” Mousavian said. "What’s more, Trump has escalated the sale of arms to the region for US financial gain."
Olivier Kempf, a researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), said that under Trump DC-Riyadh-Tel Aviv was becoming the new decision-making axis.
But some of the speakers noted that the Islamic world bears some responsibility for its current state.
“There is no coherence, no mutual support, between our regimes,” said Hasni Abidi, director of The Center for Studies and Research on the Mediterranean and Arab World (CERMAM). “President Trump knows he is talking to weak interlocutors.”ANALYSIS/OPINION:
This could annoy Republican presidential hopefuls who are racing to make a footprint on the 2016 campaign. “In a potentially huge field of candidates vying for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, the winner today is Other/Not Sure with 19 percent of the vote,” reports pollster John Zogby, who surveyed several hundred likely Republican primary voters last week.
Mitt Romney is in second place with 14 percent, followed by Jeb Bush with 12 percent of the vote. “It is very early. Unlike the Democrats, the GOP has no clear frontrunner. Arguably, Romney is the heir apparent but he should be doing better than 14 percent. Bush is quite literally the heir and that in itself is perhaps more of a problem than an advantage,” Mr. Zogby observes.
The poll goes on, though: Sen. Rand Paul is in fourth place with 10 percent, followed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (8 percent), Mike Huckabee (7 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio (7 percent), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (5 percent), Rep. Paul Ryan and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (each with 4 percent), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (3 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz (3 percent. And still recognized by voters: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (2 percent), Rick Santorum (1 percent, and both Sen. Rob Portman and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez tied at.3 percent
“Historically, since 1960 - with the exception of 1964, the GOP tends to nominate the Gold Watch Candidate, i.e. the fellow who has been around the park the longest and is next in line,” Mr. Zogby says. “At the same time, historically, since 1968, the party has nominated the most ‘moderate’ candidate in the field - with the exception of 1980 when the Gold Watch Candidate Ronald Reagan won over several more moderate candidates who split among themselves. This poll shows that the top four candidates do not fall within the strictest definition of ‘conservative’ as defined by both the social and Christian conservative wings of the party.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.(CNN) My first day at CNN was May 8, 1990. I was very excited but also pretty nervous. I was making the transition from print to broadcast journalism; while I had appeared in the past on news programs as an interview guest, I was jumping into the deep end as a TV reporter. I knew my reporting skills were solid, but I worried about all the other things that went into being in front of the camera.
Fortunately, I had already made a friend named Bernard Shaw -- or, as we all called him, Bernie.
Bernie was CNN's principal Washington anchor when I arrived at Ted Turner's network. He was already an extremely well-respected figure in broadcast journalism. He had spent time on the White House beat and in Latin America for two major broadcast networks, and he was the star of CNN. Bernie had interviewed me as a guest many times before I had started, and I had watched his work as a fan for years.
Little did I know he would become a friend, a mentor and a role model. I learned so much by watching this TV news legend in action.
Shaw retired in 2001 right after the inauguration, after two decades working for CNN. "Bernie and I don't see as much of each other these days -- we both have busy schedules -- but whenever we can, we touch base and trade stories. He's a terrific friend and a world-class journalist who made a difference in the world and in my life. He inspired me and helped me get to where I am today. And I will forever be grateful."
Shaw retired in 2001 right after the inauguration, after two decades working for CNN. "Bernie and I don't see as much of each other these days -- we both have busy schedules -- but whenever we can, we touch base and trade stories. He's a terrific friend and a world-class journalist who made a difference in the world and in my life. He inspired me and helped me get to where I am today. And I will forever be grateful."
Shaw was CNN's principal Washington anchor when Blitzer joined CNN in 1990. "He was already an extremely well-respected figure in broadcast journalism. He had spent time on the White House beat and in Latin America for two major broadcast networks, and he was the star of CNN. Bernie had interviewed me as a guest many times before I had started, and I had watched his work as a fan for years. Little did I know he would become a friend, a mentor and a role model."
Shaw was CNN's principal Washington anchor when Blitzer joined CNN in 1990. "He was already an extremely well-respected figure in broadcast journalism. He had spent time on the White House beat and in Latin America for two major broadcast networks, and he was the star of CNN. Bernie had interviewed me as a guest many times before I had started, and I had watched his work as a fan for years. Little did I know he would become a friend, a mentor and a role model."
CNN's Bernard Shaw with Wolf Blitzer, reporting on the Oklahoma City bombing. "I remember vividly when we went to Oklahoma City in 1995 after the bombing of the federal office building there. He anchored our special coverage around President Clinton's participation in the memorial service. I joined him to report and provide analysis."
CNN's Bernard Shaw with Wolf Blitzer, reporting on the Oklahoma City bombing. "I remember vividly when we went to Oklahoma City in 1995 after the bombing of the federal office building there. He anchored our special coverage around President Clinton's participation in the memorial service. I joined him to report and provide analysis."
Bernie was a solid professional, a calm and experienced voice in the newsroom and on the air. He was a natural leader, the kind who got people to follow him by example.
That was certainly evident during the days leading up to the first Gulf War in 1991. Bernie went to Baghdad shortly before the bombs started dropping on the Iraqi capital. He volunteered to stay, along with correspondents John Holliman and Peter Arnett, even though the White House and Pentagon warned CNN they could not guarantee their safety.
Bernie and the entire CNN team were staying at the Al Rasheed Hotel in downtown Baghdad. Ted Turner and CNN President Tom Johnson were told by top U.S. officials that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had intelligence units at that hotel, and it could legitimately be a bombing target. Ted and Tom told our team they could leave or stay; it was up to them. Bernie could have easily left. After all, he was a big shot anchor. But he refused. He said he would not leave the team behind.
Then the war started.
I'll never forget hearing Bernie calmly tell viewers that "the skies over Baghdad have been illuminated."
CNN was the only American news organization on the scene. Television history was made. NBC and other broadcast networks took CNN's coverage live; they had no one in Baghdad. CNN came of age.
I was CNN's Pentagon correspondent at the time, and remember vividly watching Bernie's reports and thinking to myself that he was a brave and brilliant journalist. I wondered if I would have had the guts to do what he did. Bernie was a Marine Corps veteran and was always very proud of that experience. To this day, he still says: Once a Marine, always a Marine. It helped keep him calm in that and many other situations.
We worked closely together throughout the 1990s -- covering historic moments in the United States and world events, including the failed Soviet coup in August 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the election of Bill Clinton in November 1992 and his inauguration on January 20, 1993. By then I was CNN's Senior White House Correspondent.
Bernie was an anchor who liked to cover the big stories of the day. He often joined us on major presidential trips around the world. Each time I watched him report, I learned something new from him. And our friendship grew stronger.
I remember vividly when we went to Oklahoma City in 1995 after the bombing of the federal office building there. He anchored our special coverage around President Clinton's participation in the memorial service. I joined him to report and provide analysis.
It was an emotional time for me, seeing the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, an attack carried out by an American. Yet watching Bernie I saw an anchor who could express the emotions everyone was feeling without becoming emotional. I learned about keeping my feelings in check watching him up close that day.
In truth, every day was a learning experience with Bernie. He was always so generous with his advice.
I especially remember how complimentary he was to me on the air. "Very strong report, Wolf," he would say. My mother and father, who were, of course, devoted viewers, would always call me up and say: "Bernie. Such a nice man." They were proud parents and were grateful that the lead CNN anchor was praising their son on television. Their friends also noticed and would call my parents to make sure they were watching. They were.
Together we covered the 1996 midterm presidential election and the 2000 election, including the historic Florida recount and eventual U.S. Supreme Court decision. I went to Tallahassee right from the CNN Center in Atlanta on the morning after Election Day. Bernie was so powerful in his anchoring skills. Honest, fair and willing to admit everyone had made the wrong call.
During his time on-air, Bernie was one of those rare anchors who always wanted the reporters in the field to get the full credit for their news scoops. When I had a new development at the Pentagon or the White House, he would let me break the news. He wouldn't steal it in his setup to my live report. That always meant a lot to me. As an anchor, I try every day to follow his example.
Of course I had support from other remarkable people at CNN during my early days at the network, including our founder, Ted Turner, our then president Tom Johnson, our Washington Bureau Chief Bill Headline, head of news gathering Ed Turner, and head of programing Bob Furnad. Other CNN veterans in the D.C. Bureau -- correspondents and producers -- also spent lots of time with me in those early days, offering valuable coaching and advice.
Bernie retired from CNN right after the inauguration in 2001, after two decades at the network and an even longer career as a newsman. I felt the loss immediately; but I've tried to follow his lead.
Bernie and I don't see as much of each other these days -- we both have busy schedules -- but whenever we can, we touch base and trade stories. He's a terrific friend and a world-class journalist who made a difference in the world and in my life. He inspired me and helped me get to where I am today. And I will forever be grateful.San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Access have launched an international campaign for HTTPS Now, rallying consumers around the world to help us make web surfing safer.
"We've heard a lot about how malicious tools like Firesheep can be used to steal data, including passwords for email and social networking accounts," said EFF Activist Eva Galperin. "HTTPS Now is aimed at protecting users from attacks like these by spreading the word about HTTPS and how to use it correctly. HTTPS provides the minimum level of security for websites. Without it, no site can make any meaningful security or privacy guarantees to its users."
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protects web surfing by encrypting requests from a user's browser and the resulting pages that are displayed, but many websites default to using the unencrypted and vulnerable HTTP protocol. The HTTPS Now campaign takes a three-pronged approach to protecting web surfing, including distributing updated tools for people to use to protect their web browsing, taking an Internet-wide survey of the state of HTTPS deployment, and helping website operators implement HTTPS.
As a first step, individuals using the web are encouraged to install HTTPS Everywhere, a security tool for the Firefox browser developed by EFF and the Tor Project. HTTPS Everywhere automatically encrypts a user's browsing, changing it from HTTP to HTTPS whenever possible.
Often, however, security vulnerabilities can't be cured by changes to a user's browser. Many websites have not deployed HTTPS, leaving their visitors vulnerable to malicious attacks. For the second prong, we are asking users to let us know whether the sites they visit use HTTPS. We are hoping that our crowd-sourced survey of websites will give us a relatively accurate picture of the current state of HTTPS deployment and Internet security.
Finally, we have created detailed resources for website operators who are interested in learning how to deploy HTTPS and why it's important for them to do so.
"We want to make it easier for web users to get the security they need and deserve, but we can't do it alone. We need an accurate picture of the state of HTTPS on the Internet. After that, we can target website operators and make it easy for them to update their sites," said Jochai Ben-Avie of Access. "Working together, we can all be safer from identity theft, security threats, viruses, and other things that come from an insecure Internet."
For more on HTTPS Now:
https://www.httpsnow.org
Contacts:
Eva Galperin
Activist
Electronic Frontier Foundation
[email protected] Obama administration has loosened the rules of engagement for U.S. forces striking the Islamic State and affiliated groups in Afghanistan, allowing them to target militants just for being associated with the terror network, a senior defense official confirmed to Fox News.
The new authorization now puts ISIS in the same category as al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
Previously, the militants could be targeted only if they showed what's known as hostile intent.
"Now," a U.S. official told Fox News, "we can kill ISIS in Afghanistan just for wearing the T-shirt or waving their flag."
The Wall Street Journal first reported the change.
The development comes after the State Department designated the affiliate "ISIL-K," or Khorasan, as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this month.
Despite the new authorization allowing the military to more easily target ISIS supporters, the U.S. has been going after the militants in Afghanistan for months.
The U.S. military has conducted dozens of drone operations against ISIS affiliates in eastern Afghanistan beginning this summer in order to protect Afghan, U.S. and foreign forces.
-- Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel.
Related Video:The looming public spending cuts will be more profound than any experienced in modern times, the head of the spending watchdog warned as he labelled political promises to protect schools and hospitals "insane".
Steve Bundred told MPs on the Commons public administration committee that the cuts required to reduce the nation's deficit would be worse than those in the 1970s and 1990s, and urged politicians to "be honest" about their tax and spending plans.
But he maintained that because the cuts followed sustained hikes in spending, billions could be shaved from budgets, and the public sector would still be better funded than it was in 1997.
Bundred, the head of the Audit Commission, said: "There are further efficiencies to be found in the public sector, undoubtedly, but not just in back-office functions. I think it's important in the debate about efficiencies to recognise that there are greater productivity [savings] to be found from the frontline as well as the back offices.
"It seems to me to be absurd to imagine that the only services where no efficiencies can be found are those that have been most generously funded for 10 years. To simply exempt the two most well-funded services from the kind of pain that will be inflicted on everybody else seems to me to be insane."
He went on: "Although it's undoubtedly the case that we are going to experience spending cuts of a kind that haven't been seen probably in the lifetime of anyone working in the public sector, it's also the case that they are going to come after a period of 10 years of sustained growth."
His comments – the strongest warnings the spending watchdog has made to date – came a day after a senior Conservative adviser, the former minister Lord Forsyth, said that David Cameron will have to cut public spending by £75bn a year by the end of the next parliament if he is to avoid destroying the British economy. His comments were seen as an indication of the scale of cuts expected under the Tories, should they win the general election.
Both Labour and the Conservatives are pledging to safeguard spending on frontline health and education services. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that this would lead to 17% cuts in budgets for all other departments. The first clear sign of the cuts will come from the government in a comprehensive spending review – which sets three-year budgets for departments – but the chancellor has said that will not happen until after the election.
A spokesman for the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, said Labour was clear about its pledge to halve the deficit within four years and that the pre-budget report last year committed extra money to health and education but also demanded efficiency savings. The Tories have said they will act even faster but Bundred said neither party had spelled out how it would achieve savings.
"What politicians aren't saying at the moment is about the judgment they would make about the balance between tax and spending and where the cuts should fall. I would like to see more open discussions and greater clarity of the intentions of all parties," he said.
Bundred was addressing the committee's inquiry into public administration in the fiscal squeeze. He was giving evidence alongside Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, who warned it was highly unlikely that the necessary spending reductions could be achieved without cutting staffing in key public services.
He said: "A significant part of the cost driver in the public sector are people and it is very unlikely that will be excluded from the serious cost reduction."
The committee has received written evidence from Tony Travers, professor of government at the LSE, setting out options for reducing the £178bn deficit, including reduced universal benefits such as child allowance and tax credits and increased charges for public services.Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) may have a bunch of new Canadian subscribers to its Fight Pass digital network this weekend.
That's because the UFC Fight Night 50 event, which is set to go down on Fri., Sept. 5, 2014, at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Conn., will no longer air on television across Canada because of scheduling conflicts with WWE programming and a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game.
Joe Ferraro tweets:
Looks like Friday's #UFC event is Fight Pass Only. I can only assume that Blue Jays and long tie WWE product will not be bumped. Sorry folks — Joe Ferraro (@ShowdownJoe) September 2, 2014
UFC Fight Night 50, which airs on FOX Sports 1 stateside, is being held on a Friday instead of its usual Saturday slot, preventing UFC from getting its product aired on television to north of the United States border.
So, too, is Bellator 123: "Curran vs. Pitbull 2," which takes place the same night as UFC Fight Night 50 just few miles up the road at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut. And despite what you may think, UFC didn't book a Friday event on a remote American Indian reservation to go toe-to-toe against the Viacom-owned company.
That would just be cutting off the nose to spite the face, right?
UFC Fight Night 50 will feature a main event fight between Gegard Mousasi and Jacare Souza. In the co-headlining act, Alistair Overeem battles Ben Rothwell in heavyweight action.
To see the rest of the amazing UFC Fight Night 50 line up click here.A ROMAN Catholic priest in Germany has admitted to 280 counts of sexually abusing three boys over a several-year period.
The 46-year-old priest, who has been suspended, went on trial at the state court in Braunschweig. The dapd news agency reported that he showed no remorse.
The man who was not identified was arrested last July after one victim told his mother what had happened. He was charged with abusing three boys aged between 9 and 15.
Hildesheim diocese spokesman Michael Lukas says the defendant's actions were "a catastrophe for the victims and for the Catholic church." The trial continues through February 2.
The priest also faces church disciplinary proceedings.
Germany, Pope Benedict XVI's homeland, was shaken in 2010 by revelations of abuse by clergy going back decades.
The Pope briefly met victims of sexual abuse by priests when he visited his native land last September, expressing "deep compassion and regret" at their suffering.Did those magnificent flying reptiles, the pterodactyls, die out some 65 million years ago as evolutionists believe? Or did they survive Noah's Flood and die out in more recent days?
According to a report in ‘The Illustrated London News' of February 9, 1856 (p.166), some workmen digging a railway tunnel in France last century, between Nancy and St. Dizier, disturbed a strange creature when they gunpowdered an enormous block of stone at Culmont, in Haute Marne, for the tunnel. They described the creature as having a very long neck and sharp teeth. It was livid black, it looked like a bat, and its membranous skin was thick and oily. On reaching the light the creature gave some signs of life by shaking its wings, but it died soon after, uttering a hoarse cry. Its wingspan was measured at 3.22 metres (about 10 feet 7 inches).
A naturalist well versed in palaeontology 'immediately recognised it as belonging to the genus Pterodactylus anas.' The living creature was said to have matched the many fossil remains of pterodactyls which had been found, so it was dubbed 'living fossil'. It is of interest to note that even American Indian mythology seems to describe the huge flying reptiles we call pterodactyls. The Indians call them the Thunderbird, but the description is almost identical. Why? Perhaps because when the Indians arrived in the Americas, pterodactyls were still alive.
Source: 'Creation Ex-Nihilo', Vol.8, No.4Turkey, Azerbaijan break ground for Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline
BAKU
Turkey's Energy Minister Taner Yıldız signed the first section of the pipeline laid on Sept. 20 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Turkey's energy minister has declared a gas pipeline a "peace corridor" linking the Caucasus with the Balkans."We open the project as a peace corridor that is the result of 15 years hard work by Turkey and Azerbaijan. Through the South Caucasus pipeline and its backbone, the Trans-Anatolia pipeline, we connect the Caucasus with the Balkans. I wish every country could understand the true value of these projects and contribute with us," Taner Yıldız said while speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony of the South Caucasus pipeline in Baku on Sept. 20.The minister said energy security "ranks as one of the main topics of global agenda" and dialogue between countries producing, transporting and consuming energy is "highly important."He added: "With this view in mind, we continue to develop projects with our friends, Azerbaijan and Georgia."The South Caucasus pipeline is the first phase of the Southern Gas Corridor, which will carry gas from the Caspian Sea to Turkey, connecting to the Trans-Anatolia natural gas pipeline via Georgia and reach southern Europe."TANAP [The Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline] is not a mere investment but a project for the future. We believe that the project is a way of establishing strong, sustainable and healthy relations both between Turkey and Azerbaijan and other European countries," Yıldız added.Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibasvili, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Montenegro's Prime Minister Milo Cukanovic also took part in the ceremony."We will have extra income by opening our natural gas to the world market and European countries will have a new energy resource? There is no loser in this project, everybody will win," Aliyev said.The TANAP, the first phase of the $45 billion worth Southern Gas Corridor, is expected to begin operations by 2018 with a 16 billion cubic meter capacity.We’ve been working on testing and implementing a new articulated physics engine, which will offer more robust support for joints and motors, and more accuracy. We have a vision for ROBLOX where builders have the freedom to create the most complex mechatronic creations they can imagine, and simulate them in real time with other players. This has been a long and challenging process, but the video below illustrates the progress we’ve made so far.
The Path We Took to Get Here
Before we describe the video, let’s talk about how we got here. At BLOXcon New York City, we announced that we’ve been hard at work overhauling ROBLOX physics–we even brought along our “Crash Canyon” 10-wheeler demo so attendees could experience our progress firsthand. Why a 10-wheeler? It represents many of the possibilities the articulated physics engine affords: more robust joints, a greater volume of articulated bodies, and more accurate simulation.
Thus, we started building all sorts of trucks, and they taught us a lot about what we’d be able to accomplish using our new articulated physics engine. With the 10-wheeler, we were faced with several obstacles that would truly test the strength of our joints and motors. For the first time, we had to create a multi-rigid body system (i.e. there’s two separate sections of the truck, the front and back, connected by a ball-socket joint).
The 10-wheeler also demonstrates a realistic suspension system built using prismatic joints, and a piston to provide shock absorption. There’s also a spring placed inside the prismatic joint to restore the piston to its original position, prior to the impact. This leads to a massive truck that turns extremely realistically–there’s a real weight to each turn that feels natural. With the stunt truck we were able to learn a ton about suspension and articulated joints, but we weren’t satisfied.
We went on to create monster trucks with massive suspension mechanisms to test the strength of the engine. When it was all said and done, we made trucks that could climb at 65 degree angle, in rocky and jumbled terrain.
The Front-end Loader and What It Represents
Now, we arrive at the front-end loader, which is what you’re seeing in the video above. The biggest challenge with the front-end loader was that it was planned to be a vehicle with three separate “loops” that lived in three separate sections of the vehicle (two series of joints for the boom, and one for the bucket). Loops in the topology of vehicles essentially represent joints that are dependent on one another in order to function correctly. If one joint in the loop has even a small error that is not absorbed by the physics solver properly, that error will propagate throughout the loop, which will continue on until the simulation explodes. This was definitely the next step in the “hard to simulate” list–we wanted to figure out how to simulate a mechanical creation with a loop-rich topology.
You’ll notice in the video that this creation is not just about driving realistically, but accurately interacting with the environment. The front-end loader can use a large mechanical arm to knock over walls, pick up falling objects, and scoop things out of the ground. Lots of simulated points of contact means lots of collision and friction forces, and an extremely large magnitude of torque needs to be exerted on the robotic arm to do its job. Without a high fidelity simulation of a tremendous motor gain, the arm would just shake, twist or fall apart entirely.
So what’s next? We won’t tell you exactly what it is, but we’ll give you a hint: we’re moving past vehicles and building something bigger. Where the front-end loader had two degrees of freedom (DOF) to manipulate–one for the bucket, and one for the arm–this new creation will have 10. Our goal is to build mechatronic simulations with higher degrees of freedom and more complex topology. All of this is an effort to perfect and refine our new articulated physics engine so we can give it to you, our builders. We’ll keep you posted.A24, the company founded in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges, has been hitting the motherlode—for indie companies, anyway—with smart film choices and even smarter ways of bringing them to marketplace, particularly in their increasingly innovative—and, yes, disruptive—use of digital marketing.
It not only has been working at the box office, but also at the Academy Awards, where the company defied expectations and watched their first in-house production, the $1.5 million budgeted Moonlight, take three Oscars, including a surprise Best Picture win, while grossing over $55 million worldwide.
Last year they saw three of their films grab Oscars, including Brie Larson’s Best Actress statuette for Room (a Best Picture nominee), Amy for Best Documentary, and Ex Machina in a stunning upset for Best Visual Effects, the first non-major studio blockbuster-type movie to take that award.
A24
Much of what A24 does is skewed towards a younger demographic, and that is one reason why they buy very little television or newspaper advertising, preferring to spend money hyper-targeting consumers online, where their message can connect more directly with those most likely to respond.
For the low-budget supernatural horror The Witch, the company had a 13-month window to craft a campaign with key social media and smart co-branding, resulting in a $40 million gross. They even picked up Gus Van Sant’s critically vilified 2015 Cannes disaster The Sea of Trees and turned it into a financial success, with the DirecTV deal and focus on PPV strategy.
Recently, they took another risk, world-premiering their upcoming horror title It Comes at Night at the new Overlook Film Festival in Mt. Hood, Oregon, on the site of the hotel used in The Shining. It got rave reviews from the handful of press there, and the company dropped their trailer the next day, which was amplified by the Overlook reaction and Shining comparison, in effect turning the online trailer-drop into something instantly buzz worthy.
A24
The executives at A24 don’t like to repeat themselves, so this year, they have financed the adult-skewing The Lovers; add to that their first foreign-language film, Menashe, a Brooklyn-set feature told in Hebrew. At Cannes, they are launching four new films, including two that played in official competition this week to strong response—Good Time, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer—as well as John Cameron Mitchell’s Out Of Competition entry How to Talk to Girls at Parties and midnight-screening selection A Prayer Before Dawn.It's a little known fact that it's possible to have your DNA profile removed from the National DNA Database (NDNAD). While the Police have processes to gather and retain DNA samples - they don't yet have a procedure to delete the DNA of innocent members of the public.
It's complicated - but for now, this is what you should do.
Over four million profiles have been added to NDNAD since 1995. Last year, 115 profiles were deleted and 667,737 added. In the last five years, 634 DNA profiles have been removed from the database, while 2,649,937 profiles were added. In other words, the number of DNA profiles removed is around 0.02 per cent of the number of profiles added in the period - where we have the information.
According to a document called the Step model - Retention guidelines, it is considered "exceptional" for an innocent citizen to have one's DNA sample destroyed, and the associated DNA profile removed.
Currently, the destruction of DNA samples and removal of DNA records are "completed by way of an approved form being sent [by a Senior Information Manager from the Metropolitan Police Service Specialist Crime Directorate 12 (MPS SCD 12)] to designated staff in each of the departments concerned who are aware of the exceptional case procedure, once deletion / destruction has taken place we are informed and subsequently we notify the applicant, there is no process map in existence for this practice."
My own fingerprints and DNA were added to the database on 2005-07-28 when I was arrested on the London Tube.
Then ensued a complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), an investigation, an appeal to the outcome and a final decision by the IPCC. The final decision, dated 2007-05-03, "requested that the Metropolitan Police Service reconsider your request for your records and samples to be physically destroyed and electronically deleted, and for the summary information in the Police National Computer to be expunged."
The Misconduct Office informed me, on 21 August last year, that they had agreed to this request. Department SCD12 confirmed that my fingerprints were destroyed and the entry on the fingerprint database was deleted on 2007-07-24, my DNA samples destroyed and the entry on the DNA database deleted on 2007-08-20 and my Police National Computer (PNC) record deleted on 2007-08-30.
If you read the previous paragraph carefully, you may notice that the Misconduct Office requested the exceptional case to be dealt with by SCD12 before informing me of its decision, and SCD12 appears to have been prompt. So it was no longer possible for me to witness the destruction and removal actions. Hopefully there was no break in communications, and all those involved did their job properly without making any mistake. The information I received, unfortunately, leaves room for interpretation.
For instance, there was mention of "DNA sample" (singular) when two mouth swabs were taken - most likely a shortcut. Another example is that SCD12 asks "departments", but the labs that are contracted to analyse the DNA samples and keeping them are not part of the Police and hence not departments, most likely another shortcut.
So how would I know that my DNA profile really had been deleted? One way to verify this would be to plant some of my DNA at a crime scene and wait for a knock at the door. Obviously this is an experiment I will not undertake. I'd much prefer to have (verifiable) specific assurances rather than assumptions, but instead I'll have to trust the Police and the labs they use.
To avoid others having to go through this same situation, I shared these concerns with the SCD12 Senior Information Manager. The outcome: "An exceptional case process map will be available on the MPS Publication Scheme early 2008."
Having a documented process in place instead of the current ad-hoc mechanisms will go some way to increase confidence in the efficacy of what must be a complex procedure. Unsurprisingly, the Information Commissioner's Office has also been keen for a long time for the Police to implement such a step-out (deletion) procedure.
Publishing a process - which describes in detail the actions to be taken by the Police departments and their contractors - will help ensure other innocents get fair and open treatment in getting off the NDNAD. This, in turn, will help make exceptional cases the norm. ®Giving a 5-year-old boy, Miles, who is in remission from leukemia, the dream of being a Batkid for a day is touching people across the globe.
People turned to Twitter and Instagram, getting into the spirit of giving a boy, who has battled cancer since he was 1, a day to remember.
Even President Barack Obama retweeted the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the agency making the dream a reality, urging others to follow @SFWish. He also recorded a Vine message congratulating Batkid.
On Friday, through the efforts of the Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area, 12,000 volunteers gave this "Batkid" an incredible day of dressing up as a superhero and rooting out evil and crime in Gotham City (aka San Francisco).
Police officers in Campbell put on bat masks, graphic designers created images of Batman floating over the Golden Gate Bridge, and three Harlem Globetrotters stood in a circle, pointed to the camera and wished Miles a great day: "Good Luck Bat Kid."
In a particularly funny tweet, Tony Michaels, a country DJ who lives in Fremont, said that Batkid helped an emergency landing in San Jose. An American Airlines flight did strike a bird about 6:40 a.m. Friday morning, and no one was injured.
MORE: SF Morphs Into Gotham City for "Batkid" Battling Leukemia
"This wish stands out
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suicide among the AA population are needed. Using data on all deaths between 1990 and 2007 in the US state of Michigan, the state with the highest density of AAs in the US, as well as Census 2000 population data, we explored age-adjusted suicide rates among the AA and non-ethnic (non-Arab and non-Hispanic) white populations. Given that ethnicity may influence suicide rates differently by ethnic density [20], [21], we stratified our analyses by residence inside and outside of Wayne County, MI, the county with the highest density of AAs in Michigan and the US, as well as home to 39% of the state's AAs, to understand the relations between Arab ethnicity, ethnic density, and suicide risk.
Methods Data We obtained data about all deaths among individuals aged 10 years and older in the state of Michigan between 1990 and 2007 from the death records of the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). US Census 2000 population data, obtained using the American Factfinder Database [22] and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series [23], were used to calculate population denominators (year 2000 data were used as denominators in all years). Our primary outcome of interest was death by suicide. We used International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes to determine deaths caused by intentional self-harm (suicide) or unaccounted injury. ICD-9 codes E950-E959 and E980-E989 were used from 1990 through 1998, and ICD-10 codes X60-X84 and Y10-Y34 were used from 1999 through 2007. It has been shown that there is no difference in the proportion of deaths attributed to suicide by coding edition [24]. Other covariates collected in mortality data included race, ethnicity, gender, and age. Only suicide among AAs and non-ethnic whites was considered, but this included over 80% of suicides in Michigan. Arab ethnicity was determined by next-of-kin-reported ancestry and white race was determined by next-of-kin-reported race in mortality data, while self-reported ancestry and race was used in population data. Suicide rates were stratified by residence inside or outside of Wayne County, MI. With approximately 39% of Michigan's Arab-American population residing therein, Wayne County is home to one of the largest Arab-American communities in the US [25]. For example, it is estimated that one in three residents of the city of Dearborn, Wayne County's most Arab-dense city, is Arab-American [25]. Wayne county is also the largest county in Michigan, both by land area and population, and includes within its boundaries the City of Detroit. As compared to the rest of the State, Wayne County has a smaller white population (55.1% vs. 81.2%), a larger African-American population (40.5% vs. 14.2%), and a larger foreign-born population (6.7% vs. 5.3%) [26]. Residents of Wayne County are generally less educated (Proportion with bachelor's degree or higher, 17.2% vs. 21.8%) and lower income (Median household income, $42,463 vs. $48,606) than their counterparts in the rest of the state [26]. For purposes of this analysis, residence in Wayne County, MI was determined from next-of-kin-reported county of residence in mortality data. In order to describe the underlying population of interest (Arab and non-Arab white Michigan residents aged 10 years and older), we collected information from the U.S. Census on marital status (married, separated, divorced, widowed, and never married); education (none, less than 11th grade, general equivalency diploma (GED) or equivalent, and some college or greater); household income (negative, <$20,000, $20,001–$40,000, $40,001–$60,000, $60,001–$80,000, and greater than $80,000); gender (male vs. female); and age (10–19, 20–24, 25–44, 45–65, 65 and older). This study was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board of the Michigan Department of Community Health and the Health Science Institutional Review Board of the University of Michigan. Analysis First, we calculated univariate statistics stratified by ethnicity and gender to describe the population of interest. Second, we used bivariate chi-square tests, stratified by gender, to identify statistically significant distributions of covariates of interest by ethnicity (p<0.05). The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series [23] interface was used to carry out univariate statistics and bivariate chi-square tests of the population denominator data described above. Third, we calculated age-adjusted suicide rates stratified by gender and ethnicity, as well as by gender, ethnicity, and residence inside or outside of Wayne County, MI. The year 2000 population standard was used for age adjustment, with all suicide rates standardized in five-year age categories. Fourth, we calculated the relative risk of suicide among AA men and women relative to their non-ethnic white counterparts, as well as among residents of Wayne County, MI relative to non-residents stratified by gender and ethnicity.
Discussion In a study of all suicide deaths among AAs and non-ethnic whites in Michigan between 1990 and 2007 we found that suicide rates among AAs were lower than among non-ethnic whites across gender. We also found that while residence in Wayne County, MI was associated with higher rates of suicide among non-ethnic whites, it was associated with lower rate of suicide among AAs compared to residence in the rest of the state. This is the first study, of which we are aware, that has considered suicide rates among AAs. While there is no previous data comparing suicide rates for AAs to non-ethnic whites, our findings are consistent with previous studies that have shown that whites have higher risk for suicide than other ethnic and racial minorities, including Hispanic-Americans [27], [28], African-Americans [29]–[31], and Asian-Americans [32]. Several factors have been suggested that may explain the lower rates of suicide among minority groups compared to non-ethnic whites, including stronger religious belief systems and spiritually-based coping, communalism and a collective social orientation, strong family bonds, affective expressiveness, and positive ethnic group identity among ethnic minority groups [10]. While there is no research, of which we are aware, that has analyzed these factors with regard to the etiology of AA suicide, it is plausible that many of these protective factors apply to AAs in the US, and therefore may explain lower risk for suicide among AAs relative to non-ethnic whites, as well. Moreover, according to traditional interpretations of Islamic shari'a law, suicide is considered haram or forbidden, and families of suicide victims can face ostracism within the Muslim community [33], [34]. Both explicit religious restrictions against suicide among Muslim AAs, and the effect that Islamic restrictions may have on the communally-held view of suicide within broader Arab culture may also partially explain the lower risk of suicide among AAs relative to non-ethnic whites. We also found that, despite higher suicide rates among non-ethnic whites in this context, AAs in Wayne County had lower suicide rates than their counterparts in other contexts. These findings support the extant literature about ethnic density and suicide among ethnic minority groups [20], [21], which has demonstrated that ethnic density may be protective against suicide and deliberate self-harm among ethnic minorities groups. Our observations regarding ethnic density and AA suicide rates may best be understood within the broader framework of acculturation and health outcomes among ethnic minorities [16], [17], [35]–[38]. Ethnic enclaves maintain a cultural distinction from their surroundings [14]. Therefore, ethnic inhabitants of ethnic enclaves may be more likely to adhere to traditional cultural practices, and therefore be less acculturated, than their counterparts in other localities. If traditional cultural practices among ethnic minorities influence health, than health metrics among ethnic minorities may differ systematically by ethnic density because of cultural practice norms. Suggestive evidence comes from several studies that have demonstrated that community context influences health metrics among ethnic minority groups, suggesting that acculturation may mediate these differences [15]–[17]. As discussed above, ethnic minorities may be protected against suicide via communally-oriented cultural features, including communalism and a collective social orientation, strong family bonds, affective expressiveness, and positive ethnic group identity [10]. If ethnic inhabitants of ethnic enclaves, who may be less acculturated, may be more likely to adhere to such traditional cultural norms, then it is plausible that these mechanisms may operate more robustly in these contexts, explaining our finding that AAs in Wayne County, MI, home of one of the US's largest and most ethnically-dense Arab enclaves, had lower suicide rates than their counterparts outside of Wayne County, MI. There are several limitations that should be considered when interpreting our findings. First, our observations come from only one US state. Therefore, they may not generalize to other contexts within the US or internationally. Second, while population suicide rates were stratified by ethnicity and gender and adjusted for age, our methods did not account for any other factors that may have confounded the relation between ethnicity and suicide. Third, we are limited by the accuracy of death certificate data collected from vital registry files and population statistics from Census 2000 data. Fourth, population data were taken only from the 2000 Census and therefore our analysis cannot account for dynamic changes in the population structure over the data collection period. Despite these limitations, our findings have important implications for policy, clinical care, and future research. Our observations suggest that communally-oriented cultural features among AAs may protect against suicide among this ethnic group. Therefore, as the AA community in the US inevitably acculturates, suicide rates among this ethnic group may increase. Policymakers seeking to prevent suicide among this group might seek to promote community participation and civil societal growth among the AA community. Clinicians might pay particular attention to the mental health of AA patients, especially among those in highly acculturative atmospheres. With regard to future research, this study is the first, of which we are aware, to consider suicide risk among Arab-Americans; more studies about suicidality among AAs in other spatial contexts, and among Arab populations in other non-Arab countries are needed. Moreover, studies about suicidal ideation and attempted suicide among AAs are in order. Also, researchers interested in ethnic differences in suicidality might explore mechanisms that explain differences in suicide risk between AAs and non-ethnic whites. Finally, investigators interested in the role of culture as a determinant of suicide might explicitly assess the relation between Arab cultural practice and suicide rates among AAs.
Acknowledgments The authors thank Glenn Copeland and Glenn Radford from the Michigan Department of Community Health for their help acquiring the data.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: AMES. Analyzed the data: AMES MT PS. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SG. Wrote the paper: AMES. Edited the manuscript: MT PS SG.Five things we learned from Browns-Bengals Sunday…
1. The Browns defense is for real. The defensive front, specifically, is playing a relentless, suffocating brand of football and a young and thin secondary is doing the job. No one back there — and maybe no cornerback anywhere — is doing a better job than Joe Haden, who in his fourth year has been as advertised as a more mature, more polished player and is locking down opposing receivers. The Browns defense is setting the tone early in games and in Haden and Barkevious Mingo, it has at least a couple rising stars to go with a bunch of guys who are doing their jobs and doing them well.
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2. That Browns defense played a role in this on Sunday, but the Bengals are going nowhere unless Andy Dalton starts playing much better. He really couldn’t have played much worse on Sunday; his official quarterback rating of 58.2 seems kind of high. The Bengals never found a flow, Dalton never looked comfortable in the pocket and he both forced some throws and missed some others that could have been big plays. A couple drops at the end didn’t help his numbers (23-of-42, 206 yards, one interception) but the game was long decided. Here’s how the Bengals final eight series ended: Turnover on downs, punt, fumble, punt, field goal, punt, interception, downs.
3. Brian Hoyer is smart. He’s undefeated as a starter with the Browns, too, but that’s not because of his arm strength or some other standout talent. He’s getting the ball out of his hand, getting the offense lined up and finding Jordan Cameron — who’s becoming a star, by the way. While Dalton stood in the pocket most of the day and watched it collapse or made a late decision to get the ball out of his hand, the ball came out of Hoyer’s hand quickly and even on throws he missed, he usually put them where the Bengals couldn’t get them. The Browns didn’t turn the ball over; lo and behold, they won the game. Hoyer’s 103.9 quarterback rating Sunday is the kind of number that many Browns quarterbacks haven’t been able to post adding two weeks together. Until someone forces Hoyer into a bunch of deep throws and/or sacks, the Browns have their quarterback of the near future, and that alone puts them miles ahead of where they were even a few weeks ago.
4. Finding Cameron (repeatedly), not getting A.J. Green free (or Mohamed Sanu going), running right into the teeth of that Browns defense on a questionable first-half fourth and one call…the Bengals just did not play a very good football game. They missed Leon Hall and Reggie Nelson, certainly, but the defense was left on the field too long by an offense that converted 4-of-14 third downs, had 17 second-half rushing yards (and 63 for the game; the Browns had a lot to do with that) and missed opportunities in each half. The Bengals came in on a two-game win streak and off a wild rally for what could have been a breakthrough win last week against Green Bay, but they went flat on Sunday in Cleveland and never really woke up.
5. The AFC North is a mediocre mess. The Browns have to love that, right? The Bengals blew a golden opportunity Sunday, the Ravens went to Buffalo and lost after Joe Flacco threw five interceptions, the Steelers went across the pond, lost again and limp into a bye week at 0-4…and the Browns now have a short week home game with a chance to grab first place. Yes, the Ravens, Bengals and Browns are all 2-2 after the season’s first month. The division is a combined 6-10, nobody is running the ball and nobody is getting great quarterback play, but the Browns defense is playing like it wants to lead the push out of the perennial basement. Nothing’s going to come easy, and there’s a ton of season left, but ugly appears to be en vogue and the Browns are built to win ugly. Confidence can be both dangerous and contagious, and if it’s matched with solid defense and a positive turnover margin, we can’t say right now with any certainty what might happen. The Bengals have the Patriots next, followed by two road games. They’d better find some confidence quickly.ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The defining play may have come from the right paw of Mario Williams, Buffalo’s 6-foot-6 Pro Bowl defensive end. Yet no member of a self-effacing and dominant Bills defense is willing to consider the idea that the team’s upset of the Green Bay Packers on Sunday was a single-handed achievement.
With less than two minutes left in the game, and Buffalo clinging to a 6-point lead, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers took a snap from center at the Green Bay 10-yard line and dropped back to pass. Williams muscled past right tackle J C Tretter, employing his long reach to swat the ball free.
Rodgers searched frantically, like a parent who has lost sight of a toddler. By the time running back Eddie Lacy scooped up the loose ball in the end zone, the Bills had a safety, en route to a surprising 21-13 victory that dropped the Packers to 10-4.By Ben Simmoneau
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The CBS 3 I-Team has learned that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over sex abuse allegations now holds a sensitive security post at Philadelphia International Airport.
The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day. But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.
Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.
The I-Team asked Harkins about the suit as he was leaving his shift at the airport.
“I have nothing to say,” was Harkins’ reply.
The new lawsuit, filed in federal court against the Camden Diocese says quite a bit. It accuses Harkins of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl 10 to 15 times in 1980 and 1981. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the alleged victim, claims the abuse occurred while Harkins was a priest at Saint Anthony of Padua parish in Hammonton, NJ, with one assault even occurring in Harkins’ bedroom at the rectory.
The I-Team asked Harkins if the traveling public should be worried.
“No, they shouldn’t be,” he said.
“The public should not be worried with you in a position like this despite your past?” reporter Ben Simmoneau asked.
“I have nothing to say,” Harkins repeated.
He then used his TSA badge to walk into a restricted area where our cameras could not follow.
“They should know who they’re hiring,” said Karen Polesir, a Philadelphia spokeswoman with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). She believes Harkins’ TSA job is inappropriate.
“As the public, we are screened to our underwear getting on a plane, and yet they hire a man like that.”
A TSA official tells the I-Team Harkins’ title is “Transportation Security Manager, Baggage,” meaning he deals mostly with luggage, not passengers.
“Sure, that’s his title,” Polesir said. “That doesn’t mean that’s where he stays, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t fill other roles when necessary.”
The TSA says all its employees go through a criminal background check before they’re hired, but because these cases are so old, criminal charges were not filed. A spokesman says the Camden Diocese settled the first two lawsuits with Harkins’ accusers–it has not seen this suit just yet.Of its primary water and concrete-based counterparts, snowboarding is the only sideways endeavor that is largely restricted by a fee. There is a distinct cost to snowboarding that ranges from a variable $15 to $180 per day or a fixed $300 to $3000 per winter. Plenty of means exist to slide downhill in the snow without paying for a lift ticket or buying a season pass, but more so than most pastimes, snowboarding is financially gated.
As snowboarding has matured and grown to be widely accepted at resorts and well-manicured terrain parks have become commonplace, the idea of buying a ticket or a pass has become increasingly ubiquitous. But there was a time when it was less common, when many resorts didn't allow snowboarding or restricted it to specific areas. Freestyle snowboarding was much more a do-it-yourself endeavor than it is today. Outside of a naturally-occurring lip, shovels and manual labor were requisites for air time. Riders built what they rode.
As someone who's been snowboarding for little more than two decades, this era was largely before my time. By the time I started, most resorts had some form of terrain park, albeit rudimentary in comparison to today's standards. But many of my best memories on a snowboard—the times when I learned three tricks in a day or rode late into the night—were fueled by shovel power. There is something about building a feature yourself and hiking it that accelerates progression and allows you to better connect with what you’re riding.
Each spring, there is an event that takes place which hearkens back to a simpler time in snowboarding—a time when building what you rode was commonplace, when progression didn't involve corked multiplicities, and when Colorado was the epicenter for freestyle advancement outside of the high profile contest realm.
For the last seven years Satellite Boardshop, with the help of an increasing number of shovelers each iteration, has offered a demonstration of a type of snowboarding that requires only enough money to put gas in your car and make it to the bottom of Loveland Pass. From there, you can hitch a ride to the top, where a quarterpipe is sculpted out of a natural windlip and a step up carved next to a cornice. Lower down, the infamously flat Ironing Board hip sees five hits to one land, and back at the bottom of the pass a jib-focused zone lends ample opportunity for carnage.
Either Aaron Dodds or Seth Bruce accurately described Love Games as a monster truck rally. But in between savage tomahawks, scorpions and faces meeting snow before boards—and without the typically requisite lift tickets, ski patrol, or entry fees—the strongest snowboarders manage ride away from heavy tricks at each zone, and these riders are recognized at the end of the day while hot dogs are grilled and beers are sipped by sunburnt lips.
Results:
Men’s
1st Jade Phelan
2nd Chris DePaula
3rd Seth Hill
Women’s
1st Melissa Riitano
2nd Ruby Peyton
3rd Nastya Zhukova
Froth Puppy : Nate Cordero
Best Method: Justin Phipps
Highest Air: Hunter Frutchey
Legend Award Rob Bak
Visit teamgarbear.com to help a fellow snowboarder, Gary Wyman.Welcome to the 26th instalment of Slam Radio. This weeks mix Slam welcome a bonafide Detroit legend - Robert Hood!
This Friday Robert Hood plays at Slam's monthly club night at The Arches, Glasgow, for a 'One Big Room' Easter special!
Robert Hood has released on seminal labels like Axis, Metroplex, Tresor, Peacefrog, Music Man and Rush Hour. His original productions as Robert Hood, his aliases, most notably, Floorplan & Monobox and his part in groups like X-101 (with Jeff Mills and 'Mad' Mike Banks) and Underground Resistance earned him a cult following and cemented him as one of Detroit's greatest techno exports.
This is a very special mix including numerous unreleased tracks taken from his forthcoming Floorplant album 'Paradise'. The album is released in June on M-Plant Records.
Listen/Download all the shows on Slam radio here
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Levittown, New York was the birthplace of postwar sprawl
America has descended far into the strong darkness of sprawl addiction, and while much of the future lies shrouded in more uncertainty than usual, one fact shines clear: we can no longer afford to sprawl. Cities can't afford to service sprawl's low-density pattern that consumes huge chunks of land and demands more infrastructure investment per unit served. Citizens soon won't be able to afford to live in sprawl's furthest outposts as gas edges closer to $5/gallon. How much sprawl will be uninhabitable on a median salary when gas gets to $10/gallon? And again at $20/gallon? Gas is 20 times higher than it was when I was a kid, and I'm not old. $20/gallon is less than 5 times higher than gas I bought yesterday, so it's not a matter of if, but of when.
Sprawl became an addiction in the same way most addictions start: by providing a huge rush of perceived benefits early on. It became the biggest money-making machine ever known to humanity, and you didn't really even need to think very much in order to participate because of its reductive simplicity. Zoning ordinances, financing mechanisms, and appraisal standards all conspired to grease the skids for the developers of sprawl, with an unspoken side-effect: every other way of building became intolerably laborious by comparison.
But like other addictions, sprawl burned through our resources at a staggering rate. Cities all over the US, addicted to tax revenues from sprawl construction, grew by countless acres while their populations remained constant or even shrank. Inevitably, all those one-time benefits of new sprawl construction that created such a rush at their beginnings have left the cities with infrastructure they must maintain every year forever… or until the city goes broke. Cities have sold the future for the thrill of the moment, just like any other addict would do.
These aren't sprawl's only problems. I'll be blogging shortly about the Demographic Bomb, but here's the upshot: since the end of World War II, the US housing market as a whole has contained more buyers than sellers, resulting in upward pressure on home prices. We now appear to be entering a decades-long period when there will be more sellers than buyers in the market, resulting in downward pressure on housing prices. Subdivisions that do not dramatically change their character are likely to ride this huge ebbing tide down to the rocky bottom.
This is all really bad news. But there are reasons for hope. Some of the smartest and most optimistic people I know have been working for years to figure out how to recover from this sprawling addiction. Andrés Duany and dozens of colleagues authored the SmartCode, and his partner and wife Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk authored its biggest implementation to date in Miami21, a code for millions of Floridians. Their business partner Galina Tachieva authored the Sprawl Repair Manual about a year after colleagues Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson wrote Suburban Retrofit. Chuck Marohn, Hazel Borys, and Nathan Norris all call for cities to consider the ROI on each municipal investment, a strategy that would have disinherited sprawl years ago. Andrés wrote recently of a much larger cast of characters dedicated to the feat of sprawl recovery.
This post begins to lay out a route to reclaiming compact, mixed-use, and walkable places from the very bowels of sprawl. It sounds gross… and it is. Mile after mile of subdivisions, strip malls, and office parks. How is it possible to turn this into sustainable places? Here's an even better question: how is it possible not to? Sprawl, you see, is the largest investment of the modern era, from the personal level to the municipal. We can't just walk away. We've got to make this stuff work… long before gas gets to $20/gallon.
This series of posts follows older addiction recovery paths by planning sprawl recovery in twelve steps. But before we get to the steps, we will explore the game-changers. These are broad principles that, when applied, have virtuous cycles across a number of sprawl recovery steps. We'll also look at the silver bullets. We need silver bullets because not every sprawl recovery measure measures up. Some produce only incremental benefits, so we need others that create radical benefits.
The twelve steps are next. 1. They begin with civic space, without which civilized society cannot exist. Humans need both the public and the private to thrive. Civic spaces may not be fully furnished for years, but neighborhoods cannot thrive without establishing their locations early. 2. The second step is the regeneration of a healthy system of thoroughfares, from the avenue to the alley. 3. Accessory units are third, because neighborhoods need to quickly begin to build more customers nearby for the businesses that are to follow. 4. Gifts to the Street are next, because it's never too soon to make a street more walkable. Gifts to the Street also highlight the fact that sprawl recovery is an act of enticement, not one of contrition. We should be able to entice people to live better. Scolding never works for long.
5. The fifth step is the encouragement of edible gardens, because if you can't eat there, you can't live there. We've been able to bring in meal after meal that needed a passport to get to our plate, but what happens when gas hits $10/gallon? Or $20/gallon? 6. Restaurants and third places are sixth on the list, and first of the commercial uses because they're so resilient. 7. Once you've established places to eat in your neighborhood, the next step should be a bed & breakfast so that future homes aren't burdened with the necessity of guest suites. 8. This means you can more easily subdivide larger lots into smaller cottage lots which better serve a broader swath of the American housing market.
9. The ninth step is the creation of what I believe will be the hottest unit type in the American housing market over the next several decades: the live-work unit. It comes in many flavors, from the venerable live-above (shown here) to the live-in-front (workshop,) the live-behind, the live-beside, the live-nearby, etc. 10. Step ten is the creation of a neighborhood market because you're not living in a truly sustainable place until you can walk to the grocery. And if you can walk to the grocery, chances are good that you can walk to other necessities as well. 11. Dedicated office and retail are the next-to-last step because they need a thriving neighborhood to ensure their survival. 12. The final step is the creation of civic buildings, which are the crowning achievements of a mature neighborhood.
~Steve Mouzon
Other Sprawl Recovery posts on the Original Green Blog:
Walk Appeal
Walk Appeal Measurables
Walk Appeal Immeasurables
Walk Appeal Impact
The Sky Method
The Transect
Fried-Egg Cities?
You'll receive an email from me with the subject line "Mouzon Design: Please Confirm Subscription." Click Yes to confirm your subscription for Walk Appeal book updates.
Legacy Comments
· Board Member at Sky Institute for the Future
Here's a new way of looking at sprawl repair... see what you think. Comments?
What about steps 9-12 Steve?
· Georgetown University
Your caption under the fourth illustration notes that expressways fueled the sprawl type of growth. Likewise, ought not one of your twelve steps be the transportation-type that fueled walkable growth: rail? A network of streetcars, commuter trains and intercity trains freed people to walk in those desirable public spaces.
· Trent University
Surely there has to be another side to this. If some sprawl areas densify and become more like real towns, then, assuming low general population growth, won't others have to "ruralize"? Don't we need to plan for what software designers call "graceful degradation"?
· University of Pennsylvania
Thanks for this post, Steve. Step Nine will be covered in my new Book, Live-Work Planning and Design: Zero-Commute Housing, to be published by Wiley four weeks from today. In it, a standard lexicon of terms is put forth (including live-nearby, which you cite above) that will help us all to more accurately converse about live-work.
· Georgetown University
As in "The Wizard of Oz", it's usually best to start a long journey from right where you are. That translates into use of the rails we have as a focus for new growth nodes. You are right, that the community must have a mindset towards creating a new type of (walkable) development. It must be strong enough to be manifested in urban growth boundaries and new zoning. However, to encourage that mindset, the passenger rail network we have must be made credible. Permanent funding for ("downtown to downtown") Amtrak is a start. Good, expanding experiences on Amtrak might help people believe in the horse of a different color and a walkable community of their own.
Could you please explain point three and "third places" in point six?
· Georgetown University
Steve, I agree that they CAN develop concurrently; my point however is that development-walkability and rail-connectivity MUST develop concurrently. Here in St Louis we have a great light rail system with less new walkable development (except for the downtown rehabs) than hoped. We also have a great walkable development (New Town) built completely off the transit grid, and its wish for its streetcar connection was dashed. Meanwhile, St Louis' neighboring (and State's largest) county is devoid of transit. My Masters project is a proposal to repair its significant sprawl with a three-part plan: use existing rail for a shuttle, develop node stations, and connect them to the surrounding County also with trails and paths. When I introduce this publicly soon, I will say that unless all three are part of the plan, the results will be disappointing. Am I realistic to hold to that standard?
· Memphis, Tennessee
How do the boots get on the ground and these ideas get traction in local areas? I think about organizations who go into other countries to implement what is a good idea and end up failing due to not doing the marketing research that applies. I like these ideas. In your work what do you see as causes for failure in implementing better development to reorient the suburban sprawl?
2,418+About This Content Space is lovely, dark and deep, but it has secrets it wants to keep. Rich systems defended by fierce creatures, hostile pockets of resistance to your civilization, and the sleeping giants of the universe – the Fallen Empires who may yet be stirred from their centuries long indolence.
In Stellaris: Leviathans Story Pack, the galaxy will be filled anew with adventure and challenge as your new and naïve space-faring empire comes face-to-face and ship-to-ship with a host of dangers and rewards.
Main features: GUARDIANS Powerful space entities with mysterious origins and motives. Fight or investigate them to unlock technologies and gain access to great treasures. ENCLAVES Independent outposts of traders and artists who are willing to make a deal. Exchange resources, purchase information about the galaxy, or commission a great work of art for your empire. WAR IN HEAVEN Where will your fledgling empire lie if two ancient Fallen Empires decide to renew old grievances in a War in Heaven? Will you err on the side of caution and take a side with the stronger power, or will you strike at both whilst they are occupied with their own titanic struggle?MapReduce is a programming model for processing vast amounts of data. One of the reasons that it works so well is because it exploits a sweet spot of modern disk drive technology trends. In essence MapReduce works by repeatedly sorting and merging data that is streamed to and from disk at the transfer rate of the disk. Contrast this to accessing data from a relational database that operates at the seek rate of the disk (seeking is the process of moving the disk’s head to a particular place on the disk to read or write data).
So why is this interesting? Well, look at the trends in seek time and transfer rate. Seek time has grown at about 5% a year, whereas transfer rate at about 20% [1]. Seek time is growing more slowly than transfer rate – so it pays to use a model that operates at the transfer rate. Which is what MapReduce does. I first saw this observation in Doug Cutting’s talk, with Eric Baldeschwieler, at OSCON (see BlogStarter) last year, where he worked through the numbers for updating a 1 terabyte database using the two paradigms B-Tree (seek-limited) and Sort/Merge (transfer-limited). (See the slides and video for more detail.)
The general point was well summed up by Jim Gray in an interview in ACM Queue from 2003:
… programmers have to start thinking of the disk as a sequential device rather than a random access device.
Or the more pithy: “Disks have become tapes.” (Quoted by David DeWitt.)
But even the growth of transfer rate is dwarfed by another measure of disk drives – capacity, which is growing at about 50% a year. David DeWitt argues that since the effective transfer rate of drives is falling we need database systems that work with this trend – such as column-store databases (similar to MySQL databases used with WordPress theme installation) and wider use of compression (since this effectively increases the transfer rate of a disk). Of existing databases he says:
Already we see transaction processing systems running on farms of mostly empty disk drives to obtain enough seeks/second to satisfy their transaction processing rates.
But this applies to transfer rate too (or if it doesn’t yet, it will). Replace “seeks” with “transfers” and “transaction processing” with “MapReduce” and I think over time we’ll start seeing Hadoop installations that choose to use large numbers of smaller capacity disks to maximize their processing rates.GRANITE FALLS, Wash. (PIX11) — An 18-year-old high school student has died after agreeing to be punched by a fellow student in retribution for getting into a minor car crash outside a house party.
Both the victim and suspect, 18-year-old Michael Galen, went to Crossroads High School. Evidence suggests they have known each other for years and could be considered friends.
Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office reports Galen was arrested Sunday and charged with manslaughter.
Around midnight on Sunday, the victim backed a Honda into another car outside a house party, according to KCPQ.
The victim left, then returned shortly after to find the suspect waiting in the car that was damaged by the Honda.
Galen reportedly called the victim a “liar” for not immediately admitting to the accident.
Witnesses say the two agreed to resolve their differences by allowing the suspect to punch the victim in the face.
Reportedly, the two shook hands, smoked a cigarette, then the victim stood in the road and let Galen hit him once on the left side of his face with a closed fist.
The victim fell back and hit the road unconscious.
Some time later, a friend transported him to Providence Colby Hospital. He later died there.
When Galen was arrested Sunday, he also allegedly admitted to the punching.
Deputies say Galen has received death threats via social media.Indian mainstream media, especially TV news channels, is hardly known for nuances, and they appear to miss it even during tragedies. Media coverage of 2008 Mumbai Terror Attacks is the biggest example of their insensitive, irresponsible, and sensationalist reporting, which made a lot of people take to social media to register their protest.
And it
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President Donald Trump unexpectedly called out Canada on Thursday over the impact of their agricultural policy on American farmers.
“I want to end and add by saying that Canada — what they’ve done to our dairy farm workers is a disgrace. It’s a disgrace,” Trump bluntly stated during a ceremony in the Oval Office.
The President noted that he “spent time with some of the farmers in Wisconsin — and as you know, rules, regulations, different things, have changed; and our farmers in Wisconsin and New York State are being put out of business — our dairy farmers.”
Trump continued by contending, “The fact is, NAFTA — whether it’s Mexico or Canada — is a disaster for our country. It’s a disaster. It’s a trading disaster.”
The billionaire added that “we can’t let Canada or anybody else take advantage, and do what they do to our workers and to our farmers.”
Trump later announced that “we’re going to have to get to the negotiating table with Canada very, very quickly…this is another NAFTA disaster, and we’re not going to let it continue onward.”
[image via screengrab]
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Standing at 1,396 feet tall, 432 Park Avenue will be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere.
Apartments in the New York skyscraper offer breathtaking views of Central Park, lower Manhattan and the Atlantic Ocean.
Now it has been revealed that the spectacular sights will also be seen from some of the lavish amenities on offer to the wealthy residents.
New images have been released showing the massive restaurant, pool, billiards room, library and cinema that will be available to buyers.
They are part of three floors of amenities that start 100ft above street level, The Real Deal reported.
Designed by architect Rafael Viñoly, the 96-story condo offers 104 units, ranging in price from $16.95million to a whopping $95million penthouse suite.
A 75-foot pool and jacuzzi is located on the 16th floor, which also has locker rooms, massage rooms and spa services
The state-of-the-art gym filled with high-end equipment also offers views over downtown Manhattan
A massage table is seen in the middle of one of the spa rooms, that is available on the same level as the swimming pool
Designed by architect Rafael Viñoly, the 96-story condo offers 104 units, ranging in price from $16.95million to a whopping $95million penthouse suite
Astonishingly, it towers over the Empire State Building (1,250ft), the Chrysler Building (1,046ft) and One World Trade Center without its spire (1,368ft).
According to the developers, an exclusive restaurant and lounge will occupy the 12th floor, and will have a 5,000 square foot terrace facing 57th Street.
The 14th floor is devoted to an enormous fitness center with a yoga studio, as well as a billiards room and a library.
There is also an 18-seat movie theater with a 220-inch screen and an executive boardroom with 14 seats around a custom-made marble table.
A 75-foot pool and jacuzzi is located on the 16th floor, which also has locker rooms, massage rooms and spa services.
The fitness center will be operated by Jay Wright’s The Wright Fit, which designed the gym at 15 Central Park West and other high-end condos.
Saudi retail magnate Fawaz Al Hokair is the reported buyer of a $95 million penthouse
The huge billiards room occupies part of the 14th floor, a long with a yoga studio and a library
There is also an 18-seat movie theater with a 220-inch screen on the 14th floor. It is one of the only rooms without a stunning outside view
If residents want to indulge in any business matters, there is a conference room with 12 seats
A kitchen in one of the apartments looks out onto the iconic Plaza Hotel, which sits at the bottom of Central Park
Book shelves and sofas can be seen in the gallery. At the end of the room is a huge window that overlooks Central Park
Windows from another living room look out over the Manhattan skyline in the lavish complexHe Killed the Younglings!
People keep asking me whether Half a King is a Young Adult book. Well, yes it is. Kind of. But also an adult fantasy. Kind of. Crossover, you know. Depends a little on who you ask…
Categorisation is always a bit of a strange business. Books are often put into a certain genre, or shelved in a certain part of a bookstore, because of things that are nothing to do with the content of the book – the history of the author, the nature of the publisher, the whim of a bookseller, the font on the spine. Young Adult is a particularly tough category to define as it straddles all kinds of different styles – fantasy, historical, thrillers, romance, tough real world stories. The one thing a young adult book must have is a young adult protagonist, but outside of that, there are no hard rules. They’re often shorter and more focused than adult books, but not always. They’re often less explicit in the areas of sex and violence, but not always. They’re often softer on the swearing, except when they’re not.
And of course all these categories are constantly in flux. The boundaries of what’s permissible in a young adult book are constantly expanding, and books that might once have been considered firmly in the camp of adult fantasy (like Eddings’ Belgariad, for example), are sometimes rebranded YA as the years roll on.
A little background as to how I came to write Half a King. I had a meeting with Nick Lake, young adult publisher at Harper Collins, what feels like a hundred years ago but was maybe four. He liked my adult fantasy and thought I might have a good young adult book in me. At the time I was finishing up the Heroes, I think, and the idea sat with me, in a vague sort of way, for some time until, by chance, as these things do, the seed of the idea for Half a King took root in my brain loam. Having written six big, chunky, complicated, relatively similar, unapologetically adult books I felt the need for something of a change. So I started writing.
Now, I will admit to being no kind of expert on young adult literature. Some people might think it’s rather presumptuous of me to try writing it. Maybe it is. Sorry bout that. But then I have a far from encyclopaedic knowledge of adult fantasy either. I’ve always felt strongly that you don’t write something good by trying to slavishly assess what’s working in the marketplace, still less by trying to read everything in a category so that you somehow eliminate everything done before and leave yourself only with the fresh and original. I think you write something good by drawing on all kinds of diverse influences from fiction, from non-fiction, from film and tv and games and life and combining them in a way that only you can to write the kind of book that you would like to read. Or, perhaps, the kind of book you wanted to read at 14.
My main touchstones in the young adult arena were things I read and loved when I was younger – notably Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical books (Blood Feud especially) and John Cristopher’s post-apocalyptic Sword of the Spirits. These were books full of authenticity, honesty, moral ambiguity, shocks and tough choices. These were not books that ever simplified, preached, or talked down to their audience. But I also had in mind the powerful voices of some adult viking fiction, like Frans Bengtsson’s classic The Long Ships, Robert Low’s The Whale Road and sequels, Bernard Cornwell’s Anglo Saxon Chronicles and others.
I started from the standpoint that young adults are, above all, adults. Just young ones. Many of them are extremely sophisticated in their reading. What they want to read isn’t radically different from what old adults (like me) want to read. I get emails, after all, from 11 year olds who read my adult work. When I was 14 I was reading Dragonlance and David Eddings. I was also reading Dickens and Dostoevsky (I may have been enjoying them less than Dragonlance, but you take my point). People in that 12-18 age range are dealing with serious issues of sex, money, identity, responsibility. The last thing they want to read is simplified, childish, toothless pap. The last thing they want to be is talked down to. Talked to as if they’re children. What adult does?
So my aim was not to soften, or bowdlerise, or pull the teeth of my existing style, but to modify it for a new audience, a younger adult audience, but also a wider adult audience who might have found themselves turned off by the big size of some of the fantasy out there. My aim was to write something shorter, tighter, more focused, perhaps a smidge less cynical and pessimistic. I spent some time with horror writer Adam Neville not long ago, and he explained to me his philosophy of life and death on every page. I modified that just a little to a slap in the face on every page. No wasted space. A driving single thread which is all killer, no filler. My aim was to write something tighter and simpler in its narrative, perhaps, but certainly not simpler in the way it was written or in the themes that it tackles. Something a little less explicit in the sex, violence and swearing departments but absolutely with the edges left on, with the same shades of grey, the same moral complexity, the same shocks and challenges, the same visceral action, the same rich vein of dark humour that I fondly imagine my other books have offered. Whatever I came up with, I wanted it to retain the strength of my other work, to bring new readers to that work, and absolutely to appeal to the readers I already had.
There’s a degree to which, once it’s finished and released into the wild, it’s not necessarily up to me to say whether Half a King is Young Adult or not. Publishers, booksellers and, of course, readers, will make their own determinations. The fact that I’m already known for adult fantasy certainly plays a role. In the UK there were 6 publishers interested – 1 children’s, 2 general fiction, 2 adult fantasy and a collaboration between an adult fantasy and a young adult list, all of them with slightly different ideas and emphases on how they’d package and market it. There was much talk of Crossover – that sweet spot between children’s and adult fiction where many of our most beloved fantasies sit, but is always difficult to aim at. It was the collaboration that won through in the end, between Harper Voyager (adult fantasy) and Harper Collins’ YA list with what you might call a comprehensive approach aiming at both markets. In the US, where categories are less flexible, Del Rey will be selling the book primarily in fantasy sections, but with wide-ranging attempts to bring in a young adult readership too. There are already ten or so translation deals done and the various international publishers – some of whom already publish the First Law books and some of whom are new to me – will all have slightly differing approaches depending on their own strengths and their own market.
The term YA is sometimes used disparagingly (probably by folks who’ve never really read any) to mean something superficial, fluffy, disposable, lacking in depth and edge. That is not what I had it in mind to write. That is not what I believe I’ve produced. That is not what I think any serious writer of YA fiction produces. From a recent review by the redoubtable Adam Whitehead, at the Wertzone:
“This is still very much a Joe Abercrombie novel, meaning there’s an air of both cynicism and humour to proceedings and there’s a fair amount of violence. There isn’t much swearing and no sex at all, but beyond that the only way you’d know this was a YA novel is because the author said so on his website.”
I would argue there’s a degree to which – other than by the way it’s talked about, marketed, packaged, and sold – I’m not sure you should be able to tell a good young adult novel from a good adult novel. For me they’ll both be tough, honest, truthful. They’ll both have wit, excitement, strong dialogue and vivid characters. They’ll both leave you desperate to turn the next page, and when you’ve turned the last page, they’ll both leave you with something to think about.
I read a chapter from Half a King at the World Fantasy Convention last year, and at the end, as you do, I asked for questions. Someone called out, ‘is that meant to be toned down?’ That got a laugh from the room, and from me as much as anyone.
Because no, it isn’t meant to be toned down.
Why would it be?America has added over a million new jobs so far in 2015.
In a good sign for people looking for work, the U.S. economy gained 280,000 jobs in May. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney projected there would only be 222,000 jobs gains.
The unemployment rate ticked up slightly in May to 5.5%, according to the Labor Department. That increase is a sign that more people returned to look for work in May, economists say.
"It's a strong report, stronger than we had expected," says Jesse Hurwitz, senior economist at Barclays. "The U.S. labor market strength remains very much in tact."
Related: What's the state of opportunity in America?
May's jobs report is welcome news after the winter slowdown. The economy actually contracted in the first three months of this year, sparking concerns that hiring would taper off.
Show me the wage growth: On Thursday, the International Monetary Fund expressed concern over the U.S. job market, especially how worker pay isn't going up much.
Wages grew only 2.3% in May, well below the 3.5% wage growth the Federal Reserve wants to see. Still, that beat expectations in May and is the highest level in nearly two years. Wages remain the last major economic measure to turn the corner and make significant progress.
"Employers recognize that in order to attract skilled workers, they need to increase wages," says Sharon Stark, managing director at D.A. Davidson.
Related: U.S economy contracted in the first quarter but don't panic
May's job gains are a good omen for wage growth. Many experts say that pay should pick up as it gets harder and harder to find workers.
March was the worst month of job growth this year, but the Labor Department revised up March's job gains from 85,000 to 119,000 on Friday. April's job gains were revised down slightly to 221,000.
Related: How I landed a #newjob in 2015
May brings more high quality jobs: Job gains were across the board in May too. A number of high-quality job areas made meaningful progress.
In fact, service-sector job growth so far this year has outpaced the gains from the same time last year, according to Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors in Delaware.
Health care increased by 47,000 jobs, while business services -- which includes marketing and accounting jobs -- gained 63,000 jobs. Construction also had a good month, adding 17,000 new jobs, according to the Labor Department.
The one drag is energy companies. They continued to slash jobs due to low gas and oil prices. Mining and drilling jobs dropped by 17,000 in May -- the fifth consecutive month of energy job losses.
But overall, the job market made strong gains.
It's timely progress for the economy as the Federal Reserve board meets on June 17. The Fed is widely expected not to raise its main interest rate in June, but Fed Chair Janet Yellen will speak to the press and offer her outlook on the economy.
If conditions continue to improve, interest rates could rise for the first time in about a decade -- another healthy sign for America's economy.
"The evidence in the May report shows that the economy continues to be on the right track," U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez told CNNMoney.
Have you ever worked in retail? CNNMoney wants to hear your story
IMF: Fed shouldn't raise rates until 2016Ta-Da! The Great and Powerful Trixie returns! There are a lot of firsts for me with this one, the biggest being Discord, I was surprised by difficult he was to make.I've had this comic planned for a very long time but wasn't sure how to do most of it, and then it dawned on me that I have no idea if Trixie and/or Discord will be making an appearance on the show soon. So I wanted to make this before any thing canon might have rendered this idea unusable.I was going to have more faces and catagories on the "scheme" panel, there were even some I took away after already making them, but I ran out of space so I thought I'd include some here in the description:Doughnuts: Spike and Donut JoeGourmet Desserts: Gustav the Griffon and Mulia MildsThere were also more faces in existing catagories but I removed those to.I've got to say I came up with Discord's 4th wall breaking line after trying to come up with a way to explain how he was at one of Trixie's shows, and I thought"This sucks, I have to come up with something not relevant to the comic at all, that will take up a panel that could be used for a joke or reaction, just so that people wont complain about it not making sense. Why don't they just stop overanalyzing things and accept that it's just a joke comic and go with it."Tools used: Pencil, Paper, MS paint, GIMPHere are the links to the other Trixie Vs. comics:Colgate: [link] Derpy 1: [link] Derpy 2: [link] Zecora: [link] Pinkie Pie: [link] Berry Punch: [link] Fluttershy: [link] The Cutie Mark Crusaders: [link] Also yes, I'm aware that a plot isn't an actual part of the horse anatomy, I did it for the lulz.Edit: I added an extra M to the M.M.M.M., I forgot about the mascarpone. I also added some blush to Trixie in the last panel.MLP© and it Characters belong to Hasbro©.Located in Southeast Alberta, approximately 50 kilometres west of Medicine Hat, CFB Suffield has been the site of military training in the region since 1972. CFB Suffield is host to the largest military training area in Canada, conducting the largest live-fire training exercises in the country. The Manoeuvre Training Area covers 1,588 square kilometres of a 2,700 square kilometre base. The mission of CFB Suffield is to provide a world class, sustainable Range and Training Area that enables the Canadian Armed Forces, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) – Suffield Research Centre, the British Army Training Unit Suffield and other potential users to achieve their mandates through effective stewardship of all the Range Training Area, infrastructure and equipment.
CFB Suffield operates its own sewage system, water treatment system, landfill and landfarm and provides fire services to base residents and neighbouring communities. CFB Suffield is home to the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS), the British Army’s premier live fire training establishment. BATUS delivers world class live fire and manoeuvre training as well as force on force exercises using state of the art simulation technology. The base is also the home of Defence Research and Development Canada – Suffield Research Centre. DRDC-SRC provides the Department of Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces and other government departments, as well as public safety and national security communities the knowledge and technological advantage to defend and protect Canada’s interests at home and abroad. CFB Suffield falls under the Canadian Army command of 3rd Canadian Division (3 Cdn Div).
Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) - Suffield Research Centre
As the needs of DND have changed over the years, DRDC Suffield has remained a strategic defence resource. Many of the research and development activities at DRDC Suffield are unique.
DRDC Suffield offers expertise in military engineering, autonomous intelligent systems, and defence against chemical and biological (CB) agents. Key research areas include:
Explosives threat assessment and blast effects
Detection of land mines
Neutralization of landmines and unexploded ordnance
Bulk explosives detection
Novel energetic materials
CB detection and identification
Medical countermeasures and toxicology
CB hazard assessment
Physical protection against CB agents
DRDC Suffield also offers live agent training to the Canadian Armed Forces, international military, and first responder communities.
British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS)
The prairie of Alberta has provided an excellent opportunity for the British Army to train on a large scale since 1972. The British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) is an organisation situated on one of the most sparsely populated areas of the Alberta plain.
The duration of the exercises, and size of the training area, allow all elements of a combined arms battle group (Infantry, Armour, Artillery, Engineers, Air Defence, Logistics and Equipment Support) to conduct realistic live firing training at all levels.
More about BATUS.
Command TeamTiming is everything.
Ottawa’s CFL team was supposed to be ready for action as early as 2010, after receiving a conditional franchise in 2008. Instead, it took an extra four years to get the necessary approvals and construction progress for this year’s return.
The Redblacks must be glad they waited. Four years ago, Montreal Alouettes quarterback Anthony Calvillo was in his twilight prime, leading the Als to their second straight Grey Cup and third of his career.
While the CFL East wasn’t exactly a beast in 2010, it did have the champion Als and two other.500 teams in the Toronto Argos and Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Today’s CFL East is a friendlier place for an expansion team like Ottawa. This is putting it kindly. Where else could a 1-2 win-loss, a.333 winning percentage, have a club like the Redblacks in first place?
Yes, the CFL Least is the place where playoff aspirations come to pass for one and all. This is a horse race – a $10,000 claiming race, mind you – but still a close race.
Behind the 1-2 Redblacks are the 1-3 Alouettes, the 1-3 Argos and the 0-3 Ticats, Ottawa’s next opponent, in Hamilton Saturday. Contenders all!
Calvillo is gone, having retired this past off-season at age 41, and don’t the Als know it. Herb Zurkowsky, the longtime football writer for the Montreal Gazette suggested after the Als’ 41-5 humiliation Saturday at the hands of the B.C. Lions that Montreal has hit “rock bottom.” One would hope.
Quarterback Troy Smith hardly resembled Calvillo’s heir-apparent in completing five of 17 passes (29.4 percent) for 45 yards against the Lions.
The Argos at least have a legitimate CFL quarterback in Ricky Ray, even if he has lost most of his receiving corps, including ace offensive threat Chad Owens, to injury.
On the strength of Brett Maher’s six field goals, the Redblacks eked out an 18-17 win over Toronto, and we’ll assume the Argos could have scripted a different result with Owens returning punts and receiving passes. But these are the blessings that come with membership in the 2014 East Division of the CFL, where the West Division holds a 10-2 edge in east-west matchups.
Things don’t get easier for the Argos. Minus Owens, they go west to meet the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Saturday.
The Redblacks have two western games, both losses, in the books, and get four more out of the way with Saskatchewan, Calgary (times two), and Edmonton in the weeks ahead.
First, they deal with the Ti-Cats on the grounds of Tim Hortons Field at McMaster University Saturday while Hamilton’s new stadium is completed. For the inconvenience, may we suggest fans be given free coffee and maple glazed donuts.
Facing an 0-3 team can be a recipe for trouble, but the Tiger-Cats have enough of their own, not the least of which is the head and neck injury to starting quarterback Zach Collaros, the man Hamilton chose over 39-year-old Henry Burris. Collaros did not play against the Calgary Stampeders Friday (a 10-7 Calgary win), replaced by Jeremiah Masoli, making his first career CFL start. He didn’t finish. Masoli was hooked in the third quarter in favor of Dan LeFevour. LeFevour saw brief action last season with Hamilton.
Considering Collaros didn’t throw a football in practice all last week, it’s unlikely he will face Ottawa.
That the Ti-Cats let Burris escape to Ottawa as a free agent, and left running back Chevon Walker exposed in the expansion draft, assures a couple of highly motivated Redblacks will be playing their former team on Saturday.
All Burris did was lead the Ticats to the Grey Cup game last fall. Smiling Hank won’t mind seeing the Tiger-Cats fall to 0-4 if he can help it.
The season is early. Conventional wisdom says the CFL begins in earnest on Labor Day weekend. For the Redblacks, though, there is immediate opportunity in the Least Division.
CLARIFICATION ON GOLAB
Apologies to Tony Golab and his family. In a column on the Redblacks Friday night home opener I mistakenly lumped Golab in with late Rough Riders Jim Coode and Bobby Simpson. The families of Golab, Coode and Simpson were on the field to accept a tribute on behalf of the former greats, along with Russ Jackson, Whit Tucker and others. Coode, an outstanding lineman, died of ALS in 1987. Simpson, the great receiver, died in 2007, three days after the Grey Cup game. Golab is 95. Born the year after the First World War ended, Tony ‘Golden Boy’ Golab was a World War II veteran, an RCAF pilot who flew reconnaissance missions and twice had to bail from his plane after it was hit with live fire. Post-war, permanent damage caused by shrapnel in his knee didn’t stop Golab from resuming his Hall of Fame career with the Riders as a half back and receiver.
CALLING ALL SOONERS
The junior football Ottawa Sooners are planning a reunion this fall to honour members of the 1972, 1973 and 1974 teams. The ’72 squad were east finalists, in ’73 the team reached the nationals and in 1974 the Sooners were crowned CJFL champions. For information on the 40th reunion celebrations as the event draws closer, go to http://www.ottawasooners.net.
[email protected]
Twitter.com/HockeyScannerOn August 5, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unleashed an estimated three million gallons of mine waste (lead, arsenic and copper) into Colorado’s Animas River. Somehow, the EPA burst the dam made of old timbers and soil, creating a yellow-orange, toxic mess that stretched 100 miles through Cement Creek, and then into the Animas and the Navajo Nation.
The Gold King mine spewed out this poison when the EPA was investigating ways to insert a drainage pipe into the mine, which is part of a larger project to clean up the nearby Red and Bonita mines.
This is horribly ironic: this area of Colorado is spectacularly beautiful, with its vast sea of rugged mountains, awesome lakes and wilderness land.
And yet, as bad as this spill was, officials are saying that it could have been much worse. They are also warning that this wasn’t the first spill to dye the river, and it’s not likely to be the last.
As The Guardian reports:
“One expert called the mines north of Durango near Silverton and the abandoned mining town of Gladstone “ticking time bombs”. Another expressed relief that the Gold King spill was not larger – if a slurry of mine waste known as tailings had spilled from the area, he said, there could have been “100 times the volume” of waste.”
500,000 Abandoned Hardrock Mines
Far from being the only mine with such issues, Gold King is one of many.
There are around half a million abandoned hardrock mines around the US, most of them in the 12 western states, according to federal estimates.
They are the result of the nation’s early rush to dig gold and minerals, combined with decades of lax regulations, all of which have left a massive, lingering mess that state and federal officials say they’re still fighting to clean up.
In the case of the Gold King disaster, the spill was only partly caused by the EPA. According to Popular Science, “The seeds of trouble for Gold King were sown in 1996, when Sunnyside was permitted to shut down its treatment plant— an effective but expensive way to stop pollution from mine discharges — and switch to the less costly method of simply plugging the mine works with concrete.”
What’s Happening to Protect the Public?
For a long time, prospectors and mining companies in the US seeking gold, silver, copper and lead simply abandoned their mines after extracting all the valuable minerals. In the early 20th century, there were virtually no state rules on closing mines or handling toxic tailing ponds.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the federal government began cracking down on air and water pollution. In 1997, Congress adopted a series of policies to reclaim “abandoned mine lands” under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
But of course, in order to clean the mines, federal agencies must first find out where they are and what hazards they present.
The US Geological Survey is building a database that will identify abandoned mines, including specific features like shafts and open pits, but the information is not yet available for public access. At the same time, another federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has so far identified 48,100 abandoned sites within its jurisdiction.
That leaves around 80 percent of abandoned mine sites that still need further analysis or environmental cleanup efforts.
So yes, some work has been done, but not nearly enough, and it is a hugely complicated task.
At least we can hope that the alarm raised by the Gold King toxic spill will spur federal and state officials to accelerate their mine cleanup efforts.
Take Action Now
The massive unleashing of pollution from an old, inactive gold mine high in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado is a heartbreaking reminder of how past actions and the failure to deal with them can threaten our wildlife, landscapes and human health for generations.
We should all take a lesson about conservation from this ugly spill, and remember that it is not acceptable to destroy the land and leave these problems for future generations to fix.
Here’s something you can do now: if you feel strongly about the Gold King spill, please sign and share this petition demanding that the EPA focus on cleaning up the three million gallons of toxic waste.5 Things You Need to Know About “Ice Cream Sandwich” (Android OS)
Google’s Android operating system is maturing by leaps and bounds with every new release, but the company’s 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” version of the smartphone and tablet operating system is perhaps its most profound change to date.
The company focused extensively on usability and improvements to the operating system’s user interface; compared with its rough-around-the-edges predecessors, “Ice Cream Sandwich” feels like a polished, professional, and elegant mobile device platform. Given all of these big changes and overhauls, however, there are a few things that even the Android enthusiast should know and keep in mind.
1. Your Android Device No Longer Requires Physical Buttons
It’s been a hallmark of Android-based smartphones since the very first one launched on T-Mobile several years ago: all Android phones had several physical buttons for navigation and selection. These included the home button, the back button, the menu button, and a scroll wheel or optical trackball. These buttons were required because there was no software equivalent: navigation was done only as a function of the hardware on which the Android operating system was installed.
With Android 4.0, Google has removed this limitation from its software and has given hardware manufacturers a new option when producing smartphones that run the company’s operating system. If enabled by the manufacturer, Android’s “Ice Cream Sandwich” iteration can display an app drawer button, a menu button, and a back button, as touch-based controls on the device’s screen.
This enables Android device makers to start creating button-free smartphone models that more closely resemble the sleek appearance of Google’s nearest competitor: the iPhone.
2. Tabbed Browsing Jumps from Desktop to Smartphone
Desktop browsers have long supported tabbed browsing, but the technology wasn’t available to Android users until this most recent software update. The Android mobile browser now supports up to 16 tabs open simultaneously, and these tabs can be closed or perused by swiping either left or right on the screen while browsing the internet.
Tabs can also be viewed as thumbnails, accessible via a menu option. This closely parallels to swipe-friendly “pages” available to users of Apple’s iPhone and the included Safari browser; it’s a welcome change that Android users have been asking for since the first iteration of the operating system.
3. Google Music is Integrated into Android
Apple’s iPhone has long been the darling of music lovers, as it is the only smartphone which successfully and seamlessly syncs with the company’s iTunes software. For avid users of the iTunes Music Store, this means an iPhone has been the only way to buy and listen to music both at home and on the go. That is no longer the case in Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich.”
Google recently launched its cloud-based music application and storefront, known as Google Music. With its most recent Android release, it has integrated Google Music into the operating system’s existing music player. It has paired this integration with a vast (and quite welcome) interface overhaul. Users will now find it exceedingly easy to buy, download, and sync their music between their Android devices and a desktop with access to Google Music.
4. New Contacts Application is Far More Useful — and Social
Before Android 4.0, the default “Contacts” application included with Android was rather basic, not very intuitive, and almost embarrassing. With the company’s latest software version, however, the app gets a complete overhaul that makes it one of the most beautiful — and functional — contacts applications on any mobile device. The company has made user pictures much larger — they now span the width of the screen.
And these large and beautiful user pictures are paired with social network integration. That means contacts’ pictures, addresses, and status updates now sync all-in-one without any third-party applications or hacks. Facebook and Twitter users can rejoice, as this integration is seamless, intuitive, and visually pleasing.
5. Enhanced Notifications are Easier to Use and More Informative
Google’s Android operating system has always been the leader in intuitive mobile notifications, but the company has managed to improve even this feature of the operating system. Notifications are now visible on the lock screen, and users can either swipe them and go to the relevant application, or swipe them a different direction to hide them from the screen.
Notifications now also have the ability to show a small and descriptive image on the left-hand side of the device, increasing their utility and functionality.
A Greatly Enhanced Platform
Google’s “Ice Cream Sandwich” release of Android is the most polished, professional, and elegant release to date. It’s easy to use, highly functional, and one of the most aesthetically pleasing smartphone operating systems ever produced by any software maker.
Author Bio: Evelyn C. is a freelance write and a proud mother of two teenage drivers. She is very familiar with the cell phone driving laws in her state and she discourages her children to use their cell phones while driving.Google, which has been expanding its influence beyond its traditional tech allies, gave money in the past year to Heritage Action, the upstart conservative advocacy group that helped set in motion this fall’s government shutdown.
The group is a new addition to the list of dozens of independent groups that received grants from Google since September 2012, according to an examination by the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy, based in Madison, Wisc.
A spokeswoman for the tech giant declined to comment on the size of the grant or whether it will continue to support Heritage Action.
Google, which voluntarily discloses the recipients of its grants online, does not reveal how much it gives each group. On its Web site, the company says it provides support to “a number of independent third-party organizations whose federally-focused work intersects in some way with technology and Internet policy.”
Among the organizations on the list are a number of major conservative players, including American Action Network, Americans for Tax Reform and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Google also funds traditionally liberal groups such as the NAACP, the Urban League and the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
A spokesman for Heritage Action said the group does not comment on its funders.
A sister organization of the Heritage Foundation think tank, Heritage Action emerged as one of the most polarizing groups in Washington this year, in large part because of its efforts to whip up support among conservatives for using a government funding bill to undermine President Obama’s signature health-care law. The resulting 16-day government shutdown was lambasted by business leaders as damaging to the U.S. economy.CAMPAIGNERS against animal cruelty have warned gamekeepers not to use “barbaric” snares which can kill endangered animals and domestic pets as the pheasant shooting season gets under way in Scotland.
Thousands of birds are killed between October 1 and February 1 and estate staff protect the pheasants from predators such as foxes and stoats by setting traps, which often catch endangered badgers and otters and even household cats and dogs.
The League Against Cruel Sports has renewed its call for a complete ban on snares and demanded a public inquiry into the shooting industry. The charity also warned that pheasants and partridges can be “factory farmed” and held in cages in cruel conditions ahead of the shooting season.
The League has been backed by the Scottish Greens’ environment spokesman Mark Ruskell MSP who warned there are “too many examples” of estates in Scotland which employ cruel practices.
The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) has described critics as “anti-shooting extremists” and insisted pheasant shooting is worth millions of pounds to the Scottish economy.
The season’s official start day is October 1 but because it falls on a Sunday this year the killing won’t begin until tomorrow. It is thought that around 100,000 game birds - pheasant, partridge and grouse - are shot daily across the UK during the shooting season.
Robbie
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and abroad about the possibility of a nuclear-armed conflict between the U.S. and North Korea.
Some other officials in the Trump administration have sought to calm those fears and downplay the chances of a military engagement.
“The tragedy of war is well enough known. It does not need another characterization beyond the fact that it would be catastrophic,” Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisTrump backs off total Syria withdrawal Grass-roots campaign backs Mattis for public office Overnight Defense: Dems tee up Tuesday vote against Trump's emergency declaration | GOP expects few defections | Trump doubles number of troops staying in Syria to 400 MORE said Thursday.
The American effort with respect to North Korea, Mattis said, "is diplomatically led, it has diplomatic traction, it is gaining diplomatic results. And I want to stay right there right now."
Behind the tough talk, reports emerged Friday that the U.S. and North Korea are using a secret diplomatic back-channel to discuss tensions between the two nations.
Trump declined to comment on those talks, which were first reported by The Associated Press.
“We don't want to talk about backchannels,” he said.” We want to talk about a country that has misbehaved for many many years, decades actually, through numerous administrations and they didn't want to take on the issue and I had no choice but to take it on, and I'm taking it on.”(Reuters) - The U.S. government need not turn over a secret surveillance court’s orders or the names of phone companies helping it collect call records, because it might reveal methods needed to protect national security, a federal judge decided on Monday.
The former monitoring base of the National Security Agency (NSA), which belongs to the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND), is seen in Bad Aibling, south of Munich, June 6, 2014. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, rejected the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s argument that the U.S. Department of Justice should turn over the materials, in the wake of unauthorized disclosures last year by a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.
The EFF noted that the government had already declassified hundreds of pages of other documents discussing data collection under the U.S. Patriot Act, including some that the data privacy advocacy group had requested. These declassifications came after Snowden’s leaks had been revealed.
Rogers, though, said disclosing orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles federal requests for surveillance warrants, could “provide a roadmap” for targets of national security investigations to evade surveillance.
She also said the government’s disclosure of “general” information about the call record collection program did not mitigate the “inherent risks to national security and government investigations” of revealing the phone companies’ identities.
“Official confirmation of the existence of or general information about an intelligence program does not eliminate the dangers to national security of compelling disclosure of the program’s details,” she wrote.
The EFF had also argued that statements by people affiliated with the government, including a former member of a technology review panel who said “telephone companies like Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T” were required to turn over records to the NSA, justified the disclosures.
“We’re disheartened that the court is allowing the government to keep the information secret,” EFF staff lawyer Mark Rumold said in an interview. “It is quite likely that the government is still using the Patriot Act to obtain information, under different intelligence programs, in bulk.”
The EFF will review whether to appeal, he added.
Rogers ruled in the EFF’s favor on one issue, ordering the government to turn over a Jan. 4, 2010 memo discussing the interaction between the Patriot Act and the disclosure of information collected when compiling the census.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Snowden’s leaks have sparked a broad debate over the government’s authority to collect personal data without violating people’s privacy.
On Monday, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence released partially blacked-out versions of 38 documents relating to a now-discontinued NSA program to collect bulk electronic communications metadata.
The case is Electronic Frontier Foundation v. Department of Justice, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 11-05221.During a speech in Texas last week, Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), encouraged religious leaders to “restore America” by distributing biblical voting guides in church.
“When government ceases to work towards those ends it is our right, and it is I believe our duty, to remove that government and replace it with another government,” the conservative pastor said July 31 at Trinity I.S.D. Auditorium, paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence.
The event was promoted by the Trinity County Republican Party of Texas.
“And we have an unprecedented opportunity to do that right now in these next elections,” Cruz continued. “But we cannot do that if we sit at home. I want to encourage of all of you, I want to repeat what I said to the pastors this month, every church in America needs to have a voter registration table in the lobby.”
Cruz said it was time for Christians to become the “salt and light” of the world, and he chastised pastors for not preaching about the sanctity of marriage and the chastity of teenagers. He accused pastors of ignoring important social issues.
Cruz added that churches should make sure “everybody in every congregation has voter’s guides that share clearly how candidates of both parties are voting on biblical issues.”
Watch video below.
Watch Rafael Cruz’s full speech here.
[Image via Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons licensed]Abdul-Jabbar auctions four NBA title rings The league's all-time leading scorer is auctioning rings he won with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1980, 1985, 1987 and 1988, plus other game-used and autographed memorabilia from his legendary career. Abdul-Jabbar, 71, wrote on his website earlier this month that "much of the proceeds" will benefit his Skyhook Foundation, a charity that helps kids […]
Former QB bust fought to keep NFL dream alive West Virginia's David Sills was offered a scholarship as a QB when he was 13. But after things fell apart at that position, he found a new calling at wide receiver.
The Bryce Harper saga has gotten so ridiculous Smash Mouth now claims to have inside info News came down early Monday that the Los Angeles Dodgers had re-entered the race to sign Bryce Harper, which most frustrated fans of the rival San Francisco Giants. If you don't believe us, go ask Smash Mouth. Twenty years later, Smash Mouth is ranting about sports on the Internet just like the rest of us […]
Power Rankings: The Blue Jackets 'all-in' push is a puzzler You have to respect the Blue Jackets going all in, but it's also hard to like their chances.
NFL Combine: Will Kyler Murray Throw in Indy? With reports circulating that projected first-round quarterbacks Dwayne Haskins and Drew Lock are set to throw at the NFL Scouting Combine, will Kyler Murray follow in their footsteps and do the same?Advanced Tech Tailors 2016 Camaro Driving Experience New Drive Mode Selector makes most of performance in multiple drive settings
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DETROIT – New technologies in the 2016 Chevrolet Camaro will enable drivers to tailor the car to the moment, whether it’s heading to work, touring the Pacific Coast Highway or lapping a road course.
“We wanted to build on the flexibility of the current Camaro ZL1, which is great for grand touring, commuting, the drag strip and track days,” said Aaron Link, Camaro lead development engineer. “The new Camaro will be even more adaptable, with up to eight vehicle attributes adjusted to fit a driver’s preference.”
As a result, the all-new Camaro will set the technological benchmark for the segment.
Most of the features can be changed via the new Drive Mode Selector, which includes Snow/Ice, Tour, Sport and – on SS models – Track settings. Calibrations for throttle progression, steering, stability control and more are optimized for each setting.
For the first time the Camaro SS will be available with Magnetic Ride Control, previously available only on the Camaro ZL1. The active damping system offers three preset programs – Tour, Sport and Track – that adjust the ride and handling balance. From there, it reads road and driver inputs at 1,000 times per second, and automatically adjusts the dampers for optimal performance.
Additionally, there is an enhanced dual-mode exhaust system. New electronically controlled valves can bypass the mufflers under spirited acceleration, delivering improved performance and greater sound levels. It also offers personalization options, from a “stealth” mode to a more aggressive “track” mode.
Chevrolet will introduce the all-new, 2016 Camaro on Saturday, May 16, during a special public event at Detroit’s Belle Isle Park.
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world's largest car brands, doing business in more than 115 countries and selling around 4.8 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet provides customers with fuel-efficient vehicles that feature engaging performance, design that makes the heart beat, passive and active safety features and easy-to-use technology, all at a value. More information on Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com.So sad. This from David Cay Johnston at Tax.com (my emphasis):
The long-running drive in America to push the burden of taxes down the income ladder has reached a new milestone in Oregon, which sends a troubling message for where our country’s public finances are headed. Oregon now gets substantially more revenue from state-sponsored gambling than from its corporate income tax. The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis, the state agency that forecasts revenue and expenses, said that for the 2011-2013 biennium, the lottery should net the state almost $1.1 billion compared with just under $900 million from the corporate income tax. … In other words, in Oregon those least able to afford it, those who benefit least from America’s economy, are being cajoled into bearing a heavier share of the burdens of government. At the same time, politicians are lavishing ever more tax breaks on corporations, those storehouses of wealth whose managers want to enjoy the benefits of public transportation, public education, public courts, and everything else the taxpayers provide, without sharing in the burdens.
And note the argument against lotto incomes for states — it’s not the “morality” but the inequality:
Lotteries, by and large, are a tax on the poor, study after study has shown. North Carolina Watch did a study of lottery ticket sales in that state’s 100 counties and found that per capita revenue was highest in 19 of the 20 poorest counties. The lottery is, for sure, a voluntary tax. But it is still mostly a tax on the poor.
A tax on the poor driven by fear and desperation. (Not bad for the lotto companies, however; I wonder how it works, getting a state-sanctioned gambling contract through our corruption-free state legislatures.)
If you want to argue the immorality of lotteries, I think this makes a fine starting point:
Lotteries in most places, including California and North Carolina, were sold on the basis that they would provide more money for education. Prof. Ross Rubenstein at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, who studies education finance, said there is robust evidence that lottery revenue tends to supplant, not supplement, tax dollars going to education.
I’ve just scratched the surface of this good article, and David Cay Johnston is one of our national treasures. From deeper in the piece, these gems:
The corporate income tax situation in Oregon, where many companies pay nominal amounts, is part of a broader trend as well. This is a state in which officials are poised to let Warren Buffett pocket taxes embedded in rates paid to his electric utility[.] … Nationally, corporate income taxes have fallen to some of their lowest levels as a share of GDP ever. … The average share of corporate income taxes since 1971 has been 2 percent, the CBO data show.
So much for that supposed “35% corporate tax rate” the CNBC blond(e)s complain about. David Cay Johnston at his best.
Speaking anecdotally about the lottery, it sure seems to me that the big numbers — the $100 million pools and up — for the multi-state lotteries are coming faster and faster, at an alarming rate. If lottos are constructed so that incoming purchases drive the top-prize number (and I believe that’s the case), people must be buying tickets at a fearsome rate.
If that’s a measure of people’s economic self-assessment in this jobless “recovery,” you could almost predict a double-dip recession from that metric alone. Scary.
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Liverpool's Raheem Sterling scored twice as England Under-21s clocked up a record-breaking 9-0 win against San Marino – impressively answering Gareth Southgate’s calls to show more ruthlessness in front of goal.
Fans flocked to a sold-out Greenhous Meadow hoping for goals and the Young Lions did not disappoint, racking up a win that usurps their previous best of a seven-goal margin of victory set in 1976 and 2009.
It was the perfect end to a tumultuous year and just what manager Southgate had called for in the build-up to the European Championship qualifier.
In pictures: England 9 San Marino 0
While keen for the team to play with freedom, the former England defender was frustrated by some of his players’ preference for the over-elaborate in Thursday’s 3-0 win against Finland.
Southgate called for a more clinical edge in England’s last match of 2013 and got just that in Shrewsbury, despite the absence of in-form Saido Berahino through suspension.
Michael Keane nodded England ahead after 13 minutes, with Sterling and full debutant Danny Ings extending that lead soon after.
James Ward-Prowse curled home a fine free-kick in the 24th minute as England’s dominance continued, with Thomas Ince extending the lead further as half-time approached.
Ings just beat room-mate Carl Jenkinson to prod home England’s sixth shortly after the restart, although the Arsenal right-back managed a goal of his own after Sterling smartly lifted the ball over San Marino’s hapless goalkeeper.
Will Hughes showed great feet before slotting home to put England 9-0 up, wrapping up an impressive victory that keeps them in control of Group 1.
Jesse Lingard thought he had made it 10-0 only to be denied by the referee’s whistle, while Ings saw penalty appeals waved away before Jack Robinson rattled the post.
Full debutant Lingard whistled a long-range strike just wide in stoppage-time, but the 10th proved elusive.At first, Suzanne Black didn't imagine that the reason some of her students struggled was because they didn't know how to read their textbooks. Black teaches the most advanced biology class available at her high school in Kenmore, Wash.
As the years passed, however, the problem became clear. "The longer I do it, the more I realize that it's hardest for the poor readers," she says. Today her strategy is different. "When a student is struggling in my class, the first thing I'll do is ask, 'Why don't you read me that paragraph?'" she says. "Often, they can't sift out the main details. They don't understand the organization of a paragraph, that the first sentence is a topic sentence, that the following ones are supporting details." So she shows them those things first.
Research backs what Black learned from experience. In one study of 1,651 high school students from three states, reading ability was just as important to students' science-class grades and scores on state-level science tests as the amount of science knowledge they had. The study found reading skill was even more important than such background knowledge for correctly answering questions based on passages about science.
Given the evidence, it is important to find the best ways to teach kids how to read science. "Learning how to learn science text and to be strategic about science text is different from learning to read English literature or things of that sort," says Kim Gomez, an educational psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. And "working with kids on science-text reading, in science class, is much more successful" than trying to do it in language arts classes, she says.
Research into techniques for mastering science text has evolved over a generation. Concept mapping was popular in the 1980s, for example. You might have made some yourself. They're those charts with the main ideas all written inside circles. Lines connect the circles and labels identify the relationships between the circles. A photosynthesis concept map might have "plants" and "photosynthesis" in different circles, plus a line from the first to the second labeled “make food by.”
Since then researchers have found several strategies that seem to be even more effective than concept mapping. In one compelling study researchers at Purdue University tested four reading strategies on 80 college students. One fourth of the students were told to type everything they remembered from a passage they read about sea otters. Then they repeated the read-and-type cycle. A week later those students recalled the sea otter info better than any other group, including one that made concept maps, one that reread the passage four times and a group that read the passage once.
Oddly, the students didn't seem to be able to tell which strategy would help them remember the most. When surveyed, they said they thought rereading would work best and that typing what they remembered would be the least effective. The study made it to the What Works Clearinghouse, a U.S. Department of Education database that aims to collect the strongest studies on teaching techniques.
In her research Gomez has seen other strategies that succeed for learning math and science, especially for kids who aren't reading at grade level or whose families don't speak English at home. Tops among them are annotation, T-charting and summarization. "Those are the strategies that we've used consistently and with a whole lot of success," she says.
Annotation sounds a bit like what is taught in language arts classes. Students use a set of symbols to mark in their books where they see different elements such as main ideas, supporting ideas, key vocabulary words and transition words. T-charting organizes ideas into two-column charts: topic sentences go on the left, supporting details on the right, for example. Summarization simply asks students to write down main points from what they just read.
Gomez and her team vetted those three strategies in a study they presented at the International Conference of Learning Sciences in 2010. They had 15 teachers in a Chicago high school teach all three strategies to about 860 students. The researchers then gave the students tests that asked questions about a passage on a science topic that hadn't been presented in class. Students were randomly assigned to use one of the three strategies. The students who used their assigned strategy correctly had the highest scores on their science tests, even when the researchers controlled for students who had better reading skills to begin with.
If kids have so much trouble reading science textbooks, why not ditch the textbook altogether and rely on lab work? For one thing, textbooks may be good for science learning. One recent study (pdf) found that among a representative sample of U.S. science students, those who said their science teachers had them read textbooks more often had higher test scores. Textbook reading wasn't all that was important, of course. The same study also found doing lots of hands-on activities was correlated with high scores. It seems sensible to continue using textbooks alongside activities, concluded the study authors, a team from the admissions test company Educational Testing Service. "In a best-case scenario having students read and process some passages from a text before they come to class enables me to conduct a discussion, to play with the ideas," Black notes. "It would be deadly dull if 100 percent of my class time was spent imparting information
The techniques may provide benefits beyond science class. "We have found in our research that the kids end up using the same sorts of strategies and skills in their other classrooms, like in social studies and then English language arts," Gomez says. Furthermore, the techniques may offer an answer to that old schoolkid lament about "When am I ever going to use this in the real world?" Says Gomez: "I think that textbooks are a nice prelude to the kind of reading an adult has to do when they're reading science articles in The New York Times or in their local newspaper and they're trying to make sense of the big ideas they're being presented."THE AESTHETICS OF FAILURE:
'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music Kim Cascone
"The digital revolution is over." Nicholas Negroponte (1998)
Over the past decade, the Internet has helped spawn a new movement in digital music. It is not academically based, and for the most part the composers involved are self-taught. Music journalists occupy themselves inventing names for it, and some have already taken root: glitch, microwave, DSP, sinecore, and microscopic music. These names evolved through a collection of decon-structive audio and visual techniques that allow artists to work beneath the previously impen-etrable veil of digital media. The Negroponte epi-graph above inspired me to refer to this emergent genre as ‘post-digital' because the revolutionary period of the digital information age has surely passed. The tendrils of digital technology have in some way touched everyone. With electronic com-merce now a natural part of the business fabric of the Western world and Hollywood cranking out digital fluff by the gigabyte, the medium of digital technology holds less fascination for composers in and of itself. In this article, I will emphasize that the medium is no longer the message; rather, specific tools themselves have become the message. The Internet was originally created to accelerate the exchange of ideas and development of research between academic centers, so it is perhaps no sur-prise that it is responsible for helping give birth to new trends in computer music outside the con-fines of academic think tanks. A non-academic composer can search the Internet for tutorials and papers on any given aspect of computer music to obtain a good, basic understanding of it. University computer music centers breed developers whose tools are shuttled around the Internet and used to develop new music outside the university. Unfortunately, cultural exchange between non-academic artists and research centers has been lacking. The post-digital music that Max, SMS, AudioSculpt, PD, and other such tools make pos-sible rarely makes it back to the ivory towers, yet these non-academic composers anxiously await new tools to make their way onto a multitude of Web sites. Even in the commercial software industry, the marketing departments of most audio software companies have not yet fully grasped the post-digi-tal aesthetic; as a result, the more unusual tools emanate from developers who use their academic training to respond to personal creative needs. This article is an attempt to provide feedback to both academic and commercial music software de-velopers by showing how current DSP tools are be-ing used by post-digital composers, affecting both the form and content of contemporary ‘non-academic' electronic music.
"It is failure that guides evolution; perfection offers no incentive for improvement." Colson Whitehead (1999) The ‘post-digital' aesthetic was developed in part as a result of the immersive experience of working in environments suffused with digital technology: computer fans whirring, laser printers churning out documents, the sonification of user-interfaces, and the muffled noise of hard drives. But more spe-cifically, it is from the ‘failure' of digital technol-ogy that this new work has emerged: glitches, bugs, application errors, system crashes, clipping, aliasing, distortion, quantization noise, and even the noise floor of computer sound cards are the raw materials composers seek to incorporate into their music. While technological failure is often controlled and suppressed - its effects buried beneath the threshold of perception - most audio tools can zoom in on the errors, allowing composers to make them the focus of their work. Indeed, ‘failure' has become a prominent aesthetic in many of the arts in the late 20th century, reminding us that our control of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise, and effi-cient as the humans who build them. New techniques are often discovered by accident or by the failure of an intended technique or experiment. "I would only observe that in most high-profile gigs, failure tends to be far more interesting to the audience than success." - David Zicarelli (1999) There are many types of digital audio ‘failure.' Sometimes, it results in horrible noise, while other times it can produce wondrous tapestries of sound. (To more adventurous ears, these are quite often the same.) When the German sound experimenters known as Oval started creating music in the early 1990s by painting small images on the underside of CDs to make them skip, they were using an aspect of ‘failure' in their work that revealed a subtextual layer embedded in the compact disc. Oval's investigation of ‘failure' is not new. Much work had previously been done in this area such as the optical soundtrack work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Fischinger, as well as the vinyl record manipulations of John Cage and Christian Marclay, to name a few. What is new is that ideas now travel at the speed of light and can spawn entire musical genres in a relatively short period of time. > Back to the Future
Poets, painters, and composers sometimes walk a fine line between madness and genius, and throughout the ages they have used ‘devices' such as absinthe, narcotics, or mystical states to help make the jump from merely expanding their perceptual boundaries to hoisting themselves into territories beyond these boundaries. This trend to seek out and explore new territories led to much experimentation in the arts in the early part of the 20th century. When artists of the early 20th century turned their senses to the world created by industrial progress, they were forced to focus on the new and changing landscape of what was considered ‘background.' "I now note that ordinarily I am concerned with, focus my attention upon, things or ‘objects,' the words on the page. But I now note that these are always situated within what begins to appear to me as a widening field which ordinarily is a background from which the ‘object' or thing stands out. I now find by a purposeful act of attention that I may turn to the field as field, and in the case of vision I soon also discern that the field has a kind of boundary or limit, a horizon. This horizon always tends to ‘escape' me when I try to get at it; it ‘withdraws' always on the extreme fringe of the visual field. It retains a certain essentially enigmatic character." - Don Idhe (1976) Concepts such as ‘detritus,' ‘by-product,' and ‘background' (or ‘horizon') are important to con-sider when examining how the current post-digi-tal movement started. When visual artists first shifted their focus from foreground to background (for instance, from portraiture to landscape paint-ing), it helped to expand their perceptual bound-aries, enabling them to capture the background's enigmatic character. The basic composition of ‘background' is com-prised of data we filter out to focus on our imme-diate surroundings. The data hidden in our perceptual ‘blind spot' contains worlds waiting to be explored, if we choose to shift our focus there. Today's digital technology enables artists to explore new territories for content by capturing and examining the area beyond the boundary of ‘normal' functions and uses of software. Although the lineage of post-digital music is com-plex, there are two important and well-known pre-cursors that helped frame its emergence: the Italian Futurist movement at the beginning of the 20th century, and John Cage's composition 4'33' (1952). Futurism was an attempt to reinvent life as it was being reshaped by new technologies. The Italian Futurist painter Luigi Russolo was so inspired by a 1913 orchestral performance of a composition by Balilla Pratella that he wrote a manifesto, The Art of Noises, in the form of a letter to Pratella. His manifesto and subsequent experiments with intonarumori (noise intoners), which imitated urban industrial sounds, transmitted a viral message to future generations, resulting in Russolo's current status as the ‘grandfather' of contemporary ‘post-digital' music. The Futurists considered in-dustrial life a source of beauty, and for them it provided an ongoing symphony. Car engines, ma-chines, factories, telephones, and electricity had been in existence for only a short time, and the resulting din was a rich palette for the Futurists to use in their sound experiments. "The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination." - Luigi Russolo (1913) This was probably the first time in history that sound artists shifted their focus from the foreground of musical notes to the background of incidental sound. Russolo and Ugo Piatti - who together constructed the noise intoners - gave them descriptive names such as ‘exploders,' ‘roarers,' ‘croakers,' ‘thunderers,' ‘bursters,' ‘cracklers,' ‘buzzers,' and ‘scrapers.' Although the intonarumori themselves never found their way into much of the music in the Futurists' time, they did manage to inspire composers like Stravinsky and Ravel to incorporate some of these types of sounds into their work. A few decades after the Futurists brought incidental noise to the foreground, John Cage would give permission to all composers to use any sound in composing music. At the 1952 debut of Cage's 4'33', David Tudor opened the piano keyboard lid and sat for the duration indicated in the title, implicitly inviting the audience to listen to back-ground sounds, only closing and reopening the lid to demarcate three movements. The idea for 4'33' was outlined in a lecture given by Cage at Vassar College in 1948, entitled ‘A Composer's Confessions.' The following year, Cage saw the white paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, and he saw in this an oppor-tunity to keep pace with painting and push the stifled boundaries of modern music. Rauschenberg's white paintings combined chance, non-intention, and ‘minimalism' in one broad stroke, where the paintings revealed the ‘changing play of light and shadow and the presence of dust' (Kahn 1999).
Rauschenberg's white paintings were a powerful catalyst that helped inspire Cage to remove all con-straints on what was considered music. Every environment could be experienced in a completely new way - as music. Of equal importance to Cage's ‘silent piece' was his realization that there is, in fact, no such thing as ‘silence' - that, as human beings, our sensory per-ceptions occur against the background noise of our biological systems. His experience in an anechoic chamber at Harvard University prior to composing 4'33' shattered the belief that silence was obtainable and revealed that the state of ‘nothing' was a condition filled with everything we filtered out. From then on, Cage strove to incorporate this revelation into subsequent works by paying attention not only to sound objects, but also to their background. > Snap, Crackle, Glitch
Fast-forwarding from the 1950s to the present, we skip over most of the electronic music of the 20th century, much of which has not, in my opinion, focused on expanding the ideas first explored by the Futurists and Cage. An emergent genre that consciously builds on these ideas is that which I have termed ‘post-digital,' but it shares many names, as noted in the introduction, and I will refer to it from here on out as glitch. The glitch genre arrived on the back of the electronica movement, an umbrella term for alternative, largely dance-based electronic music (including house, techno, electro, drum'n'bass, ambient) that has come into vogue in the past five years. Most of the work in this area is released on labels peripherally associated with the dance music market, and is therefore removed from the contexts of academic consideration and acceptability that it might otherwise earn. Still, in spite of this odd pairing of fashion and art music, the composers of glitch often draw their inspiration from the masters of 20th century music who they feel best describe its lineage. > A Brief History of Glitch
At some point in the early 1990s, techno music settled into a predictable, formulaic genre serving a more or less aesthetically homogeneous market of DJs and dance music aficionados. Concomitant with this development was the rise of a periphery of DJs and producers eager to expand the music's tendrils into new areas. One can visualize techno as a large postmodern appropriation machine, as-similating cultural references, tweaking them, and then re-presenting them as tongue-in-cheek jokes. DJs, fueled with samples from thrift store pur-chases of obscure vinyl, managed to mix any source imaginable into sets played for more adventurous dance floors. Always trying to outdo one another, it was only a matter of time until DJs unearthed the history of electronic music in their archeological thrift store digs. Once the door was opened to exploring the history of electronic mu-sic, invoking its more notable composers came into vogue. A handful of DJs and composers of electronica were suddenly familiar with the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Subotnick, and John Cage, and their influence helped spawn the glitch movement. A pair of Finnish producers called Pan Sonic - then known as Panasonic, before a team of corpo-rate lawyers encouraged them to change their name - led one of the first forays into experimentation in electronica. Mika Vainio, head architect of the Pan Sonic sound, used handmade sine wave oscillators and a collection of inexpensive effect pedals and synthesizers to create a highly synthetic, minimal, ‘hard-edged' sound. Their first CD, titled Vakio, was released in the summer of 1993, and was a sonic shockwave compared to the more blissful strains of ambient-techno becoming popular at that time. The Pan Sonic sound con-jured stark, florescent, industrial landscapes; test-tones were pounded into submission until they squirted out low, throbbing drones and high-pitched stabs of sine waves. The record label Vainio founded, Sähkö Records, released material by a growing catalog of artists, most of it in the same synthetic, stripped-down, minimal vein. As discussed earlier, the German project Oval was experimenting with CD-skipping techniques and helped to create a new tendril of glitch - one of slow-moving slabs of dense, flitting textures. Another German group, which called itself Mouse on Mars, injected this glitch aesthetic into a more danceable framework, resulting in gritty low-fidelity rhythmic layers warping in and out of one another. From the mid-1990s forward, the glitch aesthetic appeared in various sub-genres, including drum‘n'bass, drill'n'bass, and trip-hop. Artists such as Aphex Twin, LTJ Bukem, Omni Trio, Wagon Christ, and Goldie were experimenting with all sorts of manipulation in the digital domain. Time-stretching vocals and reducing drum loops to eight bits or less were some of the first techniques used in creating artifacts and exposing them as timbral content. The more experimental side of electronica was still growing and slowly es-tablishing a vocabulary. By the late 1990s, the glitch movement was keeping pace with the release of new features in music software, and the movement began congealing into a rudimentary form. A roster of artists was developing. Japanese producer Ryoji Ikeda was one of the first artists other than Mika Vainio to gain expo-sure for his stark, ‘bleepy' soundscapes. In contrast to Vainio, Ikeda brought a serene quality of spirituality to glitch music. His first CD, entitled +/-, was one of the first glitch releases to break new ground in the delicate use of high frequencies and short sounds that stab at listeners' ears, often leav-ing the audience with a feeling of tinnitus. Another artist who helped bridge the gap be-tween delicate and damaging was Carsten Nicolai (who records and performs under the name Noto). Nicolai is also a co-founder of Noton/Rastermusic, a German label group that specializes in innovative digital music. In a similar fashion, Peter Rehberg, Christian Fennesz, and the sound/Net art project Farmers Manual are tightly associated with the Mego label located in Vienna. Rehberg has the distinction of having received one of only two honorary Ars Electronica awards in Digital Music for his contribution to electronic music. Over the past few years, the glitch movement has grown to encompass dozens of artists who are defining new vocabularies in digital media. Artists such as immedia, Taylor Deupree, Nobukazu Takemura, Neina, Richard Chartier, Pimmon, *0, Autopoieses, and T:un[k], to name just a few, constitute the second wave of sound hackers exploring the glitch aesthetic. There are many artists who have not been mentioned here who contribute to pushing the boundaries of this movement. It is beyond the scope of this article to go deeply into the evolution of glitch music, but I have included a discography at the end of this article that will offer good starting points for the casual listener. > Power Tools
Computers have become the primary tools for creating and performing electronic music, while the Internet has become a logical new distribution medium. For the first time in history, creative output and the means of its distribution have been inextricably linked. Our current sonic backgrounds have dramatically changed since 4'33' was first performed - and thus the means for navigating our sur-roundings as well. In response to the radical alteration of our hearing by the tools and technologies developed in academic computer music centers - and a distribution medium capable of shuttling tools, ideas, and music between like-minded composers and engineers - the resultant glitch movement can be seen as a natural progression in electronic music. In this new music, the tools themselves have become the instruments, and the resulting sound is born of their use in ways unintended by their designers. Commonly referred to as sound ‘mangling' or ‘crunching,' composers are now able to view music on a microscopic level. Curtis Roads coined the term microsound for all variants of granular and atomic methods of sound synthesis, and tools capable of operating at this microscopic level are able to achieve these effects.
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licensing boards are essentially "cartels by another name," according to Aaron Edlin and Rebecca Haw, two University of Pennsylvania law professors who published a paper in 2014—just as North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners was moving through the court system—laying out exactly how and why those boards should face antitrust scrutiny.
Researchers have consistently found that occupational licensing doesn't do much to ensure quality or efficacy. However, the growth of licensing laws is correlated with a decline in labor force participation and has been shown to be a drag on the economy. The rules reduce worker mobility, make it harder for entrepreneurs to enter the market, and may be partially responsible for the low rates of new businesses started since the end of the last recession.
"Economic studies have found little impact of occupational licensing on service quality in occupations that are not widely licensed; even in occupations that are widely licensed, studies have found few impacts of tougher requirements for licensing on health measures or quality outcomes," wrote Morris Kleiner, a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota and one of the most prominent researchers on occupational licensing, in a recent study released by the Brookings Institution. A 2011 study published by Kleiner, Alan B. Kruger, and Alex Mas calculated that occupational licensing resulted in 2.85 million fewer jobs and cost consumers more than $200 billion annually.
"I challenge anyone to explain why the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from rogue interior designers carpet-bombing living rooms with ugly throw pillows."
If these regulations are not protecting consumers, says Ohlhausen, the acting FTC chair, then we must consider whom they are protecting. Often, they're the result of regulatory capture, when a regulated industry ends up controlling the mechanisms of government meant to regulate, or regulatory replacement, when governments abdicate their oversight in favor of letting an industry write and enforce its own rules. In the case of the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners, it was not the state itself acting to restrict the teeth-whitening business, but a board of self-interested, active market participants imposing licensing rules solely as a means of restricting competition.
"I challenge anyone to explain why the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from rogue interior designers carpet-bombing living rooms with ugly throw pillows," Ohlhausen said last month at the George Mason Law Review's annual symposium.
Advancing Economic Liberty at the FTC
Ohlhausen calls the requirement that someone obtain a government-issued permission slip in order to work the "mother, may I" approach to economic regulations. Even worse, she says, is the "brother, may I" form of regulation, which requires individuals and businesses to get permission from their own competitors.
As the new chairman of the FTC, Ohlhausen plans to seize the opportunity presented by the Supreme Court's ruling in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners. Last month, she announced a new Economic Liberty Task Force within the commission, which will identify problematic licensing laws and encourage state officials to review onerous requirements. Though the task force is mostly meant as an advisory resource for state officials, it will have the ability to take legal action against licensing boards engaged in anti-competitive behavior.
"I believe that economic liberty is central to opening doors of opportunity and increasing competition, entrepreneurship, and innovation that benefits all consumers," Ohlhausen told Reason in March. She said the FTC will be partnering with governors, state attorneys general, state legislators, and members of Congress.
Libertarians typically view antitrust laws with skepticism because they give the government significant power over certain types of markets. Ayn Rand once wrote that federal anti-monopoly laws amounted to "the penalizing of ability for being ability, the penalizing of success for being success." But when one part of government is out of control, as many licensing boards are, perhaps it's only another part of government that can bring it to heel.
Ohlhausen sees herself as an advocate for liberty—she's fond of Margaret Thatcher's saying that "there can be no liberty without economic liberty"—but does not self-identify as a libertarian.
Now that the FTC has the power to bring lawsuits against states with unsupervised licensing boards controlled by active market participants, state officials have a newfound reason to bring those boards under greater scrutiny. They don't have to care about economic liberty. They just have to care about not getting sued.
"While the FTC is an enforcement agency, part of the agency's mission is to promote competitive markets and protect consumer welfare," she says. "I believe we can do a lot work to advance economic liberty."
Questions for Reformers
The North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners case changed how state-level licensing boards have to operate, but it also created a lot of new questions. What constitutes "a controlling number" of board members? That could be assumed to mean a majority of the board, but then why did the Supreme Court not use that term specifically? How involved in the market does a board member have to be to count as an "active participant," thus triggering mandatory state oversight? If board members withdraw from practice during a short term of service but typically return to practice when the term ends, does that mean they're not active market participants during their time on the board?
In his dissenting opinion on the case, Justice Samual Alito raised these, and other, questions that states and the FTC would have to contend with in the wake of the ruling. "The answers to these questions are not obvious, but the States must predict the answers in order to make informed choices about how to constitute their agencies," he wrote.
There are also concerns about how the proposed reforms in Mississippi—or anywhere else—could transfer power to the governor's office and away from the state legislature.
State Rep. Toby Barker (R-Hattiesburg) opposed the bill when it was debated on the House floor in early February. According to the Jackson Free Press, he said the proposal would cede legislative authority to the governor, effectively letting one person have control over licensing boards.
Those worries shouldn't be discounted out of hand. Vesting more authority in the executive branch might seem like an odd solution to the problem of government regulations run amuck. It's not hard to conceive of ways in which that power could be abused. Governors can be captured by the same special interests that control licensing boards, or they can be convinced to approve anti-competitive rules with the same faulty arguments about protecting public health and safety that often convince state lawmakers to create those licensing boards in the first place. If pool contractors can convince governors to sign bills creating special licenses for their profession, why wouldn't they be able to get governors to approve the board's edicts, right?
Groups that backed the Mississippi proposal, including the Institute for Justice and Americans for Prosperity, acknowledge the potential for abuse exists. Lawmakers in Mississippi amended the bill to include the secretary of state and attorney general, along with the governor, in a triumvirate of executive officials overseeing the licesing boards. "By spreading that oversight you mitigate risk of a rogue elected official," Latino told Reason.
Still, even the worst case scenario—where a governor, attorney general, and secretary of state are serving as rubberstamps for licensing boards' agendas—is no worse than what currently happens without that oversight. Since a governor (and in some states, attorneys general and secretaries of state) is popularly elected, there is an added level of democratic accountability applied to what licensing boards can do.
"The idea is if you are going to give established industry insiders state power to regulate their own competitors, there has to be some oversight from an independent source accountable to the people," says Latino.
Ideally, that arrangement "should prevent vested private actors from abusing government process and imposing new regulations that displace competition without a compelling and substantiated need," says Ohlhausen. If states want to be immune from antitrust litigation over licensing boards' anti-competitive rules, she says, then executive branch oversight must be "active," per the test created by the Supreme Court in 2015.
Will Other States Follow Mississippi's Lead?
No other state has yet considered reforms as far-reaching as Mississippi's. But several others are starting to roll back licensing provisions, or at least taking a hard look at when and where they can be reduced.
In 2013, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad vetoed proposals that would have created four new licensing boards in his state. While serving as governor of Indiana, Vice President Mike Pence vetoed bills to require state licenses for diabetes educators, anesthesiologist assistants, and dieticians. Efforts are underway in Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin to review existing state licensing laws, with special scrutiny for laws that serve no public health or safety function.
Illinois approved a law last year to stop the state's Department of Financial and Professional Regulation from using past criminal convictions to block people from obtaining occupational licenses. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans have launched an effort to review state licenses and repeal ones that serve no public health or safety purpose. A similar effort is underway in Nebraska. Florida and other states have loosened licensing rules for military families, telling state boards to honor licenses from across state lines.
Those reforms are happening against the backdrop of an FTC that feels newly empowered to use federal antitrust laws to unlock anti-competitive markets. The commission is working with Gov. Pete Ricketts and lawmakers in Nebraska on a new legislative task force aimed at reducing burdensome licensing laws there.
Congress could get in on the act too. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is preparing to introduce legislation to encourage states to enact licensing reforms similar to those included in a bill he co-sponsored last year with Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska). That proposal, called the ALLOW Act, would have required officials in Washington, D.C., to use the least restrictive form of regulation—meaning things like certification or inspection requirements—before approving more onerous occupational rules like licensing. That bill also would have required officials to periodically review and justify existing licensing requirements for reauthorization every five years.
Ohlhausen says she believes in federalism and does not want to use the FTC's new task force to force states to behave in a certain way. "If politically accountable state actors have a clearly articulated policy and make the decision to displace competition in favor of state regulation, we must and should respect that decision," she says. In other words, if states want to create anti-competitive licensing laws that are bad for workers and consumers, they should be allowed to make those mistakes—as long as they're doing it in a legitimate way.
When those regulations don't reflect the will of the people, "but rather regulatory capture by a narrow group of interests," then the FTC will use its authority to act.
In the meantime, expect to see more states follow Mississippi's lead.
Robert Johnson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who has been involved in several licensing cases, says he's been following the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners ruling and its ramifications, and the Mississippi bill, though imperfect, offers the best chance to stop the ongoing game of occupational licensing Whac-A-Mole that he's been fighting for years. Unless states make changes to how their licensing boards operate, Johnson says, they now have an "enormous risk of liability," either from antitrust challenges brought by the FTC or from private individuals and groups.
But for Johnson, the issue is bigger than legal risk. "What we're talking about," he says, "is people's right to practice a chosen profession without having to get permission from the government."One of America's most successful entrepreneurs, Wyoming billionaire Robert Earl Holding, died on April 13 at age 86, apparently from age and complications related to a 2002 stroke. The son of mormons who lost everything in the 1929 Crash, Holding grew up very poor. He served in the Army Air Corps and later attended the University of Utah. After a time as a civil engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation, he moved his family to southwest Wyoming in 1952 to manage money losing motel-gas station in isolated Little America, Wyo. He eventually bought out the other owners and started adding pumps. He later borrowed to buy the Mobil refinery in Casper Wyoming in 1968, and went on to purchase Sinclair Oil in 1976. A year later he bought Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho, paying $12 million. At the time of his death, he was considered to be among the largest landowners in America with some 400,000 acres across the west. He owned the Grand America hotel in Salt Lake City, and the ski resorts Snowbasin, Utah and Sun Valley. Holding most recently ranked 139 among America's richest, with a net worth of $3.2 billion. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Carol, and his three children including son Stephen who is considered to be his father's heir apparent.Hillary Clinton did it. Barack Obama did it. Mitt Romney did it. John McCain did it. George W. Bush did it. Bob Dole did it. Bill Clinton did it. George H.W. Bush did it. Even the Gipper did it!
All of the major US presidential candidates in the last three decades released their tax returns to the American public, demonstrating their financial integrity and that they were not subject to influence by special interests. Yet just six days from the presidential election on Nov. 8, Republican candidate Donald Trump still hasn’t released his tax returns. He claims he cannot, that they are under audit. But audits do not prevent anyone from releasing their own tax returns, or past returns that are no longer under audit.
Trump’s tax returns would offer answers to open questions about the candidate’s truth-telling, connections to foreign powers, and charitable practices—all of which voters ought to hear before they choose their next president.
What is Trump’s actual net worth?
Trump’s campaign has been built largely on the idea that he is a successful billionaire. Yet, it’s not clear if that’s the case. It certainly seems that Trump doesn’t have easy access to the cash he has promised when talking about having a self-funded campaign—a campaign that is currently disputing a $767,000 bill with a pollster. Trump has repeatedly said he would donate $100 million to his election efforts, but at last count as of Oct. 19, he had loaned his campaign less than $50 million and only donated about $8 million to it, despite its financial struggles.
Who does Trump owe money to?
Trump loves debt. But with four business bankruptcies behind him, he’s not necessarily great at managing it, and often finds himself under the thumb of his creditors. Do major US financial institutions have a claim on Trump’s fortune? How about foreign lenders, whether his old pals at Deutsche Bank or perhaps a Russian financial institution? Without Trump’s tax returns, it’s difficult to know who can put pressure on Trump.
Has Trump ever given anything to charity?
Trump loves to claim that he gives to charity, but exhaustive reporting by the Washington Post’s David Fahrentold suggests he doesn’t always follow up. After it took months for Trump to make good on a campaign pledge to donate to veterans, his pattern of using his personal charity for personal gain—like commissioning a giant portrait of himself, settling personal disputes, or renovating his own properties—was revealed. Trump’s tax returns would help the public determine whether he truly is a philanthropist.
Is Trump evading taxes?
Three pages from a 1994 Trump tax return leaked to the New York Times showed that Trump claimed an extraordinary $916 million loss that year, one that would allow him to avoid being taxed on an equivalent amount of income over nearly two decades. Yet tax experts were baffled, since Trump’s businesses were built on debt and he saw hundreds of millions of dollars of those loans forgiven in bankruptcy, which should have been counted as income and reduced those losses. Since then, the Times has found more documents suggesting Trump performed a sketchy debt-for-equity swap that even his lawyers found dubious; that type of maneuver was made illegal several years later. What other dubious ways to avoid taxes has Trump found since then?
Without the returns, we have know way of knowing if Trump is telling the truth about even himself, much less his business connections, in one more shocking break from US democratic precedent.
At this point, it’s worth asking what he’s hiding.This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.
When you think of a federal sting operation involving weaponry and military gear, the Government Accountability Office doesn’t immediately jump to mind. The office is tasked with auditing other federal agencies to root out fraud and abuse, usually by asking questions and poring over paperwork.
This year, the agency went a little more cowboy. The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency—complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot—and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.
And in less than a week, they got it.
A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles, and pipe bomb material from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess materiel. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.
“They never did any verification, like visit our ‘location,’ and most of it was by email,” said Zina Merritt, director of the GAO’s defense capabilities and management team, which ran the operation. “It was like getting stuff off of Ebay.”
In its response to the sting, the Defense Department promised to tighten its verification procedures, including trying to visit the location of law enforcement agencies that apply and making sure agents picking up supplies have valid identification, the GAO report said. The department also promised to do an internal fraud assessment by April 2018.
A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment further.
'It was like getting stuff off of Ebay.' – Zina Merritt, GAO
The sting operation has its roots in the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. At the time, many were surprised to see law enforcement respond to protests with armored trucks, sniper rifles, tear-gas bombs, and other weapons of war.
Reporting by The Marshall Project and others found that much of the equipment came from the obscure 1033 program, which dates back to the Clinton era. Any equipment the US military was not using—including Humvees, grenades, scuba-diving gear, and even marching-band instruments—was available to local cops who could demonstrate a need.
The program has transferred more than $6 billion worth of supplies to more than 8,600 law enforcement agencies since 1991.
After Ferguson, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting the military from giving away some equipment and deeming other equipment “controlled,” establishing strict oversight and training requirements for law enforcement agencies that wanted it. The order also required a Defense Department and Justice Department working group to ensure oversight.
But since President Donald Trump took office, the group has not met, according to the Constitution Project, a legal and policy advocacy organization that had been participating in the meetings. Trump has said that he will revoke Obama’s executive order, although he has not yet.
Congress ordered the GAO to look into the program last year. A survey of local law enforcement did not turn up any instances of outright abuse at the state level, but did find one illegitimate agency that had applied as a federal entity and was approved for equipment, Merritt said.
That’s when the agency launched the sting. Contrary to its public image, GAO has snagged other agencies with undercover work in the past, including an investigation of the Affordable Care Act in which the agency submitted fictitious applications, and got approved, for subsidized healthcare coverage.
In this case, the GAO created the fake law enforcement agency—whose name the GAO would not reveal — and it claimed did high-level security and counterterrorism work. Once approved, the agency easily obtained the items from a Defense Department warehouse of unused military goods.
Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which lists rescinding Obama’s executive order one of its top priorities for the Trump administration, said the possibility of fraud does not indict the whole program.
“It suggests only that the US military is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies and as such is going to have some lapses in material control,” Pasco said. “Law enforcement is going to get that equipment and we’re going to use it, to protect both officers and civilians. And if we don’t get it free from the military, we’re going to have to buy it with taxpayer dollars.”
But to Madhuri Grewal, senior counsel for the Constitution Project, and other opponents of police militarization, the problem is more fundamental.
“There just aren’t many everyday policing uses for military equipment like this,” Grewal said. “The question is why can real law enforcement agencies get some of this stuff, let alone fake ones?”NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Nashville goaltender Pekka Rinne can't wait to test himself in a game.
The Predators, who announced Wednesday that they are sending Rinne to their AHL affiliate in Milwaukee, are cautiously waiting to see if the two-time Vezina Trophy finalist can help them chase down a playoff berth.
Both Rinne and the team will have a better idea of where he is after the conditioning assignment for games Friday and likely Sunday in this latest step in his recovery from an E. coli infection in his surgically repaired left hip. Rinne has been limited to only nine games this season.
Coach Barry Trotz said the Predators will be monitoring Rinne after each practice and game.
"He's at a point where we've got to find out where he is game-wise and also body and mind," Trotz said of Rinne.
The Predators start a five-game home stand Thursday night hosting Tampa Bay just four points back of the Western Conference's eighth and final playoff spot with 23 games remaining. They missed the playoffs last year for only the second time in nine seasons.
How quickly Rinne rejoins them depends on how he fares in Milwaukee.
Rinne practiced with the Predators on Wednesday before traveling to Milwaukee, and he called this a big day with doctors giving him the green light for the latest step in his long recovery. He has been sidelined since Oct. 24 for an infection in the hip surgically repaired May 9, and Rinne said he's focusing on getting his game back and help the Predators.
"So far I feel really comfortable," Rinne said. "I'm happy how things have gone in practice and how things have gone so far. I think I'm actually a little bit surprised it's been going so well. But like I said, it's still a process but for sure I feel like I'm really close to game shape and now it's just a final couple of games before I jump on the ice with the Nashville team."
Rinne, 31, is sixth in the NHL with 152 wins since the 2008-09 season and has 30 shutouts since 2008-09, which leads all goalies during that time. He hasn't played since Oct. 22 in a 2-0 loss at Minnesota. He is 4-4-1 with a 2.31 goals-against average and a.917 save percentage.
The Predators have played four other goalies this season trying to make up for Rinne's absence. Currently, Carter Hutton is their starter, and he is 13-9-4 with a.904 save percentage and 2.87 goals-against average. Trotz said what they've been missing without Rinne is a game-changer who can mean the difference in as many as 20 points in the standings each season.
"He's an elite goaltender and steals games maybe when you don't deserve it," Trotz said. "He can steal points."
Trotz said they're not sure what they'll see from Rinne.
"It's not about Pekka coming back and being a savior," Trotz said. "I think it's Pekka coming back and adding to our mix. And if he can get his game to the level close to what he's capable of, we're a better hockey team plain and simple. To me, it's about Pekka for hopefully the next five or six years. He's a difference maker."
Captain Shea Weber, who practiced with the Predators on Wednesday after helping Canada win the Olympic gold medal Sunday in Sochi, said the Predators are definitely excited about the prospect of Rinne returning to the lineup as they try to chase down a playoff spot.
"We've been through a lot this year and to see what position we put ourselves in here four points out coming in it's not going to be easy by any means," Weber said. "If anyone can do it, we can."I had just shaken the president-elect’s normal-size hand and he was moving on to the next person when he wheeled around, took a half step back, touched my arm and looked me in the eye anew.
“I’m going to get you to write some good stuff about me,” Donald Trump said.
It’s entirely possible. I keep an open mind. But I’m decided on this much: Winning the most powerful office in the world did nothing to diminish his epic ache for adoration or outsize need to tell everyone how much he deserves it.
He sat down for more than an hour with about two dozen of us at The Times on Tuesday afternoon, and what subject do you suppose he spent his first eight minutes on? When the floor was his, to use as he pleased?
The incredibleness of his win two weeks ago.
“A great victory,” he said as he went back, unbidden, through all the Trump-affirming highlights: the size of his crowds; the screens and loudspeakers for the overflow; the enthusiasm gap between his rallies and poor Hillary Clinton’s. It’s a song I’ve heard so often I could sing it in my sleep.Many security experts believe that a retrenchment is inevitable and justified.
“After 9/11, we had to respond with everything we had, not knowing what would work best,” said Rick Nelson, a former Navy helicopter pilot who served in several counterterrorism positions and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “That’s a model we can no longer afford, financially or politically.”
Michael V. Hayden, who led both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, agrees that the time will come for security spending to be scaled back and believes that citizens need to decide when that should happen. Personally, he would wait a while longer.
“I would stand fast for now,” said Mr. Hayden, who is an adviser to Mitt Romney.
In the view of most specialists, the danger to United States territory from Al Qaeda and its allies is far less than it was in 2001. Al Qaeda’s leaders have been relentlessly hunted, its ideology was rejected by most of the young Muslims who led the Arab revolts, and its recruits in the United States have been few. Of more than 160,000 homicides in the country since Sept. 11, 2001, just 14 were carried out by Qaeda sympathizers in the name of jihad.
Some of the credit is no doubt due to domestic security efforts, which cost $470 billion in federal money, $110 billion in state and local budgets and $110 billion in private-sector spending from 2002 to 2011, according to John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University. That money has paid for an alphabet soup of new agencies: the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Terrorist Screening Center and many others, each with a supporting cast of contractors. Old agencies like the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. have bulked up, and a record 4.8 million people hold security clearances.
Any move to trim the counterterrorism bureaucracy will face daunting opposition. Some Americans will worry that cutbacks could put them at risk. Members of Congress will fear being labeled soft on terrorism. Lobbyists will fight to protect the lucrative domestic security sector.
For years, counterterrorism programs have been met mostly with cheerleading on Capitol Hill, despite billions spent on programs that turned out to be troubled or ineffective: “puffer” machines for airport screening that were warehoused, a high-tech surveillance program on the border with Mexico that was shut down, costly machines to sniff city air for biological weapons that produced too many false positives.
No previous Congressional criticism of counterterrorism programs, however, has been quite so scathing as a bipartisan Senate subcommittee report this month on more than 70 “fusion centers” nationwide, created to help federal, state and local authorities share threat information. The two-year investigation found that the centers had failed to help disrupt a single terrorist plot, even as they spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and infringed on civil liberties.
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But the reaction to the report illustrated why it will be difficult to cut even marginal programs. Senior senators, the Department of Homeland Security and a half-dozen law enforcement groups rushed to criticize the report and defend the centers, which, not coincidentally, provide jobs and spending in every state.
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Philip B. Heymann, a Harvard law professor and a former deputy attorney general, said that after every war there had been an adjustment that shrank the security establishment and eased wartime controls to restore the balance of power between the government and the citizenry.
“If you want the America we built over 200 years, we always have to be looking for ways to ratchet back these controls when it’s safe,” said Mr. Heymann, who is writing a book on the subject. “If we tried, we could find a number of places where we could move back toward the normal of 2000 without reducing security.”
Like other intelligence officials after 2001, Mr. Hayden was whipsawed by public wrath: first, for failing to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, and then, a few years later, for having permitted the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects in the United States without court approval.
Perhaps, as a result, he often says that the American people need to instruct the government on where to draw the line. He told an audience at the University of Michigan last month, for instance, that while a plot on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks was highly unlikely, smaller terrorist strikes, like the shootings by an Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, could not always be stopped.
“I can actually work to make this less likely than it is today,” Mr. Hayden said. “But the question I have for you is: What of your privacy, what of your convenience, what of your commerce do you want to give up?”
A big problem for Mr. Hayden’s formula is government secrecy, which makes it tough for any citizen to assess counterterrorism programs, their value and their intrusion on people’s privacy. Ubiquitous new technology has made it far easier for agencies to keep watch on Americans, using cellphones that track location, Internet monitoring, video surveillance cameras, facial recognition software and license plate readers. And the government increasingly taps into the huge amounts of data that companies gather.
“I think the greatest threat to privacy these days is the enormous amount of data in the hands of private companies that could be misused — either by the government or by companies,” said John Villasenor, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the social impact of technology. “Today almost everything we do is recorded by default.”
Consider the counterterrorism databases that the F.B.I. has built, largely in secret, with names like Investigative Data Warehouse and Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force Data Mart. One public glimpse — a heavily redacted 2006 list of materials in the Data Mart obtained by Wired magazine under the Freedom of Information Act — suggests the sweep of information being gathered: sprawling data collections from dozens of government agencies, on subjects like suspicious bank transactions and lost passports; voluminous records from commercial data collectors like Acxiom, ChoicePoint and Accurint (which alone accounted for 175 million entries); even hotel guest records.
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An F.B.I. spokesman, Christopher M. Allen, declined to provide a current list of data in the system. But he said F.B.I. rules gave “greater overall protections for privacy than the law requires” and were strictly enforced by bureau lawyers.
Such official assurances do not comfort civil libertarians. Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington watchdog group, said that the easing of government incursions on privacy and rights that traditionally followed a war may not come this time, because the technology-driven “ architecture of surveillance and security” remained in place.
“We’re still left with this largely unaccountable infrastructure,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “As long as we don’t begin to dismantle that, I’m not sure we will ever move past 9/11.”Famed actor, comedian to appear at Wine and Spirits in the Quarter
Hollywood legend Dan Aykroyd is making his way around Jackson.The famed actor, musician and comedian is in town filming the James Brown biopic "Get On Up." Aykroyd plays Ben Bart, the president of Universal Attractions, the agency that represented the Godfather of Soul for more than 40 years.The "Saturday Night Live" alum has been spotted at Parlor Market, where he posed for a picture with state Rep. Jody Steverson. Aykroyd will make a stop Saturday at Wine and Spirits in the Quarter at 1855 Lakeland Drive. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., he will sign bottles of Crystal Head Vodka. Aykroyd is one of the founders of the company, which produces the vodka known for its purity and lack of chemical additives. "I'm expecting it to be wild and crazy around here, actually," said Nick Lord, wine and Spirits general manager. "We're going to have Jason Bailey, who's a local musician, playing on the front porch to folks, hopefully waiting outside and around the corner. For two or three hours, we're expecting a circus atmosphere -- a lot of fun."Crystal Head, which is sold in a glass skull bottle, is the official liquor of the Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Tour, whose lead singer, Mick Jagger, is a producer of "Get On Up."
Hollywood legend Dan Aykroyd is making his way around Jackson.
The famed actor, musician and comedian is in town filming the James Brown biopic "Get On Up." Aykroyd plays Ben Bart, the president of Universal Attractions, the agency that represented the Godfather of Soul for more than 40 years.
The "Saturday Night Live" alum has been spotted at Parlor Market, where he posed for a picture with state Rep. Jody Steverson.
Aykroyd will make a stop Saturday at Wine and Spirits in the Quarter at 1855 Lakeland Drive. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., he will sign bottles of Crystal Head Vodka. Aykroyd is one of the founders of the company, which produces the vodka known for its purity and lack of chemical additives.
"I'm expecting it to be wild and crazy around here, actually," said Nick Lord, wine and Spirits general manager. "We're going to have Jason Bailey, who's a local musician, playing on the front porch to folks, hopefully waiting outside and around the corner. For two or three hours, we're expecting a circus atmosphere -- a lot of fun."
Crystal Head, which is sold in a glass skull bottle, is the official liquor of the Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Tour, whose lead singer, Mick Jagger, is a producer of "Get On Up."
AlertMeUnprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Posted on 10 February 2014 by dana1981
Research looking at the effects of Pacific Ocean cycles has been gradually piecing together the puzzle explaining why the rise of global surface temperatures has slowed over the past 10 to 15 years. A new study just published in Nature Climate Change, led by Matthew England at the University of New South Wales, adds yet another piece to the puzzle by examining the influence of Pacific trade winds.
While the rate of surface temperature warming has slowed in recent years, several studies have shown that the warming of the planet as a whole has not. This suggests that the slowed surface warming is not due as much to external factors like decreased solar activity or more pollutants in the atmosphere blocking sunlight, but more due to internal factors shifting the heat into the oceans. In particular, the rate at which the deep oceans have warmed over the past 10 to 15 years is unprecedented in the past half century.
Research led by Masahiro Watanabe of the Japanese Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute suggests this is mainly due to more efficient transfer of heat to the deep oceans. Consistent with model simulations led by Gerald Meehl, Watanabe finds that we sometimes expect "hiatus decades" to occur, when surface air temperatures don't warm because more heat is transferred to the deep ocean layers. A paper published last year by Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that accounting for the changes in Pacific Ocean surface temperatures allowed their model to reproduce the slowed global surface warming over the past 10 to 15 years. However, the mechanism causing these Pacific Ocean changes has remained elusive.
The new study published by Matthew England's team helps explain how and why more heat is being funneled into the deeper ocean layers. The study indicates that a dramatic acceleration in equatorial trade winds, associated with a negative phase of a cycle called the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) has invigorated the circulation of the Pacific Ocean. This has caused more heat from the surface to be mixed down into deeper ocean layers, while bringing cooler waters to the surface. The combination of these two processes cools global surface temperatures. Like the rate at which heat is accumulating in the deep oceans, the recent strengthening of the trade winds is unprecedented, as the bottom frame in the figure below shows.
Top frame: Global surface temperature anomalies. Bottom frame: Pacific wind stress anomalies. From England et al. (2014).
Not only is this acceleration of trade winds unprecedented, but it also far exceeds anything captured by climate models. Hence they have difficulty reproducing the recent slowdown in surface warming. The catch is that oscillations eventually change phases, so as England notes, the strengthened trade winds and faster rate of ocean heat accumulation are only temporary.
"the heat uptake is by no means permanent: when the trade wind strength returns to normal - as it inevitably will -
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you are compared with where you want to be. That, and they serve as an excellent reminder to consider your health when life starts to get too busy or the next season of your favorite Netflix series is released.
But most importantly, tracker or not, it’s all about introducing positive changes that work in your own life, and using the tools that motivate you.Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders.” — Robert F. Kennedy
Let’s be clear about one thing: no one—not the armed, violent, militant protesters nor the police—gave peace a chance during the August 12 demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va.
What should have been an exercise in free speech quickly became a brawl.
It’s not about who threw the first punch or the first smoke bomb.
It’s not about which faction outshouted the other, or which side perpetrated more violence, or even which group can claim to be the greater victim.
One young woman is dead because of the hate, violence, intolerance, racism and partisanship that is tearing this country apart, and it has to stop.
Lawful, peaceful, nonviolent First Amendment activity did not kill Heather Heyer.
She was killed by a 20-year-old Neo-Nazi who drove his car into a crowd of pedestrians in Charlottesville, Va.
Words, no matter how distasteful or disagreeable, did not turn what should have been an exercise in free speech into a brawl.
That was accomplished by militant protesters on both sides of the debate who arrived at what should have been a nonviolent protest armed with sticks and guns, bleach bottles, balloons filled with feces and urine and improvised flamethrowers, and by the law enforcement agencies who stood by and allowed it.
As the New York Times reported, “Protesters began to mace one another, throwing water bottles and urine-filled balloons — some of which hit reporters — and beating each other with flagpoles, clubs and makeshift weapons. Before long, the downtown area was a melee. People were ducking and covering with a constant stream of projectiles whizzing by our faces, and the air was filled with the sounds of fists and sticks against flesh.”
The madness is spreading.
People I know—good, decent people who value equality, reject racism, and believe strongly in tolerance—in their grief and dismay and disgust, threatened violence, acted like a mob, and adopted similarly violent, intolerant, disorderly tactics as those they claim to oppose. Those who defend free speech were castigated by those who believe that only certain views should be allowed to be heard. Those who cling to nonviolence were outnumbered by angry mobs intent on inciting violence. Those who normally advocate a message of tolerance gave into the temptation to spew hate and intolerance.
The Rutherford Institute and the ACLU, two organizations who repeatedly stand up for the Constitution and the rights of all people—no matter how disagreeable their views may be—have been cursed at, denounced and threatened with violence for daring to remind government officials (and members of the community) that the First Amendment applies to all people equally.
We are walking a dangerous road.
And then there’s the role police are supposed to play in upholding the law and preventing violence.
It’s a thankless job most of the time, and police must walk a fine line between respecting peaceful First Amendment activity and maintaining the peace, while not overstepping the limits of the Fourth Amendment.
For whatever reason—which only the police and government officials are privy to—the police failed to do their job at the Charlottesville demonstration, a charge levied by both the Alt Right and the counterdemonstrators.
Despite the fact that 1,000 first responders (including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard)—many of whom had been preparing for the downtown rally for months—had been called on to work the event, despite the fact that police in riot gear surrounded Emancipation Park on three sides, and despite the fact that Charlottesville had had what reporter David Graham referred to as “a dress rehearsal of sorts” a month earlier when 30 members of the Ku Klux Klan were confronted by 1000 counterprotesters, police failed to do their jobs.
In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police “seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.”
So what should the police have done differently?
For starters, the police should have established clear boundaries—buffer zones—between the warring groups of protesters and safeguarded the permit zones.
Instead, as eyewitness accounts indicate, police established two entrances into the permit areas of the park and created barriers “guiding rallygoers single-file into the park” past lines of white nationalists and antifa counterprotesters.
There were other models that could have been followed.
As investigative reporter Sarah Posner notes, “At a neo-Nazi rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just days before the November election, police employed this tactic with success – while the rally attendees and anti-fascist protesters taunted each other over a barrier of police, they were blocked from coming into physical contact.”
In Cleveland, the site of the GOP presidential convention, “Trump diehards, Revolutionary Communists, Wobblies, and Alex Jones disciples” faced off in a downtown plaza. Yet as The Atlantic reports, “Just as confrontations between the groups seemed near to getting out of hand, police swooped into the square in huge numbers, using bicycles to create cordons between rival factions. The threat of violence soon passed, and no pepper spray or tear gas was needed.”
For that matter, consider that Charlottesville police established clear boundaries just a month earlier in which they maintained clear lines of demarcation at all times between KKK protesters and counterprotesters.
The question, as always, is where do we go from here?
It’s a question that Martin Luther King Jr. wrestled with and addressed in the last book he wrote before his assassination, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
As King pointed out repeatedly, hate begets hate. Violence begets violence.
And as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, tyranny begets tyranny.
The lesson for all of us is this: remember, when you strip away the politics and the class warfare and the skin color and the religious ideology and the gender differences and the sexual orientation and anything else that can be used as a source of division, remember that underneath it all, we are all the same.
As Nelson Mandela recognized, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”Hogs & Heifers in the Meatpacking District closed last August when the rent was hiked. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Danielle Tcholakian
MANHATTAN — From Meatpacking’s Hogs & Heifers to the East Village’s Other Music and Prospect Height’s Empire Mayo, the list of beloved small businesses being forced out due to rising rents keeps growing — and so have the calls for greater protections for mom-and-pop shops.
Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to sign legislation Tuesday establishing safeguards to prevent harassment of commercial tenants, just as there are policies protecting residential tenants.
The legislation aims to make it easier for small businesses to stay in the city, many advocates said.
It would allow small business owners, who felt they were harassed in some way and wrongfully pushed to vacate their space, to recover possession of property, attorney fees and damages amounting to one month’s rent or $1,000 from the landlord — whichever is greater — among other costs.
Harassment includes threats, unnecessary construction or repairs on the property that interfered with business, interruptions to essential services like heat or hot water, and the use of “frivolous” court proceedings against a tenant.
“It’s the first time any real meaningful reforms and protections have been created to protect small businesses who don’t own their property,” said Lena Afridi, policy coordinator from the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, which convened a citywide coalition to work on the issue. “It’s the first time tenants, who’ve experienced harassment, will be allowed to litigate against their landlords.”
The same gentrification pressures that are spurring residential displacement are hitting small businesses, too, Afridi noted. Landlords are making unnecessary repairs or not making needed repairs or even resorting to tactics like those faced by a Bushwick restaurant owner whose landlord turned off her water during her busiest shift a few months back.
“Small businesses make up a neighborhood,” Afridi added. “So, it’s not just small business displacement; it’s really cultural displacement.”
The legislation, however, needs to be strengthened, Afridi noted.
“Despite our excitement, this is a first step,” she said. “The bill needs more power.”
For one, it only applies to tenants who have leases, and many of the immigrant-owned small businesses her group has worked with don’t have leases, Afridi noted.
She’d also like to see some sort of government enforcement of harassment as well as funding to help provide legal services since many small businesses don’t have the money to hire lawyers.
Some small business advocates, led by groups like Take Back NYC, however, say the Small Business Jobs Survival Act would be a bigger help to mom-and-pops since it deals specifically with the commercial lease renewal process.
The act, which has been stalled since its 2014 introduction, would give small businesses rights in the commercial lease renewal process, including a minimum 10-year lease with the right to renewal (to help businesses better plan for their future), a provision for a third party arbiter when parties can’t agree on fair terms for a lease renewal and restrictions to prevent landlords from passing their property taxes on to small businesses.
“It’s not even a band aid,” Ahmad El-Najjar, from Take Back NYC said of the anti-tenant harassment bill. “It’s an insult to the small business community.”
The group says that roughly 1,000 small businesses in the city are forced to close their doors every month — most because they lost their lease.
“With no actual rights to renew your lease, that’s where people are being extorted,” El-Najjar said.
When legendary Meatpacking District bar, Hogs and Heifers, closed last year after more than 20 years on Washington Street, the owner blamed the landlord’s decision to increase the rent to $60,000 a month.
Though the area has become chic for high-end boutiques and pricey eateries, the bar’s owner Michelle Dell didn’t want to follow suit.
"I sell Pabst Blue Ribbon for $3. I still sell beer for $5 or $6,” she told DNAinfo previously. “I am not a business that can sell a bottle of beer for $12 and margaritas for $15."For the first time in eight years, Americans consider themselves more pro-choice than pro-life.
New Gallup polling shows that 50 percent of Americans identify with the "pro-choice" label. Forty-four percent identify as "pro-life."
Much of the shift looks to be happening among middle-age Americans. Support for abortion rights among people between the ages of 35 and 55 grew from 40 percent in 2012 to 52 percent this year.
The shift in favor of abortion rights has happened at a time when states have increasingly restricted access to abortion. States passed 231 abortion restrictions between 2011 and 2014 — more than the prior three decades combined. And more generally, separate Gallup polling shows that Americans have become more permissive on social issues over the past 15 years or so, whether that's abortion rights or babies out of wedlock or divorce. "The broader liberal shift in Americans' ideology of late could mean the recent pro-choice expansion has some staying power," Gallup analysts write.
A big caveat: Lots of Americas don't identify with these labels at all
The Gallup poll only gives respondents two options: they can identify as "pro-life" or "pro-choice." The problem, separate polling shows, is that lots of Americans don't pick these labels at all when given the additional options of labeling themselves "both" or "neither."
Vox fielded a poll earlier this year with communications firm PerryUndem that asked respondents whether they identified as pro-life, pro-choice, both, or neither. We found that 39 percent of Americans chose one of the latter two options; the singular labels, they told us, didn't apply to them.
We also found that simple wording changes can significantly shift how people think about the legality of abortion. Our pollsters, Mike Perry and Tresa Undem, gave a different question to the two halves of our polling panel. They asked one half whether they agreed with the statement "Abortion should be legal in almost all cases." The other half got a different wording of a similar idea: "Women should have a legal right to safe and accessible abortion in almost all cases."
Twenty-eight percent of the public agreed with the first statement — and 37 percent with the second. That's a jump of 9 percentage points in who thinks abortion ought to be generally legal, just by highlighting the fact that a woman is involved in the situation.
Results like these are one reason not to read too much into the new Gallup numbers. The pro-life and pro-choice labels often fail to capture the actual nuances of Americans' views on abortion.CLEVELAND -- Defensive end Juqua Parker emerged from the trainer's room and headed to his locker singing a tune -- one that might sum up the current Browns.
"We're not gonna take it," Parker said, repeating the chorus to Twisted Sister's 1980s hard rock anthem. "We're not gonna take it... anymore."
The Browns are tired of losing.
Rookie Travis Benjamin's electrifying 93-yard punt return touchdown early in the second quarter swung momentum in Cleveland's favor, and the Browns won their third straight, 30-7 over the emotionally drained Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.
Rookie running back Trent Richardson had a pair of 1-yard TD runs for Cleveland to tie Hall of Famer Jim Brown's franchise record of touchdown runs by a rookie with nine.
The young-and-improved Browns enjoyed a 23-point margin of victory, their largest since 2003 -- a significant accomplishment for a franchise with 11 double-digit loss seasons since 1999.
Benjamin's game-changer helped the Browns (5-8) continue their resurgence under second-year coach Pat Shurmur, whose future in Cleveland remains uncertain. With three games left, the Browns, who opened this season 0-5, have surpassed their win total from last season and have their longest winning streak since 2009.
"It's all kind of coming together," said 14-year veteran kicker Phil Dawson, who booted three field goals. "We're just doing all the little things right now. Guys are hungry to come back to work every day. There's some energy around here that I haven't felt. This is all good."
Added linebacker D'Qwell Jackson: "It's been a long year. At first, it was rocky. We were in a lot of close ballgames and we weren't able to finish, and now we're starting to create something. We had some young guys at the beginning of the season that were a little immature, and they've grown up a little bit.
"We have something going right now."Hello and happy Monday my sweeties! Today I’m sharing my second manicure for March’s Nail Challenge Collaborative theme. NY Fashion Week recently happened, so this is definitely the perfect timing to do manis based on fashion!
I was browsing Pinterest and stumbled upon Oscar de la Renta’s 2015 Resort line. It was filled with black and white, florals, and some pops of bright pink and purple.
Aren’t those dresses gorgeous?! I don’t know what resort you would wear these to… I’m used to wearing bathing suits and beach wear to resorts. I guess Beyonce could pull off wearing a designer gown at a resort though. So maybe this collection is meant for Beyonce? They’re stunning no matter who you’re designing for or where you’re meant to wear the pieces!
I decided I needed to work on my freehand flowers anyways, so this was a perfect inspiration for a mani. I went with a dark shimmery green instead of black, and I had a perfect pink to match!
I tried cutting down the bristles of one of my nail brushes to get really thin lines, but they’re still a bit thicker than I’d prefer. I feel like I needed to cut it down to a single bristle in order to get the type of wispy lines I was going for with this manicure.
Also, the pink photographed a bit more neon pink than it is in real life. In real life, it looks practically identical to the Oscar de la Renta dress above – a slighly purple-leaning bright fuchsia. My camera can be a temperamental little beyotch; it hates blurples, it changes neon pink to orange, it changes oranges to pinks, and it changes fuchsia to neon pink. Silly camera!
Polishes used:
Index & middle fingers: Base color: Barry M Racing Green … This is a beautiful dark blackened emerald green with some added shimmer. So beautiful! Flowers: Rica Whiteout … As usual, this is my favorite white for nail art and everything else!
Ring finger & pinky: Base color: KBShimmer Beach Please … This is a GORGEOUS fuchsia – bright pink with some purple tones. The formula is perfection! Flower on ring finger: Barry M Racing Green… This was not as pretty in nail art because it came out pretty sheer. Ah well.
What do you think? Do you sometimes want to swear at your poor little camera for screwing up colors? I feel like my camera never went to grade school and therefore never learned colors. Maybe I should be more lenient with my poor uneducated camera – it didn’t have the advantages I did. 😉
Check out more fashion-inspired manis from the NCC ladies:
AdvertisementsThis is part of a series investigating code that looks suspicious (“code smells”), and exploring possible alternatives.
During my research on refactoring I’ve seen a number of patterns (smells) crop up again and again. None of these are particularly new, and there are plenty of books, blogs and videos that cover smells and how to deal with them, but I wanted to demonstrate some specific, non-trivial examples and, of course, how IntelliJ IDEA may (or may not) be able to help you.
The first problem I’ve being trying to counter is the use of nulls, particularly when it leads to null-checks scattered around the code.
I thought Java 8’s Optional should solve a lot of these problems. I assumed that a type that specifically states that it may be null, that is designed to let you say what to do in these occasions, is exactly the right solution.
However, things are never as simple as they seem, and I suspect that’s why there’s no magic “Optionalise my project” intention in IntelliJ IDEA. Rather disappointingly, this is an area that needs me, the developer, to think hard about what should be done.
We have to come to terms with the fact that null means many things. It can mean:
Value was never initialised (whether accidentally or on purpose) Value is not valid Value is not needed No such value exists Something went terribly wrong and something that should be there is not …probably dozens of other things
You can assume some of these don’t apply to your code base if you’re a disciplined team with clear design goals – for example, having final fields that are always initialised in the constructor, using builders or factories to validate correct combinations before instantiation, not using nulls in the core of your application (i.e. pushing all checks to the edges) and so on.
Optional really solves only one of these cases, case 4. For example, you ask the database for a Customer with a given ID. Previously, you might have used null to represent this, but that could be ambiguous – does it mean the customer wasn’t found? Or that there’s a customer with that ID, but has no values? Or was null returned because the connection to the database failed? By returning an empty Optional, you’ve removed the ambiguity – there’s no customer with that ID.
In a normal, mature, code base that’s been worked on by numerous people, is it possible to tell what all our nulls mean, and what to do about them? We should be able to make some progress by taking very tiny bites.
The Case Study
I’m using the Morphia project as an example in this blog post, as I have in previous talks and articles about refactoring. This is a great example project because it’s a) open source b) small enough to easily download and explore and c) mature enough to contain the sort of real life example code you probably have in your own applications.
The Smell: return null
I did a Find in Path for all the places where null is explicitly returned. I have a theory that maybe we can change these methods into something that returns an Optional.
Example 1: Converter.decode()
Given that lots of these *Converter classes seem to return a null value in the decode method, it seems reasonable that we might want to change the Converter superclass (an abstract class called TypeConverter ) to return Optional here. But a closer look at the code shows what’s actually happening: we see exactly the same pattern happening again and again – the method checks if a value passed in was null, and if so returns null:
Checking for null on decode @Override public Object decode(final Class targetClass, final Object fromDBObject, final MappedField optionalExtraInfo) { if (fromDBObject == null) { return null; } //...now do the decoding... } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 @Override public Object decode ( final Class targetClass, final Object fromDBObject, final MappedField optionalExtraInfo ) { if ( fromDBObject == null ) { return null ; } //...now do the decoding... }
The first question is can fromDBObject actually be null? The code is sufficiently complicated that it’s difficult to tell, but theoretically it seems plausible, since this is a value from the database.
A quick search shows that all instances of this method are actually only called from one central place, so instead of making this check in 21 different places, we can just do it in a single place and from there on assume fromDBObject can no longer be null.
Solution: @NotNull parameter
My original assumption that we can use Optional here turned out to be wrong. Instead, I’m going to change the method signature of decode to declare that fromDBObject cannot be null – I’ve opted to use the JetBrains annotations to do this.
Declare fromDBObject NotNull public abstract T decode(Class<T> targetClass, @NotNull Object fromDBObject, MappedField optionalExtraInfo); 1 2 3 public abstract T decode ( Class <T> targetClass, @NotNull Object fromDBObject, MappedField optionalExtraInfo ) ;
Then I move the null check (and subsequent null return) in the place where fromDBObject could actually be null, the single place that calls decode.
It makes the call site a bit more untidy, but constrains this logic to a single place instead of scattered through all implementations. Now, we can either document the fact that fromDBObject will not be null or rely on the annotation to do this for us, so we never have to perform this null check in the Converter implementations.
Next we can tidy up and remove all the duplicated code. Here IntelliJ IDEA can help us. If we go back to the abstract method in TypeConverter that we annotated with the @NotNull parameter, we are given a warning:
The quick fix suggested when we use Alt+Enter on this warning lets us apply this annotation to all the implementations of this method in one easy step, so let’s do that.
Our VCS log shows that all the Converter implementations have been updated
This has added the @NotNull annotation to the decode method’s parameter, but we still haven’t tracked down and removed all the duplicate null-check code. The good news is that now we’ve said fromDBObject cannot be null, we can use the inspections to find all of our redundant null checks and remove them.
One way to do this is to navigate into an implementation that we know has the check (in this case I chose StringConverter) to see what warning IntelliJ IDEA gives me.
This turns out to be triggered by the “Constant conditions & exceptions” inspection. We can run just this inspection over the code base to find other examples easily, using Ctrl+Shift+Alt+I and typing the inspection name.
This returns more results than just my Converters, but by grouping the results by directory I can see all the Converter implementations easily
I can use the preview window on the right to check which code has been flagged, and see what IntelliJ IDEA suggests doing with each problem. After scanning through and making sure this is the null check I’m looking for, I select the converters directory and press the “Simplify boolean expression” button.
To sanity check the changes, I go into the VCS Local Changes window and use Show Diff (Ctrl+D) to check the changes that were applied to the 36 files there.
I can even use the diff view to make small edits if I want – in this case I use Ctrl+Y to remove the unnecessary empty lines 26 and 27 of my file (the file on the right). By using Alt+Right to check all the files that have been changed, I find an example where the null check wasn’t removed (this was a test converter and therefore was not in the converters directory), but I can easily use quick fixes even in the diff view to remove it.
This sanity check gave me peace of mind about the automatic changes IntelliJ IDEA made, and let me make some additional tweaks too. The last thing to do is run all the tests, and when they pass (hurrah!) now seems like a really good time to commit all these changes.
If you’re uncomfortable adding a new library to document that a parameter can’t be null and make the IDE warn you if you pass in null values, you can always remove the @NotNull just before committing – after all, it’s done its job now. In this case, you should at least update the Javadoc to state that the parameter is assumed to be not null.
Example 2: Converter.encode()
Earlier we saw that the decode method was only one of several that explicitly returned null values. Now we’ve dealt with that, we can take a look at another example.
The encode method on the same TypeConverter class can also return null. But unlike decode, there are valid times when the converter implementations explicitly return null:
CharacterConverter.encode() @Override public Object encode(Object value, MappedField optionalExtraInfo) { return value.equals('\0')? null : String.valueOf(value); } 1 2 3 4 @Override public Object encode ( Object value, MappedField optionalExtraInfo ) { return value. equals ( '\0' )? null : String. valueOf ( value ) ; }
Solution: Optional
This is a good place for Optional – we’re explicitly stating that there are some cases where the encode method does not return a value. Optional.empty() seems like a good representation of this fact. So I change TypeConverter.encode() method to return an Optional instead. It makes all the implementations a little more untidy, as things need to be wrapped in an Optional, but it is more explicit about the fact that this method sometimes does not return a value. I’d love to show you IntelliJ IDEA magic that does this for you (in some cases, Type Migration will work, but not in my example) but I made this change the hard way – I changed the return type of the super class to Optional and fixed all the places that broke. The good news is that once I’d changed the method signature to return an Optional, IntelliJ IDEA did offer a quick fix to wrap my return values in an Optional.
Similarly, null values can also be replaced
Now we’re returning an Optional, we have to work with this new type at the call site. In my case, I actually got no compiler warnings as my return type was originally an Object, and obviously an Optional is also an Object (note: this is why we shouldn’t use raw Object types, because it basically removes the benefits of having a strongly typed language. This code would have been better with Generics). I just have to change the one place that calls the encode method to unwrap the Optional. I’m going to do something that’s pretty nasty and use orElse(null), but since this is the same behaviour the original methods were doing anyway, and it’s restricted to one place in the code, I’m happy with this – I can flag it as tech debt and we can gradually deal with the issue rather than chasing it all around the code.
In tests that call the encode method I simply updated them to call encode(o).get() – usually this is unsafe, but a) the tests should not return an empty Optional and b) if they do, they’ll fail and that’s correct. In fact in my case this highlights that there are no tests for the case where no value is returned, so I should add new tests for empty Optional returns.
Changing your API to use Optional is often a non-trivial task, but in cases like this one it can really help clarify the intent – instead of returning nulls when there’s no valid value, it will return you an empty Optional and you can declare what to do – return an alternate value, throw an Exception, or perform some other operation. Beware though, this can get hairy.
Note: This example was OK, but there are other methods in this code that are perfect for returning Optional, but the upstream effect of applying this change was huge – the methods are called in multiple places and the return types used in all sorts of very complex methods, making it nearly impossible to track down the right place to test the Optional and unwrap it vs letting it propagate around the code. The lesson I have learnt is apply this if you can limit the impact to one or two call sites and deal with the Optional return type immediately.
Example 3: Mapper.getId()
Here’s another example of null returns:
getId public Object getId(final Object entity) { Object unwrapped = entity; if (unwrapped == null) { return null; } unwrapped = ProxyHelper.unwrap(unwrapped); try { return getMappedClass(unwrapped.getClass()).getIdField().get(unwrapped); } catch (Exception e) { return null; } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 public Object getId ( final Object entity ) { Object unwrapped = entity ; if ( unwrapped == null ) { return null ; } unwrapped = ProxyHelper. unwrap ( unwrapped ) ; try { return getMappedClass ( unwrapped. getClass ( ) ). getIdField ( ). get ( unwrapped ) ; } catch ( Exception e ) { return null ; } }
This is a great example of where null means two different things. The first null means we were given a null input, therefore we give you a null output. Seems fairly valid, if a little unhelpful. The second null means “an error happened and I couldn’t give you a value, so here, have null”. Presumably a null ID is a valid response, given the first case, but it would probably be more helpful to the caller to know what the error was and deal with it accordingly. Even if the Exception is such that the caller cannot deal with it, it’s pretty unfriendly to catch the Exception and return null, especially when the Exception isn’t even logged. This is a really good way to hide genuine problems. Exceptions should be handled where they’re found, or passed on in some useful way, they should not be swallowed unless you really really know it’s not an error.
So this null means “something unexpected happened and I don’t know what to do about it, so I’m going to give you null and hope that’s OK”, which is not at all clear to the caller. These cases should definitely be avoided, and Optional is not going to be your solution. The solution is to implement much clearer error handing.
In summary
Null is a particularly difficult problem. The main problem with null is we don’t know what it means. It’s an absence of a value, but this could be for any number of reasons. Using null is not a useful way to flag what any of these reasons are, since by its very definition it has no value, no meaning.
Symptoms:
Null checks extensively used throughout the application code, without it being clear to you, the developer, what null really signifies or if the value can really be null at all.
Explicit return null
Possible Solutions:This 2015 Bigfoot video has gotten some buzz since its release so Parabreakdown takes a closer look.
The Live Bear Cam Bigfoot footage looks like it shows what has be categorized as some as a juvenile Sasquatch walking down a trial. The bear cam Bigfoot has a couple of interesting aspects but then again ParaBreakdown brings up plenty of aspects that seems rather iffy as to it being a Bigfoot.
Have a look at the analysis and investigation by ParaBreakdown Bigfoot videos and decide for yourself if you believe this may be an actual video of Bigfoot or something else. For me the object in this possible Bigfoot video 2015 seems like it has a more human like shape and style of walking but there are some oddities which some believe make it very possible that’s its an actual 2015 Bigfoot sighting.Wednesday, May 4 – Tuesday, May 17
Join an expedition to discover a previously unknown part of Maple World! The Halflingers have discovered beautiful Spring Valley—an area rich in diverse plant life. They could use a field assistant to gather interesting plant specimens! Players Lv. 33 and above can accept the introductory quest and access the Spring Valley Base Camp from the star event notifier on the left side of the screen.
Once you arrive, you’ll become an integral part of the Halflinger Expedition. Meet Old Claw, who would like you to look for new specimens, and gives you a Catalog of Specimens to complete. Explore different parts of the beautiful valley searching for new flora.
When you find a new plant, collect it for the catalog! Once the catalog is full, return it to Old Claw to receive a special medal.
Spring Specimen Collector: Untradeable. Medal. STR/DEX/INT/LUK: +8, Weapon ATT/Magic ATT: +6, Weapon DEF/Magic DEF: +300.
Each specimen you find also gives you research points. You’ll receive more research points if you find a rare specimen! You can also complete daily quests to earn research points. You can only earn 5,000 Research Points per world each day. This restriction resets at midnight (12:00 AM Pacific) each day.
Take your research points to Captain Wangpang's store to exchange them for some specialty goods including restorative items, potential scrolls and stamps, an Exceptional Botanist title, and more.
Exceptional Botanist: Untradeable. Title. STR/DEX/LUK/INT: +2, MaxMP: +1,000, Weapon ATT/Magic ATT: +2.
In addition to new flora, there is new fauna to discover as well! Three times a day, you can enter special hunting maps. You get 20 minutes to hunt the various monsters that appear there, earning lots of EXP and completing daily quests!
Keep an eye out as you explore, for there are secret elements and fun “easter eggs” hidden all over! Look for hidden locations, try dropping specific items in front of certain plants, and observe monsters closely to see if they’re carrying any interesting items.When I was in college I spent the spring semester of my sophomore year in Paris. It was an amazing experience and has since led me to traveling out of the USA as much as possible (aka, when I can afford it). But as great as my semester abroad was, there were some things I wish I had known before arriving in the City of Lights. For example, I wish I had known that though being a polite American will help you get around town, being an angry American who can yell at Parisians in their own language will get you even further. There are just certain important facts that the travel books won’t tell you. They don’t tell you that refusing food in Taiwan is a grave insult, but burping loudly is considered a compliment to the chef. So from my experiences overseas, here’s a list of do’s and don’t when spending a semester abroad: *Do bang anything that moves. Even if she’s ugly, she’s still foreign. *Do not bang bareback. Foreign girls tend to be skanks. *Do take advantage of the lowered drinking age and the late night bars. The beer tastes better and has a higher alcohol content.
*Do not do drugs (Amsterdam excluded). If you doubt me, go watch a little movie called “Midnight Express”. *Do say that you are American. Pick the closest big city and say you are from there. *Don’t pretend to be Canadian. You will just get laughed at. *If you go to Italy, do eat everything. Nothing tastes bad in Italy. *If you go to China, don’t order the lobster. They will bring it out slightly alive and moving and even though that’s the freshest way to eat it, it’s still creepy. *Do go out and experience as much of the music, art and culture as you can. *Don’t think you have to like it. Trust me, Europe has as much crap as America. *If you are in Thailand, do get a massage. They are cheap and awesome. *If you are in Thailand, do not get a hand job after your massage. More than likely your masseur is a dude.
*Do spend some time and learn the language of your host country. Even if it’s a couple of swear words – it will make you sound cool. *Do not come back with a fucking accent. Unless you want your friends to beat the shit out of you. *If possible, do take a train to other countries. They have sleeper coaches that are relatively inexpensive and pretty comfy. *Do not share your sleeper coach with a German. They smell and insist on keeping the window closed and you will have to battle them all night (luckily you’re American so you will win…again). And the most important of all the do’s and don’ts when traveling abroad: *Do make sure you get school credit before you leave. Nothing’s worse than having to repeat Freshman Comp. *Do not skip classes. Save that for when you return back to campus.Greenburgh schools Superintendent Ronald O. Ross (Photo: File)
A principal, the human resources director, two guidance counselors and four teachers are suing the superintendent of Greenburgh schools over creating what they described as a hostile workplace rife with harassment and filled with racial, religious and sexual slurs.
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'm more than happy. I'm just so grateful. Words can't express how absolutely thrilled I am this season. It's been amazing.
IGN: He was the most close to redemption we've ever seen him at the end of last year. Have they figured out a way to maybe balance the somewhat kinder Chang with the Chang that can really go off the wall?
Jeong: In a word, yes. And they did it in such a way that I never could have thought of or anybody else in the world could have thought of. But Dan, as always, just finds a way.
Exit Theatre Mode
IGN: You also have John Oliver back this season, for the first time in a couple years. What's that been like?
Jeong: It's just like a family reunion, man. Fits like a glove. Having John back, on and off camera, he's such a wonderful presence, as is everybody else in the cast. It is great. Some of my favorite moments have been from the first season where me, John Oliver and Jim Rash were at the pool with Britta, and the introduction of Leonard. The three of us just reminisced about that. It was really cool, just me, John and Jim one day hanging out, talking together. I dunno, having John back just reminds me of the old days. He fits in perfectly on and off camera. Also, I'm so happy for him and his trajectory on The Daily Show, among other things that he's producing and doing. It's just great to reconnect with an old friend. It's been that kind of vibe. He's just a wonderful human being, just another brilliant, funny man that I've been so fortunate enough to have met through this show. I feel like I've just met the funniest of funny on this show. I've been able to rub elbows with the best.
Community: Yvette Nicole Brown Season 5 Interview
IGN: What can you say about Jonathan Banks and the energy he brings to the show?
Jeong: He brings a gravitas that's just so... I was watching a scene that he and Joel were doing yesterday, and just the nuances and the tiny moments of pure acting chops synthesized with the comedy of Community... He's been able to synthesize the two elements and make it his own and fuse it into something that no one else could do. Dan's absolutely right, I mean, Jonathan is owning so much scenery right now. It's been great. I share a trailer with him, and just to share a trailer and hang out with him has been, again man, it's been among the coolest things ever. It's been a wonderful, wonderful season, dude. Every day, reading the scripts, coming into work, we are all just going in with smiles on our faces.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.Statement by UN Watch to UN Human Rights Council, Agenda Item 4
Delivered by Rosa Maria Paya, 12 March 2013
Thank you, Mr. President.
My name is Rosa Maria Payá, member of the Christian Liberation Movement and daughter of its national coordinator, Oswaldo Payá, opposition leader and Sakharov Prize laureate of the European Parliament.
My father dedicated his life to working for legal and nonviolent change for Cubans to enjoy all basic human rights.
He promoted the Varela Project, a referendum supported by over 25,000 citizens, who have defied repression to demand legal reforms that guarantee freedom of expression, freedom of association, free elections, freedom of nonviolent political prisoners and the right to own private enterprises.
The government has so far refused to allow this plebiscite, and it imprisoned the majority of its leaders.
Yosvani Melchor Rodríguez is 30 years old, and has spent three years in prison as a punishment for his mother being a member of our movement.
Cuban authorities said that my father and Harold Cepero, a youth activist, died in a traffic accident. But after interviewing the survivors, we confirmed that their deaths were not accidental.
[Cuban delegate Juan Quintanilla starts banging on his desk.]
President of the Session (UNHRC Vice President Luis Gallegos Chiriboga, ambassador of Ecuador):
There is a point of order from the delegation of Cuba.
Cuba (Juan Quintanilla):
Thank you, Mr. President. I apologize for the noise in the room but it was necessary to interrupt the statement by the mercenary who has dared to come to this room. We would like to ask, Mr. President, if this debate on Item 4 refers to general questions that may show a pattern of violations of human rights, or whether it is also to be used to address specific issues such as what is being done now by the mercenary, who has been taking the floor at this juncture. We have this concern, Mr. President, and we would be very grateful if you could clarify things for us and if you could show this to the mercenary who is delivering a statement. Thank you.
United States:
Thank you Mr. President. We highlight that the US firmly believes that NGOs must be permitted to speak in the Council. The member states, including the United States, may occasionally disagree with the content of a NGO statement. It is essential that civil society voices be heard here in an atmosphere of open expression. Without addressing the substance of what the speaker was saying, we are of the opinion that what we have heard of the intervention so far is addressed to the subject matter at hand before this Council under item 4. Mr. President, we respectfully ask that you rule that the speaker be allowed to finish her presentation. Thank you.
China: Thank you, Mr. President. The Chinese delegation believes that the concern of the Cuban delegation is valid. I hope, Mr. President, that you will seriously consider the request by the Cuban delegation. Thank you.
Russia: Thank you, Mr. President. Our delegation would like to support what is being said by the delegation of Cuba, objecting to the procedure being used for conducting the meeting. We would like to ask you to appeal to the representative of the NGO which is speaking to adhere to the established rules of procedure for the Council and the agenda as established. Thank you very much.
Pakistan: We support the point of order raised by the Cuban delegation. Thank you.
Nicaragua: My delegation is asking for the floor to support the request put forward by Cuba in its point of order. Thank you very much.
Belarus: Mr. President, the delegation of Belarus joins the well-founded statement on the point of order and procedural issues as raised by the delegation of Cuba. Thank you.
President: I would like to remind the organizations that are speaking that we are on Agenda Item 4, the human rights situations which require attention in the Council, and that they confine to that subject matter in their statements.
[Paya then resumed her statement.]
Thank you, Mr. President.
The driver of the car told the Washington Post that they were intentionally rammed from behind. The text messages from the survivors on the day of the event confirm this.
The Cuban government’s state security calls my family home in Havana, saying: “We’re going to kill you.” These are the same death threats that were made to my father. I want to be clear: The physical integrity of all members of my family is the responsibility of the Cuban government.
Today I wish to present this appeal, signed by 46 political leaders and activists from around the world. We urge the United Nations to launch an independent investigation into the death of my father.
The truth is essential to the process of reconciliation that is necessary for a transition to democracy in Cuba. We do not seek revenge. But we have a right to know:
Who is responsible for the death of my father?
When will the people of Cuba finally enjoy basic democracy and fundamental freedoms?
Thank you, Mr. President.
At the end of the general debate, Cuba took the floor again to exercise a right of reply.
Cuba, exercising right of reply:It’s Time For The Disc Golf Pro Tour To Rethink Its Live Coverage
It's early, but the viewers are not there. The tour can act now to change its course.
After two events of the Disc Golf Pro Tour, one thing is clear: For an event whose mantra from the beginning has implored people to “Watch,” people are simply not watching.
A quick glance at the “watching now” numbers for the tour’s Silver Cup broadcast this weekend shows they were, to put it gently, less than ideal. At numerous times Friday and Saturday the numbers bounced between 300 and 400 viewers. For Sunday’s final round, it topped out just shy of 1,100, and it took about halfway through the round for those numbers to crest triple digits. While those numbers don’t paint the full viewership story – users come and go throughout the show, so the total number is somewhat higher – past disc golf livestreams have easily reached the 3,500-4,000 “watching now” range.
Some of the problem is the weekend dilemma – on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, the disc golf-viewing fanbase that events like these rely upon are out playing disc golf, not sitting inside watching – while some of it can be attributed to the Paul McBeth factor: When the sport’s Tiger Woods is not playing, the eyeballs wander elsewhere.
Still, peak viewing for the first event of the tour, the Vibram Open, was reported by the Pro Tour to have a maximum concurrent viewership of 3,000, although the “watching now” digits ticked in between 1,500 and 2,000 for most of the event. A dip in hits last weekend does not bode well for the livestream’s long-term prospects.
Suffice to say, the numbers are not cutting it, and it’s time to make some changes. Here’s how we suggest increasing the viewership and getting the tour back on track.
Air the broadcast on SmashboxxTV’s YouTube channel
As the foremost livestreaming provider in disc golf right now, SmashboxxTV was a no-brainer for the Disc Golf Pro Tour. Established viewers are already familiar with the platform and its personalities, and Terry Miller’s team has shown an impressive ability to learn and adapt on the fly. Their broadcasts continue to improve.
The Smashboxx YouTube channel also happens to have 12,317 subscribers. The Disc Golf Pro Tour channel? 2,581.
From the outset, the Disc Golf Pro Tour has decided to eschew nearly 10,000 extra sets of eyes, and the viewership numbers show that this was a mistake. Yes, the tour will likely want to build its channel over time in an effort to attract advertisers, but if the goal is to make people “Watch,” then put it in front of the most people possible from the start.
Either that, or brand the broadcasts to be Disc Golf Pro Tour broadcasts, not Smashboxx broadcasts on the Disc Golf Pro Tour channel. Lead broadcaster Miller has yet to don a Pro Tour shirt, sports a prominent Smashboxx lanyard, and makes copious references to the network’s fans, the “Smashies,” during broadcasts. Which is all another reason to let Smashboxx take the ball to its channel and run with it. It already looks like its event, anyway.
Yes, major league sports all have their own networks now, but that is only a recent development. For the majority of broadcasting history, sports were aired on a network. SmashboxxTV is that network for disc golf, so it makes sense to take advantage of the viewership base it has built.
Scrap livestreaming until the Tour Championship
Even if the Pro Tour does move its coverage to Smashboxx’s channel, it should wait to air another live broadcast until September at the Tour Championship.
As the culminating event of the six-tournament series, the Tour Championship boasts high stakes, with the winner taking home a huge $10,000 payout. That increased drama is prime for live coverage, and is ready-made for hype. But why kick the other three events to the curb?
Imagine taking Smashboxx’s budget for one broadcast – the company would not divulge what it is charging the Pro Tour, but two industry sources estimated the number at between $5,000 and $10,000 per tournament – and multiplying that by four. By nixing the livestreaming of the Minnesota Majestic, Ledgestone Open, and the Green Mountain Championships, the tour could funnel that money – at the low end of estimates, an extra $15,000 – into coverage of the Tour Championships and a possible $20,000 broadcast. With a larger budget, Smashboxx could cover more cards, hire more commentators, and deliver a livestreaming product disc golf has yet to see. That alone, if advertised correctly, would bring more attention to the event and, hopefully, more viewers.
Flood social media
In the interim, the Pro Tour can focus its coverage efforts for the next three events on building up its social media presence, which is sorely lacking. Both the PDGA National Tour and the Disc Golf World Tour have set the model for the Pro Tour to follow, as evidenced in the table below:
Social Media Posts On The Day Of A Tournament's Final Round
Event Facebook Twitter Instagram Total Disc Golf World Tour European Open 53 64 89 206 PDGA National Tour Beaver State Fling 5 76 2 83 Disc Golf Pro Tour Silver Cup 3 6 21 30
It’s nearly impossible to log on to social media during a World Tour event and not find out what is happening with the tournament. Compare that with the Pro Tour, and the difference is stark. Of those three Facebook posts from the Pro Tour – the medium on which it has the most followers – this past Sunday, zero came before the final round started. In fact, the tour posted the link to its livestream almost an hour after the event had already begun, which is a stunning failure on its part. The other two posts were late night recaps. Its Instagram presence was only marginally better, with a few of the photos posted on Sunday coming in the form of images from Saturday’s action. Of its six Twitter posts, five were cross-posts from Instagram.
The World Tour and the PDGA, meanwhile, have leveraged social media to post snippets of video and play-by-play action to replace livestreaming. Yes, many of the World Tour’s numbers are boosted by cross-posts on multiple platforms, but anyone who wants to follow the action live can capably do so on their network of choice. Additionally, both organizations have employed Facebook Live to great success, with the World Tour’s stream of the final four holes of the European Open drawing more than 3,000 viewers. That’s almost triple the Pro Tour’s livestream, and it was free for both viewers and the tour’s organizers.
The method is sound, and it does not seem to detract from post-produced coverage; the final round back 9 of the European Open has been viewed almost 120,000 times. It’s a model the Pro Tour should adopt as a way to cover its next events in anticipation of a high quality livestream at the Tour Championship. It would serve both ends: Give the events attention, and grow the Pro Tour’s online audience.
If it truly wants to shepherd in the “modern age of disc golf,” the Disc Golf Pro Tour needs to embrace the modern age of media. It may not align with organizers’ initial vision to initiate these changes, but adapting to the landscape is important for sustainability. The tour, and its broadcast team, work way too hard for way too few views. It’s time to make some changes for the prolonged health of these events.Greetings, Rocksmith fans!
I hope your holidays were as merry as can be! Now that the weekly DLC has finished for the year, let’s take a look back at the gifts @UbisoftStudioSF has lovingly given us for the month of December.
Firstly, here are the results of November’s DLC poll:
Unsurprisingly, Bachsmith wins out for a second time. Second packs of both Black Keys and Hit Singles proved to be quite popular, and it looks like Rancid‘s challenging basslines might be a bit too intense for most players.
This month was full of heavily requested bands, with the double-release of near-constantly requested (on the Facebook page, at least) Christian metal/post-grunge band Skillet and two singles from Christmas-themed charity supergroup Band of Merrymakers, the intensely popular comedy rock duo Tenacious D, a top 40 request in the form of hair metal icons Mötley Crüe, and the unfortunately timed but well-worth playing grunge icons Stone Temple Pilots to close out the year.
Bassits might not have had quite as many excellent basslines this month as November gave us, but the month was not without some standouts, especially in the form of Stone Temple Pilots’ unconventional blend of grunge with harmonic variety and groove courtesy of bass guitarist Robert DeLeo.
Betcha didn’t expect a grunge band would have this much harmonic variety.
If you listen closely, Interstate Love Song’s bass sounds more like a reggae bassline than most grunge.
Lots of chromatic walks in this one.
Crüe are a pop-metal band first and foremost, but A fair number of slides and octaves give Dr. Feelgood a nice bit of playability.
Guitarists were in for quite a treat this month; with the shredding solos of Tenacious D and Crüe, the heavy riffs of Skillet, the unconventional atonality and variety of Stone Temple Pilots, and the beginner-friendly acoustic jams of Band of Merrymakers, there was something for every skill level this month.
Harmonized on two separate lead guitar charts!
A killer riff and a very challenging arpeggio section.
A short but very sweet solo in this one.
Fast and intense
Some interesting chords and slide guitar sections courtesy of Dean DeLeo.
A delightfully merry song for beginners.
While E standard remains the undisputed champion of tunings, December gave us a fair amount of variety with the downtuning of Mötley Crüe and Skillet.
Arrangement E Standard Drop D D Standard Eb Drop Db Drop C Lead 10 2 5 1 1 Rhythm 10 2 5 1 1 Bass 10 2 5 1 1 Alternate Lead 2 X X X X
Which brings us to the usual question:
Happy New Year everyone! Regular Rocksmith DLC releases resume in January, stay tuned for the end-of-year Rocksmith DLC Battle and Riff Repeater Bowl!RuPaul Is The Head Gay In Charge In New Clip From “The Real O’Neals”
The second season of The Real O’Neals premieres tonight on ABC, and what better way to start off the new season than with a cameo from Mama Ru?!
In a clip from the episode, the O’Neal family is gathered around on the couch watching the local gay pride parade on TV—as families do—when Eileen O’Neal (played by Martha Plimpton) comes in to dampen the party and ask if the pride parade could be a little less—flamboyant.
What does Kenny (Noah Galvin) do? He picks up his Rainbow Bat-Phone and calls up celebri-gays like Lance Bass, Jane Lynch and Tyler Oakley who patch him through to RuPaul to turn down the gayness.
See what happens in the cute clip below.
The Real O’Neals premieres Tuesday, October 11 at 9:30/8:30c on ABC.America In Decline Articles
B/C 400
ObamaCare…
Chief Justice Roberts Is A Traitor
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2012 Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner
& Link To Real Jew News (SM) Support The Brother Nathanael Foundation!
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A TAX ON ‘DISSENT’
is now the law of the land in the United States of Amerika due to Chief Justice John Roberts voting
to uphold ObamaCare.
Never before in the history of Amerika has a tax been levied on a decision made by an American citizen. And “bizarre” is not quite the word to define this unprecedented tax.
More accurately, what Roberts has bequeathed to the youth of Amerika is the quashing of all legitimate DISSENT by IMPOSING A TAX on any American citizen who protests against what the Jewish-run Congress demands he or she should do.
In a 5-4 vote ushering in the totalitarian-inspired ObamaCare, Roberts sided with the 4 Jews who sit on Amerika’s highest bench: Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.
Rather than recuse herself due to her involvement in promoting ObamaCare during her tenure as Solicitor General, Kagan and her co-religionists voted to solidify the centralization of Jewish power by yet another Federal encroachment on the American citizen’s autonomy.
And John Roberts, in his egoism to show off just how very “clever” he is by morphing a penalty into a tax, sided with Jewry’s ultimate agenda: The enslavement of the Goyim through Federal centralization usurping States’ rights.
And what is even weirder, Roberts wrote BOTH opinions on ObamaCare…a very strange treason indeed.
A JEWISH CESSPOOL
WHETHER A “PENALTY” or a “tax,” a cesspool by any other name smells the same.
Jacob Lew, Obama’s Chief of Staff, a Talmudic Jew, (a Jew who subscribes to the blasphemous Talmud), defended ObamaCare against Roberts’ “tax” by insisting that the fine for refusing the individual mandate was a “penalty” and not a “tax,” as if a “penalty” is something praiseworthy. So much for Talmudic reasoning.
Yet, Roberts’ tax exceeds the foul odour of the most polluted, dung-ridden, ‘penalty-infested’ cesspool.
A “penalty” in the form of a “fine” when a citizen refuses to buy what Congress says he or she should buy, odious as it is, imposes no more than a Congressional demand upon the American citizen.
BUT, a TAX levied on a refusal to purchase what a Jewish-run Congress demands a citizen must purchase is nothing less than a TAX ON DISSENT.
DISSENT IS THE VERY CORE of American life, manifested by American history and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights which provides for the freedom of the American citizen to pursue his own quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of his OWN happiness.
By Roberts taxing refusals to purchase the individual mandate, dissent has been criminalized with the threat of an IRS agent throwing WE THE DISSENTERS into jail.
And by the way, the IRS, is run by the Jew, Douglas Shulman, chief criminalizer and executioner of those who exercise their right of dissent in refusing to purchase ObamaCare.
Shulman’s co-religionist, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, warned last week that those who dissent against purchasing ObamaCare will “rightfully” unleash all the powers of the IRS against themselves. (So much for Jewish hubris NOW IN OUR FACES.)
Indeed, the Jews have got Amerika by the you-know-what and make demands and threats with their Jewish heads uncovered.
And Chief Justice Roberts has become Jewry’s hero…a badge of dishonor that any true Christian man would shrink from.
ROBERTS IS A TRAITOR
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS IS A TRAITOR pure and simple.
Roberts may flatter himself with his cutesy smile and lofty thoughts of how very clever he is but history will write him down as a betrayer of the vision laid down by the Founding Fathers of America.
For our Founding Fathers limited the power of Congress to tax the individual as they sought to harness the Federal government’s penchant to intrude upon States’ rights.
By tilting the Jewish vote in favor of ObamaCare, Roberts has spit in the face of all that Washington, Jefferson, and Madison envisioned for a liberty-affirming nation (including the power of the people to overthrow a tyrannical government) and has brought Jewish rule over Amerikan life to its apogee.
A turncoat more treasonous than a Benedict Arnold has now befouled the pages of Amerikan history in the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts.
May Roberts make a public repentance before the pages of history write him down as a traitor.
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Share it: Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: 33 Disturbing Photos Of The Second Sino-Japanese War That Reveal Why China Is World War II's Forgotten Victim 24 Mesmerizing Examples Of Animal Camouflage In The Wild 38 Rousing Photos Of The American Workers That Helped The Allies Win World War II 1 of 26 RMS Olympic (the nearly identical sister ship of the Titanic, 1919. Wikimedia Commons 2 of 26 The Zealandia in Sydney, Australia, 1914. Wikimedia Commons 3 of 26 HMS Polyanthus, circa 1917-1918. Wikimedia Commons 4 of 26 RMS Olympic, 1915. Wikimedia Commons 5 of 26 The RMS Mauretania arrives in New York City, bringing troops home from Europe after World War I, on December 2, 1918 Library of Congress 6 of 26 USS Alloway, San Francisco Bay, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 7 of 26 World War I troop ship SS Empress of Russia, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 8 of 26 British destroyer HMS Badsworth, 1941. Wikimedia Commons 9 of 26 British gunboat HMS Kilbride, circa 1914-1918. Wikimedia Commons 10 of 26 The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Hornet near Okinawa, Japan, March 1945. Wikimedia Commons 11 of 26 British sloop HMS Rocksand, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 12 of 26 British seaplane tender HMS Pegasus, 1917. Wikimedia Commons 13 of 26 British gunboat HMS Kildangan, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 14 of 26 British ship Elpenor arriving at Liverpool, August 1918. Wikimedia Commons 15 of 26 Minelayer HMS London painted in dazzle camouflage of black, white, gray, blue, and cream, May 1918. Wikimedia Commons 16 of 26 The Ulm, a former German refrigeration vessel converted to a mine ship during World War II, date unknown. Wikimedia Commons 17 of 26 British patrol gunboat HMS Killour, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 18 of 26 HMS Argus with a battle cruiser in the distance, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 19 of 26 Royal Navy seaplane tender HMS Nairana, 1917. Wikimedia Commons 20 of 26 Royal Navy seaplane tender HMS Nairana, 1917. Wikimedia Commons 21 of 26 U.S. Navy amphibious command ship USS Mount Olympus, June 1944. Wikimedia Commons 22 of 26 U.S. Navy destroyer/minelayer USS Aaron Ward, November 1944. Wikimedia Commons 23 of 26 HMAS Melbourne, Rosyth, Scotland, 1918. Wikimedia Commons 24 of 26 Battleship USS California sporting dazzle camouflage, Puget Sound, January 1944. Wikimedia Commons 25 of 26 U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in Kyushu, Japan, 1945. Wikimedia Commons 26 of 26 Like this gallery?
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25 Eye-Popping Photos Of World War I & II Dazzle Camouflage View Gallery
At the outset of World War I, an American artist and British zoologist independently attempted to convince Winston Churchill to paint stripes on all Royal Navy ships.
However, counterintuitively, the pair hoped that these stripes would act as a form of camouflage — meant not to conceal, but to confuse.
Churchill, then Great Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, rejected the idea. He shot the zebra stripes down as "freak methods," and ones which the Admiralty considered to be "of academic interest but not of practical advantage," according to author Peter Forbes.
But then one of their own, marine artist and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officer Norman Wilkinson, piggybacked on these ideas and refined them.
Rather than pull inspiration from the animal kingdom or art theory, Wilkinson suggested using abstract "masses of strongly contrasted color," such as highly conspicuous streaks, blobs, and shards. When covering a ship, experts hoped that the coloring would confuse nearby submarines about the vessel's true size, shape, and intended navigation. If everything went to plan, the coloring would thus make the streaked ship harder to hit.
With World War I still raging, the Admiralty adopted this so-called "dazzle camouflage" technique, and the U.S. Navy soon followed suit.
The scheme's effectiveness varied wildly, with some historians saying that governments put too many variations into use to accurately gauge the potency of the paint. Still, the custom continued. During World War II, the Germans also adopted the technique.
The tactic wouldn't last that long, however. As radar, rangefinders, and aircraft became more advanced, the success rate of dazzle camouflage suffered, and its use dwindled.
The gallery above features some of the most eye-popping examples of dazzle camouflage, primarily from the World War I-era, when the method saw the most widespread use.
Intrigued by this look at dazzle camouflage? Next, see how some of Earth's most fascinating creatures conceal themselves with these photos of animal camouflage in action. Then, step into the trenches with these powerful World War I photos.The Ducks have signed forward Dennis Rasmussen to a one-year contract through the 2017-18 season. Per club policy, no financial terms of the deal were disclosed.
Rasmussen, 27 (7/3/90), has collected 8-9=17 points with a +5 rating and 16 penalty minutes (PIM) in 112 career NHL games with the Chicago Blackhawks. He played the entire 2016-17 season with the Blackhawks, recording 4-4=8 points with 12 PIM in 68 games. Rasmussen made his debut in the Stanley Cup Playoffs this spring, scoring his first career postseason goal against Pekka Rinne in Game 3 of the First Round on April 17 at Nashville.
A native of Vasteras, Sweden, Rasmussen has represented his country in several international tournaments since 2009. The 6-3, 205-pound center won bronze for Team Sweden at the 2014 World Championship in Russia and 2010 World Junior Championship in Saskatchewan. Following the 2014 World Championship, Rasmussen signed as a free agent with Chicago and made his North American debut in 2014-15 with Rockford of the American Hockey League (AHL), earning 13-14=27 points with a +9 rating and 30 PIM in 73 games.Former Black Stick Kyle Pontifex was the hero for Capital in the National Hockey League final.
The oldest man on the turf proved the hero as Capital won the National Hockey League title.
Capital's 35-year-old former Black Sticks goalkeeper, Kyle Pontifex, saved the final shot of a shootout after the final against Southern had ended scoreless at fulltime.
Pontifex dove down to his right to deny Kirk Shimmins, before throwing down his pads and helmet to celebrate with his team.
It was the most dramatic event in an otherwise tense final.
A cagey opening quarter set the tone for the match, as both teams appeared more focused on not conceding rather than breaking the deadlock in the driving rain.
Capital won the first penalty corner of the match after 13 minutes, with Ollie Logan forcing a brilliant stick save from Tom Lysaght low to his right.
Capital dominated possession in the second quarter without really threatening, while Southern were happy to sit back and wait for a Capital mistake.
The halftime team talks did not see a change in approach from either side and Capital were quick to take control again when the teams emerged for the second half.
Black Stick Blair Hilton won a penalty corner after just 90 seconds of the half, but Lysaght was able to make a comfortable save from the ensuing shot.
Southern wrestled back some control late in the quarter but the stalemate continued.
A tense final quarter never looked like producing a goal, with the real action starting after the final whistle in the shootout.
Brad Read had Capital's first penalty saved by Lysaght, before Hugo Inglis put a penalty stroke past Pontifex after the Capital keeper tripped him on his penalty attempt.
Capital's Steven Ebbers and Harry Miskimmin made no mistake with their penalties, while Southern's Nick Ross and Blair Tarrant - who was awarded tournament MVP after the game - kept their side's perfect record intact.
Benedict van Woerkman scored his penalty for Capital, before Callum Bailey had his shot saved by Pontifex as Southern started to unravel.
Hilton scored what would be a crucial penalty with a superb reverse shot, as Pontifex stepped up on Southern's last attempt, saving Irishman Shimmins' penalty to win the shootout 4-3 and secure the Challenge Shield - their first title since 2010.
Hilton admitted to a few nerves before stepping up to take his shot.
"I've had a couple of nerve-racking ones recently so I was just happy to see it go into the back of the net.
"It's been a tough tournament but it was great to get through in the end."
Earlier in the men's bronze medal match, Auckland beat Midlands 3-2 thanks to a brace from Black Sticks skipper Simon Child, including a sublime reverse stick finish to win the game early in the final quarter.Theera Ratarasarn shows off his home brew, Activated Sludge Wheat Ale beer — brewed using purified Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District wastewater plant effluent. Credit: Michael Sears
SHARE Mitchel De Santis (from left), Russ Klisch, president of Lakefront Brewery, and John Rinson test Activated Sludge Wheat Beer. Kathy Flanigan
By of the
There are disturbing aspects to Theera Ratarasarn's home brew.
The name: Activated Sludge. The label: That is a radiation symbol. The ingredients: It's brewed with purified Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District wastewater plant effluent.
But it tastes great.
To Ratarasarn, making beer with water that hasn't gone through the final cleaning process was a mission.
"I wanted to get people talking," he said "There's a potential use for what we discharge into lakes and streams."
A wastewater engineer with the state Department of Natural Resources by day, Ratarasarn, 39, has been home-brewing beer for nearly two years, usually at night after his two young sons are in bed.
It's a simple enough process — mash, boil, add hops, cool, add yeast and ferment. Unless the water is suspect. Then add a half-dozen more steps.
Ratarasarn chlorinated, dechlorinated, filtered, distilled, tested and added nutrients to the water before beginning to make 5 gallons of Activated Sludge, a wheat ale with 5.15% alcohol by volume.
After all those steps, Ratarasarn wasn't worried about the beer's safety. Neither was a taste panel at Lakefront Brewery, where Activated Sludge went head-to-head with Lakefront Wheat Monkey.
Panel members smelled their sip of beer. They cracked wise.
"It looks like a good urine sample," said John Rinson.
Then they tasted.
"No pathogen known to man that can grow in beer," said brewery president Russ Klisch, who praised Ratarasarn's Activated Sludge for its golden color. His down note was the beer's carbonation and lack of body.
Another taster, Mitchel De Santis, graded the beer a 7 on a 10-point scale, giving Ratarasarn two points for creativity. "It's one of the better home brews I've ever had."
Ratarasarn wanted to prove a point by using the water.
"I wanted to raise awareness of the quality of plant effluent," he said.
Think Bill Gates and the steam-powered sewage processor he's touting. Gates' processor burns solid waste for water and electricity. The water Ratarasarn worked with was clean water, just not clean enough for drinking, said Bill Graffin, MMSD public information officer.
Activated Sludge wheat ale is a similar concept but on a smaller scale.
Arid communities struggle for clean drinking water. Ratarasarn wanted to see what he could do based on the "knowledge that I have."
He also has a sense of humor about it. A PowerPoint presentation Ratarasarn made illustrating the steps he took is themed "A little bit of me, a little bit of you."
Ratarasarn chose to brew a wheat beer because he likes them and he's made them before. He said he steered clear of darker beers such as porters or stouts "so people wouldn't associate the beer with wastewater."
The hard part, he said, is getting the water profile correct for each beer he brews. This one, with the substandard water, proved to be the most difficult. Ratarasarn wanted to send the treated MMSD water out for testing and requested the $200 test as a Christmas present.
"My wife asked me what I wanted, and I said a water test," Ratarasarn said. "She just rolled her eyes and said 'yes.'"
The tests came back nearly perfect, with less than a trace of silica, likely from the final filter in the distillation unit.
Don't run to the liquor store just yet. Ratarasarn made Activated Sludge wheat beer for his own consumption. Based on the curiosity factor, Ratarasarn won't be able to keep his home inventory for long.
"Everybody I talk to wants one," he said.Christian leader Pat Robertson is claiming that God gave him insight regarding who America’s next president will be. But the conservative media mogul isn’t willing to
|
's World Cup, Harrison believes now is the perfect time to get involved.
"People are really starting to realize that these women are athletes, and they're good athletes. And it's just getting people excited about soccer in general, as well as women's soccer," Harrison said.
"After the World Cup, I think parents will start to say, 'Oh, my daughter is enjoying this or my son is enjoying this, and hey there's this local team--let's go check them out,' and that can get kids even more excited about playing."
In its inaugural season, Steel City F.C. tallied six wins, two losses, and one tie, though Harrison noted that both losses were to the top team in their division.
"It was a whirlwind," Harrison said. "When I look back on it, I can't believe how quickly it went from being a concept in my head to being a real thing."
"It was a ton of work," she said with a laugh. "I think my school work this year might have taken a hit but--hey--I made it."
To learn more about Steel City F.C. and find out how you can support the team, visit www.SteelCityFC.com.Once the GOP calls his bluff and stops providing him political cover, Trump is a sitting duck and his Alt Right fan base won't be able to save him. At long last, this appears to have finally happened.
The New York Times broke a story today revealing the shocking extent of the bad blood between the president Trump and Majority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. If you are a Trump fan, the story makes for incredibly depressing reading given the precarious place the Trump administration is in after events in Charlottesville. The Times reported:
The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.
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What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.
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Unable to take responsibility for his own failures, Trump has vented his anger and blamed the failure of Obamacare repeal on McConnell, who apparently isn't taking it lying down. This is not good for Trump, who has relied on his ability to cajole and bully Republicans into doing exactly what he wants for almost two years. McConnell's doubts about Trump's ability to salvage his presidency is a sign that the GOP wants out of the Trump experiment, and won't be putting up with his behavior for too much longer.
Yesterday, Matt Taibbi published a blistering synopsis of the Trump administration and its almost incomprehensible dysfunction, arguing that every aspect of Trump's personality that helped him get elected is now working catastrophically against him:
Life in the Trump era is like the president's favorite medium, Twitter: an endless scroll of half-connected little anger Chiclets rapidly spinning us all into madness and conflict, with no end in sight.
This is Trump's legacy. Because of his total inability to concentrate or lead, he will likely never do anything meaningful with the real governmental power he possesses – if he had a tenth of the managerial skills of Hitler, we'd be in impossibly deep shit right now. But as an enabler of behavior, as a stoker of arguments and hardener of resentments, he has no equal. Under Trump, racists become more racist, the woke necessarily become more woke, and areas of compromise among all quickly dwindle and disappear. He has us arguing about things that weren't even questions a few minutes ago, like, are Nazis bad?
While Taibbi's autopsy is severe, he also reminds us that during his low points, Trump is also at his "most dangerous":
Trump has shown, once again, that his power to bring out the worst in people is limitless. And we should know by now that he's never finished, never beaten. Historically, he's most dangerous when he's at his lowest. And he's never been lower than now.
It is true that Trump's ability to turn a disastrous situation to his advantage is legendary, but there are bridges he has burned and goodwill he has incinerated that seems almost impossible to repair. Once the GOP calls his bluff and stops providing him political cover, Trump is a sitting duck and his Alt Right fan base won't be able to save him. At long last, this appears to have finally happened. While spineless and amoral, the GOP is still utterly ruthless and pragmatic, and Trump will be discarded when the opportunity arises. With an approval rating of 35%, the president has little leverage and will find his usual tactics fall on deaf ears.
As it stands, Trump almost certainly won't be the Republican candidate for president in 2020. And he may be gone long before then if the GOP can finally get its act together.
Hey there! If you love what we do, please consider becoming a paid member of The Daily Banter and supporting us in holding the Trump administration to account. Your help is needed more than ever, and is greatly appreciated.ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's done it again. Back in 1996 he defined an era. Then Robert Shiller immortalized it in "Irrational Exuberance."
Well, Alan's done it again. In his updated memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," you'll find the perfect label for the current global credit crisis: "Magic Piggy Banks!"
Shiller should have waited for Greenspan to come up his new zinger. Instead, Shiller jumped on the publishing bandwagon early. As a result, his latest book has a rather boring title: "The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to do About It." But the book's got bigger problems: Shiller's solutions read like a children's fairy tale about a bag full of magical beans.
But more about that in a minute, because this rapidly unfolding drama is a runaway train with fast-breaking news driving a plot choking on greed, arrogance and incompetence. First, Bear Stearns. Then the "Freddie and Fannie Fiasco," a $5.3 trillion insolvency." Now, just a few days after Greenspan's new zinger, a second tragic character appears on stage: The Secretary of the Treasury, announcing America's second huge "Magic Piggy Bank."
Imagine Henry Paulson, former boss of Goldman Sachs, who a year ago appeared with Fed boss Ben Bernanke and made their now-famous joint denial dismissing the subprime-credit crisis: "Contained," they said. Total propaganda, totally false! After five years of regular warnings, only a truly tragic actor would have made such obvious lies a year ago.
So now we have two tragic actors, Ben and Hank, running America's two "Magic Piggy Banks."
"Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb says: "Anyone who knows anything about the history of banking... will tell you that the subprime crisis was so bound to happen [but] banks have a tendency to sit on 'time bombs' while convincing themselves that they are conservative."
Paulson's excuse that he "was lied to" by congressional Democrats is at best a disingenuous cover-up. He's the former head of America's most successful investment bank; I can't imagine any Republican, let alone Bush's Treasury head, trusting the word of a Democrat -- it's not in their genes. His ideology obviously trumped his banker's natural instinct for due diligence.
Free market falsehoods, Reaganomics rolled over
What did the takeover of Fred-n-Fan teach us? The free-market system is dead, an outdated myth that for a long time conservatives only honored in the breach, while liberals still haven't caught on to this con-game. Paulson was repeating what Bernanke did just a few months earlier when he not only killed off Bear Sterns, he killed off free-market delusions with his historic bailout of Wall Street's incompetent bankers by opening of the discount window.
Yet, magically, conservatives won again, by losing again! As James Galbraith tells us in "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too," conservatives gave up on free markets long ago. So they don't even pretend that the delusional free-market magic of Reaganomics will work to solve our economic problems; instead, conservatives milked the bull market till last summer, then went direct to the "Magic Piggy Banks."
And, predictably, the wimpy liberals caved in to this con-game. Now we have a classic "moral hazard," setting up a bigger meltdown soon.
No wonder America's financial credibility and leadership role are rapidly deteriorating worldwide as well domestically. Shiller captured the essence of all tragic drama: "Irrational exuberance is wishful thinking on the part of investors that blinds us to the truth of our situation." The truth is, all Reaganomics disciples, Paulson, Bernanke, Greenspan and everyone before them clearly saw the credit crisis coming years ago. So, it not "blind?" Then what? Two alternatives:
"Blinded" Reaganomics ideologues? Maybe they really had a valid excuse for denying the truth of the situation, for not seeing the credit meltdown coming. Maybe they are blinded by some tragic inner flaw and were psychologically unable to stop sabotaging their own conservative dogma, unable to stop killing the American dream and stop destroying America's role as leader of the free world.
Maybe they really had a valid excuse for denying the truth of the situation, for not seeing the credit meltdown coming. Maybe they are blinded by some tragic inner flaw and were psychologically unable to stop sabotaging their own conservative dogma, unable to stop killing the American dream and stop destroying America's role as leader of the free world. "Intentional" Reaganomics Bubble-Blowers? In fact, they were never really "blinded." They were fully awake. Since 2000 they knew exactly what they were doing: Intentionally blowing a bubble during the bull phase, fully aware that America's "Magic Piggy Banks" would be forced to step in during the bear-recession phase to bail them out no matter how costly or stupid their catastrophes. In short: Reaganomics loves bubbles and bailouts, consistent with Friedman's classic edict that "only a crisis... produces real change." And as Thomas Frank says in "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule," that makes the elite richer.
Actually, the final chapter is still being scripted by these ideologues. The current failure of the Fed, Treasury and Reaganomics is a prelude to a final climax in their grand opera, a meltdown by 2011, far bigger than today's massive credit crisis, one that's now being compared to the Great Depression, even the fall of Rome.
In his review of Shiller's book in BusinessWeek, Chris Farrell relabeled Reaganomics as "Bubbleonomics," which may be far more accurate than "Magic Piggy Banks" as a title for Shiller's next book.
A financial democracy?
Maybe Shiller jumped the gun, but he already has the final scene sketched out for a new book. Warning: "Our psychological vulnerability to bubble thinking is greater than it's ever been... We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism. I believe we are close to a third episode, only this one will spread irrational pessimism and distrust -- not exuberance. If that happens, our economic problems will become much worse than they need to be, and our social problems will multiply."
But don't lose hope; Shiller has "solutions!" Yes, here's how he says we can avoid the catastrophic finale in this tragic soap opera. All we must do is fundamentally transform our entire government into a new "Financial Democracy." Here are his six key elements:
New government-mandated financial advice to educate small investors
New government watchdog agency protecting consumer against banks, etc.
New default laws protecting individuals against corporate bad guys, etc
New indexing systems to measure and expose Wall Street's performance
New corporate and financial insider disclosure requirements
New comprehensive databases so the public can make intelligent decisions, eliminating irrationality, making markets operate efficiently and rationally
Yikes! More government, and bigger! An academic's pipe-dream. No wonder one reviewer called Shiller a "mad scientist," Frankenstein, no doubt.
If Reaganomic ideologues don't kill "financial democracy" fast, I guarantee the new "Global Superclass" will. Read David Rothkopf's "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making." Publishers Weekly bluntly summarizes this new elite: Real political power today is with "leaders in international business, finance and the defense industry [who] move freely into high positions in their nations' governments and back to private life, largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures, which remain abysmally ignorant."
So forget it, a "Financial Democracy" will never happen. The superrich will never finance a revolutionary scheme that will throw them out of power. They know a savvy public will revolt and take back political power. Too bad more professors and politicians can't grasp this eternal war between a rapidly emerging "superclass" plutocracy and the clueless masses being manipulated by fairy tales about a "financial democracy."
Gobbled up
Taleb has a better fairy tale for the rapidly deteriorating tragedy of America's banking system and economy. In Fortune, Taleb tells us how a clueless turkey becomes a rare "Black Swan:" "A turkey is fed for 1,000 days, every day lulling it more and more into the feeling that the human feeders are acting in its best interest. Except that on the 1,001st day, the butcher shows up and there is a surprise. The surprise is for the turkey, not the butcher."
The same goes for Reaganomics and banking: "It is the'science' of risk management that effectively turned everyone involved into a turkey [replacing] so much experience and common sense with'models' that work worse than astrology, because they assume that the Black Swan does not exist."
Translation: He's telling us that Bernanke, Paulson, every Wall Street banker and all Reaganomics ideologues are an endangered species of turkeys. They have a blind spot, and will never see "the end" coming till it's all over.
Meanwhile America's trapped in a bizarre soap opera with two "Magic Piggy Banks," a new "Bubbleonomics" bible, and a flock of clueless turkeys who don't even know they're America's next "Black Swans!"New Ransomware Becomes the Hello World of Malware in 2016
Just when you thought ransomware had fizzled as a trend with threat actors instead turning to banking Trojans like Dridex, ransomware has re-emerged as a significant threat to individuals and organizations. The $17,000 payout by Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center this week represents the latest example of what Forbes characterized as a "ransomware crisis". While $17,000 may not have the sensational value of the $3.6 million dollar ransom that was originally reported, the larger cost came from the days of downtime the hospital experienced as a result of the malware infection.
Last week, Proofpoint researchers wrote about 7ev3n and a Valentine's Day campaign to distribute this particularly destructive piece of ransomware with high ransoms and the threat of publicly posting the files it encrypts. Earlier this week, we also published a first look at Locky, a new ransomware being distributed in high-volume campaigns by the actors behind many of the largest Dridex campaigns.
Ransomware is evolving rapidly from the CryptoWall and CryptoLocker campaigns that made headlines in the last two years. While the technology behind the malware hasn't necessarily changed a great deal (and, in fact, we are seeing some fairly simple variants in the wild with evidence of "amateur mistakes"), the diversity of ransomware, the threat actors involved, and the vectors in use are shifting rapidly.
To that end, Proofpoint researchers have assembled a roundup of important ransomware variants in a new paper. The paper provides additional analysis and/or first looks at several examples of innovations in ransomware and their distribution and C2 mechanisms.
We will continue to track changes in the ransomware landscape.
Check out the research paper for recommendations, technical details, and new developments in the "ransomware renaissance".Harvey Weinstein I'm Gonna Keep Making Movies With Or Without You, Bro
Harvey Weinstein, I'm Gonna Keep Making Movies, With or Without TWC
EXCLUSIVE
Harvey Weinstein is not giving up -- not even close -- he vows he'll continue making movies, whether it's with The Weinstein Co. or someplace else.
Weinstein's showdown with TWC is set for Tuesday morning in NYC, where he will make his case by speakerphone that he was illegally fired and has a right to retake the reins. His lawyer, Patty Glaser, will be in the Board of Directors meeting to make the case.
Our Weinstein sources say he knows he's "momentarily toxic" but thinks with a little time, writers and actors will seek him out again because of his track record. He believes -- and probably rightly so -- that TWC exists because of him. He believes he can go back and produce movies, or he can just as easily do it somewhere else.
As one source put it, "Harvey's like Judge Judy. She can do her show for CBS, but if she wanted to go to NBC she can do it because it's all about her."
Harvey may not be able to make his case Tuesday. There are rumblings the Board may fire Weinstein as the first order of business, then disconnect the speakerphone and throw Patty Glaser out of the meeting. If that happens, our Weinstein sources say they will 100% go either to arbitration or court.Did you hear the news? Penn State is 16-2-1 and is ranked No. 1 in the country. It's tied for first-place in the Big Ten and if the NCAA Tournament started today, it'd be the first overall seed. Despite only being in its fifth year of Division I play, the Nittany Lions look like one of the best teams out there, and it isn't a fluke.
Now that you're caught up, head over to Store Lions Store and check out RLR's newest shirt, commemorating Penn State's rapid rise through the college hockey ranks. If you're one of the college hockey traditionalists who wishes Michigan and Boston College played for the National Championship every year or you're still upset that the WCHA and CCHA rivalries have been lost to time, then oh well. Penn State is ruining college hockey, and that's too bad for you.
Like our other shirts, good guy Mitch at Humbly Made will print these to be famously comfortable. Note that these are currently available for pre-order and while our process isn't immediate, trust it; we'll get them in your mailboxes as soon as possible.
For updates on the shirts' progress, make sure you follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.One of the best things about this job besides the whiskey, has to be the trips the little details that come up while doing game research. Did you know that power armor, bug hunts, and a critical view of the soldier-citizen is all a part of Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers?It’s impressive how many science fiction works have been influenced by his novels, from Warhammer 40,000 to Aliens.
An opening cinematic lays down the thick Veerhoven (director of Starship Troopers, the film that misinterpreted Heinlein’s book), inspired propaganda for military action in favor of Super Earth. You are a Helldiver. A single unit trained for orbital insertion into hostile territories. Your space getup is more akin to an ancient Roman Centurion; fancy cape, distinguished helm, and heavy metallic plates. As pimp as that might sound, its not enough armor. If you’re lucky, you will only be outnumbered 250 to 1 on your next sortie.
Helldivers are just a number, they don’t matter. The war matters, lives are replaceable. Helldivers die, another will take your place. Forget to duck out of the way soldier? Sentry guns will mow down enemies, but if you are in that line of fire, well that’s a damn shame. Someone more alert with proper ducking skills, will fill in the ranks. Get the picture?
Cyborgs, insectoid alien “bugs” and psionic powered beings have given humanity’s “managed democracy” the proverbial middle finger. So now they have to contend with the Helldivers. Your fight is a persistent online war, presented in top down shooter fashion. Each victory (or defeat) helps sway control of a sector. Each win may not seem like much, a drop of water in a bucket. Over time with thousands of player wins, then perhaps the Helldivers” will prevail.
It’s hell being a helldiver, and that’s not an exaggeration. So enjoy your warm cup of cocoa, your fuzzy Littlest Pet Shop full body pajama, and sucking your thumb one last time, because in the morning your Helldivers mission is going to make your little boy parts drop (caution, if your boy parts have dropped, they’ll be swaying below your patellas by lunch).
Everything is out to kill you soldier! Burrowing aliens! Swarming cyborgs! Shielded white golf ball monstrosities overrun you! Friendly turrets can shoot you in the back while engaging enemies. Aerial support teams can blow you up while strafing bugs. Grenades can take an unlucky bounce – meaning you’ll be referred to as Mr. Stumpy at the next Super Earth New Year’s party. There are no guardrails by the lava pits, easy to fall over in the heat of the action. One space trooper versus such odds might seem like fighting against the wind. However Helldivers have one powerful ability that could give them above all of these obstacles: teamwork.
Helldivers is an intense coop experience. The game is meticulously crafted to force patient, intelligent, and deliberate teamwork to survive. Yes, you can play solo missions, they are tedious one player can overcome the odds, and complete one or two objectives and manage to survive extraction. Harder missions and difficult worlds, that yield the most XP and rewards, are impossible to do without a team. You’ll need comrades to lift you up when knocked over, reinforcements when being overrun. This may put off lone wolf types. But there’s a whole other group of game fans that want the kind of brutal non-forgiving experience that feels like ripping coarse chest hairs off with rusty Epiladies with a splash of sexy iodine.
Helldivers have several customization options, most revolve around defense and support functions. Leveling up and/or completing all the missions on a world earns you a new weapons, perks, or skills. These new boosts are upgraded further in the armory terminal, located to the left of the bridge viewing panels. In the middle, the mission selection table, and around it are the four drop tubes to launch to the surface below.
Basic movement and aiming is familiar for twin stick shooter games. Left stick moves, right stick aims (good luck keyboard and mouse users, in this game its the control scheme of choice for masochists). Left trigger fires, right trigger tosses one of two grenades from your arsenal. Keep in mind that reloading your weapon forfeits the remaining bullets in the clip, which you need to manage. Reloading at the wrong time could mean getting tossed on your armored anus by an enemy. Getting tossed on your armored anus happens often, explosions, enemy fire, aliens that melee you; and before you know it your picking pebbles out of your keister while enemies close in.
Without a partner readily available to help, you are forced to smack the A button repeatedly to stand back up. In this predicament you are extremely vulnerable. It takes a good amount of time to stand up. Swarming enemies will show no mercy, and continue to damage you if they are close. It is deliberately frustrating, but one that encourages comrades to stay close while discouraging solo play.
Turrets, strafing runs, supply drops, and other abilities are selected before you head down to the planet from the mission options screen. By holding down a button on your controller and entering in the patterns indicated you can call down that special ability while in combat. What kills enemies will also kill you, so being judicial on your placement is important. Also some abilities have limits per mission, and a cooldown period before it can be used again, so being frivolous with abilities is also a bad idea. With constant enemy patrols, enemies that alert other patrols to assist when you are spotted, hanging around any area waiting for abilities to cool off is discouraged.
However with fellow players backing you up, most of the ability recharge aggravation is mitigated. Getting overrun can still occur, but a partner laying down flamethrower waves while another lifts you off the ground is a lot more effective than beating down waves alone. Together teammates can cover a player as he taps in lengthy directional combos on his D-pad to hack an objective or call down an air strike. My first 10 missions I went at it alone, followed by just as many with allies. The difference is striking. While still difficult and unforgiving, it’s brilliance as a tactical coop experience is undeniable.
All missions end with at an extraction point, where every sentient thing on that planet surges towards your position. While you await a shuttle craft to land and rescue the squad. In other words, every mission ends with the infamous scene from Platoon. My teammates would hold off swarms just long enough for me to deploy a turret. Then we would cower behind it as the swarms kept coming. With ammo running low we resorted to tossing strafing runs intermittently, and finally with 10 seconds, left scurry to the landing site (don’t let the ship land on you). Jumping on board, with enemy fire burning a hole in our backs, Our shuttle taking off utterly surrounded in a sea of chattering angry alien bugs.
Enemy variety is a plus, with the more advanced units showing up as you progress into harder missions. Helldiver’s flanking AI tactics will keep you and your squad, on your toes. You may start getting used combating the same kinds of swarming bugs or cyborg maniacs with the same tactics. Relying heavily on deployable turrets to defend a wide area. Keep in mind that the game adapts to this, shielded mechanisms nullify your deployable flamethrowers, or long range snipers will start destroying your turrets in a couple of shots. You must adapt your tactics to survive.
Helldivers’s planetary scenery can be pretty plain, and its overall lighting and visual look lacks a certain visceral appeal befitting of the horrors of war. Still there guns have visual and sound effects that give off the impression of raw power in all directions. The shuddering of a powerful machine gun turret rounds decimating a wave of enemies. Your own weaponry leaving trails of smoke and tracer fire. The rattling gunfire and detonating ordinances will explode from your speakers, the action gets chaotic and the audio is up to the task.
Where Helldiver’s falters is in the way it clings heavily to grinding. Hours of highly similar missions to increment stats and war results. Considering that missions are essentially a variation of go here, defend that, and survive extraction it’s hard not to get bored of the routines. Even with how great coop play can be, jumping on a hamster wheel with buddies can still be jumping on a hamster wheel.
Helldivers doesn’t apologize for its difficulty and heavy reliance forming cohesive teams. This approach is refreshing and enjoyable. “Wait! WAIT! We can’t leave Joe behind! PICK HIM UP!!! PICK HIM BUGS!!!” these are excerpts from our cooperative game chatter, and I DIG that. The way ability use is controlled, limited ammo requires consideration, and how relentless the flanking AI drew me back into this game. It’s repetitive grind doesn’t change the fact this game is an white-knuckle adrenaline surging bug stomp with friends.President Barack Obama offered Israel even more military aid this week as a consolation prize for the Iran deal, raising the concerns of human rights campaigners who oppose U.S. funding of atrocities against Palestinians.
Speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, the same day the accord was reached, Obama said he is ready to hold "intensive discussions" about bolstering Israel's military, according to unnamed administration officials cited by The New York Times.
However, Netanyahu—who has vigorously opposed diplomacy with Iran—rebuffed the gesture.
Obama indicated in an interview with the Times on Tuesday that Netanyahu is likely holding out to see if he can still sink the Iran deal. Netanyahu "perhaps thinks he can further influence the congressional debate, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to uphold this deal and implement it without Congress preventing that," said the president.
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Due to recently-passed legislation, the U.S. House and Senate will have 60 days to review Tuesday's agreement between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the European Union. If lawmakers were to vote against the deal, and amass the votes to override a presidential veto, Obama's hands would be tied on sanctions relief and the deal would sink.
Tuesday was not the first time the U.S. has pledged to increase aid to Israel. Reuters reported in May that, after the $3 billion annual military aid package expires in 2017, payments could dramatically increase to as much as $4 billion.
Any increase in U.S. military aid to Israel is certain to be controversial. Human rights advocates have long opposed the role of the U.S. in arming, financing, and politically backing Israeli occupation, colonization, and war crimes—from Lebanon to Palestine. The Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions urges an immediate end to such payments.
Naomi Dann, media coordinator for right group Jewish Voice for Peace, told Common Dreams, "The fact that Netanyahu's temper tantrum about the Iran deal could go towards an increase in aid is disturbing, especially as we know that U.S. aid is being used to kill civilians in Gaza and the West Bank."Without discussion, members of the Washburn University board of regents on Thursday uanimously approved the Topeka school’s concealed carry policy set to go into effect July 1.
"Unfortunately it’s come about and now we have to be prepared for it," president Jerry Farley told a room full of Washburn staff and students.
Many of the Kansas regents schools’ weapons policies set to begin this summer, including Washburn, require campus housing residents to safely secure their handguns and conceal them from sight on themselves, in their residence hall or in the trunk of their car. Restrictions on the unlawful discharge of firearms follows current state law, and a student would be subject to criminal charges if the weapon were used improperly.
The Washburn regents had delayed a vote on the campus gun policy in February after regent Brent Boles suggested the nine-member body wait until any pending legislative bills in Kansas House and Senate committees had run their course.
The 2017 legislative session has seen multiple attempts to approve exemptions to the Kansas law passed in 2013 that widened the list of public facilities in which concealed carry is allowed. That law took effect to allow concealed guns for certain institutions. For public colleges and universities and hospitals, however, it allowed a delay until July of this year.
Opponents of campus concealed carry have been pushing to stop the July 1 deadline or extend it. Proponents of the 2013 law cite provisions in the legislation that allow for keeping concealed guns out of public college and universities’ buildings if a facility installs security at entrances. Officials at those institutions, including Washburn University, have said making those kinds of security enhancements are cost prohibitive from a manpower and equipment standpoint.
Marc Fried, Washburn’s legal counsel, said in October that it would cost an average of $100,000 annually to install one metal detector and employ two staff members at one entrance to a building. Washburn’s concealed carry policy is not expected to cost the university any additional money, according to meeting documents.
A 2015 Docking Institute of Public Affairs survey showed that of Washburn students who responded to the questionnaire, 53 percent didn’t want to allow concealed weapons on campus, 13 percent favored extending the exemption for colleges and universities past July 1 and 34 percent favored allowing the policy to take effect July 1.
Of the students attending Kansas regents universities who responded to the survey, 55 percent favored not allowing concealed weapons, 14 percent favored the extension of the exemption and 31 percent favored allowing the exemption to expire.
Malcolm Mikkelsen, who served as president of Washburn Student Government until Wednesday, said he and his fellow Washburn students will have to make the best of the situation given that any additional manuevers in the Kansas legislature to change the law before July 1 aren’t likely.
"I think it started to set in the longer it went," he said, referring to the legislative attempts to alter the state law. "After those failed, we were already prepared to kind of handle it. Now I think everyone is ready to move on and make sure all the training is there and that all students are comfortable and knowledgeable of our policy."
Representatives of Washburn Faculty Senate presented the regents with a statement in further opposition of the weapons policy.
"The concealed carry of firearms on campus - in residence halls, classrooms, and arenas - threatens to restrict open discussion and debate, presents dangers for the physical safety of students, faculty and staff, and hampers the ability of institutions to recruit faculty and staff and thrive within their budgets," the statement read in part.
Shaun Schmidt, president of the Washburn Faculty Senate, said he and other members of the senate felt they needed to make the statement, knowing the policy is going to officially begin July 1
"There’s not much we can do with the legislature’s current position," he said.
Schmidt said he and other campus staff have confidence the Washburn police officers will respond to emergencies involving a weapon. However, he said much of the concerns he and his colleagues have lies with potential student suicides and accidential discharges either in the classroom or residence halls.
Chris Enos, Washburn’s chief of police, said a small percentage of students 21 years or older live on campus. He said public information and educational materials will be provided to students once the policy takes effect July 1 to promote safety.
Eric Grospitch, vice president of student life, has previously said that while campus officials won’t be allowed by law to ask whether a student has a concealed weapon, students who don’t want to room with a student who does have a handgun will be able to ask for a transfer if space allows.
Contact reporter Angela Deines at (785) 295-1143 or follow her on Twitter @AngelaDeines.KALAMAZOO, MI -- What if the polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, buried on the Allied Paper landfill site in Kalamazoo could be rendered completely harmless, broken down into inert substances: chloride salt, carbon dioxide and water?
What if that process could be undertaken for $15 million less than a plan to simply cover up the hazardous waste there?
Kalamazoo city staff, staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and representatives from a North Carolina company are planning to meet soon to hash out the possibility of an alternative cleanup plan for the Allied Paper Superfund landfill.
City commissioners had been ready Monday night, Dec. 7, to adopt resolution of support for a $63 million EPA plan to seal 1.6 million cubic yards of contaminated soil under an impermeable cap and call it done. It is a proposal the EPA fashioned when it was faced with the estimated $189 million cost of completely removing contaminants from the old landfill site.
But instead, they were persuaded to take a closer look at a
BioPath Solutions. The company's representative said they propose to enable native micro-organisms already in the soil to break down the polychlorinated biphenyls at the site.
The Allied Paper landfill is located on Kalamazoo's south side, bounded roughly by Cork, Burdick and Alcott streets and Portage Creek to the east.
That clean-up alternative, using a process called enzymatic dechlorination, eliminates the pollution instead of burying it.
The company has proposed to handle the job at a cost of $48 million, about $15 million less than the EPA's capping plan. If the alternative doesn't completely do the job, the firm will cap the site in accordance with the EPA plan within the same $48 million price tag.
"Either by enzymatic dechlorination or by consolidating and capping, we can remediate the site," said Anne Lerums, vice president of business development for BioPath Solutions, which is based in Denver, North Carolina.
BioPath is confident the bacteria can get the job done.
The technology of using micro-organisms to break down contaminants isn't new, said Bruce Merchant, the city's consultant for the cleaning up the site. But it is far more complicated than simply boosting the populations of native bacteria on the landfill surface and watching them go to work.
The reason chlorinated compounds such as PCBs are so persistent in the environment is that their chlorine shuts down the enzyme that bacteria normally use to decompose material.
BioPath holds an exclusive license on a product that allows the bacteria to resume natural production of the enzyme they need, and to break down pollutants such as PCBs just as they break down other organic matter found in nature, Lerums said.
Moisture, oxygen, nutrient supplements, and BioPath's product are the components needed to allow contaminated paper wastes to be reduced to harmless parts. After the enzyme enabler is added, the process is akin to working a compost pile or farm field, with the contaminated landfill wastes dug up and arranged into windrows, then stirred by machinery.
Each application cycle can reduce PCBs by 90 percent, and each cycle takes 10-12 weeks to complete, Lerums said. Some areas may need more than one cycle but BioPath believes it can clean up the entire site in the same time frame proposed for the EPA's original capping plan of about two to four years.
Upon completion, the land will be a clean field, returned to the city (or another party identified by the city) at no cost.
Merchant said he has questions. One logistics problem: There is not enough space on the site to spread out the entire landfill volume at once, so it
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simpler, better motivated model for dark energy set within the well-known dynamical triangulations (DT) approach to quantum gravity. This model assumes no holographic principle, uses no additional matter fields or finely tuned parameters, and does not modify general relativity beyond the geometric discretization inherent in dynamical-triangulations spacetimes. In our model, a positive vacuum energy of the correct observed magnitude spontaneously arises from the entropic bias toward negative curvature states inherent in DT geometries. Note that treating gravity as an emergent mean-field phenomenon driven by entropic forces is a popular research perspective at the moment [18]–[24]. A reasonable prediction for dark-energy within a quantum-gravity theory is only significant if the theory approximates general relativity well at large distances. Why should we believe this about a theory that uses DT spacetime states? The progenitor of the DT theory, called the Regge calculus, has been used successfully in numerical general-relativity and quantum gravity for nearly five decades [25]–[31]. The DT model itself [32]–[36] and its descendent, causal dynamical triangulations (CDT) [32], [34], [35], [37]–[40] have been studied for nearly two decades. The numerous successes achieved by these theories give confidence that our model can describe general relativity at length-scales much larger than Planck’s length. The model presented in this paper uses the same discretization of geometry and the same action as the DT theory. However, it is not identical to DT because it puts restrictions on the set of triangulations which contribute to the partition function. These kind of restrictions are also what distinguish DT from CDT although our restrictions are distinct from those in CDT. Note that it is not our purpose to advocate “triangulations” as the ultimate structure of spacetime. Indeed, in our calculation the discrete nature of geometry may be removed at the end without altering the predicted vacuum energy. We suspect that the effect described in this paper is actually a generic feature of any quantum-gravity theory which predicts a discrete spacetime geometry and which has general relativity as its large-distance limit.
Background Material General relativity can be written in the Lagrangian formalism using the Einstein-Hilbert action, which in natural units is (1) Here is a closed -manifold, a Lorentzian metric, scalar-curvature, the cosmological constant, the Lagrangian for matter and the standard volume element. See Table 1 for a list of commonly used symbols. Note, both and depend on while does not. Also note that is the only term in this action with a physically distinguished zero value. In quantum field theory on a fixed background geometry, an arbitrary constant can be added to without changing the observed physics, allowing one to simply set to zero. Thus, it is reasonable to argue, as we do in this paper, that the observed non-zero value of arises from quantum effects related to the scalar-curvature field. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Meaning of Commonly Used Symbols. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080826.t001 Hilbert and Einstein showed that the critical points of this action satisfy the equations of motion (2) These are, of course, the field equations for general relativity. Here, is the Ricci curvature tensor and the stress-energy tensor for matter. In this work we restrict attention to the Einstein-Hilbert action for the vacuum with zero cosmological constant (3) The critical points of are metrics which satisfy the vacuum field equations. These metrics are Ricci flat everywhere ( at every point) and therefore also scalar flat everywhere ( at every point.) Thus these metrics have action exactly zero. Finally, in dimensions less than four, the Ricci tensor determines the full curvature tensor, so critical points of in these dimensions must actually be flat everywhere ( at each point.). In his influential 1961 paper [25] Regge proposed a discretized version of which applies to triangulated piecewise-linear (PL) manifolds. A triangulation of a closed -manifold is a combinatorial -manifold homeomorphic to given as an abstract simplicial complex. Assigning a length to each edge in uniquely defines a piecewise-linear metric on provided these lengths satisfy some natural compatibility conditions. If we let denote the number of -simplices in, the Regge action is given by (4) In this equation, the sum runs over all codimension-2 simplices of (called hinges), is the total dihedral angle around the hinge, and is that hinge’s volume. It is easy to insert a cosmological constant into this action, although here we do not. The possibility of incorporating matter fields into is a currently active topic of research. See [41]–[43]. Note that has a nice geometric interpretation. The summand in this action is the angle defect in a small triangle enclosing and perpendicular to the hinge, weighted by the volume of that hinge. Given the close relationship in classical non-euclidean geometry between angle defect and curvature, it is natural to interpret as a discrete measure of total curvature. Because of the success of the Regge action in describing general relativity, we will interpret as a discrete measure corresponding to the Einstein-Hilbert action, and thus to total scalar-curvature. Interpreting as a total curvature is also supported by the fact that, like point-wise curvature bounds in Riemannian geometry, bounds on the angle-defect for all hinges have profound topological consequences for. See [44]–[47] for examples. The Dynamical-Triangulation Action Suppose we fix the abstract simplicial complex and consider as a function of the edge-lengths only. There is a large body of numerical evidence [26]–[29] that the critical points of this action define PL-metrics which behave like solutions to the vacuum field equations, at least at length scales much larger than the maximum edge-length. See [36] for a overview of this work, known as the Regge calculus. In this paper, however, we will require all edges to have a single fixed length so that the action is determined only by the structure of as an abstract simplicial complex, i.e. only on the way the simplices in are attached together. This form of the Regge action has been studied extensively as part of the dynamical triangulations (DT) approach to quantum gravity. We write this action as (5)where is the volume of a -simplex with all edges of length, is the dihedral angle in such a simplex, and, called the degree of, is the number of -simplices in with as a face. Usually, we will suppress the dependence on and write simply. Now for some terminology and preliminary results. Let denote the set of all triangulations of a fixed closed -manifold. We will write for the set of all triangulations of containing exactly -simplices, and for those with -simplices and DT-action. Since there are only finitely many ways to attach together the faces of a finite collection of -simplices, and are finite sets. We define to be the spacetime entropy of for -simplices and action. We will also need notation for the average hinge degree of a triangulation T, (6) By double-counting arguments we may alternately write this as (7) Proof. Suppose we examine each -simplex in and place a mark on each -simplex with as a face. Clearly we have placed marks. On the other hand, each -simplex has codimension-2 faces, so the number of marks is also. Dividing through by gives the first equality. Next, suppose we examine each -simplex in and place a mark on each of the two -simplices incident at. We have obviously placed marks. However, each -simplex has codimension-1 faces, so the number of marks is also and we have. Plugging into the previous equality and simplifying finishes the proof. The first part of equation (7) lets us nicely express as a function of the number of -simplices in and its average hinge-degree. We get (8)where is called the flat hinge-degree. Why do we call the flat hinge-degree? It is the number of regular -simplices needed around a hinge to provide a total dihedral angle of exactly, the expected quantity in a flat space. Note that, except in dimension two (where ) the quantity is not an integer. Proof of Equation (8). We begin with the DT action (5) and distribute the sum into the summand to obtain (9) By equation (7) we can replace with and the summation by to get (10) Finally, moving a factor of to the front finishes the derivation. Mean Action Per Volume The primary observable quantity of concern in this work is the mean action per volume, i.e. the average Lagrangian density over the manifold: (11)where is the PL-volume of. We use the symbol to remind us that this is a physically well-defined global observable with dimensions of energy per volume. Equation (8) gives a lovely formula for the mean action, (12)where depends only on the dimension. This tells us that for a fixed dimension and edge-length the mean-action depends only on the average hinge-degree. For notational convenience we will usually suppress the and dependence and simply write or. Finally, note that for a fixed number of -simplices we can use equations (7) and (12) to find the minimum possible separation between mean-actions. This corresponds to changing the number of hinges by one, resulting in a change to of (13)where and depend only on the dimension and is the total spacetime volume. The minimum possible separation between actions is then given by (14)
Action Spectrum in Dimension Three From this point forward, we will restrict attention to dimension three. What can we say about the possible values of on when? This is a formidable problem, since even for a small number of tetrahedra the set is quite large and complicated. We begin with an elementary result: for any triangulation of a closed 3-manifold we have (15)where and. This means that for a fixed number of 3-simplices, the effect of increasing (or equivalently, decreasing ) is to decrease both the number of vertices and the number of edges in the triangulation. Proof of Equation (15). We begin with a well-known topological fact: every closed 3-manifold has Euler characteristic zero. That is, for any triangulation of a closed 3-manifold we have. Now, we use equation (7) to replace by to get (16) Using equation (7) again to replace by and then rearranging gives (17)as desired. Finally, we plug this back into equation (16) and simplify to obtain (18)completing the proof. Equation (15) tells us that to understand the possible values for we must understand the possible combinations of and that can occur in a triangulation of a given closed 3-manifold. A 1970 paper [48] by Walkup tells us all we need to know. Theorem (Walkup). For every closed 3-manifold there is a smallest integer so that any two positive integers and which satisfy (19)are given by and for some. The quantity is a topological invariant which satisfies for all closed 3-manifolds. Note that is known for many manifolds, see [49], although we will not need this information. Walkup’s Theorem, together with equation (15) and some algebra suffice to prove the central mathematical result in this paper: Theorem. Let be a closed 3-manifold and a fixed number of tetrahedra. Then, there are mean actions (20)and (21)so that if is an integer for which lies in the interval then for some triangulation of with tetrahedra and edges. These are regularly spaced over the entire interval, each separated from the next by (22)where. This is the smallest possible separation given fixed, so these are all possible mean-actions on. Note that in most applications, the number of tetrahedra will be large and the energy densities given in the theorem will be approximately (23) Also note that when edges are Planck’s length ( in our units) the magnitude of these energy densities is enormous, about Joules per cubic meter. Proof of Main Theorem. Let be a closed 3-manifold. We start by showing that if two given integers and satisfy (24)then there is some triangulation of with and. We define. Note that by the first inequality in (24). A bit of algebra applied to the second inequality in (24) implies (25)Now, consider the upward opening parabola which has largest root. The first inequality in (24) implies which is just. Since is the largest root of an upward opening parabola, we conclude. By our definition of and, this tells us (26) By Walkup’s theorem, inequalities (25) and (26) imply that some triangulation has and. Finally, by equation (15), we know as desired. Next, we divide the inequality (24) by and take reciprocals to get (27)where. Thus, if is fixed and is an integer for which lies in this interval, then for some triangulation with tetrahedra. By equation (12) the change in mean-action for each increment of is as claimed in equation (22), completing the proof.
The N-Action Model The model used in this paper is designed to be dominated by states near a particular chosen target value for the mean-action. For a fixed number of tetrahedra let be the closest attainable mean-action to. For each, our model admits triangulations with mean-action along with those having one of the mean-action values on either side of. In this paper our target mean-action will be since the Einstein-Hilbert action for the vacuum in classical general-relativity is zero. Recall that, unlike actions in quantum field theory, the values of the Einstein-Hilbert and Regge actions are well-defined physical observables. This makes such a targeting strategy physically reasonable. Why not simply start with a model containing only those triangulation for which? It turns out that there are no such triangulations. That is, for any triangulation of a closed 3-manifold we have, or equivalently. This follows from the irrationality of and equation (12). We know is irrational due to work [50] by Conway, Radin and Sadun on what are called called geodetic angles. Note that these angles are actually interesting mathematical objects on their own and are central to the solution to Hilbert’s third problem on the scissor-congruence of polyhedra. So, let be the mean-actions in the model and the corresponding total actions. Our main theorem implies that for any and spacetime volume there is an small enough so that all of the mean-action values lie within the range where attainable action-values are regularly spaced. For such our model has partition function (28)where is spacetime entropy at action. The expected action for this model is then (29)A Euclidean version of this expected value can be found by applying the standard Wick rotation to the expression above. It is currently impossible to write or as exact closed form expressions since the entropies are beyond our ability to compute. However, if we replace with its first order approximation for a constant, then a closed-form expression can be found. We used the computer-algebra package Mathematica to show (30) A closed form expression for can obtained as before by replacing with in the equation above. Choosing How are we to choose? In an ideal world, we would have in hand a fully formed DT-style theory of quantum gravity coupled to matter, which provably reduced to general-relativity at large distances. From this theory we could derive an appropriate by computing how far a typical spacetime was from the classical action. We believe such a theory will eventually emerge, but it is not yet available. However, we have set up enough machinery to reasonably guess what such a theory would tell us about. Suppose we fix a total spacetime volume and consider the -action theory targeting mean-action zero. What happens as we let the edge-length approach zero? Because the separation between actions goes to zero and, if is left fixed as then even the most extreme action values in the theory,, would converge to zero. Since we wish to investigate quantum gravity, this is unacceptable and we are forced to choose an which diverges as. Now, suppose we make the affine entropy approximation. Equation (30) implies that if then for large enough and small enough the expected action is dominated by the final hyperbolic cotangent term and we have. This tells us that under these conditions, the model is completely dominated by entropy. The oscillating complex phase which suppresses the contribution of states far from is swamped by the entropy term involving. Thus, since is proportional to, it is natural to choose the dimensionless to be proportional to. For such a choice we can take the limit and the theory gives a finite non-zero value for the expected action. Therefore, we choose to use (31)mean-action values on either side of. Notice that by the approximations (23) even though diverges as, all actions in the model eventually lie within the “regularly spaced” range for small enough. Also note that as all the mean edge-degrees corresponding to these converge to the flat mean edge-degree. Finally, for any fixed we can use equation (30) to compute the limit, obtaining (32) For we get a purely imaginary standard expectation and a Euclidean expectation given by
The Origin of Dark Energy Taking and dividing through by in equation (32) gives (35) Let us briefly discuss the physical meaning of. Our goal was to construct a theory dominated by states close to the classical value of the mean-action,. We did this by “slicing” the partition function according to action-value, retaining only states whose actions lie within a certain distance of zero. If the volume of spacetime is large compared to Planck’s volume then we come very close to accomplishing our goal. That is, for we do indeed obtain in the limit. However, there is a small perturbation away from zero because of the relative entropy of action values. Notice that since action values are global observables, this effect is independent of the local details of the “metric”, i.e. the local structure of the triangulation. This leads us to expect that, for a typical triangulation at a given, the average action will appear very uniform at length-scales much larger than. Finally, recall that everything in the Einstein-Hilbert action except the cosmological constant depends on the metric. Thus, the basic structure of almost demands we interpret our non-zero as an emergent cosmological constant given by (36) We now turn to the question of applying this result to our own universe. This is a somewhat speculative endeavor since our world appears to be both -dimensional and infinite in extent. However, as an entropic effect connected with the pattern of attachment between simplices, we expect the perturbation away from identified in this paper to occur quite generally. So, what is appropriate for assessing the magnitude of this effect in our particular universe? Considerations of causality give us a reasonable answer: take the volume of space which has had time to causally communicate with our point of observation. That is, we ought to use something like the current Hubble volume where is the Hubble constant. Plugging in in Planck units gives (37) which is in general agreement with observation. At this point, we feel obliged to briefly discuss the term “numerology”. It has long been known that the observed cosmological constant was approximately. This and many other unexplained approximate numerical relationships between cosmological parameters are often called large number coincidences. Thinking of them as having explanatory power on their own is surely deserving of the label “numerology”. However, this epithet should not be applied to a physically well-motivated theory which predicts ab-initio such a numerical relationship, as our model does.
Discussion Our derivation of has some interesting features. Using the Hubble parameter to define our characteristic volume means that the model actually predicts a time-varying cosmological constant (38) where is the Hubble parameter at proper time. That is, we predict that scales like the area of the cosmic horizon. Amazingly, although we made no holographic assumption, this is the same behavior that emerges from holographic dark energy (HDE) theories [5], [6], [10], [12], [13]. In fact, our model shares several other key features with these approaches, including the presence of two “cut-offs” in the theory which are removed in a coordinated fashion. HDE models typically contain both a UV and IR field cut-off which are removed in a way that saturates entropy in the Bekenstein bound. In our theory, the cut-offs and are chosen to keep the entropic perturbation on bounded as. While HDE theories are very different in detail from our model, the broad similarities are quite striking. Perhaps both approaches are pointing to the same underlying physical issues. We hope that the relative simplicity of our model can help elucidate these issues. We should also mention another explanation for which shares some features with our approach. In [53] it is argued that the true ground-state vacuum has but that we observe because the universe has not yet had time to decay into this ground state. The author considers a model in which the true ground state is given by the superposition of two degenerate states, one of which describes the universe’s present-day vacuum. Since the decay probability in a given volume and time period is related to the energy density, the requirement that no such decay has yet happened in the Hubble volume provides an estimate for which agrees with observation. This argument leads, as does our model, to a connection between the Hubble parameter and. Also note that both models contain states at or near which are suppressed compared to the states. Finally, we note that in the very early universe our model predicts large and hence rapid expansion. This raises the tantalizing possibility that big-bang inflation and dark-energy are manifestations of a common effect, though it is likely that a more sophisticated choice for the characteristic volume would be needed. See [54] for consideration of this idea in the HDE context.
Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Cheryl Koester, C. Scott Wylie, Vadas Gintautas, Joe MacNeil, and Larry Viehland for their support and valuable advice. Also, many thanks to Henry Segerman for providing the triangulation census data used in this work and to Leah Langer for assisting in the collection and verification of triangulation sampling data.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: ADT. Performed the experiments: ADT. Analyzed the data: ADT. Wrote the paper: ADT.Join Ross on an exciting and magical journey, to where no type has gone before! In this talk Ross will share his experience of writing Ridiculous™ Type Providers, from the humble beginnings of the Choose Your Own Adventure type provider and Squirrelify, right through to 2048, multiplayer Battleships, the Santa's Grotto Roguelike and others.
Throughout, you can expect to see some little known type provider "features" and tricks that were discovered along the way. Did you know that you can erase types to other erased types, and that it can actually be useful? What would happen if type systems can communicate with each other? Have you tried to use inheritance with type providers? Can type providers provide other type providers? Have you used type providers in type providers?
Type Providers are still a new frontier in programming languages, and we have yet to discover all that is possible with them. So don your part silly, part thoughtful hat, come on down to Skillsmatter and let's see what new ideas emerge!
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:Gawker Outs One Cheater and the Internet Condemns Gawker—Hackers Expose 37 Million Cheaters and the Internet Condemns Cheaters
Late last week, Gawker posted an item about a "C-suite executive" at Condé Nast, a married father of three (a married-to-a-woman father of three [I'm old enough to remember when we didn't have to clarify those things]), who made arrangements to spend a weekend with a gay male escort/porn star/conspiracy theorist. The porn star figured out who the executive was—the brother of a former Obama administration official—and threatened to out the executive if the executive didn't use his political connections to assist the porn star in a dispute with the porn star's former landlord. (It's complicated.) The executive gently refused, paid the porn star his full weekend fee ($2,500), and canceled the booking. The porn star promptly handed over their correspondence to Gawker, which published the whole thing. After enduring howls of outrage from left, right, and center, Gawker's management—over protests from its editorial staff—decided to delete the post.
In what terms did Gawker's editorial staff defend the post while it was still up? Max Read, Gawker's editor-in-chief, posted this on Twitter:
I was in the air pretty much all day on Friday and unable to get on Slog, but I was able to tweet my thoughts before the boarding doors closed: "Problem with @Gawker's rationalization: we don't know if this 'C-suite executive' was fucking around on his wife... Some marriages are open, some husbands are bi, some wives allow for outside contact if husband makes an effort to be discreet... And even if he was fucking around on his wife—unless the guy is a moralizing public scold and it proves political hypocrisy, it's not news."
But Glenn Greenwald said it best:
What’s significant to me is the unstated premise of Read’s claim: that the wife of this CFO is a victim. Read is posing as her chivalrous defender: he only published this article to avenge the wrong done to her. There’s even the strangely sexist formulation to his vow: Gawker, he declares, will always “report on married executives of major media companies fucking around on their wives.” What about when the cheating executives are women and the spouse is a man? He doesn’t say. His self-proclaimed mission is to protect this little lady from the harm that has been inflicted on her. This is far and away the most common justification cited for sniffing around in the private, sexual lives of people: we’re just upset for the victim-spouse. But even if one wants to pretend that the sentiment is genuine, the logical flaw is glaring and obvious. Max Read has absolutely no idea what this CFO’s wife knows about what her husband does, nor does he have any idea what agreement or arrangement they have governing their marriage. Nor should he know, because it’s none of his business. Long-term marriage between two complex adults is a very complicated dynamic to navigate. People invent all sorts of ways to manage that. It’s of course possible that the CFO’s wife thought she was in a rigid, life-long monogamous relationship with a purely heterosexual male and is shocked and betrayed to learn otherwise, but it’s also very possible that she was well-aware that he isn’t any of those things, and the spousal agreement between them permits this flexibility on one or both of their parts. It’s possible the wife is a victim of his private behavior, but it’s also very possible there are no victims and he did absolutely nothing wrong.
Everyone left, right, and center was in violent agreement with Greenwald on Friday: What Gawker did—outing this nobody—was wrong, marriage is complicated, there may not have been any victims here (other than the guy who was outed), and even if the wife in this case was being victimized by her husband's conduct, it's still nobody else's business.
Which brings us to today's big adultery news. From Business Insider:
Extramarital affair website Ashley Madison has been hacked and attackers are threatening to leak data online Around 37 million people will be extremely nervous Monday after the extramarital-affair website Ashley Madison was hacked and the details posted online. The Canadian-based site sells itself with the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair." Data security expert and blogger Brian Krebs revealed the hack on his site, Krebs On Security, saying a group calling itself The Impact Team was behind the hack and said it had stolen user databases, financial records including salary information, and other records... The group is threatening to release all customer records, including sexual fantasies, credit-card details, and real names and addresses, unless Ashley Madison and Established Men are taken offline permanently.
The news about the Ashley Madison hack is also generating a lot of outrage—but it's not directed at the hackers who are threatening to out not just one guy for cheating on his spouse, but 37,000,000 people who may have cheated on their spouses or may have merely contemplated cheating on their spouses long enough to create an account at Ashley Madison. People are furious this time with the cheaters, not the outers. Here's what I'm seeing in Twitter:
No one should have their personal information released without their consent, but you can't help but laugh. http://t.co/aLQmBGDOAk via @AP
— Maverick (@_Melancholicus_) July 20, 2015
An act of Karma....@ashleymadison
How about stay single or be in an open relationship....don't promote cheating.
— Joanna Oesch (@MermaidRoyale) July 20, 2015
Finding it extremely difficult to feel any compassion for Ashley Madison users
— Beautiful Bobby (@TheRobertCaron) July 20, 2015
When I tweeted this...
So everyone outraged by what @Gawker did to that one guy is equally outraged by what hackers are doing 37m #AshleyMadison customers - right?
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) July 20, 2015
I got a lot of pushback like this from my followers:
Not really. Partners they're cheating on didn't consent. Not a ton of sympathy. Hackers suck, but so do cheaters. https://t.co/jna5sULOd9
— Steffani Cameron (@SnarkySteff) July 20, 2015
Now, I know that Gawker is a news site that does journalism (yes, they do journalism), and that as journalists they're held to a higher standard—by themselves and others—than a bunch of anonymous hackers. But the violation is exactly the same: People who may or may not have been cheating on their spouses are going to be outed, their lives could be upended, their children could be traumatized. "But they're cheaters!" screams the internet. "Cheaters are terrible people! Cheaters deserve to be exposed!" This would be the same internet that just a few days ago was overflowing with a nuanced understanding of infidelity where a wealthy, politically connected white man was concerned.
That seems like a weird, possibly classist disconnect to me.
Long-term marriage, like Glenn Greenwald says, is a complicated dynamic, and people invent all sorts of ways to manage that complicated, long-term dynamic—and, yes, cheating is one of the ways people manage that dynamic. It's not ideal, it would be great if everyone who felt compelled to cheat could either negotiate an open relationship or end the one they're in now, but sometimes cheating is the least worst option. Slogging through the Savage Love mail for the last 25 years has convinced me of this: There are a lot of people out there who have good cause to cheat. Men and women trapped in sexless marriages, men and women trapped in loveless marriages, men and women who have essentially been abandoned sexually and/or emotionally by spouses they aren't in a position to leave—either because their spouses are economically dependent on them (or vice versa) or because they may have children who are dependent on both partners.
Take a woman who has two children with special needs, who has been out of the workforce for 15 years, and who is financially dependent on a husband who decided five years into their marriage that he was "done with sex" but refuses to allow her to have sex with anyone else. The marriage is good otherwise, she and her husband have an affectionate, low-conflict relationship, their kids are happy and well cared for, but sexual deprivation is driving her out of her mind and threatening both her marriage and her children's health and security. What would you advise this woman—whose letter, coincidentally enough, came in today's pile of e-mail—to do? I would advise her to do what she needs to do to stay married and stay sane. (And until this morning I might have advised her to join Ashley Madison.)
It's easy to see cheating as a morality play with clearly identifiable victims and victimizers. But as Esther Perel says: "The victim of the affair is not always the victim of the marriage."
And sometimes a discreet affair saves a marriage that should be saved.
Marriage is complicated, cheating is complicated. You know what's not complicated? Outing. That executive Gawker outed last week didn't deserve it, and the members of Ashely Madison being outed today don't deserve it either.
UPDATE: Max Read and his second-in-command both resigned this morning.THE new A486 Llain to Synod Inn £2.4m improvement road in Ceredigion has made it to the shortlist for the prestigious Wales Project Awards 2017
The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Wales Cymru has shortlisted 10 projects across Wales which celebrate the contribution of civil engineering by recognising schemes for their excellence in concept, planning and design, contract management and construction.
The Llain to Synod Inn scheme is one of five nominated for the Roy Edwards Award for projects less than £3m. The others are Mynydd y Gwrhyd wind farm, Swansea; Risca flood scheme; the River Usk bridge strengthening design, Newport, Gwent and tank 114 bund lining works, Milford Haven.
The improvement of the A486 Ceredigion Link Road, undertaken in stages since 2006, has resulted in a series of road improvements along the route linking Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and the M4 corridor, totalling more than 11.5km.
The £2.4m A486 Llain to Synod Inn Improvement Scheme was jointly funded by the Welsh Government Local Transport Fund and Ceredigion County Council and completes a key element of the Ceredigion Link Road.
The section involved construction of approximately 1.4km of highway realignment to the latest design standards, including a 7.3m wide single carriageway and shared use footway/ cycleway.
The link road provides an improved and safer key route from west Wales through to Carmarthen, and is now delivering benefits to communities having transformed the links for business, agriculture, commuters and tourists, while helping to support the regional economy.
Keith Jones, Director ICE Wales Cymru said: "I am pleased to see such a wide range of projects representing the breadth of civil engineering on the shortlist for this year’s awards.”
The winners will be announced on June 16 at a ceremony in Cardiff.88-Color Metal Eye-Shadow Palette
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View the Groupon Goods FAQ for additional information, including how list price is determined.If you read some of my previous posts on this blog, you will find that I am equally interested in both the technical and social aspects of Software development. As I explained in my post about project failures, statistics appear to show that most problems Software professionals encounter are not in fact technical but rather social. Based on my own experience, I am very inclined to believe those figures.
On my quest to understanding how we could make and deliver better Software, I often wonder what I would do if I was given the difficult mission to assemble the ideal development team from scratch – the Software Dream-Team, if you will. I guess it’s time to put my thoughts in order and lay them on paper!
First, we need to define what such a team will be tasked to achieve. For the sake of the exercise, let’s assume that the lucky guys will be working on a product aimed at Italian restaurant businesses: A web-based pizza manager with both cloud and on-premises data hosting options. As the product itself is available under a monthly subscription business model, the team will have to deliver new features very regularly to keep customers from going to the concurrence. All this while guaranteeing good performance and stability, obviously. Seems like there’s a lot on the agenda, so we’d better pick the right guys for the job! Since we’re at it, let’s add an additional challenge to the mix. Turning the pizza manager into a successful project will certainly be a long-term endeavour and therefore we also want our team members to be happy and proud of their achievements. Customer satisfaction starts with employee satisfaction.
Who will we need in our team to make our pizza manager the killer app it deserves to be? Let’s list the usual suspects we encounter in Software projects and try to pick the ones that’ll be useful to us.
Business analyst (BA)
Project manager (PM)
Release manager
Back-end developer
Front-end developer
Tools developer
QA specialist (QA)
Test automation engineer
Software architect
Graphic designer
UX designer
Database administrator (DBA)
Network specialist
That’s 13 roles already. So let’s hire 13 guys and rock’n’roll, right? RIGHT!? Not really. This would most probably end in a real communication mess and this is precisely what we want to avoid. Our goal is to deliver Software, not to manage a circus.
How many individuals should we hire then? In my opinion, the magical number is probably 5. Why 5? Because there were 5 Power Rangers (not counting the green / white one, this guy joined later as an external consultant!), and that was one hell of a team! Look at that!
More seriously though, I believe that having a team composed of 4 to 6 individuals is ideal because it doesn’t introduce too much communication
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race, including $11.4 million in Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary and $6.4 million on next week's contest in Florida. And the spending has turned the race at least twice.
"Obviously, what we're seeing is, you can kind of stand up these groups very quickly," said Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that seeks more governmental transparency. "They can have a huge impact in a very short period of time because they can take such big contributions, and they can really kind of change the game in an given state."
Allison, Sunlight's editorial director, points to Iowa, where former House Speaker Gingrich surged to the top of polls as the January 3 vote approached, only to be toppled by an onslaught of negative ads by Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Gingrich finished fourth in the Hawkeye State and then made it clear that he intended to fight fire with fire. Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC, spent more than $1.76 million on ad time in South Carolina after an infusion of $5 million from Sheldon Adelson, a longtime Gingrich backer. Winning Our Future focused its South Carolina ads on Romney's record, including his time at private equity firm Bain Capital and the health care law he signed while Massachusetts governor, which many conservatives say was the blueprint for President Obama's health care reform law.
Romney came off a win in New Hampshire and entered South Carolina with a double-digit lead in most polls.
But as Romney's numbers in South Carolina were going down and Gingrich's were rising, Allison observed, "I think that has something to do with the speed with which the super PAC can raise money and get a candidate's message out."
The law prohibits a super PAC from coordinating its efforts with a candidate's campaign.
"But again, these are run by former campaign aides and officials that worked with each of these candidates, and they kind of know what the candidate needs, and they've been very effective in going after (a candidate's rivals) and doing the negative advertising," said Allison.
No coordination but plenty of family ties
Indeed, Rick Tyler, a former longtime Gingrich aide, is now a senior adviser to Winning Our Future, and Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary in the Obama administration and a member of the Obama 2008 campaign team, is now one of the principals behind Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC.
Wertheimer and his organization would like to see candidate-specific super PACs like Restore Our Future, Winning Our Future and Priorities USA Action banned all together.
"They are simply vehicles for circumventing the candidate contribution limits that exist in order to prevent corruption," Wertheimer said. "They are a way for both a candidate and a candidate's supporters to eviscerate the $2,500 contribution limit that applies to any individual contribution to a candidate."
Wertheimer doesn't believe that laws that prohibit "coordinating" between super PACs and a candidate's campaign do enough.
"I don't buy the idea that these groups are not coordinated," Wertheimer said. "But beyond that, look, these PACs are run by very close associates -- longtime associates of the candidate. The idea that they are somehow independent operations in the context that the Supreme Court and the statute has meant is ludicrous."
Burton said Priorities USA Action is following all rules and laws on coordination "in both letter and spirit." He also said that his pro-Obama super PAC makes its own decisions based on its own research, polling and focus groups. And regarding criticism from the likes of Wertheimer and Allison about his former ties to the president, Burton said it would be "illogical" for someone who didn't support a candidate to start a candidate-specific super PAC like Priorities USA Action.
Wertheimer expects super PACs to have less influence on the general election campaign for the White House than they have had in the GOP primary race, because the president and the eventual Republican nominee "are going to have more than enough money to make their case."
"The parties will be spending money. And the super PACs will be spending money, but they will not have the same kind of distorted impact that they've had in individual primary and caucus races in the nominating process."
Setting the tone of the debate
Sunlight's Allison sees super PACs using advertising to do something crucial in politics: define the terms of the debate about the record of an opposing candidate early on.
"What they can do is try to set the terms of the debate about their opponent. (In the case of GOP super PACs,) who will be, obviously, President Obama," Allison said. "And whether it's declaring he's the 'food stamp president' or going after him as being in over his head or whatever (GOP) candidate message wins, they can amplify that message and run it (in advertising) and take these unlimited sums that the candidates can't take themselves. And they can basically flood the airwaves with a message about their opponent. And I'm sure they're going to be Democratic groups who are going to be doing the same thing to whoever the Republican nominee is."
The result is likely to be, according to Allison, "an environment where political advertising becomes almost ubiquitous because they will be trying to get -- to hammer home a message about the opposition candidate."
Allison likens super PACs like the GOP-aligned American Crossroads to shadow political parties and candidate-specific super PACs like Restore Our Future, Winning Our Future and Priorities USA Action to shadow presidential campaigns.
Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for American Crossroads, says super PACs were a consequence of the last changes to campaign finance law.
"Super PACs are the logical and very predictable consequence of the last campaign finance reform effort, which was the McCain-Feingold law," Collegio said. "That effort weakened political parties because (it limited) the amount of money that could go into political parties and party committees but opened up unlimited contributions to outside groups. All of this was predicted when the reformers passed McCain-Feingold in 2002. And, ironically, the ones who want to change the law now are the ones most responsible for the current regime."
Collegio says the advertising done by American Crossroads last summer "was to frame the issue debate during the debt limit fight between the president and the Congress. And our goal there was to keep the president from raising taxes in a debt deal, and we believe we were successful in that effort."
Pressed for details about strategy, Collegio refused to say much more other than that similar issue-based advertising regarding the president's record on job creation "is fair game."
Burton said he decided to help found Priorities USA Action because of the substantial financial resources being marshaled by GOP-aligned groups like American Crossroads and their wealthy benefactors. Burton says that his organization is on track to meet its goal of raising $100 million to support the president before Election Day and that the pro-Obama super PAC intends to focus its activities on direct communications with voters via social media, radio, mail and telephone.
Influencing the agenda of successful candidates?
Regardless of what happens in the presidential or congressional races this year, some observers see another possible impact from super PACs that could have far-reaching implications.
In a recent opinion column for CNN, Hasen argued that large, unlimited donations to super PACs could skew the agendas of successful candidates in favor of the wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions that contributed to supportive super PACs before Election Day. Hasen's argument was focused on members of the House and Senate, but its logic applies to successful presidential candidates.
Like Hasen, Allison sees the possibility of some kind of political scandal, ultimately resulting in more regulation of super PACs that would undermine the Supreme Court's reasoning in 2010 for opening up the floodgates of independent spending.
Of the specific scenario Hasen posits, Allison said, "I don't even think it's a possibility. I think it will definitely happen."
And Allison points to the controversy over Solyndra, the failed alternative energy company that received massive federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration and which also has ties to a fundraiser for Obama. "It's historic. It's both Republicans, Democrats. Big contributors get rewarded. Some get ambassadorships. Some get access to the White House. Some get loans, contracts. This is what we consistently see. The people who give the most money end up getting an awful lot for it in terms of access, perks, and occasionally policies."
Wertheimer believes that the legal argument will continue.
"They're vehicles for cheating and evasion and circumvention. And we have often in the past passed laws to prevent circumvention of existing laws and that's what's going on here."The Satanic Temple has responded to an Orange County, Florida decision to disseminate religious materials in public school by creating complementary materials that espouse the philosophy and practice of Satanism.
Last month, a Florida judge ruled that if the Orange County school district allowed Christian groups to disseminate Bibles and Christian-oriented religious materials in its schools, it would also have to allow atheist groups to do the same.
David Williamson of the Central Florida Free Thought Community — who recently fought against Brevard County’s attempt to ban atheists from offering invocations at public meetings — sued the district over its initial unwillingness to allow atheist literature with titles like “Jesus Is Dead” and “Why I Am Not a Muslim” in the schools.
A judge dismissed that case after the school board decided to allow the materials.
The Satanic Temple took advantage of this decision, deciding to flood Orange County schools with a pamphlet entitled The Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities that contains kid-friendly Satanic lessons.
“These bullies are mad and afraid of things they don’t understand,” the instructions on the word-jumble reads. “Help Damian use inclusive language to defuse the situation.
The spokesman for the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, explained that his organization “would never seek to establish a precedent of disseminating our religious materials in public schools because we believe our constitutional values are better served by respecting a strong separation of Church and State.”
“However,” he continued, “if a public school board is going to allow religious pamphlets and full Bibles to be distributed to students — as is the case in Orange County, Florida — we think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions, as opposed to standing idly by while one religious voice dominates the discourse and delivers propaganda to youth.”
The Satanic Temple made headlines earlier this year when it successfully petitioned the state of Oklahoma to allow it to erect a goat-headed Baphomet statue adjacent to a display of the Ten Commandments.
Greaves made it clear that, in both cases, his organization is only responding to provocations by the Christian community.
““Even as we prefer public policies respecting secularism, we feel that opportunities — such as this — to establish an equal voice for contrasting religious opinions in the public square, tend to favor marginalized, lesser-known, and alternative religions,” he said.
“I am quite certain that all of the children in these Florida schools are already aware of the Christian religion and it’s Bible, and this might be the first exposure these children have to the actual practice of Satanism. We think many students will be very curious to see what we offer.”Stephen King Comments On The Proposed Carrie Remake By Eric Eisenberg Random Article Blend
Following
Here's the problem, though: neither David Lynch or David Cronenberg are going to want anything to do with this rehash. At best the film is going to land somebody like Samuel Bayer or Marcus Nispel, who have proven with A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday The 13th that the horror classics should just be left alone. When it comes to film adaptations of a writers work, few have as checkered a past as Stephen King. While the horror guru has had some of his books turned into masterpieces, many more of them are plain awful. One of the bigger controversies in the King's film history is his dislike of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which is seen by many as one of the great horror movies of all time. But while the author may not agree with consensus on that particular project, he does have an appreciation for Brian De Palma's Carrie and is as mystified as anyone that it's going to be remade.Following the report from last night that Roberto Aguirre-Sacassa has been hired to write the script for a Carrie remake, EW reached out to Stephen King for comment and just like many of you, he doesn't understand why they are bothering. First saying that he's heard the "rumblings" about the project, his biggest issue is that there's no point in the new version because "the original is so good," even going as far as to say that it's better than his own book. After reflecting back on the performance by Piper Laurie in De Palma's version, he did comment that a new film could be fun to cast and in the hands of the right director - he suggests "one of the Davids: Lynch or Cronenberg" - it could be successful.Here's the problem, though: neither David Lynch or David Cronenberg are going to want anything to do with this rehash. At best the film is going to land somebody like Samuel Bayer or Marcus Nispel, who have proven with A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday The 13th that the horror classics should just be left alone. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topBy Sarah Hendrix | Staff Writer
Renato dos Anjos is an award-winning animator who works for Disney and was the head of animation for the Academy Award winning feature “Zootopia.” In his 30-year career in animation, dos Anjos has worked for Disney for the past 10 years. He will be coming to KCC to do a free public lecture on Wednesday, November 15, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in ʻOhia 118.
This is dos Anjos’ third visit to KCC and he will be holding a five-day animation workshop for students involved in the New Media Arts program. He explains the benefits of learning from one another in animation and he loves seeing the creativity and ingenuity of future animators.
“I’ve really enjoyed seeing what people are doing … animation for me is a shared experience where everybody can learn from everybody,” said dos Anjos in a telephone interview this week.
Dos Anjos is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and from a young age always dreamt of becoming a comic book artist. At the age of 14 he received an internship with a popular show in Brazil called “Mônica” during a school break in 1987. While working on the show, he developed a passion for animation and has continued in that career for 30 years.
Dos Anjos has worked on many films since his career began with Disney in 2007. Some of the films include “Wreck-it Ralph,” “Moana,” “Frozen,” “Tangled” and ‘Bolt.” Currently he is the head of animation for “Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-it Ralph 2,” which will be released in March 2018.
Before working for Disney, dos Anjos was employed with Sony Pictures Imageworks as an animation supervisor. While employed at Sony he worked on movies such as “Surf’s Up,” “Open Season” and “Polar Express.”
When dos Anjos was asked to give a word of advice to future animators, he explains the value of originality in the field of animation. A pattern he has noticed in the past few years from future animators who are applying to work at Disney is that most of their work looks very similar. He encourages new animators to keep their work as original as possible and to keep their personality in the work.
“I feel like there’s something of a pattern, especially the last few years where everybody’s work looks very similar to where I feel like people are losing an aspect of their personality,” dos Anjos said. “If anything, I know that in every school you go to they tend to kind of put you inside a format, they get everybody to look kind of similar. So in the process of learning your craft don’t lose your personality.”
One of the reasons dos Anjos continues working with future animators is because he receives inspiration from hearing students’ new ideas. As he works with students he wants to share everything he has learned in his career and in exchange be inspired by the next generation of animators. As he continues to come back to KCC and work with students, he values the time he spends with them creating new ideas in the world of animation.
“I’m really looking forward to sharing anything and everything people need from me. One of my favorite things to do is come and visit you guys and hang out,” dos Anjos said. “I’ve always come back fresh and rejuvenated with a lot of ideas of my own. Like I said, I really get a lot back from it and for me it’s a great opportunity too, to go there and get to talk to everybody.”Feds bust worldwide identity theft, phone ring in Minnesota
Federal officials said Tuesday 20 members of a Twin Cities-based family have been indicted for using "thousands of stolen identities" to steal cell phones and other technology and then resell them across the globe.
According to the indictment filed yesterday in U.S. District Court, Jamal Mustafa, 42, directed members of the group to open mobile accounts under stolen identities in order to obtain new phones at discounted prices. Members of the organization called 'runners' also stole phones through burglaries and robberies. Authorities allege the ill-gotten phones were resold for a profit in 13 wireless stores throughout the Twin Cities owned and operated by members of the Mustafa family.
Authorities say the alleged thefts and resales took place over several years, beginning in 2006 until this year.
U.S. Attorney Andy Luger called it "one of the largest criminal enterprises in the Twin Cities."
He didn't offer an overall tally of how much the Mustafas made from stolen phones but estimated the proceeds to be in the millions.
"For example, one runner we interviewed told investigators he stole 9,000 phones for the Mustafa family," he told reporters Tuesday. "That one runner probably earned the Mustafas around $3 million alone."
Luger said the alleged conspiracy to steal or otherwise illegally obtain cell phones and other mobile devices arose as the numbers of cell phone thefts in the Twin Cities spiked.
Lugar said he's not sure if the members of this organization had a major role in that uptick.
"One of the reasons we wanted to get these phones in one location and do an analysis of them is that will give us information to help determine how many of these were stolen, where might they have been stolen from - if there was a report."
According to the indictment, runners were also sent to states like Utah, Arizona and Idaho to obtain the phones and mobile devices. One runner arrested in Utah was found with 80 counterfeit and real victim identification documents. Authorities believe similar documents were used to open lines of credit to purchase phones. Sometimes the runners could buy phones under two-year contracts for around $200. The phones allegedly could be resold for more than twice as much from the Mustafas' stores.
The phones were likely sold at even higher profits overseas, where a "new iPhone 5s retails for between $1,000 and $1,200," a statement from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's office said.
Luger said the Mustafa family made the travel arrangements for runners and paid for their expenses.
Authorities also believe the Mustafas are tied to a burglary ring called the Sunrise Group that allegedly broke into Walmart stores to steal merchandise for the family to fence. The devices included "cell phones, iPads, and other electronic devices, provided electronic devices to the Mustafa Family on several occasions," according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office.
The effort to bust the ring involved members of local, state and federal law enforcement authorities. Luger estimated around 300 law enforcement personnel were involved. The stores where the devices were allegedly sold are practically shut down for now because the owners and operators were arrested and their inventory seized, said a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesperson.
MPR News was unable to reach Jamal Mustafa for comment. According to court records, federal defender Reggie Aligada was assigned to Mustafa's case. The Associated Press reports Aligada declined to comment because he expected Mustafa to get a new attorney. Mustafa is scheduled to make another court appearance later this weekHYDERABAD:Old, tired and weak -- former policeman Mohammad Abdul Qadeer, who spent 25 years in prison for murdering his superior ACP Sattaiah in 1990, missed Eid with his family after being released on parole on Monday.
In 1990, when Hyderabad witnessed one of its deadliest bouts of communal riots, Qadeer shot dead his superior ACP T Sattiah in the early hours of December 12. He pulled the trigger of his 410 Musket at Sattaiah from point-blank range. Reliving the horrific incident, Qadeer says he committed the crime since he was mentally disturbed after the death of nearly 150 people.
“At that time, there was severe communal tension in the city. We were made to work double shifts every single day. Sometimes, even when everything was peaceful, the higher officials would ask us to stay on duty late at night,” recalls Qadeer.“I repeatedly complained to my superiors but nothing was done. I was disturbed that so many innocent lives were being lost in the riots. In a momentary lapse, I pulled the trigger,” he reveals.
Qadeer was sentenced to life in 1992 by the Hyderabad High Court and he has been in jail for the past 25 years.
A diabetic, Qadeer had his left leg amputated in 2012, due to which several sections have been advocating his release on humanitarian grounds.
Former Supreme Court Judge Markandey Katju has been most vocal in advocating for Qadeer’s release and has also slammed Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi for his inability to get a pardon for the former constable. Qadeer, however, says that since he was in jail, it would be unwise on his part to comment on MIM’s efforts.
“I have learnt never to trust politicians. They always change their colours whenever it suits them,” he bluntly adds. Qadeer has two sons and two daughters, one of the son is nine years old.
Cold Blooded Murder
Dismissing Qadeer’s version, MV Bhaskar Rao, who was Hyderabad’s police commissioner when the incident took place, says the constable had a vendetta against ACP Sattaiah from the start.
“Qadeer somehow had this perception that Sattaiah had something against the minority community. It was a cold-blooded murder and killing a law enforcement officer is unpardonable, and I feel the court has been lenient on him,” thundered Krishna Rao. Arguing against his release, the former cop said, “In any other country, if you kill a law enforcement officer, you will not even be granted parole. So he should consider himself as lucky to even be out on parole. There is nothing in law called ‘humanitarian grounds’, if he has a family, then what about the victims? Sattaiah’s family have suffered for years because of his crime,” Rao argued.
Sattiah Family’s Nod
Meanwhile, the parole was granted after seeking the approval of Sattaiah’s family. Sources reveal that Sattaiah’s son T Arun Kumar, who is based in USA, had agreed for him to be granted parole, since the damage had already been done.Soccer star Julie Johnston wanted to make sure her wedding to NFL player Zach Ertz included all the traditional customs, but with some personalized touches to make the day all theirs.
So along with her father walking her down the aisle, dining and dancing, the day included a flower girl and ring bearer decked out in the couple’s sports jerseys, a cake topper and cappuccinos embossed with footballs and soccer balls and an after-party stocked with the pair’s favorite candy, Justin’s peanut butter cups.
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“We wanted pops of just us, not just a typical wedding,” the bride, who now goes by Julie Ertz, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview.
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The couple tied the knot at an outdoor ceremony on March 26 at the Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, California.
“It was definitely a dream come true,” says Ertz, squeezing in time for a phone call from her honeymoon in Hawaii. “It was beautiful, perfect.”
Well, almost perfect. As the wedding party was getting ready, all the hair dryers, curling irons and other hair tools plugged in at the same time blew a fuse, rendering the room powerless. But things were quickly back on track and the rest of the day went off without a hitch, she says.
Ertz, who turns 25 on April 6, wore a backless lace gown with a sweetheart neckline by Katie May. She accentuated her long blonde hair, styled in beachy waves, with a veil custom-made by Zach’s godmother that extended past the gown’s train during the ceremony before switching to a shorter version afterward.
Ertz, at 5-foot-7, finished off the look with 6-inch heels to reach her 6-foot-6 groom, a tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles. “I didn’t want to go completely on my toes for our first kiss,” she said.
Her sister Melanie was her maid of honor. Two friends each from elementary school, middle school and college served as bridesmaids. The groomsmen for Zach, 26, were his three brothers, two middle school buddies, his high school strength coach Dave Spitz and Eagles Tight End Trey Burton.
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Other Eagles players attended the nuptials as well, as did several of Julie’s Chicago Red Stars and National Women’s Soccer League teammates Christen Press, Alyssa Naeher, Sofia Huerta and Jen Hoy.
Guests dined on crabcakes, filet mignon and sea bass then dug into a 5-tier wedding cake with layers of chocolate, vanilla, raspberry and edible confetti. The newlyweds’ first dance was to an acoustic version of Sam Smith’s “Latch,” which she says is the first song she sent to Ertz when they began dating.
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Ertz says she was nervous a week before the big day but that turned to excitement on the big day, and she made a concerted effort to slow down and soak in the whole experience. “I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a moment,” she says. “It just felt so right.”
After their honeymoon in Kauai and the Big Island—the pro athletes are working out daily in between snorkeling and luaus—the couple are getting back to work with Julie returning for a match and Zach suiting up for training and practices.
FROM COINAGE: Your Go-To Guide to Finding the Right Wedding Gift
“Putting on the new jersey will be a really special moment,” she says of her new uniform which now will have “Ertz” on the back. She’s also looking to make a repeat appearance at the Olympics with the national team after suffering a “devastating” loss to Sweden at the 2016 Rio Games.
“It didn’t go as planned, but I learned so much from it,” Ertz says. “Those are the moments that help you grow.”The first translation of the Torah into another language — Greek — took place in around the second century BCE, in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy II. It is known as the Septuagint, in Hebrew Hashiv’im, because it was done by a team of 70 scholars. The Talmud, however, says that at various points the sages at work on the project deliberately mistranslated certain texts because they believed that a literal translation would simply be unintelligible to a Greek readership. One of these texts was the phrase, “On the seventh day God finished all the work he had made.” Instead the translators wrote, “On the sixth day God finished.”
What was it that they thought the Greeks would not understand? How did the idea that God made the universe in six days make more sense than that He did so in seven? It seems puzzling, yet the answer is simple. The Greeks could not understand the seventh day, Shabbat, as itself part of the work of creation. What is creative about resting? What do we achieve by not making, not working, not inventing? The idea seems to make no sense at all.
Indeed we have the independent testimony of the Greek writers of that period, that one of the things they ridiculed in Judaism was Shabbat. One day in seven Jews do not work, they said, because they are lazy. The idea that the day itself might have independent value was apparently beyond their comprehension. Oddly enough, within a very short period of time, the empire of Alexander the Great began to crumble, just as had the earlier city state of Athens that gave rise to some of the greatest thinkers and writers in history. Civilizations, like individuals, can suffer from burnout. It’s what happens when you don’t have a day of rest written into your schedule. As Ahad Ha’am said: more than the Jewish people has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jewish people. Rest one day in seven and you won’t burn out.
Shabbat, which we encounter for the first time in this week’s parsha, is one of the greatest institutions the world has ever known. It changed the way the world thought about time. Prior to Judaism, people measured time either by the sun — the solar calendar of 365 days aligning us with the seasons — or by the moon, that is, by months (“month” comes from the word “moon”) of roughly 30 days. The idea of the seven-day week — which has no counterpart in nature — was born in the Torah and spread throughout the world via Christianity and Islam, both of which borrowed it from Judaism, marking the difference simply by having it on a different day. We have years because of the sun, months because of the moon, and weeks because of the Jews.
What Shabbat did and still does is to create space within our lives and within society as a whole in which we are truly free. Free from the pressures of work; free from the demands of ruthless employers; free from the siren calls of a consumer society urging us to spend our way to happiness; free to be ourselves in the company of those we love. Somehow this one day has renewed its meaning in generation after generation, despite the most profound economic and industrial change. In Moses’ day it meant freedom from slavery to Pharaoh. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it meant freedom from sweatshop working conditions of long hours for little pay. In ours, it means freedom from emails, smartphones and the demands of 24/7 availability.
What our parsha tells us is that Shabbat was among the first commands the Israelites received on leaving Egypt. Having complained about the lack of food, God told them that he would send them manna from heaven, but they were not to gather it on the seventh day. Instead a double portion would fall on the sixth. That is why to this day we have two challot on Shabbat, in memory of that time.
Not only was Shabbat culturally unprecedented. It was so conceptually as well. Throughout history people have dreamed of an ideal world. We call such visions, utopias, from the Greek ou meaning “no” and topos, meaning “place.” They are called that because no such dream has ever come true, except in one instance, namely Shabbat. Shabbat is “utopia now,” because on it we create, for 25 hours a week, a world in which there are no hierarchies, no employers and employees, no buyers and sellers, no inequalities of wealth or power, no production, no traffic, no din of the factory or clamor of the marketplace. It is “the still point of the turning world,” a pause between symphonic movements, a break between the chapters of our days, an equivalent in time of the open countryside between towns where you can feel the breeze and hear the song of birds. Shabbat is utopia, not as it will be at the end of time but rather, as we rehearse for it now in the midst of time.
God wanted the Israelites to begin their one-day-in-seven rehearsal of freedom almost as soon as they left Egypt, because real freedom, of the seven-days-in-seven kind, takes time, centuries, millennia. The Torah regards slavery as wrong, but it did not abolish it immediately because people were not yet ready for it. Neither Britain nor America abolished it until the 19th century, and even then not without a struggle. Yet the outcome was inevitable once Shabbat had been set in motion, because slaves who know freedom one day in seven will eventually rise against their chains.
The human spirit needs time to breathe, to inhale, to grow. The first rule in time management is to distinguish between matters that are important, and those that are merely urgent. Under pressure, the things that are important but not urgent tend to get crowded out. Yet these are often what matter most to our happiness and sense of a life well lived. Shabbat is time dedicated to the things that are important but not urgent: family, friends, community, a sense of sanctity, prayer in which we thank God for the good things in our life, and Torah reading in which we retell the long, dramatic story of our people and our journey. Shabbat is when we celebrate shalom bayit – the peace that comes from love and lives in the home blessed by the Shekhinah, the presence of God you can almost feel in the candlelight, the wine and the special bread. This is a beauty created not by Michelangelo or Leonardo but by each of us: a serene island of time in the midst of the often-raging sea of a restless world.
I once took part, together with the Dalai Lama, in a seminar (organised by the Elijah Institute) in Amritsar, Northern India, the sacred city of the Sikhs. In the course of the talks, delivered to an audience of two thousand Sikh students, one of the Sikh leaders turned to the students and said: “What we need is what the Jews have: Shabbat!” Just imagine, he said, a day dedicated every week to family and home and relationships. He could see its beauty. We can live its reality.
The ancient Greeks could not understand how a day of rest could be part of creation. Yet it is so, for without rest for the body, peace for the mind, silence for the soul, and a renewal of our bonds of identity and love, the creative process eventually withers and dies. It suffers entropy, the principle that all systems lose energy over time. The Jewish people did not lose energy over time, and it remains as vital and creative as it ever was. The reason is Shabbat: humanity’s greatest source of renewable energy, the day that gives us the strength to keep on creating.Star Trek dealt with holograms across a lot of its franchises, but to see a real Mr. Sulu hologram? All I can say is, “Oh my.”
The sci-fi series star and internet grandpa George Takei took a trip to a holographic video capture studio, where he was recorded doing all the things that make Takei great, from laughing to fighting.
The results are just as adorable as you’d expect.
Microsoft’s Actiongram software allows the user to place holograms into real spaces (with the aid of a HoloLens of course). The company hopes that it can be used for filmmaking and visual effects so that people can interact with crazy characters and fantastical situations in real time.
To show it off, Takei holograms began to spawn all over the place. In the video, he can be seen boxing toys, laughing at himself, and, with the help of his husband Brad Altman, held himself in the palm of his hand.
Not being able to see Takei fight with a sword though was kind of a disappointment.
“We talked about holograms on Star Trek, and to actually be doing that in reality today, it was a lot of fun,” Takei said in the video. “Technology and being a part of it at the cutting edge is a thrill that very few human beings get.”
The software is currently in closed beta and only available to use on the HoloLens. If you wanted to interact with Takei yourself, you’ll have to be a developer, as only a development edition is available on Microsoft’s website for around $3,000.A Structural Model of Electoral Accountability
NBER Working Paper No. 21151
Issued in May 2015
NBER Program(s):Economic Fluctuations and Growth, Political Economy
This paper proposes a structural approach to measuring the effects of electoral accountability. We estimate a political agency model with imperfect information in order to identify and quantify discipline and selection effects, using data on U.S. governors for 1982-2012. We find that the possibility of reelection provides a significant incentive for incumbents to exert effort. We also find a selection effect, although it is weaker in terms of its effect on average governor performance. According to our model, the widely-used two-term regime improves voter welfare by 4.2% compared to a one-term regime, and find that a three-term regime may improve voter welfare even further.
Acknowledgments
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21151
Published: S. Borağan Aruoba & Allan Drazen & Razvan Vlaicu, 2018. "A STRUCTURAL MODEL OF ELECTORAL ACCOUNTABILITY," International Economic Review,.
Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:Last week we teased the possible existence of a new Spider-Man title that would be launching at the end of the Superior Spider-Man series and launching alongside the new Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) #1. Many, including Bleeding Cool, speculated that this new series would be a rumored, Peter David helmed Spider-Man 2099 series. This seemed to be validated by the comments left by exiting editor Stephen Wacker in the Spider-Mail column in the back of Superior Spider-Man #27.
It seems that Wacker, the eternal internet prankster, could have had the last laugh with his final editorial note, though the Spider-Man 2099 series could come later in the year. Over the weekend Newsarama reported that Marvel Comics will be releasing a five-part story called The Amazing Spider-Man Year One: Learning to Crawl the will run alongside the new Amazing Spider-Man (vol. 3) series. The series will run from May to September and will release a new issue every month. The story will be
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1,295 executions in the US since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976
So far 482 prisoners have been killed in Texas, making it the state with highest execution rate
"Carlos Hernandez was always involved in violent crimes, and his weapon of choice was the knife," retired Corpus Christi detective Eddie Garza said in a video testimonial included in the report.
"My informants told me Hernandez had got someone else to take the fall [for Lopez's murder]. I contacted the detective in charge of the case. He said they had enough evidence linking Carlos de Luna to the crime so I backed away from it."
In essence, de Luna was executed because he looked the "spitting image" of the actual killer and officers handled the case with "nonchalance", said Prof Liebman.
"Everything that could go wrong in a death penalty case did go wrong for de Luna.
"Sadly, his story is not unique. The same factors that sent de Luna to his death - faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation, and prosecutorial misfeasance - continue to put innocent people at risk of execution today."
Carlos Hernandez died of natural causes in a Texas prison in May 1999, having been jailed for assaulting a neighbour with a 9in (23cm) knife.The Victims of Communism Memorial was dedicated on 12 June 2007 in Washington, DC. The ten-foot bronze statue that stands at the center of the Memorial is a tribute to more than 100 million people who died as a result of revolutions, wars and atrocities committed by various communist regimes. The dedication ceremony were attended by US government officials, representatives from the Baltic and East European countries and Memorial supporters. The principal address was given by President George W. Bush, who accepted the Memorial on behalf of the American People.
More than a decade in the making, the Memorial is the brainchild of Dr. Lee Edwards who heads the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The US Congress authorized the establishment of the Memorial and the government donated the land. But no federal funding was available for the Memorial, which is situated at the intersection of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues, NW, two blocks from the Union Station (Washington's train station). The Foundation raised the funds necessary to build the Memorial.
The Victims of Communism Memorial features a bronze copy of the "Goddess of Democracy" that was created by student activists in China's Tiananmen Square but destroyed by government tanks during that famous uprising in 1989. The inscription on the stone pedestal reads:
To the more than one hundred million victims of communism and to those who love liberty
And, the inscription on the back of the pedestal:
To the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples
Among the many individual and institutional sponsors of the Victims of Communism Memorial is Bizim Qirim (Our Crimea), an international nongovernmental organization based in Simferopol, Crimea. A legal entity that functions in compliance with the laws of Ukraine, Bizim Qirim, under the direction of its energetic President Abduraman Egiz, works toward preserving human rights, culture and customs of the Crimean Tatar people living in Ukraine, and promoting peace and tolerance among the various ethnic groups in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
During the Dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial, Crimean Tatars were represented by Ms. Ayla Bakkalli, who spoke on behalf of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis (Assembly) in Simferopol. The text of her Remarks is available at this Web site. Thousands of Crimea's native sons and daughters died as a result of forced migrations, artificially created famines, political repressions and deportations. The Soviet Union may be gone but its past crimes committed against our people are still felt today. Crimean Tatars understand and insist that the problems inherited from the Soviet communist era can only be addressed by democratic means. It is important that nameless victims of communism be remembered by such a Memorial that has been unveiled in Washington, DC. Crimean Tatars are among the supporters of the Memorial and were represented at the official Dedication on 12 June 2007.
Inci Bowman
Washington, DC
For further information about the Memorial, see the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Web site. See also A Victim's Reflections by M.B. Altan, who articulates what the unveiling of the Memorial has meant to a Crimean Tatar.In an interview with Bill Apter for 1Wrestling.com before the Royal Rumble PPV, Chris Jericho gave his thoughts on Roman Reigns and how he would book WrestleMania 31.
He said: “We know that Daniel Bryan is a guy that’s super popular but we all know what Vince McMahon thinks. Daniel is not a Vince McMahon prototype wrestler where as Roman Reigns is. I’d like to see Roman win, I’d like to see him win the title at WrestleMania and see what do we really have with this guy. And if that’s the case, then turn Daniel Bryan heel and put those two together, let them feud for the title back and forth.”
His card looks like this:
-Sting vs. Triple H
-Rusev vs. John Cena
-The Undertaker vs. Bray Wyatt
-Daniel Bryan vs. Brock Lesnar
-Roman Reigns vs. WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth RollinsMINNEAPOLIS—Touting the product’s health benefits and lightly sweetened flavor, General Mills unveiled Wednesday its new OmniGrain Cheerios, which are made with every known grain on earth. “Our new OmniGrain Cheerios feature the delicious, nutritious taste of 337,000 different whole grains gathered from every biome on the planet,” said company spokeswoman Karen Elston, noting that General Mills spent over 10 years locating, cataloging, and then harvesting grains on every continent, including several now-extinct varieties that were extracted from amber and permafrost. “Whether starting off your morning or enjoying an afternoon or late-night snack, you’ll love the rich texture provided by OmniGrain Cheerios’ distinctive blend of every single type of grain in existence, from the commonplace Australian barley to the previously undocumented Southern blue quinoa, which was recorded by the ancient Inca but was only recently rediscovered by our Cheerios harvest team when scouring the high slopes of Huayna Picchu.” According to Elston, General Mills is also currently developing a new line of Yoplait Ultrabiotic yogurt that consists solely of billions of live bacteria with no dairy product.
AdvertisementRed Hat’s customers are increasingly investing in and adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to better serve their customers, create value, grow their business, and reduce cost and complexity.
“Our customers see great potential in using Machine Learning (ML) to solve their business challenges. Technical advances in hardware acceleration and innovation in open source frameworks make ML a viable tool,” said Chris Wright, Chief Technology Officer, Red Hat.
We are listening to our customers. We are teaming up with Google and other members of the Kubernetes community with a goal of creating a strong open source community for AI and ML on Kubernetes and OpenShift — Red Hat’s enterprise Kubernetes platform.
Our goal is to create a future where developers and data scientists can easily access and consume AI and ML technologies and capabilities in support of their business and organizational goals.
AI and ML have the potential to create new opportunities for consumers and enterprises alike. However, to realize these opportunities, developers and operators will need to navigate a vast and complex space that builds upon fast-moving industry changes such as cloud, big data, high-performance computing (HPC), specialized hardware accelerators (such as GPUs and FPGAs), and specialized ML frameworks.
The typical ML workflow involves defining business objectives, collecting private and public data, refining and storing the data, and iteratively creating and validating useful models that must be put into production. Since nothing occurs in a vacuum, these ML methods are implemented as components of intelligent applications, which serve and apply predictive models to real-world, high-velocity information in order to provide key functionality. All this must be done in a repeatable, scalable, and resilient manner. Furthermore, some of this can require specialized (and often expensive) hardware resources, which increases the importance of resource management and utilization.
While data scientists have access to data and hardware for training and serving models today, the entire process can be bespoke, complex, inflexible, incomplete, and not scalable. As a result, the impact of advances in ML has largely been siloed, muted, and limited. We see the need for ways to break through this barrier and accelerate the application of ML.
Enter containers and Kubernetes. Developers and operators are increasingly embracing Linux containers and Kubernetes to help accelerate application development and deployment. Containers and Kubernetes abstract and simplify access to underlying infrastructure and provide robust capabilities to manage application lifecycle and development workflows. OpenShift, with additional capabilities for self-service, build and deployment and automation, further enhances this experience. Additional features in security, storage, networking, monitoring, and observability make it well suited for enterprise environments.
OpenShift is therefore well positioned to manage the complexity of ML and to democratize access to these techniques. In the words of Chris Wright,
“Using OpenShift, Red Hat’s enterprise Kubernetes distribution, data scientists can easily deploy any containerized ML stack at scale on public or private infrastructure for training and querying models.”
Red Hat is already contributing in this space.
Red Hat OpenShift engineers are the founding members of the Kubernetes Resource Management Working Group. This group is contributing towards:
Integration and access to specialized hardware resources such as GPUs, FPGAs, and Infiniband;
Specialized features such as exclusive cores, CPU pinning strategies, hugepages, and NUMA;
Optimizing the access and efficiency of resources with robust scheduling, prioritization, and preemption capabilities; and
Performance benchmarking and tuning.
Red Hat is also working with hardware vendors and the community to help simplify the access and management lifecycle of hardware drivers and libraries for the benefit of our customers.
Last year, Red Hat launched radanalytics.io, an open source project aimed at making it easier to build intelligent applications on OpenShift. With twin goals of supporting the data science workflow and making machine learning capabilities accessible to enterprise developers, the radanalytics.io community brings technologies like Apache Spark, Project Jupyter, TensorFlow, Apache Kafka, AMQP, Ceph, S3, and OpenShift S2I together on OpenShift. Red Hat engineers not only contribute to many of these projects, but a Red Hat engineer co-leads the Kubernetes Big Data Special Interest Group (SIG) and has been leading the effort to introduce first-class support for scheduling on Kubernetes into the upstream Apache Spark project.
In response to strong interest from the Red Hat ecosystem, Red Hat, along with Google and other members of the OpenShift Commons, have launched the OpenShift Commons Machine Learning SIG to further the conversations with the community around best practices for ML workloads on OpenShift. Red Hat engineers and others in the community have been gathering to discuss, develop, and disseminate best practices for deploying ML applications and workloads on OpenShift.
Today we are taking another step forward and working with the community on the Kubeflow project. Our intent is to make Kubeflow a vendor-neutral, open community with the mission to make machine learning on Kubernetes easier, portable and more scalable.
“We’re ecstatic that Red Hat has joined the Kubeflow community and is bringing their knowledge of large-scale deployments to the project,” said David Aronchick, Product Manager on Kubeflow. “With OpenShift’s native Kubernetes implementation and success in major companies around the world, Kubeflow gives you the opportunity bring ML and OpenShift together on a single platform.”
“We’re excited to work with the nascent Kubeflow community leveraging open source ML tools and Kubernetes to make ML workflows ubiquitous.” added Chris Wright.
In conclusion, Red Hat is working with Google and other Kubernetes community members to further hone the mission and objectives of Kubeflow and put into motion a collaborative plan to achieve a truly open and collaborative community. We look forward to lending our engineering and community-building talents alike to this new project.
We encourage interested members of larger Red Hat ecosystem and community to join us in this.
Get Started with Machine Learning:
Related GitHub projects:
radanalytics.io – Community for Machine Learning and Intelligent Application creation on OpenShift
Kubeflow – Machine Learning Toolkit for Kubernetes
Blog – Introducing Kubeflow
Slack Channel
Twitter
Mailing List
Jupyter-on-OpenShift – Tools for Deploying Jupyter notebooks and Jupyter Hub on OpenShift.
Related OpenShift Commons Briefings:
OpenShift Commons Machine Learning SIG:After the war, his father became an apprentice engineer and in 1955 opened a factory to make balloons and print faces on them. Around that time, he changed the family name, which is of Silesian origin, to Kroto.
As a boy, Dr. Kroto often worked with his father in the factory. He credited the experience, along with his days playing with a Meccano engineering set, with giving him the problem-solving skills needed to be a research scientist. He attended the Bolton School, where he became fascinated by chemistry and art.
He studied chemistry at the University of Sheffield, earning his undergraduate degree in 1961, and completed his Ph.D there in 1964 with a focus on spectroscopy. As a student, he divided his time between conducting experiments, playing tennis and designing covers for the student magazine, Arrows.
Dr. Kroto completed postdoctoral work in the United States and Canada for three years before returning to England to accept a teaching position at the University of Sussex in 1967.
He began collaborating with Dr. Curl and Dr. Smalley at Rice in the fall of 1985. In their experiments, they blasted graphite with lasers to recreate the plasma conditions found in stars and investigate carbon clusters. The discovery of the 60-carbon molecule came out of these tests.
Mr. Kroto was knighted in 1996. He left Sussex in 2004 for Florida State University, where he taught and conducted research.
In addition to his wife of 53 years, Margaret, he is survived by two sons, Stephen and David.
Dr. Kroto was passionate about mentoring young scientists. He created educational videos through the Vega Science Trust and Florida State’s Geoset, which are online repositories of short science presentations. He also presented his buckyball workshops in Sweden, Malaysia, India, China and Japan.A bill proposed in the student senate at Texas A&M University in College Station last week would let students choose not to pay the portion of their student fees that would otherwise fund the school’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center.
Specifically, reports the Houston Chronicle, the measure would permit “students who object, for religious purposes, to the use of their student fees and tuition to fund this center to opt out of paying an amount equal to their share of the Center’s funding from their fee and tuition bills.”
“While it can be argued that the GLBT Resource Center is a worthy use of funds in order to provide a welcoming environment for vulnerable populations at Texas A&M,” the bill further states, “it is reasonable for students to object to a use of their own money that is in direct opposition to their own religious values.”
The GLBT Center, which has been operating since 2007, describes itself as “a resource and referral center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Aggies and their straight supporters.” It’s unclear exactly how much money the Center stands to lose if the bill passes.
The polarizing bill has supporters and detractors.
Supporters argue that students who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds shouldn’t have to pay for the GLBT Resource Center.
The bill’s opponents say the bill is discriminatory. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Aggies organization issued a statement calling the bill “a direct and blatant attack,” according to the Chronicle.
Camden Breeding, former president of GLBT Aggies, told the Dallas Voice that the A&M bill is “a way to institutionalize discrimination using the guise of religion.”
Breeding contends that a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision makes the bill illegal. The general ruling in that case, Univ. of Wisconsin System v. Southworth, was that the First Amendment enables public universities to use activity fees to fund programs that facilitate extracurricular student speech.
“The Supreme Court’s already ruled on it,” Breeding asserted. “It’s a hurtful bill. It’s another bill that’s targeting the LGBT community here.”
Breeding’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s holding may not be the final word, though.
As Judge Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the opinion for the majority in the 2000 case Breeding cites: “If a university decided that its students’ First Amendment interests were better protected by some type of optional or refund system, it would be free to do so.”
GLBT student leaders told the Houston Chronicle that there will be an open forum on campus April 3 at which students can provide their opinions on the bill.
Follow Eric on TwitterLONDON — Britain on Wednesday barred firebrand US pastor Terry Jones from the country, saying the controversial preacher who had threatened to burn the Koran was guilty of “unacceptable behavior.”
“The government opposes extremism in all its forms which is why we have excluded pastor Terry Jones from the UK,” said a spokesman from the Home Office, or interior ministry.
Jones, who triggered an international furor last year with plans to burn the holy book of Islam on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, said he was disappointed with the ban.
“We are very disappointed. We would ask that they reconsider, that the ban be lifted,” he told Sky News television.
He was originally invited to speak in Britain at a rally organized by far-right group the English Defence League (EDL) on February 5 in Luton, a town just north of London.
The EDL says it fights what it calls the spread of militant Islam in Britain.
But the group withdrew its offer in the face of public opposition to the visit and concerns that Jones’ presence could inflame tensions in the town, which has a significant Muslim population.
After the invite was retracted, the radical evangelist said he still planned to visit Britain and was thinking of organizing an event in London. He also said he would fight any attempt to block him from visiting the country.
Announcing the ban on Wednesday, the Home Office said many comments made by Jones provided “evidence of his unacceptable behavior”.
“Coming to the UK is a privilege not a right and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good,” said the spokesman.
“The use of exclusion powers is very serious and no decision is taken lightly or as a method of stopping open debate.”
The pastor however insisted that he was not against Islam and said he had personal reasons for wanting to visit as his daughter lived in Britain.
“I believe that our visit there could be beneficial,” he said.
“We are by no means against Muslims, we are not against Islam… We have always spoken out only against the radical element of Islam.”
“My daughter lives in England. My grandchildren are English and live in England,” he added.
Jones leads the tiny Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida.The Senate easily voted Wednesday to advance a bipartisan agreement to slap new financial penalties on Russia and let Congress weigh in before President Trump can lift sanctions.
Senators voted 97-2 to attach the deal to an Iran sanctions bill currently being debated on the Senate floor. Republican Sens. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (Ky.) and Mike Lee Michael (Mike) Shumway LeePush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (Utah) were the only senators to vote against including new Russia penalties in the legislation.
The Senate is expected to pass the Iran and Russia sanctions bill as soon as this week. Absent an agreement, the Senate will take another procedural vote on the legislation on Thursday morning.
The vote comes after top Republicans held off for months from backing tougher financial penalties in a bid to give the Trump administration space to try to improve the U.S.-Russia relationship, which soured under the Obama administration.
But top senators have signaled that talks with Russia over Syria, where Moscow supports Syrian President Bashar Assad, were moving too slowly to warrant holding off on new penalties.
"We must take our own side in this fight. Not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans. It's time to respond to Russia's attack on American democracy with strength, with resolve, with common purpose, and with action," Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) said ahead of Wednesday's vote.
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The vote comes amid multiple investigations into Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election and questions about the Trump campaign's possible ties to Moscow.
Sen. Mike Crapo Michael (Mike) Dean CrapoSenate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks New push to open banks to marijuana industry Private insurance plays a critical part in home mortgage ecosystem MORE (R-Idaho), the chairman of the Banking Committee, praised the agreement as a "strong bipartisan measure" that will "result in some very powerful and new sanctions" against Russia.
The Russia deal would impose new sanctions, including on any individuals tied to "malicious cyber activity," supplying weapons to Assad's government or individuals tied to Russia's intelligence and defense sectors.
It would also give Congress 30 days — or 60 days around the August recess — to review and potentially block Trump from lifting or relaxing Russia sanctions; codify the sanctions on Russia imposed by executive order by the Obama administration, and allow the Trump administration to impose new sanctions on sectors of the Russian economy.
Senators in both parties pointed to the agreement, and the broader Iran bill, as an example of bipartisanship in a Senate that has been locked in partisan fights for most of the year.
"I think it sets a good example of how the Senate can still work together to tackle complex and difficult issues," Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said ahead of the vote.
Senate 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.) also urged support for the deal ahead of the vote, arguing it's as "bipartisan as it gets."
"Leader [Mitch] McConnell [R-Ky.] and I worked extremely well together on this issue," he said.
The votes comes after a swath of lawmakers — including Schumer, McConnell, Crapo, McCain, top members on the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations committees and Sens. Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamHouse to push back at Trump on border Trump pressures GOP senators ahead of emergency declaration vote: 'Be strong and smart' This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (R-S.C.) and Jeanne Shaheen Cynthia (Jeanne) Jeanne ShaheenCongress must step up to protect Medicare home health care Dems slam EPA plan for fighting drinking water contaminants Bipartisan Senators reintroduce legislation to slap new sanctions on Russia MORE (D-N.H.) — were locked in negotiations for roughly a week trying to hash out an agreement.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had been expected to mark up Russia legislation this month, but Corker and ranking member Ben Cardin Benjamin (Ben) Louis CardinThe Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump looks for boost from Korea summit The Hill's Morning Report - A pivotal week for Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Anticipation builds for Mueller report MORE (D-Md.) pointed to the Iran bill as a faster way to get Russia sanctions through the upper chamber.
The Trump administration's warmer tone toward Moscow has sparked bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are largely skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Sen. Sherrod Brown Sherrod Campbell BrownWorse than nothing's been done since the massive Equifax hack Dems face internal battle over budget On The Money: Dems set Tuesday vote on Trump's emergency declaration | Most Republicans expected to back Trump | Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown drama | Powell heading before Congress MORE (D-Ohio), who was involved in the negotiations, said the amendment would send a message to an administration that "has been all over the diplomatic map."
Gary Cohn, director of the White House National Economic Council, said last month that the administration wouldn't weaken Russia sanctions, adding that, "If anything, we could probably look to get tougher."
Cohn's comments were a clarification of earlier remarks in which he said the president didn't have a position on Russia sanctions.
The administration has also sparked concern over reports that it could hand back two diplomatic compounds in the United States to Russia.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned on Wednesday that Congress should not pass any legislation that would undercut "constructive dialogue" with Russia.
"I would urge Congress to ensure any legislation allows the president to have the flexibility to adjust sanctions," he said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
Asked about Tillerson's comments, Corker told The Hill that he thought the legislation didn't prevent the administration from lifting sanctions if they are able to make progress with Russia.
"Obviously this is a very strong piece of legislation and it is forward in its policy, but yes, if progress is made they have the ability to do what they need to do. In certain cases it would require congressional review," he said.
He added that if he was in Tillerson's position "I would be saying the same thing....No administration wants input from legislative branches."
— This report was updated at 4:06 p.m.It's hard to say exactly what Damian Lillard saw. Ronnie Price was up in his grill as soon as he crossed half court. The Los Angeles Lakers needed a steal more than a stop, so Price had no choice but to try to harass Lillard into a turnover. He came up on him so quickly, though, Lillard was able to scoot past him and into the lane. The Lakers big men rotated, leaving Portland center Chris Kaman wide open. Lillard found him, Kaman scored.
Somewhere in there, Lillard says he saw something. What, only he really knows. But on the next play whatever he saw came to life in big, bright colors. Price picked him up high again. Lillard accelerated. The bigs came over again -- but not nearly fast enough -- and Lillard threw home the kind of ferocious dunk that makes you wince more than applaud.
Lakers forward Jordan Hill, who had tried in vain to challenge the dunk at the rim, asked the referee why he called a foul so late. Portland forward LaMarcus Aldridge turned to Hill and said, "Because he was mesmerized."
By now, the Blazers (30-8) are used to Lillard morphing into "Reggie Miller" in the fourth quarter of games. Lillard has a league-high 232 fourth-quarter points this season. Fifty-eight of those points have come in clutch time (the last five minutes of a game that's within five points).
"Even if I've seen it before, it still surprises me," Portland forward Nicolas Batum said. "I mean, he's a point guard. He's not a big man, he's not 6-8. He's a point guard driving the lane in traffic and dunking like that."
Lillard says he knew the lane would be open on the play by the way the Lakers played him the previous time down. He knew they'd change it up, ever so slightly the next time down, because he'd burned them with that pass to Kaman. They'd be a step slow as the thought of what happened before replayed in their minds.
Editor's Picks Elhassan/Haberstroh: Lillard or CP3? Amin Elhassan and Tom Haberstroh debate which point guard is better right now -- Chris Paul or Damian Lillard?
"It was the perfect amount of space," Lillard said.
Listening to him describe that vision was like listening to a great pitcher explain how he sets up batters. He saw it -- whatever it is the great ones see -- before anyone else. Before it even happened. Before it could happen.
It's a theme with Lillard. Before the Trail Blazers drafted him sixth overall in 2012, he told his agent, Aaron Goodwin, he thought Portland would be the best fit.
"I thought this team had a lot of pieces that would make a good team," he said. "And that I could come play point guard here. It's pretty much worked out exactly how I thought it would work out."
Keep in mind that at the time Portland was coming off a 28-38 season and a midseason coaching change from Nate McMillan to Kaleb Canales. The Trail Blazers had Aldridge, Wesley Matthews and Batum, but they were younger, skinnier, rawer versions of the players they are now.
Plus, the Blazers had already drafted a point guard, Nolan Smith, in the first round the previous season. And they still had Raymond Felton and Jonny Flynn. And they were still kicking themselves for trading back in the 2005 draft and missing out on Deron Williams and Chris Paul in the process. There wasn't exactly a ton of room in the backcourt, or a great legacy of point guards in Portland.
And yet somehow Lillard saw it. What he could become in Rip City. What the team could do. How the parts could fit together one day. The spacing Matthews and Batum would create. The way he and Aldridge could play together in the pick-and-roll sets. He saw it all before he was drafted.
So now what does he see? That's the question everyone around the league asks about the Blazers now. Portland was the first team to win 30 games this season. They're currently second in the Western Conference behind Golden State. They have two legit franchise cornerstones in Lillard and Aldridge, depth, veterans, elite defenders. All the hallmarks of teams that contend for titles in this league. But are they there yet? Are they truly elite?
"Last year in the playoffs, when we played as well as we did, it just felt like we were one of those teams that could do it," Lillard said.
"Last year we were a young team that was kind of new to winning. This year we're one of those teams. We perform at a high level consistently. We win without depending on offense. We play better, we get along, we're confident. We've won 30 games. I think we just have to keep the same mentality that we have and remember that we are an elite team."
That question is always something of a riddle. You have to win to be considered a winner. You actually have to make that leap before people think you're capable of it. Or, you just have to have vision. See it, say it, back it up later.
"Last year we were a young team that was kind of new to winning. This year we're one of those teams. We perform at a high level consistently. We win without depending on offense. We play better, we get along, we're confident." Damian Lillard
"He'll say anything that he feels is true," Aldridge said of Lillard. "And then he'll do anything to make it true."
The reason this all worked for Portland as quickly as it did is that the Trail Blazers saw it, too. What Lillard could do for this team, the way the pieces could all fit together one day.
"Honestly, the thing I'm most proud of is the discipline we had with Dame," general manager Neil Olshey said. "We didn't bring anyone in. We didn't go after any free-agent point guards to buy him some time. We drafted him, we believed in him, and we just said, 'This is going to be his ball. He's going to be our guy.'"
They eventually got rid of Felton, Flynn and Smith and brought in Price (yes, the same Price he dunked on the other night in L.A.) to mentor him.
"There was nothing that I could teach a guy that was already that gifted," Price said. "I was just there to help him. He had the tools long before he got to the league."
That vision didn't translate into wins right off the bat. The Blazers finished 33-49 in Lillard's rookie season, though that's a little misleading since they lost their final 13 games. But everyone involved had seen enough to know what was around the corner.
"We still had a good year," Batum said. "After the All-Star break we still had the eighth spot. Then we had a lot of injuries at the end. So we knew the next season we would be OK."
After the season, Aldridge was a little antsy. He was 27 and ready to win something meaningful. But he told management he would be patient for at least another year.
"After a losing season like that, I was trying to go win somewhere," Aldridge said. "They told me to give them a year and I did."
Olshey did two things when Aldridge told him that. He asked him what kind of center he thought he'd play well with, and he asked him to trust him.
"L.A. was open-minded," Olshey said. "He gave [coach] Terry Stotts a chance on the floor and he gave me a chance off the floor."
Portland signed Roy Hibbert to an offer sheet in free agency, but the Pacers matched it. When the Pacers matched, Portland signed J.J. Hickson to a one-year deal. The next summer they traded Jeff Withey for Robin Lopez, a defensive-minded rim protector who became expendable when New Orleans needed to clear cap room to sign Tyreke Evans. It was a footnote to a three-team deal. But having a center like Lopez finally allowed Aldridge to thrive in his natural spot at power forward. That allowed his pick-and-roll game with Lillard to blossom.
"The whole team has changed now," Aldridge said.
Did Lillard see all of that way back when? Can he see how this all plays out? Does he know whether the Blazers are truly elite?
There's that riddle again. You have to do something before people think you can. You have to leap before anyone knows whether you'll make it. Or, maybe you just have to have vision.World War I: Dignitaries attend services in Glasgow, Liege, Mons and London marking centenary of Great War
Updated
Commemorative services have taken place in Britain and Belgium to mark the 100th anniversary of Britain's entry into World War I.
On August 4, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, prompting a four-year global battle that killed more than 9 million people and permanently altered the world's political landscape.
A service at Glasgow Cathedral focused on the contribution of Commonwealth nations to World War I.
Reverend Dr Laurence Whitley led the service, telling those gathered it marked the summer's day 100 years ago when "the world changed".
"Our nations and peoples found themselves in a war the like of which had never before been seen and the memory of which still haunts us all."
More than 38 per cent of Australian men under 44 enlisted. Of those 416,000, about 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded or taken prisoner.
Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, who read from the Soldier's Prayer of Commitment during the service, said it was a day to reflect on the sacrifice made by so many Australians.
"Over 400,000 of our men and lots of women wore their country's uniform - 156,000, or a number like that, were wounded or gassed or taken prisoner and...[it] ruined a generation of young Australians," he said.
"So I think as we remember the war, we remember the human cost."
The simple service ended with the handing of a candle to a young boy, which symbolised the message being passed on to the next generation.
The culmination of the UK events was a candlelit vigil at Westminster Abbey, at which the lights were gradually extinguished until only one oil lamp was left burning over the tomb of the unknown soldier.
"As we reflect on the failure of the human spirit that led to an inexorable slide into war, let us spend a moment in silent repentance," the Dean of Westminster, Reverend John Hall, said.
At 11:00pm (local time) the last candle in the Abbey will be blown out to mark the moment Britain was committed to war.
People across the UK were urged to turn off their lights during the service, leaving a single candle burning as an act of remembrance.
Instability still haunts Europe, Prince William tells Belgian service
A service in Liege, Belgium, marked Germany's invasion of the country on August 4, 1914, and the violation of Belgium's neutrality.
Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge were among the dignitaries who attended the service.
Prince William paid tribute to those who died as he noted that the current fighting in Ukraine showed instability continued to stalk Europe.
Sorry, this video has expired Video: British prime minister David Cameron speaks to the ABC in Glasgow (ABC News)
"We were enemies more than once in the last century and today we are friends and allies," the Prince said, alluding to Germany and its cohorts in the two World Wars.
"We salute those who died to give us our freedom. We will remember them," he told Belgium's King Philippe and other heads of state.
French president Francois Hollande and German president Joachim Gauck were among those at the Liege rites.
In a British ceremony in the Belgian town of Mons, prime minister David Cameron, who also attended the Glasgow service, said those gathered remember the reasons behind the conflict.
"Too often it has been dismissed as a pointless war, fought by people who didn't know why they were fighting, but that is wrong," he said.
"These men signed up to prevent the domination of a continent, to preserve the principles of freedom and sovereignty that we cherish today.
"Perhaps above all, in this the centenary of World War I, we must remember the human stories, conveyed in the poems, the literature and the pictures that still entrance us."
ABC/Reuters
Topics: world-war-1, unrest-conflict-and-war, human-interest, united-kingdom, scotland, england, belgium, australia
First postedHow is the leather world changing?
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and not strong enough for my taste. The only way I’d probably keep it in the CES Letter is with a disclaimer of some sort basically saying something to the effect of, “Vernal Holley’s maps and parallels are controversial. This information is not incorrect but it’s not strong either. Here are resources for further research.” My current plan is to remove it and in the CES Letter Updates page explain this removal and why I removed it. Thoughts? Keep? Remove? Why?
Two years ago, Runnells considered the Holley maps/Book of Mormon geography argument the weakest part of the CES Letter. If kept, he felt it should be relegated to an appendix or at least have some sort of disclaimer. (Notably, neither the copycats Letter to my Wife nor Letter to an Apostle include the Holley maps in their list of grievances.)
So what can we find in the CES Letter 2.0 today? The exact same Book of Mormon geography argument and a link to the exact same online evidence. No appendix. No disclaimer. The section even retained it’s place toward the beginning of the document, primed for maximum impact. So what gives?
Based on what people told Runnells in that August 2015 Reddit forum, the Holley maps are effective.
“When I read the CES letter this part actually blew my mind! I was sure you were wrong and researched it. This is what kept me reading the letter.”
“Reword it, asterisk it, push it to the appendix, whatever you need to do to help you feel it has the proper level of integrity, but please don’t just delete it.”
“Going down a list of names and seeing place after place after place in common was really a “wow” moment for me, and it’s one of the most memorable sections of the CES Letter in my opinion.”
“That’s the part that helped my wife consider that the church isn’t true.”
“When my husband and I read the letter together in July seeing the maps is what actually pushed him over the edge.”
Makes sense. If the Holley maps are that effective, why would Runnells care if they hold up to objective scrutiny? After all, not everything useful has to be true.
Discuss.FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Jason Varitek, who was offered a minor league contract and an invitation to big-league camp by the Boston Red Sox, was absent Sunday on the reporting date for the team's pitchers and catchers, and a source close to the longtime Boston catcher said he will "decide soon" whether he intends to continue his big-league career.
"I haven't heard that we should get his uniform ready," manager Bobby Valentine said when asked whether Varitek would be coming to camp.
Varitek, who turns 40 on April 11, has been with the Red Sox since his trade from Seattle in 1997. Only Tim Wakefield has been with the club longer, and Wakefield, 45, announced his retirement on Friday. Varitek last season signaled a desire to continue playing for at least a few more years, and fellow catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia said that Varitek has been catching, throwing and hitting all winter.
But Varitek, a free agent who served as the Red Sox captain, has not been offered a big-league job by another club, and indications are that retirement may be the only course open to him unless he's willing to accept a minor-league deal.
The Red Sox signed veteran catcher Kelly Shoppach this offseason and also have prospect Ryan Lavarnway, who made a brief appearance in Boston last season, waiting in the wings.
Both Josh Beckett and Jon Lester expressed their regret that Varitek likely will not be back.
"I don't think you're going to find anybody in there that's played with him that's not going to say they're going to miss him," said Beckett, who has had Varitek behind the plate in 139 of the games he's pitched, far more than any other catcher (Paul Lo Duca caught 35 of his games in Florida).
"If Tek doesn't come back, he's going to be missed, severely. Both in the clubhouse and on the field. For me, I won't say especially, but for me, for sure.
Beckett was asked how Varitek's departure will affect the way he pitches.
"I think a lot of it just goes with the dialogue I'm having with a couple of the guys right now," he said.
"(Saltalamacchia) caught me a couple of times, he's kind of relaying what he's seeing. What Tek was so good at was reinforcing something, whether I knew it or didn't know it, he'd come out and tell me, 'This is what you're doing, you're getting on top of the ball,' whatever. Just trying to get those guys to see the same things he saw."
Gordon Edes covers the Red Sox for ESPNBoston.com.Researchers Flag Security Flaws In New LinkedIn Offering
LinkedIn's new "Intro" tool could be a security nightmare waiting to happen, researchers warn
A new LinkedIn feature designed to familiarize users with their email partners could introduce a slew of security problems to enterprises and individuals who use it, researchers said this week.
The new feature, LinkedIn Intro, enables iPhone users to route their email through LinkedIn so that they can get background on an email sender or receiver before they write. The feature helps the user become more familiar with their email partners, LinkedIn says.
But security experts say the new feature is deeply flawed and potentially dangerous to the user's personal privacy -- and, by extension, to any enterprise that allows employees to use LinkedIn via the corporate network.
"Intro reconfigures your iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad) so that all of your emails go through LinkedIn’s servers. You read that right," states the security consulting firm Bishop Fox in a blog about the new LinkedIn feature. "Once you install the Intro app, all of your emails, both sent and received, are transmitted via LinkedIn’s servers. LinkedIn is forcing all your IMAP and SMTP data through their own servers and then analyzing and scraping your emails for data pertaining to…whatever they feel like.
The blog continues: "'But that sounds like a man-in-the-middle attack!' I hear you cry. Yes. Yes it does. Because it is. That’s exactly what it is. And this is a bad thing. If your employees are checking their company email, it’s an especially bad thing."
Other security experts also flagged the potential security vulnerabilities in the new LinkedIn feature.
"To give them credit, from the engineering point of view it is pretty nifty. But from the security and privacy point of view it sends a shiver down my spine," said Graham Cluley, an independent security researcher, in a blog post. "LinkedIn also scooped up the contents of users' iOS calendars, including sensitive information such as confidential meeting notes and call-in numbers -- which they then transmitted in plain text, not encrypted."
In fact, Intro could create problems for encrypted email, the Bishop Fox blog says. "Cryptographic signatures will break because LinkedIn is rewriting your outgoing emails by appending a signature on the end," Bishop Fox states. "This means email signatures can no longer be verified. Encrypted emails are likely to break because of the same reason – extra data being appended to your messages."
The approach of the new feature could also create legal problems for email users because it changes the content of the email and interferes with confidentiality rules, Bishop Fox states.
"[LinkedIn] calls it 'doing the impossible,' but some might call it 'hijacking email,'" the blog says.
Have a comment on this story? Please click "Add a Comment" below. If you'd like to contact Dark Reading's editors directly, send us a message.
Tim Wilson is Editor in Chief and co-founder of Dark Reading.com, UBM Tech's online community for information security professionals. He is responsible for managing the site, assigning and editing content, and writing breaking news stories. Wilson has been recognized as one... View Full BioWritten By Art Chimes
Members of a key Congressional committee on Tuesday voiced support for NASA’s Constellation program, designed to get astronauts back to the moon.
The comments came a week after an expert panel said NASA’s plans were not possible, given its current budget.
The occasion was an appearance by Norman Augustine, head of a committee formed to consider the future of human space exploration. The Augustine committee sent a summary report to the White House last week saying NASA needs at least an extra $3 billion a year to implement the Constellation moon program. The report also included several alternatives to that program.
At a feisty session on Tuesday, Congress was having none of those alternatives, starting just minutes into the two-hour hearing.
“NASA has been working for more than four years on the Constellation program, a development program in support of which Congress has invested billions of dollars over that same period,” said Science Committee chairman Bart Gordon. “As a result I think that good public policy would tell us that there needs to be a compelling reason to scrap what we’ve invested our time and money in over the past several years.”
The Democratic chairman’s words were echoed minutes later by the top Republican on the Science Committee, Ralph Hall.
“It is hard for me to understand why the president is seeking new options at all when there has been an agreed-upon plan for several years. Why don’t we just fund the program we’ve all agreed to?”
But Norman Augustine stressed that by his committee’s analysis, NASA’s Constellation program — given the current budget — is, as they might say at the space agency, a no-go.
“And the reason for that, the primary reason, is the mismatch between the task to be performed and the funds that are available to support those tasks.”
The Augustine report includes several options for human spaceflight, but in his Congressional appearance, Mr. Augustine emphasized that they were just that — options, not recommendations.
“We’ve tried very hard not to wind up being in the position where we make a recommendation as to a program, but each of the options does have liabilities, including the current program. All the others have them, too. Each has their benefits, and it’s really up to the decision maker to make a judgment as to how to weigh those.”
When Augustine referred to the “decision maker,” he was talking not only about President Obama, but also about Congress, which appropriates the money to pay for space exploration. Most of the options in the Augustine report were based on a budget increase of $3 billion a year. By comparison, NASA’s current budget for all its programs is about $18 billion.
Via VOA NewsMariano Rivera’s 2013 victory lap prior to his planned retirement has been fairly remarkable thus far, returning from injury at 43 showing little sign of wear. He leads baseball with 16 saves (none blown), ranks first among AL relievers in WPA at 1.86, and has generally shown why he is a no doubt Hall of Famer to be.
There is not all that much to analyze with Rivera, his reliance on one pitch has long been notorious. Mariano’s late breaking cut fastball has gradually lost some velocity over the years, declining from the mid-90s to its current 90.2 MPH average speed but retaining its effectiveness. I have provided a clip below comparing the movement of his cutter relative to a more typical fastball in a similar location.
While the value of his cutter is beyond reproach, Rivera has traditionally mixed in a four-seam fastball with some cut of its own and later in his career a two-seam fastball typically to right-handed batters where it provides a similar movement toward the hitter as his cutter does to lefties. Here is a look at another inside cut fastball to Colby Rasmus and its mirror two-seam to Torii Hunter.
Rivera works both sides of the plate with excellent command, and that ability to place the sharp movement of his pitches on either edge of the plate has granted Rivera another trademark – shattering the bat with alarming regularity. This is most often done with the previously mentioned inside cutter breaking into the hands of left handed hitters, the late action inducing contact far enough up the barrel of the bat to cause a break. While broken bats are not an officially kept statistic, the New York Times tallied 44 broken in the 80 2/3 innings of Rivera’s 2001 season. Five broken bats have been counted in a single outing, and four were seen as recently as a 2010 ALDS matchup with the Twins. I have reviewed Rivera’s 17 1/3 innings this year and come up with at least six, with several more that sounded like breaks but I could not confirm.
This tendency is what I primarily wanted to have some fun with today, thus I have created a composite clip of six pitches that show Rivera doing what he does best. These particular pitches range from his most recent outing through October 2011.
Enjoy him while you can.The Rock and John Cena finally went nose to nose on RAW and it was the Great One who ended up looking at the lights. An intense RAW segment ended with John Cena laying out The Rock with an Attitude Adjustment. The shocking ending opens up even more possibilities for WrestleMania 27 and beyond.
The Rock made only his second live WWE television appearance tonight on RAW. The Rock returned to a thunderous ovation from the Chicago faithful. The Rock cut yet another great promo about John Cena and mocked Cena for his colors, his music, and his fans. John Cena had enough and confronted The Rock in the ring. The thunderous cheers that met The Rock were traded in to an orchestra and boos along with the usual “Cena sucks!”
Cena answered The Rock’s promo with one of the most bizarre rebuttals I have ever heard on a dueling wrestling promo. Cena did his best to turn the crowd back on his side by cutting a promo putting over The Rock. Cena explained that only wanted The Rock back in the WWE and put over the Great One’s return. Cena finally answered back The Rock’s anti-Cena campaign by stating that he was proud of the man he is and The Rock had no business to judge him. The two finally squared off when they were cut off by The Miz and Alex Riley.
Miz and Riley made their way to the ring and Miz immediately cut a promo on Cena. Cena left the ring and Miz turned his attention towards The Rock. The Miz went off on The Rock as the People’s Champ just stared at him with an ice cold look of steel. Once Miz was done, he and Alex Riley attacked The Rock. This is where the WWE swerved me from predictable to the very unpredictable ending.
At this point I expected the predictable ending of Cena coming inside the ring and helping The Rock clean house, ending RAW with the two shaking hands. Not tonight WWE fans! Instead The Rock cleaned house on his own and even delivered the first People’s Elbow in about seven years to The Miz. The Rock proceeded to throw The Miz over the top rope, making the WWE champion look as threatening as Hornswoggle. This is where things got interesting.
The Rock threw Miz over the top and wiped his hands clean of the champion. Unfortunately for him, John Cena never left and was standing behind The Rock like a lion hunting his prey. Rock turned around, Cena lifted him, and dropped him with the Attitude Adjustment. Cena leaned down with his hand and did his “you can’t see me” on top of The Rock and left the ring with a big smile on his face to a chorus of boos worthy of only great pro wrestling heels. RAW ended with Rock laid out, Cena with a goofy smile on his face, and a lot of anticipation about WrestleMania 27.
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I have written a lot about The Rock vs. John Cena feud and its positives and negatives with the biggest negative being the fans turning on Cena. Up until tonight it looked like Cena was swimming upstream after being owned for the last month by The Rock in his promos. Tonight the WWE gave fans an unexpected twist and it worked. Instead of an embarrassing visual of the WWE’s top babyface being booed out of the building each week on RAW, the WWE now has themselves a bit of an outlaw who will probably have more fans cheering him in Atlanta on Sunday than ever before. Well done WWE.
The not so good would be the absolute squash of the WWE champion. The booking of The Miz as WWE champion has been an absolute disaster. Quite frankly I have never seen any world champion booked this weak going into a WrestleMania in 27 years. After tonight The Miz looks even more like a complete joke and has zero chance of coming out of this situation with any redeeming value.
The new twist in the John Cena vs. The Rock feud gives WrestleMania 27 a well needed boost going into the final week of promotion. WWE RAW had its lowest ratings since The Rock’s return last week and buzz was beginning to dwindle about the event. The return of The Rock and the finale should be enough to jump-start some last minute interest and keep people on their seats waiting to see what The Rock has in store for John Cena at WrestleMania.
Finally, there is a lot of buzz this week about The Rock winning the WWE championship at WrestleMania 27. Rumors and fodder all point back to WrestleMania IX when Hulk Hogan defeated Yokozuna in an impromptu match to win the WWE title. The Rock is booked for RAW next Monday and will be live in Atlanta. An interesting scenario could see The Miz retain the title (and whatever little heat he has left) and drop the title immediately to The Rock. The switch would give the WWE a ton of mainstream publicity in addition to setting up some kind of angle on Monday night and a possible Cena vs. Rock match in the very immediate future.
And I don’t think anyone would have a problem with that!
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Eric G. Eric is the owner and editor-in-chief of the Camel Clutch Blog. Eric has worked in the pro wrestling industry since 1995 as a ring announcer in ECW and a commentator/host on television, PPV, and home video. Eric also hosted Pro Wrestling Radio on terrestrial radio from 1998-2009. Check out some of Eric's work on his IMDB bio and Wikipedia. Eric has an MBA from Temple University's Fox School of Business. More Posts - Website Follow Me:Promise to cut net migration to 'tens of thousands' could be broken, David Cameron admits
David Cameron said immigration target will be difficult to meet
Tory election pledge was to reduce immigration to 'tens of thousands'
However net migration rose last year from 167,000 to 182,000
Rise was in part due to fewer Britons leaving the country to live elsewhere
David Cameron suggested it would be difficult for the Tories to meet a key immigration target yesterday as he rejected suggestions his Government is losing its grip after a series of U-turns.
The Prime Minister insisted tough measures to limit the number of incomers would continue - but pointed out that fewer Britons were leaving for foreign climes.
Before the election, the Conservatives said they aimed to cut net migration from around 250,000 a year under Labour to the ‘tens of thousands’.
David Cameron, on a trade trip to China, has admitted that it will be difficult for the government to meet targets on immigration, because not enough people are leaving Britain
But the latest figures showed that 182,000 more people came to Britain than left in the year to June, up from 167,000 in the year before.
Mr Cameron dismissed the idea that the target was ‘impossible’ to meet because fewer Britons are now emigrating to the struggling Eurozone.
‘I don’t accept that,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘If you take the whole three year period [since the election], net immigration is down by a around third.
But he said: ‘The action we have taken takes some time to come through - getting rid of bogus colleges, trying to make sure that people who don’t have a right to stay here leave, making sure that family reunion really is just that.
CAMERON EATS FUNGUS AND GIVES CHINESE HOST BOOKS AS GIFTS The delicacy bamboo fungus – thought to be an aphrodisiac – was served twice to David Cameron on his first day in China yesterday. The tropical mushroom, also known as tropical stinkhorn or phallus indusiatus, is renowned for its pungent smell. It has been part of Chinese haute cuisine since the 17th century. The delicacy was served to Mr Cameron and other guests as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army band played at a lunchtime banquet hosted by Premier Li Keqiang. At an evening banquet with President Xi Jinping, it was on the menu again as soup accompanied by sturgeons’ marrow. Mr Cameron was also presented with gifts from Premier Li Keqiang, including a painting of a horse, a model of a bullet train and a doll for the Prime Minister’s youngest child Florence. In return, he gave his Chinese counterpart - a keen tennis fan - a racquet signed by Andy Murray. His wife Professor Cheng Hong, an English professor, received a selection of Booker Prize winning novels, by authors including Hilary Mantel and Julian Barnes. The couple were also presented with a selection of biographies: Charles Moore on Baroness Thatcher; Roy Jenkins on Churchill; Douglas Hurd on Disraeli; William Hague on Wilberforce; and the Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman on The Queen. President Xi was presented with an England football shirt signed by the team, while his wife was given a pair of gloves by Mulberry.
‘A lot of these things take an amount of time to be dealt with.’
But he went on to point out that when the Tories set the goal of reducing net migration to tens of thousands a year - one which has never been accepted by the Liberal Democrats - at a time when emigration was helping to balance our immigration.
‘I made the pledge of trying to get net migration down to the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands, on the basis that actually over the previous period migration flows within Europe have been relatively balancing out when it’s been migration from outside Europe that’s been topping up the numbers.
'We have seen that migration from outside Europe come down in terms of net figures and we need to make further progress.
‘So I’ll keep going on this. It’s very important. The British public want firm and consistent action on immigration and that’s exactly what they’re getting from me.’
Only last week it emerged net migration had risen for the second consecutive quarter to 182,000 - mostly with people fleeing eurozone countries in sourthern Europe.
But the largest group of migrants came from China - in the form of students. About 40,000 arrived in the 12 months to June, 8.7 per cent of the total, and means China has overtaken India as the leading source of immigrants.
However officials pointed out that the majority did leave again at the end of the courses.
The Prime Minister insisted the coalition was still working well - pointing to the weekend deal on slashing green levies to bring down energy bills by around £50 a year.
He said the coalition parties had also reached ‘good agreements on immigration’ but claimed the Lib Dems were a restraint on tougher measures. He added: ‘Would I like to go further? Yes I would.’
Mr Cameron said he was not concerned about the perception that the Government was being buffeted by events, having made U-turns on issues including capping interest rates on payday loans and plain cigarette packaging, and responded to Labour’s promise of an energy price freeze with action to cut bills.
‘On payday lending, this is the first government that has actually regulated properly this industry. We got in, we weren’t happy with what we saw, we set up the Financial Conduct Authority, properly regulating payday loans.'
A key Tory election pledge was to reduce immigration to 'tens of thousands' but in the year to June net migration rose to 182,000 from 167,000 the year before
Mr Cameron added:'But I think it’s right, you look at the evidence, listened to the arguments and I think it’s time for an interest rate cap.
‘On energy prices, if you can cut household energy bills by rolling back on the cost of levies then it makes sense to do so.
‘This is something I announced I would do in the House of Commons and a month later we have done it. That’s good politics. You say you’re going to do something, you work hard to achieve it, and then you do it.’
Part of the rise can be explained by the fact that fewer Britons are leaving the UK than three years ago (file pic)
On the move towards plain cigarette packets, which comes months after the Government shelved the idea, the Prime Minister said: ‘You look at the evidence, look at what’s happening overseas, look at the evidence of what works, and take the appropriate course.
‘If you look at the big picture of this Government, that has taken incredible difficult long-term decisions to turn the economy round, decisions we can now see are paying off as our economy is growing, unemployment is falling, there are 400,000 new businesses are operating, the world is beginning to see that the British economy is one of the most open, exciting and dynamic in the world.
‘Listen to businesses... their sense of momentum in the British economy. This is a government that has a long-term plan to turn the country round.Ellmers has been a good foot soldier in the US House, and she does what she is told by House leaders. If Ellmers wins the 2014 Republican Senate primary, which I think she will, she will be competitive. I am a fan of Kay Hagan, and I don't underestimate her appeal; but it is hard to fight all that anonymous money that will flood into state for GOP in 2014.
To quote a friend: "Renee Ellmers--sort of another Sarah Palin, but with an even lower IQ. Makes sense! She can see Raleigh from her back porch!"
I think one reason the NC Democrats got shellacked (to use Obama's word) in 2010, was in part overconfidence and lack of preparing for the opposition.
I am cautiously optimistic about Hagan's prospects in 2014, but I am only optimistic if Randy Voller and the NC Democratic Party get their act together in fundraising and grassroots organizing to turn out the vote. Issues matter, but feet on the ground and headed to the polls matter, too.
If I were one of those highly paid consultants everyone listens to (and I am not), I would concentrate on local issues where the GOP has pissed off voters repeatedly. The airport in Charlotte, the water supply first in Asheville and now all over, the environmental rules on Jordan Lake, changes to annexation rules.
People who vote will split on abortion and other social issues, but they need to be repeatedly reminded of the overreach of the legislators in Raleigh. All politics is local. The old adage has never applied more than now in North Carolina.
“North Carolinians continue to be closely divided on Kay Hagan,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But she’ll get a break if she can run against the leadership of an extremely unpopular GOP legislature.” - See more at: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/...
U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers will not run for Senate; she will run for re-election to the U.S. House, according to several media sources including WRAL TV. Ellmers had hinted at a possible run in 2014, and she met with RNC representatives in Raleigh recently according to the Raleigh N &O.
from Twitter: Tim Boyum @BoyumNews14
Ellmers mentions multiple times how Republicans need to do a better job reaching out to women #ncpol #ncgaCredit: Marvel Comics
Credit: Marvel Comics
Credit: Marvel Comics
After a week of teasers, the Mighty have been revealed. With a team comprised of Luke Cage, Superior Spider-Man, Blue Marvel, She-Hulk, White Tiger, and Power Man, the line-up is certainly eclectic. Now we talk with the newly announced creative team to find out the details of how this team comes together and what makes them Mighty.
Follow along on twitter or in the box below, thanks to our NewsaramaLIVE twitter account.
Here are the original tweets collected from our LIVE coverage, back in proper order.
The title being teased all week is MIGHTY AVENGERS by Al Ewing and Greg Land.
Tom Brevoort is on the line, talking about how the book came together. "It's launching in the midst of the Infinity storyline, a key moment."
"Luke Cage will bring together these people, saying if the Avengers aren't here, it falls to us to be the Avengers." - Brevoort
"After Infinity, you'll see how this will interact with the other Avengers books."
Mighty Avengers, in a way, takes the slot of Dark Avengers, said Brevoort, at least in his publishing schedule.
Writer Al Ewing says he "immediately thought of a niche for this team of Avengers, on the ground, as part of the community."
In addition to those in the teasers, Monica Rambeau, Falcon, and a Ronin are in the lineup of Mighty Avengers.
"Monica is rejoining the superhero set, rebranding herself. Her new name is Spectrum" - Ewing "It sounded scifi, which appealed to me."
"She's the field leader of the Mighty Avengers. It's fun to have her in that position again. Her powers are very unique." -Ewing
"I love the character, how her powers work, her history. She's one I'm looking forward to most" - Ewing on Monica "Spectrum" Rambeau
As for Ronin, says Brevoort, "When we first see him, he'll have a totally different identity, which is also not in fact who he is..."
Ewing - "We had ideas for him putting the Ronin suit on immediately. When you see him in issue 1 you'll find out why he's remaining hidden."
"You'll see the amazing costume he chooses to wear during those first few issues - but he'll be Ronin, and his mystery drives those issues."
Ewing on the command structure/lineup "Luke has a kid, he's not going to be the first one into the line of fire. he will guide the team."
"The Blue Marvel has a military background, he's used to following orders. Similarly, people like the Falcon"
"Power Man does not respond well to authority at all. I don't think there's anyone on this team who's an automatic blind follower."
Brevoort says "Luke has some ideas for not what the Avengers ARE but what they COULD BE," saying it spins from what Bendis did with him.
As for artist Greg Land, this is his first ongoing Avengers project. "He was looking for a new challenge to take on" said Brevoort
"He can do action, he can do storytelling. Al is writing this in Plot, Art, Script, classic Marvel style." Which Tom says Land is enjoying.
Press Q&A, starting with Kiel Phegley of CBR - "A lot of small but passionate fan-followed characters, is that something attractive to you?"
Al - "I take it very seriously. I don't like the idea of A list, B list, C list. You don't say to a firefighter, oh you're a C list fireman"
Al "I didn't know of the Blue Marvel until he was pointed out to me, and I fell in love with him. He's sort of the opposite of the Sentry."
Al "He thinks & cares very deeply about everything that he does. I'm listening to his fanbase on this."
Al "I'm glad to make his fans happy, I know what it's like to have a favorite character who doesn't show up much."
Next from us, Was the diverse cast a specific focus, or a happy accident?
Al "This was taken from a list of people that were available. Luke and Monica were always in the mix from the beginning."
Tom "It's no accident, really. I've talked in the past, people have asked why don't you do "Black Avengers" or "Latino Avengers"
TB "That feels artificial, ghettoizing to me. Let's put all the black characters together & away from other characters, it felt fake."
TB "But people who want to see heroes that reflect them have a genuine point. We started conceptualizing this book in February, it was Black History Month and the anniversary of the birthday of my dear departed friend Dwayne McDuffie."
"I set out this book not to make Black Avengers, but Dwayne McDuffie Avengers. At least 50% non-white male. As it turned out, we went more"
"It doesn't substitute the need for diversity elsewhere, but it was definitely something I was paying attention to as we set Mighty up."
Next Q from Paul on iFanboy "What's the relationship between the new and old Power Man? Is Luke okay w/him using his name?"
Al "In the past he hasn't been very okay with it. New Power Man's powerset is almost more Iron-Fisty"
Al "it's not a teacher-student relationship like Danny & Vic have, it's more like Boss & intern."
AL "It's not a mentor-mentee thing between Luke and Vic, they'll rub up against each other. Massive argument right in the first issue."
Q from Steve Morris at the Beat "Superior Spidey jumps out to me int he line-up, how is he fitting in with the team?"
Al "Yeah, Spider-Man is now obviously a complete ****. With his spider-eyes all over the city, he won't miss a horrible thing happening."
Al "After that, his POV is how dare you people try to protect the streets I'm protecting? Who do you think you are?"
Al "He's almost crashing the party. He forced his way in and nobody likes him. And the inevitable recriminations & open assault is coming."
Q from Tim at the NY Post "What's the team dynamic, do they come from a position of teamwork right away?"
TB "It'll develop over time. They come together and fight back-to-back out of necessity, because the world's in jeopardy."
TB "Thereafter the relationships will begin to gel, and set them off on their mission and life's work. The cast will evolve beyond the 9."
TB "Some cast will go in, go out, be around for some stories but not other issues. Classic, free-form Avengers team from 70s or 80s."
Melissa from IGN Q: "Can you tell us about your process with Greg Land?"
Al "I really wanted to try the Marvel method. Turns out I love it! For this it's really nice to do a dense plot, but give Greg freedom."
Al "We've got a few pages back already, & I get quite excited about what everybody is saying" when scripting dialogue over the art.
Al "Page 2 of issue 1 sees the Plunderer (the clue is in the name, he Plunders things). I wrote a rant for him in my head..."
"The page I got back from Greg, I cannot wait to write that rant. I'm having fun! It's great to work that way after a decade of full script"
Q from Mark from Marvel.com "Will Iron Fist be joining the cast at all?"
Tom "You won't see Iron Fist right away. They've been good friends for many many years, but Luke is actually married to someone else now"
Tom "It's inevitable that eventually he'll turn up in the book, because of Luke and Vic."
Al "yeah, he'll be along for a coffee, he'll be on the phone."
Q from Dan from Nerdist "These are some volatile personalities, which character pairing are you excited to write?"
Al "So far I'm excited for Blue Marvel and Spectrum. Adam and Monica, how they might come together is very interesting."
Al "Power-wise Adam is quite energy based. I've been thinking about how they'd interact, not to start any shipping happening on Tumblr..."
Al "There's Luke Cage & Power Man, Power Man & White Tiger, Luke and Jen (She-Hulk). She's there as much for legal knowledge as powers!"
Al "They won't be as connected to SHIELD & the government as the regular Avengers are, so he'll need that help from her."
Back to Kiel from CBR "Let's talk villains! Thanos, any other villains?"
AL "Yes we'll be getting Thanos lieutenants, some new villains, the Plunderer, some old villains too."
Al "One villain with a particular connection to White Tiger"
Q from us "Do you feel you're bringing any particular 2000AD style or sensibilty to Marvel here?"
Al "One is density, having a proper page. The other thing is comedy and drama mixed together."
Al "You can't have all grim and serious all the time, you need some humor if only so you can plunge it back down, and vice-versa."
Al "So I guess that's something I feel both 2000AD and Marvel do, combining the comedic and dramatic."
iFanboy again "Any other locations besides NYC?"
Al "There will almost certainly be some sort of terrifying hidden mountain. They will go to places, it won't just be the streets of NY."
Al "Strange citadels, Doomy Mountains, possibly the Moon, they're connected to villains. & the bottom of the Ocean's deepest trench, because that’s where Blue Marvel lives."
Q from Nerdist: Any characters who almost made the cut but didn't at the last minute?
Al "Wolverine! There was no room for Wolvie, no room in his schedule or mine. We just couldn't get together."
Marvel.com final Q "How does Jessica Jones feel about everything?"
AL "She definitely shows up, she'll get some hits in. She's not overly happy, but she loves Luke for a reason, part is he's a man w/ dreams"
Al "She's not happy about him being on the front lines, but he's trying to cut that down. Trying to balance this dream and his family."
Al "They love each other, and things happen (laughs). Sorry, that's not a great answer is it?"
And that's all for Mighty Avengers, a new ongoing series in Sept 2013 by Al Ewing and Greg Land!
Tweets by @NewsaramaLIVECalifornia Democrats closed out their state convention this weekend by giving Donald Trump the finger, but now their own constituents claim that they got the bird flipped at them by the Powers That Be. The convention elected an establishment party operative as its new chair in a close election over a candidate favored by Bernie Sanders activists
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unanticipated by those braced for its arrival. It catches its victim below the chin, breaking his jaw an instant before his teeth clamp and sever the tip of his tongue.
A high, long hit claims the afternoon’s last casualty. It soars to the back of the temporary stand, where a beery group rise to greet it, but succeed only in deflecting it onto the forehead of their neighbour who is treated on site, before exiting for concussion tests.
This Cheltenham College bloodbath is, with the exception of the concussion case, a fiction, departing from reality at some point after the ball is described crossing the boundary. It is not a fiction that has required a lot of imagination. One of these five incidents happened. The other four very nearly did.
The injured bull-runners at Pamplona do not attract much sympathy. They have willingly entered into a dangerous activity and suffered painful, but predictable consequences.
We do feel sympathetic for anyone injured watching a cricket match. “Should’ve kept their eye on the ball,” some might quibble, flinching as they remember turning to talk to a friend, or looking down at their newspaper, as the crack of a middled slog-sweep is heard.
But with sixes hit at a rate of one per 25 deliveries in professional T20 games, haven’t we reached the point where the need to evade or gain protection from balls smote over the boundary has itself become predictable? And if a risk is predictable, where does responsibility for its mitigation, or liability for its occurrence lie?
A little internet research reveals opposing views to this question in the UK and USA. In the judicature that covers the city of Cheltenham, case law points to sports clubs having responsibility for taking steps to counter reasonably foreseeable risks to the safety of the public.
Across the Atlantic, courts have sided with sports organisations, concluding that spectators understand and accept the risks of attending baseball or ice hockey matches. To place the liability with the franchise would, it is argued, increase their insurance costs, and push the price of tickets beyond the reach of those sports’ core fans.
Gloucestershire County Cricket Club may envy the legal protection enjoyed by the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Penguins, but they operate under the less forgiving legal code. What then, should the county club be doing to fulfil its duty of care?
I have three proposals which relate primarily to cricket played at occasional or festival venues, such as Cheltenham College. Spectators at purpose built professional grounds are less at risk. The playing areas are larger and the rows of fixed seats facing the middle help to keep spectators’ attention on the action. The ECB, with its plan to move to an eight team T20 league in 2020 may have the ultimate solution. These proposals are for interim precautions.
Pitch location
The pitch at Cheltenham was located off-centre. The distance to the nearer square boundary probably only just exceeded the minimum distance required by ECB playing regulations: 50 metres. That short boundary, opposite the college buildings, is where the majority of spectators were sat or stood. Sixes hit over the longer square boundary were highly unlikely to cause harm as so few people were in the line of fire. I would recommend that pitches at grounds like Cheltenham are central and certainly not closer to the square boundary where most spectators are gathered.
Protect areas where spectators mill
One of the pleasures of festival cricket is the promenading, dining, or standing and chatting in sight of the action. People thus occupied are distracted from the game and so less likely to be able to evade a ball hit towards them. Preserving the traditional pleasures of festival cricket needs to be balanced with the modern artillery of limited overs cricket. Protective netting can allow the two to coexist. Occasional grounds lack stands with roofs or double tiers, which could be used as a frame for protective netting. But a temporary net could be raised between the playing area and the concentrated zones where spectators expect to have sight of the match, if not their eye permanently on the ball.
Pad hard surfaces
The really unnerving moment at Cheltenham was when McCullum’s pull shot ricocheted from the lip of the boundary boards. Its pace and sudden change of direction would have defeated anyone but the sharpest slip-fielder. Grounds should ensure that the fittings erected between the players and the spectators do not exacerbate the threat to spectators. Padding around the top of boundary boards and other hard surfaces would absorb the ball’s momentum.
Unlike Pamplona’s running of the bulls, the running of the (white) balls is unlikely to last into the next decade at grounds such as Cheltenham College. The event’s passing will happen whether or not the safety of spectators from flying balls is given a higher priority. In the meantime, do not turn those spectators into unwitting bull-runners; or the players into bulls. John Simpson of Middlesex launched the six that hit the head of the man at the top of the temporary stand. Simpson held up play and walked towards the boundary, concerned for the injured spectator. He only allowed the game to restart when he saw one of the teams’ medics run across the outfield and climb the steps of the stand. The very next ball, mind perhaps not fully returned to the game, Simpson judged a quick single poorly, and was run out.
AdvertisementsHere are 10 accounts by women of all different ages from across the UK that happened in the last week:
I was followed around today during my run by a guy on a bike who rated different parts of my body.
Man addressing a room I was in: “When I say ‘men’ I mean everyone - it's a generic term.”
Little gem from a work party: getting told I look “good enough to rape” by male colleagues.
Guy at work used to think it was OK to only ever address me as big boobs. "Morning big boobs" etc. I started addressing him as "small dick" he soon realised that maybe saying "morning Kate" would be a better way to address me.
On seeing me in my lab coat, a bloke said to me at work: “Oh you're one of the scientists? I thought you must be the receptionist.”
Walking with my mum, a man sitting outside a pub starts shouting "threesome? THREESOME!?” at us.
Offered a sandwich at work, I say: “No thank you.” Male boss then adds: “I expect she is watching her weight.”
Male stranger says: "Tell your husband thanks for buying you those tits, they're hot."
At the community centre a volunteer asks: "Anyone have a husband who can come in and fix our computers?" I have an IT degree.
Some guys who live across the road stand outside every day and shout at every girl that passes. It makes me nervous to go out.
The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis. It now has more than 20,000 entries and is set to expand globally. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that women don’t even feel able to protest. By sharing stories, sexism is shown to exist on a daily basis and that it is a valid problem to discuss as opposed to being wrongly referred to as 'banter'.
Click here to learn more about the Everyday Sexism Project or follow it on Twitter or visit the website.California continues to be a leader in poverty, host to massive numbers of poor illegal immigrants and champion of the welfare state. It’s not likely to change any time soon.
Citizens and the middle class are being exploited so illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities.
The Los Angeles County officials are telling foreigners how to get “free” money and benefits from hard working Americans.
The notice specifically states that it won’t affect immigration status.
Free medical care, one-time payments, non-cash benefits, emergency relief, transportation vouchers, housing assistance, child care services, educational assistance and more.
This notice was posted on reddit. I couldn’t confirm the source of the notice but if you check the LA County Department of Public Social Services, you will find all these services are available and it doesn’t look too hard to get most of it without being a citizen.
Sanctuary locales funnel money into illegals who then support the politicians. The entire state of California is a sanctuary state.
A $10 million dollar legal defense fund has been set up to keep illegal immigrants.
A 2014 study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that providing education, health care, law enforcement, and social and government services to illegal aliens and their dependents costs Californians $25.3 billion per year according to FAIR’s report The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on California Taxpayers. The state’s 3 million illegal aliens and their 1.1 million U.S.–born children cost the average California household — headed by a U.S. citizen — $2,370 annually.
Conditions in some areas of the state “are like a third-world country” made worse by the multi-year megadrought. There is no backup plan.
A profligate state like California, has failed to reduce the growth in its spending and continues to face sizeable deficit and accumulate debt. Gov. Brown predicts a $4 billion dollar deficit by the summer of 2020.
The pension fund investments are at or below zero percent annually. Of all fifty states, California has the second highest pension debt. Alaska’s was higher at $110,538 though for different reasons.
California, now a Democrat Socialist state, has a depressed economy with one-party dominance which is a direct outgrowth of liberal policies and massive illegal immigration. A few areas, mostly in the Bay Area’s technology industry, are doing well, but the job-growth rate is mediocre, the unemployment rate is 10th highest, and underemployment rate is third highest. California is Number 1 in poverty with nearly a quarter of Californians impoverished.
In 2012, The Wall Street Journal calls California’s dive into a welfare fiefdom nothing less than a Greek Tragedy:
California’s rising standards of living and outstanding public schools and universities once attracted millions seeking upward economic mobility. But then something went radically wrong as California legislatures and governors built a welfare state on high tax rates, liberal entitlement benefits, and excessive regulation. The results, though predictable, are nonetheless striking. From the mid-1980s to 2005, California’s population grew by 10 million, while Medicaid recipients soared by seven million; tax filers paying income taxes rose by just 150,000; and the prison population swelled by 115,000.
California, once the land of plenty, is the land of poverty.Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson leaves the cabinet's weekly meeting in 10 Downing Street, London, Britain, October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Mary Turner
LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Thursday it was time to ramp up the pace of Brexit talks after the European Union’s chief negotiator said they were deadlocked over money.
“We’re looking for some urgency from our friends and partners, time to put a bit of a tiger in the tank and get this thing done,” he told reporters.
“We think... that we’ve made some very helpful suggestions to get the great ship moving down the slipway and on to the open seas, that is what we all want to see. We see no reason why that should not take place.”
Brexit talks are deadlocked over money, the EU’s Michel Barnier said on Thursday as he ruled out discussions on future trade being launched by EU leaders next week but spoke of possible progress by December.
“The prime minister has made it very, very clear that we are going to get a deal, we are working for a great deal, but obviously we must make the right preparations as and when it is necessary for a no-deal scenario,” Johnson said.
“Of course that’s the responsible thing to do and that’s what we are going to do.”Hayden Panettiere in Men's Vogue
starlooks all grown up in her photo shoot in the current issue of
In the magazine the 18-year-old actress dishes about young Hollywood, rumors about her romantic life and who she wouldn't mind being linked to romantically.
Hayden on when she intends on becoming the latest screwed-up girl in Hollywood: “Never, never. Cross our fingers. You can’t schedule rehab for me. And I don’t think you can schedule any DUIs. I think I’m going to be one of those boring girls.” Hayden on Britney Spears: “That girl was the epitome of beauty when I was younger. And we built her up and just ripped her down, put every aspect of her life under a microscope. Probably made 90 percent of the stuff up along the way. I can’t even imagine if I had it like she does. She’s someone that I’m rooting for, and I hope she can make that comeback.” Hayden on the craziest rumour she has ever heard about herself: “Well, now that I’m single, it’s like I’m dating every male I’m standing next to—and possibly every female.” Hayden on rumours she is dating her Heroes castmate, Milo Ventimiglia: “No, I’m not. I love my castmates, and I adore Milo. He’s awesome, but we’re easy targets. We’re both young, and he’s one of the only people on the show not married with children.” Hayden on celebs she wouldn’t mind being romantically linked to: “God, it could be anyone from Leo DiCaprio to Justin Timberlake—or any girl. You want to make me a lesbian? That’s totally fine with me. Um, let’s see. We could do a love affair with Angelina. We could do… Oh gosh, I love—there are so many beautiful girls. Charlize Theron. Oh, my God Kate Beckinsale is gorgeous. Jessica Alba.”
Hayden Panettiere seems to have her head on straight. I hope she can keep it that way.
View more photos from the Men's Vogue shoot below.
SourceJavier Hernandez wants to resurrect his career at Manchester United after failing to secure a permanent transfer to Real Madrid.
The Mexican forward, who spent last season on loan at the Bernabeu, will report back for pre-season training at United following his participation in the Concacaf Gold Cup with Mexico next month after scoring nine goals in 33 appearances for Real last term.
Hernandez had been told by United manager Louis van Gaal last season that he did not feature in his plans at Old Trafford, with the Dutchman sanctioning the striker’s move to Real due to the arrival of Radamel Falcao on loan from Monaco.
But with Falcao being sent back to Monaco following an unsuccessful campaign at United and ongoing doubts over the future of Robin van Persie, Hernandez insists he can salvage his Old Trafford career following the club’s return to the Champions League.
“Last summer it was a different situation,” Hernández told Marca. “When Van Gaal arrived, he wanted to restructure the team and reduce the number of players.
“They weren’t playing in Europe and he preferred to focus on the Premier League. Perhaps he didn’t want many players because we wouldn’t have played, but now the situation is different.
“There will be a Champions League preliminary round to play, which means many more games and I think there might be more opportunities. I think I have more options to play at United next season.”
Javier Hernandez is entering the final year of his Manchester United contract
Hernandez, 27, enters the final year of United contract next month having arrived in a £6m deal from Chivas de Guadaljara in the summer of 2010.
And although he is targeting a stay of execution at United, Hernandez admits he is now at the stage of his career where he must pursue regular first-team football.
• Henry's attack on Hernandez was sour
“What any player wants is to play,” Hernandez said. “If that doesn’t happen at United, I will look for a team where I will be given more playing time.
The 2015-16 Premier League season starts in
“Real had a deadline to exercise the right to acquire my rights but they let it go, so right now, Real are like any other club and as of now I am a Manchester United player.
“That’s the only reality. Above all, I want to join a team where I can play and have minutes. If it’s at Manchester United or another team, I will be equally happy. My priority is to play.”Before delving into today’s intel, here’s the back story on how we verified it. Last night, a Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer rumor was going around that Treyarch is doing away with the fixed slot system in Create a Class in favor of a point allocation system.
This was outed by Garnet Lee on this week’s Weekend Confirmed podcast, which was taken down and re-uploaded with the Black Ops II multiplayer discussion edited out. As I promised on the forums, I managed to get a hold of the original podcast from NeoGAF user, ace3skoot. Now having listened to the original version of the podcast, I can confirm what Garnet Lee spilled regarding his experience with Black Ops II multiplayer.
Recently, several publications were shown Black Ops II’s multiplayer at E3 2012 behind closed doors. Through that multiplayer session, the new HUD was also leaked, you can check it out through here. In terms of what stood out in the session, and here are the findings:
The Create-a-Class section in multiplayer received a major overhaul. Instead of having different slots for primary, secondary weapons and such, Black Ops II uses an overall point allocation system, where players receive ten points to spend on guns, attachments, perks, equipment and so on. Think Homefront or Counter-Strike in the vein of having a set amount of resources to use on your loadout.
This allows players to completely customize their character in multiplayer. It also goes in line with what Game Director David Vonderhaar teased in a recent behind the scenes video.
Vonderhaar explained, the multiplayer mode’s new “create a class is sweet” because it now enables you to “choose what’s the most important things to you, and forget about the things that are not important.” He went on to note, “This will open up doors for playstyles you have not seen. It’s going to be fantastic.”
For instance, you can pick two primary weapons with their attachments, but this leaves you with only one perk to choose, as primaries, obviously, take up more points than secondaries, grenades, or perks.
Another scenario is to jack up your loadout with perks, leaving you with only a knife in your arsenal so that when you pick up a gun, you’d be loaded for bear.
In addition, a new wager match type of mode was on display. A massive free-for-all mode, where players only have a machine pistol and an EMP grenade. Players have to hack drones (turrets and the like) in order to to get them to fight on your side. Players can get more EMP grenades by scavenging them from fallen enemies.
Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the latest Black Ops II news.Netflix has of become well-known as a leading streaming platform thanks to its binge watching qualities, yet did you know it is also a US government-funded manipulation tool? Well, that's the case, according to one high-ranking Russian minister.
In a recent interview, culture minister Vladimir Medinsky – who has become well-known as a fiercely patriotic supporter of President Putin – indicated that he believes there is more to Netflix than meets the eye.
"It looks like our ideological friends [at the US government], totally understand what is the most important art form, and they understand how to enter people's homes by getting into every television with the help of Netflix," he said, as translated by Radio Free Europe. He added: "Through this television, [they get into] the heads of everyone on earth."
According to Medinsky, the Netflix platform has expanded thanks to support – and funding – from the Obama administration. "You thought these gigantic start-ups emerge by themselves?" he posed. "One schoolboy sat down, thought for a bit, and then billions of dollars rained down from above?"
According to The Times, Medinsky made the remarks while setting out an argument for increasing funding for independent local Russian cinema to help combat the so-called "dominance" of Hollywood films. Netflix, western mind-control tool or not, launched in Russia in January this year and has faced a number of restrictions ever since.
The Russian state has warned the service could be banned if it fails to pay taxes or produce at least 30% of its content in the region – terms Netflix appears to have agreed with.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, changes to law may mean that all online video services will have to be run through a Russia-registered subsidiary. Additionally, the changes will demand video streaming services in the country have at least 80% of its content translated into Russian.
While there is no evidence Netflix is part of an American conspiracy, US spies from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did indeed have teams dedicated to subverting Russia through the spread of art and culture during the Cold War.
In one expose from the mid-1990s, one former officer, outlining the scope of the secretive division dedicated to this cause, said: "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do – send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."Donald Cerrone put on a great showing against Jeremy Stephens at UFC on Fuel TV 3, battering the tough Stephens on the feet over the course of three rounds. What makes the performance even more impressive is the information Cerrone shared with Sherdog's Savage Dog Show.
It appears that Cerrone was dealing with a rather nasty intestinal issue heading into the fight.
First, the history of the injury:
"I was racing some motocross and I wrecked real bad and just kind of spilled my guts out," Cerrone said. "They had to take a bunch of my intestines and part of my stomach."
Cerrone went on to explain how he re-aggravated the injury before the fight:
"What happened this time is, my stomach basically rolled around the intestine. Man, talk about pain. It was like someone was stabbing me. Oh, it was so brutal. I had to go to the ER, and basically they had to empty all of my intestines out and then rush water down my stomach and try to get it to unspin, kind of like a garden hose. If you have a kink in the hose, you run water and the pressure will cause it to unravel. It worked, so thank God."
Cerrone said that he was urged by coach Greg Jackson to back out of the fight, a move that would have been extremely understandable, but Donald felt that two weeks was enough time to recover.
Cerrone's desire to fight a very busy schedule, willingness to take fights on shorter notice than most and now his fighting through a pretty awful sounding injury has to put him in good standing with the UFC. I also have to be honest and admit that I had no idea that he'd have the level of success he had coming over to the UFC after the WEC was absorbed.
Cerrone may not win any UFC titles, but he's going to be a top ten fighter for a long time.Saturday – February 23,2019
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What To Expect During Early VotingEnergy consumption is growing rapidly in the 21st century, with rising energy costs and sustainability issues greatly impacting the quality of human life. Harvesting energy directly from sunlight to generate electricity using photovoltaic technologies is considered to be one of the most promising opportunities to produce electricity in an environmentally benign fashion.
Among the various photovoltaic technologies, polymer (plastic) solar cells offer unique attractions and opportunities. These solar cells contain Earth-abundant and environmentally benign materials, can be made flexible and lightweight, and can be fabricated using roll-to-roll technologies similar to how newspapers are printed. But the challenge has been improving the cells’ power-conversion efficiency.
Now a research team of faculty members and students led by Professor Tobin J. Marks of Northwestern University reports the design and synthesis of new polymer semiconductors and reports the realization of polymer solar cells with fill factors of 80 percent -- a first. This number is close to that of silicon solar cells.
“Our results indicate that the power-conversion efficiency achievable with polymer solar cells may be far beyond the current levels, heralding a bright future for this technology,” Marks said. “With our high fill factors, polymers with very good but not champion light absorption still are able to achieve very good efficiency.”
Marks is the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Research Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The study was published Aug. 11 by the journal Nature Photonics.
The team showed that the exceptional fill factors arise from high levels of order in the mixture of polymer donor chains and buckyball acceptor components, the way these two components are distributed within the cell active layer, and a “face-on” orientation of the polymer chains on the electrode surface.
The fill factor achieved is more than 10 percent greater than previously achieved by the polymer solar cell community, and, in the present study, although the polymer semiconductors have non-optimal light absorption characteristics, a near-record power-conversion efficiency as high as 8.7 percent is still obtained.
The working principle of polymer solar cells differs greatly from that of traditional silicon solar cells. The active layers of polymer solar cells typically contain a mixture of polymer chains that can donate electrons and “buckyball” molecules that accept electrons. (Buckminsterfullerene, or buckyball, is a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60.)
Under solar irradiation, electronic excitation generates mobile electron-hole pairs called excitons. The excitons then diffuse through the active layer of the cell, separating at donor-acceptor interfaces into free charge carriers (electrons and holes) that are collected as electrical current when they reach the cell electrodes.
In spite of the attractions of polymer solar cells, their large-scale application has been limited by the relatively low power-conversion efficiency, which is defined as the percentage of the power generated by the cell versus the power of the incident sunlight. The power produced by a solar cell is the product of three cell performance parameters: the open circuit voltage, the short circuit current and the fill factor. Various strategies now are being developed to increase these parameters to maximize the power-conversion efficiency of the cells.
While there are reliable approaches to increase the cell’s open circuit voltage and short circuit current, the realization of high fill factors has proven elusive, with fill factors of most polymer solar cells typically well below 70 percent, versus 80 percent for conventional silicon solar cells.
In polymer solar cells, achieving high fill factors is largely prevented by the recombination (self-annihilation) of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs before they reach the cell electrodes to be collected as current. In typical polymer solar cells, the randomly distributed donor and acceptor components lead to formation of disordered domains and isolated islands, as well as energy-wasting contacts with the electrodes. Such disordered structures combined with low mobilities of holes and electrons in such materials means that many recombine before they can be swept to the electrodes for collection.
Decoding and implementing design principles that produce high fill factors thus represents a significant advance in polymer solar cell technology.
The Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research Center (ANSER Center), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Institute for Sustainability and Energy (ISEN) at Northwestern University, and Polyera Corp. supported the research.
The paper is titled “Polymer solar cells with enhanced fill factors."
In addition to Marks, other authors of the paper are Xugang Guo, Nanjia Zhou, Sylvia J. Lou, Jeremy Smith, Daniel B. Tice, Jonathan W. Hennek, Rocío Ponce Ortiz, Shuyou Li, Lin X. Chen, Robert P. H. Chang and Antonio Facchetti, of Northwestern; Juan T. López Navarrete, of the University of Malaga, Spain; and Joseph Strzalka, of Argonne National Laboratory.The Obama campaign is completely tone-deaf. The DNC will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, and guess what mantra is featured in Charlotte’s banners all over the city during the convention?
“We make it possible.”
The last time a four-word phrase became the Obama mantra it didn’t do so well: You Didn’t Build That.
Now, that insult to the independent-minded American has been given new impetus by telling people that “WE” make it possible. YOU need OUR help.
Methinks ’tis the other way around; the Obama campaign, desperate to maintain its image as a juggernaut, is actually busing people in so they can fill the 74,000 seat stadium where Obama is to accept the nomination. It appears THEY need OUR help.
What kind of leader is so insecure that he needs a 74,000 seat stadium filled to capacity in order to cultivate his demagoguery?
“You didn’t build that.” “We make it possible.”
It’s all about Obama. It’s always been about Obama. It will always be about Obama. In his mind, we are simply the serfs who serve the king.Nuremberg, Germany
SUSE® today announced the general availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, the newest version of its reliable, scalable and secure platform for efficiently deploying and managing highly available enterprise-class IT services in physical, virtual or cloud infrastructure. New products based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 feature enhancements that more readily enable system uptime, improve operational efficiency and accelerate innovation. The foundation for all SUSE data center operating systems and extensions, SUSE Linux Enterprise meets the performance requirements of data centers with mixed IT environments, while reducing the risk of technological obsolescence and vendor lock-in.
With this release, SUSE also introduces an updated customer portal, SUSE Customer Center, to make it easier for customers to manage their subscriptions, access patches and updates, and communicate with SUSE customer support.
“Given their competitive cost pressures, IT organizations today have a hard time responding quickly to changing business needs and leveraging innovation,” said Nils Brauckmann, president and general manager of SUSE. “SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 helps enterprises stay agile, reclaim budget and easily leverage future open source innovation, helping them compete more effectively now and in the future.”
Al Gillen, program vice president for servers and system software at IDC, said, “The industry is seeing growing movement of mission-critical workloads to Linux, with that trend expected to continue well into the future. The modular design of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, as well as other mission-critical features like full system rollback and live kernel patching, helps address some of the key reservations customers express, and should help accelerate the adoption of Linux in this market segment.”
New operating systems and software extensions based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 include:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for x86_64, IBM Power Systems and IBM System z —versatile server operating systems for delivering business-critical IT services in a variety of physical, virtual and cloud environments. New features like full system rollback, live kernel patching enablement and software modules increase data center uptime, improve operational efficiency and accelerate the adoption of open source innovation. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 further builds on SUSE’s leadership with Linux Containers technology and adds the Docker framework, which is now included as an integral part of the operating system.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server takes advantage of IBM POWER8 processor-based hardware optimizations that include support for little-endian Linux applications running on simultaneous multithreaded (SMT8) and PowerKVM environments. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z improves workload performance through instruction set exploitation for the last two generations of IBM System z processors, state-of-the art support for cryptographic accelerators and the related software stack, and enhancements for operational tasks like faster DASD formatting with dasdfmt or multiple point-to-point NETIUCV interfaces between Linux on System z and z/VM instances.
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension and Geo Clustering for SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension —clustering software for increasing services availability, physical and virtual, local and global. A new web console, updated OCFS2 and GFS2 file system support, and the latest updates in ReaR for disaster recovery make protecting core business systems quick and easy.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack —for boosting Windows virtual machine performance on Linux hosts. It now supports a wider variety of Windows operating systems, such as Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise Workstation Extension —for improving productivity while lowering costs and increasing security. Users can turn servers into full-featured development or administrator workstation environments.
Partners on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12
Duncan Campbell, HP vice president of EG Marketing Alliances: “The rapid pace of innovation requires businesses to strive for higher levels of performance from their infrastructure, with even greater importance on security and availability. With the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, HP has worked with SUSE to include significant performance improvements into the upstream kernel allowing data-intensive workloads on large systems to achieve record-breaking performance for mission-critical computing.”
Doug Balog, IBM Power Systems general manager: “SUSE’s announcement of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 for little-endian mode on Power Systems enables a richer set of applications to easily take advantage of the higher performance and greater throughput of the POWER8 processor, making Power Systems an ideal solution for data-intensive workloads such as analytics. Combining the long collaboration of SUSE and IBM with the community efforts of the OpenPOWER foundation, we continue to see tremendous growth of enterprise-grade, open source applications becoming readily available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM Power Systems.”
Mauri Whalen, Intel vice president, Software and Services Group, and director of core system software in the Open Source Technology Center: “For close to two decades, Intel and SUSE have worked closely to offer reliable, efficient and high-performance solutions for mission-critical applications powered by Intel Xeon processors. Intel has worked with SUSE via its partner Linux driver program SUSE SolidDriver to ensure customers can easily take advantage of the latest innovations from Intel.”
Mike Gebele, Lenovo vice president of Server Systems and Marketing, Enterprise Business Group: “The SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 focus on eliminating down time makes it a great platform for high performance and mission-critical in-memory database and analytic applications. Lenovo’s x6 architecture and its advanced memory capabilities, combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, optimizes in-memory database performance and analytics workloads. This platform combination also provides excellent economies of scale for OpenStack cloud workloads by providing the ability to run more virtual machines per node and enhances cloud efficiency with more virtual guests per machine.”
Rob Cashman, Unisys vice president, Mission-Critical Servers and Solutions: “Unisys and SUSE share a commitment to providing a highly available and scalable environment for modern mission-critical solutions to clients’ key computing challenges. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 helps further that commitment through innovative features that can enable greater operational efficiency for heterogeneous applications communicating across the fabric architecture on the Forward! by Unisys™ enterprise computing platform.”
Sanjay Katyal, VMware vice president, Global Strategic Alliances and OEMs: “We’re pleased to work with SUSE to make SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 optimized for VMware vSphere®, the leading server virtualization platform. By supporting open-vm-tools together, VMware and SUSE are creating a seamless experience for our mutual customers as they realize the benefits of the software-defined data center.”
Dan Elder, Novacoast Linux Services manager: “SUSE Customer Center is a giant leap forward, offering a unified view of customers’ SUSE subscriptions, system information, software updates and direct support. Our customers will benefit from the streamlined interface, which gives them access to all their SUSE information in a single location.”
Availability, Information and Pricing
For more information about SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, visit www.suse.com/promo/sle12.html. For details on pricing and availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, the flagship SUSE Linux Enterprise offering, see www.suse.com/support/programs/subscriptions/?id=SUSE_Linux_Enterprise_Server. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 images—with modules enabled—are also now available on Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure.
About SUSE
SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, provides reliable, interoperable Linux and cloud infrastructure solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility. More than 20 years of engineering excellence, exceptional service and an unrivaled partner ecosystem power the products and support that help our customers manage complexity, reduce cost, and confidently deliver mission-critical services. The lasting relationships we build allow us to adapt and deliver the smarter innovation they need to succeed—today and tomorrow. For more information, visit www.suse.com.
Copyright 2014 SUSE LLC. All rights reserved. SUSE and the SUSE logo are registered trademarks of SUSE LLC in the United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
VMware and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.A 49-year-old man convicted of raping an Arizona State University student over a decade ago will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Kevin Francois was sentenced Thursday to 137.75 years in the Arizona Department of Corrections, the maximum sentence allowed, for raping a 19-year-old woman in 2003, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office said.
“The sentence demonstrates the serious nature of this type of crime and our commitment to
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out the standalone version on PC and PS4.
DayZ unless they nix those patching fees and open up self-publishing, saying...
“We’re happy to see DayZ on any console but there is a… I guess one problem,”... “The console needs to not charge for us to do updates and it needs to be indie title friendly.”
“As far as I’m aware, Microsoft is, Sony’s not. And Sony allows you to self-publish. But who knows? Maybe Microsoft will change. From our perspective, we need self-publishing because DayZ would be a great digital download title.”
As a quick recap: Microsoft does not allow indie devs to
Also, patching a game can cost up to DayZ is riddled with bugs and if the game appears on consoles during beta (and we forbid to think about alpha) the team would be required to patch the living daylights out of the game quite frequently. In such a scenario, it might cost them more money to patch the game than they would make from the revenue of people purchasing the game.
For now, If you've been clamoring for an open-world, post-apocalyptic zombie title to play with friends and strangers where survival is key and permadeath is, well permanent, you'll probably want to check out. Except, you'll only be able to check out the standalone version on PC and PS4. Edge managed to catch up with Dean “Rocket” Hall, the poster-boy of mod-turned-full-game indie culture, and according to Hall there won't be an Xbox One rendition of the standaloneunless they nix those patching fees and open up self-publishing, saying...As a quick recap: Microsoft does not allow indie devs to self-publish. Sony allows indie devs to self-publish and they waived certification fees and patching fees. I wonder why no one asked about the Wii U? Nintendo doesn't charge patching fees, either.Also, patching a game can cost up to $40,000 per patch, with the first patch/update being made available to developers for free. As many of you know and as Hall says himself,is riddled with bugs and if the game appears on consoles during beta (and we forbid to think about alpha) the team would be required to patch the living daylights out of the game quite frequently. In such a scenario, it might cost them more money to patch the game than they would make from the revenue of people purchasing the game.For now, DayZ's standalone version is still undergoing closed alpha testing and the open-alpha test for public consumption is scheduled to arrive at the end of the month. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topGuardian writers’ predicted position: 12th (NB: this is not necessarily Jacob Steinberg’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)
Last season’s position: 12th
Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 1,500-1
The reaction will be like a knowing tut from your mum when you cheerfully ignore her pleas to wear a jumper before venturing outside into the cold and return home with a sore throat and an all-consuming desire for sympathy.
If West Ham find themselves shivering in the winter months, they will not be able to say that no one warned them about the consequences of letting go of Sam Allardyce. They have been told repeatedly and ploughed on regardless, paying little heed to the received wisdom that saying goodbye to Allardyce is asking for relegation.
The one snag in that theory is that Newcastle United were relegated not because they sacked Allardyce but because Mike Ashley was presiding over a shambles, Bolton Wanderers went down five years and three managers after his decision to leave and Blackburn Rovers, well, Venky’s were too busy concentrating on signing Ronaldinho and David Beckham to hire a proper manager. It is true that West Ham are playing a dangerous game by trusting that Slaven Bilic represents an upgrade on Allardyce a year before their move to the Olympic Stadium, and Thursday night’s defeat at Astra Giurgiu means the team go into the Premier League season having already been knocked out of Europe, but it is not guaranteed that they will struggle domestically.
West Ham needed a fresh start after four years of grumbling about Allardyce. His relationship with the board and supporters had reached the point of no return at the end of last season. Although he won promotion in his first season and established West Ham in the Premier League by instilling a tougher mentality at a club whose players have had the attention span of Homer Simpson confronted by a dog with a puffy tail in the past, there was always discontent over the style of football, which was perceived to be negative and dull. Allardyce could have sneezed on the touchline and the crowd would have taken it as a sign that he was sticking 10 men behind the ball.
The reality of the Allardyce era lay somewhere between the stereotype of constant tedium and his Allardici self-hype. His football could sometimes be invigorating if one had an open mind about it, especially when Andy Carroll’s absence forced him to think outside the lump-it-in-the-box template in the first half of last season and he hit upon a diamond formation which brought the best out of Stewart Downing. However the manner of West Ham’s plummet from the top four after Christmas sealed Allardyce’s fate and a dreadful run of results convinced the owners, David Sullivan and David Gold, not to offer him a new contract. Injuries did not help Allardyce’s cause but those who insisted he had run out of ideas pointed out that he was overseeing relegation form: West Ham’s only league wins in 2015 came against Burnley, Hull City and Sunderland.
So in comes Bilic, a charismatic former West Ham defender who enjoys the backing of the crowd for now, although anyone who recalls the rancour that followed the Croatian’s controversial move to Everton in 1997 knows that attempts to depict his appointment as an emotional homecoming are slightly wide of the mark.
Bilic is still popular in east London, however, and it has been likely that he would be West Ham’s manager one day ever since his Croatia side made an impression on people in this country by qualifying for Euro 2008 at England’s expense. He has always wanted to manage in England and, unlike Allardyce, he will endear himself to supporters by saying the right things. In Turkey he was seen as something of a politician during his time at Besiktas and that charm, his appreciation of knowing what people want to hear, should buy him more time if West Ham do not hit the ground running.
A manager’s utterances should not be that important, yet they do matter in times of adversity. Although Allardyce was abrasive and never got to grips with understanding West Ham, his immense self-confidence gave him a thick skin despite the criticism that flew his way throughout most of his tenure and ensured that his players respected him.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stewart Downing impressed last season but has left for Middlesbrough. Photograph: Tony O'Brien/Action Images
It is not that Bilic will be a happy-clappy cheerleader, constantly banging on about the West Ham Way and the undisputable fact that they won the World Cup in 1966, but the early impression is that he will bring a touch more glamour and excitement than Allardyce. He is the kind of person who instinctively appeals to supporters and another populist move was the addition of Julian Dicks, a West Ham legend, to Bilic’s staff. Dicks managed West Ham Ladies last season, but he does not have much coaching experience.
Whether these changes will prove enough on the pitch remains unclear and it is not immediately obvious that Bilic is a better manager than Allardyce, who, for all his faults, understands the demands of English football. Bilic had a positive impact with Croatia and they were unfortunate to lose a dramatic quarter-final on penalties to Turkey at Euro 2008. His time at Lokomotiv Moscow was a disappointment and he did not win the Turkish league with Besiktas.
Equally, however, Besiktas were unable to use their stadium because of construction work during Bilic’s two years there and their title challenge last season was held back by their Europa League campaign. They pushed Arsenal hard despite losing 1-0 on aggregate to them in their Champions League play-off last August, they took four points off Tottenham Hotspur in their Europa League group and beat Liverpool on penalties in the round of 32. However a source of concern is that Bilic was not appointed in the immediate aftermath of Allardyce’s departure. It had been widely accepted that Allardyce was going by the time he left on the final day of the season but Bilic was not installed until 9 June.
West Ham were frustrated in discussions with other managers. David Moyes decided to prolong his stay at Real Sociedad, Unai Emery could not be tempted away from Sevilla after they qualified for the Champions League and Rafael Benítez surprisingly decided to accept an offer from Real Madrid instead. Marseille’s Marcelo Bielsa also featured in the club’s thinking. In the end, they plumped for Bilic.
Preparations for the new season have not been ideal, with West Ham’s unexpected entry into Europe via the Fair Play League forcing them to start their season with a qualifier against the Andorran part-timers of FC Lusitans on 2 July. They have been mixing pre-season friendlies with competitive, meaningful matches and it has not been straightforward doing so while some players have been missing, others have been getting up to speed and transfer business is still being conducted.
Reading too much into pre-season games is a waste of time, but a couple of unconvincing performances have made the mood more cautious. A side that was packed with reserves needed penalties to beat Malta’s FC Birkirkara on penalties in the second qualifying round and how very West Ham that they should qualify for Europe because of their fine disciplinary record and then pick up three stupid red cards in their first five matches. Diafra Sakho and James Tomkins reacted to provocation against Lusitans and Birkirkara respectively, and West Ham squandered a 2-0 lead against FC Astra Giurgi after James Collins was sent off for two quick bookings in the first leg last week.
Ultimately going out to Astra on Thursday night might have be a blessing in disguise. West Ham finished 12th last season, which hardly suggests that they are equipped to deal with the demands of the Europa League. Better sides than West Ham have struggled to recover after their exertions on a Thursday night and their squad lacks depth. The priority is staying up; imagine the embarrassment if West Ham’s final season at Upton Park ends with them going down and beginning the Olympic Stadium era in the Championship.
That is the worst-case scenario, although with a couple more additions in key areas, West Ham should be strong enough to finish in mid-table. They played well for an hour against Astra. Bilic used a 4-3-1-2 formation which had Dimitri Payet operating in a free role and the French winger can be expected to dazzle after his arrival from Marseille. Tempting Payet to West Ham is a sign of ambition, assuming he settles in England and that he does not turn out to be more of a Rémy Cabella than a David Ginola. Payet created plenty of goals for Marseille last season.
However the 2-2 draw with Astra was marred by Enner Valencia’s injury. Shortly after Valencia had given West Ham the lead with a powerful header from Payet’s cross, he was taken off on a stretcher. The good news is that he does not need surgery on his knee and ankle and should be out for roughly 10 weeks rather than the six months that were initially feared. The bad news is that Valencia’s absence means that with Andy Carroll not expected to return from his knee injury until October, West Ham are one Sakho injury away from having to rely on Modibo Maïga and Mauro Zárate up front.
West Ham must sign a striker, because Maïga is out of his depth and Zárate is a luxury player who hangs on to the ball for too long. They are trying to get a work permit for Atlético Madrid’s Mexican forward Raúl Jiménez and are also targeting Queens Park Rangers’ Charlie Austin. Jiménez was not prolific for Atlético; QPR will need to lower their £15m valuation of Austin.
What will Bilic have planned for Carroll when he returns? Carroll was Allardyce’s biggest signing at £15m from Liverpool two years ago but he has been blighted by injuries at Upton Park, every promising run of form scuppered by another lengthy spell on the sidelines. As likable as the big striker is, he is veering dangerously close to being written off as a dud. Yet although he may not be an automatic starter under Bilic, he can still be a hugely effective option, not least when he is paired with another striker. His lack of pace makes West Ham predictable, easy to defend against and too quick to launch the ball long when Carroll plays on his own up front.
They were at their most devastating as an attacking force last season when Sakho and Valencia started together. Sakho surely would have scored more than 12 goals after joining for £3.5m from Metz if his season had not been prematurely ended by a thigh injury in April and the pair were pivotal in West Ham’s victories over Liverpool and Manchester City during the autumn.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest What will Slaven Bilic do with Andy Carroll when the striker is fit? Photograph: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images
That was when West Ham were playing with a diamond in midfield. Downing was superb in that system and watching him link up with Payet would have been a delight – yet he was allowed to follow his heart and move back to Middlesbrough. Payet was supposed to complement Downing rather than be his replacement and his departure has left West Ham searching for another creative player.
Matt Jarvis has no end product and even less confidence, Morgan Amalfitano is too inconsistent to start regularly, Martin Samuelsen is only 18 and West Ham have taken a punt on Manuel Lanzini, a 22-year-old Argentinian forward who has joined on loan from Al Jazira Club in Qatar. For what it is worth, Lanzini’s nickname is The Jewel and will hopefully turn out to be more useful than the last South American player brought in from Qatar, Nenê. Payet will need some more assistance than just Lanzini and West Ham are targeting Barcelona’s young Croatian, Alen Halilovic.
Another Barcelona player who could join is Alex Song, who was on loan at West Ham last season. He made them tick before Christmas and although his form fizzled out, signing him on a permanent basis would undeniably be a coup. The deal was held up after Song injured an ankle.
If it goes through, he will slip into a midfield that already has a solid look to it. The versatile Cheikhou Kouyaté had an outstanding debut season in England and Mark Noble is dependable, while Pedro Obiang was highly rated at Sampdoria.
Diego Poyet, neat and tidy, will hope to be involved more and Reece Oxford, who is only 16, has been assured as a defensive midfielder in pre-season, but Kevin Nolan’s best days are behind him. The captain is too slow, although he can be a useful ally for Bilic in the dressing room if he is ready to accept a reduced role.
Leadership should not be an issue, though. West Ham’s defence will be tough to penetrate if Bilic organises the team well. In goal, Adrián has developed into a cult hero, saving more than his fair share of penalties, and will be backed up by Darren Randolph, a free transfer from Birmingham City.
The right-back will be Carl Jenkinson, who has joined on loan from Arsenal again, and the diligent Aaron Cresswell will continue on the left. Joey O’Brien will provide cover for Jenkinson, Stephen Hendrie for Cresswell after his arrival from Hamilton Academicals.
Bilic’s options at centre-back are enviable. Winston Reid’s partner is likely to be Angelo Ogbonna after the Italy international left Juventus and Tomkins and Collins are able deputies. The Canada international, Doneil Henry, will push for recognition, while Reece Burke has impressed during a few cameos. Allardyce was content with only three centre-backs, a gamble that backfired on a couple of occasions, but West Ham have competition for places now.
There are holes that need to be filled elsewhere, but many of the pieces are there for Bilic, who needs to assemble them in the right order quickly. West Ham are in a unique position, the pressure on them to stay up more extreme than it has ever been. Relegation this season would be disaster from both a financial and PR perspective. Leaving Upton Park will be enough of an emotional wrench without people queuing up to tell them how misguided they were to get rid of Allardyce come the end of the season.Ontario Provincial Police are asking for the public's help to find four rifles and three shotguns that were stolen from a house about an hour north of Peterborough,Ont.
Police said the suspected break-in happened sometime between Sept. 27 and Oct. 1 at a residence on McGillivray Road in the Municipality of Highlands East.
Among the personal property removed were seven firearms:
A Mossberg pump shotgun, with serial number J467415.
A Winchester 3030 lever rifle, with serial number 4636500.
A Liege United Arms side by side shotgun, with serial number 27491.
A Marlin rifle, 22 with scope, with serial number 6410097.
A 303 Lee Enfield 1955 rifle, with possible serial number 7414.
An FN Indian Ishapore, restricted firearm (rifle), with serial number BH4417.
A Remington 12 gauge shotgun.
Police are asking anyone with information about the case to contact the Bancroft OPP at 1-888-310-1122 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.Brazil's biggest bank - the state-run Banco do Brasil - is being sued for allegedly funding deforestation in the Amazon.
Public prosecutors say the bank lent money to companies that illegally cleared the rainforest and used labour practices bordering on slavery.
The smaller state-owned Banco da Amazonia is also being sued.
Brazil says it has drastically reduced the rate of deforestation in the Amazon in recent years.
Prosecutors in the state of Para said they had uncovered 55 loans worth nearly $5m (£3m) that the Banco do Brasil approved to farms that had broken environmental and employment laws.
They also said they had uncovered 37 loans worth $11m given to farms with similar violations by the Banco da Amazonia.
The loans violated Brazil's constitution, environmental laws, banking regulations and international agreements signed by Brazil, the independent prosecutors at the Public Ministry said.
The discovery of this this irregular financing shows that this is a generalised problem Brazilian public prosecutor's office
"The discovery of this this irregular financing shows that this is a generalised problem," they said in a statement.
They added that their findings supported studies that showed a direct relationship between public loans and deforestation in the Amazon.
Denial
The Banco do Brasil denied the allegations, insisting it complied with Brazilian law, but said it would look into the charges on a case-by-case basis.
The Banco da Amazonia said it would not comment until it had studied the legal documents.
Brazil's judicial branch will now have to decide whether to pursue the case.
If the lawsuits are successful the banks could have to pay compensation.
The prosecutors have also called for closer regulation and control of how loans are handed out.
Last year Brazil's government said deforestation in the Amazon - the world's largest tropical rainforest - had fallen to its lowest rate for 22 years.
Brazilian officials said the reduction was due to better monitoring and control.
Brazil says it is on course to meet its target of cutting deforestation by 80% by 2020 as part of international efforts to tackle global warming.
The cutting and burning of trees in the Amazon has made Brazil a major contributor of the greenhouse gases.You may believe your thoughts are intangible and inscrutable, but all mental activity is communicated via electrical impulses. As our understanding of the brain improves, we’re increasingly able to decode our mental electrical signals, and translate our thoughts into automatic action.
A scalextric powered by the mind is the latest product to make use of our brainwaves. Stephen Sigurnjak, senior lecturer in electronics at the University of Central Lancashire, has built a scalextric where the cars are powered by the players’ level of concentration.
“You brain works off electrical activity, a bit like a computer,” he says. “As you concentrate on something, it fires neurons in the brain.”
Mind-control sclalextric headsets clip to the forehead to measure the level of mental activity. The thoughts are then organised into different frequency bands (the subconscious, for example, operates at a different level from conscious thoughts), the electric signal is processed by a computer and sent to a micro controller, which sends a corresponding level of voltage to power the car.
But when I put on the headset, the car stays still. Dr Sigurnjak says that it helps to visualise the alphabet or arithmetic problems but this makes no difference – apparently my brain signals remain tiny. The car starts to move when I listen to Dr Sigurnjak’s explanation but, once it’s started, it’s difficult to slow the car down. I try to stop thinking entirely – focusing on meditative breathing – and the car whizzes even faster, suggesting it takes an awful lot of brain power to try and shut down your thoughts.
Though the scalextric is fun, there are plans to use mind-control power in far more sophisticated ways. “If you’ve had an accident or are paralysed then your brain could still work even if your body can’t. There’s quite a lot of research that goes into that area, and trying to control things just by thinking about them,” says Dr Sigurnjak. “The goal would be that you could think about turning left in a wheelchair and automatically turn left. And in the future you might be able to translate your thoughts. So you could think about what you want to write and a computer would type it out.”
The technology could also be used to measure anxiety in high-stress jobs so that if a pilot, for example, seemed to be overloaded and at risk of making an error, then someone else could step in to help.
Dr Sarita Robinson, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, says that using the brain as a power source has become more feasible as we’ve begun to understand how the mind works.
“If you go back 100 years you could barely see inside the brain. We were pumping the skin around the skull with air and removing the cerebral fluid and taking some really dodgy x-rays just to get an image of what was going on,” she says. “Now we have MRIs, cat scans, we can take blood flow images. In the future, we’ll be able to look at a brain scan and see what a person’s thinking about.”
At the moment, we can tell whether a person’s hungry or thirsty based on their brain scan, but our mind-reading skills are still fairly primitive. Still, don’t expect your thoughts to remain inscrutable for long.It's Auckland or bust as New Zealand's host venue or the 2021 event will be held it Italy, Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton has revealed as part of the new protocol for the 36th America's Cup.
Dalton confirmed today that the event will feature 75 foot monohulls and nationality rules where 20 percent of sailors must be from one country. The rest of sailing team must meet strict criteria of residents of 380 days in country from 1 Sep 2018 to 1st Sep 2020.
Two pre-regattas will take place in 2019 and 2020. Dalton confirmed that team new Zealand won't take part in the Challenger series, to be called the Prada Cup.
Dalton said there is a deadline of August 30 next year to decide whether Auckland will be ready to host the event.
"The only reason we went to the America's Cup was to bring it back here. We're really clear about that, this is where we want to hold it but we've got nothing in place yet.
"I think it's only responsible for the challengers if there is a natural disaster or whatever happens that we couldn't hold it here.
"Rather than finding out next year that it's got to be shopped out all over the place to try and find a venue, we say 'if for whatever reason it can't be in Auckland, which is the intention, absolutely the intention, it will go to Italy."
Dalton said racing won't take place in the inner harbour but will feature off Takapuna or Milford, closer than the last America's Cup in Auckland in 2003.
Details confirmed:
Monohull - 75ft, design details revealed Nov 30. 10-12 on the boat.
Cyclors not banned.
Teams can run two boats - TNZ will have two.
Probably see longer races than Bermuda - Around 40 mins. Include longer pre-start and up-wind start.
Nationality - Citizenship defined 20% of sailors must be from one country - Rest of sailing team must meet strict criteria of residents of 380 days in country from 1 Sep 2018 to 1st Sep 2020
Event - Intent is Auckland, 2021 - but no infrastructure exists. Must start by mid next year. No host city agreement. If not in Auckland - event will go to Italy.
Pre-regattas - Events in 2019, 2020 in the AmCup race boats. Challenger series will be organised by Challenger of Record (Luna Rossa)Rodrigo Garcia’s Last Days in the Desert brings to life the biblical story of Jesus’ time in the desert, spent fasting, praying, and being tempted by the devil—but it does so in secular terms. If the movie’s latest trailer is any indication, Ewan McGregor will be spending a lot of time talking to himself in order to pull this off, as he plays not only Jesus (Yeshua), but also Satan, who appears to Jesus in the form of … another Jesus.
The film already screened at Sundance, to largely positive reviews that noted how carefully the film approaches its subject matter, McGregor’s “committed” performance, and the gorgeous cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. All of this is on full display in the trailer, as McGregor’s Jesus struggles to avoid taking the other Jesus’ manipulative words to heart. The movie is set for limited release May 13.The star's directorial debut brought in $5.65 million within the six days to the end of the year
Russell Crowe's directorial debut The Water Diviner is the top-grossing homegrown film of 2014 in Australia.
Released on Boxing Day, the film, set after the WWI battle of Gallipoli, brought in $5.65 million at the Australian box office within the six days to the end of 2014, distributor Entertainment One said on Monday. As of Sunday night, it had grossed $8.4 million.
Read more 'Predestination,' 'Water Diviner' Lead Australian Film Awards Nominations
The performance beat the box-office take of Greg McLean's Wolf Creek 2, which brought in $4.7 million in 2014, to make the movie the top homegrown release of the year in Australia.
"We are delighted that Australian audiences have responded with such enthusiasm to the film," said Mike Baard, managing director for Universal Pictures Australia and Sandie Don, head of distribution for Entertainment One. "It's that time of year when people are thinking about the future, and The Water Diviner reminds us of the possibility of hope. It is so fitting that in the year that we remember the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, all Australians have a film [that] transports audiences to that time and place but does so with a fresh perspective and such a positive and uplifting message, which is relevant today."
Only four Australian movies crossed the million-dollar mark at the country's box office in 2014. Detailed, full-year figures are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
Read more Warner Bros. Picks Up Russell Crowe's Historical Drama 'Water Diviner'
The Water Diviner actress Olga Kurylenko recently told THR: "What I like about the film is that it doesn't take sides, and that is why I think people have loved it. Both the Turks and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps soldiers are presented with such understanding and equally with such respect. It's really well done. And it's so hard to do so."
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @georgszalaiMedia playback is not supported on this device Haye feels "like a young fighter" as he prepares for Mark de Mori fight
Former heavyweight world champion David Haye will make his return to boxing against Australian Mark de Mori at London's O2 Arena on 16 January.
Haye has not fought since he stopped fellow Briton Dereck Chisora in 2012.
The 35-year-old has been training with Shane McGuigan - son of former world champion Barry - and is aiming to reclaim the world title he lost to Wladimir Klitschko in 2011.
De Mori has lost only once in his 33 career bouts.
The 33-year-old Perth-born boxer's last defeat came in 2004, and 26 of his 29 victories have come via knockout.
"I could have picked an easier opponent," said Haye. "I could have fought someone who'd been knocked out a couple of times but I wanted to give people someone to get excited about.
David Haye announced his return to boxing in front of the media on Tuesday
"He is top 10. I don't want to fight complete nobodies. I believe if I can do what I'm doing in the gym on 16 January then I'll be better than I used to be."
De Mori said: "One thing his team may not know is that 90% of my career I trained in my dad's garage.
"I had a few fights with my wife in my corner. That's the guy they have seen on Youtube and are preparing for. But I've lived in Croatia for the last two years and have gone from training in my garage to training with a coach who is a two-time Olympian.
"So I've gone from self-trained guy with my wife wiping blood from my face to being properly trained. My strength has gone to another level."
Haye claimed the heavyweight world title by beating Russian giant Nikolay Valuev in 2009 and successfully defended it twice.
But he then lost a unanimous points decision to Ukrainian Klitschko - only the second defeat of his 28-fight career.
Klitschko will attempt to maintain his 11-year unbeaten streak against another Briton, Tyson Fury, in a world title fight in Duesseldorf, Germany on Saturday.
Haye has seen three previous attempts to return thwarted by injury.
After pulling out of a bout with Manuel Charr because of a hand injury in 2013, Haye then saw two fights against Fury cancelled because of a cut head and a shoulder injury.The IRS thinks bitcoin is property; a federal judge thinks it’s a currency; now the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has decreed it a commodity.
What is bitcoin? Is it property, something to be owned? Is it a currency, something to be spent? Or is it a commodity, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “any useful thing,” and/or “anything bought and sold; any article of commerce.”
The Internal Revenue Service thinks bitcoin is property; a federal judge thinks it’s a currency; now the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has decreed it a commodity. That means the regulator can now bring charges against any wrongdoers trading cryptocurrency futures and options.
In a statement, the CTFC’s Director of Enforcement, Aitan Goelman, said:
“While there is a lot of excitement surrounding Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, innovation does not excuse those acting in this space from following the same rules applicable to all participants in the commodity derivatives markets.”
Does the ruling change the fundamental nature of what bitcoin is? We asked members of the bitcoin community for their views.
The developer: “A bizarre ruling that will be challenged”
“There are so many regulators in the U.S., and they all want more jurisdiction, which leads to a constant stream of bizarre rulings.
“I’m not terribly surprised and not terribly worried. I think the CFTC has a very weak case here and it’s a very creative reinterpretation of what the word commodity means. The ruling will be challenged and judges will apply common sense and decide it to be a currency” as happened in the Silk Road case.
The researcher: “Don’t take it out of context”
“This ruling is obviously very consequential to U.S.-based bitcoin futures trading platforms, but it’s important not to overplay the implications. Last year, the U.K. tax authority ruled that Bitcoin is a currency. Last month a Japanese judge ruled that bitcoin is not property. These rulings concerning what bitcoin is or is not are for certain purposes only, but they often get taken out of context.”
The exchange founder: “It will send companies offshore”
“In the U.S. there are regulators that look at Bitcoin from their own perspective and just arbitrarily make up a rule or guidance. New York regulates it as a currency, for example. It’s just not sensible. If this ruling does affect anyone, they’ll just move to offshore jurisdictions.
“Bitcoin has many uses — sometimes it’s used, traded as a commodity, but it’s also used as a currency and a technology.”
The CEO: “Regulators need to work together”
“Regulators need to be talking with each other and engaging with industry. The CFTC doesn’t seem to have done either of those. Just claiming a platform is illegally offering bitcoin options isn’t helpful if they’re trying to have a relationship with these companies.
“There’s a lot more collaboration in the U.K. between the Treasury, the FCA, HMRC and the top bitcoin companies. To date the government hasn’t taken a public position that they’ve had to take back.
“Having said that I’d rather bitcoin were regulated as a commodity because commodity regulations are the lightest.”
The Lecturer: “A very prudent move”
“As money, bitcoin is terrible — a deeply deflationary currency that’s within a bubble. It’s an OK commodity, but it’s the equivalent of selling real estate on the moon.
“There’s no inherent value. I applaud the ability of speculators to make money from selling it to other people, but I don’t think even calling it a commodity is enough. It’s a kind of shadow asset.
“Moving toward a system where proponents of bitcoin could use a less stark designation for marketing purposes would have been a mistake.
“So it’s very prudent to classify bitcoin as something relatively uncontentious, simply something bought and sold for a price, rather than something contentious, like a currency or other financial asset.”New Delhi, Mar 22: Swine flu claimed the lives of 16 more people as the death toll across the country crossed the 1,900 mark today while the number of those affected by the disease exceeded 32,000. According to data collated by the Union Health Ministry, as on March 21, 1,911 people have died due to the contagious disease while the number of those affected across the country stood at 32,233. The two most affected states are Gujarat and Rajasthan. (Also read: Swine flu virus to die as temperatures rise: Goa minister)
In Gujarat, the number of people who have died of the disease has climbed to 410 while the number of affected persons was 6,360. In Rajasthan, the death toll stood at 400 while the number of affected persons was 6,409. The Union Health Ministry said the death toll in Maharashtra rose to 347 with 4,082 people having contracted the H1N1 virus. In Madhya Pradesh, 281 people have perished with 2,094 persons being affected. The toll in Telangana has reached 75 while in Karnataka, the death toll stands at 77.
The death toll in Uttarakhand has reached 11 while in Punjab, the disease has claimed the lives of 53 persons. Another person has died taking the death toll in West Bengal to 24 while the toll has increased to 36 in Uttar Pradesh. Jammu and Kashmir has seen 16 swine flu fatalities.
In Delhi, the toll has risen to 12 with the number of affected persons at 4,142. In Kerala, the death toll has reached 12 while 15 people have died in Tamil Nadu after another person died of the contagious disease.
Andhra Pradesh has so far seen 22 swine flu fatalities while 20 people have died in Himachal Pradesh. The disease has claimed the lives of 18 people in Chhattisgarh. As per a Health Ministry study, 34 per cent of the 723 swine flu deaths that were analysed had occurred in the age group of 30-45 years, followed closely by those in the 45-60 bracket, who accounted for 32 per cent of the fatalities.June 2, 2012, I took time to listen to friend and colleague, Richard Dolan's new internet radio show, and to join in on the discussion in his chatroom. It was, as one might expect from Mr. Dolan, a fun and wide-ranging discussion, and it turned to one of my favorite topics toward the end of the broadcast, when Mr. Dolan mentioned the following interesting article on the amount of documents still classified, nearly half a century after the assassination:
Is the Government Holding Back Crucial Documents?
The article speaks for itself: why is Mr. Sustein in charge of President Obama's "open government" initiative? Implied answer: because he distrusts those who have alternative narratives of events like 9/11....and the JFK assassination. But more importantly, why would the government still be classifying records concerning the JFK assassination? Mr. Dolan's answer to this question was very proximate to one I suspect many others, including myself, would give: because there is still something to hide concerning the conspiracy of interests and cabals behind it, not the least of which is that at least some of those elements are still in existence. To this, one might also add, that there are aspects of this conspiracy that have not yet come to light.
I listened to Mr. Dolan's on-air musings with some interests, because I had long entertained similar suspicions, but further reflection on what he was saying, and what Russ Baker was saying in his article, gave me pause, and should give you pause too.
The reason why is rather simple. Consider only the history of JFK assassination and revisionist research. It is safe to say that what began as a "fringe conspiracy theory"
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falls into the “art” category. But it deserves a category of its own. My life is music. It’s on more hours of the day then not. Nothing compares.
#10 Love People. I love loving. Sharing my life, showing affection, growing in unison, sharing silence, conversing, laughing, crying, and exploring with another.
#11 Take time in the rain. So many people rush in the rain. Try, just once, to take your time. Get wet. Who cares.
#12 Overlook the city from afar. Everything that seems so big suddenly becomes small. This is the only place where you can crush your problems with your two fingers.
#13 Blast and sing music in the car. The best way to start and end the day.
#14 Talk to the checker at the grocery store. I’ve worked in retail my whole life. And nothing brightens your day like an “out of the ordinary” nice customer.
#15 Send [and receive] morning texts. It’s nice to start the day by sending and [hopefully] receiving a positive message from someone you care about.
#16 Share Music. Spotify is the best thing since…well, toilet paper, cake, idk? You can share songs and collaboratively build playlists with people. It’s awesome.
#17 Fix Something Small. Replace those holey socks, fix the blade on your blender, get rid of unworn clothes. These small things can make you feel monumentally better!
#18 Be outside late at night. Most people are tucked away while you’re stargazing. Losers, pshh.
#19 Coffee shop afternoons. Earphones, big mugs, sunshine through window panes. This is where the magic happens.
#20 Smile/Talk to strangers. Positive energy is electric and creates exponential happiness. Flash those pearly whites.
#21 Think about what you’re thankful for. It’s natural to focus on the negative. Shifting that focus will create instantaneous positivity. Building a gratitude list is even better.
#22 Watch the sunrise. I rarely have the willpower to get up before the crack of dawn. But man it’s a beautiful crack when you see it.
#23 Paint pictures, create art. The last time I painted a picture, it ended up looking like a pickle hooker, but it was a damned good time. [It was meant to be a peacock].
#24 Listen to music from childhood/early adolescent years. Amazing how this can put you back into a childlike state of mind. Re-awakening your mini-you.
#25 Free write. Write as if nobody will ever read it. And don’t think about being “right”, “wrong”, “weird”, or “silly”. Just write.
#26 Give someone a note. Write a note to your boyfriend, girlfriend, mom, dad, grandma. On pen and paper, preferably.
#27 Take goofy pictures. Cheezin’, man. It’s leeegit.
#28 Free Style. Okay, you may not rank with Eminem or Pac, but it’s a good ol’ time to put on a backtrack (YouTube) and freestyle like a mofo.
#29 Volunteer. Get out and help people where it’s needed. Not only will it fulfill your soul, it’ll give you a wealth of interesting [perhaps odd and stinky] experiences.
#30 Pretend you’re a photographer. I do this all the time. When I go places and see something that strikes my fancy, I strike a snapshot. One day, you’ll look back and be like, “hey I remember that!”.
#31 Hike. Hey, why don’t cha take a hike?!
#32 Have a picnic in the park. Brown bag it. Get a blanket and a boom box too. Clink, clink. ;)
#33 Look up free events. You’d be surprised at how much FREE crap happens every day. Music festivals, farmers markets, art walks–you name it. Get out there!
#34 Go on a run. I thought it would be too obvious that I’d say this, so I made it number #34. It deserves two places on my list.
#35 Read something completely random. You gravitate towards the same types of books, whether you admit it or not. Go to the bookstore and read something TOTALLY out of the ordinary.
#36 Find a meetup. So you like to Salsa? Frisbee Golf? Collecting toenails? There’s a meetup for virtually anything and anybody. Great way to meet like-minded folk.
#37 Invent a new recipe. A long time ago, my friend and I used to make up recipes only using what was in the kitchen. It always tasted like a funky clay dough. But I have better faith in your cooking skills!
#38 Look at old photo albums/home videos. Home videos and old pictures are a BLAST if you have access to them. Nothing like taking a waltz down memory lane. Especially when you had a perm and a borderline mullet as a child…Thanks Obama!
#39 Dance! You DON’T need a special occasion to shake yo thang. Grab a partner, turn on some jams and dance the night away.
#40 Talk about memories from childhood. One time, I jumped off the roof of my friends playhouse with an umbrella. Inspired by Mary Poppins, it didn’t work out as I expected. What did you do as a child?
#41 Ask random questions. This one is reserved for only the coolest people, so if you suck you can ignore this. Muster up some off-handed questions and ask away. “What was your best gift ever”, “If you were an animal, what would you be?” “If you could jump into a pool of anything, what would it be?”
#42 Watch funny videos on YouTube. There is a lot of funny shit out there just waiting to make you giggle like a little school girl. Go find them!
#43 Create a bucket list. What are your deep and shallow aspirations? Write em’ down and hang them up where you can see them. Cross them off as you do them too!
#44 Clean something you don’t normally clean. This one leaves me many options, haha! But just think–what is something you don’t normally clean? Is it your car seat covers, your shoes, your pillowcase, your face, your armpits? Make it squeak!
#45 Watch a documentary. There are so many great [and, okay crappy] documentaries out there, for interests of all kinds. Find the good ones and watch them.
#46 Have friends over for dinner and games. A dinnah pahtee. Classy, right?
#47 Focus closely on one area of your life you want to improve. Do you want to stop spending so much on coffee? Do you gossip? Do you pass gas in public? Just focus on improving one area of your life for a while.
#48 Memorize a quote, and live by it all day. “Be the change you want to see”, “Follow your bliss”, “Thou shalt not kill”. Amazing how this can intensify your focus on a one particular ideal.
#49 Window Shop/People Watch. If you live in Colorado, I recommend going to the Pearl Street Mall or the 16th Street Mall. Those places always have cool shops and peculiar happenings. You see things and people that you would’ve never thought existed.
#50 Take a nap! C’mon, you deserve it. Especially after reading this exhaustive list. :)
What do you do that is FREE?The Black Rifle Coffee Company made some waves when it promised to hire 10,000 veterans in response to Starbucks’ decision to hire 10,000 refugees. Now, the veteran-owned-and-operated coffee company has announced some big plans about where some of its profits will go, and it’s awesome.
In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, Black Rifle Coffee CEO Evan Hafer described the company’s outlook, including its big plans to benefit a pro-police charity.
“Our plan is to build 600 stores in the next six years. I’m gonna try to push this forward with the community behind me,” Hafer, an Army Special Forces vet, told “Fox & Friends.”
“Hiring vets is not PR for me. It’s who we are,” he added, noting that post-9/11 vets have a high unemployment rate of 6.3 percent.
He also said that all of the profits from one particular type of coffee — Thin Blue Line — go directly to the police charity Blue Lives Matter.
“I gave away more money last year than I personally made,” Hafer said.
Video below:
Much like Starbucks, Black Rifle Coffee Company is willing to court controversy, albeit in a different direction.
On its Facebook page, the company lists its motto of sorts as, “Because hipsters didn’t invent coffee.”
On its website, the company also takes a strong stand for American values: “Patriotism, honor and sacrifice; three words that hipsters, (most) millennials and as of recently … an NFL quarterback know nothing about.” Well, this millennial hopes that he does know something about them, although not to the same extent that men like Hafer know it from serving our country. However, I’m certainly a lot more wiling to park my Macbook at Black Rifle than at Starbucks, especially since I might hear some relatively enlightened political discussions instead of two Brooklynites discussing the “objective correlative” in Brecht plays they haven’t actually read. And yes, I do own a Macintosh. That still doesn’t make me a hipster. Move on. Like us on Facebook – USA Liberty News Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter to let everyone know about Black Rifle Coffee Company’s plans.
Do you agree with what Black Rifle Coffee Company is doing? Scroll down to comment below!
Source: conservativetribune.com
H/T BizPac ReviewThe documentary “Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine” attempts to tell the story of the young man before he was murdered in 1998. (Education Pictures/Run Rabbit Run Media)
The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, in which two men brutally beat the 21-year-old gay college student and left him tied to a fence, transfixed the nation. The media flooded little Laramie, Wyo., celebrities spoke at vigils and Shepard’s name became a rallying cry against hate crimes.
Fewer people know about Matthew Shepard’s life. Before he became a symbol, he was just a gregarious kid trying to figure out life, which is what Michele Josue aims to show in her poignant documentary “Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine.”
Josue went to boarding school in Switzerland with Shepard, and she tracked down a wide swath of people — friends from growing up in Wyoming, classmates from Switzerland, a teacher, a guidance counselor, a priest and Shepard’s parents — to tell stories about his life. She also culled diary entries, old letters, photos and home videos to create a rich portrait of her friend, free of hero worship.
Many of the most poignant moments involve Shepard’s parents, who are intensely watchable interview subjects, full of touching and often funny anecdotes about their son’s abbreviated life. Judy Shepard, especially, makes a strong impression with her sardonic insights of how she knew her son was gay about a decade before he came out to her. (His love for dressing up like Dolly Parton was one clue, she says.)
In the process of drilling down into Shepard’s past, Josue does something even more interesting: She explores her own quest for understanding and closure — if such a thing even exists. The movie becomes a tool for coming to terms with tragedy.
If the director wanted to rehumanize Shepard, she has succeeded. Her other goal, though worthwhile, was not so easy to accomplish: to make sense of a horrific event and move on.EYE ON THE MEDIA: Annals of Great Mendacity
by ERIC DRAITSER
As the refugee crisis in Europe has come to dominate western media headlines, it has predictably given rise to a complex web of theories, analyses, and politically and ideologically charged omissions and distortions. The corporate propagandists of ‘acceptable journalism’ have presented the issue in a purely humanitarian and cultural light, with little to no political context in terms of the refugee influx as the fruit of imperial wars in Africa and Asia. These bastions of journalistic truth have managed to flush down the memory hole nearly all evidence published in their own pages of the overlapping strategies of regional and international powers that have conspired to wage war in Syria, openly colluded in wars of aggression in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and prolonged and capitalized from seemingly endless conflicts in Somalia and elsewhere. All of these very conscious decisions by the ruling class and its political establishment in the US-NATO (plus Israel and GCC), have led directly to the “crisis” as it exists today. And yet, if they’re mentioned at all, it is merely in passing bemusement, the way one might refer to a stupid comment made after one too many tequila shots at a margarita happy hour. The refugee issue then becomes less a product of political conflict, and more a cultural battlefield with trenches dug along racial and ethnic lines: the struggle to maintain European ‘civilization’ against the barbaric hordes of uncivilized brown-skinned invaders arriving as a “swarm,” to borrow the unintentionally honest expression used by British Prime Minister David Cameron to describe the refugees. This is of course the neocolonial, supremacist position espoused most vocally by the far right throughout Europe, from Marine Le Pen and the Front National in France, to Hungary’s conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban whose heavy-handed tactics – building fences, mobilizing troops and the unemployed, convicts, and fascists of various stripes – to block the refugee influx, have been both praised and condemned by various elements in Europe. While there is clearly an attempt to rewrite recent history to scrub the role of imperialism in fostering this crisis, there is also a deafening silence on the role of certain regional and international actors in manipulating it for political advantage. For instance, there is virtually no discussion in mainstream (and much of the alternative) media regarding the role of Turkey in redirecting refugees from its country to Greece and into Europe. There has yet to be even one substantive investigative piece in any establishment media on the collusion between the human traffickers of the Islamic State and other terror groups and criminal gangs, and their backers in the US, Europe, and Middle East. Equally, there has been virtually zero discussion of how the strategy of manipulated migration is part of a broader effort to further the goals of the Empire in the Global South. I ndeed, such questions and debates are critical to understanding the political, economic, and socio-cultural implications of this issue. However, in asking such questions, one almost immediately encounters the virulent strains of racism, bigotry, and outright fascism whose pernicious influence has become pervasive in nominally anti-imperialist circles. Sometimes such ideology is manifested in centuries-old reactionary conspiracy theories in which cabals of Jews, Jesuits, freemasons, or reptilian overlords (as the case may be) conspire to destroy white Christendom. Other times it is simply a rehashing of the ‘barbarian invader’ trope, a product of both European history and good old fashioned Euro-supremacism. ndeed, such questions and debates are critical to understanding the political, economic, and socio-cultural implications of this issue. However, in asking such questions, one almost immediately encounters the virulent strains of racism, bigotry, and outright fascism whose pernicious influence has become pervasive in nominally anti-imperialist circles. Sometimes such ideology is manifested in centuries-old reactionary conspiracy theories in which cabals of Jews, Jesuits, freemasons, or reptilian overlords (as the case may be) conspire to destroy white Christendom. Other times it is simply a rehashing of the ‘barbarian invader’ trope, a product of both European history and good old fashioned Euro-supremacism. Why are these questions critical? Simply put, the discourse on the refugee crisis is essential to undermining the entire imperialist agenda in Africa and the Middle East. Leftists must be cautious not to take the bait on the liberal versus conservative culture war narrative rooted in a neocolonial worldview, while at the same time remaining vigilant about both the real geopolitical machinations driving the crisis, and the fascistic memes that pass for “telling the truth” in the quagmire of social media and online activism. A Conspiracy of Silence There are two distinct ways in which the corporate media, in its role as propaganda appendage of the Empire, has deliberately confused the refugee issue. On the one hand, they have shielded the narrative from penetration by uncomfortable questions regarding the role of the West and its proxies in initiating, fomenting, and expanding the wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, and beyond. By doing so, the media removes the refugees from their politico-historical context, transforming them into so-called “migrants” – an elusive term designed to obscure the reality of who these people are, and why they’re desperately trying to get into Europe – as if they’re simply poor people looking for work, rather than victims of imperialism looking to protect their families and escape wars and destabilization initiated by the West. On the other hand, the media have simply refused to critically examine exactly the relationship between the flow of refugees and the policies, both overt and covert, of the countries participating either directly or indirectly in these wars. There is virtually no investigation into the facilitation of refugee travel by the Turkish government despite the literally countless reports of the Islamic State, al-Qaeda groups, and myriad criminal organizations engaging in human trafficking in Syria and Libya specifically. “The corporate propagandists of ‘acceptable journalism’ have presented the issue in a purely humanitarian and cultural light, with little to no political context…” With respect to Syria, Turkish intelligence is directly implicated in collusion with jihadis of the Nusra and ISIS variety, smuggling both fighters and weapons into Syria in the ongoing attempt to implement regime change against the Syrian government. According to Cumhuriyet, a popular Turkish daily: a group of jihadis were first brought to the Turkish border town of Reyhanli on January 9, 2014 from Atme refugee camp in Syria in a clandestine operation. From there, they were smuggled into Tal Abyad, a border town used by ISIS as a gateway from Turkey, on two buses rented by the MIT [Turkish intelligence]…which it said were stopped by police a day after the operation following a tip-off that they were smuggling drugs into Syria. It was revealed that the buses had been used to smuggle jihadis after investigators found bullets, weapons and ammunition abandoned in the buses. The drivers of the buses, who were briefly arrested, said in their testimony they were told that they were carrying Syrian refugees and the vehicles were rented by the MIT. Two important points should be immediately apparent in reading the reports. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the direct relationship and contact between Turkish intelligence and terrorist fighters intent on waging war in Syria. Secondly, and most important to this examination, is the fact that, as the bus drivers’ testimony clearly indicates, they were told by Turkish authorities that they were carrying Syrian refugees. It seems then that Turkish intelligence openly facilitates the transit of refugees throughout Turkey, and has a direct chain of custody over their movements. Taken in tandem with the knowledge that Turkish intelligence is also working with ISIS and Nusra then, it is not at all far-fetched to assume that they are also colluding in the human trafficking networks.
Those Who Make the Wounds—Protected by Their Media TAKEAWAY PRECIS “These bastions of journalistic truth have managed to flush down the memory hole nearly all evidence published in their own pages of the overlapping strategies of regional and international powers that have conspired to wage war in Syria, openly colluded in wars of aggression in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, and prolonged and capitalized from seemingly endless conflicts in Somalia and elsewhere. All of these very conscious decisions by the ruling class and its political establishment in the US-NATO (plus Israel and GCC), have led directly to the “crisis” as it exists today…”
This is an important point because it is these smuggling organizations which are directly implicated in funding ISIS in places like Libya. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the value of refugee smuggling in Libya alone reached $323 million in 2014, “dwarf[ing] any existing trafficking and smuggling businesses in the region… [it]has particularly strengthened groups with a terrorist agenda, including the Islamic State.” But while media have noted this important phenomenon, they have almost entirely buried the fact that those same ISIS (Islamic State) networks in Libya are being run by US-NATO asset Abdelhakim Belhadj, the man touted as a hero and great revolutionary by the imperialists in their war on Libya in 2011. Indeed, Belhadj served the US cause in Libya so well that he can be seen receiving accolades from Sen. John McCain, never one to shy away from a photo op with a terrorist or fascist. Belhadj was initially rewarded after the fall of Gaddafi with the post of military commander of Tripoli, though he was forced to give way to a more politically palatable “transitional government” which has since evaporated leaving in its wake ISIS, run by the very same Belhadj. It must be said that the refugee issue is far bigger than just US-NATO wars in Libya and Syria. Indeed, the refugees have come from countries that have been directly impacted by other imperialist policies, such as the ongoing economic war against Eritrea. As WikiLeaks cables revealed, there has been a concerted effort by the US to promote and facilitate the migration of Eritrean youth to the West using the lure of “educational opportunities” funded by the US government. Many of these young Eritreans, duped as they are, are then sadly caught up in the same human trafficking networks, often becoming victims of kidnapping or worse. Similarly, many of the refugees come from Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries still being devastated by US wars of aggression. They come from Pakistan where terror groups have waged genocidal campaigns against Shia muslims of the Hazara ethnic group, among others. They come from Somalia, a country still embroiled in a seemingly endless state of chaos facilitated by US policy. In short, the refugees are unmistakably victims of US-NATO (plus Israel and GCC) imperial policies. And there is almost no mention of any of this. What does get traction in the corporate media however is the potential need for still more war, this time to “help the refugees.” In short, the political and military establishment in the US makes the insidious, and deeply cynical, argument that the only way to help the people of Syria is to bomb them and destroy their country further, just as it argued in Libya in 2011. And again, there is almost no critical debate in the major media. Essentially, the corporate press acts as the de facto public relations wing of the ruling class, setting the parameters of how the refugee issue is to be discussed. As Noam Chomsky famously said, the media acts to “strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” Racism, Refugees, and the Rothschild-Jew-NWO-Illuminati-Muslim-Freemason-Reptilian Conspiracy™ As soon as one begins to interrogate the issues by asking questions such as those above, immediately one is confronted by the most exasperatingly tiresome, hackneyed, and utterly discredited conspiracy theories which still worm their way into far too much online discourse. In fact, according to such internet buffoonery, nearly every political development and conflict in the world can be chalked up to some illusory master plan enacted generations ago by a secret cabal of [insert demonized group of choice], rather than the complex political, economic, and social factors that give rise to human phenomena; so, too, with the refugee issue. “Essentially, the corporate press acts as the de facto public relations wing of the ruling class, setting the parameters of how the refugee issue is to be discussed…” The conversation often can sound something like, “Have you noticed that the Muslims and Africans flooding into Europe are mostly young males? It’s not a coincidence that the Jewish globalist plan is to destroy national boundaries and pervert the white Christian world with a fifth column in the quest for total global control through the destruction of nations and consolidation of the rule of Jewish bankers. #WhiteGenocide.” One could be forgiven for thinking that that is satire and hyperbole for comedic effect; sadly, no. That is taken almost verbatim from multiple memes and various written pieces circulating in the morass of social media. Normally, one would be quick to dismiss such idiocy as simply the childish ramblings of fascist nitwits whose study of history is confined to the Alex Jones School for Racist Lunacy. However, it is important to note that such discourse has an increasingly strong presence in nominally anti-imperialist and leftist circles, where opposition to Israel’s genocidal policies, and the supremacist ideology of Zionism, provide cover for outright fascist tendencies to cloak themselves in the flag of anti-Zionism. When the unhinged blather of David Icke and Alex Jones becomes acceptable discourse, it is cause for any anti-imperialist to worry. For this reason, the refugee issue has caused many of us to worry. The late author and journalist Alex Cockburn, a co-editor of CounterPunch for many years, in examining the allure of conspiracism generally (9-11 trutherism specifically), brilliantly wrote in 2011: [Conspiracism has] penetrated deep into the American left…These days a dwindling number of leftists learn their political economy from Marx. Into the theoretical and strategic void has crept a diffuse, peripatetic conspiracist view of the world that tends to locate ruling class devilry not in the crises of capital accumulation, or the falling rate of profit, or inter-imperial competition, but in locale (the Bohemian Grove, Bilderberg, Ditchley, Davos) or supposedly “rogue” agencies, with the CIA still at the head of the list. Though speaking of 9-11, Cockburn could easily have broadened that critique to include the growing number of people on both left and right, who subscribe to the Rothschild-Illuminati-New World Order worldview (if it can be called that). His argument, entirely correct in my view, is that in place of real historical-materialist analysis, or substantive analysis of any kind, be it anti-capitalist or the like, a sort of quasi-mystical belief in irrational and unseen forces has taken root in the collective imagination of many so-called activists. Cockburn quoted philosopher and CounterPunch contributor Michael Neumann who succinctly noted that such thinking “probably comes from the decline of Western power. Deep down, almost everyone, across the political spectrum, is locked in a bigotry which can only attribute that decline to some irrational or supernatural power. The result is the ascendency of magic over common sense, let alone reason.” Indeed, it is bigotry, or perhaps more correctly a reactionary racist and fascistic worldview, that owes much to tsarist and Nazi propaganda, and the right wing extremist scribes who preserved it in the post-war period. Such thinking is, sadly, not only alive, but thriving, in allegedly anti-imperialist circles. No doubt these memes have been wet-nursed by Zionism and Israeli policies which, in point of fact, are fascist and in many ways indistinguishable from the Nazism they allegedly abhor, as this author has argued numerous times. In effect, Zionism has contributed in no small part to the proliferation and normalization of fascist sentiment on both left and right. And it is precisely this sort of thinking that is now coloring the debate on refugees. Suddenly, the refugee crisis becomes a conspiracy to destroy ‘White Europe,’ rather than an outgrowth of imperialist wars undertaken by the US-NATO powers. Suddenly, the refugees become invaders, while the aggressors become the victims. This inversion is at once insidious and incredibly disheartening for those activists and analysts (this author included) who dedicate much of their time and effort to exposing the machinations of the Empire and its hegemonic agenda. To again quote Cockburn, “There are plenty of real conspiracies…Why make up fake ones?” Exactly! The conspiracy of regional and international actors needs to be unraveled, the evidence made public, the guilty prosecuted for war crimes. The conspiracy of silence in the corporate media needs to be exposed for what it is: still more evidence of how the propaganda matrix actually operates, how it serves the Empire. These are the conspiracies that matter. Let’s leave the Rothschilds, Illuminati, and lizard people to the darker recesses of internet irrelevance. While the racists cry from the mountaintops that their precious White Europe is under siege, let us recognize that the discourse of anti-imperialism is also under siege; that the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist space must be reclaimed and must be defended, whatever the cost.
Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.org and host of CounterPunch Radio. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at [email protected]. Nauseated by the
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If you don’t, who will?Last week, we reported that the Vegas Golden Knights’ television broadcast territory with Root Sports includes a portion of northwest Arizona.
This initially caught some within the Coyotes organization by surprise, but the overlap in broadcast territories is fairly common in the NHL. The New York and southern California markets have multiple teams, and there is overlap in other markets within close proximity to another, including Columbus and Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New Jersey and others.
The Coyotes still have broadcast rights in all of Arizona (and all of New Mexico), but they will share Mohave County with the Knights. Mohave County, with a population of about 200,000, is in the very northwest corner of Arizona and borders both Nevada and California. Its principal cities are Lake Havasu City (52,527 people), Bullhead City (39,540) and Kingman (28,068).
The NHL considers the city in which a team plays and a 50-mile radius around the city that team’s sphere of influence for over-the-air broadcasts, but cable creates a far broader footprint, thereby creating overlap territories. Root Sports still must find providers to broadcast Knights games in northwest Arizona.
FLAT CAP?
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters at the Stanley Cup Final that the salary cap could remain essentially flat next season if that is what the NHLPA wants. That would mean a $73 million cap, but deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the number could rise to $77 million if the players choose to use the 5 percent escalator. Doing the latter would also mean increasing players’ escrow, which has been an ongoing player complaint.
If the cap remains flat, Coyotes GM John Chayka acknowledged it could potentially help his team even more this summer. Few teams have much flexibility under the cap, and the expansion draft is complicating matters even more.
“We have flexibility for sure,” Chayka said.
Per capfriendly.com, the Coyotes currently have $25,874,724 in cap space for next season, the third most in the league behind the expansion Vegas Golden Knights and the Carolina Hurricanes. Arizona has no significantly priced unrestricted free agents it hopes to re-sign (Radim Vrbata is a possibility), and only two or three restricted free agents it is likely to retain.
COMBINE UNDERWAY
The NHL Scouting Combine began at KeyBank Center and HarborCenter in Buffalo on Monday with 104 players in attendance from North America and Europe. Like the NFL Scouting Combine, the NHL Scouting Combine is designed to provide a physical and medical assessment of players before the 2017 NHL Draft, which will be held at United Center in Chicago from June 23-24.
“I keep reading this quote over and over: ‘Talent sets the floor but character sets the selection,'” Coyotes GM John Chayka said. “We can measure the physical components but there is this huge variable of character and who a person is so it’s very important to us to get to know people.
“It’s all just input into a decision. Are we going to change our draft list dramatically based on those conversations? Probably not, but tweaking matters. We’re prioritizing players from a large group for the draft so this allows us to get a good sense of them.”
Each NHL team has the opportunity for 1-on-1 interviews with the prospects, this week. Medical exams conclude on Thursday, and eight of the 12 fitness tests will take place Saturday.
LOOSE PUCKS
— Forward Tobias Rieder underwent successful surgery on the ankle he injured in a game against Russia at the World Championship earlier this month. His rehabilitation time is targeted at 8-12 weeks with a full recovery expected. The Coyotes do not expect Rieder to miss any of training camp.
— Coyotes prospect Dylan Strome came up one win short of the Memorial Cup when Erie lost to host Windsor, 4-3, on Monday in the championship game. Strome led the tournament with seven goals and 11 points (the latter was tied with teammate Taylor Raddysh).
— Chayka has said he doesn’t expect the Coyotes to be major players in free agency, but he does hope to consummate trades. The team’s greatest needs are center, right defense and right wing.
One player to keep an eye on is Nashville forward Pontus Aberg, who will be an RFA at the end of this season. Nashville probably won’t be able to protect him so they may want to get something in return. The Coyotes have interest.
The 6-foot, 198-pound, 23-year-old Aberg, was the Predators’ second-round pick in 2012. He’s fast, he’s skilled and he could be ready for a larger role. Aberg has a gaudy 56.28 Corsi For percentage this postseason. He has a goal and four points in the postseason, while averaging 12:17 of ice time.
Follow Craig Morgan on Twitter
Follow @craigsmorganFeeding stimulates intraperitoneal macrophages to produce IL-1β
To study the physiological involvement of IL-1β in insulin secretion, we performed experiments in which wild-type mice and IL-1β-deficient (Il1b−/−) mice underwent overnight fasting, followed by refeeding. At 2 h after the start of refeeding, the circulating IL-1β concentration was increased (relative to the concentration after fasting but before refeeding) only in wild-type mice, while, as expected, IL-1β was undetectable in Il1b−/− mice (Fig. 1a; validation assay, Supplementary Fig. 1a). Of note, in wild-type mice, the concentration of IL-1β in serum was already elevated at 30 min after the start of refeeding (data not shown).
Figure 1: Feeding stimulates intraperitoneal macrophages to produce IL-1β. (a) Concentration of circulating IL-1β in wild-type (WT) mice (n = 22) and Il1b−/− mice (n = 3) after fasting without refeeding (Fasted) or with refeeding (Refed). LLOD, lowest level of detection. (b) Gene expression in omental fat isolated from wild-type mice (n = 8) after fasting with or without refeeding (key). (c) Quantification of peritoneal cells isolated from wild-type mice after fasting without refeeding (n = 15 mice) or with refeeding (n = 17 mice). (d) Il1b expression in peritoneal cells isolated from mice (n = 6) after fasting with or without refeeding (key). (e) Peritoneal-cell composition of mice (a pool of four mice) after fasting with refeeding, determined by flow cytometry. (f) Quantification of IL-1β released into the culture supernatants of macrophages isolated from mice after fasting without refeeding (n = 5 mice) or with refeeding (n = 6 mice), then stimulated with ATP. (g–i) Concentration of circulating IL-1β in Il1bfl/fl mice (n = 15) and Il1bfl/flLyz2-Cre mice (n = 16) after fasting with or without refeeding (key) (g), in mice (n = 13 per group) after fasting with or without refeeding (key) and treated (horizontal axis) with a placebo or with the SGLT2 inhibitor canagliflozin (h), and in mice after fasting with or without refeeding (key) and treated (horizontal axis) with saline (n = 9 mice) or 2DG (n = 10 mice) (i). (j) Secretion of IL-1β ex vivo from macrophages isolated from mice pretreated for a week with antibiotics (ABX) or not (Control) and then left unstimulated (US; left) or stimulated with ATP alone (middle) or after priming with LPS (right). (k) Concentration of circulating IL-1β, insulin and glucose before (Baseline) and after (LPS) intraperitoneal injection of LPS (1 mg per kg body weight (mg/kg)) into mice that did not undergo fasting (n = 8). (l) Concentration of circulating insulin in wild-type or Il1b−/− mice that did not undergo fasting, assessed after intraperitoneal injection of LPS (1 mg/kg) or saline (wild-type mice: n = 5 (saline) or n = 7 (LPS); Il1b−/− mice: n = 7 per condition). Each symbol represents an individual mouse (a–d,g–l) or biological replicate (f); small horizontal lines indicate the mean (± s.e.m.). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 and ****P < 0.0001 (analysis of variance (ANOVA) (b,g,h,I)) or Student′s t-test (c,d,f,j,k). Data are from four experiments (a,c,e), three experiments (b,g–i) or two experiments (d,f,j,k). Full size image
Next we investigated the source of the increased IL-1β. At 2 h after the start of refeeding, the expression of Il1b mRNA and of mRNA encoding the IL-1β-dependent chemokines CXCL1 and CCL2 was greater in the omental fat (the main site from which macrophages migrate into the
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ality to emerge? In one form or another, slavery has existed since the dawn of civilization. Slaves, to be sure, have always known that slavery is wrong. But Davis’s concern was with the rise of a humanitarian sensibility among those who did not suffer under the institution. Slavery was long accepted as an imperfect part of a necessarily imperfect social system, one example among many of social hierarchies on which public order was thought to depend. Anti-slavery, as a coherent body of thought, emerged only in the eighteenth century, due to a revolution in moral perceptions. Central to this process were evangelical religion and Enlightenment thought, both of which placed a new emphasis on every person’s inherent dignity and natural rights and on the possibility of perfecting society.
As intellectual history, Davis’s book was pathbreaking. But perhaps its deepest impact arose from his demonstration of slavery’s indispensable role in the rise of the modern world. Previous historians, especially in the United States, had tended to see slavery as an exception, a footnote in a teleological narrative of progress. But Davis demonstrated that slavery became the key institution in the European conquest and settlement of the New World. The book inspired a spate of works that showed the centrality of slavery to American and Atlantic history.
Davis’s second volume, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (1975), again led scholarship in new directions. It discussed the Haitian Revolution as a pivotal episode of that era, a commonplace today but a revelation forty years ago. The index to R.R. Palmer’s influential two-volume study The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959–64), for example, does not include the words “Haiti,” “Saint-Domingue” or “slavery.” Davis explored with great subtlety the views of Thomas Jefferson and other American founders and analyzed how the leaders of the French Revolution confronted slavery. But what generated the most attention among historians was the part of the book that sought an explanation for the rise of abolitionism in the realm of social relations, not simply ideas. Noting the close connection of British Quakers and other Dissenters with both the early Industrial Revolution and the movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, Davis suggested that the condemnation of slavery had the effect of legitimizing free wage labor at a time of deeply oppressive conditions in English factories. This was not a conspiracy theory, as some interpreted it—a capitalist plot to use the slavery issue to deflect attention away from the situation of the working class—but an analysis of the social functions, sometimes unintended, of abolitionist ideology. The book stimulated a wide-ranging and fruitful debate about capitalism’s relationship to the emergence of modern moral sensibilities.
In the decades since the second volume appeared, the focus of the study of emancipation has shifted again. Increasingly, blacks—not white abolitionists—occupy center stage. Slave resistance is now seen as central to the process of abolition in the United States, the Caribbean and Brazil. The crucial role of free blacks in abolitionist movements has been widely recognized. In this latest work, Davis—following in the wake of recent scholarship—makes the role of blacks as historical actors and catalysts of emancipation far more central than in his previous volumes.
* * *
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation is considerably less comprehensive than its earlier companions. A “highly selective study,” as Davis describes it, the book focuses almost exclusively on the United States and Great Britain. For the end of slavery in Cuba and Brazil, the reader must turn to the work of other historians, most recently Robin Blackburn’s The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights. [See Foner, “Inhuman Bondage,” August 29, 2011.] Rather than a full history of abolition in the nineteenth century, Davis offers a set of erudite ruminations on questions central to the debate over slavery.
The book’s central theme is slavery’s tendency toward the “dehumanization” of its victims and the implications of this for abolitionist movements and the prospects for emancipation. Throughout the hemisphere, as Davis points out, black slaves were literally “treated like animals.” Legally, they were reduced to chattel, lacking both rights and a will of their own. They were disciplined and restrained as animals were, with whips and chains. Slave-sale broadsides often listed slaves and animals side by side, with similar prices and descriptions.
What interests Davis, however, is less the legal or physical treatment than the psychological implications for both whites and blacks of this “animalization.” In adopting this approach, he follows in the footsteps of Stanley Elkins’s Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959) and its discussion of the impact of total institutions on their victims. Like Elkins, Davis has a penchant for practicing psychiatry without a license. He briefly veers off on a not entirely helpful Freudian excursion, proposing that whites’ “projection of an ‘animal Id’” onto blacks became the key to racism, even as some whites “succumbed to the appeal of the ‘Negro Id’” by seeking to emulate black music, dance and other cultural expressions. More persuasively, he insists that by describing and treating slaves as animals, whites enhanced their view of themselves as rational and self-disciplined human beings. One wishes that Davis had also delved into Jefferson’s insight that exercising absolute command over other men and women warped the psychology of the slaveholders as much as the slaves, instilling in them a tendency toward authoritarianism and violence. More controversially, perhaps, Davis probes the extent to which slaves internalized their own dehumanization and how black abolitionists sought to counter this tendency.
The emphasis on the dehumanization inherent in slavery helps explain what may strike many readers as the surprising amount of space (four full chapters) that Davis devotes to the movement to “colonize” freed slaves outside the United States. As he points out, although barely remembered today, colonization was a mainstream movement before the Civil War. Prominent white Americans from Jefferson to Lincoln (at least until he issued the Emancipation Proclamation) believed that with the end of slavery, blacks should be encouraged or even required to leave the United States. Moreover, a remarkable number of black leaders at one time or another embraced the idea of seeking a homeland elsewhere. For its white advocates, colonization would remove a people who had become so brutalized that they posed a menace to the social order if allowed to remain in this country in freedom. For blacks, separation from the American environment would allow former slaves to overcome the psychological effects of being treated like animals.
For supporters of colonization, white and black, Davis argues, the biblical narrative of Exodus imbued the idea with millennial significance. More recent precedents also existed: the expulsion of Moors and Jews from Spain and the deportation of the Acadians from the Canadian Maritime Provinces by Great Britain in 1755, not to mention Indian removal in the United States. A considerable number of American blacks migrated to Haiti in the 1820s, although many returned after finding that island nation less of a utopia than they had hoped. As conditions for free blacks in the United States worsened in the 1850s, emigrationist sentiment revived. If black Americans, in the words of the black abolitionist Martin Delany, constituted a “nation within a nation,” then logic suggested that they deserved a nation state of their own. Davis makes the point that unlike white colonizationists, Delany did not advocate the emigration of the entire black population; indeed, he and others insisted that the establishment of a powerful black nation overseas would help those who remained in the United States to win citizenship rights.
Nonetheless, Davis acknowledges, emigration was always a minority impulse among black Americans. Liberia, established in West Africa by the American Colonization Society, failed to attract a large number of colonists. (Those who did go, he writes, frequently acted like “high-handed imperialists” in their relations with the native population.) The establishment of the Colonization Society in 1816 produced an immediate backlash among ordinary free blacks, leading them to assert their Americanness and to articulate a vision of the United States as a land of equality before the law, where rights did not depend on color, ancestry or racial designation. The black mobilization against colonization became a key factor in the rise of a new, militant abolitionism in the 1830s. Compared with previous anti-slavery organizations, mostly led by whites and promoting gradual emancipation, the new abolitionism was different: immediatist, interracial, and committed to making the United States a biracial nation of equals.
Davis offers a thoughtful discussion of the role of free blacks in abolitionist movements and their relations with slaves. That relationship differed from society to society, but free blacks everywhere occupied an ambiguous and marginal place in slave systems. Disdained by whites, they often tried to establish an identity separate from slaves. But sometimes, as in revolutionary Haiti or the northern United States, they made common cause with those in bondage.
Free blacks were “the key to slave emancipation,” but in a double sense. Their work was essential for the abolitionist movement, but they bore a great burden—demonstrating in their own lives the slaves’ capacity for freedom. Consequently, Davis argues, even the most militant abolitionists chastised many free blacks for poverty, intemperance and violations of the Sabbath. They worried that evidence of the impact of “dehumanization” on the black population might make emancipation seem inadvisable.
David Walker, whose Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) in some ways launched the new abolitionism, spent part of that radical manifesto berating slaves and free blacks for accepting and internalizing their inferior status. Frederick Douglass called on free blacks to prove themselves “men” by working hard, rising in the social scale and, during the Civil War, enlisting in the Union Army. Unlike some recent scholars, however, Davis stresses that rather than being a conservative impulse—an attempt to impose elite values on a Dionysian lower-class black culture—the campaign for “racial uplift” formed part of the movement to demonstrate to white America the fitness of black people for freedom. Its aim was “empowerment,” not repression.
In this context, the Haitian Revolution took on sharply different meanings among whites and blacks. The very existence of a black nation founded by a slave revolution challenged every slave regime in the hemisphere. Among whites, the alleged “horrors” of Haiti, including massacres of white residents, not only produced “alarm and terror” but also offered evidence of the bestial nature of the rebel slaves and the need to strengthen slavery where it still existed. For blacks, free and slave, Haiti was an inspiration. It demonstrated black “manhood,” Douglass would later declare. The example of Haiti inspired the leaders of the Barbados insurrection of 1816, Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy in Charleston in 1822, and slave rebels in Cuba. Walker urged his readers to study the history of Haiti, “the glory of the blacks and terror of tyrants.”
* * *
Davis devotes a revealing chapter to another form of slave resistance—running away from slavery—and its political impact in the United States. In some ways, however, this discussion seems to cut against the argument about the impact of slavery on slaves. The fugitives’ courage, ingenuity and self-reliance challenges the idea of widespread psychological “dehumanization.” William Still, a free black and the key operative of the underground railroad in Philadelphia, wrote that his encounters with fugitives led him to realize how many slaves had “deeply thought on the subject of their freedom.” Speeches by fugitives, including Douglass, Henry H. Garnet, Henry Brown and many others, attracted large audiences in the North and Great Britain. Fugitive slave narratives—accounts written by runaways of their ordeals and accomplishments—emerged as a popular literary genre and an effective argument for abolition.
“The fugitive slave issue,” Davis writes, was “absolutely central in bringing on the Civil War.” At the most basic level, running away from slavery gave the lie to proslavery propaganda about contented slaves. The actions of fugitives forced onto the center stage of American politics intractable questions about the balance between federal and state authority, the extent to which the laws of slave states extended into the North, and the relationship between the national government and slavery. Washington’s active efforts to assist slaveholders in their attempts to reclaim fugitives reinforced the abolitionist contention that the Slave Power effectively determined national policy. None of this would have happened without the actions of slaves who sought to escape to freedom.
If Haiti inspired black radicalism, Parliament’s abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 convinced American abolitionists of the practicality of immediate emancipation. Yet, Davis points out, this moral triumph was also the product of political negotiation and compromise. Britain liberated 800,000 slaves, but rewarded their owners with £20 million in monetary compensation—an immense sum, amounting to 40 percent of the national budget. (Because of a regressive tax system, the British working class paid most of the bill.) Moreover, as former slaves took up small plots of land to grow food for their families, Caribbean sugar production plummeted. By midcentury, respectable opinion on both sides of the Atlantic had concluded that emancipation was a failure. Thus, ironically, the British experience hardened opposition to abolition in the United States, stoking fears that it would lead to economic disaster.
Nonetheless, August 1, 1834—the date the British law went into effect—was celebrated as a “turning point in human history.” For free African-Americans, August 1 replaced July 4 as a day of annual celebration. Their admiration for Great Britain put abolitionists (black and white) in a complicated position when they lectured in the British Isles during the 1840s, just as the Chartist movement was drawing attention to political and economic inequalities there. In a brief discussion that to some extent modifies his earlier analysis of the ideological relationship between chattel and wage slavery, Davis points out that Garrison and Douglass did express sympathy for Chartist demands. Yet Davis also notes that despite the success of speaking tours by American abolitionists, there was a remarkable degree of support for the Confederacy in England during the American Civil War—not only among the aristocracy, which despised democracy, but also journalists, reformers and clerics.
The abolition of slavery appears, in retrospect, so inevitable a part of the story of human progress that it may seem jarring when Davis emphasizes that there was nothing predetermined about it. He endorses the view advanced by recent scholars that, far from being retrograde or economically backward, slavery in the mid-nineteenth century was a dynamic, expanding institution, with powerful support everywhere it existed. “Never was the prospect of emancipation more distant than now,” the Times of London observed in 1857. Despite abolition in the British Caribbean and Spanish America, there were more slaves in the Western Hemisphere on the eve of the Civil War than at any point in history. Had the Confederacy emerged victorious, which was entirely possible, “it is clear that slavery would have continued well into the twentieth century.” Contingency, even accident, produced the end of slavery in the Old South, the greatest slave society the modern world has known.
Davis is well aware, of course, that emancipation did not usher in the abolitionist dream of a society of equals. The end of slavery in the Caribbean was succeeded by new forms of unfreedom, as planters brought in indentured workers from Asia to replace the blacks who had abandoned the plantations. Davis notes that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, adopted in the United States immediately after the Civil War to guarantee the civil and political equality of the former slaves, are virtually without precedent in other post-emancipation societies. Yet Reconstruction was soon succeeded by a new system of racial inequality. Did emancipation, then, make any difference in the United States?
In a moving personal reflection that opens the book, Davis dates his interest in studying the history of slavery and racism to his experience in 1945 as an 18-year-old draftee on a troop ship headed to Europe. He was shocked to discover that hundreds of black soldiers were jammed together in the hold, in conditions reminiscent of what he imagined a slave ship during the Middle Passage must have been like. When he reached Germany, he had to listen to racist diatribes by US Army officers. Three hundred pages later, Davis ends by acknowledging that, in various forms, slavery persists in the world even today.
Davis is fully aware of the moral ambiguities involved in the crusade against slavery, the process of abolition and the long afterlife of racism. Nonetheless, in a rebuke to those historians today who belittle the entire project of emancipation, he insists that the abolition of slavery in the Western Hemisphere was one of the profoundest achievements in human history, “a crucial landmark of moral progress that we should never forget.” His monumental three-volume study helps to ensure that it will always be remembered.The question greenies are too afraid to discuss
Updated
As the Australian public baulks at even a modest carbon price, climate change activists have set their sights on what is pragmatic and convenient, not what is truly necessary, writes Greg Foyster.
On June 18, the Australian Senate launched an inquiry into "The Abbott Government's attacks on Australia's environment, and their effects on our natural heritage and future prosperity".
Initiated by the Greens, the inquiry lists a litany of grievances: abolishing the Climate Commission and the Biodiversity Fund, attempting to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and carbon price, cutting funding to Environmental Defenders Offices, and attempting to de-list a swathe of forest from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Areas.
It was an obvious political ploy, and the message was clear: the Coalition is tearing through Australia's environmental programs like a Hummer bush-bashing in the Daintree.
Green groups are in emergency mode, launching reactionary campaigns - Protect our solar industry! Save the Reef! Show you care about Tassie's forests! - to salvage what they can. Meanwhile, a much bigger emergency rumbles in the distance, one that's not getting the airplay it should. I'm talking about the possibility that the 'official' solution to climate change - negotiated at global level - may not be enough to avert catastrophic warming.
The United Nations climate negotiation aims to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system". For the past two decades, the danger threshold has generally been interpreted as two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a target reaffirmed in Copenhagen in 2009.
But is two degrees too high? Some leading climate scientists seem to think so.
In 2011, Professor Kevin Anderson, then director of the UK's Tyndall Centre, co-authored a paper arguing that two degrees represented a threshold not between dangerous and safe, but between dangerous and "extremely dangerous". NASA's James Hansen has described the two-degree target as "a prescription for long-term disaster".
And yet lower targets are mostly off the table. The IPCC's latest report says only a limited number of studies have explored scenarios to keep the temperature rise under 1.5 degrees by 2100. It's easy to understand why: this lower target requires an immediate plunge in emissions and energy demand. It's considered politically unfeasible. And so we set our sights on what is pragmatic and convenient, not what is truly necessary.
Writing in Nature in 2012, Professor Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows argued "catastrophic and ongoing failure of market economics and the laissez-faire rhetoric accompanying it (unfettered choice, deregulation and so on) could provide an opportunity to think differently about climate change".
But where is the discussion about the unorthodox, radical solutions that may be required?
On June 21 and 22, about 300 environmentalists and academics attended the Breakthrough National Climate Restoration Forum in Melbourne to address these very questions and take a sobering look at what mitigating catastrophic warming really entails.
Is two degrees too high? Do we need to restructure the economy? Is climate engineering inevitable?
The first session laid out the global emergency we face. Danny Harvey, a geography professor at the University of Toronto, described how two degrees of warming risked 10 to 30 metres of eventual sea level rise, significant dieback of the Amazon, and a near total loss of coral reefs.
Climate analyst David Spratt argued that even the IPCC's most ambitious carbon budget to stay below the two-degree target has a one-in-three chance of failure. If humanity wants a less than 10 per cent probability of exceeding the two-degree target, he said, then "there is no carbon budget left".
Understanding risk is essential because the globe doesn't warm in a steady, linear fashion. Brett Parris from Monash University argued the climate record shows a sudden shift between equilibriums. But economists and policy makers are hoping they can manipulate the climate to a point that suits them - two degrees, or even three or four degrees - without knowing where the real threshold lies. "What if there's no equilibrium between one degree and six degrees of warming?" asked Parris.
A second question hovers over how to achieve the two-degree target. Unless emissions peak before 2020, we're looking at emissions reductions rates of up to 9 per cent per year, which has historically been associated only with severe recession. Several forum speakers argued this calls for economic restructuring on the scale and speed of mobilisation for WWII. This would involve market interference, a more central "command and control" style of government, and possibly electricity rationing.
That brings us the most radical proposal of all. David Keith, a professor of public policy and applied physics at Harvard, presented a case for climate engineering, a hubristic scheme to cool the planet by spraying sunlight-reflecting sulphur particles into the upper atmosphere. The technology would be used to slow the rate of change, not mask the effect of all emissions, but it still carries big risks. It's an indication of the seriousness of climate change that the environmentalists in the audience didn't openly revolt at the suggestion of directly interfering with the planetary thermostat.
As the Abbott Government continues attacking environmental programs and the Australian public baulks at even a modest carbon price, green groups might be reluctant to broach more radical solutions. But if they don't agitate for what's truly necessary, as opposed to what's politically convenient, then who will?
It's time we had a frank - and frightening - discussion about the catastrophe we're heading for and the full suite of options available to turn the situation around. Is two degrees too high? Do we need to restructure the economy? Is climate engineering inevitable? These are the climate debates we have to have, and soon.
This article was first published on the ABC's Environment portal. See the original here.
Greg Foyster is a Melbourne journalist and the author of Changing Gears: A Pedal-Powered Detour from the Rat Race. View his full profile here.
Topics: climate-change, federal-government, activism-and-lobbying
First postedDAVIE, Fla. — Walk in the front door of the Miami Dolphins’ headquarters, and the new vibe is impossible to miss. The lobby has been remodeled and now features less memorabilia, putting the focus on the important stuff: the franchise’s two Lombardi Trophies. Out on the practice field, the head coach who looks young enough to be a player is unafraid to jaw at defenders between plays.
When Adam Gase was hired in January to lead the Dolphins, the message he wanted to deliver was one of starting over. Don’t dwell on the ups and downs of the past few years, including a turbulent 2015 that bore a midseason coach firing, a 6-10 record and a last-place finish in the AFC East.
“Who are we going to become?” Gase instead asked.
• CAMP REPORTS: Bucs | Jaguars | Panthers | Lions | Falcons | Steelers | Bills | Eagles | Patriots | Giants | Colts | Jets | Packers
That’s a team-wide question, and one directed at Ryan Tannehill. Though he hates the moniker, Gase was largely hired for his reputation as a quarterback whisperer, which he earned by effectively working with quarterbacks of all talent levels, from Peyton Manning to Jay Cutler to Tim Tebow. Tannehill is a fifth-year passer who has already thrown for more than 15,000 yards but has never been part of a winning NFL team.
Ryan Tannehill (17) discusses a play with Arian Foster. Lynne Sladky/AP
In his office last Friday evening, Gase brought up the 15,000 passing yards stat, noting that only two other quarterbacks have ever passed for more yards than Tannehill in their first four years in the league: Peyton Manning and Dan Marino. It’s just one example of how Gase is throwing his support behind the 28-year-old QB.
Their relationship is still a new one. Gase waited until he saw Tannehill throw in person this spring before diving into a film review. Now, the offense is in the “throw a handful of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” phase, as Tannehill puts it. Gase is trying to learn everything about his new quarterback as fast as he can, but he’s realistic: The scripted reps on the practice field serve a purpose, but they don’t go a long way toward revealing how Tannehill will respond in the flow of a game against a foreign defense.
• BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: NFL head coaches endure a grueling hiring process. Here’s what Adam Gase experienced in Miami
Even still, Gase decided early on that he would empower Tannehill in a way that his predecessor, Joe Philbin, didn’t. The quarterback now has a freedom to change pass concepts or plays, which he wasn’t afforded the past few seasons. “You see what the defense is playing, and now we are trying to attack them,” Tannehill says of his ability to change plays at the line of scrimmage, “hit them where they’re weak, as opposed to just hope we’re calling the right play to hit the right spot.”
It’s more than just on the field. Gase is letting Tannehill run some of the offensive meetings—taking players through film of one-on-one drills, for example, or going through the plan for the afternoon walk-through. “We try to put him in a position where the other players can hear him talk about what we are doing. That opens up the lines of communication,” Gase says.
• FANTASY RANKINGS: QUARTERBACKS | RUNNING BACKS | WIDE RECEIVERS | TIGHT ENDS
It takes a lack of ego for a coach to turn over a meeting room, but that’s what Gase did in Denver with Peyton Manning. When Tannehill leads these meetings, instructing his receivers on the way he wants specific routes run, some of those tips have come directly from Manning’s mouth. The newly retired quarterback visited South Florida as recently as last week, and Tannehill doesn’t hesitate to share what they talked about. “Route concepts,” he says.
Tannehill is focusing on the small picture. He’s trying to get “faster in my feet,” for example, because Gase has told him that will allow him to get the ball out faster. In one recent practice throw, this lesson was reinforced: Tannehill was a little slow at the top of his drop, and a little late with a throw to Jarvis Landry. The receiver still caught it, but missed out on yards after the catch that would have been there had the ball arrived sooner. But beyond the small picture is a big picture that can’t be ignored. The four-year contract extension Tannehill signed last offseason set this up to be a prove-it year, with his base salary nearly doubling in 2017 to about $18 million, most of which is not fully guaranteed until next spring.
• AT THE COMBINE: The MMQB sat in the room as the Dolphins grilled a quarterback and tried to determine the makeup of the man
“Everybody looks at contracts. That’s what the going rate of quarterbacks are,” Gase says. “There’s no middle class. You are either top or bottom. Everybody thinks quarterbacks get paid just for what they do on the field. They get paid for a lot more. They get paid for doing everything right, for being the guy who’s in the media all the time, for being the guy who has to take the blame for losing a game. That’s why they get paid all that money.”
He pauses, and apologizes for going on a tangent. It’s really just another show of support for his quarterback. Back to the original question though: How much does Tannehill need to show in one year under Gase for the Dolphins to proceed forward with him?
“We’re just trying to get players better, rather than worrying about the result,” Gase says. “We follow our process, and whatever the outcome ends up being, well, it’s been good in the past.”
Laremy Tunsil. AP
Five Things I Think About the Dolphins
1) Laremy Tunsil should be the opening-day starter at left guard, but Gase is going to make the first-round pick earn it. Tunsil has had one of the more bizarre years of any high draft pick in recent memory. Once the presumed No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 draft, he slid to the Dolphins at No. 13 when the infamous gasmask-bong video was released minutes before the draft began, and now he’s been primarily working with the second-team offensive line. With veteran Branden Albert at left tackle, Tunsil has been learning the guard position, but for now he’s still working behind left guard Dallas Thomas. “We want guys to earn their spot, and make sure they are not putting our other players in a position where one guy causes the rest of the group to fail,” Gase says. “As a rookie, this league is tough. It’s more just being mentally strong. There are a lot of things that come up whether it be during a game or throughout the year; balancing your personal life with this profession.”
• TUNSIL’S DRAFT HIT: The Dolphins’ Mike Tannenbaum explains the behind-the-scenes draft room discussions
Tunsil has had a turbulent year, and that seems to be a factor in the Dolphins’ plan for him. But ultimately, they need his talent on the field to help protect a quarterback who has already been sacked 184 times in his career. “When I watch him at practice, and see him work, he’s always trying to get with his coaches and make sure he knows what he is doing mentally,” Gase says. “For me, that shows promise for him to be one of those five guys we have out there.”
2) The weakest spot on the Dolphins’ roster is their secondary. Case in point: they are counting on second-round pick Xavien Howard, a rookie who still hasn’t practiced in camp because of a knee injury, to be a Week 1 starter opposite Byron Maxwell. With Howard still sidelined, it didn’t go well on Friday for some of the options behind him. Tony Lippett got his ankles broken (figuratively) by Landry, and Chimdi Chekwa left with a leg injury. The Dolphins weren’t the only team (see: Carolina) to turn to the draft’s deep and diverse cornerback class to fortify the cornerback position, and they have high expectations for Howard once he’s healthy. But there’s little margin for error.
• FOOTBALL STYLE: A look at the loud new off-field trend being set by wide receivers
3) On the flip side, the Dolphins have a wealth of depth on their defensive front. Even with Ndamukong Suh sitting out with a minor back injury last Friday, the defensive line still dominated the practice. Against the first-team offensive line, DE Andre Branch beat Laremy Tunsil and Terrence Fede beat Ja’Wuan James for would-be sacks of Ryan Tannehill. They have more defensive linemen than they can fit on their roster, and some—Chris McCain, perhaps?—could end up being trade bait.
4) Arian Foster has some tread left on the tires. The 29-year-old running back was released by the Texans after rupturing his Achilles last season, but he has a good chance of being Miami’s lead back. The Dolphins plan on running a lot of no-huddle and not subbing personnel groups during a drive, and the simple answer is that Foster is the most complete back on the roster and has the best chance of seeing the field the most.
5) It was neat to see Bryan Thomas, who had an 11-year career as a Jets outside linebacker, in Davie as a training camp scouting intern. Mike Tannenbaum, now Miami’s EVP of football operations, was the Jets GM during most of Thomas’ career there and gave Thomas a chance to dip his toe in the scouting world. Scouting hasn’t traditionally been a popular post-career path for players, but more and more longtime players, like Philly’s Brian Dawkins, are giving it a try. The scouting grind is a lot to take on after a long playing career, but players also have a unique eye for what to look for in talent.
Question? Comment? Let us know at [email protected] was Ivanovic who played a poor pass to Cahill that put the England centre-half under pressure and resulted in his mistake that let in Sanchez for the first goal.
The defending was just as bad for the second and third goals, and Ivanovic was also booked for a foul on Alex Iwobi just outside the penalty area.
Conte switched to a back three in the second half and it can surely only be a matter of time until Ivanovic loses his place and César Azpilicueta is moved to the right, either as a full-back or a wing-back.
Despite refusing to single out his defence, Conte will be well aware that it is by far his biggest problem. Chelsea have conceded at least two goals in each of their last four games and have badly missed 35-year-old Terry, which tells its own story.
“I don’t want to talk about defenders, midfielders or strikers,” said Conte. “Because I think we lose and we win as a team. Today we understood – me first, then the players – that this league is very tough. We must improve a lot if we want to stay up [near the top], and not in the middle of the table.A couple of days ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Floyer-Lea, Head of Programming at Rebellion. Kevin shared some new details with us about the tech features of the Asura Engine, its Multicore CPU capabilities, and the ‘Obscurance Fields’ setting (that most of you didn’t know for what it was responsible for). In addition, Kevin shared his thoughts on Mantle, DX12 (as well as DX11.2), a possible new Aliens vs Predator game and the advantages/disadvantages of self-publishing a PC game. Enjoy the interview after the jump!
DSOGaming: Before we begin, please introduce yourselves to our readers.
Kevin Floyer-Lea: Hi, I’m Kevin Floyer-Lea, Head of Programming here at Rebellion. I’m the architect of our in-house Asura engine. I’ve been at Rebellion for 19 years now – back in the 90s I was lead programmer on the original PC version of Aliens vs Predator. I’ve been making PC games since before these new-fangled GPUs became fashionable, and have vague memories of writing software rasterizers in machine code.
DSOG: Sniper Elite 3 will be powered by the Asura engine if we are not mistaken. Can you share some tech details about the engine and its features?
Kevin Floyer-Lea: The Asura engine has been under constant development for over 14 years now – we’re continually adding, removing and refining. We went to a fully deferred approach about 8 or 9 years ago, and our rendering tech has been steadily improving over that time, based on the needs of the games we’re developing. For Sniper Elite 3 for example, we needed a system that could cope with dynamic shadows and bounced light from a bright, desert sun. In day levels the sun and sky are pretty much the only light sources, with everything lit procedurally. In night time settings the deferred approach means we can have hundreds of light sources dotted around as well as the gentle moonlight. I don’t think we actually have any hard limit to the number of light sources; it’s left to the artists’ discretion!
DSOG: With Sniper Elite V2 we noticed that there wasn’t any performance difference with the number of CPU cores. In our analysis of Sniper Elite 3 we saw performance differences between dual-cores, tri-cores and quad-cores. Hell, the game even benefits from penta-cores, something that really surprised us. What’s changed?
Kevin Floyer-Lea: Yes, Sniper Elite 3 should definitely scale to any number of CPU cores. We have a task system that creates as many worker threads as the machine has logical processors. Work for culling, rendering, animation, AI, physics and so on is split into smaller jobs and all thrown at the task system. So as long as the number of tasks is high enough, the engine should in theory just keep scaling as you add more and more cores. On Sniper Elite V2 a lot of the AI and animation work was to a large extent single-threaded – now on Sniper Elite 3 it’s multithreaded via the task system. That makes a huge difference, and was a definite requirement now we have bigger, more open levels where 60 to 80 NPCs may be roaming around simultaneously.
DSOG: Sniper Elite 3 will take advantage of the new API, Mantle. Can you share your thoughts on this API? Why did you decide to support it? Is the performance boost significant? Did you have any trouble programming for that particular API and how different is it compared to Direct 3D?
Kevin Floyer-Lea: We’re always keen to be on the forefront with our technology – we shipped one of the very first D3D11 games for example. For years we’d been asking for a lower level approach to PC graphics much like we have on consoles, so Mantle fits the bill perfectly.
The speed difference on CPU is startling – the driver overhead we’re used to has disappeared. We can now easily construct command buffers multithreaded and then submit them to the GPU with the minimum of fuss, which makes us even more multi-core friendly and scaleable.
It’s also made apparent just how much work was going on behind the scenes with Direct3D and the associated drivers – memory being copied around, duplicate buffers holding data as it’s moved into different areas of VRAM, that sort of thing. Suddenly we have direct control over that – and that leads on to new optimisations which wouldn’t have occurred to us before. It’s not so much the immediate improvements that excite us as the potential for future advances.
DSOG: What’s your opinion on OpenGL and Direct 3D? OpenGL is said to support a lot of low
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to get information, should anybody be able to get at bank records. Let’s say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said, ‘Don’t make me cut this ribbon because you’ll make me cut it many times’.”
Apple has been pulled into a war of words with US law enforcement in the last week, after a judge ordered the company to write software that would enable FBI investigators to unlock Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. Mr Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has called the request a “chilling” example of “over-reach” by the US government that would set a “ dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties”.
Mr Gates’s stance sets him apart from the rest of the technology industry, including the company he founded. Satya Nadella, Microsoft chief, has not publicly commented on the matter, but a spokesperson for the Seattle-based company pointed to a statement by the Reform Government Surveillance organisation, of which it is a member, opposing the order.
Silicon Valley executives including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief; Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder; and Sundar Pichai, head of Google, have all sided with Mr Cook. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden called the showdown “the most important tech case in a decade”.
Podcast Apple versus the FBI Apple has taken a stand against a US court order that it must help the FBI unblock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Ravi Mattu discusses the FBI request and Apple’s response with Sam Jones, FT defence and security editor, and Tim Bradshaw, San Francisco correspondent.
But James Comey, FBI director, has insisted that the case is “quite narrow”.
“We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” Mr Comey wrote in a blog post on Sunday night.
Mr Gates told the FT that there were benefits to the government being able to enforce taxation, stop crime and investigate terror threats, but said there must be rules on when the information can be accessed.
“I hope that we have that debate so that the safeguards are built and so people do not opt — and this will be country by country — [to say] it is better that the government does not have access to any information,” he said.
Mr Gates was speaking at the launch of the annual letter from his charitable organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in which he argues that “an energy miracle” will be needed to bring electricity to the one-fifth of the world’s population that does not currently have it, while still reducing carbon emissions to zero.
“Let’s science the expletive-expletive out of this,” he said, quoting Matt Damon’s character in the movie, The Martian. “I don’t know what the expletives are.”
Bill Gates on the FBI versus Apple Q: Is Apple right to be challenging the FBI’s request to open a backdoor to its phones? There’s no doubt Apple can make this information available and I don’t think there’s any doubt that when the courts eventually rule that they’ll follow whatever the court says to do. The discussion of do you want the government to be blind on one hand, or if it’s not blind does it have the right safeguards of how that information, when it’s acquired and how it’s used — that’s a good debate. In my view the benefits to the government of being able to enforce taxation, being able to stop crime, particular things like terrorism with nuclear weapons or biological means, which means a very few number of people are given by innovation the ability to affect millions or billions — I hope that we can have that debate so that the safeguards are built so people don’t opt — and this will be country by country — that hey it’s better off that the government doesn’t access any information. Q: Would you support a backdoor into Microsoft phones, Google phones, Apple phones as a general principle. Nobody’s talking about a backdoor so that’s not the right question. This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They’re not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case. Q: But is Apple right to say that a backdoor, once created in one case, is a backdoor that can be used in the future? Apple has access to the information. They’re just refusing to provide the access and the courts will tell them whether to provide the access or not. You shouldn’t call the access some special thing. It’s no different than should, if anybody ever been able to tell the phone company to get information; bank records, should anybody be able to get at bank records. There’s no difference between information, the government’s come asking for a specific set of information and let’s say the bank had tied a ribbon around the disk drive and they say ‘don’t make me cut this ribbon, because you’ll make me cut it many times, just because this guy’s such a terrible person’. Anyway, it’s a simple question of do voters want the government in any case, is there any case where a company should provide the information. Q: Apple just made it sound like it’s a matter of principle, a broad principle. Any time a bank is told, hey, turn over a bank account information, as soon as they do that on one person they are admitting they can do it on many people, so yes, they are waiting for a high court to make clear what they should do.
* The headline of the story has been updated to more closely reflect Mr Gates’ comments
Letter in response to this report:
FBI’s request is about more than just this case / From Nuala O’ConnorShe paused.
“Um, what are you doing?”
My wife stepped carefully over a paint can and one of my legs. She peered quizzically at my lower half, sticking out from under my 8-year-old’s newly painted desk as if I was tuning up a car.
“I’m teaching Kayla a lesson.” “By painting under her desk?” “Exactly.” “Wait, what? That’s a lesson?” “It’s one of the most important ones I know. I’m also inscribing a note.”
She waited.
I finished up, snapped a photo of the inscription and popped out from below. I showed her the photo on my phone.
She understood.
_____________________
The desk was a present. My daughter turns 8 today and more than ever I feel like a father. It’s not just her age that makes me feel this way, but her growing talents and my responsibilities in nurturing them. She, like me, is a Builder of Things.
She draws. She paints. She makes books (as in literally, *makes* them, from the bindings to the illustrations to the stories within). She makes puppets. She takes photos. She. Makes. Things.
And she is very, very good at what she does.
I want to help her channel her creative energy in a way that will let her inspire others as she grows. She is a next generation maker and the creative tools already at her disposal make my childhood tools look like Play-Doh in comparison (because, actually that’s what it was). She will be leaps and bounds ahead of me. I want to pass on some of the lessons that I only learned in my twenties and thirties, now, while she is still moldable.
_____________________
This particular lesson is simple:
I’m not going to tell her there is an inscription under her desk or even that I painted all the areas normally hidden from view. But one day - probably at some point over this year or the next - she will be playing hide and seek and find shelter under the desk. Maybe she’ll be recovering a lost toy and happen to look up. She might notice that I have taken time to painstakingly paint an area of her desk that is normally never seen.
She might not.
But at some point in the near future, she will notice the inscription:
And then, I hope, the lesson will be learned.
More to come on Twitter @avimuchnick.By Richard Thomas
John Lunn, Master Distiller at George Dickel, left the company today. Lunn had served as Dickel’s Master Distiller for 11 years.
Lunn was recruited into the company in 2004 by former Dickel Master Distiller Jennings D. Backus, serving as his apprentice for roughly a year before succeeding Backus upon his 2005 retirement.
Although Dickel is best viewed as a medium-sized distillery next to majors like Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s, it dates its present establishment back to 1958 and stands as one of American whiskey’s Old Guard distilleries. Lunn is 45 today, and at the time of his appointment was remarkably young to be entrusted with such a prestigious distillery.
Diageo, Dickel’s parent company, has begun a search for a new Master Distillery. This may imply that Distiller Alissa Henley (note the lack of the word “master” in her title) is not in the running as Lunn’s replacement. Lunn has made no official statement yet as to what he is moving onto.CHANDIGARH: Infuriated on being denied
, a Haryana man strangled his wife to death on Tuesday night. According to police, 35-year-old Sanjiv Kumar, a native of village
in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district, killed his wife Suman after she resisted his attempt to have sex.
A murder case has been registered at the
police station against Sanjiv Kumar for killing 30-year-old Suman, a housewife, after a midnight fight over conjugal rights. The couple have two children and were married for over a decade. The accused is a painter by profession. A case of murder was registered against Sanjiv and six other members of his family on a complaint made by Ravi Kumar.
“During investigation, Sanjiv confessed he had wanted to have intercourse with his wife, but she had refused. After she scolded the accused for trying to force himself on her, Sanjiv lost his cool and strangled her, leading to her death,” SHO Ramesh Kumar of Kurukshetra University police station told TOI.
According to the police officer, Sanjiv admitted that his wife had been avoiding
because he was not well and had been diagnosed with symptoms of
.Fermented drinks Edit
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Age-standardised prevalence of current drinking for females (A) and males (B) in 2016, in 195 locations. [3]
Average standard drinks (10 g of pure ethanol per serving) consumed per day, age-standardised, for females (A) and males (B) in 2016, in 195 locations.[3] The average number of people who drink as of 2016 was 39% for males and 25% for females (2.4 billion people in total).[3] Females on average drink 0.7 drinks per day while males drink 1.7 drinks per day.[3] The rates of drinking varies significantly in different areas of the world.[3]
Reasons for use Edit
Apéritifs and digestifs Edit An apéritif is any alcoholic beverage usually served before a meal to stimulate the appetite,[34] while a digestif is any alcoholic beverage served after a meal for the stated purpose of improving digestion. Fortified wine, liqueurs, and dry champagne are common apéritifs. Because apéritifs are served before dining, they are usually dry rather than sweet. One example is Cinzano, a brand of vermouth. Digestifs include brandy, fortified wines and herb-infused spirits (Drambuie). Flavoring Edit Reduction of red wine for a sauce by cooking it on a stovetop. It is called a reduction because the heat boils off some of the water and most of the more volatile alcohol, leaving a more concentrated, wine-flavoured sauce. Pure ethanol tastes bitter to humans; some people also describe it as sweet.[35] However, ethanol is also a moderately good solvent for many fatty substances and essential oils. This facilitates the use of flavoring and coloring compounds in alcoholic drinks as a taste mask, especially in distilled drinks. Some flavors may be naturally present in the beverage's raw material. Beer and wine may also be flavored before fermentation, and spirits may be flavored before, during, or after distillation. Sometimes flavor is obtained by allowing the beverage to stand for months or years in oak barrels, usually made of American or French oak. A few brands of spirits may also have fruit or herbs inserted into the bottle at the time of bottling. Wine is important in cuisine not just for its value as an accompanying beverage, but as a flavor agent, primarily in stocks and braising, since its acidity lends balance to rich savory or sweet dishes.[36] Wine sauce is an example of a culinary sauce that uses wine as a primary ingredient.[37] Natural wines may exhibit a broad range of alcohol content, from below 9% to above 16% ABV, with most wines being in the 12.5–14.5% range.[38] Fortified wines (usually with brandy) may contain 20% alcohol or more.
Alcohol measurement Edit
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See also EditNintendo's first smartphone game is due out by the end of this year, and more are soon to follow. In a meeting with investors following the release of the company's 2014 earnings, CEO and president Satoru Iwata (above) said that approximately five mobile titles will be released by March 2017.
"You may think it is a small number," said Iwata, "but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business."
"This is not a small number at all."
Iwata reiterated that Nintendo will take a cautious approach to the mobile market, and won't port existing titles to phones. "Even with highly popular IP, the odds of success are quite low if consumers cannot appreciate the quality of a game," he said. "Also, if we were simply to port software that already has a track record on a dedicated game system, it would not match the play styles of smart devices, and the appropriate business models are different between the two, so we would not anticipate a great result."
Nintendo will continue to produce its own gaming machines into the future; an upcoming console codenamed NX is currently in development. The company hopes that producing games on smartphones will familiarize customers with Nintendo's IP and eventually drive them to "explore more premium experiences on our dedicated game systems," as Iwata puts it. Together with partner DeNA, Nintendo is creating a cross-platform membership service that will work on mobile devices and its own consoles.
Iwata also announced that Nintendo has sold about 10.5 million Amiibo figurines worldwide, saying that the line of NFC-equipped characters continued to sell quickly even after the holiday season. The company is ramping up production for certain models that have proven difficult to find.
Yesterday Nintendo announced its first annual profit in four years.Airbus is looking at the potential of adapting its sharklet wing-tips to the A330 following good results from initial flight tests of the modification on the A320.
The manufacturer is also interested in raising the maximum take-off weight of the A330-200 further, to 240t.
Chief operating officer for customers John Leahy, speaking to Flightglobal Pro in Hamburg, said the airframer was "getting better results than we thought" from the sharklets fitted to the A320.
© Tim Bicheno-Brown-Flightglobal Sharklets on the A330-200 could nudge the twinjet's range closer to the capability of the rival Boeing 787-8.
He said initial results indicated improvements which exceeded early estimates of 3.4%.
Leahy said Airbus was "studying" the possibility of putting sharklets on the A330, and added: "Right now we're still several months away from a decision."
The process was complex, he said, because the A330 already has winglets, so the benefit of sharklets would have to be clear, and the airframer needed to analyse wing loading - particularly because it was also trying to raise the A330-200's maximum take-off weight to 240t.
He said the airframer would "ideally" look for a retrofit as well as new-build solution, but pointed out that Airbus could not indicate a production date until it had determined the nature of the sharklet design. "We don't know what 'it' is," said Leahy.
Leahy added that Airbus would also like to raise the take-off weight of its A330-300, to "the same" level of 240t.As Parks And Recreation is gearing up for its upcoming seventh and final season, the series’ star and executive producer Amy Poehler has teamed with the series’ co-executive producer Aisha Muharrar for another single-camera workplace comedy at NBC. The project, now in development, hails from Universal TV, where Poehler has an overall deal, and 3 Arts Entertainment. Written by Muharrar, the untitled comedy centers on a young, agnostic woman who inherits a church and the crew of strong-willed characters who make up her new community. Poehler, Muharrar and 3Arts’ Dave Becky are executive producing.
UTA-repped Muharrar started on NBC/Uni TV’s Parks And Recreation as a staff writer in Season 2, rising to co-executive producer. Last season, she sold another comedy to NBC executive produced by The Office alum Ed Helms. Poehler, repped by WME and 3 Arts,executive produced NBC’s comedy pilot Old Soul starring Natasha Lyonne this past season.LONDON (Reuters) - Mayor Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he would keep trying to buy tickets for the 2012 London Olympics after falling foul of the public mechanism for buying them which he described last month as an oddity.
The Mayor of London Boris Johnson speaks to a reporter after an awards ceremony at a health centre, in west London, September 10, 2010. REUTERS/Andrew Winning
Speaking at an event to mark the completion of the Olympic “gateway” station at Stratford, east London, Johnson said he would try by “hook or by crook” to get tickets for himself and his family.
“Obviously, it makes me even more keen to get re-elected and get there,” Johnson said. “I, like everybody else, am going to have another crack at it in July and if I fail then I am going to have another go in November.”
People applying for tickets should have had money drawn from their bank accounts by May 31, although they will not officially be told which tickets they have secured until June 24.
The system has been criticised for being too vague and weighted towards more wealthy applicants with the means to apply for hundreds, even thousands, of pounds worth of tickets.
Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London organising committee (LOCOG), said he realised some people would be “bitterly disappointed” but defended the system as the fairest available.
He said if they had used a first-come-first-served system there would be many more complaints.
“I think it was right to give people over a 1,000 hours to really understand what it was they were wanting, and where the venues were and session-by-session,” Coe said.
“Those that haven’t got any tickets on this application will be able to get back into the system and we will work right the way through. There are tickets still to be had.
“I really do think we went as far as we possibly could, but of course I understand those people who haven’t got tickets this morning, they are intensely disappointed.”
“It’s certainly not been a fiasco,” he said when asked. “It is the fairest system I believe. We talked to the best brains in this business.”
A total of 6.6 million tickets were up for grabs during the 42-day application process for UK residents, ranging from 20 pounds to the top-priced seats for the Opening Ceremony priced at 2,012 pounds.
LOCOG expects to raise 400 million pounds of its 2.2 billion pounds Games operating budget from the sale of tickets.The Witcher 3 will be the finale to the Geralt of Rivia trilogy, but CD Projekt Red intends to continue working in the universe novelist Andrzej Sapkowski created, co-founder and joint CEO Marcin Iwinski and executive producer John Mamais told Polygon during an E3 demo.
Iwiński told us that the universe Sapkowski created is a vast one with a lot of stories left to tell.
"With the third installment, we should wrap it up and conclude a lot of threads," Iwiński said. "We are not killing the world and walking away from it, but we will definitely want to make this game the finale in a big way."
Mamais added that Witcher fans could even see Geralt reappear in a lesser role in the future.
"We might even include Geralt in later games potentially," Mamais said. "We just need to talk about it and figure out what we're going to do next."
CD Projekt Red will also continue its consumer friendly policy of offering free DLC, though console platform holders come with certain rules.
"Sometimes you cannot just give content for free," Mamais said. "We will do our best to choose the most gamer friendly solution, and honestly speaking, should the need be — if we will be able to afford it — in many cases we will pay out of pocket for that. Please don't forget we are an independent studio, but I really believe that DLC and updates are free things."
Jake Lear contributed to this report.Coastguard rescues 5,800 attempting to cross Mediterranean as Europe deals with influx of migrant boats
Updated
Another 5,800 migrants desperate to reach Europe were rescued this weekend as they tried to cross the Mediterranean on rickety boats, more than 2,150 of them on Sunday, the Italian coastguard said.
The number rescued this weekend was one of the highest recorded in recent years, raising fears that the tide of people risking their lives to reach Europe from Africa and the Middle East has not been slowed by recent disasters.
On April 12 and 13 alone, more than 6,000 people were rescued.
Not all those trying to reach Europe made it, as the bodies of eight migrants were found on board two of the vessels on Sunday, the coastguard said.
It was unclear how they died, but migrants face many dangers and extreme conditions on board overcrowded, flimsy vessels that set sail from Libya to Italy.
Two other people drowned after they jumped into the sea to rush towards the rescue teams, the coastguard said.
Sunday's rescues came as the Libyan coastguard intercepted five boats carrying 500 people and ordered them to return.
Another 50 migrants reached the Italian island of Lampedusa, the closest to north Africa's shores, on Sunday.
The Italian navy said its patrol ship Bettica picked up more than 570 migrants from four vessels on Sunday, among them some 60 women and around 15 children.
The MV Phoenix, a ship operated by the NGO Migrant Offshore Aid Station and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), also rescued 369 on Sunday, a day after setting sail from Malta for a six-month aid mission, MSF said.
Meanwhile, the Libyan coastguard intercepted five boats with some 500 people on board, some eight nautical miles off the coast, and ordered them to head back for the city of Misrata east of the capital Tripoli.
Colonel Reda Issa of the Libyan coastguard told AFP most of the migrants were Africans. He did not say what would happen to those intercepted, but Libya has a detention centre for migrants in Misrata.
Fleeing war, poverty
People smugglers have taken advantage of the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Moamer Gaddafi.
On April 19, some 750 migrants were killed when their trawler sank between Libya and southern Italy, sparking global outrage and demands for action.
Four days later EU leaders tripled the bloc's budget for patrols off Libya.
EU leaders are now seeking UN Security Council approval for military action against smugglers in chaos-ridden Libya. But rights groups have blasted the Europe for focusing on patrols rather than humanitarian efforts.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has also urged the European Union to refrain from resorting to force.
Video released by the Italian coastguard on Sunday showed people crammed onto a small boat. The migrants are later seen clambering aboard a rescue vessel.
Saturday's operations in the Mediterranean involved four Italian coastguard vessels, two Italian navy ships and two customs boats, as well as four cargo ships and tugs.
French patrol boat Commandant Birot, which was sent last week to boost the EU's Operation Triton patrols dealing with the influx of migrant boats, also picked up 219 people off the coast of Libya Saturday.
Most of the migrants rescued Saturday were being taken to Sicily or southern Italy, while some had already landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
However two suspected people traffickers were to be handed over to police at the port of Crotone in Calabria in southern Italy.
Several hundred migrants, mostly Africans but also including many fleeing the civil war in Syria, set out from Libya every day, hoping to make it to Europe to start a new life.
The number of migrants entering the EU illegally in 2014 almost tripled to 276,000, according to Frontex, nearly 220,000 of them arriving via the Mediterranean.
Some 1,750 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe this year, 30 times more than during the same period in 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration.
AFP
Topics: immigration, refugees, italy, european-union
First postedSouth Africa's ruling party condemns its own national broadcaster for censoring political violence
Posted
South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has condemned its own public broadcaster for practicing censorship by not broadcasting images of violent anti-state protests.
Key points: Ruling party joins opponents saying decision not to broadcast political violence "censorship", "arrogant"
SABC's acting chief executive, a journalist, has resigned citing a "corrosive atmosphere"
National broadcaster says it is an "editorial decision" and not a "policy issue"
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was initially accused by opposition parties of pro-government bias when it brought in a policy of self censorship when violence flared as local elections approached.
Now the ruling party's chief whip Jackson Mthembu has condemned the broadcaster, saying: "When property is burnt, people of South Africa need to be shown those images, that is the ANC view".
"Because when you don't show those images, that amounts to censorship," Mr Mthembu said in a televised media briefing.
"You can't take that decision, in our view. That decision can be taken by the people of South Africa. Not anybody sitting in some cosy office to decide and be that arrogant and decide what it is that the people can see or not see."
The statement represent a reversal by the ruling party and may point to schisms in the ANC, which in May welcomed the broadcast ban by the SABC as the "best decision".
SABC chief operating officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, who has pushed through a number of policy changes at the broadcaster, is considered close to President Jacob Zuma, whose popularity has been sagging following a string of scandals.
Mr Mthembu said the ANC would meet with Communications Minister Faith Muthambi to discuss the SABC, where the acting chief executive, a journalist, resigned last week, citing a "corrosive atmosphere".
Outbursts of violence over the lack of services such as water or roads are common in South Africa, and in recent months have included the torching of schools and other property, both public and private.
The protests have taken on political significance before August 3 elections which are expected to be the ANC's greatest test at the polls since it came to power in 1994.
The SABC said its decision not to broadcast such incidents was an "editorial decision" and not a "policy issue".
"It should be noted that the decision is not to censor any violent protests but not to glamorise the act of burning public property," the SABC said in a statement.
Various civil society and media groups have protested the broadcast ban on civil disturbances by the SABC, which has the widest broadcasting reach in South Africa.
Reuters
Topics: information-and-communication, television-broadcasting, radio-broadcasting, broadcasting, censorship, south-africaWhat are the most interesting new materials? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by David Toyli, Ph.D, physicist, on Quora:
One physicist's perspective on the most interesting new materials:
Topological insulators: Topological insulators are a recently-discovered class of materials that are insulating in their interior but have conducting surface states. These surface states are predicted to have the special property that the spin of the electrical carriers is correlated with with the momentum of the carriers. This condition, that spin and momentum have to be at right angles to each other, drastically reduces the mechanisms available to scatter carriers and dissipate power. This suggests that realizing topological insulators could lead to low-power electronic devices utilizing these conducting surface states. Topological insulators represent one of the hottest research topics in physics and materials science right now; however, it's also fair to temper the hopes for these materials with the reality that we don't yet know the extent to which general theories of topological insulators can be realized in real materials systems like Bi2Se3.
Multiferroics: Multiferroics are a long-studied class of materials; however, there's been new in interest in them for potential information storage applications. In short, multiferroics are materials that exhibit multiple types of long-range order, typically ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. In many compounds, such as BiFeO3, there is coupling between the magnetic and electric orders such that magnetic properties can be manipulated with electric fields. Similarly, researchers are also pursuing devices based coupling between ferroelectric materials in close proximity to ferromagnetic materials. Achieving electric field control of ferromagnetism holds promise again for lower power electronics. Magnetic information is widely used for information storage (hard drives), although writing magnetic information often involves appreciable power consumption for generating magnetic fields. If magnetic information could instead be written with electric fields this could facilitate lower power electronics.
I should note that the general ideas of controlling magnetism with electric fields and utilizing spin states for low power electronic devices have central pursuits over the last 20 years in the field of spintronics:
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices: This one is a bit abstract but researchers in atomic physics have been steadily progressing in making 'designer' materials using very cold atoms trapped by laser beams. By interfering counter propagating laser beams researchers are able to create a periodic potential which can trap atoms in the minima of the potential. The periodic arrangement of atoms that results is analogous to crystalline solids found in everyday life. The advantage to this approach is that making optical lattices allows for substantial freedom in preparing the properties of the lattice and also allows for controlling the interactions between the atoms. The hope is that this control will allow researchers to simulate novel materials and to better understand solid-state phenomena like magnetism or superconductivity. Two concrete examples of this include proposals for realizing 'quantum liquid crystal phases' of matter with ultracold atoms in an optical cavity, and also experiments which have demonstrated spin-orbit interactions, important in III-V semiconductors like GaAs and also topological insulators, using ultracold atoms under the influence of laser beams. It's crazy to think that we might learn something new about technologically relevant materials (like GaAs or Bi2Se3) by simulating these materials with ultracold atoms!
Materials for quantum computation: Quantum Computation is another central research focus in modern physics. I think one often-overlooked aspect of this research is the extent to which materials science plays a role, particularly in solid state implementations of quantum computation. Building a quantum computer requires being able to engineer interactions between specific set of atoms or electrons while simultaneously suppressing interactions between those atoms or electrons and their entire environment (which might contain anywhere from billions to Avogadro's number of particles). It's an incredibly hard problem, and one that materials science plays a central role in. As an example, researchers in Germany have recently shown that the timescales over which single electronic spins trapped in a diamond crystal can remain in carefully prepared quantum states increase by an order of magnitude when the diamond lattice is engineered to contain 100% 12C as opposed to its natural 99% 12C + 1% 13C. Having longer lived quantum states improves the prospects for achieving any sort of quantum computation.
This question originally appeared on Quora. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and access insider knowledge. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:Meeting the New Faces on the Penguins
Devastated by injury—particularly on the blue line, the Pittsburgh Penguins have done a patchwork effort to fill their roster.
Relying massively on their AHL affiliate, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the Penguins have found grit, determination and a surprising amount of skill.
Let’s take a look at the Penguins lost to injury this season (via cbssports.com):
Jayson Megna, RW — Lower Body (12/19)
Deryk Engelland, D — Suspension (12/18)
Kris Letang, D — Upper Body (12/16)
Evgeni Malkin, C — Leg (12/14)
Brooks Orpik, D — Concussion (12/13)
Andrew Ebbett, C — Ankle (12/06)
Paul Martin, D — Leg (11/27)
Beau Bennett, RW — Wrist (11/26)
Tanner Glass, LW — Hand (11/26)
Rob Scuderi, D — Ankle (10/28)
Tomas Vokoun, G — Pelvis (9/30)
Wow. That’s a lot of injuries.
The top four defensemen—Letang, Orpik, Scuderi, and Martin—are out, as well as d-man Deryk Engelland who was recently suspended.
Only Matt Niskanen and 19-year-old rookie Olli Maatta remain from the defensive corps that started the season.
On top of that, winger James Neal just returned from a five-game suspension for kneeing Bruins forward Brad Marchand in the head.
The roster has certainly shifted around for Pittsburgh. And with that many injuries, there comes that many new faces. Let’s meet them:
Chris Conner, RW
Diminutive, but strong on his skates, Chris Conner stands just 5’8″ tall and has bounced around the NHL minor leagues for years. Conner is in his second stint with Pittsburgh—playing also for Dallas, Phoenix and Detroit since joining the league in 2005.
As mentioned by NBC’s Pierre McGuire on a recent broadcast, Conner has never been traded, but still find a way onto NHL clubs by virtue of his hard work. Which is evident each and every night.
He’s not afraid to go into the tough places or take on a defender nearly twice his size. Conner’s engine reminds you of Tampa Bay’s Martin St. Loius and he has certainly been a spark wherever head coach Dan Bylsma has placed him this season.
Stats: 14 games played, three goals, one assist and owns a plus-2 rating.
Brian Gibbons, C
Another smaller forward, Gibbons played for two National Championship teams during his years with Boston College. Known for his speed, Gibbons is a hard working grinder with a nice shot.
Stats: Five games played, one goal, one assist and a plus-2 rating.
Jayson Megna, C
Megna was quickly turning into a crowd favorite before injuring his knee against Toronto on Dec. 16.
Megna showed some skill playing alongside Evgeni Malkin during Neal’s suspension and early-season injury. He notched six points and looked like he could make a case to stay on the team’s roster for the long haul. Unfortunately, Megna is going to be out at least six weeks with that knee injury.
Stats: 15 games played, four goals, two assists and plus-3 rating.
Zach Sill, C
Sill has been a bruiser since being called up to the NHL. He seems to have the making of a two-way forward with above average defensive skills.
The production might not be there for Sill, but he’s doing the little things—digging into the corners against the boards, checking and forechecking—that helps a team win.
Stats: 10 games played, zero goals, zero assists and a minus-2 rating.
Robert Bortuzzo, D
Bortuzzo isn’t necessarily a new face for Pittsburgh, but he has seen a rise in his playing time due to the devastation of the Penguins defense.
A lumbering 6’4″, Bortuzzo uses his long reach to lift opposing players sticks and get in the way of shots. He’s also not afraid to get dirty and the playing time he’s getting might be just the thing he needs to remove the “spot-starter” stigma surrounding his name.
Stats: 21 games played, zero goals, one assist and a minus-1 rating.
Simon Despres, D
Many Penguins fans were surprised when Despres started the year for the WBS Penguins. Many thought he was a surefire lock for the defensive rotation after two impressive auditions for the Penguins the past two seasons.
Taken 30th overall in the 2009 draft, Despres has been the defenseman in waiting for the Penguins. And he certainly looks like he’ll be a great player for them for years to come.
The stint in the minors this season helped Despres play huge minutes and hone his defensive game—which was a needed facet to his already offensively potent game.
Despres and Maatta look to give the Penguins a solid defensive pairing in the near future.
Stats: 12 games played, zero goals, three assists and a plus-4 rating.
Brian Dumoulin, D
Another Boston College product, Dumoulin came to Pittsburgh with Brandon Sutter in the trade for Jordan Staal with Carolina last offseason.
Dumoulin’s game is predicated offensively and in just his fourth game in the NHL, he’s already seeing time on the first powerplay unit—one that ranks first in the NHL, no less.
Stats: Four games played, zero goals, one assist and a neutral rating.
Philip Samauelsson, D
Son of former Penguins defenseman, and current New York Rangers assistant coach,
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almost half of the nation's GDP
The president led the country in a short war with Russia in 2008.
He has sought to portray the election as a choice between his progressive Western-leaning government, and a future dominated by Russia.
"Tomorrow, our enemy has its last chance to turn us off our path of independence," Mr Saakashvili said in a recorded address carried on state TV on Sunday.
The human rights group Amnesty International says many of Mr Ivanishvili's supporters were "fined, fired, harassed or detained for expressing their political views" during the election campaign.
"In a highly charged political environment, public officials associated with the ruling party have on occasion abused public institutions and administrative resources to restrict the freedom of assembly, expression and association of opposition supporters," Amnesty's Georgia expert Natalia Nozadze said.
The government's reputation has taken a battering in recent weeks because of a prisoner-abuse scandal.
Videos broadcast on national television showed prison inmates being beaten and sexually abused by guards.
The scandal sparked street protests and has allowed Mr Ivanishvili to portray the government as high-handed and uncaring.
Mr Saakashvili's second term as president ends next year, and he is constitutionally barred from standing again.
A parliamentary majority for his United National Movement could see him continue his domination of Georgian politics after he steps down.
The BBC's Damien McGuinness in Tbilisi says fist-fights are already a common feature of campaign meetings, and there are fears a dispute over the results could lead to violence.The Japanese government is gearing up to regulate bitcoin activity more actively in the wake of the collapse of bitcoin exchange Mt Gox.
Nikkei reported earlier today that members of a select panel within the country’s Financial Services Agency – its top finance regulator – are looking to draft a regulatory framework for bitcoin-related businesses.
The government has indicated in the past that it intends to seek greater oversight over bitcoin businesses in response to the bankruptcy of Mt Gox. CEO Mark Karpeles has faced multiple arrests this year, bringing new attention to the 2014 collapse of the Japan-based company.
“Japan needs an adequate oversight mechanism for virtual currencies, including ways to confirm identities and block money laundering, Financial Services Agency panel members agreed in a meeting Monday,” the service reported.
The Financial System Council reportedly discussed registering bitcoin exchanges and adopting measures related to consumer protection.
According to the report, those at the meeting expressed openness to working with the industry and “invited operators of virtual currency exchanges to share their knowledge and regulatory ideas”.
Reports that the Japanese government was moving to police bitcoin activities – while simultaneously exploring blockchain concepts more broadly – emerged earlier this year. At the time, Finance Minister Taro Aso said that the government needed to “carry out studies” to inform the steps it would take.
The FSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Wasps have added 26-year-old London Irish hooker Tom Cruse to their playing staff for next season.
The former Sale Academy No.2 joined the Madejski Stadium club from Championship club Rotherham last summer, but has since found his opportunities limited behind former England hooker David Paice and Gerard Ellis.
Cruse is known to Wasps’ backs coach Lee Blackett, who was formerly head coach at the South Yorkshire-based Titans, and as a converted flanker he comes with a reputation for being extremely mobile in the loose.
Wasps boss Dai Young said Cruse has caught his eye during his three Premiership and three European appearances this season.
“Tom was the stand-out hooker in the Championship last season while playing for Rotherham Titans,” he said, “and he’s also impressed every time he’s put on the shirt for London Irish this season.
“He is a young, mobile hooker and we know there’s plenty more to come from him as he’s still maturing and developing as a player.”
In addition to fly half Danny Cipriani and prop Marty Moore, Cruse is the second hooker to become part of Young’s squad for next season following the announcement that Sale No.2 Tommy Taylor will also ply his trade at the Ricoh from September.
Story link:
Hooking duties this season have mainly been shared between another converted flanker, Ashley Johnson, and 35-year-old Italian international Carlo Festuccia, supported by former Worcester front-rower Edd Shervington.
It is extremely unlikely that Wasps will retain the services of five hookers, so it seems probable that one and possibly two of the incumbents will move on at the end of the current campaign.
Cruse, who remains part of London Irish’s relegation battle until the end of the season, said he is excited about joining Wasps’ Ricoh revolution.
“Having met with Dai Young, the ambition and direction of the club is clear to see,” he said, “and the opportunity to be part of that going forward is one I am very much looking forward to.”
Story link:England plan to unleash a squad of thoughtful footballing RoboCops, capable of enforcing their will and skill despite anything the rest of the world can throw at them. That is not the phrasing of the FA but it seems to be the hope behind the England DNA masterplan on how to build the ideal England international.
The FA hopes coaches will spread the word across the land, while the most talented young players in the country will be carefully nurtured and issued with flash disks that they can wear on wristbands so they can consult the blueprint at any time. The aim is to make England dominant and distinctive.
“England DNA is the start point for the creation of a world-class approach of elite player development,” reads the blurb for a scheme hatched over the past 12 months to help the FA make best use of St George’s Park. Some 1,500 licenced coaches will gather over the next three days to find out more before passing on their knowledge.
Spearheaded by Dan Ashworth, the FA’s director of elite development, the plan factors in research and consultations with coaches across the country as well as the most advanced practices of six other European nations and three in South America.
“We have a mantra that the only thing that changes is the size of the shirt,” said Ashworth, explaining the England style will be fostered at youth level and seamlessly taken into the senior team by well-reared players.
“There has to be a consistency in the message we’re trying to get out to the players,” Roy Hodgson said. “The earlier we can get that message to them, the better. It’s very important that we have clear principles of what we want them to be doing in defensive positions, what we want them to be doing with the ball, without the ball improving their awareness tactically, their sense of game-management.” The England manager added: “The earlier we can get these messages across to them – and really bed in these messages – it should really help the senior team.”
So how will New England play? The FA stresses the style will not be German or Belgian, to mention two countries whose models it admires, but English, intelligent and open to evolution. That, apparently, means cultivating players who are comfortable on the ball, shrewd in the mind and able to rise to any challenge. But definitely not copying anyone. Ashworth, appointed two years ago on the back of his progressive work at West Bromwich Albion, said England’s youth team are already starting to demonstrate the definition in motion.
“I watched the under-21s home and away against Croatia, watched them against Portugal, watched the under-19s against Italy, and the ability for us to deal with the ball, the ability for us to press early when needed to, the ability for us to be tactically flexible to be to play against different systems such a diamond that Portugal threw up against us, the ability for us to dominate the middle of the pitch, some of the key things there, that’s not a formation, that’s a philosophy. We get hung up on ‘is it 4-3-3 or 4-4-2?’ No, it is a philosophy and principles of play.”
Intriguingly, given England have just emerged from an era partially defined by the vexed question of whether Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard can play together, Ashworth suggests that in the future England players and coaches will have the nous to make good players complement each other: “We have a duty to get our best players on the pitch. If the two best players at under-16s are No9s, then we have to find a way of getting them on the pitch without having one sat on the bench. We are not rigid.”
The FA recognises clubs will remain the chief influence on young players but says increasingly they and the FA share similar visions. “Of course 90% of players development is with clubs because they have more time with them,” Ashworth said. “But the connection and interaction with the clubs is better than it’s ever been. It’s not club v country, it’s club and country. We’ve all got the same success criteria. The clubs want good young players coming through their academies and we want good young players in England teams.”
An example of a change beneficial to club and country is the increase in the number of England youth teams, introducing under-18s and under-20s, and devising a more diverse fixture list. This change resulted from the FA’s conviction that, in addition to improving players technically and tactically, it needs to broaden young players’ experiences by getting them to play more international matches and against a wider range of teams.
Gareth Southgate, the England Under-21 coach, points out that the Germany players who won the World Cup last summer were more experienced than their England counterparts even before they graduated to their senior teams, with top countries’ players averaging 20 youth caps more than English ones by the time they reach their senior teams. “But it’s not just about the number of caps, it’s the types of experiences,” Southgate said. “Historically our game programme was just against European teams, this year we’ve tried to extend that. Our under-17s were in America last week playing against Australia, Brazil and the States. We’ve got to play world opposition and face different types of challenges.”
England drew 2-2 with Brazil in Florida and Southgate said it was an enriching encounter thanks to the antics of the Brazil coach and the fact that, contrary to the stereotype, Brazil play a direct style with which English youngsters are not familiar. “Our under-17s had a unique experience against Brazil this week with some of the things that were going on off the pitch as well as on it – their coach was sent to stand, let’s leave it at that – and you have to cope with all of that. You have to have the discipline to keep 11 men on the field and experience how we’re going to play when we’re behind, how we’re going to play when we’re ahead with five minutes to go. Also, encountering different styles of play – when you play a South American team, they’ve been very direct in our experiences from senior level to youth level over the last couple of years. Also, the experience of being away for a period of time for a tournament situation is very different to life with clubs.”
Given the FA’s desire for continuity – or a “golden thread” linking youth teams and the senior team – it would seem logical for the next England manager to be someone steeped in the England DNA doctrine, someone such as, say, Southgate or Gary Neville. Ashworth sidestepped the question with the sort of nimbleness he hopes to instil in young England players. “First and foremost, Roy has still got a long time left on his contract,” he says. “It’s not a question we need to think about for a period of time. At club level we had a philosophy, where the club felt it was important to continue the work that had gone on, the philosophy, and head coaches were brought into that philosophy during the interview process. I’ve not been through that process at international level yet and hopefully for not for a while to come.”RJD chief Lalu Prasad with sons Tejaswi Yadav and Tej Pratap at a rally after the latter filed nomination papers from Mahua assembly constituency, in Hajipur on Monday. (PTI Photo)
Bihar politician Lalu Prasad Yadav’s younger son is 26 and older son is 25.Tej Pratap, who is older, wrote his age as 25 in his nomination papers for the state assembly polls, because that is his age according to the voters' list."It is a minor technical error," said Election Commission sources. The state's Chief Electoral Officer Ajay Naik said corrections cannot be made "in the middle of the election process."The mistake means that Tej Pratap is his younger brother's junior, at least in this election.Those who have observed the two say this role reversal is a sign, one that reflects on the brothers' dynamics. Along with their sister Misha Bharti, they are the only ones among Lalu Prasad's nine children to enter politics.30 minutes after filing his nomination for the Mahua assembly seat yesterday, Tej Pratap addressed a public meeting and his inexperience showed.Unlike his younger brother Tejaswi - who is also a first time candidate but has campaigned with his father in last year's national election - Tej Pratap is new to rallies, so the crowds wanted to hear him. They appeared less than impressed when he wrapped up in just under five minutes."The roads here are such that in the rain, an elephant would drown...I will make them better," said Tej Pratap. Immediately, his father whispered something to him.Tej Pratap then repeated his comments in the local Bhojpuri dialect, and managed to draw some applause. Next to speak was Tejaswi, who is widely seen as Lalu Prasad's political heir. In a near-flawless performance, he spoke for over 30 minutes without being prompted by his father, who was seen nodding appreciatively more than once.Tej Pratap can't avoid comparisons with his brother; to questions about a brewing rivalry, he gamely replies: "Tejaswi and I are like Krishna-Balram in the Mahabharata, we are united and we are going to win." But both brothers are in the same corner when it comes to the battle of perception, comments Tej Pratap. "Many people say we are young, my rival says he defeated my mother Rabri Devi, but we are very mature, don't go by looks," Tejaswi says at the rally.A Terre Haute man is in the Hendricks County Jail, accused of making meth in the parking lot of the Plainfield Walmart. Police say there could have been an explosion injuring nearby people, including a small child.
The meth lab fit in the trunk of car. If the man and woman inside the car hadn't been fighting, police probably wouldn't have found it.
Before police cleared the area and went to work, the car with a potentially explosive meth lab cooking in the trunk, was surrounded by other cars, one with a small child inside.
Josh Skaggs, a parent, watched the scene Monday afternoon.
"Oh my goodness, what is going on with people these days?" he wondered.
Skaggs started taking pictures. A day later he is still worried about what he witnessed.
"It's just not in the inner cities no more. It's all over the place," Skaggs said. "It could be in a small town, a little city like this or anywhere."
Plainfield Police arrested Steven Bailey of Terre Haute. They believe Bailey bought most of the ingredients there, picked up the rest locally, and then went to Walmart.
"He is basically making meth in the parking lot in his car," said Capt. Jill Lees of the Plainfield Police Department. "The female passenger wanted nothing to do with it."
An onlooker saw Bailey fighting with the woman and called police. They became suspicious and searched the car after getting a search warrant.
"When meth was really big here in the 2000's people were buying it in bulk, making it to distribute." Lees said. "Now they are making it in the one pot method for their own personal use."
According to Indiana State Police, of the nearly 1,500 meth labs discovered by law enforcement agencies last year, 90 percent were the one-pot variety. It is a process small and simple enough to be carried in a car's trunk, a back pack, even a woman's purse and taken anywhere.
"A parking lot, a hotel room, a residence, or on the side of the road. What's so dangerous, it could explode. It is very volatile," Lees said.
The car is impounded. Baily is in jail facing battery and a number of drug charges. He declined our request for an interview.
Last month a methamphetamine lab was found inside a back pack left in the restroom of a Muncie Walmart. Police arrested one man.
In addition to manufacturing a dangerous and illegal drug, these one-pot meth labs are seen as a growing danger to police and the general public.Regular expression is an art of the programing, it’s hard to debug, learn and understand, but the powerful features are still attract many developers to code regular expression. Let’s explore the following 10 practical regular expression ~ enjoy :)
1. Username Regular Expression Pattern
^[a-z0-9_-]{3,15}$
^ # Start of the line [a-z0-9_-] # Match characters and symbols in the list, a-z, 0-9, underscore, hyphen {3,15} # Length at least 3 characters and maximum length of 15 $ # End of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
2. Password Regular Expression Pattern
((?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[@#$%]).{6,20})
( # Start of group (?=.*\d) # must contains one digit from 0-9 (?=.*[a-z]) # must contains one lowercase characters (?=.*[A-Z]) # must contains one uppercase characters (?=.*[@#$%]) # must contains one special symbols in the list "@#$%". # match anything with previous condition checking {6,20} # length at least 6 characters and maximum of 20 ) # End of group
==> See the explanation and example here
3. Hexadecimal Color Code Regular Expression Pattern
^#([A-Fa-f0-9]{6}|[A-Fa-f0-9]{3})$
^ #start of the line # # must constains a "#" symbols ( # start of group #1 [A-Fa-f0-9]{6} # any strings in the list, with length of 6 | #..or [A-Fa-f0-9]{3} # any strings in the list, with length of 3 ) # end of group #1 $ #end of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
4. Email Regular Expression Pattern
^[_A-Za-z0-9-]+(\\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@[A-Za-z0-9]+ (\\.[A-Za-z0-9]+)*(\\.[A-Za-z]{2,})$
^ #start of the line [_A-Za-z0-9-]+ # must start with string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) ( # start of group #1 \\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+ # follow by a dot "." and string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) )* # end of group #1, this group is optional (*) @ # must contains a "@" symbol [A-Za-z0-9]+ # follow by string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) ( # start of group #2 - first level TLD checking \\.[A-Za-z0-9]+ # follow by a dot "." and string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) )* # end of group #2, this group is optional (*) ( # start of group #3 - second level TLD checking \\.[A-Za-z]{2,} # follow by a dot "." and string in the bracket [ ], with minimum length of 2 ) # end of group #3 $ #end of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
5. Image File Extension Regular Expression Pattern
([^\s]+(\.(?i)(jpg|png|gif|bmp))$)
( #Start of the group #1 [^\s]+ # must contains one or more anything (except white space) ( # start of the group #2 \. # follow by a dot "." (?i) # ignore the case sensitive checking ( # start of the group #3 jpg # contains characters "jpg" | #..or png # contains characters "png" | #..or gif # contains characters "gif" | #..or bmp # contains characters "bmp" ) # end of the group #3 ) # end of the group #2 $ # end of the string ) #end of the group #1
==> See the explanation and example here
6. IP Address Regular Expression Pattern
^([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\.([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\. ([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\.([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])$
^ #start of the line ( # start of group #1 [01]?\\d\\d? # Can be one or two digits. If three digits appear, it must start either 0 or 1 # e.g ([0-9], [0-9][0-9],[0-1][0-9][0-9]) | #...or 2[0-4]\\d # start with 2, follow by 0-4 and end with any digit (2[0-4][0-9]) | #...or 25[0-5] # start with 2, follow by 5 and end with 0-5 (25[0-5]) ) # end of group #2 \. # follow by a dot ".".... # repeat with 3 time (3x) $ #end of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
7. Time Format Regular Expression Pattern
Time in 12-Hour Format Regular Expression Pattern
(1[012]|[1-9]):[0-5][0-9](\\s)?(?i)(am|pm)
( #start of group #1 1[012] # start with 10, 11, 12 | # or [1-9] # start with 1,2,...9 ) #end of group #1 : # follow by a semi colon (:) [0-5][0-9] # follow by 0..5 and 0..9, which means 00 to 59 (\\s)? # follow by a white space (optional) (?i) # next checking is case insensitive (am|pm) # follow by am or pm
==> See the explanation and example here
Time in 24-Hour Format Regular Expression Pattern
([01]?[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]
( #start of group #1 [01]?[0-9] # start with 0-9,1-9,00-09,10-19 | # or 2[0-3] # start with 20-23 ) #end of group #1 : # follow by a semi colon (:) [0-5][0-9] # follow by 0..5 and 0..9, which means 00 to 59
==> See the explanation and example here
8. Date Format (dd/mm/yyyy) Regular Expression Pattern
(0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])/(0?[1-9]|1[012])/((19|20)\\d\\d)
( #start of group #1 0?[1-9] # 01-09 or 1-9 | #..or [12][0-9] # 10-19 or 20-29 | #..or 3[01] # 30, 31 ) #end of group #1 / # follow by a "/" ( # start of group #2 0?[1-9] # 01-09 or 1-9 | #..or 1[012] # 10,11,12 ) # end of group #2 / # follow by a "/" ( # start of group #3 (19|20)\\d\\d # 19[0-9][0-9] or 20[0-9][0-9] ) # end of group #3
==> See the explanation and example here
9. HTML tag Regular Expression Pattern
<("[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^'">])*>
< #start with opening tag "<" ( # start of group #1 "[^"]*" # only two double quotes are allow - "string" | #..or '[^']*' # only two single quotes are allow -'string' | #..or [^'">] # cant contains one single quotes, double quotes and ">" ) # end of group #1 * # 0 or more > #end with closing tag ">"
==> See the explanation and example here
10. HTML links Regular Expression Pattern
HTML A tag Regular Expression Pattern
(?i)<a([^>]+)>(.+?)</a>
( #start of group #1?i # all checking are case insensive ) #end of group #1 <a #start with "<a" ( # start of group #2 [^>]+ # anything except (">"), at least one character ) # end of group #2 > # follow by ">" (.+?) # match anything </a> # end with "</a>
Extract HTML link Regular Expression Pattern
\s*(?i)href\s*=\s*(\"([^"]*\")|'[^']*'|([^'">\s]+));
\s* #can start with whitespace (?i) # all checking are case insensive href # follow by "href" word \s*=\s* # allows spaces on either side of the equal sign, ( # start of group #1 "([^"]*") # only two double quotes are allow - "string" | #..or '[^']*' # only two single quotes are allow -'string' | #..or ([^'">]+) # cant contains one single / double quotes and ">" ) # end of group #1
==> See the explanation and example hereHeavy Metal Magazine: Looking Back on “Phase One”
Since I inherited my father’s collection of Heavy Metal last autumn, I’ve been working my way through the magazines, scanning 12 pages of each and posting them, one a day. While I have been enjoying the primary content, I’ve also been paying attention to the ephemera: advertising and editorials. The advertising, in particular, is a great snapshot of the time period and provides incredible insight into what various advertisers thought of the demographic of Heavy Metal (not necessarily what the demographic actually was).
I just finished reading the 32nd issue (November of 1979) and I noticed that it was the last issue put together by the original editors, Sean Kelly and Valerie Marchant. Ted White, the successful editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic–two magazines dedicated to publishing cutting edge science fiction and fantasy stories–became the new editor, taking the magazine in a slightly different direction. This change in editorial guidance made a perfect point to stop and look back on the first two and three-quarters years of the magazine.
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Ironically, the single best issue of the magazine to that point was the October 1979 issue, which was dedicated to adaptations of and stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. This single issue featured work by Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Steve Bissette, Yves Chaland, Luc Cornillon, Alain Voss, Frank Margerin, Walt Simonson, Alberto Breccia and Serge Clerc (among others). Although this was a very strong issue, not every issue from this time period measured up to this standard; several were just so-so and one issue barely featured any art by Moebius at all
In addition to these artists, this first period featured the works of Jacque Tardi, Claude “Alias” Lacroix, Philippe “Caza” Cazamayou, Dominique He, Sergio Macedo and Chantal Montellier, Enki Bilal, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Jean-Claude Forest, Jean-Michel Nicollet, Jean-Claude Mézières and François Schuiten.
American (and English-speaking) creators that appeared during this era included Vaughn Bode, Richard Corben, Paul Kirchner, Angus McKie, Howard Chaykin (referred to as “Howie Chaykin in the 2nd anniversary editorial), Rick Veitch, John Totleben, Todd Klein, Larry Elmore, Jim Starlin, Archie Goodwin, Len Wein, Gray Morrow, Trina Robbins, Karl Kofoed, Charles Vess, Dan O’Bannon and Michael William Kaluta. In addition to the comic strips, there were adaptations of stories by Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorcock, Alfred Bester and Theodore Sturgeon.
By issue 5, all of Moebius’s Arzack material had been exhausted and he was well into his new serial, The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius. Richard Corben wrapped up Den by issue 13 and started an Arabian Nights story with collaborator Jan Strnad (with whom he is still working). Philippe Druillet’s color work started appearing in issue 11, with some spectacular images that overshadowed his black and white work–which reached a peak in issue 9, an oversized issue containing the entirety of his epic “Vuzz,” the first time Heavy Metal had run a whole story of such length in one issue.
In addition to the primary content, there were features on various films that Heavy Metal felt were worthy of support. Dawn of the Dead got some attention and Alien got several issues of promotion, including concept artwork that included Moebius designs and an illustrated adaptation by Walt Simonson and Archie Goodwin. These features for Alien bled over into ads for merchandise, including a baseball cap from the Nostromo–the ship that Alien takes place on.
Advertising was very important to the look and feel of Heavy Metal during this period. Heavy Metal ran ads for collections of stories that they had serialized in the infancy of the magazine and several of the features that were being serialized were backed up against ads for that same content in collected edition–often touted as limited edition collector’s items. The second issue actually contains an ad claiming that the first issue is a collector’s item and the claim grows as the magazine gains traction, establishing the legend of the magazine and something that everyone wants to be reading.
By November of 1979, Heavy Metal was selling in excess of 200,000 issues a month. Naturally, this attracted advertisers that wanted to get their products in front of its readers. Towards the beginning, this took the form of stereo equipment and liquor ads. Later, bands like Queen, Styx, Devo, Ted Nugent, Molly Hatchett, The Cars and even previously unreleased material by Jimi Hendrix showed up. There were also ads for art books, posters, science fiction book clubs, Starlog magazine and even an underground comics publication that featured Sergio Aragones, Joe Kubert and Dick Giordano (among others).
Despite the tagline that “[Heavy Metal] is better than being stoned”–pulled from the letter column–and numerous drug references, Heavy Metal did not see actual drug paraphernalia advertisements until February of 1979, when Bambu rolling papers took out a full-page ad, complete with cut-out mail-order coupon. Club papers followed up the next month and subsequent months saw multi-cultural models telling readers about the awesomeness of JOB rolling papers.
Heavy Metal during this period is best known for incredible visuals presented in new and interesting ways that don’t really hold together as coherent stories. It would be nice to chalk that up to a translation error, but the truth is that just as many English-speakers presented stories that rely heavily on dream logic as the Europeans did. There are some great stories that do hold up and some very pointed problems with the overlap between sexuality and violence.
One of the main themes that runs through the entire oeuvre of the stories as presented is the apocalypse motif. Many of the stories are about life after the collapse or end with the world being destroyed–contextually, these were written during the height of the Cold War, when mutually assured destruction was a common concern.
The other major theme of this period is women (often queens) who walk around with their breasts hanging out–which suggests that most of these stories occur in warmer climates where commonplace nudity is actually helpful. The worst offender by far is not Richard Corben (although he does feature a woman wearing a modesty hood so we can’t see her hair, but is otherwise naked), but Grey Morrow’s “Orion”.
I’m looking forward to reading the next phase of Heavy Metal, the year that Ted White was the editor. One of the things that I’m going to be watching for is how the publication changed with the leadership. At this point, I can saw definitively that collectors who want the pure, uncut viewpoint of the original editorial team could do a lot worse than hunting for these issues from the seventies. There’s a lot of weird stuff in there, but more than enough material to make the search worthwhile.
To find Heavy Metal Magazine stuff from Amazon, you can use this link. [/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]Save this picture! The rejected proposal for the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum in Crissy Field, San Francisco. Image © Art Zendarski
After the controversy surrounding their rejection by San Francisco and subsequent relocation to Chicago, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts has today announced a team of MAD Architects and Studio Gang as the designers of their new building in Chicago's museum district near Northerly Island.
The building itself will be designed by MAD Architects, chosen "because of its innovative approach to design and the firm’s philosophy of connecting urban spaces to natural landscapes." In this case, that landscape will be designed by Studio Gang, who will also add a bridge to Northerly Island, an area which they have worked on turning into an ecologically diverse urban park.
"It is a gift to be able to design the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in a city so rich with architectural history," said founder of MAD Architects Ma Yansong. "I am humbled and honored to be given this opportunity to create a timeless design that moves and inspires people just like Mr. Lucas' collection."
Commenting on the proposed plan to link the museum site to Northerly Island, Jeanne Gang said: "We are excited to build upon our current work and collaborate to create a seamless transition between the Museum Campus and Northerly Island. In keeping with the Northerly Island ethos, our design goal will be to create a combined ecological and urban habitat." The museum is funding this urban link at no cost to the City of Chicago.
George Lucas has previously commented on the decision to move the museum to Chicago, saying: "Choosing Chicago is the right decision for the Museum, but a difficult decision for me personally because of my strong personal and professional roots in the Bay Area. I thank all Californians who reached out to me in support of the Museum."
He said of the new proposals: "I am thrilled with the architectural team’s vision for the building and the surrounding green space. I look forward to presenting our design to the Chicago community." The designs for the new museum are scheduled to be released in late 2014.
VOA Associates will serve as the executive architects.Special and General Courts-Martial for June 2014
From the Office of the Chief of Information
WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The following reports the results of Special and General Courts-Martial tried within the United States Navy in June 2014.
The cases are listed by the Navy Region in which they were tried.
Naval District Washington
Special Court-Martial
* At a Special Court-Martial in Washington, D.C., AT1 James C. Freels, USN pleaded guilty to attempted abusive sexual contacts, aggravated assault, and two specifications of assault consummated by a battery.
On 9 June 2014, the military judge sentenced him to reduction in rank to paygrade E-4 and confinement for 89 days.
Navy Region Mid-Atlantic
General Court-Martial
* At a General Court-Martial in Norfolk, Virginia, AZ3 Ronderrick J. Rhome, USN pleaded guilty to false official statement, wrongful use of cocaine, wrongful use of MDMA (Ecstasy), distribution of cocaine, introduction of cocaine onto an installation, and assault consummated by a battery. On 4 June 2014, the military judge sentenced him to be discharged with a Bad Conduct Discharge, reduction in rank to paygrade E-1, forfeit all pay and allowances, and confinement for 2 years.
* At a General Court-Martial in Groton, Connecticut, an E-3 was tried for sexual assault. On 13 June 2014, members returned a verdict of not guilty.
* At a General Court-Martial in Norfolk, Virginia, MM1 Derrick Domena, USN was tried for willful disobedience, sexual assault, abusive sexual contact, and assault. On 18 June 2014, the panel of members returned a verdict of not guilty to the charges of sexual assault, abusive sexual contact, and assault, but guilty to the charge of willful disobedience. On 19 June 2014, the panel of members sentenced him to restriction for 14 days.
* At a General Court-Martial in Norfolk, Virginia, IS2 Darin G. Lopez, USN was tried for sexual assault. On 25 June 2014, the military judge returned a verdict of guilty. The
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) Directed by Ross Patterson
Movie Overview | Trailer Official Synopsis: In yet another masterpiece by St. James St. James, this film explores the true story that government didn't want you to know about how Helen Keller really lost her eyesight and hearing: Nightwolves. Cast: Lin Shaye, Richard Riehle, Barry Bostwick, Brendan McCarthy, Alanna Ubach, Jim O'Heir, Christine Lakin, Jean St. James, Robert R. Shafer,…
Genres: Horror, Action, Comedy
Source: official YouTube pageA majority of Americans believe that the federal government is “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens,” a new poll suggests.
According to a poll conducted for CNN, 56 percent believe the federal government has grown so large and powerful that it poses a risk to rights and freedoms, while 44 percent disagree.
If accurate, it would suggest that anti-government sentiment in the US is not confined to Tea Partiers or libertarians, as neither of those movements enjoy similar levels of support.
But the poll does indicate that those on the right are more likely to see government as a threat than those on the left. While nearly 70 percent of self-identified Republicans and 63 percent of independents view the government as a threat, only 36 percent of self-identified Democrats do.
This is the second CNN poll in less than a week to suggest deep antagonism to — or at least disappointment with — the federal government. A poll earlier this week found that 86 percent believe the federal government is “broken.”
However, the widespread discontent with government isn’t stopping some commentators from interpreting the poll results through a partisan perspective. “Poll: 56% are tea-baggers,” states a headline at DailyMail.com.
The poll results “shouldn’t surprise anybody,” writes Matthew Givens, a former Alabama Libertarian Party official and Ron Paul supporter. “Because of recent actions taken by our government, fewer and fewer people actually believe it cares about protecting our rights.”
But concerns about government intrusion on rights and freedoms have not been limited to the right wing. In the post-9/11 era, many left-wing politicians raised concerns about the expansion of government power through the Patriot Act and other anti-terror measures. Many on the left were also alarmed by the Bush administration’s eagerness to expand US military power and engage in conflicts abroad.
In those areas, the left found an unlikely compatriot in Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian whose grassroots popularity was highlighted when he won a presidential straw poll at the CPAC conference last summer. Paul attracted the attention of many on the left by advocating against government surveillance and US involvement in foreign wars.With fictional worlds come fictional alcohol. But not just alcohol that's bad for you in the usual ways — bad for you in the "this will kill you if you drink it" kind of ways. These are drinks bartenders need hazmat suits to prepare and serve.
These are not just the drinks that are part of regular worldbuilding. These are the drinks that stories use to prove to the badass bona fides of our characters. Or to provide light-hearted moments of comedy as they drink and then nearly die. Here they are, arranged in rough lethality order.
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Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy
Not the most dangerous drink out there, but one that has become the go-to description of an out-of-this-world drink that is strong on a mythical scale. Given the opportunity, you should definitely not drink too many of. While the knock-off Earth version isn't exactly healthy, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes the real stuff as "like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick." The TV show made clear that you should never drink more than two of these unless you are "a thirty ton mega elephant with bronchial pneumonia."
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Aldebaran Ale from Star Trek
While the official drink of Starfleet appears to be synthehol, an alcohol substitute which has none of the bad effects of real alcohol, the Star Trek universe itself has a pile of fictional drinks that could knock you for a loop very easily. There's Klingon Bloodwine, which is barely tolerable by humans. There's a nectar that knocked out Enterprise crewmembers in The Animated series that was compared in strength to Saurian brandy. Quark once tried to serve Doctor Bashir a drink called the "warp core breach," one sip of which would relax him for three days. And then there's the infamous Romulan Ale, a bright blue — and very potent — alcohol that is illegal in the Federation.
But on the scale of flat-out dangerous, Aldebaran whiskey probably wins. It's probably the drink that Scotty uses to win a drinking contest against one member of a crew taking over the Enterprise in "By Any Other Name." Scotty describes it to his unsuspecting victim as "It's green."
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The drink got another shout-out in The Next Generation's "Relics," where Data, faced with the same drink, was also only able to describe it as "green." Any time a drink is indescribable? It's probably a bad choice
"The stuff where you get your eyesight back in two days — guaranteed." Red Dwarf, "Gunman of the Apocalypse"
Don't drink anything with that as a selling point. Although Kryten's description does indicate that there's worse out there. Don't drink that either.
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Bor'Kaan from Babylon 5
A very potent Drazi alcohol that can only be drunk by humans after taking an alcohol blocker. Which sounds like it takes all the fun out of drinking. A non-lethal version was named for Susan Ivanova and made by diluting it with vodka.
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Black Frost from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
In "Beer Bad," a bar owner fed-up with college students acting like class-A dicks brews up supernatural beer that turns drinkers in Neanderthals. Now that is a side effect no one expects when they go out drinking.
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Dune Battle of Corrrin Cover Art by Stephen Youll
Spice Beer from Dune
Spice melange from Dune is a miraculous thing. It gives long life, vitality, and heightened awareness and even prescience in some. It's the thing that makes space travel in this universe necessary. So of course it's been added to beer. That's a horrible choice. Why not make this expensive drug that is practically the basis for society into a beer, adding addiction and deadly withdrawal to the usual side effects of alcohol.
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Scumble from Discworld
First, should you find yourself on the Disc, avoid any drink that's explicitly for trolls — they have a very different physiology, meaning that one of their drinks is literally a battery that shorts out their silicon brains. But, for humanoids, scumble is the drink to avoid.
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It's a drink that's served in thimbles. It can't be watered down since it explodes when it comes into contact with water. Nanny Ogg's version is called "Suicider," and it's not a fanciful name — it's a description of the people who choose to drink it. It's made from "mainly apples," but has "some qualities of fresh apples and some of dimethyl hydrazine before liftoff." We'll leave you with this description from Mort:Canada's smart gun: Department of National Defence wows the world with new high-tech assault rifle
Canada wows the world with new, high-tech'smart gun'
Storified by CBC News Community· Fri, Feb 20 2015 00:26:23
The Canadian army has actually made the gun from Halo http://t.co/X2VKWO87Ca http://t.co/ds3V7fMrQDHoopnod
Canada did not invent the gun, nor do its citizens even have the constitutional right
Heck, if media stereotypes have taught us anything, most Canucks would rather throw down with hockey gloves than wave around a glock.
So why is Canada being credited this week for shaping "
Because it appears to be true, that's why.
Canadians may not be huge on carrying guns, but when it comes to building insanely cool next-generation assault rifles, our government is leading the game. Of all the many things our county is known for producing – maple syrup, hockey stars, ketchup chips, snow — "firearms" have never really been associated with Canadian innovation.Canada did not invent the gun, nor do its citizens even have the constitutional right to carry one without a license, proper training and a thorough background check.Heck, if media stereotypes have taught us anything, most Canucks would rather throw down with hockey gloves than wave around a glock.So why is Canada being credited this week for shaping " the future of firearms?"Because it appears to be true, that's why.Canadians may not be huge on carrying guns, but when it comes to building insanely cool next-generation assault rifles, our government is leading the game.
Canada's Next-Generation Military Smart Gun Unveiled http://t.co/nOhYVHi5O3 #techDan Maycock
"This insane, deadly smartgun was made by... Canada?" http://t.co/02kvdVnOLuChris Levesque
Canada's military is getting a new gun that interfaces with smart accessories, such as a speaker that says "sorry!" when a shot is fired.Solar Powered Robot
Developed in partnership with Colt Canada for the Canadian Armed Forces, the headline-grabbing integrated assault rifle concept boasts "more firepower, improved accuracy and smart integrated accessories that connect to command and control networks" according to a
It also includes "a firing mechanism to shoot lightweight cased telescoped ammunition, a secondary effects module for increased firepower and a NATO standard power and data rail to integrate accessories like electro-optical sights and position sensors."
Oh — and an M203 grenade launcher. Tech and innovation enthusiasts have been buzzing about Canada's new "smart gun" since a prototype video (seen above) was released earlier this month by Defence Research and Development Canada, a civilian agency of the Department of National Defence.Developed in partnership with Colt Canada for the Canadian Armed Forces, the headline-grabbing integrated assault rifle concept boasts "more firepower, improved accuracy and smart integrated accessories that connect to command and control networks" according to a DRDC press release It also includes "a firing mechanism to shoot lightweight cased telescoped ammunition, a secondary effects module for increased firepower and a NATO standard power and data rail to integrate accessories like electro-optical sights and position sensors."Oh — and an M203 grenade launcher.
The evolution of the next generation rifle prototype for the Canadian Armed Forcescanadianforcesvideos
"In the medium term, this weapon concept represents a lethal, flexible general-purpose platform,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Serge Lapointe, from the Soldier Systems group in Director Land Requirements – Soldier Systems (DLR 5) of the Canadian Army. “It will be able to operate in all theatres of operations in the most complex terrain including urban areas, mountains, jungles, deserts and the Arctic.”
These features, and the fact that this "smart gun" would allow soldiers to generate or receive data from their command networks is exciting to many — but what's really got the internet paying attention is the promise of a gun that can shoot on its own.
"...find, aim and shoot at a target all by itself." So much for Guns don't kill people... http://t.co/bqfOun0Gj1Ollie Boermans
The DRDC did not actually mention this set of features in its official release, however.
What the agency did share was that its team "studied how to increase the rifle’s accuracy using technology that can automatically detect targets and assist with engaging them."
"In the next phase of development, automated target detection and assisted target engagement will be the subject of an in-depth study in the Future Small Arms Research (FSAR) project," reads the Feb. 9 release on DRDC's website. Several international media outlets have run with the angle that Canada's new smart gun, which has been in development since 2009, can "find, aim and shoot at a target all by itself," sparking even more interest in the project.The DRDC did not actually mention this set of features in its official release, however.What the agency did share was that its team "studied how to increase the rifle’s accuracy using technology that can automatically detect targets and assist with engaging them.""In the next phase of development, automated target detection and assisted target engagement will be the subject of an in-depth study in the Future Small Arms Research (FSAR) project," reads the Feb. 9 release on DRDC's website.
The evolution of the smart gunFebruary 9, 2015 More firepower, improved accuracy and smart integrated accessories that connect to command and control networks are the headline features of the new integrated assault rifle concept that Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and Colt Canada have developed for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).Also in the original Grimm Fairy tale, Flynn Rider was actually a prince and Rapunzel wasn't a princess but born a peasant, Before her birth, her mother saw some rampion growing in Dame Gothel's garden and craved it longingly, Rapunzel's father stole the rampion, the first time successfully but during the second time he got caught and in exchanged for the rampion he had to give up his first child. When Rapunzel was born, the witch appeared and took the child away and named the baby girl after the rampion her mother had craved for. After 12 years Gothel locked Rapunzel in a tower and was the only visitor for some years until a prince came by. In the Grimm story Rapunzel falls for the prince who visits her frequently leading her to become pregnant. Gothel finds out and cuts Rapunzel's hair and banishes her to a desert where she gives birth to twins. The prince arrives at the tower only to learn that the witch is there. In his grief he lets go of the hair and falls into thorns becoming blinded. He wanders through the desert, gets reunited with Rapunzel who cries and the tears restore his sight and they live happily ever afterDeckmaster Theory: Lord of the Rings
Every holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Years, I re-watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended versions of course). For years, I dabbled heavily in creating custom Magic: the Gathering cards around what I have dubbed the “Deckmaster Theory.”
The basic premise is that the mechanics of Magic: the Gathering can be used as a framework for any game, much like how Munchkin uses similar rules that are comparable across multiple games. So here are the fellowship:
I gave everyone the hated ability banding because they did all travel in groups and it seemed fitting.
I’d love to hear feedback from others, so let me know what you think. And expect to see other, much weirder, examples down the road!
Cards were created using Magic Set Editor. All images are owned by New Line Cinema and all aspects of the Magic the Gathering templates are owned by Wizards of the Coasts.Most recommended from 45 comments
atuarre
Here come the drums
Premium Member
join:2004-02-14
EC/SETX SWLA 18 recommendations atuarre Premium Member RE No. Softbank can't manage Sprint and now they want to try to absorb two other companies? No.
The bills will go up but as a previous poster stated you can pretty much forget about any improvements. crazymonkey1
join:2016-04-09 17 recommendations crazymonkey1 Member Can you imagine? America's worst major wireless company merging with America's worst major cable company.
Sounds like a match made in customer service hell. Ugh. ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL 10 recommendations ISurfTooMuch Member SMH So Son wants to spend money on Charter, but he doesn't want to spend money to make Sprint competitive? These CEO types must be playing three-dimensional chess, because I sure as hell don't understand their strategy.
Sprint is sitting on tons of spectrum, just waiting to be built out. What the hell is Son waiting for? If T-Mobile could turn itself around, Spring sure as hell can, although it needs a complete management overhaul first. shanghaista
join:2014-08-03
Canton, MA 5 recommendations shanghaista Member Big Boat This is just a glorified pissing contest about who's in charge:
Rutledge didn't acquire TWC just to get bought out. He wants to be the big dog in charge of a conglomerate that can surpass Comcast.
Similarly, Son isn't willing to sell either. He just wants to double down, potentially diversify and increase his holdings.
This puzzles me; he's not willing to admit his losses and sell Sprint, Softbank isn't willing to pour money into Sprint to ramp up their network like TMUS did in the past 5 years, yet they're willing to pay 12-figures for Charter?
The spectrum assets Sprint holds (see what I did there?) is definitely undervalued right now because of the rest of the company is struggling, but build it out. Don't be slashing CapEx estimates and forecasts...
I can't say I blame either of them; Rutledge has turned around Charter since their bankruptcy and Son has previous success with Japanese wireless. Interesting to see moving forward. existenz
join:2014-02-12 ·Google Fiber
5 recommendations existenz Member If Softbank will invest in them, then maybe Softbank seems to buy companies only to eventually sell again, not truly investing to fullest potential. If they truly invest in Charter and Sprint, then maybe. But doesn't seem likely they'll get TMO even in Trump era (possible though).
Given Sprint has more spectrum than any carrier and 2500 is great for fixed wireless, this is an opportunity for Charter to expand into many new markets with fixed wireless (using outdoor MIMO antennas) with OTT TV. But Softbank needs to understand there needs to be enough backhaul to every site for this to work, needs to be a primary focus. shmerl
join:2013-10-21 5 recommendations shmerl Member No, this should be forbidden. Enough of this merger craziness. They want to have a landline ISP? Let them build a new one. Nucleartx
join:2016-09-08
Belton, TX 3 recommendations Nucleartx Member Tom's gonna say no Free helicopter ride everyday above the peasants, why give that up. Son isn't gonna give Tom $98 million so he'll pass. majortom1029
join:2006-10-19
Medford, NY 3 recommendations majortom1029 Member hmm I can see comcast,charter, and altice all coming together and purchasing sprint.
Anon2b20f
@2600:8800.x 3 recommendations Anon2b20f Anon Sprint's network isnt horrible Son has continued investment in the network. Just not as much as people here want.
Thing is if Son's goal has been some merger or buyout why invest now? Wait until the merger happens then go from there. A merger with TMobile would be different than one with Charter.
Dump in a ton of money now just to find out it was wrong buildout for the merger that happened. techguru30
join:2016-05-19
Cincinnati, OH 2 recommendations techguru30 Member Sounds like Soft Bank is not liking the offers they got Sounds like Soft Bank is not liking the offers they got to buy their bankrupt sinking wireless Titanic called Sprint. So now they are focusing to buy and merger with another US company instead of selling at a loss for pennies on the dollar. Bob61571
join:2008-08-08
Washington, IL 2 recommendations Bob61571 Member And People in Hell Want Ice Water.....
Masayoshi Son wants to build a communications giant, but I can't see it all falling into place for him. AT&T has the phone/cable/internet structure that Son wants to imitate, but AT&T has seemed to stumble lately.This article has been corrected since it was published in the print magazine.
My father was a child of the Great Depression. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1921 to Italian immigrant parents, he experienced the economic crisis head-on. He took a job working in an eyeglass factory in the city’s Ironbound section in 1934, at age 13, combining his wages with those of his father, mother, and six siblings to make a single-family income. When I was growing up, he spoke often of his memories of breadlines, tent cities, and government-issued clothing. At Christmas, he would tell my brother and me how his parents, unable to afford new toys, had wrapped the same toy steam shovel, year after year, and placed it for him under the tree. In my extended family, my uncles occupied a pecking order based on who had grown up in the roughest economic circumstances. My Uncle Walter, who went on to earn a master’s degree in chemical engineering and eventually became a senior executive at Colgate-Palmolive, came out on top—not because of his academic or career achievements, but because he grew up with the hardest lot.
Also see:
Multimedia: "Reshaping America"
An interactive map of America's new geography.
Interview: "The Great Reset"
Urban theorist Richard Florida explains why recession is the mother of invention. An interactive map of America's new geography.Urban theorist Richard Florida explains why recession is the mother of invention.
My father’s experiences were broadly shared throughout the country. Although times were perhaps worst in the declining rural areas of the Dust Bowl, every region suffered, and the residents of small towns and big cities alike breathed in the same uncertainty and distress. The Great Depression was a national crisis—and in many ways a nationalizing event. The entire country, it seemed, tuned in to President Roosevelt’s fireside chats.
The current economic crisis is unlikely to result in the same kind of shared experience. To be sure, the economic contraction is causing pain just about everywhere. In October, less than a month after the financial markets began to melt down, Moody’s Economy.com* published an assessment of recent economic activity within 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. Three hundred and two were already in deep recession, and 64 more were at risk. Only 15 areas were still expanding. Notable among them were the oil- and natural-resource-rich regions of Texas and Oklahoma, buoyed by energy prices that have since fallen; and the Greater Washington, D.C., region, where government bailouts, the nationalization of financial companies, and fiscal expansion are creating work for lawyers, lobbyists, political scientists, and government contractors.Over the last two days, the Giants allowed a combined 43 runs in the first inning. They were reluctant to use a reliever right away because they were about to start a four-game series in Coors Field. They needed to save the bullpen as much as as possible. The result was Barry Zito gutting out more innings than he might have deserved and Chad Gaudin throwing 72 pitches.
There is another way.
But the Giants haven't explored it in decades. Decades! Back when Craig Biggio was a catcher and Steve Decker was Bill James's favorite prospect, the Giants let a position player pitch. To the amazing Baseball Almanac and their auto-generated Fast Facts!
Did you know that Greg Litton pitched 1 games at home, had an ERA of 9.00, pitched 1 innings, allowed 1 hits, had 1 earned runs, 1 runs, and 0 home runs, walked 3 batters (0 intentionally), threw 0 wild pitches, hit batters 0 times, and balked 0 times?
I did! You can check out the box score here. As bad as Litton was, he was the second-most effective pitcher for the Giants that day.
Before Litton, there was another huge gap between position players pitching. Dave Kingman pitched twice within a month-long span in 1973 -- 18 years before it happened again. Before that, Matty Alou pitched in the first game of a doubleheader. He's still tied for the highest strikeout rate in Giants history, you know.
Now, there have been position player Giants who pitched. Just not with the Giants. Steve Finley pitched a scoreless inning, as did long-time Giant Desi Relaford. Dave McCarty pitched 3.2 innings in three separate appearances, and Brent Mayne even got a memorable win, getting Chipper Jones on a grounder with two runners on to beat John Rocker. If you're trying to convince an atheist in your life, that box score would help your cause, especially if you point out the Chipper/Rocker part.
Even Cody Ross pitched an inning:
D'awww, the li'l' hop. ♡ u cody. Also, yeah, that was Pedro Feliz. But nothing for the Giants since Litton. This is probably more important than a third championship, everybody.
But who would do it? Buster Posey pitched in college, of course, but you can be damned sure Bruce Bochy isn't stupid enough to try that. The other options:
Brandon Belt
He also pitched in college, so he wouldn't embarrass himself. Well, he'd probably trip over the rubber and sit there with a frustrated, dejected look on his face, but he wouldn't embarrass himself with the pitching, at least.
Brandon Crawford
Strong arm. A really strong arm. He's never pitched before (edit: that's not true!), but with arm strength and accuracy, I'd like to see it.
Pablo Sandoval
This falls under the Posey category, but Sandoval makes it because he can throw with either hand.
Nick Noonan
Not because I want to see him pitch, especially, but because this is the kind of back-of-the-bench player who usually does it. Let him/us have his/our fun and put him on the mound, dang it.
Of course, there is another.
HUNTER PENCE
oh god oh please oh please oh please oh please oh god oh please oh god oh please oh please oh please oh please oh god oh please oh god oh please oh please oh please oh please oh god oh please oh god oh please oh please oh please oh please oh god oh please oh god oh please oh please oh please oh please oh god oh please oh god oh please oh please oh please oh please oh god oh please let this happen
Money? You need money? We can raise money.
You want me to scrub all the negative things I've ever written? No problem. Most of them were stupid, anyway.
Animal shelters? Yeah, I'll burn them. Down to the ground. Those freeloaders don't give anything back to society, so what's the big deal? Anything to get Pence on the mound.
...
But, yeah, I'll take Noonan. Or anyone. A position-player pitching for the Giants, please. Blowouts are bad things, but every 20 years or so, they become legends.After intense financial pressure from evangelicals, World Vision has decided to reverse their decision regarding employment of gay and lesbian people.
I don't know what to say. I really don't.
For those of you who donated, thank you. That money will be put to good use, I assure you. But I am deeply, profoundly sorry that I inadvertently rallied these fundraising efforts in response to the fallout from a decision that would ultimately be reversed. Though I certainly hope everyone who sponsored a child or made a donation will continue to support World Vision, I can see how this effort would make you feel betrayed, as though it were launched under false pretense. And I'm so, so sorry for that. I'm as surprised by all this as you are.
This whole situation has left me feeling frustrated, heartbroken, and lost. I don't think I've ever been more angry at the Church, particularly the evangelical culture in which I was raised and with which I for so long identified. I confess I had not realized the true extent of the disdain many evangelicals have toward LGBT people, nor had I expected World Vision to yield to that disdain by reversing its decision under financial pressure.
Honestly, it feels like a betrayal from every side.
Something has to change. And I'm as committed as ever to being a part of that change.
But not today.
Today, I don't know what else to do but grieve with everyone else who feels like a religious refugee today. This sucks, and I'm so, so sorry.
I hope you take some comfort in the fact that perhaps, as a result of our petty warring, some kids were sponsored today.
See also: "On the World Vision Reaction"
***
P.S. I want to share this comment from reader Dan:
"I sponsored a child because of their original decision. His name is also Daniel and he lives in the Dem Rep of the Congo, which co-incidentally, I am planning on traveling to in November (though I have no plans to see him.)
As a gay man, I am once again disappointed by the actions of some evangelical Christians. I have learned not to expect much from conservative Christianity and tend to give conservative Christians a wide berth. I want to reconcile. I am a graduate of Azusa Pacific University and remain a committed, Episcopalian, Christian. But I often feel like Charlie Brown when he tries to kick Lucy's football when engaging evangelical Christians and this is no exception.
However, none of this is the the fault of the child I sponsored. I'm not going to unsponsor because they reversed their decision. It's ultimately about the child's welfare."Image via Steve Troughton-Smith
Developer Steve Troughton-Smith has explored the code and found that HeadBoard, tvOS' UI, includes support for folders. Yesterday, Apple seeded the first beta of tvOS 9.1 to developers, the first software update to tvOS 9.0.Folders on tvOS currently work in a similar way to iOS, notes Troughton-Smith. A user would just have to drag one app over the other to create a folder. Users would also have the ability to rename folders. Troughton-Smith was able to activate the folders using the LLDB software debugger. The folders appear to use a 3 x 3 layout and sit alongside apps on the Apple TV's home screen, just like folders do in iOS.In recent days, Apple has been updating the Apple TV's new App Store with Top Charts and Categories for better discoverability. However, those updates were server-side updates that didn't require users to update their software. Folder support would require a software update, but it's unclear which software update Apple would enable it in. Last year, iOS 8 code pointed to split-screen multitasking, but the feature didn't become official until iOS 9 almost a year alter.Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly indicated that Steve Troughton-Smith had found the code for tvOS folders in tvOS 9.1. He found the code in the public, released tvOS 9.0.DUCHESNE — A Duchesne County man is facing misdemeanor charges after deputies said he threatened his neighbors, who killed his pit bull when it attacked their dog and then jumped inside a van filled with their children.
James Patrick Markey, 46, is charged in Duchesne County Justice Court with possession of a firearm while under the influence of alcohol and making threats of violence, both class B misdemeanors. He is also charged with disorderly conduct, an infraction.
The incident that led to Markey's arrest began Saturday when a family returned to their home near 2300 West and 11660 North in Neola to find their dog being attacked in the driveway by Markey's pit bull, according to Duchesne County Sheriff's Lt. Jeremy Curry.
The husband, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, got out of the family van and fired several shots at the pit bull as it charged him, Curry said.
"(The dog) veered off of him and jumped into the van," the lieutenant said.
The van was occupied by the man's wife and the couple's four children, who range in age from 1 ½ to 7 years old.
The wife, who also has a concealed weapons permit and had pulled her pistol, told investigators the dog lunged at her as she fired her first shot, striking the animal. The woman said the dog backed off briefly, but moved in again to bite her legs.
"She fired five shots into the dog, ultimately killing the dog," Curry said, noting that the husband, wife and children did not suffer any physical injuries.
The couple called for help, and responding deputies arrived a short time later. When the deputies went next door inform Markey that his dog had been killed, Curry said Markey began making threats toward his neighbors.
"He threatened to kill all their animals," the lieutenant said.
She fired five shots into the dog, ultimately killing the dog. –Duchesne County Sheriff's Lt. Jeremy Curry
Despite the verbal threats, Markey was not arrested and deputies left the area, only to return 45 minutes later on a report of "shots fired." Markey told deputies he was firing a rifle into a wooded area behind his house "to blow off some steam," Curry said.
Deputies determined that as many as 40 shots had been fired. Markey told them he could shoot his neighbor from his back porch if he wanted to, according to the arresting deputy's report. He also said he "had a house full of guns and would get the job done," and that he wanted to "scare his neighbors" so they wouldn't be able to sleep, the report states.
The report noted that Markey had been yelling threats and obscenities loud enough that they could be heard 200 yards away by his neighbors. It also showed that Markey had a blood-alcohol content of 0.066 when he was booked into jail.
Sheriff's office records show deputies were called to the same Neola home two years ago after the husband was able to scare off Markey's pit bull with a "warning shot" when it crossed onto his property and became aggressive, Curry said.
No charges were filed in that case, court records show, but Markey does have misdemeanor convictions in 2007 for unlawful detention, criminal mischief, and assault.
The unlawful detention and criminal mischief charges were dismissed one year later, after Markey successfully met the terms of a plea in abeyance agreement offered by Duchesne County prosecutors. Markey paid a $400 fine for the assault conviction but served no jail time, according to court records.
Markey posted bail and was released from custody shortly after his arrest Saturday. His first court appearance is set for Dec. 15. A judge has issued a civil stalking injunction that bars Markey from having any contact with the couple who shot his dog.
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Photos“President Obama may mouth very different rhetoric,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “He may have a more complicated process with members of Congress. But in the end, there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration.”
Complicating the analysis, Mr. Bush’s policies evolved over time. Much of the legal controversy that initially surrounded his administration’s efforts to prevent terrorist attacks had drained away by the time Mr. Obama took over on Jan. 20.
The Bush team stopped using its harshest interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, years before leaving office. And in Mr. Bush’s second term, Congress passed legislation bringing federal statutes into alignment with policies like military commissions and surveillance without warrants.
As a senator, Mr. Obama voted for the 2008 bill authorizing the surveillance program, which he has continued since taking office. He voted against a 2006 bill authorizing military commissions, but it passed anyway. While Mr. Obama initially halted the trials, he has since proposed reviving them in a revised form.
Mr. Obama has also drawn fire from human rights advocates for fighting to prevent detainees in Afghanistan from having habeas corpus rights. But his legal team notes that the 2006 Military Commissions Act contains a provision saying such prisoners may not challenge their detentions in court.
Still, Mr. Obama has also continued other Bush-era policies where statutory law is murkier or absent — like the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition” program in which detainees are transferred to other countries and the invocation of the “state secrets” privilege to shut down some lawsuits. (The administration is reviewing both policies.)
Photo
And after grappling with how to close the prison at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama proposed a new system of preventive detention to deal with those terrorism suspects who, he says, would be hard to prosecute and dangerous to release.
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But Mr. Obama’s insistence that he would create such a preventive detention regime only with Congressional authorization may pose little pragmatic obstacle, because he can claim lawmakers have already granted it.
In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that Mr. Bush could detain — indefinitely, without trial and on domestic soil — a man accused of fighting for the Taliban. It cited Congress’s authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the 2001 attacks, which remains on the books.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
To be sure, Mr. Obama has made some significant changes to Bush policies. He closed the Central Intelligence Agency’s long-term prisons and required strict adherence to antitorture rules. He also released secret legal memorandums about interrogation.
Those changes have opened him up to attacks from the right. In particular, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Mr. Obama of abandoning the Bush-Cheney strategies, suggesting that Mr. Obama would bear direct responsibility for any future terrorist attack.
Mr. Obama has embraced Mr. Cheney’s premise that he is an agent of change, as his campaign rhetoric suggested he would be. In a speech in May, Mr. Obama described his policies as “a new direction from the last eight years.”
But Jack Goldsmith, a top legal official in the Bush administration, said the claim of a vast gulf between Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism policies and those at the end of Mr. Bush’s tenure was false.
“There is a faux debate that something new is afoot and both the Obama administration and Cheney have an interest in that being the case, but it’s just not true,” he said. “It just serves almost everyone’s political interests to make it seem like something brand new is happening, but it’s mostly window
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as before and other queen moves off the d-file allow Qc7#. 18....b6 loses to 19. Qc3+. 18....Bd5 19. Qxa7 followed by exd5 isn't much better.Video music “F Minor” from Jake Shimabukuro,’s new album “NASHVILLE SESSIONS.”
Paradise Helicopters crew with Tropical Visions Video’s photographer/videographer Mick Kalber conducted a volcano flyover at 6 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17.
Rainy weather upslope prevented the crew from accessing the vent on Thursday, but the activity at the ocean entry more than made up for their loss.
“The 61g flow continues unabated, dumping tons of lava into the Pacific Ocean at Kamokuna just inside Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park,” said Kalber.
“Pele sends her flows through the tube system from the vent some six miles to the new lava delta, which continues to make the Big Island bigger, minute by minute, day by day,” Kalber added.
Heavy flows into the water frequently explode as the cool sea water is not able to cool them off quickly enough, and the resulting steam sends lava rocks skyward.
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“The lava delta is enormous… well over 20 acres large now, even though cracks indicate a collapse may decrease that figure at any time,” Kalber said.
Numerous lobes of lava are pouring into the Pacific Ocean there, creating a huge plume of laze that can be seen for many miles.
“We saw only one tour boat, which left the ocean entry as we arrived,” said Kalber. “We saw no other visitors on shore watching the creation of the newest land on Earth.”
Lava continues to form new black sand beaches along the coast near her ocean entries.
The hot lava’s interaction with the cold seawater shattering the flow into bits that are then tumbled into submission.
“What a magnificent sight for visitors who can gain access from either the Kalpana of HVNP side by walking out the temporary access road, which goes directly to the ocean entry!” said Kalber.
The walk is lengthy and precautions should be observed.
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory cautions visitors viewing the 61g flow ocean entry (where lava meets the sea), that there are additional significant hazards besides walking on uneven surfaces and around unstable, extremely steep sea cliffs.Venturing too close to an ocean entry exposes you to flying debris created by the explosive interaction between lava and water. Also, the new land created is unstable because it is built on unconsolidated lava fragments and sand. This loose material can easily be eroded away by surf, causing the new land to become unsupported and slide into the sea. In several instances, such collapses, once started, have also incorporated parts of the older sea cliff.
Venturing too close to an ocean entry exposes you to flying debris created by the explosive interaction between lava and water. Also, the new land created is unstable because it is built on unconsolidated lava fragments and sand. This loose material can easily be eroded away by surf, causing the new land to become unsupported and slide into the sea. In several instances, such collapses, once started, have also incorporated parts of the older sea cliff.
Also, the new land created is unstable because it is built on unconsolidated lava fragments and sand. This loose material can easily be eroded away by surf, causing the new land to become unsupported and slide into the sea. In several instances, such collapses, once started, have also incorporated parts of the older sea cliff.
Finally, the interaction of lava with the ocean creates a corrosive seawater plume laden with hydrochloric acid and fine volcanic particles that can irritate the skin, eyes and lungs.Jerod Mayo, a leader of the Patriots defense since he was drafted in 2008, announced Tuesday that he's chosen to retire.
Mayo, who made two Pro Bowls and won the 2008 AP Defensive Rookie of the Year, said in the message that he's "RETIRING A PATRIOT."
It is not surprising that his time with the team is coming to an end, but his retirement one week before his 30th birthday was not expected. Then again, Mayo has struggled to stay healthy for years. He tore his pectoral muscle in 2013, tore his patellar tendon in 2014 and injured his shoulder as a part-time player in 2015.
"After a lot of thought Chantel and I take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude for what we consider a life changing event... that of becoming a New England Patriot for the past 8 years," Mayo wrote. "We are extremely grateful to "Thundercat," Jonathan, the Kraft family, Coach Belichick, the Pats organization, and the most amazing fans in contributing to these pages of our lives. As my family and I prepare for the future, be sure that the Pats memories will always hold a special place in our hearts."
It is fitting that Mayo retires without changing teams. A surprise choice as the 10th pick of the 2008 draft, Mayo immediately stepped in and looked like a lifetime Patriot at inside linebacker. This came at a time when Bill Belichick was struggling to hit on draft picks, especially in the front seven. Belichick quickly lauded Mayo as a leader and one of the smartest players he ever drafted.
Mayo's body just didn't hold up. Injuries limited his effectiveness in 2009, but he put it all together for a first-team All Pro season in 2010. He signed a big contract late in 2011 with $25 million guaranteed, but ultimately was supplanted by Devin McCourty, Dont'a Hightower, Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins as the best players of the team's defense.
"Mentor, teammate, friend....honored to have played next to you," Jones wrote on Twitter.
It would not be a surprise if Mayo continued a career in football. Hightower, for one, said Mayo could be the team's "defensive coordinator right now."
The Patriots will save $7 million in cap space following Mayo's retirement, with $4.4 million in dead money still on the books.Photo: Rune Hellestad/Corbis
The only thing that’s more intimidating than a meeting with Anna Wintour is a job interview with her. Even among staff members whom she likes working with, the editor-in-chief of Vogue is notorious for giving employees’ outfits a knowing once-over. So what happens when you not only need to dress up (it’s an interview, after all), but also must choose a look that convinces her you’re Vogue material? That’s what we asked dozens of people who’ve been through the ringer in the past few decades. Our thirteen favorite responses, full of Prada and plenty of subpar handbags hidden under desks, are below.
1. The Woman Who Spent More Than $5,000.
They surprised me with scheduling my interview the very next day. Not having worked in fashion, I didn’t have anything nicer than J.Crew. So, after work, I went to Barneys because it was the only store open until eight and I could bang it out. I also found a nail salon nearby open until nine, and got a blowout the next morning. I bought a silk Proenza tank dress, Prada heels, and a Celine belt. It was like a supermarket sweep, and I spent about $2,000. I didn’t have a new bag, but then the receptionist held my (now downmarket) Marc by Marc bag anyway. They made me come in for another interview, which threw me. I started to really get into it and money stopped becoming a problem. I got a shift dress at Prada from the spring collection and then they sold me the blue patent shoes, and it all looked so good. The dress needed tailoring, but it was going to take a week and I needed it in a couple of days, so I name-dropped and they did it fast. The dress actually was on sale but still more than I ever paid for everything. I think that purchase must have been $3,500.
Got the job.
2. The Woman Who Was Told Not to Cry
I didn’t spend much money at all, as I have a stash of vintage finds. I wore a vintage, linen apricot dress with gold buttons and gold peep-toe heels. I borrowed my friend’s Prada clutch to match, and wore some jewelry from David Yurman, where my friend is a designer. Before the interview, the managing editor asked if I’d ever cried on a job (I hadn’t), because she and Anna “hated going into bathroom and fashion closets and hearing girls sniffle and cry over the ‘little things’ that go on throughout the day.”
When Anna opened my portfolio and saw my address, she said, “Ah, okay. So you live in BROOK-lyn, huh?” She seemed put off by that, and also asked what my parents did for a living. When I said that they used to be teachers, she was not impressed.
No dice.
3. The Woman Who Went Back — Three Times
Considering it was, I believe, 1989, I’m guessing the ensemble probably involved a teeny Betsey Johnson skirt, opaque black Donna Karan tights, and …cow booties! I’m sure she shuddered. When I got rehired there the second time, I was a bit savvier. I remember a simple black Calvin Klein sheath. And when I was interviewing for my third time back (glutton for punishment), I went to see a friend who was a personal shopper at Bergdorf for a full wardrobe!
Got three different jobs.
4. The Woman Who Wore Doc Martens
I didn’t know I was going to be interviewing with Anna that day, but even if I had known, I don’t think I would have chosen my outfit any differently. I was just clueless enough to be unintimidated by the whole Vogue thing. (And it was a features assistant job, not a fashion job.) I just wore my favorite outfit from my post-college wardrobe: a dark gray Anna Sui pleated skirt, black cardigan, black tights, and Doc Martens. This was 1993, what can I say?
Got the job.
5. The Man
I got an e-mail on Thursday about meeting with Anna on Monday. As soon as I hung up, I just went into preparation mode, poring over every section of all the major international newspapers. I scheduled a haircut for the following day. As for what I wore, I kept it simple: a light gray Thom Browne suit, a white dress shirt with the top button left unbuttoned, glossy dark brown leather Church’s dress shoes polished the day before (worn without socks, of course). The only flourish was a white linen pocket square and a very simple Valextra brief case. Before talking about the position, we talked about current events and then tennis (I’ve been playing sporadically since being on my high’ school’s team), which broke any ice. It wasn’t scary. She was really lovely, in fact.
Got the job.
6. The Woman Who Bought $1,000 Shoes
I got a call about my interview in the evening around 5 p.m. on a Monday night. “Can you meet with Anna tomorrow at two?” I agreed, hung up the phone, and ran to my closet. Nothing. I called a stylist friend, freaking out, who said, “Calm down, she is a professional, she interviews people all the time. Stop making such a big deal about it,” before adding, “but whatever you do, don’t wear last season’s anything.” I had time to go to Soho for a pair of shoes and was waiting outside when Kirna Zabete opened. Somehow I decided that my best option was a pair of Proenza open-toed, stacked heels, despite the rain. I justified the $1K price tag and ran back home to get dressed. I paired them with 3.1 Philip Lim high-waisted, silk pants and a black Celine tote I borrowed from my stylist friend, with a belted coat by Apiece Apart. Everything else I kept super simple: little to no makeup, straight brushed hair, and a wedding ring. By God, no fragrance.
Got the job.
7. The Woman With a Mohawk
This was almost ten years ago, back when Anna Wintour didn’t have to interview everyone applying for a job on staff. I was in the art department, and I tried to push the limit a little by wearing neck ties as belts or going so far as to actually shave my hair into a mohawk. That never got more out of Anna than a look and a smirk.
Got the job.
8. The Woman Who Didn’t Know Enough to Be Nervous
It was 1996. I wore some kind of black wool shift/schoolgirl dress (I want to say it was J.Crew or similar) over a white button-down buttoned all the way up and these cheetah-print YSL shoes that I thought were the best thing ever and I still have even though they have bald spots and don’t really fit. I did not know enough to be worried that the look was probably not so great. I thought $300 for the shoes was pretty insane at the time and I definitely did not have Prada, Celine, or even Marc by Marc Jacobs.
Got the job.
9. The Woman Who Was Told to Get a Blowout
Anna was my ninth and final interview at Vogue. I luckily borrowed a friend’s forest green Helmut Lang dress, which I wore with black tights from Alter and black Dolce Vita wedges. It was recommended by a Vogue staffer that I get a blowout for the meeting, and, reluctantly, I paid $30 to have my hair blow-dried for the first time ever at a Polish place in Greenpoint. Anna was to the point and all business, and the entire interview lasted under five minutes.
Got the job.
10. The Woman Who Had No Money
HR called me and I had one day to prep. First was the interview with HR, who then rushed me down to meet with Virginia [Smith], then Jessica [Sailer], and then Meredith [Melling-Burke] one after the other. The next day, HR called and said they wanted me to come in again and meet with Anna. So I have one day to prep before my interview with Anna. I was never someone who agonized over outfits and I didn’t buy anything for it. I was literally right out of college, so I had no money. I didn’t realize people borrowed clothes; I didn’t know that was a thing. I wore a J.Crew gold sequin skirt, Mulberry doctor bag, and white silk Equipment blouse buttoned up all the way to the top with a Robert Rodriguez blazer over it. My black heels must have been Zara or Dolce Vita because, like I said, no money. I quickly realized I would never wear anything like that again at Vogue, once I saw everyone was actually wearing clothes off the runway.
I think I spent about three hours doing my hair. I ended up sleeking it back with a high pony at the crown of my head so I couldn’t fidget with it. I couldn’t twirl my hair in front of Anna.
Got the job.
11. The Woman Who Asked Anna to Wait
During my final weeks before graduating from college, I got a phone call from a Vogue editor offering an opportunity to interview for a position. In my thesis-writing delirium, I thought it was some kind of dream or hoax. I asked if they could wait till after graduation, and they said they would. Right after my graduation ceremony, I took a red-eye flight to begin preliminary interviews. After meeting with four different people, I met AW wearing a black crepe wool Balenciaga dress from the latest collection (all of my graduation money combined put a slight dent in its purchase, but I don’t regret it as it’s a favorite in my closet), a white dress shirt underneath with a crisp collar and cuffs, a simple-but-interesting pave pendulum necklace, and black Prada banana heels that were all the rage at the time.
Got the job.
12. The Woman Who Went Vintage
So I was maybe 21, at my first job out of college, when I interviewed with her. At that time, I had no money and figured if I wasn’t wearing high-end designer, I would do vintage. So I wore a very classic outfit with a vintage winter white pencil skirt, and a blouse that I don’t remember. I had new accessories, like designer boots and a bag by Marc Jacobs. Vintage coat. I didn’t end up getting the job, but it was last minute anyway and they had someone in mind already.
No dice.
13. The Woman Who Wore the Vogue Uniform
I was a rover at Condé Nast at the time — it was early days at Vogue when black leggings, a Brooks Brothers boys department button-down, and a sweater wrapped around your waist was an adopted uniform on the editorial side. I wore a black pleated Agnes B. skirt, a black V-neck sweater from Charivari, black tights, and black pointy but squared-off Barneys loafers. Because I was already at 350 Madison that day, I left my black, pleather Ann Taylor tote bag under my desk.
Got the job.Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivers remarks at a news conference at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, U.S. September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday accused the United States and its allies of orchestrating “deadly provocations” against Russian troops in Syria.
Moscow has complained about what it has says are suspiciously friendly ties between U.S.-backed militias, U.S. special forces, and Islamic State in Syria and accused Washington of trying to slow the advance of the Syrian army.
“There are a lot of questions to U.S.-led forces in Syria,” Lavrov told pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat in an interview published on Wednesday.
“Either they accidentally bomb Syrian troops after which Islamic State militants launch an offensive, or they get other terrorists to attack strategically important objects... or they stage deadly provocations against our military servicemen.”
Lavrov’s deputy, Sergei Ryabkov, said last week that the “two-faced policy” of the United States was to blame for the death of Russian Lieutenant-General Valery Asapov in Syria, something Washington flatly denied.
Asapov was killed by Islamic State shelling.
Lavrov also said on Wednesday that the United States and the coalition it leads were “unwelcome guests” in Syria from the point of view of international law and accused Washington of “dividing terrorists into bad and no so bad ones”.BELGRADE, Serbia -- A transport plane has delivered two Russian MiG-29 fighter jets to Serbia, the initial shipment of a six-jet deal that could add to East-West tensions in the Balkans.
The warplanes arrived disassembled aboard a massive Antonov An-124 transport plane that landed at a military airport in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica on October 2.
The MiGs are being provided by Moscow at no charge, but their assembly, repair, and refurbishing costs are expected to near $235 million in total.
The four other jets are set to arrive sometime before October 20, when they are likely to be displayed in Belgrade during a Liberation Day parade. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is scheduled to attend.
In March, Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic, then prime minister and now president, confirmed earlier reports that Russia would provide the six MiG-29 fighters "as a gift."
He added that the planes would enter military service by the end of 2017 after refurbishing and pilot training.
Russia also committed to provide 30 T-72 tanks and 30 BRDM-2 patrol combat vehicles to Serbia for free.
Vucic said on October 2 that Serbia also planned to improve its defenses and has been negotiating with Moscow for the purchase of Russian-made S-300 antiaircraft systems.
"We will continue to protect our freedom and independence," Vucic said.
Vucic, a former nationalist, has remade himself as a pro-European Union reformer while seeking to maintain good relations with traditional ally Russia, which is looking to block the Balkan nation’s path toward possible NATO membership.
Serbia’s moves to heighten military ties with Moscow have worried the West and many neighboring countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina and NATO member Croatia.
A NATO official told the Associated Press that "the defense equipment which NATO's partners procure is a sovereign choice for those countries. There are no restrictions imposed by NATO."
With reporting by AP, Defenseworld.net, and InSerbia NewsIf I were to survey every guy in my gym and ask them what’s their favorite lift I imagine bench press would be the overwhelming answer. And that’s just what I’ve come to expect in today’s disappointing everybody-follow-the-leader culture.
What’s the best exercise?
However, If I changed my question and instead asked what’s the best exercise you can do, many would probably stick with their original answer firmly believing that the bench press is, in fact, magical. But some would smarten up and say the squat or the deadlift. And in terms of the most muscles worked per exercise or the highest degree of difficulty those last two answers aren’t wrong. But, if I had to prescribe just one exercise to the average man today, it wouldn’t be any of those.
I’d instead opt for the back row. I’m not overly concerned about which back row you choose – it could be the seated cable row, the TRX row, the inverted bodyweight row, the T-Bar row, the single arm dumbbell row, or my personal favorite, the bent over barbell row.
Combating a weak lifestyle
The row is so vital for men to perform in this day and age because it serves to correct the biggest postural problem our society faces: the forward slouch. This is when your shoulders round forward and you look like the humpback of Notre Dame.
Today, everything we do is in front of us: we lean forward to type on computers, we drive our cars using steering wheels that we grip in front of us, and then we goto the gym and we make matters worse. We bench press, we cycle, and we run – all anteriorly dominant movements that make this problem even worse. The end result is a severely overdeveloped chest and anterior shoulder muscles, coupled with a disturbingly loose and weak upper back. This is the cause of weak posture.
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Combating a weak mindset
Instead of standing straight and tall, we slump forward and appear nervous. We appear shorter and less confident. And the problem extends far beyond appearances. Recent studies have even linked our physical stature to our mental attitude. When we stand up straight and take up large amounts of space, we assume a matching and measurably more confident mindset. When we cower and slouch forward, we similarly adopt a matching mindset – this time timid and weak. If men weren’t already getting soft enough as it is, this only intensifies the depressing downward trend.
If your posture isn’t perfect you must act now to fix this problem. Forget building muscle or cutting fat, when you strengthen your back, stretch your chest, and begin to assume a correct posture – you’ll look far more confident and strong. You’ll shoulders will appear broader, and your chest bigger. You’ll feel the same way, too. And it will take only a fraction of the time to see a big difference when compared to trying to alter your body composition.
While this article is aimed at men, women should take note too–correcting their posture will lead to visibly larger breasts and a more perky appearance, two things all men find attractive.
Check out my new book Shredded Beast, for more advice on building a strong, manly body. To see reviews and more info: click here.
Read More: The Only 2 Things A Man Can Depend OnTencent, the Chinese tech behemoth, sparked outrage this week when a video from its year-end party leaked online. The video shows employees participating in an incredibly sexist office game.
The women in the video appear on their knees, attempting to remove caps from water bottles positioned between the male coworkers’ thighs. The obvious novelty of the game is that they look like they’re performing oral sex on their male colleagues.
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The seven-second clip reportedly comes from an annual dinner held by the company’s instant messaging department. Tencent has released a statement apologizing for the incident. It writes that employees responsible for the demeaning game have received “demerits” on their records.
Users of the massive Chinese micro-blogging service Weibo—which is owned by Tencent—expressed their disgust with the company’s behavior. According to Shanghaist, one user asked, “How could a company treat its workers in this way? Do they not have any sense of decency?”
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One answer to that question could have something to do with the fact that Tencent doesn’t have a single female executive, board member or division chief. This is the latest incident highlighting the tech industry’s sexism problem in China. Shanghaiist writes:
In 2015, Alibaba was forced to withdraw a job advertisements for a female candidate looking like porn star Sora Aoi who was to be tasked with “motivating” her fellow coworkers. That same year, Baidu celebrated International Women’s Day with a series of lackluster doodles perpetuating stereotypical images of women. [The] next year, a senior Baidu exec was demoted after giving an incredibly sexist presentation, in which he told the audience: “If a girl says to me, ‘The air conditioning in my dorm doesn’t work, and I don’t want to go home,’ what does she mean? I think it means she wants to kiss and have some sex.”
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Charlotte Han, a manager at 500 Startups and a co-founder of Lean in Beijing, told Bloomberg, “It’s quite shocking because my impression was that things were improving.” She said that “a lot of stereotype challenges that Chinese women face come from social and culture expectations.”
While the incident highlights rampant sexism in China’s tech industy, Silicon Valley still has many of the same issues. A 2016 survey found that 60% of women in the Valley have encountered sexual harassment. As for the tech industry’s gender gap in hiring, many companies are still lamely saying that there just aren’t enough qualified candidates to diversify staff.
In a blog post about Facebook’s diversity in 2016, Maxine Williams, the company’s global director of diversity, wrote, “appropriate representation in technology... will depend upon more people having the opportunity to gain necessary skills through the public education system.” Experts say that the larger issue is that too often tech companies heavily rely on internal hiring recommendations.
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[Shanghaiist]Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for node.
var express = require ('express') var app = express ( ) app. get ('/ ', function ( req, res ) { res. send ('Hello World') } ) app. listen ( 3000 )
Installation
This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry.
Before installing, download and install Node.js. Node.js 0.10 or higher is required.
Installation is done using the npm install command:
$ npm install express
Follow our installing guide for more information.
Features
Robust routing
Focus on high performance
Super-high test coverage
HTTP helpers (redirection, caching, etc)
View system supporting 14+ template engines
Content negotiation
Executable for generating applications quickly
Docs & Community
PROTIP Be sure to read Migrating from 3.x to 4.x as well as New features in 4.x.
Security Issues
If you discover a security vulnerability in Express, please see Security Policies and Procedures.
Quick Start
The quickest way to get started with express is to utilize the executable express(1) to generate an application as shown below:
Install the executable. The executable's major version will match Express's:
$ npm install -g express-generator@4
Create the app:
$ express /tmp/foo && cd /tmp/foo
Install dependencies:
$ npm install
Start the server:
$ npm start
Philosophy
The Express philosophy is to provide small, robust tooling for HTTP servers, making it a great solution for single page applications, web sites, hybrids, or public HTTP APIs.
Express does not force you to use any specific ORM or template engine. With support for over 14 template engines via Consolidate.js, you can quickly craft your perfect framework.
Examples
To view the examples, clone the Express repo and install the dependencies:
$ git clone git://github.com/expressjs/express.git --depth 1 $ cd express $ npm install
Then run whichever example you want:
$ node examples/content-negotiation
Tests
To run the test suite, first install the dependencies, then run npm test :
$ npm install $ npm test
People
The original author of Express is TJ Holowaychuk
The current lead maintainer is Douglas Christopher Wilson
List of all contributors
License
MITCLOSE President Trump signed three presidential directives, including withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 13-nation trade deal signed by the Obama administration. USA TODAY
President Trump holds up an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership after signing it alongside White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in the Oval Office Monday. (Photo11: SAUL LOEB, AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Trump signed three presidential directives Monday, withdrawing U.S. support for a Pacific trade deal, imposing a hiring freeze in civilian agencies, and restoring and expanding the so-called Mexico City policy that prohibits U.S. aid from supporting international groups that promote abortion.
Along with an executive order signed Friday on Obamacare and another White House memo freezing unpublished Obama-era regulations, Trump's first-week executive actions signal a U-turn from signature Obama administration policies. But they also show a determination to put his own stamp on the executive branch, and assert a muscular presidential role in trade policy.
"Everybody knows what I'm about to do," Trump said before withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trade deal signed by the Obama administration but not ratified by the Senate. "We’ve been talking about this for a long time. A great thing for the American worker, what we just did."
After meeting with union leaders later in the day, Trump called it "a very powerful document" and promised an end to multi-nation trade pacts. "We're going to have trade but we're going to have it one-on-one, and if somebody misbehaves, we're going to send them a letter of termination, 30 days, and they'll either straighten it out or we're gone," he said. "Not one of these deals where we can't get out of them. It's a disaster."
The Mexico City policy, referred to as the "global gag rule" by abortion rights groups, was first adopted by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been subject to presidential ping-pong ever since. Democratic presidents repeal it as one of their first acts in office; Republicans reinstate it.
In restoring the Mexico City policy, Trump reinstated Reagan-Bush language that "taxpayer funds appropriated pursuant to the Foreign Assistance Act should not be given to foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform abortions or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."
But Trump also went a step further, applying the ban to "global health assistance furnished by all departments or agencies" — not just family planning programs by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. And he included new language banning the use of taxpayer funds to support organizations that participate in "coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization."
"There's one big, big thing that this does," said Jen Kates, a vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which takes no position on the policy. "Bush made it clear that the policy didn't apply to non-family planning money. So this is a big expansion of the restriction."
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the policy should not have come as a surprise.
"The president has made it no secret that he's a pro-life president," Spicer said. "He wants to stand up for all American's including the unborn and I think the reinstatement of this policy is not just something that echoes that value but respects taxpayer funding as well."
The federal hiring freeze is in line with a similar freeze by Reagan on his first day. Trump made exceptions for military, national security and public safety positions, as well as others deemed "otherwise necessary" by the Office of Personnel Management.
"Control over the administrative state is key to presidential power," said Andrew Rudalevige, a Bowdoin College professor who studies presidential power. "It’s important for president to get an early grasp on what they control."
None of the directives were executive orders, but rather presidential memoranda. Sometimes known as "executive orders by another name," presidential memoranda became President Obama's executive power tool of choice, signing more of them than any president in history even as he tempered use of executive orders.
Trump already signed his first executive order on Friday, directing agencies to allow more flexibility to states, companies and consumers in carrying out the Affordable Care Act while the Republican-controlled Congress works to repeal it.
Read more:
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2jQRUeFThe ears of the praying mantis are easily overlooked, even by entomology experts. Until the research of Yager and Hoy in the late 1980s, (Cell Tissue Res (1987) 250:531-541), the mantis was not known to be capable of sound detection. The praying mantis uses crypsis (blending with its surroundings) to stalk and capture unwary insect prey and to hide from predators of all sorts. Making noise would be counterproductive. Mating in the praying mantis involves release of pheromone by the female and does not depend on sound like mating in grasshoppers and katydids.
Why does the praying mantis have ears? Its camouflage is very effective against visual predators when it is stationary. Its camouflage is not at all effective when it flies. In daytime, predators such as birds are abundant. It is safer for the mantis to fly under cover of darkness. However, dangerous predators patrol the flyways at night- bats. Bats prey on many insects including the praying mantis. Bats use sonar (sound waves) to locate and capture flying insects. The ears of the mantis warn of approaching bats and allow the mantis to take evasive action.
Yager and Hoy investigated the unusual structure of the underside of the praying mantis thorax and determined that it was a sound detection organ. The segment of the thorax that contains the middle legs of the mantis has a shallow groove that leads to an even deeper groove between the hind legs of the mantis. The deep groove contains the mantis ears. Each side of the groove contains a thin area of cuticle that vibrates in response to sound waves, including the sounds made by bats. Inside the mantis, air sacs are aligned next to the cuticle of the groove. When the cuticle of the groove vibrates, it causes the underlying air in the air sac to vibrate and the “sound” is received by the mantis nervous system.
The configuration of the mantis ears probably does not allow the mantis to get directional information about the bat. However, evading bats involves adjustments in flight, commonly sharp non-directional turns or to enter a steep “power dive” to the ground. For these movements, knowing the bat’s direction of approach is not as important as just knowing the bat is nearby.Entertainment
Before the advent of DVD special features, alternate endings were often consigned to the cutting room floor, never to be seen by the general population. However, that’s no longer the case — and thanks to sites like YouTube, it’s easier to see these clips than ever before.
Here are five must-see alternate endings that might just change the way you saw these hit movies; at the very least, they’re an interesting look into the way films are made.
5. I Am Legend
This well-known alternate ending is more in line with the way things play out in Richard Matheson’s hugely influential novel. Rather than the explosive ending of the movie that went to cinemas, Will Smith’s character realizes that he might be as much of a scourge to the undead as they are to him. It may only be a few minutes long, but it changes the tone of everything that came before it.
4. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
The alternate ending to Dodgeball simply cuts the action short, leaving the referee’s call of a GloboGym win intact. The team from Average Joe’s are sent home as failures, and for once the bad guys come out on top. It’s most likely just a joke meant for the DVD release, but it’s a funny twist on the sports movie genre.
3. Little Shop of Horrors
Few alternate endings go quite as big as this one; rather than the hint that the killer plant Audrey II is still alive that we got in the movie’s cinema release, this deleted denouement sees the world conquered by the flower. There’s all sorts of death and destruction — it’s certainly not what you’d expect from the closing moments of a stage adaptation.
2. 28 Days Later
The bleak zombie outbreak of 28 Days Later is made even more bleak by this alternate ending. Rather than have protagonist Jim saved on the operating table, this twist sees him expire. His two companions are forced to simply carry on out without him — it’s not the most satisfying way to round off a movie, but it’s very fitting considering the jet-black tone of the film.
1. Titanic
It might seem like some sort of horrible joke, but this alternate ending Titanic is very, very real. It’s difficult to imagine the movie going on to quite such box office success and critical acclaim as it enjoyed had these awful final moments been the last things audiences saw. The acting is bad, the dialogue is wooden and, generally, it seems beneath the rest of the movie.
What’s your favorite alternate ending? Or do you prefer to stick to the way things turn out in the cinema release? Let us know in the comments section below, or get in touch via Twitter by following @SocialNewsDaily.Last month, the Google Car had its first minor accident, but according to the US transport secretary Anthony Foxx, it was inevitable. Speaking to the BBC at the SXSW festival this week, Foxx said that accident was "not a surprise," and that it was part of the ongoing process of improving autonomous technology.
"At some point, there would be a crash of any technology that's on the road. But I would challenge one to look at the number of crashes that occurred on the same
|
com briefly jailed and millions of dollars of property confiscated from his New Zealand home.
US officials are still seeking to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand over allegations that Megaupload constituted a massive conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. Dotcom has steadfastly denied the charges, and the extradition effort has met with growing resistance from New Zealand officials after aspects of the investigation into Megaupload were found to be unlawful.
As the case lumbers on, Dotcom has mounted an impressive public relations campaign aimed at clearing his name, marked by rapid-fire Twitter posts and even a music video extolling the virtues of Megaupload.
More recently, he has tried to paint himself as a Robin Hood figure, touting a plan to offer free broadband internet access to Kiwis via an undersea cable that would link New Zealand with the US.
Such largesse could also benefit Gabon, which has declared 2013 "the year of the internet." Gabon's government has been working hard to reduce the cost of internet access there, with the aim of seeing a homegrown digital economy emerge by 2016.
But alas, it seems any help from Dotcom is unlikely, given present circumstances. The Mega-man says he already has a backup domain name lined up for his new venture, though he has yet to say what it is or in what country he will try to host it this time. ®Marching Squares, partitioning space
Content creation is a big part of making games. Something special happens when editing is built right into the game itself. The player becomes a creator too. In this tutorial you will create an editable 2D voxel grid, then use the Marching Squares algorithm to triangulate it. You'll learn to Construct a 2D voxel grid;
Split a map into chunks;
Support editing of the voxels;
Triangulate the voxels. This tutorial builds on the foundation laid by previous tutorials. If you've done the Curves and Splines tutorial you should be good to go. The Noise Derivatives tutorial is also useful because it contains a basic introduction of meshes. This tutorial has been made with Unity 4.5.2. It might not work for older versions.
Drawing angular shapes.
Showing a Bitmap
What does it mean to edit or creating something digital? Think of image editing software. Basically, you're manipulating a 2D grid of color data using various brushes, filters, and stencils. If you're using layers, you could be considered to work in three dimensions, even though the result is presented as a flat surface. Applying this concept to games, you could be creating a level layout or world map instead of an image. Or you could even create a true 3D environment. However, there's a lot involved to get that working. Let's start with something simple. As 2D is a lot easier to work with than 3D, we'll limit ourselves to a flat surface. We'll keep it square so the width and length are the same size. We fill this square area with a voxel grid. These voxels could contain any data we want, and the simplest is a single boolean to indicate whether it's empty or filled. So for now we'll work with a grid of 1-bit values.
Creating a Voxel Grid
Create a new project. You can make it a 2D project, so you start with an orthographic camera and the scene view set to 2D mode by default. This is not essential though. We need a custom component to contain our voxels. It needs a boolean array and a resolution. We could use a two-dimensional array, but a normal array works as well. It's both faster and makes it easier to linearly loop through all elements, in case we desire to do so.
using UnityEngine; public class VoxelGrid : MonoBehaviour { public int resolution; private bool[] voxels; private void Awake () { voxels = new bool[resolution * resolution]; } }
A voxel grid object with resolution 8.
We have to use something to visualize the voxels. Let's use a default quad object, with its collider removed because we don't need that. Create one and turn it into a prefab.
Voxel Prefab quad.
To make use of the prefab, the grid needs to get a reference to it. So add a voxelPrefab variable and drag the prefab onto it. Also add a directional light and clear its rotation, so quad instances will be fully lit.
public GameObject voxelPrefab;
Ready for visualization.
For now we use a 1-unit area. So the size of the area covered by one voxel is equal to one divided by the resolution. Let's remember it.
private float voxelSize; private void Awake () { voxelSize = 1f / resolution; voxels = new bool[resolution * resolution]; }
After the array has been initialized, we can create the individual voxels. We'll loop through the X and Y direction such that our array gets filled with consecutive rows of voxels along the X axis.
for (int i = 0, y = 0; y < resolution; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < resolution; x++, i++) { CreateVoxel(i, x, y); } }
Storing a 3x3 voxel grid in a 1D array.
Creating a voxel right now just requires us to instantiate, position, and scale a prefab. As the quads are centered, we set the voxel positions at the center of their area. So we have to offset by half the voxel size.
private void CreateVoxel (int i, int x, int y) { GameObject o = Instantiate(voxelPrefab) as GameObject; o.transform.parent = transform; o.transform.localPosition = new Vector3((x + 0.5f) * voxelSize, (y + 0.5f) * voxelSize); o.transform.localScale = Vector3.one * voxelSize; }
Now you should see a which square show up when entering play mode, although it's actually a grid of quads. You'll probably have to adjust the orthographic camera's size property to get a good look at it.
A grid of quads.
Right now, selecting the grid of quads in the scene view selects whichever quad is under the cursor. As we'll be interested in selecting the grid as a whole, this is inconvenient. We can add the SelectionBase attribute to our component to instruct Unity to select it instead of its children.
[SelectionBase] public class VoxelGrid : MonoBehaviour { … }
Finally, to make the grid structure visible, we can reduce quad size a bit.
Vector3 voxelScale = Vector3.one * voxelSize * 0.9f ;
It's a grid, not a single quad.
Partitioning the Voxels
Now we have a square voxel grid, which we can make as large as we want. However, extremely large or technically infinite worlds will become a problem, especially once you start using more complex voxels and visualizations. Sooner or later, you'll have to partition your world into individual chunks to work around some technical limitation. Instead of refactoring our code once we reach that point, let's support chunking from the start. To do so, we need an overarching object that manages the individual grid chunks. Assuming that we're working on some world or level map, we introduce a VoxelMap component. We give it a size so we can easily control to dimensions of the entire map. We also give it a voxel resolution, which we pass along to the individual voxel grids. Finally, we give it a chunk resolution, which determines the size of our chunk grid.
using UnityEngine; public class VoxelMap : MonoBehaviour { public float size = 2f; public int voxelResolution = 8; public int chunkResolution = 2; public VoxelGrid voxelGridPrefab; }
After adding an object with this component to the scene, turn our voxel grid into a prefab and assign it to the new map object.
Voxel map instead of a single voxel grid.
As the map will create the grids and pass along their resolution and size, we turn VoxelGrid.Awake into an initialization method.
public void Initialize ( int resolution, float size ) { this.resolution = resolution; voxelSize = size / resolution; voxels = new bool[resolution * resolution]; for (int i = 0, y = 0; y < resolution; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < resolution; x++, i++) { CreateVoxel(i, x, y); } } }
VoxelMap now has to instantiate its voxel grid children when it awakens. It works similar to how voxel grids are initialized. Let's center the map around zero, so it always stays in the center of our view, no matter its size. Let's also compute and remember some convenient size values, as we might need them later.
private VoxelGrid[] chunks; private float chunkSize, voxelSize, halfSize; private void Awake () { halfSize = size * 0.5f; chunkSize = size / chunkResolution; voxelSize = chunkSize / voxelResolution; chunks = new VoxelGrid[chunkResolution * chunkResolution]; for (int i = 0, y = 0; y < chunkResolution; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < chunkResolution; x++, i++) { CreateChunk(i, x, y); } } } private void CreateChunk (int i, int x, int y) { VoxelGrid chunk = Instantiate(voxelGridPrefab) as VoxelGrid; chunk.Initialize(voxelResolution, chunkSize); chunk.transform.parent = transform; chunk.transform.localPosition = new Vector3(x * chunkSize - halfSize, y * chunkSize - halfSize); chunks[i] = chunk; }
Voxel map with top right grid selected.
Editing Voxels
To be able to edit our map, we have to detect user input. So add a 3D box collider of the appropriate size to VoxelMap when it awakens.
private void Awake () { … BoxCollider box = gameObject.AddComponent<BoxCollider>(); box.size = new Vector3(size, size); }
We'll check each update whether the mouse button is currently pressed. If so, we perform a ray-cast from the cursor position. If it hits the map, we convert the point to local space and use it to edit our voxels.
private void Update () { if (Input.GetMouseButton(0)) { RaycastHit hitInfo; if(Physics.Raycast(Camera.main.ScreenPointToRay(Input.mousePosition), out hitInfo)) { if (hitInfo.collider.gameObject == gameObject) { EditVoxels(transform.InverseTransformPoint(hitInfo.point)); } } } }
Before doing some real editing, let's see if we can convert the input point into voxel coordinates.
private void EditVoxels (Vector3 point) { int voxelX = (int)(point.x / voxelSize); int voxelY = (int)(point.y / voxelSize); Debug.Log(voxelX + ", " + voxelY); }
Looks like the (0, 0) coordinate is located in the center of the map. For our finite map, it is more convenient to assign (0, 0) to the bottom left voxel, so let's offset it.
int voxelX = (int)( ( point.x + halfSize) / voxelSize); int voxelY = (int)( ( point.y + halfSize) / voxelSize);
Next, we have to identify the chunk that contains the voxel.
int voxelX = (int)((point.x + halfSize) / voxelSize); int voxelY = (int)((point.y + halfSize) / voxelSize); int chunkX = voxelX / voxelResolution; int chunkY = voxelY / voxelResolution; Debug.Log(voxelX + ", " + voxelY + " in chunk " + chunkX + ", " + chunkY );
Now that we know which voxel grid was touched we can convert to the chunk's local voxel coordinates. Then instead of logging the coordinates we instruct the chunk to fill its voxel.
voxelX -= chunkX * voxelResolution; voxelY -= chunkY * voxelResolution; chunks[chunkY * chunkResolution + chunkX].SetVoxel(voxelX, voxelY, true);
So we have to add this method to VoxelGrid, which is simple.
public void SetVoxel (int x, int y, bool state) { voxels[y * resolution + x] = state; }
While we are now actually editing voxels when clicking and dragging across the map, there is no visual change yet. As the voxels start empty and white, let's change the color of filled voxels to black. To do so, VoxelGrid has to know which material belongs to a voxel. A simple solution is to add a material array and fill it while we instantiate our voxel quads. Once they're all created, we can set all the voxel colors at once.
private Material[] voxelMaterials; public void Initialize (int resolution, float size) { this.resolution = resolution; voxelSize = size / resolution; voxels = new bool[resolution * resolution]; voxelMaterials = new Material[voxels.Length]; for (int i = 0, y = 0; y < resolution; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < resolution; x++, i++) { CreateVoxel(i, x, y); } } SetVoxelColors(); } private void CreateVoxel (int i, int x, int y) { GameObject o = Instantiate(voxelPrefab) as GameObject; o.transform.parent = transform; o.transform.localPosition = new Vector3((x + 0.5f) * voxelSize, (y + 0.5f) * voxelSize); o.transform.localScale = Vector3.one * voxelSize * 0.9f; voxelMaterials[i] = o.GetComponent<MeshRenderer>().material; }
Setting the voxel colors is done by simply looping through the voxels and looking at their state.
private void SetVoxelColors () { for (int i = 0; i < voxels.Length; i++) { voxelMaterials[i].color = voxels[i]? Color.black : Color.white; } }
By also calling SetVoxelColors after editing a voxel in SetVoxel, our edits will finally become visible.
public void SetVoxel (int x, int y, bool state) { voxels[y * resolution + x] = state; SetVoxelColors(); }
Painting voxels.
Stenciling
Right now we can only edit a single voxel at a time. It would be nice if we could support editing multiple voxels at once, using a stencil or brush with a configurable size. To do that, we need some kind of stencil object, so let's create a class for it. As it won't be a scene object, it won't inherit from MonoBehaviour. Give the stencil a simple method to apply it to a voxel at a certain position. It should return the new voxel state, which for now will always be filled.
using UnityEngine; public class VoxelStencil { public bool Apply (int x, int y) { return true; } }
Now that we're applying stencils to voxels, change VoxelGrid.SetVoxel to Apply and have it accept a stencil instead of a voxel state.
public void Apply (int x, int y, VoxelStencil stencil ) { voxels[y * resolution + x] = stencil.Apply(x, y) ; SetVoxelColors(); }
Now we have to create a stencil in VoxelMap.EditVoxels so we can pass it to the chunk.
VoxelStencil activeStencil = new VoxelStencil(); chunks[chunkY * chunkResolution + chunkX]. Apply (voxelX, voxelY, activeStencil );
Changing the Paint
Though our approach has changed, editing still works the same from the user's or gamer's point of view. This changes once we add more features to our stencil. For example, we can set the stencil to either fill or empty the voxels it touches. To support this we add a fill type and initializer method to our stencil. Then we let Apply return this fill type.
private bool fillType; public void Initialize (bool fillType) { this.fillType = fillType; } public bool Apply (int x, int y) { return fillType ; }
Let's add a very basic UI to switch fill type, by adding an OnGUI method to VoxelMap. Create a small layout area at the top left of the screen, then put a label and a selection grid in it. We'll use a simple string array to fill the selection grid and we'll remember which index has been selected.
private static string[] fillTypeNames = {"Filled", "Empty"}; private int fillTypeIndex; private void OnGUI () { GUILayout.BeginArea(new Rect(4f, 4f, 150f, 500f)); GUILayout.Label("Fill Type"); fillTypeIndex = GUILayout.SelectionGrid(fillTypeIndex, fillTypeNames, 2); GUILayout.EndArea(); }
We can then use fillTypeIndex to initialize the stencil in ExitVoxels. Now you can switch between filling and emptying voxels in play mode.
VoxelStencil activeStencil = new VoxelStencil(); activeStencil.Initialize(fillTypeIndex == 0); chunks[chunkY * chunkResolution + chunkX].Apply(voxelX, voxelY, activeStencil);
Select the fill type.
Increasing the Radius
Next, let's make the size of the stencil configurable. We do this by adding a radius to it, measured in voxels. A zero-radius stencil only affects the voxel that was hit. A radius of one will also affect all voxels adjacent to it, and so on. To support this, add center coordinates and a radius to the stencil. Also add a separate method to set the center, because we'll end up needing to call it more than once.
private int centerX, centerY, radius; public void Initialize (bool fillType, int radius ) { this.fillType = fillType; this.radius = radius; } public void SetCenter (int x, int y) { centerX = x; centerY = y; }
Now that our stencil knows its dimensions, we can ask it which voxels we should apply it too. We can do that by adding four properties that define the bounds of a rectangular area through which we have to to loop.
public int XStart { get { return centerX - radius; } } public int XEnd { get { return centerX + radius; } } public int YStart { get { return centerY - radius; } } public int YEnd { get { return centerY + radius; } }
Give our UI another selection grid so we can control the stencil's radius. A range from zero to five should be plenty for a small map.
private static string[] radiusNames = {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5"}; private int fillTypeIndex, radiusIndex ; private void OnGUI () { GUILayout.BeginArea(new Rect(4f, 4f, 150f, 500f)); GUILayout.Label("Fill Type"); fillTypeIndex = GUILayout.SelectionGrid(fillTypeIndex, fillTypeNames, 2); GUILayout.Label("Radius"); radiusIndex = GUILayout.SelectionGrid(radiusIndex, radiusNames, 6); GUILayout.EndArea(); }
Select the radius.
We now have to set the stencil's radius and center in VoxelMap.EditVoxels. Because the stencil holds all data that we need, we can remove the coordinates from the call to VoxelGrid.Apply. I've also renamed the coordinate variables so it's clear that we're working with a center.
private void EditVoxels (Vector3 point) { int centerX = (int)((point.x + halfSize) / voxelSize); int centerY = (int)((point.y + halfSize) / voxelSize); int chunkX = centerX / voxelResolution; int chunkY = centerY / voxelResolution; centerX -= chunkX * voxelResolution; centerY -= chunkY * voxelResolution; VoxelStencil activeStencil = new VoxelStencil(); activeStencil.Initialize(fillTypeIndex == 0, radiusIndex ); activeStencil.SetCenter(centerX, centerY); chunks[chunkY * chunkResolution + chunkX].Apply (activeStencil) ; }
VoxelGrid.Apply has to loop over all voxels that are covered by the stencil. So we use the stencil's properties to perform a double loop and compute the array indices.
public void Apply (VoxelStencil stencil) { int xStart = stencil.XStart; int xEnd = stencil.XEnd; int yStart = stencil.YStart; int yEnd = stencil.YEnd; for (int y = yStart; y <= yEnd; y++) { int i = y * resolution + xStart; for (int x = xStart; x <= xEnd; x++, i++) { voxels[ i ] = stencil.Apply(x, y); } } SetVoxelColors(); }
This seems to work, but only when we stay in the center of individual voxel grids, because otherwise we go out of bounds. We have to cut off the area that falls outside the voxel grid.
int xStart = stencil.XStart; if (xStart < 0) { xStart = 0; } int xEnd = stencil.XEnd; if (xEnd >= resolution) { xEnd = resolution - 1; } int yStart = stencil.YStart; if (yStart < 0) { yStart = 0; } int yEnd = stencil.YEnd; if (yEnd >= resolution) { yEnd = resolution - 1; }
Radius 1 stencil produces unexpected shapes.
We no longer get errors, but we get unexpected results when using a nonzero radius. This happens because we're currently only applying the stencil to the voxel grid that contains its center. So the stencil gets cut off by chunk boundaries. To fix this, we basically have to do the same thing in VoxelMap.EditVoxels as we did in VoxelGrid.Apply. Instead of looping over covered voxels, we have to loop over covered chunks. So we define a voxel area and convert it into chunk bounds, then loop over those chunks. We also have to reset the stencil's center so it matches each chunk's local coordinates.
private void EditVoxels (Vector3 point) { int centerX = (int)((point.x + halfSize) / voxelSize); int centerY = (int)((point.y + halfSize) / voxelSize); int xStart = (centerX - radiusIndex) / voxelResolution; if (xStart < 0) { xStart = 0; } int xEnd = (centerX + radiusIndex) / voxelResolution; if (xEnd >= chunkResolution) { xEnd = chunkResolution - 1; } int yStart = (centerY - radiusIndex) / voxelResolution; if (yStart < 0) { yStart = 0; } int yEnd = (centerY + radiusIndex) / voxelResolution; if (yEnd >= chunkResolution) { yEnd = chunkResolution - 1; } VoxelStencil activeStencil = new VoxelStencil(); activeStencil.Initialize(fillTypeIndex == 0, radiusIndex); int voxelYOffset = yStart * voxelResolution; for (int y = yStart; y <= yEnd; y++) { int i = y * chunkResolution + xStart; int voxelXOffset = xStart * voxelResolution; for (int x = xStart; x <= xEnd; x++, i++) { activeStencil.SetCenter(centerX - voxelXOffset, centerY - voxelYOffset ); chunks[ i ].Apply(activeStencil); voxelXOffset += voxelResolution; } voxelYOffset += voxelResolution; } }
Stencils working across chunks.
Adding a Circular Stencil
Our current stencil is square, but that's not the only possible shape. Let's add the possibility to choose between a square and a circular stencil. To easily support different stencils, we'll use inheritance. VoxelStencil will be the base class. First, make its fields protected instead of private, so subclasses can access them. Also declare its methods as virtual, so subclasses can override them if needed.
protected bool fillType; protected int centerX, centerY, radius; public virtual void Initialize (bool fillType, int radius) { this.fillType = fillType; this.radius = radius; } public virtual void SetCenter (int x, int y) { centerX = x; centerY = y; } public virtual bool Apply (int x, int y) { return fillType; }
Because a circular stencil won't touch all voxels covered by its rectangular bounds, we need to way to not change a voxel. We can do so by passing the original voxel value to the stencil's Apply method, so let's add it to the parameter list.
public virtual bool Apply (int x, int y, bool voxel ) { return fillType; }
Of course we now have to pass along the voxel in VoxelGrid.Apply.
voxels[i] = stencil.Apply(x, y, voxels[i] );
We are now ready to add a new stencil class. We'll name it VoxelStencilCircle. To determine whether a voxel is inside the circle we can compare square radiuses. So let's override Initialize to store a precomputed square radius. Then inside Apply we check if the coordinates fall inside the circle. If so, we return the stencil's fill type, otherwise we return the original value.
using UnityEngine; public class VoxelStencilCircle : VoxelStencil { private int sqrRadius; public override void Initialize (bool fillType, int radius) { base.Initialize (fillType, radius); sqrRadius = radius * radius; } public override bool Apply (int x, int y, bool voxel) { x -= centerX; y -= centerY; if (x * x + y * y <= sqrRadius) { return fillType; } return voxel; } }
Using the Pythagorean theorem to determine inclusion.
Now we have to add a new configuration option to our UI.
private static string[] stencilNames = {"Square", "Circle"}; private int fillTypeIndex, radiusIndex, stencilIndex; private void OnGUI () { GUILayout.BeginArea(new Rect(4f, 4f, 150f, 500f)); GUILayout.Label("Fill Type"); fillTypeIndex = GUILayout.SelectionGrid(fillTypeIndex, fillTypeNames, 2); GUILayout.Label("Radius"); radiusIndex = GUILayout.SelectionGrid(radiusIndex, radiusNames, 6); GUILayout.Label("Stencil"); stencilIndex = GUILayout.SelectionGrid(stencilIndex, stencilNames, 2); GUILayout.EndArea(); }
Pick your stencil.
An instead of creating a new stencil instance each time, we store an instance of each in an array.
private VoxelStencil[] stencils = { new VoxelStencil(), new VoxelStencilCircle() };
So in EditVoxels we can use the currently selected one.
VoxelStencil activeStencil = stencils[stencilIndex] ;
And now we can draw blocky circles!
Playing with circle stencils.
Marching the Squares
So far we've been using individual quads to show a blocky grid. This is fine in some situations, but it is very useful to be able to produce a single mesh per grid chunk. As the voxels are either filled or empty, the transition between those two states happens somewhere in between the voxels. To represent this with a mesh, we need to place triangles in the square areas between voxels. These areas are usually known as cells. You can see these square when you reduce the voxel quads to small dots. As they provide a handy visual aid, we'll keep them even after adding the mesh. To keep the dots visible, put them a bit closer to the camera.
o.transform.localPosition = new Vector3((x + 0.5f) * voxelSize, (y + 0.5f) * voxelSize, -0.01f ); o.transform.localScale = Vector3.one * voxelSize * 0.1f ;
A grid of squares that have voxels at their corners.
Recalling how the full-size quads filled the grid previously, you can work out that there were sixteen different ways that the square areas could be filled. If you then filter out patterns that are rotated version of each other together, you end up with six groups.
Six ways to to fill the cells, ignoring rotation.
We're going to use the Marching Squares algorithm to triangulate these squares. We will reproduce the configurations that we discovered above, but we'll directly connect the square edges instead of going through the center. We're basically taking shortcuts along diagonals. This is known as primal contouring, while the alternative is dual contouring. We still have the same six group types, but one of them is now ambiguous. When there are two filled voxels that both share empty neighbors, do we connect them diagonally or disconnect them? Neither option is better than the other, so let's just pick one and be consistent about it. I choose to keep them disconnected.
Marching Squares cell configurations, including both ambiguous cases.
Preparing for Triangulation
Before we start with our mesh, first create simple flat shader that requires no uv and normal data, so we don't have to worry about that. Here's an adjusted default surface shader that takes care of this. I removed the texture, injected a fixed normal, and added a color property. The dummy is needed to prevent a compiler error.
Shader "Custom/2D Flat" { Properties { _Color ("Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1) } SubShader { Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" } LOD 200 CGPROGRAM #pragma surface surf Lambert vertex:vert fixed4 _Color; struct Input { float dummy; }; void vert (inout appdata_full v) { v.normal = float3(0, 0, -1); } void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutput o) { o.Albedo = _Color.rgb; } ENDCG } FallBack "Diffuse" }
Add a MeshFilter and MeshRenderer component to the Voxel Grid prefab, then create a new material that uses the custom shader and assign it to the prefab.
Preparing for triangulation.
Next, VoxelGrid needs a Mesh variable. We also need to accumulate vertices and triangle data somehow. Because we don't know ahead of time how many vertices and triangles will be generated, let's add two list variables so we don't have to worry about size limits.
using UnityEngine; using System.Collections.Generic; [SelectionBase] public class VoxelGrid : MonoBehaviour { private Mesh mesh; private List<Vector3> vertices; private List<int> triangles … }
Now we are no longer just setting voxel colors. Replace the call to SetVoxelColors at the end of Initialize with the initialization of our mesh data and a call to a new Refresh method. Also replace the call to SetVoxelColors in Apply with the invocation of Refresh.
public void Initialize (int resolution, float size) { … GetComponent<MeshFilter>().mesh = mesh = new Mesh(); mesh.name = "VoxelGrid Mesh"; vertices = new List<Vector3>(); triangles = new List<int>(); Refresh(); } public void Apply (VoxelStencil stencil) { … Refresh(); }
Refreshing now entails both setting the old colors and a new triangulation, for which we add a placeholder method.
private void Refresh () { SetVoxelColors(); Triangulate(); } private void Triangulate () { }
Adding a Voxel Class
We will need to place vertices at voxel positions and halfway along the edge between two voxels. We could compute these positions each time we need to position a vertex, but it's more convenient to precompute and store them, so let's do that. Storing voxel positions is easy, as we already compute those. We could either store the edge positions separately, or along with the voxel data. If we consider a voxel to define the bottom-left corner of a cell, then it is adjacent to the bottom and left edges of that cell as well. As this is true for all voxels, we can store these two edge positions along with the voxel position. This would mean that the rightmost and topmost voxels have edge data that's poking outside the grid, but we'll worry about that later.
Storing voxel and edge positions together.
To store this data in a convenient way, let's upgrade our voxel booleans into full-fledged objects. Add a new Voxel class that contains the boolean voxel state, its position, and the edge positions for the X and Y directions. Also mark the class as serializable, so the voxel data can survive code compilation while Unity is in play mode.
using UnityEngine; using System; [Serializable] public class Voxel { public bool state; public Vector2 position, xEdgePosition, yEdgePosition; }
Give it a constructor method in which it calculates its positions values. It needs to know its coordinates and size to do so, though we don't need to store them.
public Voxel (int x, int y, float size) { position.x = (x + 0.5f) * size; position.y = (y + 0.5f) * size; xEdgePosition = position; xEdgePosition.x += size * 0.5f; yEdgePosition = position; yEdgePosition.y += size * 0.5f; }
Now we need need to modify VoxelGrid a bit. Change the voxel array's type, create new voxel instances, and access the voxel's state variable, instead of just working with booleans.
private Voxel [] voxels; public void Initialize (int resolution, float size) { this.resolution = resolution; voxelSize = size / resolution; voxels = new Voxel [resolution * resolution]; … } private void CreateVoxel (int i, int x, int y) { … voxels[i] = new Voxel(x, y, voxelSize); } private void SetVoxelColors () { for (int i = 0; i < voxels.Length; i++) { voxelMaterials[i].color = voxels[i].state? Color.black : Color.white; } } public void Apply (VoxelStencil stencil) { … voxels[i].state = stencil.Apply(x, y, voxels[i].state ); … }
Triangulating
It is now time to fill in the Triangulate method. We start by clearing the old data, then triangulate all cell rows, then assign new vertices and triangles to the mesh.
private void Triangulate () { vertices.Clear(); triangles.Clear(); mesh.Clear(); TriangulateCellRows(); mesh.vertices = vertices.ToArray(); mesh.triangles = triangles.ToArray(); }
Because cells sit between voxels, the cell resolution of a grid is one lower than its voxel resolution. That means our TriangulateCellRows method must perform a double loop one step shorter than for voxels, as it triangulates each cell. As cells are identified by their lower-left voxel corner, we have to keep track of the voxel index. Also, because we're skipping the last voxel each row, we have to increase the index one more time per row, so we increment it in both loops.
private void TriangulateCellRows () { int cells = resolution - 1; for (int i = 0, y = 0; y < cells; y++, i++) { for (int x = 0; x < cells; x++, i++) { TriangulateCell(); } } }
A cell is defined by its four corner voxels, so we have to provide them to TriangulateCell. Let's order them just in the same way the entire voxel grid is ordered, first along X, then along Y.
Cell corners, ordered like a 1x1 voxel grid.
The A voxel is simply the voxel with the current index. The B voxel is one step further. The C voxel is on the next row, so we have to add the resolution to the index. And the D voxel is one step further than C.
private void TriangulateCellRows () { int cells = resolution - 1; for (int i = 0, y = 0; y < cells; y++, i++) { for (int x = 0; x < cells; x++, i++) { TriangulateCell( voxels[i], voxels[i + 1], voxels[i + resolution], voxels[i + resolution + 1] ); } } } private void TriangulateCell (Voxel a, Voxel b, Voxel c, Voxel d) { }
TriangulateCell now needs to figure out the configuration of the cell's corners. We can identify the sixteen possible cases by assigning numbers to corners and combining them like bit masks. We assign the first bit to A, which is the number 1. The second bit goes to B, so its number is 2. C gets the third bit, which makes it 4. And D has the fourth bit, being 8.
Corners with their bits and numbers.
If we combine the numbers of filled corners using the binary OR operator, we end up with a number in the 0–15 range. This number tells us which of the sixteen possible types our cell has.
int cellType = 0; if (a.state) { cellType |= 1; } if (b.state) { cellType |= 2; } if (c.state) { cellType |= 4; } if (d.state) { cellType |= 8; }
Sixteen possible cell types, rotations grouped.
Now we have to perform a different triangulation for each of the sixteen cases. We'll use a switch statement pick the right one. First up is case 0, which is trivial as the cell is empty.
switch (cellType) { case 0: return; }
Case 1 requires placing one triangle at the bottom left of the cell, between A's position and its adjacent edges. Make sure to supply the points in a clockwise order, so the triangle will face the camera.
switch (cellType) { case 0: return; case 1: AddTriangle(a.position, a.yEdgePosition, a.xEdgePosition); break; }
We just assumed that we had an AddTriangle method, but we didn't so we have to create it now. First fetch the current vertex count, which equals the index of the next vertex to be added. Then just add the vertices to the vertex list and their indices to the triangle list.
private void AddTriangle (Vector3 a, Vector3 b, Vector3 c) { int vertexIndex = vertices.Count; vertices.Add(a); vertices.Add(b); vertices.Add(c); triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex + 1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex + 2); }
Try it out somewhere in the middle of a chunk. Filling a voxel should produce a single triangle. It won't seem to work right along chunk edges, but don't worry about that just yet.
Case 1 covered.
The other three single-corner cases work the same way, they just require different points. I've grouped similar cases together here, but you can also sort them numerically.
case 2: AddTriangle(b.position, a.xEdgePosition, b.yEdgePosition); break; case 4: AddTriangle(c.position, c.xEdgePosition, a.yEdgePosition); break; case 8: AddTriangle(d.position, b.yEdgePosition
|
.
About Rogue Ales & Spirits
Rogue Ales & Spirits is an agri-fermenter founded in Oregon in 1988 as one of America’s first microbreweries. Rogue has won more than 1,800 awards for taste, quality and packaging and is available in all 50 states as well as 54 countries. Since 2008, Rogue has remained committed to saving the terroir of Oregon hops, barley, rye, wheat, honey, jalapeños, and pumpkins one acre at a time by growing its own.What happened in web development in 2017? What were our personal and professional feats in 2017? What should we look forward to in 2018?
Snipcart allows you to create online shopping carts without any backend work. It's entirely client-side which means it's the perfect fit for anyone building a SPA in React, Angular or any other framework. Check out the full list of features over at Snipcart.com/syntax and sign up for three months free!
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The Show Notes!
02:00
Scott's 2017 Look Back
Scott is a new parent
Dealing with kids who don't sleep
Scott's Breakdancing Gains
05:20
Wes' Look Back
Taking Health Seriously
First full year of Wes doing tutorials full time
Course Correction VS Goals
Course Platform Improvements
Lots of Email Marketing
Migration to Drip
09:10
Scott cut ties with startup
100% Invested in Levelup Tutorials
Major Platform improvements
New Payment Gateways
Lots of new Series - 400 videos!
11:25
We Launched Syntax!
Thank you!
The show is getting good (we think?)
13:50
Wes launched his Learn Node Course
Wes updated his ES6 for Everyone Course
Lots of feedback on Wes' JavaScript30 course
Stickers!
16:20
Goals for 2018
The Yacht Club
S.M.A.R.T. Goals
18:00
Scott's 2018 Goals
More videos
More Youtube
Building a Set
Less Overtime
20:35
Wes' 2018 Goals
Releasing lots and lots of Content
CSS Grid
VS Code
Some ideas around JavaScript and CSS Courses tweet Wes your feedback
If it's not a Hell Yes, it's a no
Double down on what works
New Checkout Experience
Delegate + Automate
Get faster at recording
29:40
JavaScript in 2018
SSR Frameworks: Next.js, Gatsby, Nuxt.js
ParcelJS
Tooling is becoming less of a pain in the ass
33:00
GraphQL Is Blowin' Upppppp
Typed Languages / Typings
Flow / Typescript / ReasonML / GraphQL Typings
38:00
WordPress' Gutenberg Editor
41:00
React Patent's Dropped
Vue became really popular
45:30
CSS Changes!
CSS Grid
Firefox CSS Grid Dev Tools
48:50
Componentized CSS
Design Systems
Figma
CSS Variables
54:00
VS Code became very popular
55:00
The Iron Yard shut down
58:00
Progressive Web Apps
59:00
What do we hope for in 2018?
Sick Picks
Tweet us your tasty treats!Related Everything You Need To Know About NFL Week 7
As the fourth quarter of Monday night’s game began, Carson Wentz disappeared.
Not figuratively speaking—the second-year quarterback literally vanished from the camera’s view, lost in a suffocating crush of Redskins defensive linemen. The question seemed to be not whether the play would result in a sack, but which Redskins defender would earn credit for it.
And then, like Eli Manning in Super Bowl XLII—or maybe the marine iguana from Planet Earth II—Wentz miraculously escaped.
That disappearing act was the best of Wentz’s myriad magic tricks as he led the Eagles to a 34-24 victory over the division-rival Redskins. Wentz finished the game completing 17 of 25 passes (68 percent) for 268 yards, four touchdowns, and one interception, good for a 126.3 passer rating. He even led both teams in rushing with eight carries for 63 yards—1 yard fewer than all other Eagles rushers combined. Philadelphia is now 6-1 and owns the best record in the NFL as well as a 2.5-game lead in the NFC East after seven weeks. Wentz, who now leads the NFL in passing touchdowns, is the best player on what might be the best team in the league, which feels like the latest of many shocking developments this season as it approaches its halfway point.
The Eagles started slowly Monday. Down 10-3 with just over four minutes to play in the first half, Wentz took an avoidable (and painful-looking) sack on first-and-10. He followed that up with a 64-yard touchdown pass to Mack Hollins (who might have biked to the stadium???) on second-and-16 that tied the game at 10. A Washington three-and-out gave the Eagles the ball back two minutes later, and Wentz led the team on a six-play, 80-yard drive that ended with a 4-yard touchdown pass to tight end Zach Ertz that put the Eagles up 17-10 heading into the half, just four minutes after they were trailing by seven points.
The second half was all Wentz. He led a 10-play, 81-yard drive to start the third quarter that ended with this ridiculous 9-yard touchdown toss to Corey Clement right as Wentz got popped.
Then early in the fourth quarter, Wentz turned a first-and-goal from the 10-yard line into an easy touchdown when he audibled and hit a wide-open Nelson Agholor.
Monday wasn’t all good news for the Eagles. Nine-time Pro Bowl left tackle Jason Peters suffered a knee injury scary enough for dozens of Eagles to meet him at midfield and the entire crowd to chant his name as he was carted off early in the third quarter. Losing Peters for an extended period will certainly diminish Philadelphia’s offensive line, and it’s unfortunate to lose him just as right tackle Lane Johnson returns from a concussion. But Wentz proved Monday that he has enough mojo in the pocket to handle leaky pass protection.
The Eagles host the 0-7 49ers next week in what could be a thrashing that sends them to 7-1, and then face the suddenly vulnerable Broncos the following week. By the time Philadelphia heads to Dallas in Week 11, the team may already be within striking distance of clinching the division, and Wentz might be the favorite for NFL MVP. Thus far, Wentz is showing up when the Eagles need him to—even if that means briefly disappearing.Spread the love
New Rochelle, NY– A video uploaded to LiveLeak on Saturday shows an officer holding a group of black youth at gun point, allegedly over a snowball fight. The incident reportedly took place on Wednesday after winter storm Juno landed the town a large amount of snowfall.
The footage was originally uploaded online in 2 parts, each 15 seconds long, before being obtained by the New Rochelle publication Talk of the Sound. It is unclear if a longer video exists.
The clip begins after the incident was already underway, so it is unknown what transpired before the good Samaritan began filming, but what she did capture is extremely troubling. It starts with a New Rochelle Police officer drawing his firearm and aiming it at a teenager kneeling in the snow. The officers were reportedly there to investigate a disturbance; a disturbance that is described by the woman filming the encounter as a snowball fight.
The officer is heard saying “Don’t f*cking move, guys, don’t move.” as he approaches with his weapon pointed at one of the youth before quickly frisking him.
“They were having a snowball fight, this group of guys was having a snowball fight and now a cop has a gun on them,” the witness laments as she films.
After frisking the teens, they appear to be released and sent on their way.
As of Saturday evening, the New Rochelle police have not responded to any media requests regarding the incident.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first case of police ruining winter fun this season.
Earlier this week we reported on police in New Jersey shutting down young and entrepreneurial high school students who were shoveling snow to earn a little bit of extra money.
At the beginning of January, we reported on Local politicians in cities and towns across America who are implementing laws that will ban children from sledding.
Let’s hope this war on winter activities doesn’t prove as deadly as the war on drugs.
Follow @CassandraRulesCTVNews.ca Staff
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has announced the preliminary details of a compensation plan for residents whose food was spoiled during the power outages caused by last weekend’s ice storm.
Wynne told reporters Sunday morning that Loblaw would be donating $25,000 in gift cards for affected residents to put toward replacing the food they had to throw out.
She said the provincial government is working on matching that amount, particularly for Ontarians who can't afford replacing the spoiled food. She also called on other grocery chains to step up.
Individuals who would like to donate to the effort can make a monetary donation to the Daily Bread Food Bank, she said. More details of the plan will be released in the coming days.
Residents of Toronto Community Housing told CTV Toronto that they've had to throw away thousands of dollars in food following the storm.
"Everything got spoiled, we throw everything in the garbage… chicken, beef," Gladys Ekeocha said Saturday, estimating that she tossed out $1,000 worth of groceries.
Wynne unveiled the preliminary details as Toronto Hydro announced that they were in the final stretch of the power restoration, with approximately 7,400 customers in the city still without electricity.
"We can see the finish line ahead of us," Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines said, noting that hydro crews would be working around the clock to finish the job. "We're getting that last group of customers back on."
Hydro One CEO Carmine Marcello said that power restoration outside of Toronto was pretty much complete, but warned that new outages may occur due to inclement weather conditions.
He said there will still be a fair amount of work to come, mostly involving tree trimming and removal.Looking for news you can trust?
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It was a moment of victory in the political cultural war that has gripped the United States since the tumultuous days of the 1960s. It came in the middle of the inauguration celebration held at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. And its bearer was Garth Brooks. The man who has epitomized country music, the official music of Red-State America, was hailing the election of a man who represents what many people with a Red-State mentality oppose: an America that embraces liberal attitudes of diversity and tolerance, that does not equate Ivy League-style education with effete elitism, and that does not hold on to traditions to block social change and progress. True, Brooks is no rock-ribbed redneck. His 1992 song, “We Shall Be Free.” essentially endorsed gay marriage. But when he performed the old Isley Brothers soul classic, “Shout,” before a massive crowd of Obama supporters, you could almost hear some Red-Staters wail, “They’ve turned our Garth into a black guy!” When he finished, Brooks doffed his cowboy hat toward President-elect Barack Obama, who sat with his family to the side of the stage.
The show at the Lincoln Memorial contained other moments signaling that the cultural civil war that began with the civil rights crusade, the movement against the Vietnam War, and the rise of hippie-dom was done—at least for now—and that the libs had won. Toward the end of the HBO-aired event, Bruce Springsteen, once a greaser-rocker, brought out folk music hero and activist Pete Seeger, once derided by conservatives as a commie, and Seeger led the crowd in “This Land Is Your Land.” This song is the liberal national anthem, written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 as a populist-minded response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which was too rah-rah for Guthrie’s liking. (Beyoncé then hit the stage and belted out “God Bless America.”)
Earlier in the day, minutes before HBO threw the on-switch for its taping, gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson delivered an invocation that probably would be considered heretical by many fundamentalists. He began:
Bless us with tears–for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger–at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people….Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance–replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Take that, Rick Warren.
During the show that followed, the Washington Gay Men’s Chorus performed “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”–appearing on the same stage as military honor guards. Gays and the military–it was all part of this “We Are One” extravaganza. Had John McCain and Sarah Palin (and their America) won in November, there would have been no such coming together. And no U2 singing “Pride (In the Name of Love”), its anthem-tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., for the new president the day before Martin Luther King Jr. Day (a federal holiday that had been opposed by some Red-Staters, including McCain).
In the United States, culture is politics—and vice versa. Obama’s election helped define—or redefine—which currents and sensibilities are ascendant. And Obama made this victory possible with his skills as a political communicator. He has deftly blocked the right’s traditional assaults on his—and, by extension, his supporter’s—patriotism. In fact, he has masterfully embraced America’s mythology—such as when he praises the drafters of the Declaration of Independence—while recognizing the past and present flaws of the nation.
On Saturday, in Philadelphia, as Obama began a train ride to Washington, DC, he delivered remarks that were better than many inaugural addresses of the past. Celebrating the revolution that gave birth to the United States, he said, “The American Revolution was–and remains–an ongoing struggle in the minds and hearts of the people to live up to our founding creed. Starting now, let’s take up in our own lives the work of perfecting our union.”
Politicians and others often smugly cite the nation’s founding fathers and their accomplishments in a self-satisfied manner and as an act of (national) self-validation. Obama references the country’s civic icons as an argument for national betterment. Before hopping on that train, Obama proclaimed, “People who love this country can change it.”
That is the opposite of the old slogan used by the right when the political culture war began: “America, love it or leave it.” No, the protesters of that time countered, America, make it better. The expansive view of America—that it is ever-changing, that it always can be improved, that it embodies a wide assortment of people and views—was on display beneath Lincoln’s marble gaze on Sunday. More important, it had helped propel the electoral wave that landed Obama in office.
No victories are permanent. Shifts, backlashes, reversals are always possible. But for the moment, via Obama’s election, a great debate has been decided. The times have a-changed.
For a different review of the show, click here.
Flickr photo from the Presidential Inaugural Committee used under a Creative Commons license.There’s been a spate of people misusing the newest thing in town: Bicycle-sharing.
Pictures of Ofo bikes being either abandoned or thrown about have been constantly surfacing.
But, proving that the universe tends to balance itself out, a tweet by Mok, showed not all is lost in Singapore.
Here’s the tweet in question.
instead of just leaving it aside, ruined, brought this bike home & asked my dad to repair! 👌🏼 pic.twitter.com/2BUyj6JqpL — mok (@qlhbusyra) April 19, 2017
The post detailed how she had seen the ruined bike while walking around.
And instead of despairing at the state of the nation, she brought the bike back, where her father helped to fix it up.
An act which received unanimous praise.
Cue applause.
Top photo from Mok’s Twitter
If you like what you read, follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest updates.Any law that forbids citizens from revealing what the government gets up to, or from speaking out about what they find, needs to be looked at with a very hard stare indeed. Yet that’s where we find ourselves with the draft Investigatory Powers Bill, aka the Snooper's Charter.
As Glyn Moody and George Danezis point out, the draft bill effectively makes it a crime to reveal the existence of government hacking. Along the way, the new law would also make it illegal to discuss the existence or nature of warrants with anyone under any circumstances, including in court or with your MP, no matter what’s been happening. The powers are sweeping, absolute, and carefully put beyond public scrutiny, effectively for ever. There’s no limitation of time.
Forget for one moment the wisdom of giving such powers to anyone and placing them outside the main system of law, as part of normal civil life. Ignore the chance that anyone within the security services or government or other authorised agencies might use this to cover up bad actions, either their own or those of someone else who’s been doing embarrassing things. Such things are bad and inevitable, but that’s not the worst part.
By placing such stringent absolutist non-disclosure laws on government intrusion, this bill threatens to outlaw security research, at least outside the secret agencies.
Let’s say I’m a security researcher, digging into some unusual behaviour in a router on behalf of a major telecoms client. I discover a security hole into which somebody has installed a backdoor. Whoever it was didn’t leave a calling card: they rarely do.
What would I do if I found that backdoor today? The ethical thing is to check my results with trusted colleagues, tell my client, determine what the best remedial action is, tell whoever is in charge of that aspect of the router software, allow time for a patch to propagate out, then tell the world what happened. It’s interesting, but not immediately important, to work out who did the attack. Fix first, ask questions later.
Let’s look at that in a world where the Snooper's Charter has become law. I find the backdoor and tell a colleague. She doesn’t answer my e-mail, but I get a knock at the door—turns out that GCHQ was behind the attack. I am now banned forever from mentioning to anyone what I found—or that I found anything. The backdoor is later exploited by the bad guys and my client is hit. Why didn’t you find it, they ask? I can only shrug. Soon, my consultancy is in disarray. If I’m sued for incompetence, I cannot defend myself. I can write no papers, warn no people.
Standing on a landmine
There are various other bad scenarios, but the basics remain the same: as a security researcher, I could at any time stand on an invisible landmine, placed by the same people who’ve denied me the use of a metal detector. I'm essentially forbidden from digging into any backdoor, to find out who was behind the attack: it could be gangsters, or it could be someone who can and will throw me in jail.
Will I want to be a security researcher in the UK under this regime? It seems unlikely. Is it a good idea for the UK to massively discourage research and competence in IT security? That seems unlikely too—although doubtless Theresa May would say that leaving the country vulnerable to massive exploitation and without valuable economic skills is a small price to pay for the ability to find an abducted child by reading everyone’s browser history.
Given everything else asinine and dangerous the UK government has said about computer security to date, it's impossible to say whether these are unintended consequences or not. But if you are involved in security research in the UK, you may care to read the Bill and enter the debate.
If you wait until the Bill is actually signed into law next year, it will be far, far too late.
Rupert Goodwins started out as an engineer working for Clive Sinclair, Alan Sugar, and some other 1980s startups. He is now a London-based technology journalist who's written and broadcast about the digital world for more than thirty years. You can follow him on Twitter at @rupertg.I was talking to a friend last night and a common theme that's come up has been, "Why do Dallas games seem to feature a red card so frequently?" Then he suggested that I take a look into the stats and see what it had to show. So I dove in and took a look and there is a little bit of truth to what he was saying as Dallas games do tend to feature a higher number of red cards being issued, but to my surprise it wasn't FC Dallas that led the way in 2015.
In the table below you'll see a listing of teams and the number of games which that particular team played in that had a red card shown to either side this season. So for example, when Philadelphia's Zach Pfeffer threw an elbow and picked up a red card, that counts as a game which both the Union and Dallas where the game featured a red card. Then the last two columns separate whether the card was issued to their own team or to the opponent.
Team Games Self Opp CHI 3 0 3 COL 3 1 2 CLB 3 1 2 DCU 1 0 1 FCD 3 2 1 HOU 2 1 1 LAG 0 0 0 MTL 1 1 0 NE 1 1 0 NYC 4 2 2 NYRB 2 0 2 ORL 2 2 0 PHI 3 2 1 POR 0 0 0 RSL 2 2 0 SJ 3 2 1 SEA 3 1 2 SKC 2 1 1 TOR 3 2 1 VAN 5 2 3
Yes, the season is still young but Dallas is currently tied for first (with seven other teams) with two red cards which of course gives the impression that the Hoops are a red card prone team. Then I began digging more into the team's more recent history and compared it to the rest of league and came out with this:
2014 2013 2012 2011 Total Avg CHI 3 5 5 4 17 4.25 COL 5 4 3 5 17 4.25 CLB 5 2 2 3 12 3 DCU 3 0 3 4 10 2.5 FCD 10 5 6 4 25 6.25 HOU 5 3 1 7 16 4 LAG 2 1 2 4 9 2.25 MTL 6 1 3 10 3.33 NE 2 8 3 10 23 5.75 NYC 0 0 NYRB 3 5 2 5 15 3.75 ORL 0 0 PHI 5 3 5 3 16 4 POR 3 3 2 3 11 2.75 RSL 4 6 4 7 21 5.25 SJ 3 7 5 5 20 5 SEA 3 10 4 2 19 4.75 SKC 6 1 3 8 18 4.5 TOR 7 6 2 4 19 4.75 VAN 3 1 3 5 12 3
*NYC and ORL do not have any data as they are current expansion teams and MTL is missing 2011 data because they were not part of MLS yet.
But as you probably quickly saw is how troubling this trend has been for the club. Dallas has led the league in red cards twice in the last four seasons, picking up the most cards during that four year stretch and have averaged 6.25 red cards per season.
I couldn't find a correlation between red cards and Supporter's Shield winners during this four year window, but it was interesting that the team with the most MLS Cups, LA Galaxy (3), also has the fewest red cards as well. There's probably nothing to make of it, but I did just find that interesting.
But perhaps the most fascinating piece of information had to be the 2013 DC United team which managed to finish the season dead last on just three wins, managed to do that with all 11 men on the field for the entire season. I would just expect them to have some red cards in there to explain the futility of that abysmal season. I suppose soccer just doesn't make sense sometimes.The federal government declared Friday that it will launch a 2 million dollar program to supply illegal immigrant minors with lawyers. The announcement came in the wake of the recently leaked photos of immigrant children held in Border Patrol warehouses in Texas and Arizona.
The Department of Justice is collaborating with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which administers AmeriCorps, to launch the program:
The interagency agreement reflects the spirit of a presidential memorandum issued on July 15, 2013, that established the Task Force on Expanding National Service. The task force calls on federal agency leaders to identify ways to address some of the nation's most pressing challenges by expanding national service. “With the launch of justice AmeriCorps, we're taking a historic step to strengthen our justice system and protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of society,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “How we treat those in need, particularly young people who must appear in immigration proceedings - many of whom are fleeing violence, persecution, abuse or trafficking - goes to the core of who we are as a nation. Through this program, we reaffirm our allegiance to the values that have always shaped our pursuit of justice. We empower new generations of aspiring attorneys and paralegals to serve their country and stand on the front lines of this fight. And we bolster both the efficacy and the efficiency of our immigration courts.”
The program will employ approximately 100 lawyers and paralegals across at least 28 states. Their services will be provided to children under the age of 16 who must appear before an immigration court.
Americans have the right to an attorney per the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Illegal immigrants, however, are not U.S. citizens and are therefore not entitled to this right. This is merely another way of adapting laws in an attempt to help integrate these undocumented individuals into the United States.
President Obama previously eased the crackdown on illegal immigrant children in 2012 when he passed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. As Conn noted earlier, the number of illegal minors to cross the border doubled the year DACA launched and the numbers are only expected to get worse.
As noted by the Associated Press (emphasis added):
An unusually large number of those crossing in South Texas are unaccompanied children, many seeking to join parents who are already in the U.S. illegally. Authorities arrested 47,017 unaccompanied children on the border from October through May,up 92 percent from the same period a year earlier. A draft Border Patrol memorandum estimates that number could reach 90,000 in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, up from a previous government estimate of 60,000.
Extending constitutional priveleges to illegal immigrants sounds like the perfect way to insure a steady influx of undocumented immigrants.Dee3 Smart Cases are luxury mobile cases designed universal to secure valuables and provide custom styles on demand. For various reasons, this masterpiece is equipped with interchangeable parts that slide, rotate, and attach together. This LEGO structure features stainless steel accessories and cushion inserts to provide superior protection for any valuables enclosed.
Can you imagine this case offering many elegant styles personalized according to your preference?
Whether you love fashion or business, Dee3 iChains are necklaces suitable for your wearing pleasure to stand out. Within seconds, these stylish necklaces can be assembled instantly to carry iPhones, iPods, and other valuables. You will have the option to accept phone calls, enjoy music hands-free, advertise in style, wear digital name tags, access key functions, or even spin your smart case nonstop for fun.
Check out this demonstration. Press play!!!
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
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To spice up this fashionable idea, smart billboards were developed to promote anything instantly using your smart devices. At anytime, you are always just a touch away from displaying smart billboards through any electronic mobile device as a screen saver or for promotional use. These animated graphics can be downloaded on YouTube or accessed through an app. You will discover how beneficial this marketing strategy works in noisy-crowded places (such as trade shows, concerts, sport arenas, etc.) as a powerful way of advertising and showing support for an organization or business. Try testing a few samples to get a better understanding on any mobile device.
Press play & click on the playlist below within the video to view more smart billboards.
The concept of combining smart billboards & future product designs required more than 3 years of research, analyzing, and testing to develop. Dee3 Smart Cases relied heavily on a universal structure rather than most smart cases of today. In order to offer many styling options & lower tooling cost, each part had to be constructed precisely and interchangeable.
Take a look at the layouts & prototypes.
Since 2010, every style incorporated into this smart case design brought on new challenges. Most problems were resolved through a trial & error basis which came at a hefty cost. Even though prototype revisions have delayed the production process quite often, setbacks only made these smart cases better and current. Google provided just enough resources in making this creation possible on a very limited budget. As of today, about $12,000 has already been invested into prototypes, 3D drawings, tooling expense, mobile devices, promotional campaigns at local events and trade shows across the country.
Keep in touch throughout the manufacturing process. (See Production Timeline shown below to keep track of the progress being made. Yellow bars indicate parts are pending. Green bars indicate parts are finish & ready to ship.)
Your generosity has the power of bringing this idea into existence including other universal models. Every detail about these smart cases have a purpose. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE SAMPLES!!!
Pledge any amount to help us exceed beyond the funding goal. In return, you will receive a reward your heart desires.Metro will host a community meeting in East Los Angeles to provide updates and receive public input on the latest developments of the Eastside Transit Corridor Phase 2 project.
Metro is studying two alternatives (SR60 and Washington Boulevard) to extend the Metro Gold Line east from its current terminus at Pomona and Atlantic boulevards. Metro conducted four community meetings for the project in late March in East Los Angeles, South El Monte, Whittier and Montebello. Based on feedback received at the March community meetings, Metro is holding a second meeting in East Los Angeles, which has been scheduled for:
Wednesday, June 22, 6-8 p.m.
Griffith Middle School (Cafeteria)
4765 E 4th Street
East Los Angeles
The “Washington Boulevard” alternative was originally designed to follow the SR-60 freeway and then turn south, running on an aerial structure above Garfield Avenue and turning east on Washington Boulevard, ending near the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Lambert Road. However, the aerial segment on Garfield Avenue has been eliminated from consideration, which has led to further studies to identify a new route to Whittier that does not include the eliminated aerial section on Garfield Avenue.
Three route concepts for the Washington Boulevard alternative that are currently under consideration:
1) along Arizona Avenue, with potential stations at Arizona/Whittier and The Citadel;
2) along Atlantic Boulevard, with potential stations at Atlantic/Whittier and The Citadel, and;
3) along Garfield Avenue, with the same stations that were proposed in the Draft EIR. The Garfield Avenue route concept would need to include an underground segment to replace the aerial portion that was eliminated by the Metro Board. The configuration (above street, street level or underground) of potential routes on Arizona Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard have not been determined.
The “SR-60” alternative generally follows the southern edge of the SR-60 Freeway terminating at Peck Road in the city of South El Monte. The train would run along the south side of the freeway on an elevated track crossing over existing freeway ramps, and would travel for a short distance on the north side of the SR-60 freeway between approximately Greenwood Avenue and Paramount Boulevard. This alignment is identified as the SR-60 North Side Design Variation (NSDV).
At their November, 2014 meeting, the Metro Board of Directors directed staff to: 1) continue studying both alternatives, and also explore the option of operating both alternatives; 2) for the SR-60 alignment, follow up on comments received from partner agencies to evaluate and mitigate concerns raised in the Draft Environmental document; 3) for the Washington Boulevard alignment, eliminate an aerial section on Garfield Avenue and develop a new alignment to get to Whittier, and; 4) develop a cost containment plan.
The public will hear about work that has been done to address comments raised regarding specific areas of the SR-60 route. The meeting will also include opportunities for the public to ask questions and submit comments and suggestions about the project, including the three Washington Boulevard route concepts under consideration.
Like this: Like Loading...This article is about the observance. For other uses, see Halloween (disambiguation)
Halloween or Hallowe'en (a contraction of Hallows' Even or Hallows' Evening),[5] also known as Allhalloween,[6] All Hallows' Eve,[7] or All Saints' Eve,[8] is a celebration observed in several countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide,[9] the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed.[10][11]
It is widely believed that many Halloween traditions originated from ancient Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain; that such festivals may have had pagan roots; and that Samhain itself was Christianized as Halloween by the early Church.[12][13][14][15][16] Some believe, however, that Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, separate from ancient festivals like Samhain.[17][18][19][20]
Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related guising and souling), attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, as well as watching horror films.[21] In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular,[22][23][24] although elsewhere it is a more commercial and secular celebration.[25][26][27] Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.[28][29][30][31]
Etymology
The word appears as the title of Robert Burns'" Halloween " (1785), a poem traditionally recited by Scots
The word Halloween or Hallowe'en dates to about 1745[32] and is of Christian origin.[33] The word "Hallowe'en" means "Saints' evening".[34] It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day).[35] In Scots, the word "eve" is even, and this is contracted to e'en or een. Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en evolved into Hallowe'en. Although the phrase "All Hallows'" is found in Old English "All Hallows' Eve" is itself not seen until 1556.[35][36]
History
Gaelic and Welsh influence
Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots.[37] Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that "there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived".[38] Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which comes from the Old Irish for'summer's end'."[39]
Samhain () was the first and most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and was celebrated on 31 October – 1 November[citation needed] in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.[40][41] A kindred festival was held at the same time of year by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany; a name meaning "first day of winter". For the Celts, the day ended and began at sunset; thus the festival began on the evening before 7 November by modern reckoning (the half point between equinox and solstice).[42] Samhain and Calan Gaeaf are mentioned in some of the earliest Irish and Welsh literature. The names have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century,[43] and are still the Gaelic and Welsh names for Halloween.
Snap-Apple Night, painted by, painted by Daniel Maclise in
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ors that are made using what chipmakers call a 20- or 22-nanometer manufacturing process. An IC fabricated with this process, such as a microprocessor or a dynamic RAM (DRAM) chip, can have billions of transistors.
Nevertheless, there on the cutting edge, the business is troubled. Each new generation of ultradense chips demands a new manufacturing process of mind-boggling industrial and technological complexity. The struggle has become so pitched that researchers are now often at a loss for words to describe the metrics of their progress.
At the December meeting, for example, Chenming Hu, the coinventor of the FinFET, began by mapping out the near future. Soon, he said, we’ll start to see 14-nm and 16-nm chips emerge (the first, which are expected to come from Intel, are slated to go into production early next year). Then he added a caveat whose casual tone belied its startling implications: “Nobody knows anymore what 16 nm means or what 14 nm means.”
It’s actually become a fairly common refrain among industry experts. The practice of attaching measurements to chip generations has “been hijacked by marketers to an enormous extent,” one chip-design expert told me. “A lot of it’s really smoke and mirrors,” says analyst Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research in Santa Clara, Calif. It’s “spin,” he says, that’s designed to hide widening technological gaps between chip companies.
The nanometer figures that Hu discussed are called nodes, and they are, for want of a better term, the mile markers of Moore’s Law. Each node marks a new generation of chip-manufacturing technology. And the progression of node names over the years reflects the steady progress that both logic and memory chips have made: The smaller the number, the smaller the transistors and the more closely they are packed together, producing chips that are denser and thus less costly on a per-transistor basis.
But the relationship between node names and chip dimensions is far from straightforward. Nowadays, a particular node name does not reflect the size of any particular chip feature, as it once did. And in the past year, the use of node names has become even more confusing, as chip foundries prepare to roll out 14-nm and 16-nm chips, custom-made for smartphone makers and other customers, that will be no denser than the previous 20-nm generation. That might be just a temporary hiccup, a one-time-only pause in chip-density improvement. But it’s emblematic of the perplexing state of the field.
Moore’s Law, when reflected through the steady march of node names, might seem easy and inexorable. But today a plague of intense manufacturing and design problems is forcing compromises that are sometimes sobering. And some analysts suggest that regardless of what we call the next generation of chips, the transition from old to new no longer provides nearly the kind of payoff—in cost or performance—that it used to.
“What do you mean by 14 nm?” When I asked An Steegen that question at an industry conference in July, she smiled and let out a wry, knowing laugh. “Ah…what’s in a name?” asked Steegen, senior vice president for process technology development at Imec, the Belgian research center. “Actually, not that much any more.”
It’s a state of affairs that has been nearly two decades in the making. Once upon a time, the node name told you practically everything you needed to know about a chip’s underlying technology. If you trained your microscope on microprocessors made by a handful of different companies using a 0.35-micrometer process, you’d find that their products were all remarkably similar.
Data Source: GlobalFoundries What’s in a name? Key chip dimensions, such as the transistor gate length [yellow] and the metal one half pitch [orange]—half the distance spanned by the width of a wire and the space to the next one on the dense, first metal layer of a chip—have decreased but not strictly tracked the node name [red]. These numbers, provided by GlobalFoundries, reflect the company’s plans to accelerate the introduction of 14 nm chips in 2014, a good year early.
In the mid-1990s, when such chips were the state of the art, 0.35 µm was an accurate measure of the finest features that could be drawn on the chip. This determined dimensions such as the length of the transistor gate, the electrode responsible for switching the device on and off. Because gate length is directly linked to switching speed, you’d have a pretty good sense of the performance boost you’d get by switching from an older-generation chip to a 0.35-µm processor. The term “0.35-µm node” actually meant something.
But around that same time, the link between performance and node name began to break down. In pursuit of ever-higher clock speeds, chipmakers expanded their tool kit. They continued to use lithography to pattern circuit components and wires on the chip, as they always had. But they also began etching away the ends of the transistor gate to make the devices shorter, and thus faster.
After a while, “there was no one design rule that people could point to and say, ‘That defines the node name,’” says Mark Bohr, a senior fellow at Intel. The company’s 0.13-µm chips, which debuted in 2001, had transistor gates that were actually just 70 nm long. Nevertheless, Intel called them 0.13-µm chips because they were the next in line. For want of a better system, the industry more or less stuck to the historical node-naming convention. Although the trend in the measurements of transistors was changing, manufacturers continued to pack the devices closer and closer together, assigning each successive chip generation a number about 70 percent that of the previous one. (A 30 percent reduction in both the x and y dimensions corresponds to a 50 percent reduction in the area occupied by a transistor, and therefore the potential to double transistor density on the chip.)
The naming trend continued as transistors got even more complex. After years of aggressive gate trimming, simple transistor scaling reached a limit in the early 2000s: Making a transistor smaller no longer meant it would be faster or less power hungry. So Intel, followed by others, introduced new technologies to help boost transistor performance. They started with strain engineering, adding impurities to silicon to alter the crystal, which had the effect of boosting speed without changing the physical dimensions of the transistor. They added new insulating and gate materials. And two years ago, they rejiggered the transistor structure to create the more efficient FinFET, with a current-carrying channel that juts out of the plane of the chip.
Through all this, node name numbers continued to drift ever downward, and the density of transistors continued to double from generation to generation. But the names no longer match the size of any specific chip dimension. “The minimum dimensions are getting smaller,” Bohr says. “But I’m the first to admit that I can’t point to the one dimension that’s 32 nm or 22 nm or 14 nm. Some dimensions are smaller than the stated node name, and others are larger.”
The switch to FinFETs has made the situation even more complex. Bohr points out, for example, that Intel’s 22-nm chips, the current state of the art, have FinFET transistors with gates that are 35 nm long but fins that are just 8 nm wide.
That is, of course, the view from a chip manufacturer’s side. For his part, Paolo Gargini, the chairman of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, says the node is and always has been defined by the proximity of wires on the first metal layer on the back of the chip, a dimension that was reflected well in DRAM and, later, flash memory, but not in logic.
Illustrations: Emily Cooper Two Transistors: Chipmakers are in the process of moving from traditional planar transistors [left] to ones that pop out of plane [right]. Intel introduced these 3-D transistors in 2011, and they are now shipping widely. The leading foundries, such as GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., are in the process of ramping up production of 20-nanometer planar transistors. They will make the switch to 3-D with the next generation.
Regardless of definition, numbers in node names have continued to decline. Along with them, the distance between transistor gates and that between the closest copper wires on the back of the chip have also decreased. Both of those features help define how dense a chip can be and thus how many more you can produce on a single silicon wafer to drive down costs.
But the difficulty inherent in printing ever-finer features has now taken its toll. “When we got to around 28 nm, we were actually pushing the limits of the lithographic tools,” says Subramani Kengeri, vice president of advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries, the world’s second-biggest chipmaking foundry after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
To deal with this, Kengeri and his colleagues were forced to adopt a lithographic technique called double patterning. It lets technicians pattern smaller features by splitting a single patterning step into two, relying on a slight offset between the two steps.
Intel used the technique to form transistors on its 22-nm chips, but it stuck to single patterning to make the densest metal layer. Pushing the technique to its limits, the company made wires with a pitch of 80 nm, which encompasses the width of one wire and the space to the next. By adopting double patterning, GlobalFoundries and others could push the pitch down to about 64 nm for their 20-nm chips. But that move came with a significant trade-off: Double-patterned chips take longer to make, adding significantly to the cost.
Carrying this technique over from the 20-nm node to 14 nm would mean that chipmakers would have to double-pattern even more layers of the chip. So last year, Kengeri and his colleagues announced a chip industry first: They would put a stop to the shrink. GlobalFoundries’ line of 14-nm chips, which are slated to begin production in 2014, may be the foundry world’s first FinFET transistors. But the company will build the new chips with the same wiring density used in its 20-nm chips. “The first-generation FinFET is basically reusing all of that and plugging a FinFET into that framework,” Kengeri says. “It’s really a 20-nm FinFET, in a way.” Nevertheless, the company refers to these as 14-nm chips because they offer roughly a generation’s-worth jump in performance and energy efficiency over its 20-nm chips.
Kengeri hopes that by putting a one-generation pause on shrinking chips and focusing on introducing 3-D transistors, GlobalFoundries will catch up with Intel, which is already shipping 3-D devices in its 22-nm chips. GlobalFoundries’ 14-nm chips aren’t any denser than—and therefore cost just about as much as—the previous generation, but they’re still a big improvement, Kengeri says. “Our point—and our customers agree—is that as long as they see that value, they don’t care what the technology is called or what is inside.”
“It is quite a controversial move,” says William Arnold, chief scientist at ASML, the world’s largest maker of semiconductor-fabrication equipment. “The customers of the foundries, the people who are making cellphone parts, are very skeptical of not being able to get a shrink along with a performance improvement. They’re pretty vocal about saying that they’re not happy about that.”
The foundries’ latest move aside, chips are still more or less doubling in density from node to node, says Andrew Kahng, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and an expert on high-performance chip design. But for Kahng, the steady progression of node names masks deeper problems. There is a difference, he says, between “available density” (how closely you can pack circuits and wires on a chip) and “realizable density” (what you can actually put into a competitive commercial product).
The sheer density and power levels on a state-of-the-art chip have forced designers to compensate by adding error-correction circuitry, redundancy, read- and write-boosting circuitry for failing static RAM cells, circuits to track and adapt to performance variations, and complicated memory hierarchies to handle multicore architectures. The problem, Kahng says, is that “all of those extra circuits add area.” His group has been scouring company specs and deconstructing images of chips for years, and they’ve come to an unsettling conclusion: When you factor those circuits in, chips are no longer twice as dense from generation to generation. In fact, Kahng’s analysis suggests, the density improvement over the past three generations, from 2007 on, has been closer to 1.6 than 2. This smaller density benefit means costlier chips, and it also has an impact on performance because signals must be driven over longer distances. The shortfall is consistent enough, Kahng says, that it could be considered its own law.
This might be a recoverable loss. So far, Kahng says, the chip industry has made it a priority to keep up the pace of Moore’s Law, ensuring that manufacturers can continue to build and release new product families while using a new process every 18 to 24 months. This means there hasn’t been time to explore a number of design tricks that could be used to cut down on power or boost performance. “When you’re on that kind of schedule, you don’t have time to optimize things,” he says. As the value of the simple shrink decreases, he says, chipmakers should then be able to revisit their designs and find chip-improving approaches they may have missed or else left on the cutting-room floor.
When will the scaling stop? Today’s patterning technology, which relies on 193-nm laser light, is becoming an ever more costly challenge, and its natural successor, shorter-wavelength extreme ultraviolet lithography, has been long delayed.
Kahng says chipmakers may face a more immediate struggle with wiring in just a few years as they attempt to push chip density down past the 10-nm generation. Each copper wire requires a sheath containing barrier material to prevent the metal from leaching into surrounding material, as well as insulation to prevent it from interacting with neighboring wires. To perform effectively, this sheath must be fairly thick. This thickness limits how closely wires can be pushed together and forces the copper wires to shrink instead, dramatically driving up the resistance and delays and drastically lowering performance. Although researchers are exploring alternative materials, it’s unclear, Kahng says, whether they will be ready in time to keep up with Moore’s Law’s steady pace.
Many people in the industry, who have watched showstopper after showstopper crop up only to be bypassed by a new development, are reluctant to put a hard date on Moore’s Law’s demise. “Every generation, there are people who will say we’re coming to the end of the shrink,” says ASML’s Arnold, and in “every generation various improvements do come about. I haven’t seen the end of the road map.”
But for those keeping track of the road, those mile markers are starting to get pretty blurry.
A version of this article originally appeared in print as “The End of the Shrink.”Theranos () was a privately held health technology corporation,[2] initially touted as a breakthrough technology company, but subsequently infamous for its false claims to have devised blood tests that only needed very small amounts of blood.[3][4][5] Founded in 2003 by then-19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes,[6] Theranos raised more than US$700 million from venture capitalists and private investors,[7] resulting in a $10 billion valuation at its peak in 2013 and 2014.[8][9] Investors and the media hyped Theranos as a breakthrough in the large blood-testing market, where the US diagnostic-lab industry posts annual sales of over $70 billion. Theranos claimed its technology was revolutionary and that its tests required only about 1/100 to 1/1,000 of the amount of blood that would ordinarily be needed and cost far less than existing tests.
A turning point came in October 2015, when investigative reporter John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal questioned the validity of Theranos' technology. Since then, the company has faced a string of legal and commercial challenges from medical authorities, investors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), state attorneys general, former business partners, patients, and others.[10] By June 2016, it was estimated that Holmes' personal net worth had dropped from $4.5 billion to virtually nothing.[11] The company was near bankruptcy until it received a $100 million investment from Fortress Investment Group in 2017.[12] In September 2018, the company ceased operations.
In July 2016, Theranos received sanctions from the CMS, including the revocation of its CLIA certificate and prohibition of Holmes and other company officials from owning or operating a lab for two years.[13] Theranos announced it would close its laboratory operations and wellness centers to work on miniature medical testing machines.[14] In April 2017, Theranos said it had reached a settlement agreement with CMS.[15] Following the CMS sanctions, the Walgreens pharmacy chain terminated its contract with Theranos and filed a lawsuit claiming continuous breaches of contract. The suit was settled out of court, with Theranos compensating Walgreens for a much smaller amount than the claimed $140 million, reported at about $30 million.
On March 14, 2018, Theranos, Holmes, and former company president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani were charged with "massive fraud" by the SEC.[16] One section of the complaint says Holmes falsely claimed in 2014 that the company had annual revenues of $100 million, a thousand times more than the actual figure of $100,000.[17] Theranos and Holmes agreed to resolve the charges against them, with Holmes paying a fine of $500,000, returning the remaining 18.9 million shares that she held, relinquishing her control of the company, and being barred from being an officer or director of any public company for ten years.[18][19] According to the agreement, if Theranos were acquired or otherwise liquidated, Holmes would not profit from her ownership until more than $750 million was returned to investors and other preferred shareholders. Theranos and Holmes neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC's complaint.[7] Balwani did not settle.[20] On June 15, 2018, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California announced the indictment of Holmes on wire fraud and conspiracy charges. Balwani was also indicted on the same charges.[21]
Theranos ceased operations on August 31, 2018, with CEO David Taylor and a few support staff remaining on payroll for a few more days.[22]
History [ edit ]
While at Stanford University, Elizabeth Holmes had an idea to develop a wearable patch that could adjust the dosage of drug delivery and notify doctors of variables in patients' blood.[23] She started developing lab-on-a-chip technology for blood tests, and had the idea for a company that would make testing cheaper, more convenient and accessible to consumers.[24] Holmes dropped out of Stanford and used the education trust from her parents to found the company that would later be called Theranos, derived from a combination of the words "therapy" and "diagnosis".[25][26] The company's original name was "Real-Time Cures",[8][27][28] which Holmes changed after deciding that too many people were dubious about the word "cure".[8]
Partnerships [ edit ]
In September 2013, Theranos partnered with Walgreens to offer in-store blood tests at more than 40 locations. Walgreens announced plans to expand its "wellness centers" across the United States.[29] Theranos blood tests were used on drug trial patients of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. Each company stated that there were no ongoing active projects with Theranos in October 2015.[30][31] In November 2016, Walgreen Co. filed suit against Theranos in a federal court in Delaware, for breach of contract. Theranos reported to investors on June 21, 2017 that the suit, which originally sought $140 million in damages, was settled for less than $30 million.[32][33]
In March 2015 the Cleveland Clinic announced a partnership with Theranos to test its technology in order to decrease the cost of lab tests.[34] Theranos became the lab-work provider for Pennsylvania insurers AmeriHealth Caritas and Capital BlueCross in July 2015.[35][36]
In July 2015, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the company's fingerstick blood testing device for the herpes simplex virus (HSV-1) outside a clinical laboratory setting.[37][38] Theranos was awarded the 2015 Bioscience Company of the Year by AzBio.[39]
Exposure and downfall [ edit ]
In October 2015, John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos was using traditional blood testing machines to run its tests instead of the company's Edison devices, and that the company's Edison machines might provide inaccurate results.[40][41] Theranos claimed that the allegations were "factually and scientifically erroneous and grounded in baseless assertions by inexperienced and disgruntled former employees and industry incumbents".[42][43] Walgreens suspended plans to expand blood-testing centers in their stores following the report.[44][45] At that time, the Cleveland Clinic announced that it would work to verify Theranos technology.[46] Theranos fought back against the Journal's investigation, sending lawyers after sources in the story in an effort to stop them from providing information to the press.[4] Tyler Shultz was a key source for the WSJ story. Shultz was a Theranos employee from 2013 to 2014 and the grandson of one-time Theranos director George P. Shultz. Tyler Shultz had attempted to bring concerns about the company's activities to his management, and when that had failed, he had spoken to Carreyrou and also, under an alias, reported the company to the New York State Department of Health.[47]
Following the WSJ story, the history of FDA interactions with Theranos was scrutinized. The FDA had received a formal inquiry to look at Theranos blood test devices by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2012 before the devices were commercially available and did not require FDA approval.[48] FDA inspection reports from 2014 and 2015 stated that its containers for blood collection were "not validated under actual or simulated use conditions" and "were not reviewed and not approved by designated individual(s) prior to issuance".[49] The FDA inspection in 2015 resulted in multiple 483s from the FDA where inspectors observed violations of FDA Title 21 Regulations.[50][51] After the inspection, Theranos announced that it would voluntarily suspend its tests apart from the FDA-approved herpes simplex virus (HSV-1) test.[52]
The Arizona Department of Health Services reported issues with the company's Scottsdale lab meeting regulations in October 2015.[53]
In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to Theranos based on an inspection of its Newark, California, lab in fall 2015, reporting that the facility did not "comply with certificate requirements and performance standards" and caused an "immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety" due to a test to determine the correct dose of the blood-thinning drug warfarin.[54] Walgreens and Capital BlueCross announced a suspension of Theranos blood tests from the Newark lab.[55]
In March 2016, CMS regulators announced plans to enact sanctions that included suspending Holmes and Balwani from owning or operating a lab for two years and that they would revoke the lab's license.[56] The company did not receive the sanctions until July.[57]
By April 2016 Theranos came under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors and the SEC for allegedly misleading investors and government officials about its technology.[58] The case is considered "extremely unusual" by a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Justice Department.[59] The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce requested information on what Theranos was doing to correct its testing inaccuracies and adherence to federal guidelines in June 2016.[60][61]
In May 2016, Theranos announced that it had voided two years of results from its Edison device.[62] The company announced that about 1 percent of test results had been voided or corrected from its proprietary machines in June 2016.[63]
In July 2016, Theranos announced that the CMS had revoked its CLIA certificate and issued sanctions prohibiting its owners and operators from owning or operating a lab for two years, suspension of approval to receive Medicare and Medicaid payments, and a civil monetary penalty. The company discontinued testing at its Newark location while attempting to resolve the issues.[13] Theranos announced plans to appeal the decision by regulators to revoke its license to operate a lab in California and other sanctions.[64]
In August 2016 the company withdrew its request for emergency clearance of a Zika virus blood test after a lack of essential safeguards during the testing process was found by federal inspectors.[65][66]
Theranos announced that it would close its laboratory operations and wellness centers and lay off about 40 percent of its work force to work on miniature medical testing machines in October 2016.[14][67][68][69][67]
In January 2017, Theranos announced that it had laid off 41 percent of its workforce, or approximately 155 people, and closed the last remaining blood-testing facility after the lab failed a second major U.S. regulatory inspection.[70][71]
Also that month, the company faced lawsuits from several different entities including Walgreens[72][73] and the Arizona Attorney General.[74]
In April 2017, lawyers for Partner Investments LP and two other funds, with combined stakes totaling more than $96 million in Theranos preferred shares, charged that Theranos had threatened to seek bankruptcy protection if the investors did not agree to accept additional stock equity in lieu of litigation. Theranos officials said the funds had mischaracterized the exchange offer, which was discussed before the suit was filed.[75] The suit also alleged that Theranos Inc. had misled company directors about its practices concerning laboratory testing and that it had secretly bought lab equipment to run fake demonstrations.[76] The case was settled on May 1, 2017.[77] On May 1, 2017, Theranos announced that it had reached an undisclosed settlement with Partner Fund Management LP. Theranos General Counsel David Taylor stated: "Theranos is pleased to have resolved both lawsuits with PFM. Although we are confident that we would have prevailed at trial, resolution of these two cases allows our tender offer to go forward and enables us to return our focus where it belongs, which is on executing our business plans and delivering value for our shareholders."[78]
In April 2017, Theranos reached a settlement with CMS agreeing to stay out of the blood-testing business for at least two years in exchange for reduced penalties,[79] and signed a consent decree with the state of Arizona over violations of the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act. Alleged violations included false advertisement and inaccurate blood testing. Theranos agreed to refund $4.65 million to the state's residents for Theranos blood testing services, regardless of whether the test results were voided or corrected.[80][81][82][83]
In August 2017, Theranos announced it had reached a settlement with Walgreens.[84]
In December 2017, Fortress Investment Group loaned $100 million to Theranos. Theranos had reportedly been on the verge of bankruptcy, with the loan meant to keep the company solvent into 2018.[12][85][86] The loan was secured by Theranos' patents.[87] On April 10, 2018, the company laid off the majority of workers in a renewed bid to avoid bankruptcy. The company's total headcount was down to fewer than 25 employees, after having 800 employees at its peak.[1][88]
In March 2018 the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos, its CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former president Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, claiming they had engaged in an "elaborate, years-long fraud" wherein they "deceived investors into believing that its key product – a portable blood analyzer – could conduct comprehensive blood tests from finger drops of blood."[89][90] Holmes reached a settlement with the SEC, which requires her to pay $500,000, forfeit 19 million shares of company stock, and be barred from having a leadership position in any public company for ten years.[91] Balwani did not settle with the SEC.[92]
On June 15, 2018, Holmes and Balwani were indicted on multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. According to the indictment, investors and doctors and patients were defrauded. It is alleged the defendants were aware of the unreliability and inaccuracy of their products, but concealed that information. If convicted, they each face a maximum fine of $250,000 and 20 years in prison. The case has been assigned to Lucy H. Koh, United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.[93][94]
Shutdown [ edit ]
On September 4, 2018, Theranos announced in an email to investors that it would cease operations and release its assets and remaining cash to creditors after all efforts to find a buyer came to nothing. Most of the company's remaining employees were laid off on the previous Friday, August 31. However, CEO David Taylor and a few support staffers remained on payroll for a few more days.[95] The Wall Street Journal reported that any equity investments in the company were made worthless by the shutdown.
Technology and products [ edit ]
Theranos claimed to have developed devices to automate and miniaturize blood tests using microscopic blood volumes. Theranos dubbed its blood collection vessel the "nanotainer" and its analysis machine the "Edison."[96][97][98] The technology has been criticized for not being peer reviewed.[99][100] Theranos claimed to have data verifying the accuracy and reliability of its tests that would be published.[101] In February 2016, Theranos announced that it would permit the Cleveland Clinic to complete a validation study of its technology.[102] In March 2016, a study authored by 13 scientists appeared in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, where it was stated that the company's blood test results were flagged "outside their normal range 1.6x more often than other testing services", that 68 percent of lab measurements evaluated "showed significant interservice variability", and that "lipid panel test results between Theranos and other clinical services" were "nonequivalent".[103] In August 2016, the company introduced a new robotic, capillary blood testing unit named "miniLab" at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, but did not present any data supporting the claimed abilities of the device.[104][105][106]
Corporate affairs [ edit ]
Location [ edit ]
Theranos was headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It previously had laboratories in Newark, California and Scottsdale, Arizona.[107]
Management [ edit ]
Elizabeth Holmes, the chief executive officer and founder of Theranos in 2013.
From its incorporation in 2003 until 2018, Holmes was the company's chief executive officer. She recruited Channing Robertson, a chemical-engineering professor at Stanford, to be a technical advisor and the company's first board member during its early years. Holmes' then-boyfriend Sunny Balwani, a software engineer 18 years her senior whom Holmes had met during high school, joined the company as its president and chief operating officer in 2009.[108] In July 2011, Holmes was introduced to former Secretary of State George Shultz, who joined the Theranos board of directors that month.[109] Over the next three years, Shultz helped to introduce almost all the outside directors on the "all-star board," which included William Perry (former Secretary of Defense), Henry Kissinger (former Secretary of State), Sam Nunn (former U.S. Senator), Bill Frist (former U.S. Senator and heart-transplant surgeon), Gary Roughead (Admiral, USN, retired), James Mattis (General, USMC), Richard Kovacevich (former Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO) and Riley Bechtel (chairman of the board and former CEO at Bechtel Group).[109][110][111] The board was criticized for consisting "mainly of directors with diplomatic or military backgrounds."[24]
In April 2016, Theranos announced its medical advisory board which included past presidents or board members of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.[112] Members were invited to review the company's proprietary technologies and advise on the integration into clinical practice.[112] The board included past presidents or board members of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry such as Susan A. Evans, William Foege, former director U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), David Helfet, director of the Orthopedic Trauma Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery and professors, Ann M. Gronowski, Larry J. Kricka, Jack Ladenson, Andy O. Miller and Steven Spitalnik.[113][114]
Balwani left his position as President and COO in May 2016. At that time, the company announced its new board members, Fabrizio Bonanni (former executive vice president of Amgen), Richard Kovacevich and William Foege, who would help to publicly introduce its technologies.[115][116][117]
In May 2016 members of the Theranos board of directors were:[118]
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO
Riley Bechtel, former Bechtel Group CEO
David Boies, a founder and the chairman of Boies Schiller & Flexner
William Foege, former director CDC
Richard Kovacevich, former Wells Fargo CEO and chairman
James Mattis, later US Secretary of Defense
Fabrizio Bonanni, former executive vice president of Amgen
In December 2016, it was announced the Theranos management team would be restructured with the departure of Riley Bechtel. In January 2017 incoming US Secretary of Defense nominee James Mattis resigned from the Theranos board. In January 2017 the Theranos board of directors included:[119] Elizabeth Holmes, William Foege, Fabrizio Bonanni, and Daniel Warmenhoven, former NetApp CEO, who replaced Riley Bechtel
It was also announced in November 2016 that the celebrity-studded "board of counselors" would be scrapped in January 2017.[120]
Valuation [ edit ]
Theranos raised millions of dollars in its first years. In 2004, Theranos was based in a rented basement near the Stanford campus.[121] By December 2004 the company had more than $6 million from investors at a valuation of $30 million.[122] The company had about $45 million total fundraising after Series B and Series C funding in 2006.[123] Theranos raised an additional $45 million in 2010 at a valuation of $1 billion.[122][124] The company moved to the former headquarters of Facebook in June 2012.[125][126] The company had significant news coverage starting in September 2013 after profiles in the San Francisco Business Times and Wall Street Journal.[24] By 2014, Theranos had raised more than $400 million with an estimated value of $9 billion.[127] In 2016, Forbes revised the estimated net worth of the company to $800 million taking into account the $724 million of capital raised.[11]
In May 2017, participating shareholders provided a release of any potential claims against Theranos in exchange for shares of the company's new preferred stock. Holders of more than 99 percent of the shares elected to participate. CEO Elizabeth Holmes contributed shares to the company and gave up equity to offset potential dilution to non-participating shareholders.[128]
In May 2018 John Carreyrou reported that American business and government leaders lost more than $600 million by privately investing in Theranos.[129] Major investments had been made by the Walton family ($150 million), Rupert Murdoch ($121 million), Betsy DeVos ($100 million), and the Cox family (of Cox Media Group) ($100 million).[13] The final liquidation of the company in September 2018 rendered these investments completely worthless.[95]
In books and documentaries [ edit ]
John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose work exposed Theranos, published a book-length treatment in May 2018 titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.[130] As of June 2016 a film version was in the works starring Jennifer Lawrence as Elizabeth Holmes, written by Vanessa Taylor and directed by Adam McKay.[131]
In January 2019, ABC News Nightline released a podcast and documentary about the Holmes story called The Dropout.[132]
Alex Gibney created a documentary titled The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley about Holmes and Theranos, which will make its official debut at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in 2019.[133]
See also [ edit ]
Ian Gibbons – Theranos' chief scientist who died in 2013Upcoming fifteen-barrel brewery Wayward Owl Brewing has just acquired new digs at 3940 Thalia St. (former Gem Theater) in Central City along with the right to brew less than 12,500 barrels a year thanks to a recently-updated City Zoning Ordinance. Expect an opening in 6-7 months from now.
Louisiana-native and former lead brewer at Seattle-based Black Raven Brewing Co. Justin Boswell and wife Kristin Boswell first announced their intention to open Wayward Owl Brewing in New Orleans about a year ago. Here's what to expect at their upcoming location:
We plan on having a very nice-sized tasting room with the potential of an outdoor beer garden, a functional stage, and, if we're allowed, a pop-up neighborhood movie theater so that those living close to us can benefit not only from the beer being produced but a resurrection of something that served that community so well for so long.
Wayward Owl will join upcoming Central City hotspots Jack & Jake's Public Market and Adolfo Garcia's fire pit mecca Primitivo, making this area New Orleans' fastest growing culinary hub. This will be the fourth brewery to open in New Orleans since 2009, joining NOLA Brewing, Courtyard Brewery, and Second Line
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’d): Having finished his prayer session with Lisa Jefferson, the caller claiming to be Todd Beamer left the phone connected. Jefferson recalls hearing the now famous rallying cry.
Caller: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.”
CALL J (cont’d): Esther Heymann, who believed herself to be talking with her step daughter, heard her last words.
Caller: I need to go. They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I love you. Goodbye.”
CALL G (cont’d): Phil Bradshaw heard his caller’s last words to him.
Caller: “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.”
CALL F2 (cont’d): Lorne Lyles recalls hearing the last moments of Flight 93.
Caller: (screams) “They’re doing it! They’re doing it! They’re doing it!
The caller screamed again, said something he couldn’t hear, then the line went dead.
3. Operational details
How on Earth could any organization fake the calls I have just described? In the middle of writing this very sentence, I was interrupted by someone calling through the back door of our porch: “Is anybody home?” It was my son who was visiting us from out of town. He had been out with some old friends. I went out to the back porch to greet him.
It wasn’t my son at all, but the neighbor next door wanting to borrow our ladder. I marveled that I could have mistaken his voice for that of my son. It has a different timbre and tone, yet the context of expectation overrode my ability to discriminate sounds. One could say that my neighbor faked my son’s return without even trying to.
This example proves nothing, of course, but it illustrates a fact that has been used by spiritualists and mediums to beguile clients for hundreds of years. Anxious people, hoping to contact a deceased loved one, would typically report satisfaction with a seance. “I swear, it was my son. There was no mistaking that sweet little voice.” The context leads the recipient of such a message actually to hear the loved one. Of course, the tone of voice must be approximately correct. In the case at hand, persons faking phone calls have the further advantage of electronic fuzzing, the tendency for audio lines with very low bandwidth to transmit the human voice somewhat imperfectly. In addition, extreme emotional stress alters the human voice even more markedly, causing the person addressed to make unconscious allowances.
Telephone calls all have low bandwidth which simply means that many of the characteristics of the human voice are simply lost, like an out-of-focus photograph; if you know that the picture taken at the lake last summer was of your sister, you will have no trouble “recognizing her. Yet if someone who somewhat resembles your sister, wearing the same clothes had stood in for your her, you would still “know” that it was your sister.
There are three ways to fake the telephonic voice of any person whatever. First, voices can be mimicked. With a little practice, you or I can sound like a great many people. Second, voices can be synthesized in near real time if one has a recording of the voice being recorded. Software that was already well developed before September 11, 2001, was able to produce a very convincing quote from General Colin Powell of the Joint Chiefs: “I am being treated well by my captors.” (Arkin 1999) Moreover, the mimicry is convincing even when played over a high bandwidth device such as a tape recorder.
The third way involves a device called a voice transformer or a voice changer, such devices having been under development for at least a decade. (Ex. Pro 2004) (Spook 2004) (SeeStorm 2004) One speaks into a microphone, the sound pattern is digitized and, in real time the computer within the device produces a signal that is reconstituted as sound, a voice that can be entirely different from your own. Everything you say will be spoken by the synthesized voice and with the same inflections, pauses and emphases. You can transform your voice into that of an old man or a young girl. You can alter the sound of the voice so produced by changing the settings of controls that govern pitch and voice formants, the overtones that make up what might be called the specific “sound” of a particular person’s voice.
Of the three methods of faking a particular voice over the telephone, method number three is obviously preferable.
However, it was the content of the alleged cellphone calls that caught the attention of the American public as confirming that the calls had been made as alleged. The caller seemed to know at least a few “personal details” about the person being called. As far as we can determine, these details involved the pet name for one’s partner, as well as other commonplace items such as references to “the kids,” and so on.
The question therefor arises how the caller could have known these details. There are at least two ways. First, several passengers aboard Flight 77 were undoubtedly frequent flyers. Agents taking the flight on several occasions prior to September 11 would have an ample opportunity to engage numerous fellow passengers in chitchat, meanwhile recording their voices.
“Take this flight often?”
The recordings would contain information about timbre, pitch and other voice characteristics, as well as a wealth of “personal information.” the second way is to listen in on phone conversations. In this connection it must be mentioned that the vast majority of telephone calls made every day in the United States pass through the AMDOCS Company billing system, a telephone facility headquartered in Israel which has long been suspected as providing a golden opportunity for anyone with real time access to the calls passing through the AMDOCS system to eavesdrop on conversations. (Curtiss 2003) (WRH 2004)
“Sweetie, would you drop by the store on your way home and pick up ice cream for Jenny and Bobby?”
Of course, the organization involved would have obtained copies of the flight manifests well before the flight or it could have simply eavesdropped on the phone reservation systems for American and United Airlines.
On the fateful day the calling operation would take place in an operations center, basically a sound studio that is equipped with communication lines and several telephones. An operations director displays a scripted sequence of events on a screen so that the voice operators know what stage the “hijacking” is supposed to be at. All calls are orchestrated to follow the script. For example, shortly after the takedown of Flight 77, (See Dewdney 2003b) the first bogus calls from Flight 77 are made.
Other pseudo-events in the script include the first appearance of the hijackers, their announcement, scuffles with passengers, the back-of-the-plane strategy session, and the final rush to the cockpit. It would also include real events such as the aircraft’s turn mentioned in Call D.
To supplement the calls with real sound effects, an audio engineer would have several tapes ready to play. The tapes, which portray mumbled conferences among passengers or muffled struggles, replete with shouts and curses, can be played over any of the phone lines, as determined by the script, or simply fed as ambient sound into the control room. Trained operators with headsets make the actual calls, talking into voice changers that have been adjusted to reproduce the timbre of voice for every passenger designated to make cellphone calls.
Each operator has studied tapes for several of the individuals, as recorded on prior occasions of Flight 93, as well as profiles of the individuals, including many items of personal information, obtained by he methods previously explained.
The introductory sentence would carry the hook: “Honey, we’ve been hijacked!” Thereafter, with the belief framework installed, the operator can react to questions, literally playing the situation by ear, but being sure to include pertinent details such as “Arab-looking guys,” “boxcutters,” and all the rest. If the contact has been made successfully in the operator’s opinion, with the essential information conveyed, it is always possible to terminate the call more or less gracefully, depending on what portion of the script is under execution. “Okay. We’re going to do something. I’ll call you back.” Click.
Operators would have received general instructions about what do to in the course of a call. Although each has been supplied with at least some “intimate” details of the target’s life, there would be techniques in place for temporizing or for avoiding long conversations where basic lack of knowledge might threaten to become suddenly obvious, and so on. Three such techniques are praying (from text, if necessary) (Calls D, F1, and J), crying (as in call H), or discussing the other attacks (as in call A2 and B).
In the case at hand, Flight 93, various calls may now be examined as a consistency check. First, it must be noted that the longest call was made by the person who identified himself as Todd Beamer (Call D) to someone whom the real Todd Beamer did not know at all, Lisa Jefferson, a Verizon supervisor. Among the shorter conversations were Calls B, A2 and D.
Early in Call B (Glick), the caller indicates that it is general knowledge among the passengers that other aircraft have been hijacked that morning. Near the end of this conversation, when the caller discusses possible actions against the hijackers, he makes a joking remark:
Caller: “I have my butter knife from breakfast.”
This is strange because it implies that the caller had already finished breakfast, whereas meals are not normally served until the aircraft reaches cruising altitude, about the time that the alleged hijacking began.
In Call A2 (Burnett), Deena Burnett describes the other hijackings.
A2 Deena: “A lot of planes have been hijacked, but they don’t know how many.”
Caller: “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Deena: “No.”
Caller: “Were they commercial planes or airliners?”
Here, the caller seems to be temporizing. Not only are hijackings of commercial (i. e., cargo) aircraft extremely rare events, the caller’s apparent surprise contradicts the implication of Call B (made earlier) that the other attacks were already general knowledge among the passengers of Flight 93.
Call C, also short, may point to a possible fumble. Was one of the callers asleep at the switch?
Caller: “Mom? This is Mark Bingham.”
Caller: “I want you to know that I love you. I’m on a flight from Newark to San Francisco and there are three guys who have taken over the plane and they say they have a bomb.”
Alice: “Who are these guys?
Caller: (after a pause) “You believe me, don’t you?
Caller: “Yes, Mark. I believe you. But who are these guys?
Alice Bingham attributed the strange introductory sentence to her son being flustered. But if Mark chose his mother to call, over all other people in the world, would he be likely to make such a mistake? Would thoughts of his mother not be uppermost in his mind, no matter what happened in the passenger compartment? A caller can only make such a mistake if he or she is thinking of something entirely unrelated to the reason for the call or the person being called and that can hardly have been the case in the alleged circumstances.
Instead of answering the mother’s question, the caller seems uncertain. Mrs. Bingham has just asked “Who are these guys?” and the caller answers with another question. Does she believe his previous sentence? The caller, who may have lost confidence in the call, terminates the conversation (possibly pounding his forehead in silent frustration).
Caller C never called back. Of the 13 phone calls allegedly made from the plane, four were from one caller (A: Burnett), two were from another (F: Lyles), and the remaining seven calls were not repeated. Non-repeated calls would thus represent final exits with either flubbed results or a smooth performance. The repeated calls give continuity to the script, as well as opportunities for myth-building. Here’s Todd Beamer, known to friends (and observers) as a kind of go-ahead, take-charge guy. Perfect. He will be the “reason,” decided well in advance of September 11, why the plane crashes well short of the White House.
Caller D, the one alleged to be Todd Beamer, apparently had difficulty using his airfone. This could be explained if the telephone used by the caller was not part of the Verizon system. However, the caller could easily access the Verizon supervisory office over an ordinary telephone, explaining that he had been trying to reach someone. Strangely enough, caller D preferred to talk to Lisa Jefferson (asking her to call his loved ones for him), even though he was about to die.
One other cellphone call bears mention. Barbara Olson, a well-known Washington lawyer and, more recently, television political pundit, died aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the aircraft which reportedly struck the Pentagon building. News reports (San Diego, 2001), (BBC, 2001), (Telegraph, 2001) described two calls which Ms Olson made to her husband, Ted Olson, Solicitor General of the United States. The caller said she had locked herself in the lavatory and attempted to place the call to Mr. Olson ten times before the charges were accepted. The first conversation, in which the caller said, “Can you believe this, we are being hijacked,” was cut short, for some reason. In a second attempt, the caller described men with boxcutters overpowering the flight crew, then asked, “What do I tell the pilot to do?”
The Olson call is neither less nor more mysterious than the calls previously analysed. In this case it might be asked what advice Ted Olson could possibly have for the pilot (who was allegedly at the back of the plane with the passengers).
The foregoing analyses certainly do not prove that the cellphone operation actually took place. But they clearly demonstrate that all the conversations are consistent with such an operation, along with a sprinkling of tantalizing clues that are more consistent with the operation than actual in-flight calls. That is all one can hope for from such an analysis, even if the alternate scenario is correct or approximately correct.
Under the weight of evidence that the cellphone (not airfone) calls were essentially impossible as described by the Bush White House and the major media on the day in question, we have no alternative but to give serious consideration to the operational possibilities, as outlined here.
References
(Arkin 1999) Arkin W. H. When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing. WashingtonPost.Com. Mon. Feb. 1/99. Retrieved June 10/04 from <public-action.com/911/voice-simulation>
(AVWeb, 1999) Dahler C. 1999. AVWeb letters. Retrieved November 20, 2002 from <http://www.avweb.com/other/avma9910.html>
(BBC, 2001) British Broadcasting Corporation, 2001. Final calls from doomed flights, Retrieved November 3, 2002, from <http://news.bbc.co,
uk/1/hi/world/americas/1539193.stm>
(Curtiss 2003) Curtiss H. Despite Coverup, Israel Caught Spying in Washington Again. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. June 2000. Retrieved June 10/04 from <www.wrmea.com/backissues/062000/ 0006006.html
(Dewdney 2003a) Dewdney A. K. 2003. Project Achilles: parts I, II, III. Physics 911. Retrieved June 10, 2004 from <physics911.org/net/modules/ news/article.php?storyid=6>
(Dewdney 2003b) Op Pearl
(Ex Pro 2004) Voice Transformer. Executive Pro. 2004. Retrieved June 10/04 from <http://www.pimall.com/nais/provoice.html
(Fraizer, 2002) Fraizer J. How do I log on while in flight? North American Network Operators. (June 27 2002)<www.irbs.net.internet/ nanog/0206/ 0907.html>. Retrieved Sept. 3, 2002.
(Roddy et al., 2001) Roddy DB, Lash C, Levin S, and Silver JD. Flight 93: Forty lives, one destiny. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Oct 28, 2001. See also <www.post-gazette.com/headlines/ 20011028flt93mainstoryp7.asp>, Retrieved August 24, 2002.
(San Diego, 2001) San Diego Union-Tribune. 2001. Author calls spouse from doomed plane. Retrieved November 8, 2002, from <http://www. signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/firstweek/20010912-9999_ 1n12olson.html>
(SeeStorm 2004) VoiceDisguise. SeeStorm. 2004. Rerieved June 10/04 from <http://www.seestorm.com/products/vd.jsp>
(Spitzer, 1987) Spitzer CL. 1987. Digital Avionics Systems, New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
(Spook 2004) Voice Changer. Spook Tech. 2004. Retrieved June 10 from http://www.spooktech.com/teledev/provoicechng.shtml>
(Telegraph, 2001) Harrison, D. 2001. Revealed: the men with stolen identities. The Telegraph. London. September 23, 2001. Retrieved September 29, 2002, from <www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/23/widen23.xml>
(WRH 2004) Is Israel Blackmailing America? What Really Happened. Retrieved June 10/04 from <www.whatreallyhappened.com/blackmail.
html>High school graduates are passing up billions of dollars in free money to help them pay for college, a new analysis suggests.
By not filling out or completing the free application for federal student aid, or FAFSA, high school graduates lost out on as much as $2.7 billion in financial aid they wouldn’t have to pay back in the last academic year, according to a study published Wednesday by NerdWallet, a personal finance site. Researchers at the site came to that conclusion by estimating the number of high-school students who didn’t file the FAFSA who would also be eligible for Pell Grants, the free money the federal government gives to low- and moderate-income students.
“The FAFSA is really the gateway to getting federal aid,” said Nonso Maduka, a financial-aid expert at NerdWallet. So even if a student is eligible for a Pell Grant, she won’t get it unless she fills out the form. That also applies to federal student loans and in many cases different types of college or state-specific grants or loans.
The NerdWallet study indicates that more than 1 million students either aren’t filling out the FAFSA at all or are starting and not completing the form. The analysis does cover high school graduates who may be Pell eligible but who may not go to college, so it likely overestimates the total amount of money students are giving up. Still, there are a variety of reasons why a prospective college student may not fill out the form and pass up their chance at aid — they may think they’re ineligible or get scared off by the length of the application and the information required, said Maduka.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Democratic front-runner for president Hillary Clinton and Lamar Alexander, the Republican senator from Tennessee who chairs the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions, have pushed for FAFSA reform that would make the application simpler to fill out in the hopes that families get more of the aid to which they’re entitled.
The Obama administration has already taken steps to make it easier to fill out the form. Starting in the 2017-2018 academic year families can base their application on tax information from two tax years prior to the year they’re applying in. That will make it more likely that families will have accurate tax information on hand when they fill out the form because they won’t be relying on tax forms they have not yet filed for the FAFSA.
In addition, families will be able to start filling out the application in October instead of having to wait until January, so they’ll get a sense of their financial aid eligibility before applying to schools.
But trying to address the issue of college affordability by simply cutting the length of the FAFSA misses the point, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin. That’s because financial aid, particularly the kind you don’t have to pay back, is often a zero-sum game—an uptick in the number of students who apply for aid could mean that students actually get less money in the long run.
“We can’t pretend like we’re providing enough resources in the system such that if our FAFSA rates go up everybody’s money goes up,” she said.
Instead of devising a system that focuses on who is deserving of aid, Goldrick-Rab said policy makers should be working to make college free for everyone. That would ensure that students who aren’t filling out the FAFSA for a variety of reasons — they think they won’t get aid, they’re undocumented immigrants, they simply don’t have enough or the right information — can still afford to go to college.
“I would say the answer is not fix FAFSA — it’s kill FAFSA,” she said. “The evidence that students continue to not fill out the FAFSA and leave “money on the table” is evidence that we’re not going to tweak our way out of this.”
But as long as the FAFSA remains the key to getting federal financial aid, Maduka has a few tips for students and their parents:
Fill it out: “Don’t be afraid of it, don’t be daunted by the form, remember the first letter stands for free,” he says.
Prepare: Get your tax and other documents in order so that you have all the information readily available when you’re applying.
Avoid Scams: Companies will often offer to help you fill out the FAFSA for a fee. Remember it’s a free form so businesses trying to get you to fork over money to fill it out may be scams.
Check Your Work: Once families submit a FAFSA the information is often verified by financial aid officers that means if data proves to be incorrect you may not get the aid to which you’re entitled.
Get a daily roundup of the top reads in personal finance delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Personal Finance Daily newsletter. Sign up here.How would you respond to a spell behind bars in a repressive country? Most of us would probably opt to keep quiet and try resuming our lives. Somewhere in Iran, probably in Gharchak jail outside the town of Varamin, a young woman is now a prisoner because she made the opposite choice.
Atena Farghadani, a 29-year-old artist, has been punished with a sentence of 12 years and nine months for daring to expose the reality of her treatment at the hands of Iran’s prison system.
At a time when Britain has reopened its Embassy in Tehran and a procession of European foreign ministers, including Philip Hammond, has visited Iran, Ms Farghadani’s ordeal demonstrates how the Islamic Republic’s treatment of its own citizens remains harsh, arbitrary and profoundly unjust.
Ms Farghadani is sometimes reported to have been locked up because she published satirical cartoons of Iranian MPs. “Imprisoned for drawing cartoons in Iran”, is Amnesty International’s summary of her case.
In fact, that is only part of her story. True enough, she was arrested in August 2014 for publishing satirical images on Facebook and spent the next three months in Evin prison in Tehran, before being released in November.
But Ms Farghadani’s most serious offence was what came next. Instead of staying silent about her treatment in jail, she wrote letters of protest to the men who rule Iran: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, Hassan Rouhani, the President, and the Head of the Prison Service.
When she received no response, Ms Farghadani chose to record a Youtube video describing exactly what had happened to her inside Evin prison (shown at the top of this article).
On 17 October 2014, for example, she was beaten and strip-searched by two female guards. Her supposed transgression was to have tried to smuggle some paper cups from a bathroom to her cell.
“One of the women [guards] violently pushed the cell door and, while yelling and insulting incessantly, she ordered me to remove my clothes immediately,” said Ms Farghadani in the video. “I kept saying that what they were doing was not legal, that it was illegal and even against religious values if I was forced to undress myself in their presence. That woman raised her voice and insulted me again.”
Ms Farghadani added: “One of the women - the one who kept insulting me - held my arms up because I refused to let them strip-search me or remove my clothes. I had my right arm slammed into the wall and my wrist was heavily bruised and swollen. One of the guards searched my upper body. She did not find anything but she left visible scratch marks on my breast. The other woman started searching my lower body.”
At this point, one guard said “shut your mouth or I will knock your teeth out”, before adding: “I wonder which brothel they brought you here from”.
A month later, Ms Farghadani was released. On 23 November 2014 she described her ordeal on Youtube. “I have produced this video with my own free will and consent,” she explained. “I am publishing it to prevent such maltreatment of any prisoner. I can only hope that in the future I hope that there will be no political prisoners at all. I also hope that no political prisoner will receive such demeaning and degrading treatment.”
Ms Farghadani passed some of this time behind bars in the same cell as Ghoncheh Ghavami, the British-Iranian student who was jailed for five months in 2014 for trying to attend a male-only volleyball match.
The appearance of Ms Farghadani’s video appears to have enraged the authorities. Soon afterwards, she was re-arrested in January 2015 and returned to jail. In June, she was brought before a notorious judge, Abolghassem Salavati, who has earned his reputation by ordering a string of executions.
After a trial lasting less than a day, Judge Salavati briskly convicted Ms Farghadani of an array of offences, including “colluding against national security”, spreading “propaganda against the system” and “insulting” the Supreme Leader and the President. For good measure, she was also found guilty of “insulting” her interrogators – a hitherto unknown crime, presumably arising directly from the video.
After her conviction, Ms Farghadani’s male lawyer visited her in prison - and she shook his hand, something which is illegal in Iran. The authorities promptly added the further charge of “illegitimate sexual relations”, for which she is also expected to be tried.
In the meantime, Ms Farghadani is believed to be serving her sentence of 12 years and nine months in Gharchak jail, a facility reserved for common criminals. Her health is reported to have deteriorated, partly because she has, at various stages, chosen to go on hunger strike.
Ms Farghadani must have anticipated the possible consequences of recording her video; nonetheless, she went ahead. Her decision to speak out was an act of profound moral courage. The vengeful reaction of the authorities shows that her metaphorical arrow struck its target.
At a time when Iran is trying to improve its image and achieve better relations with the West, some of the country’s leaders surely understand that Ms Farghadani’s treatment can only damage that endeavour. Twitter is blocked inside Iran, but President Rouhani and his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, are both active users. They can be reached on @Rouhani_ir and @JZarif.
Here's the hashtag - #freeatena - you know what to do.Fantasia is back for this week's game against the Suns.
The Coaches have announced the squad for this Sunday’s game against the Gold Coast Suns.
There will be at least three changes to last week's team with Mathew Stokes, Orazio Fantasia and Jake Long all coming in for the game.
Jonathan Simpkin, Will Hams, Kyle Langford and Mason Redman have been named on the extended bench.
The Bombers will be without Brendon Goddard, Courtenay Dempsey andAaron Francis who will all miss through injury, while youngster Darcy Parish will be rested for the clash.
The game is set to provide plenty of excitement for Bomber fans with Jake Long set to finally make his debut.
Read more about Jake’s debut here.
Zach Merrett will become the third youngest Bomber in the Club’s history to Captain the side when he leads the team out on Sunday.
Watch what he had to say earlier today.
It’s also a special occasion for defender Matt Dea who will play in his 50th AFL game after joining the Club in January this year.
Tickets are still available for this week’s game, so make sure you secure yours today.
Check back tomorrow at 5pm to see the final team.
Essendon vs. Gold Coast Suns:
Round 21
1:10PM (AEST), Sunday August 14
Etihad Stadium
Click here to see the Suns' squad.
IN: M.Stokes, J.Simpkin, W.Hams, O.Fantasia, J.Long, K.Langford, M.Redman
OUT: B.Goddard (Groin), C.Dempsey (Hamstring), A.Francis (Calf), D.Parish (Calf)
B: M Dea, M Hartley, C.McKenna
HB: A.Cooney, M.Brown, P.Ambrose
C: Z.Merrett, D.Zaharakis, M.Gleeson
HF: J.Kelly, J.Laverde, A.McDonald-Tipungwuti
F: M.Stokes, J.Daniher, J.Long
Foll: M.Leuenberger, C.Bird, O.Fantasia
IC FROM: J.Merrett, M.Redman, K.Langford, W.Hams, J.Polkinghorne, J.Simpkin, S.Grimley
Get all the Game Day information you need by visiting our Game Day Hub.The folks at Gmotors have the best look yet at the new five door F55 MINI. Seeing some of the first full running prototypes on the road means it probably a good time to give you a re-cap of what we know about the car.
The Release Schedule
The 2015 MINI five door (the name is still TBD) will debut in the fall of 2014. Details have yet to be worked out but expect a roll-out to be slightly compressed in compared to the F56 – meaning it should hit the US before the spring of 2015. This should help give the Convertible room to launch that spring.
The Space
The new MINI five door will allow MINI to compete in the four door market without buyers giving up the typically MINI attributes. Despite it being a core brand attribute, many potential buyers can’t get past the size of the standard MINI hatch. Getting someone who is used to four door sedans to believe that a MINI hatch can be practical for them is harder to do. So MINI is developing a secret weapon for the next generation hardtop aimed squarely at markets such as the US. The internal code-name is F55 and, if it is received as hoped, it could make a MINI seem practical for an entirely new group of potential owners.
But what exactly has MINI done to the dimensions to create more space? Read on.
Using the next generation hatch (internally knowing as the F56) as its basis, MINI will shorten the front doors and add two small, conventionally opening doors behind them. This will be much like the Countryman’s layout, but in a smaller package. Those rear doors will be on the small side, but still more usable then you might expect. Sources are telling us that the rear doors will extend from the trailing edge of the front doors all the way into the rear wheel arches and up to the gas cap on the right side of the car. Opening those four doors will be completely redesigned door handles, while stylistically they will be similar to the current car, will pivot outward from the front end similar to the mechanism found on newer BMWs.
Inside we’ve been told to expect rear legroom to increase about 5 cm as compared to the next generation hardtop (which will be roughly the same as the current generation). F55 will offer a three person bench seat (like the Countryman and Clubman in some markets) likely as standard.
Stylistically the front of the car will be identical to the new F56. However the rear will be slightly raked as the extra 5 cm of legroom will push the boot out slightly. As these photos almost let you make out, think of shape as almost a fast-back. In total the F55 will likely be at least 5 cm longer than the F56 hatch which will be approximately the same size in length (give or two a cm or two). On the roof the R55 will feature a more subtle version of the Clubman’s “dune-line” roof profile to further distinguish the three and five door hatches.
MINI will even likely market the R55 simply as “the four-door MINI.” It won’t be taking the place of the iconic two door hardtop, but it will be offered for those who want a small MINI with just a bit more practicality. A little practicality wouldn’t hurt the hardtop for many. Have you ever tried to get a child seat in the back of the hatch or perhaps a dog in and out? Then you’ll know why the four-door F55 may go along way in helping Americans overcome their fears of impracticality. For the rest, the original hatchback form factor of the two door MINI will remain as well.
Or thought of another way, it’ll bring some of the Countryman’s gains in practicality, but with fewer of its SUV-bred performance compromises. Imagine being able to more easily haul passengers, kids or pets, but retaining all of the smaller MINI’s handling and lightweight efficiency. That’s a package we can get excited about.
What about the Clubman? Don’t worry MINI still has plans for the “other” MINI. But expect some tweaks to the formula in an effort to make the next generation Clubman (dubbed internally as the F54) a bit more dynamic.
Engines and Technology
Since the F55 is an iteration of the F56 the entire range of engines will carry over. For the US that range will comprise of two engines at launch: a 1.5L three cylinder and a 2.0L four cylinder.
The B37/B38 are built on a modular platform that increases.5L for every cylinder. That means that these engines essentially 1/2 or 2/3 of the revered 3.0L BMW inline six. Crucially, both engines are now turbocharged. What that has done is re-align the models, with the Cooper joining the Cooper S in forced induction. In our minds, this makes the Cooper much more performance-oriented than before, but lets look at the numbers.
Horsepower:
– Cooper: 134 bhp / 162 lb-ft
– Cooper S: 189 bhp / 207 lb-ft
One note – MINI will likely keep the six speed Aisin automatic at launch before replacing it with the ZF 9 Speed later in the lifecycle.
Look for the slow strip-tease to happen throughout the next 12 months ahead of it’s late 2014 reveal.
Image courtesy of Gmotors.Introduction
There is a great scene in one of the Harry Potter books, where the students are taught to deal with a shape-shifting monster. The monster can take the form of your worst fear—whether it is a spider, a giant snake, or a strict teacher that you are terrified of. And the strategy to deal with the monster? The students are taught to cast a spell to make the monster look ridiculous. A spider without legs, a snake that can only meow like a cat, that sort of thing.
I like this scene because the idea of confronting your worst fears and slowly getting better at dealing with them is a well-known method of phobia treatment in psychology. Psychologists, however, do not have convenient access to shape-shifting monsters to use during treatment. They’ve tended to rely on pictures and video clips mostly, but new technological advancements in the field of Virtual Reality are making treatment for phobia easier and more effective.
What is a Phobia?
But let’s first be clear about the concept of a phobia. When someone has a persistent (and often extreme) fear of an object or situation, to such an extent that it causes great anxiety, you can say that this person has a phobia. There are many types of phobias. Specific phobias are phobias relate to objects or situations, causing excessive fear. These include Aerophobia (the fear of flying), Astraphobia (the fear of thunder and lightning), Arachnophobia (the fear of spiders), Acrophobia (the fear of heights), Ophidiophobia, (the fear of snakes), and many others. And then there is also social phobia, that causes extreme social anxiety in social situations, causing people to often avoid socializing and meeting people altogether.
Not all phobias are created equal, of course. If you suffer from Ophidiophobia, for example, it may not disrupt your daily life too much if you live in a city, surrounded by concrete, with little chance of encountering a snake. As long as you avoid the nature documentaries and TV shows about shape-shifting snakes, you should be fine. But fear of spiders or ants? Fear of flying? Hard to lead a normal life if you suffer from one of those. People with such phobias typically seek treatment to overcome their phobia.
Phobia Treatment
The phobia treatment depicted in the Harry Potter scene, as it happens, is surprisingly accurate. Phobia treatment using therapy focuses on systematic desensitization and gradual relaxation in the face of the phobia, and uses humor in a big way in the course of exposure therapy. The general idea is to expose patients to their fear gradually, teaching them to relax as they encounter their fear, so that familiarity and exposure eventually help them overcome their phobia.
Medication is also sometimes used in treating a patient suffering from a debilitating phobia
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,” she said. The form asked for my Social Security number. I wanted to ask the school counselor for my number—maybe she knew it—but I remembered the incident with my father. If my parents didn’t have a Social Security number, it probably meant none of us did. For the first time, it dawned on me that my parents’ problem could impact me too. I wondered: Is this going to stop me from driving? What else is it going to prevent me from doing? I felt helpless, like no amount of hard work could fix this.
After a day of worrying, I went to the high school’s guidance counselor, who told me just to write down my student ID number. But from then on, I felt anxious all the time. As my siblings and I grew up, we were facing more and more paperwork of adulthood. I knew my student ID number couldn’t fill in forever. I had the sense that my future was suddenly on a different path than my friends’, that the steps that everybody else was taking toward adulthood might not work for me.
My parents worked nights, cleaning empty office buildings from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. They always told me that education would bring a better life. I took Advanced Placement classes, joined the French club and dreamed of being the first in my family to finish high school and go to college.
But my missing Social Security number kept coming up. Unlike my friends, I couldn’t take my driving test or get a license. In school, a teacher said we’d need our Social Security numbers to take the practice SAT—later, she told me privately just to write in my student ID number, and I took the test. Then at a college fair, recruiters wanted my Social Security number, too. I was devastated and worried I couldn’t make college happen. Education, the path that my parents had promised could lead to a better life, looked like an impossibility for me.
The next year, my junior year, a Latina recruiter invited me to attend a college fair for Latino students, and I started to wonder if college might be possible after all. I got up my courage and decided to ask one of the recruiters, “What about students who don’t have a Social Security number?” After I said it, I thought, Oh my God, did I just really ask that? I just revealed myself! But he told me undocumented students can attend college. I wanted to cry, not only because my world suddenly felt full of possibility, but because he had given a word to my family’s situation: undocumented. Hearing that word made me feel I was part of something larger; there were others like me.
Now that I had a word for my status and the hope that it wouldn’t prevent me from pursuing my education, I had a plan for what I’d do after graduating from high school: I’d go to college. At Kennesaw State University, I worked hard and often fell asleep studying on my living room floor. Initially, I felt like my responsibilities left little time for a social life. But after a while, I made friends. I met people like me—others who were the first in their families to go to college, people who wanted to make a difference in the world. I became a founding member of our school’s chapter of the Lambda Theta Alpha Latin sorority. School suddenly seemed fun, and I began to feel like I had a place.
That all changed in a single day during my senior year in 2010. I was parking a car and a campus security officer said I was obstructing traffic. He asked for my driver’s license, and I didn’t have one to give him.
I was arrested and taken to a holding cell in the Cobb County jail, a big room with bunks all around it full of women. The next day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived to ask me a bunch of questions, and within a few hours they said they were going to deport me to Mexico. Suddenly, all my hard work meant nothing. Whatever else I was, I was undocumented. The word that had once seemed to offer possibility now became a sentence.
I was moved to another jail, and then, about a week after my initial arrest, transferred to Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, a deteriorating building in the middle of nowhere. Five of us were admitted at the same time, and the officers told us to strip naked and get in the shower together. They brought out a thin hose attached to a machine and sprayed us with some kind of chemical. They took away our clothes and gave us emerald-green uniforms. There are moments that are so degrading, they’re seared on you forever. For me, this was one of them.
Weeks later, there was a pro-immigration rally in Atlanta, and my sorority sisters went, wearing shirts with our Greek letters and carrying signs that said “Todos Somos Jessica”—we are all Jessica. Soon my story was on CNN. I had reached the national news.
Thirty-seven days after my arrest, one of the officers came into my cell.“Jessica, pack your stuff,” she said. “You’re going home.” They were sending me back to Atlanta and releasing me.
After my release, a reporter tried to contact me at the home address a police officer had copied from my ID card during my arrest, but while I was in detention, my parents had moved to a new place in Atlanta out of fear they’d be arrested too. The local sheriff got wind of this and apparently assumed I had given law enforcement a fake address, and nine days after I was released, he charged me with a felony: giving false information to a police officer. Even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I pleaded not guilty, I wound up doing community service in a diversion program and the charge was dismissed.
I was both excited and terrified to go back to college. I didn’t know how my classmates would react to me now that I’d become the center of a debate on immigration. Would people would look down on me? Bully me? Would I be able to continue going to school? To my surprise, most people acted the same as usual, and some were especially kind. Some classmates came to talk to me to say, “I don’t really understand what’s going on, but I wish you the best.”
The federal government granted me deferred action, meaning I had permission to go to school and drive and work and continue pursuing my dreams of becoming an immigration attorney, and I wouldn’t be deported.I graduated from college on May 11, 2011. It was the happiest day of my life.
In 2012, when President Barack Obama created the DACA program, finally making the deferred action I received available to hundreds of thousands of Americans. I was elated. The program granted young people whose parents brought them undocumented to the United States as children and who met certain conditions temporary permission to stay in this country and work or study. I felt safe.
In July 2013, the government approved me for DACA, and renewed my status in 2015.
Early last month, I again applied to renew my DACA application, and submitted all the same information about my legal issues as I had the first two times. On May 8, I was told that my DACA had been revoked because of my “criminal history.” Nothing about my legal situation has changed for the past seven years; officials said my “criminal history” was because I was guilty of a felony even though that whole charge was based on a misunderstanding, I pleaded not guilty and it was dismissed. At the end of May, the Department of Homeland Security even admitted in a legal brief that I never had a felony conviction. But they still want to revoke my DACA. My lawyers are asking a judge in an Atlanta court on Thursday to order the government to reconsider my DACA application.
There are 750,000 DACA recipients. We don’t yet know how many of them might be vulnerable to what happened to me. I am lucky to have private lawyers and the ACLU working on my case, but if it hadn’t been for their intervention, officials may never have felt the need to tell me why the government revoked my status. Others in similar situations may not be so lucky.
Last December, then-President-elect Trump said that he want to make Dreamers like me “happy.” “We’re going to work something out,” he promised. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
We still don’t know what’s going to happen—both to me, and to all the other Dreamers. But if it’s true that Trump wants us to feel “happy” and “proud,” then his administration should at minimum make sure that they are considering our cases fairly.
We do know there are hundreds of thousands of other young Americans who, like me, have stories of struggling parents who came to this country because of the hope it offered. If we are deported, who benefits? Is our country really the better for it?
As I write this in Atlanta, I’m afraid that in a few weeks, I’ll get notice that the government wants to deport me—send me to a country I’ve never known as an adult and force me to start my life over.
DACA helped me to make a life in the community I grew up in and call home. It allowed me to plan for the future—a future that my parents and I have worked so hard to make real. All I want is the opportunity to continue working for that future.A capsule thought to contain the first samples grabbed from the surface of an asteroid has returned to Earth.
The Japanese Hayabusa container hit the top of the atmosphere just after 1350 GMT, producing a bright fireball over southern Australia.
It had a shield to cope with the heat of re-entry and a parachute for the final drop to the ground.
A recovery team later reported they had identified the landing zone in the Woomera Prohibited Range.
"We just had a spectacular display out over the Outback skies of South Australia," said Professor Trevor Ireland, from the Australian National University, who will get to work on the samples
"We could see the little sample-return capsule separate from the main ship and lead its way in; and [we] just had this magnificent display of the break-up of Hayabusa," he told BBC News.
The Hayabusa mission was launched to asteroid Itokawa in 2003, spending three months at the 500m-long potato-shaped space rock in 2005.
The main spacecraft, along with the sample-storage capsule, should have come back to Earth in 2007, but a succession of technical problems delayed their return by three years.
Even now, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the capsule really does contain pieces of Itokawa.
Image caption Although the grab mechanism failed, dust may still have found its way inside
Analysis has shown the Hayabusa spacecraft's capture mechanism malfunctioned at the moment it was supposed to pick up the asteroid rock fragments.
However, Japanese space agency (Jaxa) officials remain confident of success.
HAYABUSA'S HIGH-SPEED RETURN (1) Three hours before re-entry, sample capsule was released
(2) At altitude of 200km, probe and capsule encountered atmosphere
(3) Capsule travelled at 12km/s; heat-shield had to work at 3,000C
(4) Main spacecraft had no protection and burnt up
(5) At 10km, capsule dumped shielding; deployed parachute
(6) Capsule was tracked to landing via beacon and radar
They say a lot of dust would have been kicked up when Hayabusa landed on the space rock to make the grab, and some of this material must have found its way inside the probe.
On the journey home, the Hayabusa team had to work around communication drop-outs and propulsion glitches.
But each time an issue came up, the scientists and engineers working on the project managed to find an elegant solution.
Just three hours before the spacecraft began its plunge into Earth's atmosphere, it pushed the sample capsule out in front.
The main spacecraft was destroyed during the descent, accounting for most of the spectacular light show south Australians saw in the night sky.
The container, on the other hand, was equipped with a shield made from carbon phenolic resin which is capable of enduring temperatures that were expected to reach 3,000C on the re-entry.
Radar tracking and a beacon in the canister itself were used by the recovery team to locate the parachute drop-point.
The capsule will not be approached until daylight hours.
"Tomorrow (Monday) or day after tomorrow, we will pick up the capsule itself. Maybe there is some powder or some sample in it," said Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the associate executive director of Jaxa.
"We will package the capsule and then send it back by aircraft - it's a special aircraft - from the Woomera range to Tokyo International Airport, to go to our facility, our laboratory, where we will analyse the samples."
It could be some months before scientists are able to say with confidence that Hayabusa did indeed capture fragments of Itokawa.
"You hope for grams of sample but you can make do with much less than that," observed Dr Michael Zolensky who worked on Nasa's Stardust comet sample-return mission.
Image caption Hayabusa streaks across the sky with the Milky Way in the background
"On Stardust, the entire sample return was on the order of thousands of nano-grams. That was thousands of grains, each of which weighed about one nano-gram; and one of those grains you could spend a year studying," he told BBC News.
Such grains would provide new insight into the early history of the Solar System and the formation of the planets more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Professor Ireland said no rocks on Earth could provide this information because they had been recycled many times.
"If we look at anything on Earth it has been thoroughly through the wringer; it's been messed up by plate-tectonic processes and geochemical processes. So if we want to look at what our Earth was made of, we have to leave Earth. That's the importance of Hayabusa and going to Itokawa."
[email protected] that April 13th already past and the Metadata scheme is already in place in Australia, a lot of controversy arises from who will be able to access the data and how far controverting into Australians privacy it is.
Are we risking too much for uncertain rewards?
Although every security agent in Australia from the top most officials to your local police station will be able to access your Metadata, the police further argue that:
For phone Calls
data includes the phone numbers of the people involved and how long they have talked. The content of the conversation is not included.
For emails
data information such as the relevant email address and the time at which it was sent; not the subject of the email and content. data information such as the relevant email address and the time at which it was sent; not the subject of the email and content.
For web searches
The IP address and for how long a user stayed on a site; the content you were surfing is not included in the data.
This will assist to
Quickly rule out innocent people from suspicion and further investigation.
Identify suspects and networks of criminal associates.
Support applications for warrants to use more complex intrusive tools such as interception.
Safeguarding measures against access to telecommunications set in place.
Limited data access to a defined list of law enforcement and national security agencies.
The Attorney General reports to Government on the operation of the data retention scheme each year.
Where ASIO or enforcement agencies require access to the journalist data, the agency will be required to obtain a warranty and resort to the independent insight body.
All accessible agencies are subject to oversight by the communication Ombudsman or by the ASIO.
Why is Australia only a late member of this party?
Countries with mandatory data retention laws
As the Electronic Frontiers Foundation published, Australia will not be the first country to enact such data retention laws. There are other countries with such reigning rules, they include:
Argentina
Data retention scheme ruled unconstitutional and canceled because it compromised privacy.
Brazil
The Data retention bill was proposed. However, it was stopped by civic campaigns.
Czech Republic
Data retention law ruled unconstitutional, and ISP obligations were canceled.
Europe
The law is under review in Hungary and Finland being battled in Greece. It was declared constitutional in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany and Romania. Nevertheless, it was restricted in Sweden and Slovakia. On the other hand, Poland has a scheme that goes beyond EU parameters.
Mexico
Data retention scheme has been vainly challenged.
United States
Data retention scheme does not exist, but communications law can be used to oblige providers to reserve data on government demand.
How to legally save your data from this perdition
Do you want to disable ISP from monitoring or gathering whatever activities you do online? Do you want to stop Telcos from gathering Metadata even from your emails and online conversations? If yes, all you need to is get a VPN.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) like Express VPN, IPVanish, is the only way to counter monitoring and to ensure that all your connections are private and secure. ISPs and Telcos will not be able to access any of your data when using a VPN. The VPN encrypts all your local internet connection, therefore, making it impossible for ISPs to monitor and gather logs of all your activities online and similarly stopping Telcos from gathering the Metadata.
What are the Best VPN for Australia?
Rank VPN Name Monthly Price 1. $ 6.67 Visit 2. $6.49 Visit 3. $6.55 Visit 4. $2.90 Visit 5. $3.29 Visit 6. $4.95 Visit 7. $3.33 Visit 8. $3.33 Visit 9. $8.25 Visit 10. $6.67 Visit
Are Australian internet users in trouble?
Simon Frew, Pirate Party Australia’s Deputy President, said
Years of undermining privacy and other civil liberties has reached a climax. Everyone will live under the shadow of mass surveillance. We can no longer take our privacy for granted. It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor, a lawyer or a journalist — no one can assume that their communications are confidential. This is the most shamelessly authoritarian legislation Australia has seen for a long time.
Does this mean that every Australian will be living in a BIG BROTHER HOUSE with lots of cameras, monitoring every individual activity?
Why is the data retained for two years?
According to this law, this Metadata is to be stored for two years. The law enforcement and security agencies argue that the period is necessary to investigate complex and serious criminal matters. Most requests made by these agencies relate to straight forward and simple cases, which can be solved using data less than six months old. However, complex and serious cases – including many terrorism, espionage, organized crime, financial crime and public crime and public corruption cases. These cases often require lengthy investigations that require data older than six months.
A sigh of relief for social media users
Australian ISP (internet service providers) are not required to keep data about what a person does on social media and in the same way they are not required to retain data on your web browsing history.
Justification for this scheme
Moving from older business models and technology can only mean that telecommunications corporations are not retaining data enough to be used for law enforcement and security investigations. This inconsistent retention and lack of data hampered investigations have been shielding penetrators from justice.
How will this new scheme affect businesses?
For companies that collect a chunk of Metadata about their customers or other members of the public – and in a digital economy that increasingly means that every business will be burdened and red taped discouraging investment in the digitally enabled economy. This is because organizations will be required to allocate additional resources and to respect the complex customer access requests and will also need to redefine their ways to manage such data.
We encourage the government to lead in this area instead and work with the industry to strike a fair balance between promoting investments in the digitized economy while reasonably protecting consumer rights and privacy. This could be a fair deal that providing unreasonable access to Metadata for the sake of access without practical purpose.
This whole situation makes the Office of Australian Information Commissioner questionable whether it is the suitable body to provide this policy equilibrium.The house is elevated from the ground to align with the topography and the applied materials such as wood, concrete and natural stone. While the architecture studio used proven materials, the floor plan deviates from typical family homes: The ground floor offers a spacious roofed wooden terrace and a small children’s room. On the first floor the architects created six bedrooms and a TV lounge. Whereas the second floor is conceptualized as the social area of the house, providing the kitchen and the living room. Furthermore the upper floor provides a hot tub, a sauna, an outdoor fireplace and a huge infinity pool. In order to take the best advantage of the scenic landscape the architects worked with various openings. In this way you can marvel at the view of the ocean, the forest and the mountain not only from the roof but from all levels of the jungle house.Advertisement George Zimmerman arrested for domestic violence Zimmerman accused of pointing shotgun at girlfriend in Apopka Share Shares Copy Link Copy
George Zimmerman is accused of pointing a long-barreled shotgun at his girlfriend and pushing her out of her Apopka home Monday afternoon before barricading the door with furniture, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said.Read the arrest affidavitZimmerman was arrested when deputies arrived at the home on Topfield Court at 1 p.m. and was charged with felony aggravated assault and battery, domestic violence and criminal mischief.Zimmerman's girlfriend, identified as Samantha Scheibe, called 911 during the fight.Raw video: Chopper 2 over Zimmerman arrest scene"He has his freaking gun breaking all of my stuff right now," she told the dispatcher.Scheibe could be heard yelling at Zimmerman on the call."I'm doing this again? You just broke my glass table. You just broke my sunglasses and you put your gun in my freaking face," she said.911 call: Zimmerman's girlfriend calls policeAccording to Scheibe, she asked Zimmerman to leave the home and he began packing his belongings, including a shotgun and an assault rifle. She said Zimmerman cocked the shotgun and then took it out of his bag."Scheibe then advised Zimmerman that she was calling the police because she was nervous about why he pulled out the shotgun. Zimmerman then pointed the shotgun at Scheibe for a minute, and asked her if she really wanted to do that. Scheibe stepped back, at which time Zimmerman smashed a glass coffee table, belonging to Scheibe, with the butt of the shotgun," the arrest affidavit said.Video: Neighbors weren't aware Zimmerman was living nearbyZimmerman got on the phone and made his own 911 call as he watched deputies outside the home."They're pretty upset I think," he said. "They're banging on the door and window."911 call: Zimmerman says pregnant girlfriend has 'gone crazy'Zimmerman blamed the damage inside the home on his girlfriend, who he said is pregnant with his child. He said they began fighting after she told him to leave and that she wanted to raise the child on her own."My girlfriend, for lack of a better word, has gone crazy on me," he told the dispatcher.Images: Zimmerman arrested in ApopkaZimmerman said he wanted the truth out there about what happened and said he never displayed a gun. At the end of the call, deputies can be heard entering the home.No one was hurt in the incident."He offered no resistance to deputies as they responded," said Dennis Lemma, chief deputy with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.Zimmerman will be held on no bond in a 64-square-foot single cell with limited contact with other inmates until his first appearance in front of a judge at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. He will not be represented by Mark O'Mara, his attorney during his murder trial."He will be housed as he has been in the past, under administrative confinement," said Lemma.If Zimmerman is released on bond, deputies want the judge to impose electronic monitoring.Neighbors told WESH 2 News that they didn't know the woman was dating Zimmerman, and they thought the man might have been an undercover cop because he walked around like an officer.Neighbors said his truck had been parked in the neighborhood for about a month.Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin in July.He was involved in a domestic dispute involving his wife, Shellie Zimmerman, and her father in September, but he will not face charges in that incident.Images: Many looks of George ZimmermanA potential witness in the May fatal shooting of Ibragim Todashev by an FBI agent in Florida has been granted permission to stay in the United States until the end of the month.
An immigration judge in Miami originally ordered Tatiana Igorevna Gruzdeva, a 19-year-old aspiring foreign language teacher and a Russian citizen who was arrested for overstaying her visa, to leave the country no later than July 1, but the removal office of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency granted her a 30-day extension, according to an ICE official.
The agency did not say why it granted the extension.
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Gruzdeva will remain in jail until she leaves the country per the immigration judge’s order. Officials say she first came to the United States last year.
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Gruzdeva’s ordered deportation had drawn concern from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, which is investigating Todashev’s death.
Related Links More coverage: Marathon bombings
Todashev, 27, a Russian native living in Orlando when he was killed, was a friend of accused Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and was interviewed several times about that relationship.
During his final voluntary interview, Todashev was shot multiple times and killed by an agent who said the man attacked him.
Details of what happened in the moments before the shooting remain shrouded in secrecy, with the FBI refusing to release any information, citing an ongoing investigation.
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Gruzdeva was Todashev’s roommate in Orlando.
Wesley Lowery of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. Nicholas Jacques can be reached at [email protected] I consider the greatest mysteries:
1) Why did giant humans and hobbits and most giant animals become extinct?
2) Who made the miniature tools that have been found around the world, tools that are meant for hands the size of supposedly mythical fairies.
3) Why don’t aliens share their technology with people they’ve determined are moral?
4) Why are there no apparent alien bases anywhere, for example an intergalactic one that encourages humans to develop themselves and join?
5) Why are the various types of forest apes called “bigfoot” so difficult to photograph, unlike apes and other monkeys? (This might actually be due to bigfoot hating the smells of civilization, like various chemicals, and having a very low population, like pandas, and preferring extremely remote terrain, and from their hide and hair, they can probably easily withstand harsh climates).
7) Why are genuine “free energy” devices hard to come by and buy despite them being plentiful?
8) Why hasn’t antigravity been rediscovered by the world after thousands of years except by a few obscure people, and why hasn’t what they discovered been developed further?
9) How are tiny spiders able to live underground where there are no apparent entry ways?
10) What is ball lightning, how does it pass through objects and why does it sometimes explode and how can it be replicated?
11) How were ancient vitrified forts/fortresses made? Those are ancient stone fortress that have walls that were fused into one solid piece by an unknown means and which no one has been able to duplicate even today.
12) Where did the majority of the technology of the ancients before the Flood end up being buried?
13) Is the moon hollow?
14) Is Earth hollow?
15) Are all planets in general, hollow?
16) How did Leedskalnin build Coral Castle?
17) How were the pyramids all over the world built?
18) Why is most of the world unfamiliar with sciences of logical fallacies (the study of illogical and logical reasoning) and the more popular theology (study of religions)? If both were mastered would allow it to advance extremely quickly. According to the Bible the reason humans resist learning true morality and being logical is because Satan and the demons that follow him are negatively influencing the world via their hearts, and they can apparently affect memories too somehow, and can also appear in various ways visually, as ghosts or angels or even make ghostly vehicles, like ships and cars. And everyone knows they can also move physical things.
19) Why are there many more ugly and plain people than beautiful people if beauty is much more strongly preferred over things that are not?
20) What happened to fire breathing reptiles, aka dragons? Why are there nearly no sightings? The last one was in Niger some years ago, and it was a walking, not flying dinosaur.
21) Why are there no human or alien super heroes or villains, but only people that rely on bulky technologies and a large amount of help to stay in power or evade capture? In other words, why doesn’t anyone have a suit that allows them to fly for long periods of time, or that can shoot lasers, or electricity, or someone with a very small ship by which they do the same things, or someone who naturally or artificially has those powers in their body? Why don’t billionaires use their money to build such suits? Why didn’t they do so over the decades? It seems the rich of the world are simply boring people. But I also wonder, why aren’t there alien versions on Earth? If the universe is filled with countless trillions of beings, and they can get here in ships that could destroy entire cities in maybe a month, then why haven’t any decided to play hero, seeing all the injustices here? Can’t any of these aliens gather together some volunteers from their world to make a base somewhere in the solar system as a base and home for themselves after playing superman? But all they appear to do is observe what’s going on, and very, very rarely do any appear to do a good deed. There’s only one account of a what seemed to be something alien healing anyone, it was told on the show Unsolved Mysteries, and a woman claimed that while lying on her bed, a little UFO came in through her window and healed her of her cancer and then left. Atheist Gene Roddenberry seemed to think that they don’t “interfere” due to not wanting to be blamed later on for any trouble that results in their actions. He seemed to me to be saying this through his show, Star Trek. However, there are four strange exceptions:
a) Animal mutilations. Who is doing them? It may be demons, since it would make no sense logically for an alien or aliens to keep this up for decades as there is no logical reason to do so. It would be like a human going to some alien planet and wasting their time butchering animals in bizarre ways. Either there are some insane aliens about or demons, or it could be both. What is so strange is that if it were aliens, then why, if observation is their general rule, in other words, no interference, do the “mutilations” occur in such a way that it’s obvious it wasn’t caused by an animal? They are similar to Jack the Ripper killings. In fact there is one example of a human being killed the way cows are usually found mutilated by a demon or alien (or demons and aliens). The few sightings that have been documented of animals being abducted only give inconclusive evidence since the phenomenon is rare as far as the general public knows. Second, why are the mutilations apparently arbitrary? For example: why is all the blood drained? Why is only one eye removed? Why are the genitals removed? Why are extremely specific surgical acts performed, like a little piece of the tongue removed or some organ removed and the rest left intact? There’s one to three other odd things that happen that are also very specific. If these aliens are so advanced, why not just clone their own cows or make some sort of machine that can artificially make cow blood and the organs they desire? Can’t they find things around the universe to sell and then pay some aliens back on their own planet or others, or even trade with some to make such machines? Or can’t they buy a station used for cloning? Why risk getting caught, or getting some unknown disease when clean sterile copies could be made with a machine? For example, if I have an interstellar, especially intergalactic ship, I would take video and photos of all kinds of things and sell them or trade them for whatever. I would scan some meteorites and asteroids and various things on planets and look for anything interesting and of value to take back. I’d tow or cut up an asteroid if I had to. Then I’d bring it back to whoever for money. And if I wanted to play hero on some planet for fun, I’d use all that money to make base nearby for me to go to when I wanted rest and time to myself. As for language barriers, I could always hire one of the natives to teach me the language, and give it help in exchange for helping me understand the culture or cultures of their planet. Even if I didn’t, I could just hover around invisibly around various parts of a city or some city, and when I see what is obviously a crime taking place, stop the criminal and leave my signature perhaps, some sign that someone other than one of their own kind had helped them.
b) There is one somewhat clear example that aliens too, can become insane, that being the case of Springheeled Jack, an alien that for many years, now and then terrorized some people in the UK. Another possible example, nearly pointless to mention since it is so inconclusive, is the mothman creature, which for all anyone knows, only God knows, was just a demon. Charles Fort recounted a story of chicken mutilations, but it was apparently caused by a demon.
c) Crop circles.
d) Abductions.
f) Antigravity ship sightings (or what seem to be ships). Why show your ship if you have no intention to interfere? Can’t a UFO sighting cause someone to be late to work, interfere with someone’s work in another way, cause a car accident, cause accidental worship of alien beings (and there are UFO cults). Perhaps that is there way of encouraging humans to “reach for the stars” and to be friendly with the rest of the universe, but of course, not everyone will have a sane or logical response, I’m sure they know.
There are many other mysteries, but these ones come to my mind the most and most easily.
AdvertisementsImage caption Kim Lee was granted a divorce, alimony and compensation by a Chinese court
On Sunday a marathon divorce case with domestic violence at its core came to an end in a Beijing court.
On one side was Li Yang, the multimillionaire celebrity entrepreneur who founded the English teaching school "Crazy English".
On the other was Kim Lee, Li Yang's American wife; she had accused Mr Li of domestic violence and wanted a divorce and sole custody of their three daughters.
The judge granted the divorce on the grounds of domestic abuse, plus a three-month restraining order to Ms Lee.
The court also ordered Mr Li to pay Ms Lee 50,000 yuan (about $8,000: £5,000) for mental anguish, alimony for their daughters until they turn 18, plus 12 million yuan as compensation.
After the verdict, a visibly relieved but tearful Ms Lee told reporters and supporters: "It's not the best way, to sort out one's marriage in court, but the domestic violence has really hurt me from the inside."
She urged women who are still suffering to use the law to protect themselves.
The battle between the couple started in August 2011, when Ms Lee posted several pictures on Sina Weibo, the microblogging website, showing bruises on her body she claimed were the result of being beaten by her husband.
Image caption Li Yang is a well-known entrepreneur in China
The pictures went viral. Many were shocked and voiced their concern. Others thought Ms Lee went too far, while Li Yang himself issued denials and threats.
Li Yang is a household name in China, having pioneered the Crazy English teaching methodology in the mid-1990s. More than 30 million people have attended his lectures.
The high-profile case brought an issue that not many people want to talk about openly right to the heart of the national conversation.
On Tencent Weibo, there is a lot of anger directed at Li Yang.
"How can he educate other young people when he behaves like this?" one user asked.
"Li Yang's behaviour is inexcusable - it should be condemned; financial punishment is not enough, he should taste what he had done to his wife," another user suggested.
Death sentence
According to a national survey carried out in 2011, one in four married women in China has experienced some form of domestic violence.
In the past, many battered women regarded this as a domestic issue and felt reluctant to report it, but attitudes are changing gradually.
According to state news agency Xinhua, in 2005 courts in Beijing dealt with 217 cases involving domestic violence; in 2011 the number had risen to 657.
While Kim Lee scored a victory against her famous husband, another court case might have a more harrowing ending.
Li Yan (unrelated to Li Yang), a woman in Sichuan province, was sentenced to death in August 2011 for killing her husband, Tan Yong.
Li said she had suffered years of abuse and violence at the hands of Mr Tan, including being burned by cigarette butts, having part of her finger chopped off and being locked out of their accommodation in winter.
Li Yan complained about the abuse to local police and community officials, but they did nothing to investigate.
In November 2010 she killed her husband during a fight, hitting him with the butt of an air rifle that, Li's lawyer says, Mr Tan had threatened to shoot her with, and dismembered his body.
Evidence of abuse including police records, hospital records, witness testimony, pictures of her injuries and complaints to the ACWF (All China Women's Federation) were presented in court, Human Rights Watch said in a 30 January statement, but the court ruled that it was not enough to prove she had suffered domestic violence.
Li Yan appealed against the death sentence on self defence grounds, but it was rejected by the Sichuan high court.
There are reports that the People's Supreme Court has given the green light for the death sentence to go ahead, although defence lawyer Guo Jianmei says that she hasn't received the decision. Executions normally take place within seven days of the Supreme Court decision.
Why no evidence?
There have been frantic efforts in the past few days to stop the execution. On 25 January, more than 100 lawyers, scholars and NGO workers urged
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, Aug. 25, at the Aviation Unit at Manama International Airport.
At 11:31 a.m. AST, four MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters took off and entered a formation in preparation for a low pass fly-by of the Aviation Unit runway. Commander, Task Force 52 (CTF 52) Capt. Eric Wirstrom, was in attendance. While forward deployed in Bahrain, HM-15 DET 2 is assigned to CTF 52.
The MH-53E is a heavy lift capable helicopter with a maximum range of 500 nautical miles, with in-flight refuel which extends their range. Their primary mission is to maintain a world-wide 72-hour airborne mine countermeasures (AMCM) rapid deployment posture, with four aircraft forward-deployed for AMCM and vertical onload delivery capability in the Arabian Gulf.
The Blackhawks recently completed maintenance for a rigorous and time consuming airframe bulletin (AFB). For the duration of the AFB, due to the extensive maintenance required, they were not able to keep all four aircraft fully mission capable. However, they completed the AFB ahead of schedule and are now mission ready.
"After some recent safety issues, the Navy has recently made significant investment in time and resources to ensure that the MH-53E Sea Dragon remains ready to execute its mission," said Capt. Wirstrom. "The formation flight today is a testament to the hard work, teamwork, and focus of the entire naval aviation enterprise, and the Blackhawks of HM-15 in particular. It was a privilege seeing all of those helicopters flying today. It was even better seeing the pride that DET 2 takes in accomplishing this significant achievement."
For more news from Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/5th Fleet, visit www.navy.mil/local/cusnc/."If I don't feel happy, I can't paint."
In the past four years, Hasan Abdalla has painted less and less. Instead, he keeps his canvases rolled up and stacked in a closet in his apartment in London.
Abdalla, a Syrian Kurdish painter, applied for asylum in the U.K. four years ago.
He's one of tens of thousands of refugees recently arrived in Europe, and now arriving in growing numbers. He's also one of the many struggling to cope with what he has lived through.
It took almost a year for his claim to be accepted, but he was granted five years of humanitarian protection that allows him to live and work in the U.K. He's settling into a new apartment with his wife and youngest son after a string of temporary housing.
Three days after the family moved in, there are still boxes on the floor. Abdalla's wife has unpacked two patterned cups and a small bag of Syrian coffee from home. A soccer match broadcast by Al-Jazeera plays quietly in Arabic on the TV.
Abdalla says his work used to feature scenes from everyday life. He says he loved to use bright colours and bold, clean lines. (Zoe Todd/CBC) In Syria, Abdalla sold his abstract and expressionist work for as much as $5,000, but in London he says he's lucky to get a quarter of that price at outdoor markets. "I used to be productive and I thought that nothing is difficult for me to paint – whatever I want, I could paint," Abdalla said.
But then he hears about another friend or family member killed in Syria. "I live that anxiety – that worry. If you are worried and anxious, you can't paint."
Abdalla's anxieties are not unusual among the refugees now flooding into Europe, a 2015 study suggests.
The German Chamber of Psychotherapists has released numbers suggesting half of the refugees in Germany are traumatized by their experiences. Most commonly, they suffer from post-traumatic-stress disorder or depression – often both.
Of those diagnosed with PTSD, 40 per cent have made plans to take their own lives. Only four per cent get psychotherapy. There are no statistics about the number of refugees who have committed suicide.
Psychotherapy is vital
Doctors who conducted the study say psychotherapy is a crucially important treatment. They warn medication isn't enough to overcome PTSD and its symptoms, which include panic attacks, heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and flashbacks.
For most, the flashbacks are scenes of what made them flee. More than half of the adult refugees surveyed for the German study witnessed or experienced violence. A quarter of the children surveyed have seen dead bodies.
Abdalla knows all of those things. Syrian police arrested him at an airport in 2010 as he returned from an art exhibition in Sweden. They confiscated his passport, then imprisoned and tortured him for days. Abdalla can't remember exactly how many.
After fleeing from Syria to England in 2011, Abdalla says, his paintings changed. He started using darker colours to depict chaotic impressions of his life as a refugee. (Zoe Todd/CBC) After his release, Abdalla joined the Syrian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. He recalls meeting with friends to protest with hundreds of people in the streets of Damascus.
"They wanted no more than this – just democracy." Then he remembers seeing two of his friends shot down.
"When my friends were shot dead, I knew it was my turn," he said. "So I decided to flee."
Abdalla travelled alone through Lebanon to Turkey, and then for seven days by truck to England in 2011. Along the way, he sold paintings to pay smugglers for a Danish passport and travel.
When Abdalla arrived in England, he unrolled his remaining paintings. He says what he saw on the canvas didn't match his memories of home. When he picked up a paint brush, he noticed his style had changed.
"In my last paintings there is a lot of melancholy – a lot of depression, as I believe, because everything is destroyed," he says. "No longer perfect figures; no longer known elements; no longer traditional colours; no longer that happy background of happy experiences."
Separated from his family and surrounded by strangers at a temporary refugee home, Abdalla says he began to feel depressed.
The stigma of mental illness
Authorities seldom talk to refugees about the mental health services available to them, says Alex Storer, who works for a U.K. mental health charity called Mind. Depending on a refugee's cultural background, they also might not know to ask for this kind of support because of the stigma around mental illness in their native country.
"If [refugees] haven't been supported in terms of their mental health, they're much more likely to become isolated," Storer says. "It's about making sure that integration can happen, and people are supported to be active citizens."
People who seek asylum in the U.K. can access public health services, but Storer says it's difficult to get help for mental illness. Injuries and other physical ailments are prioritized while depression, anxiety, and PTSD can go undetected and untreated. Often, asylum-seekers aren't referred to a mental health specialist until they attempt suicide or self harm.
"As far as they are not reaching the crisis point, their mental health may be deteriorating but they don't get any support around that," Storer said.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he wants to accept 25,000 refugees by the end of 2015. Some refugees already in the country hope Canada is prepared to unpack the mental health baggage new asylum-seekers bring with them.
One of them, Ahmadou Gitteh, became a refugee while studying at Carleton University in Ottawa in 2011.
Death threats by email
He received death threats by email after rejecting a government intelligence job in his native Gambia, a narrow strip of land in Africa surrounded by Senegal. He knew it wouldn't be safe to return home, so he applied for asylum.
When he saw images of the current refugee crisis in a newscast this summer, Gitteh says he had to look away. He doesn't watch the news anymore because it makes him cry. "More and more people become me every day," he said.
Gitteh doesn't know when or if he'll see his home again. He says the thought made him want to commit suicide.
That's why he started seeing Berak Hussain, a counsellor for international students at Carleton. She has worked with refugees from different countries, but with similar struggles – trauma, grief, disbelief, anxiety and depression.
"There's a lot pain from the losses," she said. "They're people like you and I who were at the wrong end of the world when politics and violence and greed and hatred came into their lives."
Hussain says there is an extremely high chance of recovery for refugees with mental illness if they get help. Awareness is a critical first step.
Gitteh, who says Hussain saved his life, didn't know about Carleton's counselling service until the university's international student centre referred him.
Unlike Gitteh, Abdalla hasn't seen a counsellor or therapist and still struggles with feelings of isolation, vulnerability and anxiety.
He says nobody in the refugee-assistance system ever asked about his mental state.Move means party will be led by generation without links to violence, but 69-year-old is still expected to wield influence
Gerry Adams will announce his plans to retire after 34 years as president of Sinn Féin on Saturday, marking a generational shift that will break the leadership’s last link with republican violence.
Adams will take to the stage of Dublin’s RDS conference hall to set out an exit that some analysts say will improve Sinn Féin’s electoral chances in the Irish Republic.
But sources within the mainstream Irish republican movement and veteran Adams-watchers believe the 69-year-old will still hold the centre of power in Sinn Féin from behind the scenes long after his official successor is elevated to the top post.
Having survived as head of his party longer than five British prime ministers, six Irish premiers and five US presidents, Adams will use the televised speech to set out a timetable for his departure that he has indicated will take about a year.
When he does finally go, the Sinn Féin politician most likely to take over from Adams will be the party’s deputy leader and Dublin TD, Mary Lou McDonald. With Michelle O’Neill the leader in Northern Ireland, the party once umbilically linked to the Provisional IRA and its armed campaign will not only be led by two women but also by a generation with no direct involvement in the Provisionals’ 30-year “war”.
One veteran of the IRA’s West Belfast Brigade who was once close to Adams and his family doubts that the former MP for the constituency and TD for Louth in the Irish Republic is about to relinquish his full control of the party.
“Gerry made Sinn Féin in his own image,” the former IRA prisoner said.
“Whatever you think about him he was the master strategist. He built Sinn Féin up into an efficient electoral machine. He guided the party and the movement away from war to peace. It could never have been done without him and he knows that. He still thinks he can push them on to power in the south [Irish Republic] as his final achievement. So he will be staying around, in the back room, working the controls.”
Outside observers of the often closed world of Irish republicanism also agree that Adams’s history and character dictate he will still play a leading role behind the scenes.
Deaglán de Bréadún, the author of Power Play: The Rise of Modern Sinn Féin, said: “It is hard to imagine him withdrawing entirely from political activity.”
He said Adams was even more likely to remain a key backroom figure following the death of his friend and closest ally during the peace process, the late deputy first minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness.
Although he has a certain popular appeal as an icon of Irish republicanism, the more controversial aspects of his past are constantly highlighted by political opponents in the Republic.
On Adams’s switch from Northern Ireland to the Dáil, De Bréadún noted: “He has never really settled into the political scene in the Republic and his grasp of the finer points of economic policy, for example, remains rather limited.
“Nor does he appear to enjoy the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gerry Adams with the Sinn Féin deputy leader, Mary Lou McDonald, who is tipped as the candidate most likely to succeed him as leader. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
There was speculation that Adams would use his semi-retirement to run next year for the presidency of Ireland. Last weekend, however, he ruled himself out of a contest that proved to be particularly brutal and bruising for McGuinness back in 2011.
On the hustings McGuinness came face to face with IRA victims, including the son of an Irish soldier the Provisionals had murdered who said in front of the TV cameras that the Sinn Féin deputy leader was not fit to be president of the nation.
Given the allegations levelled at Adams ranging from being a senior IRA member to ordering the kidnapping, murder and secret burial of the mother of ten Jean McConville in 1972 – charges he has always denied – it seems unlikely he would want to resurrect such controversies during a televised Irish presidential election.
Adams’s unofficial biographer, however, believes the Sinn Féin president will impose one cast-iron rule on his replacement – a vigorous defence at all times of the legitimacy of the Provisional IRA’s campaign.
Malachi O’Doherty, author of Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life, said: “The priority for Adams is that his party never disowns the IRA.
“He will not want or allow any successor to ever cast doubt on the validity of that IRA campaign. He will want them to state that this campaign was as legitimate as the rebels of 1916.”
Despite his many remarkable achievements in turning the republican movement towards solely peaceful constitutional politics, Adams is now seen by both external observers and some party insiders as a brake on the party’s growth in the Republic.
His longstanding connection to the IRA’s violent “armed struggle” and his often poor performances in Dáil parliamentary debates continue to alienate vast sections of the Irish Republic’s middle class.
Yet despite his promise before this weekend’s 2017 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis to provide a road map to retirement, Adams the author as much as the leader continues to leave hints about his true intentions. Earlier this month he launched a new book, a collection of his writings on topics ranging from his thoughts on Brexit to his love of dogs. Adams’s latest work is titled Never Give Up.
Gerry Adams
1970
Adams joins up with the Provisionals after the IRA divided with the Marxist Officials.
1972
He is interned without trial in Long Kesh prison camp as an IRA suspect, but freed that summer to join an IRA delegation that held secret meetings with British ministers in London.
1973-76
Adams is imprisoned several times and starts to write under the nom de guerre of Brownie for the republican newspaper An Phoblacht, mapping out a political strategy beyond the IRA’s armed campaign.
1981
While Sinn Féin’s vice-president he plays a pivotal role in the hunger strikes in which seven IRA prisoners and three INLA inmates starve themselves to death for political status. The mass support on the streets for the hunger strikers convinces Adams of the need to engage in electoral politics.
1983
Adams is elected MP for West Belfast and later internally voted in as Sinn Féin president, a post he has held ever since.
1984
He is shot and wounded by a UDA assassin in central Belfast.
1992
He loses his West Belfast seat to the moderate nationalist party the SDLP as talks are about to start between him and John Hume, its leader.
1994
Adams is one of the co-architects alongside McGuinness of an IRA ceasefire, which within three years becomes a permanent cessation of violence.
1997
He sees off an attempted coup d’etat by a hardline IRA faction to take over the republican movement and push it towards war once more. The defeated recalcitrants break away to form the Real IRA.
1998
Adams takes part in all-party peace talks in Belfast that lead to the Good Friday agreement.
2005
The IRA decommissions most of its huge terror arsenal.
2007
Adams backs McGuinness to enter a power-sharing government with their former foe the Rev Ian Paisley – a once unthinkable arrangement that leads to almost a decade of a devolved cross-community coalition in Northern Ireland. Adams’s ultimate aim of a united Ireland, however, has failed to materialise and is unlikely to in his lifetime.VANCOUVER -- In what is called the largest crime spree in Vancouver history, police recommend that 60 people be charged with everything from assault to breaking and entering after the downtown Stanley Cup riot last June.
Police chief Jim Chu said Monday a forensic video database was used to analyze characteristics of suspects. They asked the Crown to approve 163 charges against 60 people.
Police now recommend that 60 people be charged with everything from assault to breaking and entering after the downtown Stanley Cup riot last June. Sergei Bachlakov/Getty Images
The June 15 riot put police under pressure to recommend charges quickly after thousands of people lit fires, burned cars and looted stores following the Vancouver Canucks' loss to the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.
"It became, by many measures, the largest crime spree in the history of B.C.," Chu said at a news conference.
The recommendations have been forwarded to British Columbia prosecutors, who will determine if the charges go forward. Names of suspected rioters were not released.
Chu said officers needed the last four months to investigate.
"In the minds of many, today has been a long time coming and I share those frustrations," Chu said. "I wish there could have been a quicker and simpler way to bring the rioters before the courts, and as tempting as it may have been to some to take those shortcuts, we still believe that we owed it to the victims of the riot and the residents of the community to take the time necessary to build the best cases possible."
Chu outlined recommended charges against three men in their early 20s, including one who saw his picture from the riot posted on Facebook.
The chief said the Vancouver Island man contacted police to apologize for damaging a car and that after police interviewed him, they were initially prepared to recommend a charge of mischief.
But Chu said investigators then searched for the man's description in the database of riot video they'd asked the public to download onto a police website. The computer returned numerous hits showing the suspect allegedly damaging six vehicles, including an unmarked police car.
In another case, Chu said a 21-year-old man's fate was sealed by DNA collected at the scene. He said the same suspect was seen on video looting a store while masking his face with his shirt and punching a random victim in the back of the head, rendering him unconscious.
Chu said a third case involved a man whose newspaper photo showed him reaching into a broken store window. The man told officers he was just touching a dress on a mannequin, but never took it. The video, however, showed him running down the street with the stolen garment and tossing it onto a fire.
"This man is known to police and has a previous criminal history of trafficking drugs and crimes of violence," Chu said. "The people who rampaged that night must be held accountable for their actions."
An earlier report concluded police were overwhelmed by a massive and largely drunken crowd that streamed into the downtown core to watch the game on large TV screens.Nintendo has posted an interview with Super Mario Kart directors Tadashi Sugiyama and Hideki Konno to shed some light on how the SNES title took shape 25 years ago.
One of the most interesting tidbits to come out of the exchange is the revelation that Super Mario Kart actually began life as an F-Zero game.
Before Mario had ever stepped foot in a kart, Miyamoto assigned Konna and Sugiyama the task of turning F-Zero into a multiplayer affair. He wanted the duo to take advantage of the SNES's two controllers, but after some experimenting they realized that F-Zero might not be the right fit.
"We didn't at all have the concept of a racing game with Mario. We began with experiments for a multiplayer F-Zero game," explains Konno.
"In F-Zero, you race at over 400 kilometers per hour along incredibly long straight lines, but we realized that splitting the screen into upper and lower portions for two players to do the same thing was out of the question."
Due to hardware constraints at the time, it was actually impossible for the SNES to display tracks with long straight lines in two separate windows on the same screen. That's why Super Mario Kart's tracks snaked and squiggled, and played host to karts as opposed to lightning fast hovercars.
"If you look back at the Super Mario Kart tracks, you'll understand. Instead of tracks with long straight lines, the track designs are compact, with lots of twists and turns so they fit well within a square," added Konno. "And the the only vehicle that made sense within such tightly woven courses were karts."
You can find out more about the development of Super Mario Kart by checking out the full interview on the official Nintendo website.DRAWING up a list of today’s fastest off-the-shelf bikes is something of a pointless exercise. Parity in power combined with a self-imposed 186mph top speed limit means that there’s a whole gamut of superbikes that are just as fast as one another – any top speed shootout is just as likely to come down to an individual rider’s ability to tuck in neatly as much as his mount’s natural ability.
But it’s not always been that way. So here’s our run down of the top ten fastest production bikes, one for each decade since the 1920s.
10: 1920s
BACK when the motorcycle was as fresh and new as the internet is today – and no doubt surrounded by endless middle-aged stick-in-the-muds claiming that ‘a horse was good enough for me’ – there wasn’t much doubt over who was fastest. No, any public-house argument over ‘mine’s quicker than yours’ would be ended the moment a man with a Brough Superior walked into the bar.
With top speed built into the bikes’ names, there was no need to ask the owner of an SS80 or SS100 “what’ll it do, mister?” – the machines were individually tested and guaranteed to achieve in MPH the number in their name. In fact, SS100s were clocked at well over 100mph, with George Brough himself hitting more than 130mph on a tuned one in 1928.
9: 1930s
STRICTLY-speaking, a Brough might well have remained the fastest bike you could buy in the 1930s, since their production continued until the outbreak of WW2. Power increased by around 50% between the SS100s introduction and the launch of the special ‘two of everything’ model in the mid-1930s, which would easily hit 110mph. However, the American Crocker V-Twin would give them a run for their money, speed wise, with a similar 110mph top end.Introducing... Star Wars Rebels - Modernography! By SWCT Team on 2017-10-11 15:00:00 The Star Wars Rebels crew has landed in our Modernography Series!
Collect these new graphics featuring characters and ships from the show!
Set Information:
9 inserts (3 variants) + 1 award card (3 variants)
Variants:
-White, Open-Edition (*IMPORTANT NOTE* Each white variant will TEMPORARILY sell out after 24 hours but since they are Open-Edition, they will be made "For Sale" once again when this set is complete)
-Blue, 24-hour availability
-Green, limited to 325 Prints (EXCLUSIVE TO CRYSTAL PACK!)
These inserts are available in 2 packs (until sold out!):
Star Wars: Rebels - Modernography Crystal Pack (60 Crystals Per Pack):
Odds Per Pack (WHILE AVAILABLE):
Modernography Inserts
-White - 1:3 (Open-Edition)
-Blue - 1:12 (24-hour availability)
-Green - 1:35 (325 Prints)
Star Wars: Rebels - Modernography Pack (5,000 Credits Per Pack):
Odds Per Pack (WHILE AVAILABLE):
Modernography Inserts
-White - 1:5 (Open-Edition)
-Blue - 1:25 (24-hour availability)
Checklist:
1) Hera
As always, all available limited inserts are available until sold out!
Head to the Cantina! Head to the Cantina!Memories of the Past Part 1 Part Two, Part Three
I can’t believe I actually finished it, sketchy or no! This is my first time finishing a comic. This has been floating around in my head for a while and I needed to sketch it out. Leaving it in it’s sketchy stage because if I work on it any longer, it’ll never get posted. Formatting sucked, lines are a bit cheesy, transitions and actions are a little wonky, but it was good practice! *sheds a tear*
I have a million headcannons and theories concerning Garnet, this is just the first I’ve really sketched. We don’t know if Garnet and the other Gems always knew Rose (heck, we don’t know anything about Rose or the Gem’s past), so this is just one take on how these two might have met before Garnet became a Crystal Gem. There’s more of a backstory behind this but this is already getting pretty long and I want to go watch Space Race.Throughout the entire predraft process former Florida State running back Dalvin Cook’s name had been in connection with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for weeks. In light of Doug Martin’s PED suspension and unsettled situation many analysts and fans were almost certain that the Bucs would draft a running back in the first round and that there was a very good chance Cook could be the man. Instead, however, the Buccaneers chose to select Alabama tight end O.J. Howard, who was originally slated to be a top ten pick but fortunately fell right into the Buccaneers’ lap on Day 1.
Despite drafting Howard, however, Mark Cook of Pewterport.com has confirmed that the Bucs were in fact interested in Cook, but ultimately the decision came down to what made the most sense for the team.
“Dalvin Cook was definitely a player that was under strong consideration at No. 19 overall (PewterReport now knows that to be true),” Mark Cook wrote. “With that said, the Bucs had no choice really but to take O.J. Howard at no. 19 as they, like many teams had him as a Top 10 talent. But I can confirm they are extremely pleased with Howard and with second rounder Justin Evans.”
The move seemed to work out in Tampa Bay’s favor as the Bucs landed a tight end who is slated to be one of the best tight ends in the NFL. It also helps that he is a product of Nick Saban and one of the best teams in college football. Meanwhile, Doug Martin is looking great and appears to be on the right track which is good news for the running back corps and proves the Bucs made a solid decision when they opted to draft Howard in the first round.The Cracked Podcast #69
Pop quiz, hotshot. Did you know that ‘Speed’, the Keanu-on-a-bus 90s action tent-pole was originally developed as a completely different film? At first, the script was written as an ensemble drama about a cast of strangers on a bus working together to stop a terrorist, but once Keanu signed on, it was rewritten as the fast and dumb classic we know and love today.
So many huge Hollywood films have little-known stories like these, where one decision changes the entire film and the lives of everyone involved. In other cases, these stories don’t provide an alternate history as much as they provide a new context that makes re-watching the film a completely different experience.
This week on the podcast, Jack O’Brien is joined by Earwolf’s Matt Gourley to discuss some of the stories unearthed from his podcast ‘I Was There Too’ and then chats with Cracked editor David Christopher Bell about overlooked behind the scenes stories from the films of David O. Russell, Stanley Kubrick and more.Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. Content can be viewed at actual source page: http://youtu.be/CZyz1amPaqI Video by Katie Schoolov
Whether it's coming from the sun or a smartphone, light is abundant. But research suggests the wrong light at the wrong time of day can disrupt the body's natural rhythms.
Satchin Panda feels at home in the Salk Institute. Not just because of the prestige, but also because of Salk's unique architecture.
"They built this institute with big glass doors and windows," Panda said.
At every turn, the building emphasizes one of Panda's abiding research interests: light. His lab sits two stories below the ground floor, but thanks to Salk's deep natural light wells, it's anything but dark and gloomy.
"There is very little lab space inside that's not brightly illuminated," he said.
Panda grew up in India. And he can remember visiting villages back when they still didn't have electric light.
Now, he studies circadian rhythms. He's trying to understand how our biological clock keeps our bodies on a steady 24-hour cycle that determines when we eat, when we work, and when we sleep.
And he's found that light plays a crucial role. But it's not necessarily the light we see. Even blind people have their daily rhythms regulated by light.
"That told us that there might be some unknown light sensor present in the eye," Panda recalled.
That light sensor is called melanopsin. Panda knows it helps keep the body's internal clock ticking, because he once did an experiment on mice that lacked melanopsin.
The mice could see normally. But when Panda simulated jet lag for the mice by adjusting the time of day when they were exposed to light, things got rough.
"A normal mouse would readjust to the day-night cycle within a week. But this mouse would take almost a month to adjust. And that was really fascinating because this mouse can see perfectly fine, but the light sensor that was resetting its clock was not there."
Without melanopsin, the body struggles to intuitively know when it's time to wake up, and when it's time to sleep. That's because melanopsin plays an important role in regulating melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep.
Light helps keep melatonin down during the day. When light floods the melanopsin in our eyes, our body dials back on the hormone, keeping us alert.
At least, that's how things should work. But the way Panda sees it, this system is getting hijacked by the typical 21st century lifestyle.
"Nowadays, with artificial light, and with so much work to do, we constantly stay awake late into the night," Panda said.
We spend all day working indoors, shielded from natural light. Then we spend our nights bombarded with the bright displays of laptops and TVs and smartphones.
"The question is, how does this lifestyle affect our clock on a daily basis, and whether this effect will guide our bodies on the way of health or disease in the long-term," he said.
There's reason to think we could be harming our health with all these wrong light signals at all the wrong times. Just look at medical data on workers who alternate between daytime and graveyard shifts, living totally out of sync with the natural light cycle.
"What has been shown is, shift work predisposes to quite a few chronic diseases," said Panda. "Like obesity, diabetes, certain kinds of cancers, and even dementia."
But Panda says more data is needed to really drill down on the way light affects health. So he's getting people to wear light sensors around their wrists.
"The whole idea is to see how much light you get exposed to during the entire day," Panda explained. "And we'll see whether that light level will affect how you are sleeping, how much you are active."
The idea of a Fitbit for light intrigued me, so I took one of Panda's sensors home. And I went about my routine, working, sleeping, running errands.
Ten days later I went back to Panda's lab to get the rundown on my light diet. Panda brought up a graph with bright yellow bars tracking my daily light exposure.
The first thing I noticed was that I get very faint light when I'm in the office. A few yellow peaks mark my commute into and from work, but my chart is mostly dim, poorly lit valleys. There was one outlier, though: a day when I worked mostly outside.
"You look at this day, then look at the sleep that night. You have very little hand movement in bed, so that means you were sleeping like a baby," Panda said.
He said little-by-little, people are becoming more conscious about the link between light and health.
Some people now use light therapy to treat their depression. And developers are making software that filters out bright light from computer displays at night to help the body's melatonin production. He'd like to see architects fill offices and other buildings with more light.
"People who are building these structures, are they factoring in what we are now learning from the effect of light on human behavior and health?"
If you can't bring the workers outdoors, Panda says maybe we can figure out a better way to bring the outdoors in for the workers.
To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.If you were to ask a random person what the best example of Artificial Intelligence is out there, what do you think it would be?
Most likely, it would be IBM’s Watson.
In a stunning display of knowledge and accuracy, Watson blew away the world Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter without blowing a fuse, and ended with Jennings proclaiming, “I for one welcome our new computer overlords.”
IBM’s Watson represents the current popular approach to AI: that is, spending hundreds of hours hand-coding and fine-tuning a program to perform exceedingly well on a single task. Most people in the field of AI call machines like Watson an expert system because they are designed to be experts at a single task. This approach has been wildly successful lately, producing machines that drive cars and fly UAVs by themselves, beat world chess and Jeopardy champions, and even fool some people into thinking they’re human.
However, imagine how hard it would be to hand-code a system that could do everything the human brain is capable of. Do you think that sounds impossible? That’s the reason why the field of neuroevolution was born: scientists wanted to harness the creative power of evolution to design the programs that could achieve human-level intelligence.
What is Neuroevolution?
Neuroevolution, or neuro-evolution, is a form of machine learning that uses evolutionary algorithms to train artificial neural networks. It is useful for applications such as games and robot motor control, where it is easy to measure a network’s performance at a task but difficult or impossible to create a syllabus of correct input-output pairs for use with a supervised learning algorithm. -Wikipedia
What does all that mean?
Broadly speaking, the goal of neuroevolution is to evolve an artificial brain with a genetic algorithm to solve a specific task. The artificial brain, oftentimes called the artificial neural network, is designed based off of our understanding of how biological brains work. This video does a great job of explaining artificial neural networks:
As the video mentioned, oftentimes the genetic algorithm starts out with a bunch of random artificial brains. The genetic algorithm then emulates the process of evolution:
Fitness evaluation: each of the artificial brains are tested on how well they perform at a task. Selection: the brains that perform better are chosen to reproduce into the next generation of artificial brains. Descent with modification: the offspring of those artificial brains are created as copies of their parent brains with slight modifications.
This process repeats over and over until the artificial brains master the task. Here’s an example of an artificial brain being evolved to walk in a two-legged robot. Notice how the artificial brain does a really bad job of walking at first, but eventually learns walk without falling at all.
Why is that useful?
Genetic algorithms have been proven to be a creative and powerful designer.
For example, researchers once used a genetic algorithm to design an antenna for one of NASA’s satellites. The original antenna took months for engineers to design; cost thousands of dollars per antenna; and didn’t even perform as well as NASA had hoped. An entrepreneurial group of researchers at UCSC decided to make an attempt at designing their own version of the antenna with a genetic algorithm, and evolved an antenna that used a single piece of wire that cost next to nothing and performed better than the antenna designed by the engineers.
The same concept applies for evolving artificial brains.
Researchers at UT Austin have evolved artificial brains to control a rocket into space without fins, which is an otherwise extremely difficult problem to engineer. [videos]
Meanwhile, researchers at UCF have evolved artificial brain controllers for two-legged robots that walk and balance all by themselves. [video]
Evolved artificial brains are even being used in video games, such as UT Austin’s NERO video game. [video]
There are plenty more examples of “neuroevolution in action” out there; these are just a few choice examples. Neuroevolution has a promising future of designing intelligent algorithms for robot control, vehicle navigation, and many, many, many more applications.
Neuroevolution and Artificial Intelligence
The real advantage of neuroevolution is what it brings to the development of Artificial Intelligence. In the past, computer scientists working on AI would design an algorithm that would exhibit intelligent behavior, then tweak that algorithm’s parameters until it exhibited “optimal” intelligent behavior. The AI they designed either worked or it didn’t, and oftentimes their results didn’t teach us much about how human brains work.
On the other hand, in neuroevolution, scientists can begin to ask questions about the evolution of human-level intelligence:
“What challenges (or set of challenges) were ancient organisms faced with that required them to evolve intelligence to succeed?”
“What were the ‘building blocks’ to human-level intelligence?”
etc.
Indeed, neuroevolution promises to be an insightful field of study, since scientists can not only attempt to create an artificial intelligence, but also hypothesize about how intelligence was created in the first place. (Which is why neuroscientists and biologists are also interested and involved in this field!)On Sunday, the San Francisco 49ers kick off the 2017 NFL season at home against the Carolina Panthers. What is the Niners’ game plan for victory in Kyle Shanahan’s head-coaching debut?
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan began mental preparations for Sunday’s game when he originally set his sights on becoming an NFL head coach, and well before he signed his six-year contract with the 49ers earlier this year.
Four years ago, Shanahan didn’t know his first opponent would be the Carolina Panthers, but he was well aware he would have something to prove in his inaugural game. Since Shanahan knows this game will be treated as an early litmus test
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to the DIRNSA, which is NSA-speak for Director of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander. He’s also the commander of the Defense Department’s U.S. Cyber Command and the Central Security Service, the military signals and cyber intelligence units that contribute personnel to the NSA. The CSS is essentially the NSA.
The NSA’s Foreign Affairs Directorate interacts with foreign intelligence services, counterintelligence centers and the UK/USA and FIVE EYES exchanges, an alliance of intelligence operations between the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand that dates back to 1946. It also includes the Office of Export Control Policy.
The Information Assurance Directorate is the center of NSA’s cyber warfare and defense program offices. It’s also responsible for generating the codes that the U.S. uses.
The Signals Intelligence Directorate is the largest functional directorate. It has three subdivisions. One helps determine the requirements of what the NSA calls its customers — other agencies, the president, the military. The agency’s main analytical centers live here, too. The super-secret work of SIGINT collecting and offensive cyber warfare is the responsibility of S3, with its many bland sounding and compartmentalized branches.
The Research Directorate figures out how to break codes and how to best penetrate the telecom infrastructure of tomorrow. The Technical Directorate puts everything together. It’s responsible for the infrastructure for everything NSA does.
Two other directorates are responsible for training and human resources and for acquisition and procurement.
The NSA’s three operational centers are its main watch facility, the National Security Operations Center, or NSOC; the National Threat Operations Center, which is the U.S. government’s primary worldwide cybersecurity warning office; and the NSA/CSS Commercial Solutions center, which interacts with private companies, uses commercial technologies for classified purposes and conducts research on cryptography that the government is willing to share with the public.
Another NSA office is the Special Collection Service, which is run jointly with the CIA and operates classified listening posts from embassies and other special facilities worldwide. The SCS is responsible for NSA listening posts that aren’t inside of U.S. or allied military facilities.
Inside the United States, the NSA has very large off-site campuses in Hawaii, Texas, Utah and Georgia. In Maryland, it owns and hosts offices in Linthicum, Finksberg, Bowie and College Park, alongside Ft. Meade, its home, and adjacent properties. There’s an NSA office inside the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, where NORAD and NORTHCOM have their backup command center. And NSA has a big presence at Site R, the site of the Alternate National Military Command Center, near Ft. Ritchie, Md.
[Related: The NSA’s New Spy Facilities are 7 Times Bigger Than the Pentagon ]
All these sites are connected by an architecture called NSANet, which exists in parallel to the regular telephone switch system. Real-time feeds of SIGINT reports and time-sensitive cyber information can be sent to users anywhere in the world, such as those on Navy ships, using the NSA’s Integrated Broadcast Service.
The NSA uses a bewildering amount of technical tools and databases. You’ve now heard of PRISM, which was revealed in the Edward Snowden leaks. This system collects digital network information from U.S. content providers.
The NSA also has several tools and databases, including metadata collection, a repository of malicious network signatures and an Air Force/Navy tool that tracks ships in real time.
Here are the other main NSA collection tools and databases:
ONEROOF: Main tactical SIGINT database (Afghanistan), consisting of raw and unfiltered intercepts
NUCLEON: Global telephone content database
XKEYSCORE: Collection tool for international metadata
AIRGAP: Priority missions tool used to determine SIGINT gaps
HOMEBASE: Tactical tasking tool for digital network identification
SNORT: Repository of computer network attack techniques/coding
WIRESHARK: Repository of malicious network signatures
TRAFFICTHIEF: Raw SIGINT viewer for data analysis
BANYAN: NSA tactical geospatial correlation database
OILSTOCK: Air Force/Navy tool to track ships in real time
MAINWAY: Telephony metadata collection database
ASSOCIATION: Tactical SIGINT social network database
MESSIAH/WHAMI: Electronic intelligence processing and analytical database
MARINA: Internet metadata collection database
PINWALE: Internet data content database
SURREY: Main NSA requirements database, where targets and selectors are “validated” by NSA managers
PROTON: SIGINT database for time-sensitive targets/counterintelligence
OCTAVE/CONTRAOCTAVE: Collection mission tasking tool
WRANGLER: Electronic intelligence intercept raw database
ANCHORY: Main repository of finished NSA SIGINT reports going back three years.
AQUADOR: Merchant ship tracking tool
So how do you get NSA to spy on someone? You send in an IN. An IN is an Information Need. The INs go into the collection requirements databases, like SURREY, and are evaluated. Are they time-sensitive? Are they critical, meaning intel is needed within three days? Do they fit in with the National Intelligence Priority Framework, which lays out in broad terms the targets the NSA is working on in any given year?
To invert a phrase from biology, in the intelligence community, function follows form. To begin to understand the NSA from the outside, you need to understand what it looks like from the inside.CLOSE The Nashville area has gained hundreds of restaurants since 2010. But how much is too much? Jon Garcia and Lizzy Alfs/USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee
Buy Photo Henrietta Red. The Germantown restaurant and oyster bar is the dream of homegrown talent Julia Sullivan and her partner Allie Poindexter. (Photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean)Buy Photo
Just six weeks into the new year and looking ahead to spring, it's time for Nashville diners to brace themselves for the next wave of the city's restaurant explosion.
While concerns remain about the pace of this growth, the dining public remains filled with gustatory anticipation. The variety of places lurking on the horizon also shows that there's a little something for (almost) everyone.
This year actually looks to be ahead of the pace of fine-dining openings compared to last year, which saw fewer than a dozen noteworthy places emerge. We should double that mark if all opens as planned.
After a quick survey of the more than two dozen places slated to open this year, I spoke with some of the ambitious entrepreneurs who remain in the throes of construction and staff training.
One of the most anticipated openings among the chef community is Henrietta Red, the Germantown restaurant and oyster bar dream of homegrown talent Julia Sullivan and her partner Allie Poindexter. Scheduled to open Friday, Feb. 24, it's been a steep learning curve even for an industry veteran like Sullivan.
Developing the project from initial concept to today has been almost a four-year process, including two years since partnering with Strategic Hospitality.
"I was naive," Sullivan said. "That's not really the right word, because I'm not new to this, but there were so many things that I didn't anticipate."
Like bedrock, for example, when it came time to prepare the foundation, adding an extra $20,000 to project costs.
"It's alarming how quickly budgets can get out of control," Sullivan said.
Feeling the pressure of her peers' expectations, she admits she's also a little scared.
"I feel rusty," she said of her absence from running a kitchen, but she's taking the advice gleaned along the way to start with what you know you can do well and build from there. "I was told it may take two years before I really feel that the kitchen is mine."
For now, Sullivan said she's content to borrow from her experience, including stints at Per Se under Thomas Keller and the Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
Buy Photo Alex Sidorov, left, Maneet Chauhan and Chris Cheung are the culinary team behind Tansuo, a new Asian-inspired restaurant opening in the Gulch in the fall. (Photo: Jim Myers / The Tennessean)
For the now-entrenched and beloved celebrity chef Maneet Chauhan, whose community involvement has earned her wide praise, her next venture after Chauhan's Ale & Masala House is in the space right next door. Called Tànsuŏ, it will be Chauhan's inspired take on authentic Chinese food, a void she immediately noticed in Nashville. If that weren't enough, a third concept, The Mockingbird, will follow right next door to Tànsuŏ later in the spring.
Chauhan said she wants her next restaurant to be "another unique part of the Nashville dining tapestry."
"We asked, 'what will make this place stand out?' and I think from the design to the food, we have blown it out of the park," Chauhan said.
She also made the smart play to hire an experienced Chinese chef, Chris Cheung, to oversee the Gulch property.
Like almost every place looking to open, she says they are months behind, mainly from the challenges of rehabbing an old building and having to stop and take care of structural issues along the way.
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Across town in East Nashville, Bill Darsinos is in the furious homestretch of opening Greko, a fast-casual take on Greek street food. Darsinos is a local restaurant veteran whose family operates Darfon's, Gondola Pizza and the Southside Grill. They are finally getting around to the food of their heritage.
Fire-roasted chicken will be a staple at Greko when it opens this summer in East Nashville. (Photo: submitted)
Darsinos estimates that he's about five months behind, mostly due to challenges from the gaps in the construction workforce. It's also driven up labor costs in an effort to find qualified people, he says.
Greko will be the flagship for what Darsinos hopes to be a nascent chain of fast-casual eateries as part of Fresh Hospitality.
"Don't look for blue and white columns, though," he said, referencing Greek restaurant stereotypes. "You won't find a painting of the Parthenon, either."
Instead, he's channeling the authentic street life of Athens and other urban centers of Greece. He's hired a graffiti artist to tag the exterior and will feature logos of Greek soccer clubs and other paraphernalia more typical of the tavernas of his homeland.
Darsinos has faced permit and import issues as he tried to import five Greek wines from his family village in the Peloponnesus for the restaurant. Darsinos can finally see some light now, and anticipates opening, along with his cousin, niece and brother, his modern temple to souvlaki by the end of March.
Sometimes, it takes forever to get a place open, and Gerard Craft says, in this case, it's a blessing. The James Beard Award-winning chef from St. Louis has planned a Pastaria outpost in Nashville for more than a year. Last May, in anticipation of a late summer 2016 opening, he even did a pop-up pizza service to remind people he was coming.
The restaurant, part of the OneCITY development just off of Charlotte Pike near Centennial Park, had some unanticipated delays. Craft says he was opening another restaurant in St. Louis on a similar timeline, so when delays occurred he was relieved.
In Nashville last week for meetings, Craft says the "coming soon" label is now in earnest and hopes to see business in the next few months. He's even planning on bringing his wife and two daughters down for the summer.
"I really like Nashville," said Craft in a way that people do after spending more than a weekend here and getting a feel for life in this place.
No doubt there's an attractive energy in Nashville and it will be interesting to see what bubbles up over the next couple years. Rumors abound of other high-profile chefs and concepts that have been seen sniffing around. We can only hope that, given the cost to join the fray these days, that there is as much homegrown talent sowing their dreams as there are suitcases of money from beyond the Nashville basin.
Reach Jim Myers at [email protected] 615-259-8367, on Instagram@culinarityand on Twitter@ReadJimMyers.
A partial list of restaurants and other food-related concepts slated to open
Henrietta Red
1200 4th Ave. N.
www.henriettared.com
February 24, 2017
Oak Steakhouse
801 Clark Place
oaksteakhousenashville.com
March/April 2017
Tànsuŏ
121B 12th Ave. N.
www.tansuonashville.com/
March/April 2017
EiO & The Hive
5304 Charlotte Ave.
www.eioandthehive.com
Spring 2017
Hopsmith Tavern
1903 Division St.
Spring 2017
51N Taproom
702 / 704 51st Ave. N.
Spring 2017
Henley
204 21st Ave. S.
henleynashville.com
Late Spring 2017
Black Rabbit
218 Third Ave. N.
Late spring 2017
Greko
702 Main St.
www.grekostreetfood.com
Late spring 2017
Lulu / Geist
Jefferson Street (Between 3rd and 4th Ave.)
Late spring 2017
Von Elrod’s
1000 4th Ave. N.
facebook.com/Von-Elrods-1195333520520614
Summer 2017
Kuchnia & Keller
1300 3rd Ave. N.
kuchniaandkeller.com
Summer 2017
The Mockingbird
121A 12th Ave. N.
mockingbirdnashville.com
Summer 2017
[Unnamed] Philip Krajeck concept
823 Meridian St
Hopdoddy (Boscos)
1805 21st Ave. S.
Pastaria
pastariastl.com
July 2017
Attaboy
8 McFerrin Ave.
Diskin Cider
1235 Martin Street
www.diskincider.com
Late summer 2017
St. Roch Market
431 Chestnut St.
strochnashville.com
strochmarket.com
Ford Fry
1400 Adams St.
Three concepts projected for 2018
Andiamo Italian Steakhouse
Cambria Hotels & Suites
118 8th Ave. S.
Sea Salt
209 Third Ave. N.
Late 2017
Babalu
2407 Franklin Pike
eatbabalu.com
Buy Photo Chef Julia Sullivan and Allie Poindexter are partners in a new restaurant, Henrietta Red, in the Germantown neighborhood Tuesday Feb. 7, 2017, in Nashville, Tenn. (Photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean)
Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/2m7McHeJust to put the thicknesses into a more american-friendly form for those of us that are not very good at trying to envision anything in the metric system 4mm = ~ 1/6 inch and 6mm = ~ 1/4 inch (a little less).
When you order your sandals from invisible shoe, they come in a kit, so you have to decide where you want to put the hole between your toes which allows you to make it custom to your feet. You may need to trim some of the rubber from the sides if you have more narrow feet, I didn't, because my feet are boats. Next, follow the instructions found on the site to tie them up to your feet, or you can just make up your own ways to tie them, it really doesn't matter as long as they are comfortable. Take your time to make sure that they fit the way you want them to and are comfortable, it is worth it when you are out on the trail.
Anyway, after taking some time to try out the 4mm Connects, I have a few things to say. Since the sole is significantly thinner than the 6mm huaraches, it is more floppy. I find that it slaps around on the ground a lot more as I am running, this may be due to it being a little too loose on my foot which I am going to try and change this week and give you guys an update. It is harder to keep it from folding under and staying close to your foot. I really love the 6mm Contacts because of the way that they form to your foot and stay there. When running in them, I almost feel like I am running completely barefoot because they stay put so well on my feet that I hardly notice them, where the 4mm's were more floppy and harder to manage. As far as the 6mm being more "padded" or offering more protection against the ground than the 4mm's, I really didn't notice a difference. I think that both are thin enough that they truly don't offer any cushion (which is good), and are very comparable in the amount of protection that they offer. I HIGHLY recommend the 6mm Contacts for any barefoot runner looking for a little protection on those gravely, glassy or hot roads. I really love mine and wear them often. As I have said before, I love to take them on a barefoot run with me in my hands and when I encounter areas that are tough on the feet, I throw them on so I don't tear my feet up. I mostly do this because of a couple bad experiences with glass/slivers/tiny sharp objects while running on the side of a busy road or an old wooden bridge.
Now it's time to go order some of your own! You won't regret it!
A little while back, Steven Sashen from invisible shoes sent me a pair of huaraches to try out for him. I already had a pair of the 6mm Contacts so he sent me some 4mm Connects to compare the two of them.‘Minor’ fire at Galaxy Note 7 battery supplier’s Tianjin plant saw 110 firefighters and 19 trucks sent to put out blaze, according to emergency services
A fire that drew out 110 firefighters and 19 trucks to a factory operated by Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery supplier, Samsung SDI, was caused by discarded faulty batteries, the company has said.
A “minor fire” broke out Wednesday in a Samsung SDI plant in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin and had to be extinguished, according to local emergency services Reuters reports.
The fire was contained to a part of the site used for waste processing, including faulty batteries. There were no casualties or significant impact on the operations of the plant, although the local fire department was called, said a Samsung SDI spokesperson.
The Wuqing branch of the Tianjin fire department said on Sina Weibo that the “material that caught fire was lithium batteries inside the production workshops and some half-finished products”.
Samsung SDI operates five plants within China, with Tianjin operating as the main manufacturing point for small batteries used in portable electronics, including the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 that had to be recalled twice and withdrawn from sale leaving Samsung with a $5.3bn (£4.24bn) hole in operating profit.
Despite Samsung mobile stating that the Note 7’s issues were caused by batteries supplied by Samsung SDI and China’s Amperex Technology, Samsung SDI is due to supply batteries for Samsung mobile’s upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone.
Samsung SDI said in February that it is has invested approximately 150bn won ($131m) in safety. The Note 7’s fires have caused manufacturers and battery supplies across the globe to double down on testing, with some delaying shipping devices with more advanced batteries in favour of older, inferior but tried and tested designs.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 will be crucial in maintaining the company’s competition with arch rival Apple and newer players such as China’s Huawei. It will launch on or around21 April, have an edge-to-edge infinity screen, iris scanner and waterproof design, according to insiders.From the carefree way that Jelena Ostapenko smacks a tennis ball, you would think no one was watching. Yet the unknown Latvian thrilled 15,000 fans on Court Philippe Chatrier, and millions of TV viewers, as she became the youngest grand slam champion since 2006.
Judging by her on-court interview, Ostapenko was as bewildered by her triumph as everyone else. She arrived here as the world No 47, hoping to get through a couple of rounds, or reach the second week at best. Her pre-tournament odds were 100-1, so this 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over Simona Halep made her the most unlikely major winner that modern tennis has produced.
Now Ostapenko goes away with the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen, and the small matter of £1.8 million in prize money. This was the eighth major she has competed in, and she only turned 20 during Thursday’s semi-final against Timea Bacsinszky. But by succeeding so spectacularly, she has already achieved a goal that eludes Caroline Wozniacki, Jelena Jankovic and Dinara Safina – all former No 1s who have never won a grand slam.
“I still cannot believe it,” said Ostapenko, “because it was my dream and now it came true. I think I’m going to only understand that in maybe couple of days or couple of weeks. Five or 10 minutes before the match, I was a little bit nervous, and then again when I was losing the second set. But then I felt I have nothing to lose, so I’m just going to enjoy the match and do my best.”Criminalizing access to information?
Danger to the Internet and agriculture
(NaturalNews) Are Natural News, its growing network of news and information sites and all other alternative media in danger of becoming extinct? This thought would become more than just a remote possibility if newly revealed data about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement the Bush and Obama administrations have spent years negotiating are revealed to be accurate.According to the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that focuses on protecting civil liberties in today's Information Age, a recent leak of a May 2014 draft of the TPP agreement revealed the addition of new text that criminalizes the misuse of trade secrets via "computer systems.""This is a significant revelation," said the EFF in a blog post, "because we also know that trade secrets are planned for inclusion in the EU-US free trade agreement, TTIP (the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)."The revelation of the proposed text in the TPP provides a good indication that the same kind of language will likely also appear in TTIP," EFF continued. "Frighteningly, this text contains no protections to safeguard the public interest."EFF says that the U.S. Trade Representative's sudden interest in the protection of trade secrets comes mainly amid reports of rampant cyber espionage against U.S. government and private industry computer systems emanating from China. Such reports have also led to domestic proposals like this year's Defend Trade Secrets Act, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in April, along with a companion House bill. If approved, the measures would create a new federal right of action for theft of trade secrets, according to the EFF.However, in August, 31 law professors penned a letter in opposition to these two measures on several grounds, including the measures' potential use for anti-competitive purposes, as well as the possible negative consequences it might have on access to information."Labeling information as a trade secret has become a common way to prevent public and even regulatory access to important information ranging from the composition of hydraulic fracturing fluids to the code inside of voting machines, all of which have compelling (but not uncontroversial) reasons for public access in a democracy," the professors wrote.EFF says that even if the measures pass, the U.S. government's ability to enforce them against foreign competitors will be limited to the usual diplomatic approaches such as economic sanctions."The introduction of new language on trade secrets into both TPP and TTIP — which may become the United States' two largest trade agreements — is therefore a parallel tactic to address cyber-espionage on the global stage," EFF notes.As noted at thewebsite, the Obama administration recently announced that the TPP had been signed by all 12 nations involved in crafting it, after eight years of negotiations. It is a cornerstone of Obama's economic legacy, so the White House is going all out to get Congress to agree to it.Also,is reporting that the provisions unearthed by EFF indicate that the Internet is also in danger."Internet users around the world should be very concerned about this ultra-secret pact," OpenMedia's digital rights specialist Meghan Sali told the site. "What we're talking about here is global Internet censorship. It will criminalize our online activities, censor the Web, and cost everyday users money. This deal would never pass with the whole world watching — that's why they've negotiated it in total secrecy."In addition to these usurpations, as Natural News has previously reported, TPP also criminalizes saving seeds while pushing a pro-Monsanto biotech patent monopoly."As America races toward her date with destiny, there is yet another 'fundamentally transforming' event coming her way, and that event is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)," Dave Hodges ofsaid. "The TPP is a plot designed to hand over control of the world's governments to private corporate interests and it is all being done in secret. Even Congress is not allowed to examine the TPP provisions."Roy W Spencer made the announcement when he gave testimony before the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 22 July 2008. He has a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has been
involved in global warming research for close to twenty years. He has numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles dealing with the measurement and interpretation of climate variability and climate change. He is Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the AMSR-E instrument flying on NASA's Aqua satellite. Data obtained from Aqua is the basis for much of the following.
Here are excerpts from his full testimony.
"Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions.... we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."
"Another way of saying this is that the real climate system appears to be dominated by "negative feedbacks" -- instead of the "positive feedbacks" which are displayed by all twenty computerized climate models utilized by the IPCC....If true, an insensitive climate system would mean that we have little to worry about in the way of manmade global warming and associated climate change. And,... it would also mean that the warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly
natural. Of course, if climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control, and is likely to end -- if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now."
"The support for my claim of low climate sensitivity (net negative feedback) for our climate system is two-fold. First, we have a new research article in-press in the Journal of Climate which uses a simple climate model to show that previous estimates of the sensitivity of the climate system from satellite data were biased toward the high side by the neglect of natural cloud variability. It turns out that the failure to account for natural, chaotic cloud variability generated internal to the climate system will always lead to the illusion of a climate system which appears more sensitive than it really is...."
"The second line of evidence in support of an insensitive climate system comes from the satellite data themselves. While our work in-press established the existence of an observational bias in estimates of climate sensitivity, it did not address just how large that bias might be. But in the last several weeks, we have stumbled upon clear and convincing observational evidence of particularly strong negative feedback (low climate sensitivity) from our latest and best satellite instruments. That evidence includes our development of two new methods for extracting the feedback signal from either observational or climate model data, a goal which has been called the "holy grail" of climate research...."
"Based upon global oceanic climate variations measured by a variety of NASA and NOAA satellites during the period 2000 through 2005 we have found a signature of climate sensitivity so low that it would reduce future global warming projections to
below 1 deg. C by the year 2100."
"One necessary result of low climate sensitivity is that the radiative forcing from greenhouse gas emissions in the last century is not nearly enough to explain the upward trend of 0.7 deg. C in the last 100 years. This raises the question of whether there are natural processes at work which have caused most of that warming.
"On this issue, it can be shown with a simple climate model that small cloud fluctuations... can explain 70% of the warming trend since 1900, as well as the nature of that trend: warming until the 1940s, no warming until the 1970s, and resumed warming since then."
"I predict that in the coming years, there will be a growing realization among the global warming research community that most of the climate change we have observed is natural, and that mankind's role is relatively minor.... given that virtually no research into possible natural explanations for global warming has been performed, it is time for scientific objectivity and integrity to be restored to the field of global warming research."
UPDATE
In the comments below you'll find references to Spencer's views on so-called Intelligent Design, along with links to an article he wrote for online magazine TCS Daily (the only time, as far as I know, he's ever written on the subject). These references have been posted to discredit Spencer's scientific reputation. Here are some extracts from that article.
"Twenty years ago, as a PhD scientist, I intensely studied the evolution versus intelligent design controversy for about two years. And finally, despite my previous acceptance of evolutionary theory as "fact," I came to the realization that intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism.
"In the scientific community, I am not alone. There are many fine books out there on the subject. Curiously, most of the books are written by scientists who lost faith in evolution as adults, after they learned how to apply the analytical tools they were taught in college.
"You might wonder how scientists who are taught to apply disciplined observation and experimentation and to search for natural explanations for what is observed in nature can come to such a conclusion? For those of you who consider themselves open-minded, I will try to explain.
"True evolution, in the macro-sense, has never been observed, only inferred. A population of moths that changes from light to dark based upon environmental pressures is not evolution -- they are still moths. A population of bacteria that become resistant to antibiotics does not illustrate evolution -- they are still bacteria. In the biological realm, natural selection (which is operating in these examples) is supposedly the mechanism by which evolution advances, and intelligent design theory certainly does not deny its existence. While natural selection can indeed preserve the stronger and more resilient members of a gene pool, intelligent design maintains that it cannot explain entirely new kinds of life -- and that is what evolution is.
...
"One finally comes to the conclusion that, despite vigorous protests, belief in evolution and intelligent design are matters of faith. Even some evolutionists have admitted as much in their writings. Modern biology does not "fall apart" without evolution, as some will claim. Maybe the theories of the origins of forms of life fall apart, or theories of the origin of capabilities that those life forms exhibit, or the supposed ancestral relationships between them fall apart. But these are merely intellectual curiosities, serving only to stimulate discussion and teach the next generation of students the same beliefs. From a practical point of view, the intelligent design paradigm is just as useful to biology, and I believe, more satisfying from an intellectual point of view.
"Intelligent design can be studied and taught without resorting to human creation traditions and beliefs, which in the West are usually traceable to the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Just as someone can recognize and study some machine of unknown purpose built by another company, country (or alien intelligence?), one can also examine the natural world and ask the question: did this machine arise by semi-random natural physical processes, or could it have been designed by a higher power? Indeed, I was convinced of the intelligent design arguments based upon the science alone."
...As a child I always lusted after the Armatron robotic arm. Oh, the amazing things I would have done! I could have assembled miniature cars! Pinched my sister remotely! Gently squashed bugs to paste! But, alas, the Armatron was too expensive and I never got one.
Now that I’m old and wizened I can finally get one. Or at least something like it.
The Swift by UFactory is a crowdfunded robotic arm that promises fun, frolic and programmable robotic interaction for about $300 for early-bird models. There are two versions — the standard Swift with a louder DC model and the Pro unit with a more accurate stepper motor — and they can be used to perform tricks like laser etching, light painting and simple assembly. It’s programmable using UFactory’s Scratch-like programming language and you can even move the arm manually and it will recreate your motions.
They plan on shipping in May and the UFactory and their UArm team have already shipped more complex arms that have been used to open potato chip bags and, inexplicably, tickle a poop emoji.
The most complete package costs $499 and includes a gripper, laser and 3D printer head. While all of this looks too good to be true — and since it’s a crowdfunding campaign the buyer should beware — darn it if this doesn’t tickle that little nugget in my brain that always wanted a robot friend. Armatron, you’re dead to me.Boring topic? Maybe.
But if you believe what Gartner has to say: “Through 2016, 75% of CISO’s who experience publicly disclosed security breaches, and lack documented, tested response plans, WILL BE FIRED.”
Gartner said that (2012 Gartner Predicts) – CISO’s may be fired for not having CIRP’s…..
I’m a big believer in Response Planning, but I would have never said something that bold.
Fail PCI without a CIRP? Yes
Fail to follow industry ‘best practice’ framework like ISO 27K without a CIRP? Yes
I guess if you are a CISO/CSO and HOPE that you won’t have an incident, maybe you should be fired.
You’re a CISO/CSO who doesn’t believe in documented Due Diligence? Maybe you should be fired.
Because Gartner said so and you STILL didn’t bother to develop a CIRP, maybe you should be fired.
You’re a CISO/CSO whose motto is “What, me worry?” You know the answer….
I don’t understand why so many people out there don’t have CIRPs. They’re pretty simple.
Start with some basic concepts:
Anticipation
Say to yourself: “I am going to have a data breach in three weeks” – believe it; Now what would you do NOW to deal with it? What obligations does my organization have to meet? What resources will I need? How will this adversely affect my organization? What kind of ad-hoc organization will I need to respond to this crisis?
Socialization Who else in the organization will either need to be involved in the response or who has ideas about how we should respond? Suggestions: Legal, public affairs, applicable folks in IT, Forensics, Compliance, Shareholder Communications (if you are publicly traded), Corp Insurance (if you have cyber insurance) – just to name a few. How do they “interpret” an “incident”? Be sure to leverage them in an “advisory committee”. Brief them monthly and solicit their feedback. Don’t be afraid to look outside of the organization.Research
What information (Network diagrams, Point Of Contact listings, etc.) will I need to have immediately available at the time of crisis? What external resources may I need to call on?(Third party consultants, law enforcement, identity protections services, PFI’s, etc.) How do I notify my acquiring bank(s)?
This is just a start. For planning to be an effective mechanism in mitigating risk, it must provide a solid foundation as to its execution, specific information so that participants are empowered with current and relevant knowledge, and yet it must be broad as to not constrict an organization’s ability to respond to unforeseen events. Planning will rarely answer all the questions that come up during an incident, but it should provide a repository of thoughtful anticipation, collaboration and research. Furthermore, to assure a plan’s continued usefulness, it should be tested and updated on a regular basis. A plan’s true value is measured by the relevance of the information and processes it provides at a time of crisis.
Document Your Plan
Leverage the National institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SP 800-61 document. Open a new Word doc, start with the following “Heading 1″s:
Plan Introduction – this is where you put the nuances of the plan (ownership, objective, scope, assumptions, limitations, etc.) Incident Preparation – all the things you can do NOW to prepare for that day (Contacts, diagrams, third party services, etc.) Incident Detection, Analysis & Notification – How do you know when you have an incident? How does your organization (not just IT) define an “incident”? Who are you going to call? Incident Response – ‘who’ does ‘what’ in a manner that is most efficient (parallel vs. serial efforts)? How are you going to make decisions? How do you keep things ‘organized & calm’? Does everyone know their Role & Responsibilities? Have you included everyone you need? Plan maintenance and post incident responsibilities – When is it really over? Annual testing? “Lessons Learned”, documentation in case of post event litigation.
Embrace the idea of “transparency” – knowing that by doing so you are documenting your professional Due Diligence.
Share your plan with others. Solicit their feedback knowing that it is implicit approval and that there are numerous perspectives on what you may think is just a
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of Justice Cemil Çiçek gave permission for an investigation against Dink; the case was launched and trial was started. Protests against Dink started in front of the courthouse and Dink was attacked in the courthouse. Lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, a suspect in Ergenekon case, demanded to be an intervening party in Dink’s case. Retired Gendarmerie Brigadier General Veli Küçük, who was also a suspect in Ergenekon case, attended a hearing and demanded to be an intervening party as well.
Another case was launched against Dink, because he wrote a story about the investigation against him. Then, another case came because of his interview to Reuters. On October 2006, Patriarch of Armenians of Turkey Mesrob Mutafyan applied to Istanbul Governor’s Office once again, asking for protection for Armenian institutions.
Meanwhile in Trabzon
Hayal carries a grudge against Armenians
While Dink was occupying the public agenda, the information that Yasin Hayal, who carried out the McDonald's bombing in Trabzon, was carrying a grudge against Armenians and planning to carry an action in Istanbul was recorded by Intelligence Branch on October 2005. The information was from Erhan Tuncel, who was working as a police informant in Trabzon. As of January 2006, Intelligence Branch personnel knew that Hayal was in contact with people from a crime syndicate and looking for TNT.
On February 5, 2006, Priest Andrea Santoro living in Trabzon was killed in the church he was working. 10 days after this murder, on February 15, 2006, Trabzon Intelligence Branch personnel had already recorded this information: “Yasin Hayal will go to Istanbul and kill Hrant Dink at all costs.” This information was sent to Directorate of Intelligence of Ankara and Intelligence Branch of Istanbul General Directorate of Security.
After this information was received, Erhan Tuncel, who was the informant providing information from Yasin Hayal, was dismissed.
Trabzon Intelligence Branch reported that “Yasin Hayal hasn’t changed his mind about murdering Hrant Dink”. In the same report, it was stated that Hayal stopped using phone, since he was aware that he was wiretapped.
Hrant Dink was murdered on January 19, 2007.
Right after he was murdered, Minister of Interior Abdülkadir Aksu, Governor of Istanbul Muammer Güler and Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah appeared before the cameras and said: “This is not an action by an organization. A couple of people did it out of nationalist feelings.”
First trial: the largest wave of all
The first prosecution process related to Dink murder started on April 2007. There were 18 suspects of the case which was tried in 14th High Penal Court of Istanbul. The first hearing was held on July 2, 2007. Almost 500 lawyers applied for representing Dink family. In the first hearing, police informant Erhan Tuncel stated that he had informed the intelligence personnel about the murder. In the second hearing, the reports Erhan Tuncel mentioned was received by the court. Starting from the second hearing, it has been known that Veysel Şahin, an officer from Trabzon Gendarmerie Intelligence Branch, was one of the most important names in the investigation, which still continues today. Şahin was arrested 9 years after the murder.
While the trial was continuing, lawyers of Dink family started to apply for prosecution of public officials from Istanbul and Trabzon, including Celalettin Cerrah. Trabzon and Istanbul governor’s offices hadn’t permitted investigation and refused the objections of the lawyers of district administrative courts.
The court addressed questions to Istanbul Governor’s Office about the meeting with Hrant Dink. For a long time, the governor’s office didn’t answer those questions. After years, MİT informed the investigating authorities about the meeting; it was reported that MİT District Chief Özer Yılmaz and MİT official Handan Selçuk attended that meeting. Özer Yılmaz, in his statement to the prosecutor, stated that they met with Dink upon the order of MİT undersecretary Şenkal Atasagun.
On October 8, 2007, the prosecution imposed a confidentiality order on the investigation file. After this order, lawyers of Dink family had no longer access to the file.
After the murder, hitman Ogün Samast’s photo with police officers in Samsun with a Turkish flag was revealed and caused widespread debate. On October 30, 2007, a lawsuit was launched against the officer who treated Samast like a hero in Samsun. Meanwhile, Trabzon Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation against Trabzon Gendarmerie personnel, including Gendarmerie Regiment Commander Ali Öz. It took 9 years to arrest Öz and the other officers.
Lawyers of Dink family submitted petitions to Istanbul 14th High Penal Court and Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office for joining the trials and investigation in Trabzon and Samsun with the main case. All petitions had been refused. It took 9 years to join all the investigations.
Talking about the trials in 14th High Penal Court, Lawyer Fethiye Çetin said, “They mocked us.” Throughout the trials, defence lawyers insulted Hrant Dink and Dink family. Fuat Turgut, who later became a suspect of Ergenekon case, was dismissed from the court because of his behaviors.
On July 7, 2008, suspect Coşkun İğci, brother-in-law of the instigator Yasin Hayal, said in the court: “I informed Gendarmerie Intelligence about the murder.”
While the trials were continuing, State Supervisory Council, Prime Ministry Inspectors and Ministry of Interior Inspectors carried out an enquiry on public officials; they decided that an investigation should be launched against some public officials. Some of these inspectors are currently under arrest.
Starting from October 2008, officers from Trabzon Directorate of Security Intelligence Branch were started to be heard as witnesses in the court. Those officers claimed that “there was no concrete intelligence report or activity concerning the murder of Hrant Dink.” Now, the same police officers are tried as suspects.
Officials from Istanbul Directorate of Security were excluded from investigation and prosecution processes. Lawyers of Dink family requested police officers from Istanbul Directorate of Security and Police Intelligence Department are heard as witnesses. This request was refused by the court. It took 9 years for those police officers to stand trial.
During 25 hearings, all requests for bringing the public officials to the court had been refused. Reluctance of the judicial authorities, combined with the resistance of governmental offices and bureaucracy, a pseudo-prosecution, which was not effective and extensive, had been carried out. In this process, each institution played the parts that were assigned to them in a game, which seemed like designed by a strong will. The ones who had significant responsibility in the prevention of the murder and the ones who were responsible for the murder itself went unquestioned.
After 25 hearings, the court led by Judge Rüstem Eryılmaz announced the decision on January 17, 2012: “There is no organization behind the murder.” The court decided that the murder was committed by a couple of young people, like Celalettin Cerrah said on the first day. Lawyer of Dink family Fethiye Çetin said: “They saved the biggest mockery for the last.”
Turning points
The most important turning point in Dink case took place with the fight between the government and Fethullah Gülen movement, which is called “FETÖ” today. Once the fight was begun, police officers who were allegedly supporters of Gülen started to be included in the investigation. With some court decisions that was made during this fight, some progress made in the prosecution process.
While the prosecution process in 14th High Penal Court was going on, lawyers of Dink family applied to ECHR on the ground that prosecution was ineffective and kept prolonged. ECHR made an exception to its condition of “exhaustion of domestic remedies” and announced its decision on February 10, 2010. Convicting Turkey, ECHR stated that an effective investigation against public officials hadn’t been carried out. Thus, an important decision was made for investigating the public officials.
On November 12, 2012, lawyers of Dink family applied to Constitutional Court. After 2 years, on July 17, 2014, Constitutional Court ruled that there was violation in Dink case.
On May 13, 2013, Penal Chamber no. 9 of the Supreme Court reversed the judgment of 14th High Penal Court; it stated that there “is an organization” and referred the file to the domestic court.
On April 2013, legal changes, which were referred as “fourth jurisdiction package”, were made, which included an important regulation that was closely related to Dink murder case. Launching investigation in cases which ECHR deemed as lacking effective investigation was made possible. After that, on July 2013, lawyers of Dink family applied to Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office for launching investigation against officials from Trabzon Directorate of Security and Gendarmerie, Istanbul Governor’s Office and Directorate of Security.
On November 28, Istanbul Governor Hüseyin Avni Mutlu refused to give permission for launching investigation against Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah and other public officials. On January 22, 2014, District Administrative Court approved this decision. Consequently, Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office made a decision of non-prosecution on February 21.
On May 21, 2014, Bakırköy 8th High Penal Court revoked Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office’s decision of non-prosecution. The Court pointed out the ECHR decision and the legal change in the fourth jurisdiction package. Then, Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office applied to Ministry of Justice on June 4 for reversing the decision for the “public weal”. The Ministry refused prosecutor’s demand. Thus, the time of appearing in the court had come for the public officials, who had been protected for years.
First arrest
After the court decision, Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office restarted to deal with Dink case, in which there wasn’t any substantial progress for years. 7 years after the murder, on January 13, 2015, Muhittin Zenit and Özkan Mumcu, police officers from Trabzon Intelligence Branch, were arrested as part of the investigation. On January 18, Ercan Demir, another police officer from Trabzon Intelligence Branch, was arrested. On March 6, chief of General Directorate of Security Intelligence Branch Ramazan Akyürek was arrested. On May 28, director of Office C of the General Directorate of Security Intelligence Branch Ali Fuat Yılmazer was arrested.
The prosecutor sticking by his indictment
On October 22, investigating prosecutor Gökalp Kökçü sent the indictment to the court, which included Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah, Istanbul Intelligence Branch Chief Ahmet İlhan Güler, chief of General Directorate of Security Intelligence Branch Engin Dinç and Ramazan Akyürek as suspects. Such developments had never been seen before in the legal history of Turkey.
On the same day, the indictment was returned due to technical reasons. On October 25, Kökçü resent the indictment to the court. Technically, the indictment had to be sent to chief public prosecutor’s office, which returned the indictment to Kökçü on November 3 on the ground that there was no sufficient evidence for showing the causal connection between “willful murder” and the suspects. Prosecutor Kökçü added another name to the indictment and resent it to the court on November 4.
It was claimed that the indictment was returned, because it included Ahmet İlhan Güler and Celalettin Cerrah. The indictment was accepted by the court thanks to the insistence of the prosecutor, but it turned out that, in addition to FETÖ, there are some other issues in the case that state doesn’t want to be revealed. While Kökçü was conducting the investigation against gendarmerie officials, he was taken off the case.
A threshold in Dink case: July 15
And the fight has started
On February 2012, MİT undersecretary Hakan Fidan was called to testify and thus the fight between the government and Fethullah Gülen circle was revealed. Dink murder investigation was one the fields where the fight was felt very intensely. The investigation file, which had been prevented from proceeding for years, started to stir suddenly.
The name of the organization in Dink case
Prosecutor Kökçü, in the indictment concerning the negligence of public officials, claimed that FETÖ (Fethullah Gülen Movement, which was started to be called FETÖ after Erdoğan used this abbreviation) knew all the details of the murder from the beginning and defined the assassination as “the murder that was made happen”.
There is footage but no arrest
As the investigation got deeper, gendarmerie officials’ hand in the murder was started to be revealed. 9 years after the murder, footage that shows some gendarmerie officials was accompanying hitman Ogün Samast on the day of murder was revealed. On November 2015, evidences showing that gendarmerie officials was in the crime scene was included in prosecution file. However, no one was detained or called to testify.
Another threshold
After the coup attempt on July 15, Dink murder investigation was taken to another level. Prosecutor Gökalp Kökçü was reassigned to the case. Now, he had a stronger hand. He also became the prosecutor in many investigations concerning the coup attempt.
An operation against gendarmerie was launched, because some gendarmerie officials who are mentioned in Dink murder investigation had been caught in the act during the coup attempt.
After the coup attempt, more than 30 soldiers had been detained and 15 soldiers had been arrested on the ground that they have a hand in the murder of Hrant Dink.
Dink murder in the coup file
In the investigation against gendarmerie personnel, no lawsuit is launched yet. However, Dink murder is referred in the indictments that have been issued as part of the coup investigations. The indictments concerning the attempted coup acknowledge the murder of Hrant Dink as “the first armed attack of FETÖ on the way to the coup”.
Before the coup attempt, the investigating prosecutor of Dink case was claiming that the murder was “used as a tool”. It was pointed out that the murder was committed for the purpose of facilitating the actions of the armed terrorist organization. The definition of the murder was changed after July 15.
Lawyers of Dink family, who don’t regard the process leading to murder and the murder itself as separate cases, are acting with deliberation concerning claims about FETÖ. Lawyers have been noting that the statement of the General Staff after Dink's story on Sabiha Gökçen, Dink’s being threatened in governor’s office and attacks against Dink in the courthouse are related to the murder; stating that many persons and institutions became partners in the murder, they call the assassination a “consensus murder”. Lawyers also note that the ones who are related to FETÖ had played important parts in the murder, but they prefer to make substantial comments after they have seen the indictment and evidences.
It has been 10 years since the murder. It is still unknown who gave order for murder. Trials concerning FETÖ and coup attempt have just started. It is unknown how deep the claims about the relation between FETÖ and Dink murder will go. And interventions to the legal process cause concerns. Judges of the court that deals with Dink case was changed. One of the newly-assigned judges was detained as part of FETÖ investigation. And the chief judge who had been conducting the legal process from the beginning was taken off the case and reassigned to another court.
With the changes in the political atmosphere, many issues related to Dink murder have been revealed after 10 years. However, a different political atmosphere had obfuscated the same evidences for 10 years. We only managed to take a few steps toward justice in 10 years. However, we don’t know how many years it will take to have the whole truth. Dink murder case may still get lost in the dark tunnels of Ankara; this is still a possibilty. For now, we are concernedly watching how far the fractures caused by the political fights will go.Posted by: Lyle Blackburn on June 18th, 2013
Novelist Eric S. Brown announced that Origin Releasing has acquired the motion picture rights to his “Bigfoot War” book series. The series, which started in 2010 with a novelette simply titled “Bigfoot War,” has now grown to seven installments that include rampaging bigfoots, zombies, and even bigfoot zombies!
As a fan of the series (read my original review here), I’ve always thought this is the kind of material that just begs to be made into a movie. The question is, can they can translate Brown’s masterful monster mayhem to the screen? If they can, it’s gonna be one hell of a ride!
Casting has already begun and production is slated to start in late July for a planned 2014 release. A director has yet to be named.
The series rundown:
Bigfoot War
Bigfoot War 2: Dead in the Woods
Bigfoot War 3: Food Chain
Bigfoot War 4: Legion
Bigfoot War: Frontier
Bigfoot War: Outbreak
Bigfoot War: The End
About Lyle Blackburn
Lyle Blackburn is an author, musician, and cryptid researcher from Texas. His investigative cryptozoology books, such as “The Beast of Boggy Creek,” “Beyond Boggy Creek,” and “Lizard Man,” reflect his life-long fascination with legends and sighting reports of unknown creatures. During his research, Lyle has often explored the remote reaches of the southern U.S. in search of shadowy beasts said to inhabit the dense backwoods and swamplands of these areas. Lyle has been heard on numerous radio programs, including Coast To Coast AM, and has appeared on television shows such as Monsters and Mysteries in America and Finding Bigfoot. Lyle is also a writer for the monthly horror magazine, Rue Morgue, and was recently featured in the documentary film, Boggy Creek Monster. For more information, visit Lyle's website at: www.lyleblackburn.com
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PrintAfter more than three decades of interference in citizens’ reproductive choices, it seemed something of a breakthrough in 2015 when the Chinese government decided to allow all couples to have two children.
The polices were further loosened last year when children born in violation of the erstwhile rules were given the registration document that is needed for everything from attending public school to opening a bank account.
While China’s low birth rate has sparked action, for mothers whose children are born out of wedlock, the nightmare of bureaucratic non-recognition persists.
Chinese national law has never properly defined a single women’s reproductive rights. The country’s Population and Family Planning Law states that all citizens hold the right to have children, and women’s rights laws stipulate that women are free to decide whether or not to have children “in accordance with the relevant provisions of the state” — in other words, as long as their choice does not conflict with population control policies. Moreover, Article 25 of the Marriage Law states that children born outside of marriage have the same rights as those born to married parents and shall not be subjected to harm or discrimination on that basis.
Yet, unmarried mothers are discriminated against in other ways. When applying for an official recognition of a birth, both parents must prove they are related to the child in order to obtain a birth certificate. And without a birth certificate, a registration or “hukou” — a requirement for attending public school — is unattainable. Consequently, if a mother does not know who the father is or cannot convince him to submit to a DNA test, she cannot register her child.
In China, reproductive rights go hand in hand with notions of legitimacy, most of which center on whether or not parents are legally married. Family planning regulations reinforce the stigma attached to women who have children out of wedlock. This explains why surrogacy, with its connotations of emancipating married couples from the pain of infertility, is able to gain much more media traction than single motherhood, which is often branded as unethical and irresponsible. This view denies women the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, assumes women are incapable of independent decision-making, and reinforces misogyny in what is already a highly patriarchal society.
In reality, an increasing number of Chinese women are well educated, have high-paying jobs, and enjoy a high social standing. They are often more financially independent than men of a similar age and hold more liberal attitudes regarding marriage and parenthood.
Their educational and professional achievements also motivate them to challenge traditional concepts of marriage, family, and gender roles. They long for a social and legal system that supports their right to have children on their own terms.
Still, many women never act on their desires to become single mothers. Fear of being labeled “leftover women” push many women into marital arrangements for which they are unprepared. Society also ignores the fact that women remain single out of choice. Instead of settling for being unwilling wives and mothers, a growing number of Chinese women are seeking fulfillment through successful careers or other interests.
A proper debate needs to happen in China about alternative family and marriage arrangements that have recently gained traction in many Western countries. Chinese society cannot take monogamous relationships as the norm, and supporting a woman’s reproductive rights will put it on the path toward more progressive social attitudes regarding sexuality, gender, and marriage.
The government must clarify the reproductive rights of single women and the legal status of children born to them. It must protect the social welfare of unmarried women, including their individual rights and access to health care. Lastly, it must encourage mass media organizations to present a more progressive image of modern relationships by offering the general public examples of strong, capable, and loving single mothers.
There are signs that change is taking place, albeit slowly. The provincial government in Guangdong recently abolished the practice of charging a social support fee to mothers who failed to present a marriage certificate when registering births. Yet, a nationwide flurry of progressive legislation is still far off and much work remains to ensure that Guangdong does not remain the exception, but instead becomes the norm.
Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our weekly emailPhotos by Ian James | Published Dec. 19, 2017
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Off the northeastern coast of Australia, I stood on the deck of a dive-boat watching whitecaps under a blue sky, excited that my 13-year-old son and I were on our way to the Great Barrier Reef.
We listened on deck with dozens of other scuba divers and snorkelers as one of the crew members gave a pre-dive talk. He said many people have been asking him lately whether a lot of the coral is now dead, and how long the reef might last. He explained that human-caused climate change is taking a major toll, leading to bleaching events that have degraded large portions of the reef. That degradation comes on top of other problems including ocean acidification and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish.
“But really, is the reef dead? No, it’s definitely not dead,” he said, speaking into his headset microphone. “Basically, the reef is undergoing more and more threats every day. We’ve got to do something to preserve it.”
A view of the Great Barrier Reef from the deck of a dive-boat.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
As we motored on, I wondered how the reef would look. In the Caribbean and the Florida Keys, I’ve seen reefs at both ends of the spectrum — colorful corals filled with life, and patches of dead coral reduced to gray rubble. I’ve been dismayed to read scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings that as the world’s oceans heat up due to the burning of fossil fuels, many coral reefs may not be able to survive much longer.
I hadn’t been diving in several years, and my son’s school band trip to Australia in July seemed the perfect opportunity for him to be scuba certified so we could go diving together for the first time. I learned to dive when I was 13, and I’ve been fascinated ever since by the abundant kaleidoscope of life around coral reefs, and by the experience of exploring these oceanic rainforests. I wanted to share with him the magical experience of floating weightlessly beneath the waves, the excitement of discovery at spotting eels and sea turtles, and the awe of swimming through a living undersea sanctuary — one of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet.
Even as I’ve learned about the serious threats facing reefs, I’ve also seen signs of resilience that have given me some hope. On a moonlit night 16 years ago on the island of Culebra off Puerto Rico, while I was working on a story about dying coral reefs in the Caribbean, I witnessed an amazing spectacle: the annual spawning of boulder coral. Tiny peach-colored eggs were released from the surface of the coral and floated away to form a new colony. The eggs drifted across the beam from my light and disappeared into the darkness.
I’ve always wanted to visit the Great Barrier Reef to see one of the world’s largest natural wonders. Built slowly over the ages by colonies of tiny coral polyps, it is so immense that it's visible from space.
Scuba tanks line the back of a dive boat on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
As we prepared for our trip, I read about the alarming bleaching events that ravaged the reef in 2016 and again in 2017. This bleaching happens during extreme heat when coral polyps become stressed and expel their essential symbiotic algae, the zooxanthellae. When a coral colony is left white, it may be able to recover eventually if conditions are favorable. If not, the coral dies.
Last year, the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef suffered severe bleaching. This year, a central stretch of the reef was hit hardest, including some of the areas off Cairns where we were headed that day.
We gathered our masks and wetsuits, and began to suit up.
Reporter Ian James and his son pose for a photo while scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
This day out was our second dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Earlier in the week we had taken a daylong snorkel-and-scuba trip to another part of the reef. There we saw schools of yellow and blueback fusilier, a huge Queensland grouper, outcroppings of living coral and a clownfish nestled among the undulating tentacles of an anemone.
This time, we were going out for a longer three-day cruise, and I was anxious to see how the coral was faring in this area.
At Norman Reef, we stepped off the boat’s back deck. As the bubbles cleared and I began to breathe from the regulator, my son and I gave each other “OK” signs and descended along the anchor line toward the sandy bottom. I was happy and proud seeing how he had learned his diving skills and seemed comfortable underwater.
Ahead of us, a column of coral and a reef wall rose from the sand. Swimming along the reef were multicolored parrotfish, sweetlips and wrasse. A moray eel peered out from the coral. Lionfish gathered around the base of a coral outcropping. A green sea turtle swam near the surface.
Corals and fish form a kaleidoscope of life along the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
There were boulder corals the size of cars, and looking closely at the surface of the coral, we saw spiral-shaped Christmas tree worms. As we approached, the worms quickly retracted into holes.
The Great Barrier Reef is made up of hundreds of different types of corals, and some of them are faring better than others as global temperatures rise.
I noticed that many of the corals were alive, with colors from green to brownish to pink. But the branching tips of some corals were bleached white.
I found myself wondering: What would this reef have looked like 20 years ago? And how might it look 20 years from now?
Another thought troubled me: Might I be looking at a reef that future generations won’t have the opportunity to see alive?
Corals spread out just beneath the surface in a shallow area of the Great Barrier Reef. The reef suffered back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
Over the next two days, we anchored at other reefs. We spotted yellow butterflyfish, pufferfish and the aptly named unicorn fish. We saw a whitetip reef shark sleeping on the sandy bottom, and gray reef sharks circling near the boat.
When we went diving at night, we saw green sea turtles and a silvery fish called giant trevally. A whitetip reef shark swam past at a distance, its eyes glowing green in our lights.
A snorkeler explores the corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
On dives during the day, we saw giant clams four feet across with iridescent green dots on the flesh between their gaping shells, and tiny white gobies that darted into holes in the sand to hide.
We swam through coral canyons and along reef walls, past swaying sea fans, majestic staghorn corals and giant brain corals.
At a place called Coral Gardens at Hastings Reef, on one of our last dives of the trip, I snapped photos of a giant clam and marveled at the variety of fish and the colorful coral. The closer we looked at the coral, the more reef-dependent creatures we saw, from a bright blue fish to a tiny crab camouflaged in the coral.
There too, we saw areas where the corals looked damaged, colorless and gray.
Even as we saw reefs that seemed mostly alive, I thought this must be an example of “shifting baselines,” in which the degradation is unfolding gradually in ways that are hard for casual observers to notice.
Staghorn corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
Looking at the reef as a whole, though, there is nothing subtle about the devastating changes that scientists have been documenting.
Researcher Terry Hughes, who leads a coral reef studies center at James Cook University, said in a widely cited tweet after last year’s bleaching event that he had showed the results of aerial surveys to his students, “and then we wept.”
The reef was hit by earlier mass bleachings in 1998 and 2002, and warming ocean temperatures are leading to more frequent and more severe damage.
Clownfish stay close to an anemone in an area of damaged coral on the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
In an article after this year’s bleaching event, Hughes and fellow researcher James Kerry wrote that the combined footprint of the unprecedented back-to-back bleaching now covers two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.
“We have a narrowing window of opportunity to tackle global warming, and no time to lose in moving to zero net carbon emissions. We have already seen four major bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef with just 1°C of global average warming,” Hughes and Kerry wrote in the article.
They warned that “if the world continues its business-as-usual greenhouse emissions for several more decades, it will almost certainly spell the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we now know it.”
RELATED: Two-thirds of Great Barrier Reef ravaged by coral bleaching
MORE: Scientists race to prevent wipeout of world's coral reefs
In one recent study published in the journal Nature, researchers used satellite temperature data from 1985 to 2012 to study the effects of warming in causing bleaching stress on reefs around the world. The scientists found that the frequency of bleaching-level heat stress increased three-fold during that time. They said based on current trends, by 2050 “more than 98% of reefs are expected to be exposed to bleaching-level thermal stress” every year.
Shafts of light cast patterns on large boulder corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
Around the world, many coral reefs have already been lost due to pressures ranging from polluted runoff to overfishing, and scientists are trying to find ways to help save at least some of the remaining reefs.
Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, are leading a project called the 100 Island Challenge, using imaging and data technologies to “archive reefs digitally” and monitor how they change over time. The effort aims to generate information about local management approaches that can help protect reefs.
In Australia, scientists collected samples of surviving coral from northern areas of the Great Barrier Reef damaged by bleaching. The researchers packaged samples in boxes filled with seawater and flew them last month to a specialized lab, the National Sea Simulator, where they’re testing whether these corals could help produce offspring that are more heat-tolerant in other areas of the reef.
This research is one of several studies intended to help restore reefs or boost their ability to withstand rising temperatures and worsening acidification. And these efforts speak to just how serious the situation has become for reefs worldwide.
Snorkelers swim from a boat toward the Great Barrier Reef.
(Photo: Ian James/The Desert Sun)
Coral reefs are important for so many reasons. They sustain fishing communities around the world. They generate some of the oxygen that we breathe. And although they cover a small fraction of the oceans, they provide habitat for about a fourth of marine species.
I don’t want to imagine a world with most of its coral reefs dead, but scientists say that looks possible without bigger efforts to combat climate change.
After we returned home, my son wrote some his thoughts about our visit to the reef.
“I saw so much life and movement, fish, turtles and more swimming in every direction,” he wrote. He said that while the reef has been bleached at an alarmingly rapid rate, much of what he saw “was still completely stunning.”
“It is at the tipping point, where we still have the power to help before its demise,” he wrote. “Lowering global greenhouse gas emissions through renewable energy, electric cars and more can help stop the degrading of this marine paradise."
I’m grateful that we saw the Great Barrier Reef together. We came away with a shared appreciation of how magnificent and vital the reef is, and how threatened it has become.
Ian James writes about environmental issues for The Desert Sun. He can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @TDSIanJames.
CLIMATE POINT: Sign up for our climate change and environment newsletterIn a statement that is truly baffling and frightening, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., implied that colleges and universities can adjudicate gun crimes just as they adjudicate campus sexual assault.
Speaking on an Oct. 29 press call regarding national fraternity and sorority groups' support of a bill that would put sexual assault crimes back in the hands of law enforcement, McCaskill implied that the groups were singling out sex assault.
"Keep in mind, they have only carved out this exception for sexual assault – not any of the other violent crimes," McCaskill said, according to a transcription by the Huffington Post. "So a young woman could be robbed at gunpoint, decide she wanted to just try to get that person off campus and go to their university... but if she was raped, she would not be able to do that unless she went to the police."
Slate quoted the senator as saying the woman robbed at gunpoint could "go to her university and they could take action under Title IX."
Neither Slate nor HuffPo questioned the senator's comments or explained them in any way.
Because what Sen. McCaskill appears to be suggesting is that colleges really are their own court system, adjudicating gun crimes the way they adjudicate sexual assault – and that the anti-gender discrimination law known as Title IX requires them to do so. Colleges and universities are required to adjudicate accusations of sexual assault and sexual harassment because of Title IX. The argument goes that these are gender-specific crimes and are therefore a form of gender discrimination.
That's a stretch unto itself, as it implies that sexual preference is discrimination. It's also problematic because schools are still required to adjudicate accusations of sexual assault when both parties involved are the same gender.
But even that is more plausible (the notion that sex crimes are a form of sex discrimination) than suggesting a robbery at gunpoint is a form of sex discrimination, even if the robber is a man and the victim is a woman. Even the Violence Against Women Act doesn't include robbery in its list of crimes against women (the list includes domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking).
McCaskill's office has never responded to a Washington Examiner request for comment, about this or previous articles.
But let's say colleges are supposed to handle a crime such as robbery at gunpoint the same way they would handle sexual assault – by allowing the accuser to dictate the process instead of legal authorities. There is no national focus or federal pressure incentivizing the colleges to "do something" about robberies or gun crimes. There are not special college administrative offices dedicated to gun crime and theft like there are administrative offices dedicated to "diversity," "student life" and "gender-based misconduct."
While it has become perfectly acceptable for schools to simply expel potentially violent rapists, it is unheard of to think it would be acceptable for a school to expel a potentially violent murder. And if you think it is absurd that colleges are expelling potentially violent rapists, allowing them to prey on the population at large, you have campus activists to thank.
Let's say a student is expelled for sexual assault because the victim didn't want to go to police, and that student goes on to rape a non-student. Certainly the family of the non-student victim would want to sue the university for setting loose that student on the larger community. But schools would have a good defense in that they did what was required of them under federal law – Title IX doesn't require them to report to police.
But if a student is expelled for holding another student up at gunpoint and goes on to murder the next student they try to rob? The school couldn't point to Title IX in that case, as it doesn't cover robbery or murder.
But that would be a rare scenario anyway, as it is also inconceivable that a school wouldn't report a gun crime because the victim just wanted the attacker expelled.
Of course, if either student was found guilty in a court of law, there would be no question that a school could and should expel them – the student would be in jail for the crime he committed; he wouldn't be available for a hearing.
Colleges certainly have
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systems that we could all explore – whizzed past. He says that players will be able to see about 10,000 stars on the map at any given moment, and seeing them onscreen made even that comparatively modest figure seem impossibly large.
During our demo of the map, Murray acknowledged a potential problem with its scale that we didn’t anticipate. It turns out, they didn’t think about it at first, either. “There will actually be a thing that I never thought we would need, but then as soon as we put in the galactic map and started using it, it was like, ‘Oh we need this.’ We're going to have a minimap for the galactic map down in the bottom left. Because right now I can't tell my orientation. And I can get lost; I can just kind of go down here, and now it's quite difficult for me to find the planet that I was just on. There will obviously be a button to send you back to where you are and a marker for that.”
A map within a map? Considering the size of the galaxy, pilots are going to need all the help they can get.
Click on the banner below to enter our hub for No Man's Sky that will be updating throughout the month with exclusive features on the game.CLOSE USA TODAY looks at the National 9/11 Memorial Museum. (From May 15th) Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
President Obama speaks during the opening ceremony for the National September 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero in New York City. (Photo11: Pool photo by Getty Images)
NEW YORK — The National September 11 Museum, which President Obama praised at its dedication Thursday as "a sacred place of healing," has in its development years repeatedly aroused bitter divisions over how to tell the story of the terror attacks.
The museum, which opens to the public Wednesday, has faced what urban anthropologist Elizabeth Greenspan calls "controversy after controversy.'' Disputes have ranged from the disposition of human remains to the $24 general admission price.
Greenspan, author of The Battle for Ground Zero, says much of the contention has stemmed from the institution's dual, and often conflicted, mission: to commemorate those who died in the 2001 attacks, and to explain the attacks themselves.
Jeffrey Melnick, a University of Massachusetts Boston cultural historian who has studied 9/11, says the museum's problem is the one that bedeviled redevelopment of the entire 16-acre World Trade Center site: "Too many different stakeholders trying to do too many different things in one place.''
And possibly trying to do it too soon. Greenspan says the history that the museum seeks to convey to visitors "is still delicate.''
Among the controversies in which the museum has been embroiled over the past eight years:
• Whether unidentified human remains recovered from Ground Zero should be kept in a private medical examiner's office site in the subterranean museum. When a solemn procession took remains to the museum Saturday, some relatives showed their opposition by standing with black tape over their mouths.
• Whether the exhibit, by displaying the hijackers' photographs and names, glorifies them and insults their victims' memories. The museum compromised by using small head shots marked as FBI evidence.
• Whether a brief explanatory film narrated by NBC's Brian Williams about the 9/11 conspiracy unfairly links al-Qaeda terrorism with Islam. An imam who sat on an interfaith clergy museum advisory committee resigned in protest, but the museum stuck by the film.
• Whether the presence in the museum of the "Ground Zero Cross,'' a cross section of steel I-beams found in the rubble that inspired many recovery workers, constitutes an endorsement of Christianity by a public institution. An atheist group has appealed a lower court ruling that there was no church-state problem.
Because of these and other issues, some family members have said they'll boycott the museum.
But on Thursday at least one 9/11 survivor said he found the experience powerful.
Tim Brown, a 51-year-old retired firefighter, said he lost 93 friends in the department on 9/11. He said he was moved to tears when he visited the museum's memorial section and saw the wall of photos of those who died that day.
"There were so many (firefighters) who died that sometimes you forget who lived and who died,'' he said. "So you see someone's photo here, and say, 'I forgot he died.' It's hard for us.''
Now that the museum is opening, will divisions begin to heal? Don't bet on it, said Greenspan: "I think there'll be even more debate. We have to go through that to get to a more consensual place.''
She was echoed by Jefferson Crowther, whose son Welles died a hero helping other workers flee the South Tower. "This is America,'' he said. "Everyone's got a bone to pick.''
NEVER FORGET: Your photos of the 9/11 museum and memorial
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1ltMoohMattia Binotto is the new Chief Technical Officer of Ferrari F1. He is 45 years of age and comes from Lausanne, in Switzerland. He is a graduate of mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic of Lausanne in 1994, he then went on to study for a Masters in motor vehicle engineering at the University of Modena. He then joined Ferrari as a test engineer in 1995. He moved to the race team in 1997 and worked with Rubens Barrichello, in particular, before becoming chief engineer of race and assembly in the engine department in 2007. Two years later he became Head of Engine and KERS Operations and in October 2013 was named as Deputy Director, Engine and Electronics, taking on the role of Chief Operating Officer, Power Unit, the following year.
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RelatedKING TV Tyler James Deutsch, 25, was charged with assault of a child in the first degree, criminal mistreatment in the first degree and interfering with the reporting of domestic violence.
A Washington state man accused of putting his infant daughter inside a freezer long enough for her body temperature to drop to 84 degrees was charged Tuesday with first-degree child assault, first-degree criminal mistreatment and interfering with the reporting of a domestic violence incident.
His bail was set at $1 million, NBC station KING5 of Seattle reported.
Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist said the 6-week-old baby also suffered a broken arm and leg and a head injury.
Tyler James Deutsch, 25, and the baby's mother live together in a trailer in the city of Roy. The mother left the child alone with Deutsch from about 1:30 until 3:30 p.m. Saturday, KING5 reported.
The prosecutor’s office said Deutsch told detectives he was tired and the baby was crying, so he put her in the freezer and closed the door, according to KING5.
The man then fell asleep and only woke up when the mother returned home.
According to the prosecutor's office, Deutsch did not remove the baby from the freezer until the mother returned to the trailer. The baby was only wearing a diaper, KING5 reported.
The mother tried to call 911, but Deutsch wouldn't allow it because he didn't want to get in trouble the prosecutor's office said. She then left the trailer and alerted the neighbors, who called for help.
Doctors believe the baby will survive.
The charges filed against Deutsch are preliminary, The News Tribune reported. He could face a life sentence if convicted.LOS ANGELES -- UCLA will unveil a statue of legendary coach John Wooden during a ceremony Oct. 26 outside of newly renovated Pauley Pavilion.
Several members of the Wooden family and the Edwin W. Pauley family will be on hand to unveil the statue, designed and created by renowned sculptor Blair Buswell.
"The statue is a monument to a man who touched countless lives and showed us what it means to lead with integrity, humility, compassion and commitment," UCLA chancellor Gene Block said in a statement. "The legacy of the late coach Wooden transcends athletics, our campus and the local community. I speak for many when I say with pride that his image will forever grace the main entrance to Pauley Pavilion."
The statue ceremony at 2:30 PT will lead into a weeklong celebration of the reopening of Pauley Pavilion after its $136 million renovation. The week features a variety of events for fans, alumni, students, faculty and staff that will pay tribute to a facility that has been home to 39 NCAA championship teams.
Wooden, who passed away in 2010 at age 99, won 10 national championships at UCLA, including eight after the 1965 original opening of Pauley Pavilion.
Pauley has been shut down for 18 months while it received a modernization and makeover, and the final touch is the Wooden statue. The arena officially will reopen Nov. 9 for the men's basketball season opener against Indiana State, the school at which Wooden began his collegiate coaching career.
"All of us at UCLA certainly feel an incredible debt of gratitude to coach Wooden for his extraordinary contributions to our athletic program and university as a whole," UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said. "It is extremely fitting to commemorate coach's legacy with an iconic statue that will serve as the main gathering place for generations of Bruin fans and welcome all visitors to 'The House that Wooden Built.'"Palatine, Illinois – April 1, 2017 – Andrew Lewis of St. Paul was the overall winner of the first annual Pipe-Major Ian Swinton Open Solo Piping Competition, held at the Palatine Presbyterian Church. Chandler Sievewright, New Berlin, Wisconsin, was the Grade 1 winner of the Terry McHugh Memorial Amateur Solo Piping Competitions.
The event was the Midwest Pipe Band Association’s “Day of Piping,” with the finals of the Terry McHugh Memorial Amateur after Regional qualifiers held at Kansas City; Alma, Michigan; St. Paul; Lexington, Kentucky; and Milwaukee, and the top three from each grade going through.
The professional piping event is named for the long-time pipe-major of the Midlothian Scottish Pipe Band, Ian Swinton. Total prize money was US$3,500 for the event.
+ MWPBA honours American living legend with event
+ Swinton retires after 34 years with Midlothian
Brian Donaldson and John Cairns judged everything.
Pipe-Major Ian Swinton Open
Overall
1st Andrew Lewis, St. Paul
2nd Andrew Carlisle, Pittsburgh
3rd Matt Pantaleoni, St. Louis
4th Jack Williamson, Topeka, Kansas
5th Alastair Murray, Moon Township, Pennsylvania
Piobaireachd
1st Matt Pantaleoni, “The Battle of Auldearn” No. 2
2nd Andrew Lewis, “Lament for Donald Duaghal Mackay”
3rd Alastair Murray, “The Big Spree”
4th Andrew Carlisle, “Lament for the Earl of Antrim”
MSR
1st Andrew Lewis, “John MacFadyen of Melfort,” “The Shepherd’s Crook,” “The Sheepwife”
2nd Andrew Carlisle, “The Braes of Castle Grant,” “John Roy Stewart” (D. MacLeod setting), “The Rejected Suitor”
3rd Jack Williamson, “Brigadier General Ronald Cheape of Tiroran,” “Kirstie MacCallman’s Favourite,” “Sandy Cameron”
4th Teddy Krogh, Anchorage, Alaska, “Inveran,” “Cabar Feidh,” “The Grey Bob”
Others competing but not in the prizes: Kenneth Liechti, Austin Dave Mason, Cincinnati; Avens Ridgeway, Batesville, Arkansas; Palmer Shonk, Pittsburgh; and Richard Winslow, Carnegie Pennsylvania.
Terry McHugh Memorial
Grade 1
1st Chandler Sievewright, New Berlin, Wisconsin
2nd Tony Karcz, Arlington Heights, Illinois
3rd Laureano Thomas-Sanchez, Parma, Ohio
Grade 2
1st Joseph Fischer, Grafton, Wisconsin
2nd Michael Kazmierski-Dunn, Grand Rapids, Michigan
3rd Tak Tang, Minneapolis
Grade 3
1st Rhys O’Higgins, Madison, Wisconsin
2nd Sophia Richter, South Kingstown, Rhode Island
3rd Duncan Petersen-Jones, Okemos, Michigan
Grade 4
Senior
1st John Adair, Naperville, Illinois
2nd Bob Gaugh, Rockford, Illinois
3rd Mike McCollum, Deerton, Michigan
Junior
1st Sydney Howieson, St. Paul
2nd Thomas McCollum, Deerton, Michigan
3rd Mark MacPhee, Batesville, Arkansas
Senior Novice
1st Colin Kair-Gavin, Naperville, IllinoisI didn’t start out as a proper Jeremy Corbyn supporter. During the 2015 Labour leadership contest, I was deeply frustrated at the options available. Though I’ve always sat on the left of the party (I first joined when I was at university, after a friend convinced me Ed Miliband represented a break with the New Labour era) I bought into the idea that under Jeremy Corbyn, the party wouldn’t be electorally viable. Unfortunately, the other three candidates were far from inspiring. To varying extents, they espoused the sort of stigmatising, anti-welfare rhetoric that seemed a betrayal of core Labour values. At a time when the party needed to be bold and stand up for what is right, they seemed too willing to capitulate and accept the Conservatives’ austerity logic.
I once saw pretence in braids and weaves – now I see choice | Afua Hirsch Read more
Because of this, when it began to look like Corbyn might win I couldn’t help getting a little excited. Though I was too pessimistic to publicly back him, a part of me started to wonder, what if? What if the conventional wisdom was wrong and it really was possible to win a general election from the left? What if the tide of hope that was sweeping the party could be replicated at a national level? Friends who’d never been interested in party politics posted on social media that they’d joined Labour to vote for Corbyn. The enthusiasm was infectious, and though the “sensible” part of my brain still insisted it couldn’t work, I found that I was actively rooting for him. When he won the leadership, I felt more politically optimistic than I had in a good long while.
But I came back down to earth with a bang. It feels unnecessary to recount everything that happened over the next year or so – but from the perspective of a Labour supporter, it’s fair to say that it didn’t go well. In the spirit of Christmas I want to try to avoid apportioning blame in a way that reopens old wounds, but I personally believe there are several reasons for the struggles the party initially faced under Corbyn’s leadership. By the time of the 2016 leadership challenge, almost every committed Labour supporter I knew was in a state of despair – no matter what faction of the party they belonged to. A few kept their hopes up – how I scoffed at their naivety.
By the start of this year, I’d gone through several stages of grieving for the Labour party, oscillating between denial, anger, bargaining and grief. I blamed Corbyn and his team for the teething difficulties early on, and thought they’d blown their chance to set a positive media narrative. I blamed hostile Labour MPs for briefing against him, and certain journalists for treating him more harshly than they might have other leaders. I blamed myself, and felt an irrational personal responsibility to come up with a plan that would heal seemingly irreparable rifts.
Though I personally agreed with most of what Corbyn said, I thought the party would never properly unite behind him – so I tried to figure out who might be a replacement that would satisfy members across the spectrum. I felt frustrated at Corbyn supporters for refusing to accept that their project was a failure.
When the snap election was called, I felt sick. I’d been dreading it but was hoping Theresa May might be too cautious. The previous December, Diane Abbott was widely mocked for claiming that Labour would catch up with the Tories within a year. In April, the party was trailing in the polls by 17 points.
Closing that gap seemed an impossible task. I tried to use what platform I had to motivate other Labour members to go out and campaign – and to encourage voters, particularly younger voters, to register in time – but I have to admit I was expecting disaster. When some polling companies started predicting a closer result, based on significantly increased youth turnout, I didn’t dare to believe.
Theresa May is in a Brexit muddle and I’m muddled as to what to think of her | Anne Perkins Read more
But Abbott was right and I was wrong – as was almost every other political commentator. Party preference is way more volatile than most of us had assumed. And attempting to inspire non-voters isn’t a doomed strategy. Significantly, being written off by most of the mainstream media doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s game over – perhaps because increasing numbers of people now get their news from other sources. Labour might still have lost, but only by a narrow margin. The Conservatives are now dependent on the DUP for their wafer-thin majority.
I’ve changed my mind about Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral viability – but it goes further than that. I’ve fundamentally lost faith in political experts. By that, I don’t mean I entirely reject the utility of specialist knowledge – I still pore over polling as much as ever and follow the work of several political scientists – but I’m more inclined to listen to my gut than I was before. I also try to listen more closely to people on the ground in different parts of the country, who might pick up on things the London-based media largely missed in both the Brexit vote and the last election. Nothing is as certain as I’d previously believed. That’s scary, because it makes every decision a risk. But it also means there’s always hope.
• Abi Wilkinson is a freelance journalistDominant Juventus are looking to lift their sixth consecutive Serie A title this season.
Juventus will begin the defence of their Serie A title with a home game against Fiorentina, with that fixture the pick of the opening day games in the 2016-17 season schedule.
The Bianconeri, who lost their opener to Udinese last year and took over a month to get their season up and running, will host the Viola on the weekend of Aug. 20-21.
Seeking a sixth straight Serie A title, Massimiliano Allegri's men will then travel to Lazio before hosting Sassuolo after the first international break of the season at the start of September. A week later, they head to Inter Milan for the Derby d'Italia against Inter Milan before Allegri's former club, Cagliari, pay the Juventus Stadium a visit.
Crotone's first-ever Serie A game will come in Bologna, with the promoted sides first home game against Genoa a week later.
Vincenzo Montella's debut as AC Milan coach comes at home against Torino, before the San Siro heads to Napoli. Udinese then come to the San Siro before Montella returns to his former club, Sampdoria, in the fourth round of matches.
His first derby in the 13th round of matches is also the first city derby of the season, with the Eternal City derby between Lazio and Roma coming two rounds later. The Turin city derby will take place just prior to Christmas.
The final round of matches will see Juve head to Bologna, and last season's runners-up, Napoli, travel to Sampdoria, while Roma will end their season at home to Genoa.
Ben Gladwell reports on Serie A, the Italian national team and the Bundesliga for ESPN FC, UEFA and the Press Association. @UEFAcomBenG.Clark County Republican Party Rejects New RNC Rules Change
By Randy Rose: By Randy Rose:
The Clark County Delegates are not happy and the Party came out with this official statement:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CLARK COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY CALLS ON NATIONAL CONVENTION TO REJECT POWER PLAY BY RNC ELITE
Las Vegas, Nevada
In an emergency meeting held tonight via teleconference, the Executive Board of the Clark County Republican Party, the largest county Republican Party in Nevada (and one of the largest county parties in the United States), voted to formally and urgently call upon the delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention to reject certain new rules that have been proposed by the convention’s Committee on Rules and Order of Business.
The new proposals, crafted by lobbyist and political consultant Benjamin Ginsberg (and approved by the Rules Committee on a narrow margin), would empower the Republican National Committee to change the party rules in-between national conventions, thereby destroying the system of checks and balances imperative to preventing tyrannical control of our party. Even more egregious are the new provisions which would subject the Republican Party to a nomination process completely controlled by elite party officials, consultants and power brokers, rather than a process based on the conservative principles that the GOP and our country were founded upon.
Under these proposed rules, the new nationalized nomination process would force every state to bind their delegates, and would give the candidate to whom they are bound veto power over their credentials, effectively nullifying the role of state and local parties in electing delegates to the national convention.
This attempted coup by the consultants and national party elite would completely disenfranchise all rank and file Republicans, and is in absolute contradiction with the values that have long guided our Republican Party.“We’re doing God’s work,” said William Ackman, the hedge fund manager, on CNBC this week. He was referring to his $1 billion bet against Herbalife, the company that he accuses of being an illegal pyramid scheme.
For the two years that Ackman has been “short” Herbalife, it has been the most entertaining of business stories. Carl Icahn and Daniel Loeb — both, like Ackman, activist investors — made a grand show of buying Herbalife stock. The stock went up, meaning Icahn and Loeb were making money while Ackman was losing it. Icahn called Ackman a “crybaby in the schoolyard.” Then the two men kissed and made up at a CNBC conference.
Ackman made lengthy presentations laying out his evidence that Herbalife was a pyramid scheme. He set up a website dedicated to exposing it. He raised enough of a stink that both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice opened investigations. Herbalife fought back with its own battery of P.R. people and lobbyists. The company adamantly denies being a pyramid scheme. Since the middle of last year, however, it has failed to meet Wall Street’s expectations. Now Herbalife’s stock is way down. Although Ackman is now making money on his Herbalife bet, he is not satisfied. He expects the stock to go to zero.
In a way, the ongoing Ackman-Herbalife story is a little like the coverage of a hotly contested political campaign. The horse-race aspect is so entertaining that sometimes more serious issues get short shrift. In this case, the issue is not whether Ackman is up or down or feuding with Icahn, but whether Herbalife — like dozens of other “multilevel marketing” companies — is, in fact, a pyramid scheme.When a company earns huge amounts of profits, there is a lot that it can do with them, such as expand the business, spend lavishly, or just sit on stacks of money. There is something much more noble that can be done, however -- it can donate some of its bounty to people and organizations in need.
Microsoft is a company that has historically been very generous with its money, something likely inspired by the philanthropic actions of its founder Bill Gates; at least partially. Even more impressive is the company's Employee Giving program, where Microsoft matches donations of both time and money that is given by its workers. 2016 was yet another successful giving year for the Windows-maker, as it donated more than $650 million in cash, time, software, and services to nonprofit organizations. A good portion of that was from its employees.
"A year after the formation of Microsoft Philanthropies, Microsoft Corp. and its employees have donated more than $650 million in cash, cloud services and software to nonprofits around the world. In a letter published today, Mary Snapp, corporate vice president at Microsoft Philanthropies, detailed the organization's 2016 contributions. Highlights include $465 million in cloud services donated to more than 71,000 organizations to benefit the public good. In addition, Microsoft employees raised $142 million for 19,000 nonprofits, helping reach an important milestone: The company's giving program has now raised $1.5 billion since 1983," says Microsoft.
The Windows-maker further shares, "In January 2016, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the company would donate $1 billion in cloud services to nonprofit organizations and researchers working on the world's most urgent needs, from health care to education to the environment. While the commitment was originally envisioned as a three-year initiative, Microsoft Philanthropies is nearly at the halfway point of the goal, with $465 million donated in a year to 71,000 organizations."
Microsoft shares the following benefits of its 2016 donations.
Through the TEALS program, helped engage 750 volunteers from more than 400 different companies to bring computer science education to students in 225 U.S. high schools
In partnership with Code.org, set a new record for the annual Hour of Code campaign, with 15 million trials, in 119 countries, of Minecraft coding tutorials
Aided refugees and displaced people in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece through more than $30 million in technology and funding to organizations such as Mercy Corps, CARE and NetHope
Delivered connectivity to remote schools, health clinics and community centers in 11 countries through the use of TV white spaces
What makes Microsoft's donations so valuable is that they are not only cash. In other words, it is easy to throw money at a situation -- Microsoft is also giving services and solutions to help these organizations. Not to mention, by matching employee donations, Microsoft is likely boosting its workers' morale too.
Photo Credit: Andy Dean Photography/ShutterstockThe ink isn't dry yet on the federal government's decision to repeal its net neutrality rules, and yet many are already gearing up for what they say is an inevitable legal battle (once again) over the future of the Web.
“I'm shocked — shocked! — that people are going to challenge this decision in court!” said Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, last week after his agency voted 3 to 2 to repeal the Obama-era rules for Internet providers.
The repeal will permit broadband companies such as AT&T and Verizon to speed up some websites, slow down others or charge them new fees — a move that critics say could reshape the Internet ecosystem to favor large, established incumbents. Defenders of the decision, meanwhile, say it will free up more money for Internet providers to use to upgrade America's networks.
Because of the potentially far-reaching consequences of the vote, consumer groups and some state attorneys general have vowed to sue the FCC to overturn its decision. The first suits could be filed in mid-January, according to some analysts.
“We're suing because the FCC today broke essentially all the rules of administrative procedure,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told MSNBC last week after the vote. “Agencies aren't just allowed to make any arbitrary decision. In fact, courts have held that if a decision is ‘arbitrary and capricious’ … it has to be rejected.”
Opponents of the FCC are expected to make two broad categories of arguments, analysts say. One thrust is likely to target the FCC's legal reasoning for undoing the net neutrality rules, and the other will concentrate on the decision-making process that led to the vote, which some critics claim had been “corrupted.”
The last net neutrality lawsuit also followed this pattern, but the sides were flipped: It was industry groups who argued that the FCC's net neutrality rules were flawed and that the agency had violated the Administrative Procedures Act. In that lawsuit, a three-judge panel upheld the regulations, giving the FCC the benefit of the doubt in part due to its technical expertise.
But that deference to agency decision-making could cut against supporters of the net neutrality rules this time even though it helped them in the last round, said Matthew Brill, a partner at the firm Latham and Watkins who represents NCTA — The Internet and Television Association, a major cable industry trade group. That's because the FCC gets a “significant amount of discretion” to change its mind on policy matters, he said.
“When the court ruled [last time],” said Brill, “it emphasized it wasn't assessing the wisdom of that policy — it was just upholding the agency's decision-making under the broad leeway it gets.”
Judging by that argument, the courts could find that the GOP-led agency is within its rights to write the rules differently now, according to industry officials.
“What the court has said when you change your mind is, ‘As long as you come in with a rational, reasonable justification that's not arbitrary and capricious, we will uphold you,’ ” said one industry official, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak more freely.
What exactly did the FCC change its mind on? The key issue is how the FCC regulates Internet providers in the context of its oversight powers. Under the 2015 net neutrality rules, Internet providers were branded as telecom companies for the first time — opening the door to new rules on everything from privacy practices to the pricing of Internet access. Last week's repeal overturns that classification, describing providers instead as “information services” — which are more lightly regulated and face fewer FCC obligations.
Opponents of the current FCC may try to argue that the agency didn't do enough this time around to consider whether Internet providers should qualify as telecom companies.
The FCC's order “starts with the definition of an information service, and decides that broadband [qualifies as] an information service and therefore we don't need to ask the question of whether it's a telecom service,” said Harold Feld, a senior vice president at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
The FCC declined to comment for this story. But Pai has previously argued that in its only case on this question, the Supreme Court endorsed an earlier, 2000s-era finding by the FCC that Internet providers are, in fact, information service providers. As a consequence, it should not pose a legal problem for the FCC to return to that interpretation, according to Pai.
Even if the courts rule for the FCC on its definition of Internet providers, opponents of the agency hope to gain a victory by focusing on the public feedback portion of the decision-making process. FCC Democrats such as Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel have highlighted troubling irregularities in the agency's docket, such as numerous comments that were filed under allegedly stolen or fake identities.
As many as 2 million comments may have been submitted under false names, according to Rosenworcel, who also alleged that some 500,000 comments came from Russian addresses and that 50,000 consumer complaints mysteriously vanished from the docket.
By casting doubt on the integrity of the comments, FCC critics are arguing that the decision-making process had been tampered with in ways that ought to invalidate the agency's policy.
“The FCC will be made to explain its headlong rush past all of the problems with its record in this proceeding,” said Matt Wood, policy director at the consumer advocacy group Free Press, which has also signaled an intent to sue.It seems so strange now, but before the 1960s, dirt bikes usually had the same chassis as their road-going counterparts. And if you wanted a bike to race, you could order a basic engine and frame from the factory, and then finish the machine to your own specification.
In France, you were known as a “compé-client,” or competition client. And that’s how this lovely 1955 Velocette Scrambler started its life. Owned by a friend of Vincent Prat (of the Southsiders MC), it was ridden by a local pilot for several seasons until the frame broke under the stresses of off-road competition.
This particular Scrambler was a factory-built machine based on the MSS 500. Power was boosted from 18 to 35 hp, thanks to components from the more powerful Venom—including the camshaft. The bike is also running a BTH Racing Magneto and an equally rare Amal 10TT9 carburetor.
According to Vincent, the Velocette languished at the back of a garage for several years after the frame was damaged. In the 1960s, a mechanic turned the broken rear frame into a lever-armed shock absorber, and the Velocette was once again pressed into competition.
The bike could not be set up correctly, and it was sold on in frustration. It was passed from one owner to another, each one putting his own stamp on it—such as a new seat, and a gas tank from a Motobécane.
The Velocette is now in safe hands, though. The current owner is part-way through a complete restoration, and the frame and vintage “mono-shock” will be properly optimized.
Isn’t it good to know that there are still people out there who care?
Photography by Benoit Guerry.HTC said its second-quarter unaudited net profit rose 33 percent amid surging sales, surpassing the company's guidance from earlier this spring.
The company reported unaudited net profit of $268 million, up from $202 million in the year-ago period. The Taiwanese smartphone maker has surged to prominence thanks in large part to the company's embrace of Google's Android platform. HTC's revenue for the second quarter jumped 56 percent to $1.88 billion, up from $1.18 billion in the second quarter last year. In April, the company said it was expecting revenue of $1.6 billion for the quarter.
"HTC's second-quarter earnings result is better than its original second-quarter guidance, [as] both June and second-quarter revenues continuously hit record highs," the company said in a statement.
Although HTC remains behind Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) in terms of smartphone market share, according to research firm IDC, the company has benefited from growing brand recognition. It has also been the recipient of strong marketing support from some of the top U.S. carriers. Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) is having trouble keeping Droid Incredibles in stock, and Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) has been touting the Evo, its first WiMAX smartphone, and is also experiencing shortages of the device.
For more:
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
- see this Engadget post
- see this JKOnTheRun post
Related Articles:
HTC touts brand growth, multi-platform approach
Verizon CEO: Component shortages hampering supply of HTC Incredible
HTC's rise linked to Android, innovation
Sprint launching HTC Evo June 4 for $199
HTC boasts of U.S. smartphone growthPhoto by: The News-Gazette The former Coca-Cola plant on South Neil Street in Champaign will be the next home of Papa Del's. Other Related Content Top of the morning, Jan. 26, 2016
CHAMPAIGN — For almost a month, Champaign will be without Papa Del’s Pizza.
The pizzeria’s Village at the Crossing location will stop cooking Tuesday, four weeks before the opening of the Neil Street location during the week of March 1, general manager Andrea Seten told The News-Gazette on Wednesday.
The oven at the Village at the Crossing location will have to be sent to Chicago to be cleaned before returning it to what wlll be the 500-seat Papa Del’s Pizza Factory. On Monday, Papa Del's owner Bob Monti told The News-Gazette that renovating the Neil Street location — which he had hoped to open in November 2015 — has been "a long process."
Frozen pizzas will still be available at the crossing location until a week or so before the Neil Street opening. Then, there will be no Papa Del’s until the week of March 1.
Seten said she isn’t worried about supplies lasting because the staff can stay open to produce the frozen pizzas.
Still, she said she expects a rush until Tuesday.
“I’m sure people will be getting their last hurrah before they have wait until March,” Seten said.Ben Roethlisberger explained what happened after the Steelers made it a two-point game with just under 12 minutes remaining in Sunday's game against the Colts.
Big Ben shared what he overheard between Todd Haley and Mike Tomlin after Roethlisberger's touchdown pass to Vance McDonald made the score 17-15.
"The only thing I heard was Todd was saying to kick it, and Coach T was like, 'No, let the offense go,'" Roethlisberger said. "We called a play and made it happen."
The Steelers were rewarded for the decision, as Martavis Bryant pulled down Big Ben's pass to tie the score at 17-all.
While Roethlisberger was obviously pleased with Tomlin's decision to go for two, he was also pleased with what he saw from Bryant, who also caught a key 19-yard reception on Pittsburgh's game winning drive.
"I thought he made some plays for us, none bigger than the last one that he made," Roethlisberger said of Bryant, who played for the first time in three weeks after being benched during Pittsburgh's Week 8 victory over the Lions. "I hope that it just builds his confidence. I know I have confidence in him, so I hope we see more and more (from him) every week."Chlamydia and gonorrhea infections in 2015 reached the highest rates ever recorded in Bexar County.
Data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV rates all increased in Bexar County from 2014 to 2015, the most recent year state data is available.
Statewide rates of chlamydia and syphilis reached record highs as well.
The state attributes the increases to better and more accessible testing, but Dr. Junda Woo, medical director of San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, said it may also have something to do with how the agency has directed its resources, particularly the decision to focus primarily on decreasing the incidence of syphilis.
Metro Health received nearly $2.8 million in mostly federal money from 2014 to 2016 to fund a prevention project that expanded testing for and education about HIV and syphilis, with an emphasis on preventing mothers from passing syphilis on to their babies during pregnancy or childbirth. The agency received an additional $1.2 million to continue the project this year.
More Information Metro Health clinic The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District’s STD/HIV Clinic is open Monday through Friday and tests for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV for as low as $15. Location: 512 E
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talk at the end about being on dating apps and relationships, and I love what you said – that you’re looking for a human connection, and that doesn’t discriminate (between) men or women.
“When did you come to that realisation?” she asked the singer.
With a huge smile on her face, Demi replied: “That’s how I’ve always felt.”
She did not label herself, so neither will we.
The superstar, who revealed that she has now been sober for more than five years, also praised all those coming forward to speak about their experiences with Harvey Weinstein.
Cara Delevingne was one of those who have spoken out, saying Weinstein had talked to her in an “inappropriate” way and told her she would have no future in Hollywood if she was open about her sexuality.
“I think that it’s very brave,” Demi said.
“I think it’s very important that people stand up for themselves and speak out about these issues, because it just gives people at home, people who don’t have a voice, the courage to step forward with things that happened to them as well.”
She also spoke about a moment in her life covered during the film, when she punched a backup dancer on a plane – an incident which led her to seek professional help.
“I wish I didn’t do that, but I take full responsibility for it in this film,” she said.
The Sorry Not Sorry singer added that she had been through “a few” rock bottom moments.
“But I’ve picked myself up every time,” she said, adding that “in the film, it showcases every single time that I’ve picked myself back up and made changes to grow.”
New rumours about Demi’s sexual orientation surfaced after she was spotted holding hands with another woman last month.
The woman who she was getting close to at Disneyland in Los Angeles was reported to be Lauren Abedini, a DJ and producer.
This excited fans, but Lovato has always resisted attempts to label her sexual orientation.
The singer has told People: “It’s something I don’t think needs to have a label: As humans, It’s just about a connection with someone.”
Demi has also been reluctant to open up about the lyrics to her song Cool for the Summer, which many say has Sapphic undertones.
The song’s lyrics include: “Got a taste for the cherry / I just need to take a bite”, and “I’m a little curious, too / tell me if it’s wrong, if it’s right / I don’t care / I can keep a secret, can you?”
When Alan Carr asked whether the song was about same-sex relationships, Lovato said: “I’m not confirming, and I’m definitely not denying.”
And when questioned about her sexuality during an interview with PrideSource.com, Demi replied: “I just feel like everyone’s always looking for a headline and they always want their magazine or TV show or whatever to be the one to break what my sexuality is.
“I feel like it’s irrelevant to what my music is all about.
“I stand up for the things that I believe in and the things that I’m passionate about, but I like to keep my personal life as private as possible when it comes to dating and sexuality and all that stuff just because it has nothing to do with my music.”
Many of her supporters – known as Lovatics – would love for her to come out as proudly part of the LGBT community, which she has repeatedly embraced in the past.
However, this doesn’t mean they want her to come out against her will.
The strength and understanding present in their support was demonstrated when HuffPost called Demi’s reasons for not publicly talking about her sexuality “total bulls***.”
One reader labelled the article “so gross”, adding: “a young queer person literally doesn’t need to openly come out, celebrity or not, if they don’t want to.”
Another said: “Reality check: no one, at any time or for any reason, owes another person any god damn thing when it comes to their sex life.”
Among the hundreds of comments, it was hard to find a single one in support of the article.
Readers seemed to share a similar viewpoint: no one is obliged to reveal their sexuality or come out, regardless of whether they are in the public eye or not.
One commenter even called for the article to be taken down, labelling it “utter bulls***.”
Watch Demi’s interview here:A flaw in a government contracting database might have allowed vendors or federal workers to steal other vendors' financial information and trade secrets.
Late Friday, the General Services Administration said in a statement that GSA officials found "a security vulnerability" in a registration system "which could allow some existing users in the system to view certain registration information of other users." The potential exposure was first reported by Federal News Radio on Friday.
The database, called the System for Award Management, or SAM, currently catalogs, among other things, central contractor registration records that include personal and banking information, company financials, and codes that grant access to a past performance rating system.
GSA Spokeswoman Jackeline Stewart told Nextgov "all registered SAM users were made aware of the situation." She would not disclose the number of system users but an estimated 600,000 companies currently are registered in the database. The security loophole “was reported to GSA” on March 8 and fixed on March 10, agency officials stated.
This sort of vulnerability can be caused by a malicious or inadvertent action, according to software security researchers. Stewart would not comment on whether the opening was the result of intentional "SQL injection," or something accidental such as a password management glitch or someone forgetting to apply a software update.
"It was discovered that by following a unique series of steps an entity record manager could potentially see the sensitive information of another entity," agency officials stated.
The presence of an SQL injection bug would mean someone had deliberately taken advantage of a coding error to execute unauthorized commands and breach the system.
"I am not sure if we have enough information yet about what the flaw was," said Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer of consulting firm Secure Ideas, but "SQL injection could absolutely be the way they were exploited."
Johnson, who is paid to spot security vulnerabilities, said, "I have often used that type of flaw to retrieve exactly this type of data. And it is commonly found -- sadly -- on government Web applications."
He said that while a person must perform an SQL injection, the attacker might not necessarily be a bad actor, but rather a security tester, like himself, working for GSA.
A number of other issues also could have caused this kind of outage, Johnson added.
GSA applied a software patch to block the exposure and the agency has no evidence that any company's data was improperly used, altered or lost, government officials stated. A full review is ongoing, the officials added.
If there was an intruder, Johnson said the hacker likely could have been seeking the proprietary information of a competitor. Identity fraud was another possibility, he said.
An FAQ posted on the GSA website Friday night states, “Registrants using their Social Security numbers instead of a [Taxpayer Identification Number] for purposes of doing business with the federal government may be at greater risk for potential identity theft." Free credit monitoring services will be made available to those registrants, agency officials added.
The GSA notice states, "The security of this information is a top priority for this agency and we will continue to ensure the system remains secure."
Johnson's company, which is registered on the SAM database, was notified of the incident by email shortly after 2:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. He said the delay likely is due to the high volume of messages being sent.
(Image via Ermek/Shutterstock.com)Source: used with permission from wikipedia.org
It appears that so many people are really upset and in a state of panic about the upcoming American presidential inauguration on Friday. The dramatic shift from President Obama to President is certainly a head spinning and sharp contrast in style, perspective, and priorities. Over 50 representatives in congress (thus far) have publicly stated that they will boycott the inauguration ceremony and festivities while the women’s protest march on Washington is growing larger than expected with similar marches planned in almost every city across the country the day following the inauguration. Tension, panic, discombobulation, and intense are in the air and repeatedly reported on in the news. From a psychological perspective, what can and freaked-out citizens do to cope? While there are no simple answers or solutions that will work for everyone, three psychological informed principles might be helpful to consider. These include the following:
1. Control what you can and let go of what you can’t control.
Part of the panic that grips people is associated with being or feeling out of control. It is a bit like watching a train wreck unfold before your eyes in that you can’t do anything to stop it but you want to control the situation so that the inevitable doesn’t happen. Taking stock of what you can control and do to manage your upset might include attending a march, signing a petition (or creating one yourself), contacting your elected officials to articulate your views, and talking with others who are sympathetic to your feelings and opinions. Additionally, it is helpful to take stock of what you can’t control and work hard to accept it. Asking supportive others to help remind you of what you can and can't control may be of value as well.
2. Be thoughtful about exposure.
Living in a 24/7 news cycle with constant “breaking news” to grab your can make anxiety worse. You can easily get wrapped up watching endless hours of news updates via numerous media outlets including social media. News that is presented in attention grabbing ways often with hysterical headlines and outbursts by talking heads can make fears so much worse. Being vigilant about limiting your exposure to news to brief and manageable doses, attending to reliable (and perhaps calming) news sources, and avoiding the intensity of in-your-face and “gotcha” style coverage is highly recommended.
3. Remind yourself of who you are and who you want to become.
While controlling the behavior of others is usually frustrating and impossible to do you can control your own behavior and focus on the values and type of person you want to be and to become. For example, being respectful, kind, gracious, and caring to others may be organizing and centering qualities that can act as a foil to the kind of rancor witnessed and experienced during current times. Being attentive to your own ethical principles and priorities in life may help keep yourself calm when feeling anxious. I recommend using the easy to remember RRICC model representing respect, responsibility, integrity, competence, and concern for others as a mantra. Or, if you want something even easier to remember, consider the RC model (i.e., respect and compassion). Holding onto valued and perhaps sacred ethical principles can help you cope better and feel good about your approach to challenging stress.
We certainly live in a remarkable time of transition that is likely very for many. It is easy to get swept up in the hysteria and upset. Even if there are many good reasons to be upset we still need to find ways to cope as best as we can with these new and transitional challenges. While these three suggestions are not magical in any way they may help to move you in the right direction to help find some peace and calm in the middle of a remarkable and turbulent storm.
Copyright 2017, Thomas G. Plante, PhD, ABPPSamsung's Gear 360, the spherical video camera first shown off at Mobile World Congress in February, is finally landing in the US. Samsung has set the price at $349.99, but there's a catch — you can only buy it "on a limited basis" at VidCon, which kicks off in Anaheim tomorrow. If you can't make it down there, you'll have to wait for details of a wider launch to come later in the year.
Samsung is also using VidCon as a springboard to launch new VR and 360-degree content offerings. Milk VR has been renamed to Samsung VR and now supports user-generated content; creators can upload 360-degree videos for viewing on the Gear VR headset.
In addition, a new initiative called Samsung Creators will see the company partner with video shooters and curate content for the platform. Samsung is working with noted YouTuber Casey Neistat to "spotlight emerging creators from YouTube and push the creative boundaries of 360 video storytelling," and will launch a competition next month to pick 10 winners who've made VR content using Samsung products.The elder scrolls: The Era of the stars.
Disclaimer: I don't own mass effect or elder scrolls; they belong to bioware and Bethesda.
Author's notice: I attempt to combine my two favourite things; the elder scrolls and mass effect. Please note I have never fully played oblivion and the last time I play morrowind or daggerfall since 2005, so my memory may not perfect.
I only have word 2003 on my computer, so my grammer may not be up to standards and I don't feel like buying a new one.
Also while this fanfiction shares the similar concept with ethereal 23's fan fiction (people of nirn enter the space age and meet the races of mass effect.) I will be writing the fanfiction on what I wish to happen.
'Hello' means someone is thinking or talking through telepathy
/hello/ means a message is playing
*bang* means there is a noise
There are three important things you need to know
1. The names of the planets in the solar system changed now
Mercury is zenithar. Venus is mara. Earth is nirn. Mars is sheogorath. Jupiter is Akatosh. Saturn is cavlicus. Uranus is jullianos. Neptune is mora. Pluto is namira. If your asking why I'm changing the names of the planets please note that it makes sense for the people of nirn to name the planets after there gods, not after ours. Also the days and months changed to their elder scrolls counterpart.
2. The people of nirn use robots that were originally humanoids, but were trapped in a soul gem and then had the chance to be placed into a robot body or be killed. So they aren't actually since they use to be human.
3. The people of Nirn aren't going to act all sunshine and rainbows, nor are they going to act all dark and evil.
Part 1: Timeline
4E 202: The events of Skyrim take place. A Bosmer is discovered to be the dragonborn. The Stormcloaks when the civil-war and skyrim becomes separated from the emperor. Alduin is killed in sovangarde by the dragonborn. The dark brotherhood is destroyed in skyrim. The thieves' guild is returned to its former glory.
4E 210: The aldemeri dominion attempts to conquer skyrim. Heavy resistance was encountered; the Storm-cloaks succeed in driving back all thalmor forces. An attempted invasion of the summerset isle is attempted; it becomes a disaster. Tensions between the aldemeri dominion and the storm-cloaks increase. The reformations of the blades occur in skyrim due to the requests of the dragonborn. The Falmer and hagravens become extinct. Giants start slowly signs of reduced hostility.
4E 212: The Stormcloaks attempt to gain the argonians and khajit in skyrim as allies. They are successful with the khajit, however the argonians refuse to become involved with the conflicting. Surprisingly, the entire bosmer population in skyrim sides with the stormcloaks, most likely due to the dragonborn being a bosmer. The Emperor of tamriel dies of a heart attack. Christen Medes become emperor a month after his uncle's death. Skyrim becomes fully engaged in war with the aldemeri dominion.
4E 215: Ulfric Stormcloaks dies due to natural causes. The Dragonborn becomes high-king of skyrim. The emperor of tamriel approaches the dragonborn with an offer. If Skyrim becomes part of tamriel again then the empire will send supplies and troops over to help with the war. At first the storm-cloaks refused the emperor's offer, but later accepted when they realize they had no other choice. Staying true to his word; Christen Medes aid the storm-cloaks in battling the aldemeri dominion in exchange to become of the emperor; through most of his actions were in secret. The giants become engaged with modern society.
4E 220: The Aldemeri dominion discovers that the emperor has assisted the storm-cloaks in the war. The aldemeri dominion/ Empire war occurs.
4E 225: The war ends and peace treaty is signed. It states that each side most keep to themselves and any hostile actions against one another is considered an act of war. The races of Tamriel slowly start to drift about and racial tenses have been the highest; with most of the races keeping to themselves
4E 230: Christen Medes dies of a heart attack. The dragonborn becomes emperor of tamriel. His first task was to cut the amount of racial tension in tamriel, make sure each race have an equal place of power and restore the empire to its former glory. The aldemeri dominion is dissolved due to political corruption and the argonian rebellion.
4E 300: Racism is decrease. All species have equal power to allow for equal power. The empire is restored to its former glory.
4E 320: The dragonborn offers the redguards to restore Yokunda back to its original state in exchange that the continent becomes part of the emperor; the redguards agree. Atmora becomes part of the empire. Pyandonea becomes part of the empire and first contact is made with the sea elves. At first they prove quite hostile through they later joined the empire five years later.
4E 380: Yokunda is restored back to its original state. Scientists and scholars become interested in reverse engineering ancient dwarven tech; the dragonborn quickly increases funding for magic and science in the hopes of increasing their technology.
4E 400: Electricity is discovered and it slowly becomes part of the empire. Total population is 1 billion
4E 500: Nirn enters the steam age. Akavir is discovered and it is quickly discovered that the native races are in engaged with the civil war with each other. The native races learn discover the empire's presence and each of them beg the dragonborn to aid with the war. The dragonborn refuses for unknown reasons. Total population is 2 billion
4E 550: Akavir becomes part of the empire. Total population is 4 billion
4E 566: Maganus becomes the archmage of the world at age two-hundred and forty and remains so to this very day.
4E 580: Nirn enters the nuclear age. The dragonborn dies due to unknown reasons. The empire becomes leaderless for a month; many people attempt to become emperor. The 4th era ends.
5E 10: A new emperor is chosen by the people, a nord by the name of Culeen Heart-fish. Who is described as a man doing the right things for the wrong reasons.
5E 25: Nirn enters the industrial age. Total population is 5 billion. Culeen is replaced by a wood elf named Valara. She described as lovable but incompetent
5E 40: Certain species slowly start to have their population reduced. Valara is replaced by an imperial named Georgian Reedfolk. He proves to be wildly popular with the people.
5E 60: Georgian reedfolk is replaced by a dark elf named Benaronah. She turns out to be incredibly popular with the people and other politics and have remained in power for over eighty years because of it.
5E 80: Nirn enters the nuclear age. Total population is 6 billion.
5E 131: A dark elf by the name of Jana Shepard is born in the crime infested town of riften to two barely known people; Hariah Shepard and Dreya Shepard. She becomes an orphan and is moved to raven rock sixty years later (or when she was ten) when her parents were killed by a serial killer
5E 135: Arnus Ferea is born to incredibly wealthy family in solitude and has a life without any troubles or hardships.
5E 140: Benaronah is replaced by a high elf named Zien, the first ever real high-elf emperor. He turns out to be incredibly unpopular and after six months in office, Benaronah becomes the emperor again.
5E 150: Zaan Morseli becomes the first man on masser. A year later, Farkins Silver-blood becomes the first man on secunda. An increased interest in space travel occurs.
5E 177: Benaronah is assassinated by an unknown culprit while visiting the imperial city much to the dismay of the people. A high elf named Melius much to the anger of the people. However, despite the last high elf being a total failure, he proved much more capable and promising then before, but still retains the infamousness that Zien had achieved.
5E 185: Melius is forced to be replaced despite being just as a capable Benaronah due to the opinion of the people of him and rumors of him working with the thalmor. He is replaced by a wood elf named Vyleen. He turns out to be a decent emperor, but a more favourable one then Melius.
5E 200: Nirn enters the solar age. Soul gems are discovered to be a renewable and clean source of energy. A device is built that allows for soul gems to absorb sunlight for energy instead of souls. A device called the C.U.B; conscious uploaded body is created, a device that allows for anyone who had been put inside of a soul gem to be put inside of a robot body.
5E 202: Vyleen is replaced by a nord named Varka Cinnamon-crunch and despite his strange last name he was one of the most capable and popular emperors through he's often described as loud and quick to act.
5E 207: General Williams is born and becomes a general forty years later.
5E 217: General Mary is born and becomes the general for the entire nirn army forty years later.
5E 220: The empire begins to terraform nearby planets. Work on teleportation begins using oblivion gates as a template to create a form of FTL. Population is 10 billion.
5E 226: Construction begins to drastically remodel and expand BlackRose prison.
5E 227: Varka is replaced by Muan-El, the first ever argonian emperor in the entire history of the empire and a very capable one. Due to being the first ever argonian emperor, the majority of Nirn is in disagreement if he should be emperor or not. The argonians feel proud and excited by finally having one of their own being emperor. Redguards, Bretons, nords, giants, wood and sea elves are glad that the argonians get the chance to prove their worth. The imperials, dunmer and altmer think that he's unfit to be emperor due to his argonian blood. The kahjit are jealous because the argonians got an emperor before they did. To this day the majority of Nirn remain fighting over Muan-el's ability to lead the world.
5E 230: The first teleporter station is created and it proves to be a success; unfortunately teleportation sickness quickly becomes a very noticeable side effect. Nausea, vomiting, slight dehydration and nose bleeds are the symptoms of teleportation sickness.
5E 232: Prothean ruins and element zero is discovered on Mars. Once learning of the properties of element zero; mages begin to convert other elements into eezo.
5E 235: David Anderson is born and joins the army eighteen years later.
5E 237: Terrorists gain a hold of an insanity bomb and detonate it in riften causing nearly one thousand people to go insane including some cops. It took nearly three days to restore the peace and the city still hasn't recovered from the mass riots.
5E 239: Shepard joins the military and quickly rises through the ranks faster then most other elves.
5E 243: A large tone fork shaped object is found frozen near Namira. It is quickly discovered to be able to allow star-ships to travel instantly to other star systems and is called a gate. The empire begins to activate as many gates as possible. Arnus attempts to turn the military at age 18. He excelled at conjured and destructive combat. However, he wasn't able to join until six years later.
5E 250: The remodelling of Blackrose prison is complete and it is now a maximum security jungle super prison in black marsh with no possible way of escape and where violent criminals fight for territory. It proves to be incredibly controversial.
5E 255: Shepard becomes a nightingale. Her fellow nightingales describe her as fun and loving on shore leave; quick, deadly and intimidating when in combat.
5E 257: Present day.
A pale gray and yellow nord research vessel about 250 meters long, 100 meters wide and 150 meters tall by the name of SSV Phillos stood beside a metal tone-forked shaped object that was greatly bigger then it. The ship had a narrow blocky symmetrical shape with a long narrow rectangular shaped head. The middle of the ship had a boxy and ugly appearance as was the back just with multiple thrusters emitting conjured magic blue flames.
The majority of the ship had small narrow rooms that favoured utility over comfort, however some rooms such as the crew-quarters and the bridge had some comfort; through only barely and the bridge was here her captain was standing.
A large nord man stood by the name of Captain Tarven fire-strong in the center of the bridge. He was a muscular man with pale white skin and messy short brown hair. He was about forty-four years old and had multiple small and barely noticeable wrinkles across his face. Stood with a posture that displayed both superiority and disinterested. He wore a heavy dark green fur jacket with multiple golden symbols on it and thick dark green pants.
He stared at the large polished metal tone-fork in front of them. Most of his crew were amazed by the sight of a gate; however the captain's expression was that of boredom. The captain let out a very loud and noticeable yawn and patted his mouth with his right arm.
A bosmer pilot near the end of the bridge turned around and faced his captain. "Is something bothering you Captain," he asked.
"Nothing is bothering me Sammon, just bored and don't refer to me by Captain; refer to be my first name. I've already informed you several times before on our trip," he said with a deep clear voice.
"And why would you be bored? We've just seen a gate up close for the first time ever," he said excited as he pointed towards the large intimidating galactic slingshot in front of them.
"Uninteresting. We are already capable of feats that far surpass these gates; such as actual teleportation," he informed rudely with heavy emphasis on the last part.
"True, but going through a gate doesn't make you feel like hell when you go through it," he replied annoyed by Tarven's comment. In all due, the protheans were capable of some pretty impressive feats.
"You'll get use to it. Now send the ship through so we can scan for planets, tell the emperor what a fine job we did and get a hefty pay check.
Sammon give him a confused look. 'How do you become immune to teleportation sickness,' he asked himself, but quickly removed himself from the thought before he becomes too indulged in it. "Uh Captain, shouldn't we-." He stopped when Tarven stared at him like he was about to hit him; hard. "I mean Tarven. Shouldn't we send a probe through just in case if they're others on the other side?"
"Are you suggesting that aliens exist," he asked confused.
"Yes."
The nord let out loud and deep laughs as he crouched down in laughter. The crew looked out there captain confused. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, that's fucking hilarious; aliens. Sometimes you really crack me up," he said barely able to talk clearly. He stopped laughing once he realized that Sammon had the complete opposite expression on his face. "You weren't kidding," he said somewhat embarrassed by his probably offending laughing.
"And why do you find my beliefs funny," he asked annoyed.
"Well, if aliens exist; shouldn't we would have find them by now?"
"We have, just not an alien race with an actual civilization. So I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for intelligent life to exist on other planets. The only requirements for a planet to have advanced life are complex and highly evolved life-forms. Besides, several different intelligent races have evolved on Nirn."
"Well that was quite an interesting discussion. Sorry if I offended you and if you are right about aliens; then I'll buy you drinks for a week"
"Apology and deal accepted."
"Through we're still sending the ship through," he demanded.
"After everything I told you; were still going to rush blindly through it. I mean what-," he argued but was then interrupted by Tarven.
"Send the ship through," he ordered staring at him with a look that could make almost anyone nervous.
"Fine," he replied worried about the consequences as the ship flew towards the gate and disappeared in a flash of blue light and a loud bang.
Once they exited the relay; they were greeted by several unknown and alien ships much larger they then were, about ten in total. They're appearances was similar to that of nord starships; blocky and geometrical, but all had the appearance of a fighter-jet or airplane. They were also much more colourful with a clear white body and strips of red, blue, yellow or black across them. Multiple armaments were on each ship; cannons, railguns, missile launchers and chainguns. Clearly the fleet was meant for war.
Tarven stared at the large alien fleet intimidated, but still remaining calm despite being faced with the likely-hood of death. However, much of his crew were shaky nervous from being frightened by the unknown vessels in space.
"I- I guess you owe me those drinks," joked Sammon nervously trying to calm himself down
"Alright, I will buy you your drinks as long as we make it out of this alive," he replied angrily. Tarven turned his attention to a dark elf near his right. "Kaylena, can send a message to the alien fleet. Tell them that we come in peace," He ordered.
"We're going to die, we're going to die," she repeated over and over as she clinched herself in fear and rocked back and forth.
"Kaylena! Tell the alien fleet that we come in peace!"
She immediately woke herself up from her state and focused on her captain. "Yes sir, but I'm wondering if they're peaceful and I really want to get of here before they blow us to bits" she said nervously.
"And what act like cowards. A true nord never shows weakness even when the odds are stacked against them. Now send the message to the fleet," he said proudly.
Kaylena took a look at her captain; clearly the man was somewhat insane. 'He's going to get us all killed,' she thought angrily. She bent down towards the microphone. "This IS the SSV Phillos, we come in peace and are hoping you do to." The message was immediately sent to the ten alien ships in front of them.
"I don't want this ship to move until we get a response from them. Now all we have to do is to wait." The captain sat down while the rest of the crew waited in fear and anxiety.
xxxxxxxxxxx
General Desolas Arterius of the turian hierarchy looked at the small ship in front of him. It had a blocky and geometrical shape, and had a quite ugly design. The quarian flotilla had ships more attractive then the makeshift in front of them. The ship didn't match anything that he or his crew had seen, so it much had to belong to a new race.
They had just encountered it about three minutes ago when the apparently dormant relay 314 was activated and a small ugly ship came out of it. It surprised the crew when it was activated, but what surprised the crew greatly was what came out of it. They were expecting something terrifying like the rachni, but what they got instead was a small ship that looked it would fall apart as soon as it entered FTL.
'I spent two months out here looking for pirates and instead I found an entirely new species. I guess today is my lucky day,' Desolas thought proudly as he stared at the small ship in front of them. It was a quite a small ship and seemed rather pathetic compared to the massive fleet that he commanded. He let out a slight chuckle at the ship in front of them. A nearby turian then attracted his attention.
"General, we've just received a message from the ship; I'm playing it now," informed a communication Officer.
/Dette er SSV Phillos, vi kommer I fred og haper du gjor ogsa/. The majority of the crew had zero idea of what the message meant.
"Private, can you translate the message," asked Desolas through it was rather an order then a question.
"Sorry, can't, but I can guess. Since they seem intimidated by us; I guess it's a message of peace or just a trick. What are your orders General Desolas."
Desolas weighed in the options. On one hand, they could the peaceful route and try to talk the newcomers diplomatically. However they did activated a dormant relay and they must face the consequences for they're actions. Plus, they could prove a useful client race for the turian hierarchy. Desolas weighed the pros and cons of each option, and chose the latter. "Power up weapons to 100% and prepare to fire. Once were done, go through the relay and invade the nearest colonized world; then they'll become a client race of the turian hierarchy. They must know the consequences for they're actions," he said calmly. The ship begin to slowly gain power and aimed there cannons towards the ship.
Within seconds the ship's weapons have reached 100% and have fired on the alien ship. It barely had anytime to react as one single blast managed to cause the SSV phillos to erupt in shards of metal and blood. The majority of the crew let out a small cheer; however, those weren't so patrionic felt some regrets for there general's actions.
Desolas let out the turian equivalent of a sneer. "Excellent. I want all ships to head through the relay. Once we're through, I want soldiers to be on the nearest colonized world we can find," he ordered through the microphone with a loud and commanding voice. The fleet moved towards the relay and vanished in a flash of blue light.
Shanxi, lundas, heartfire
A dunmer by the name of Jana Shepard stood in the middle of day-star; a metropolis of a city with over one million inhabitants. The city was also the only city with a population higher then a million. Skyscrapers made out of polished white marble, thick clear glass and corundum metals casted shadows upon the smaller stone round huts below. The city streets were busy as argonians, elves, humans and khajits walking in and out of stores, and creating clusters of people among the streets.
The dark elf was about fairly young; only twenty-one years old or one-hundred and thirty-three years old in elven years. She had a fairly fit and athletic body with a light, but noticeable muscle mass. She was wearing mostly red and some blue light guard armour that covered everything except her head. The armour's appearance was exactly like the guards of skyrim during the 4th era, just with a bulletproof vest and shield generator underneath. She had an almond shaped face with light ash blue skin, bright thick black hair that reached down to the top of her shoulders and bright pure dark red almond shaped eyes. An elven heavy pistol and glass dagger attached to her hips.
She analyzed the crowds for any signs of pick pocketing, stealing, lock picking or any other minor crime; there were zero signs of any crime. 'I've been patrolling in the markets for three hours and nothing has happened yet,' she thought to herself bored as she then kicked a rock down the sideway. However, despite her boredom; she still acted serious during patrol, most of the time.
She walked down and through the crowded streets and entered the golden bear tavern. There were people singing, dancing, eating on long polished wooden tables bars telling tales and playing music. The room was bright and colourful with blue, red, yellow, and green on the walls, ceiling and floor.
She walked towards a stool and sat down it. "One nord mead," she asked somewhat tired and incredibly bored as she pulled out five septims from her pocket and placed it on the counter. She needed something drink to remove herself from her boredom.
A light brown scaled argonian bartender wearing dark brown and pale yellow thin clothes reached out to the shelves and pulled out a bottle of mead. "Here you go, one bottle of mead," she said with the usual raspy argonian accent as she took the five golden coins on the counter and placed it in the cash register.
Jana opened up the bottle and started to drink large amounts of it. Once it was empty, she slammed the bottle unto the counter. "Another please," she asked as she pulled out five more septims from her pocket.
"I think that's enough for one day Jana. Besides, aren't you on patrol," she asked as she grabbed the empty bottle on the counter and placed it in a bucket.
"Don't worry, I'm on a quick break and I can hold more liquor then a bear," she said proudly. "How much liquor can a bear hold?"
"About five bottles," replied a khajit that was walking by.
"See I'm fine for just one more bottle," she persuaded.
"No, I'm not going to sell you more booze. I don't want to tell your captain that you've been drinking on the job," she argued.
"Velia, everyone drinks while working, people drink, the elderly drink, oblivion, even children drink. And not one of them has gotten drunk by drinking only one bottle," she argued.
"I'm still not serving you another drink."
"Damn it. Hey, how does business go?"
"Pretty good, but it could be better as long as that idiot D-." Her sentence was stopped by the sounds of an explosive several miles away. Nearly everyone in the building crouched down and covered there ears in shock. "What in oblivion was that?!"
"I don't know, but I intend to find out," replied Jana as she then rushed out of the building followed by several other people.
There were ten gigantic ships above the sky. Everyone took a look at the ships; clearly they did not belong to the empire.
"By the gods," yelled a nord.
"What in oblivion is that," yelled a artmer
"By azura," whispered Jana.
A large bright light
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Wizards of the Coast
This product is part of a bundle. Complete the set and save on all bundled products you don't already own and all future additions to the bundle.
D&D Adventures Bundle
Take a stand against the giants in this adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
Giants have emerged from their strongholds to threaten civilization as never before. Hill giants are stealing all the grain and livestock they can while stone giants have been scouring settlements that have been around forever. Fire giants are press-ganging the smallfolk into the desert, while frost giant longships have been pillaging along the Sword Coast. Even the elusive cloud giants have been witnessed, their wondrous floating cities appearing above Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate. Where is the storm giant King Hekaton, who is tasked with keeping order among the giants?
The humans, dwarves, elves, and other small folk of the Sword Coast will be crushed underfoot from the onslaught of these giant foes. The only chance at survival is for the small folk to work together to investigate this invasion and harness the power of rune magic, the giants’ weapon against their ancient enemy the dragons. The only way the people of Faerun can restore order is to use the giants’ own power against them.
To defeat giants, you need to be giant!
This module includes:
The entire contents of Storm King's Thunder adventure
adventure Image handouts that can be shared with players collectively or individually
Maps containing information for the Dungeon Master (DM) only and with all locations pre-linked to story entries which may contain additional DM notes, boxed text, encounters, images and treasure parcels
Maps with all hidden information removed and resized for use as tactical combat maps
Tokens for many of the monsters in the module. When no token is available, a letter token is used to represent the NPC
XP for encounters that can be dragged to the party sheet and awarded to the players as they complete them
Searchable monster indexes by CR, type and in alphabetical order
Requires: A Fantasy Grounds full or ultimate license or an active subscription and The 5E Ruleset.
Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, their respective logos, the dragon ampersand, all Wizards titles, the fifth edition rules, and Wizards' character names and distinctive likenesses are property and copyright of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA and other countries. Used with permission.
Fantasy Grounds is a trademark of SmiteWorks USA LLC. (C) 2016 SmiteWorks USA LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Released on August 26, 2016
Designed for Fantasy Grounds version 3.1.7 and higher.
Screenshots
WOTC5ESKTDaniel Lewis has been a professional [Ruby on Rails developer](https://www.toptal.com/ruby-on-rails/job-description) for over 4 years, working on about a dozen high-traffic web applications, many of them through Toptal.
Sometimes, clients give us feature requests that we really don’t like. It’s not that we don’t like our clients—we love our clients. It’s not that we don’t like the feature—most client-requested features are aligned perfectly with their business goals and income.
Sometimes, we don’t like a feature request because the easiest way to solve it is to write bad code, and we don’t have an elegant solution on the top of our heads. This will send many of us Rails developers on fruitless searches through RubyToolbox, GitHub, developer blogs, and StackOverflow looking for a gem or plugin or example code that will make us feel better about ourselves.
Sometimes, we don't like a feature request because the easiest way to solve it is to write bad code.
Refactor Ruby on Rails Code
Well, I’m here to tell you: it’s okay to write bad code. Sometimes, bad Rails code is easier to refactor into beautiful code than a poorly thought-out solution implemented under a time-crunch.
This is the Rails refactoring process I like to follow when massaging problems out of my horrible band-aid solutions:
For an alternative perspective, here’s the Git commit log for a feature that’s been refactored step-by-step:
And here’s another interesting article about large-scale refactoring from a colleague in the Toptal network.
Let’s see how it’s done.
The Views
Step 1. Start in the Views
Say we are beginning a ticket for a new feature. The client tells us: “Visitors should be able to view a list of active Projects on the welcome page.”
This ticket requires a visible change, so a reasonable place to start work would be in the Views. The problem is straightforward and one that we’ve all been trained to solve multiple times. I’m going to solve it The Wrong Way and demonstrate how to refactor my solution into it’s appropriate areas. Solving a problem The Wrong Way can help us get over the hump of not knowing the right solution.
To begin, assume we have a model called Project with a boolean attribute called active. We want to get a list of all Projects where active is equal to true, so we can use Project.where(active: true), and loop over it with an each block.
app/views/pages/welcome.haml: %ul.projects - Project.where(active: true).each do |project| %li.project= link_to project_path(project), project.name
I know what you’re saying: “That would never pass a code review” or “My client would surely fire me for this.” Yes, this solution breaks the Model-View-Controller separation of concerns, it might result in stray database calls that are difficult to trace, and it may become difficult to maintain in the future. But consider the value of doing it The Wrong Way:
You can get this change on staging in under 15 minutes. If left in, this block is easy to cache. Fixing this Rails problem is straightforward (could be given to a junior developer).
Step 2. Partials
After doing it The Wrong Way, I feel bad about myself and want to isolate my bad code. If this change were clearly only a concern of the View layer, I could refactor my shame into a partial.
app/views/pages/welcome.haml: = render :partial =>'shared/projects_list' app/views/shared/projects_list.haml: %ul.projects - Project.where(active: true).each do |project| %li.project= link_to project_path(project), project.name
That’s a little better. Clearly, we are still making the mistake of a Model query in a View, but at least when a maintainer comes in later and sees my horrible partial, they will have a straightforward way of tackling that Rails code problem in particular. Fixing something obviously dumb is always easier than fixing a poorly-implemented, buggy abstraction.
Fixing something obviously dumb is always easier than fixing a poorly-implemented, buggy abstraction.
Step 3. Helpers
Helpers in Rails are a way of creating a DSL (Domain Specific Language) for a section of your Views. You have to rewrite your code using content_tag’s instead of haml or HTML, but you get the benefit of being allowed to manipulate data structures without having other developers glare at you for 15 lines of non-printing View code.
If I were to use helpers here, I would probably refactor out the li tag.
app/views/shared/projects_list.haml: %ul.projects - Project.where(active: true).each do |project| = project_list_item(project) app/helpers/projects_helper.rb: def project_list_item(project) content_tag(:li, :class => 'project') do link_to project_path(project), project.name end end
The Controllers
Step 4. Move It to the Controllers
Maybe your awful code isn’t just a View concern. If your code still smells, look for queries you can transition from the Views to the Controllers.
app/views/shared/projects_list.haml: %ul.projects - @projects_list.each do |project| = project_list_item(project) app/controllers/pages_controller.rb: def welcome @projects = Project.where(active: true) end
Step 5. Controller Filters
The most obvious reason to move code into a Controller before_filter or after_filter is for code that you’ve duplicated in multiple Controller actions. You can also move code into a Controller filter if you want to separate the purpose of the Controller action from the requirements of your views.
app/controllers/pages_controller.rb: before_filter :projects_list def welcome end def projects_list @projects = Project.where(active:true) end
Step 6. Application Controller
Presume that you need your code to show up on every page, or you want to make Controller helper functions available to all controllers, you can move your function into the ApplicationController. If the changes are global, you may want to modify your application layout as well.
app/controllers/pages_controller.rb: def welcome end app/views/layouts/application.haml: %ul.projects - projects_list.each do |project| = project_list_item(project) app/controllers/application_controller.rb: before_filter :projects_list def projects_list @projects = Project.where(active: true) end
The Models
Step 7. Refactoring to the Model
As the MVC motto goes: Fat Model, Skinny Controllers, and Dumb Views. We’re expected to refactor everything we can into the Model, and it’s true that most complex functionality will eventually become model associations and model methods. We should always avoid doing formatting/view things in the Model, but transforming data into other types of data is permissible. In this case, the best thing to refactor into the Model would be the where(active: true) clause, which we can turn into a scope. Using a scope is valuable not only because it makes the call look prettier, but if we ever decided to add an attribute like delete or outdated, we can modify this scope instead of hunting down all of our where clauses.
app/controllers/application_controller.rb: before_filter :projects_list def projects_list @projects = Project.active end app/models/project.rb: scope :active, where(active: true)
Step 8. Model Filters
We don’t have a particular use for a Model’s before_save or after_save filters in this case, but the next step I usually take is to move functionality from Controllers and Model methods into Model filters.
Say we had another attribute, num_views. If num_views > 50, the Project becomes inactive. We could solve this problem in the View, but making database changes in a View is inappropriate. We could solve it in the Controller, but our Controllers should be as thin as possible! We can solve it easily in the Model.
app/models/project.rb: before_save :deactivate_if_over_num_views def deactivate_if_over_num_views if num_views > 50 self.active = false fi end
Note: you should avoid calling self.save in a Model filter, as this causes recursive saving events, and the database-manipulation layer of your application should be the Controller anyway.
Step 9. Libraries
Occasionally, your feature is large enough that it could warrant it’s own library. You may want to move it into a library file because it’s reused in a lot of places, or it’s large enough that you’d like to do development on it separately.
It’s fine to store library files in the lib/ directory, but as they grow, you can transfer them into a real RubyGem! A major advantage of moving your code into a library is that you can test the library separately from your model.
Anyway, in the case of a Project List, we could justify moving the scope :active call from the Project model into a library file, and bring it back into Ruby:
app/models/project.rb: class Project < ActiveRecord::Base include Activeable before_filter :deactivate_if_over_num_views end lib/activeable.rb: module Activeable def self.included(k) k.scope :active, k.where(active: true) end def deactivate_if_over_num_views if num_views > 50 self.active = false end end end
Note: the self.included method is called when a Rails Model class is loaded and passes in the class scope as the variable k.
Conclusion
In this Ruby on Rails refactoring tutorial we’ve taken under 15 minutes and implemented a solution and put it up on staging for user testing, ready to be accepted into the feature set or removed. By the end of the refactoring process, we have a piece of code that lays out a framework for implementing list-able, activate-able items across multiple Models that would pass even the most stringent review process.
In your own Rails refactoring process, feel free to skip a few steps down the pipeline if you are confident in doing so (e.g., jump from View to Controller, or Controller to Model). Just keep in mind that the flow of code is from View to Model.
Don’t be afraid to look stupid. What separates modern languages from old CGI template rendering applications isn’t that we do everything The Right Way every time—it’s that we take the time to refactor, reuse, and share our efforts.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, overcrowded northeastern cities with minimal indoor plumbing were struck with a new kind of problem: keeping citizens clean. In Philadelphia, the city began providing “floating baths”–enclosed areas of the Schuylkill River marked off for swimming and bathing. By the 1870s, the river was too polluted and the floating baths were closed. In search of another solution, the City planned public baths in densely populated neighborhoods. These weren’t exactly traditional bathhouses with bathtubs and showers, but what we now call swimming pools.
Philadelphia was an early leader in the realm of municipal swimming pools. The notion was that swimming during warm weather months would lead to better hygiene. By the 1880s, their popularity caused occasional rioting, when swimmers were denied entry due to crowding. Eventually, reformers launched a private charity called the Public Baths Association to provide year-round bathing facilities beyond the average swimming pool, but only a few of these were opened.
But after swimming gained popularity as a sport during the 1896 Olympics, the city responded by going on a “bathhouse” building spree that would last two decades. Though the vast majority of these structures are now lost, one in particular still stands today under the EL on North Front Street, just below Thompson Street.
On January 19th, 1905, the Select and Common Councils of Philadelphia passed an ordinance authorizing $12,000 from the 1905 budget of the Department of Public Safety’s Bureau of City Property for the purchase of 1241, 1243, and 1245 North Front Streets for “bath house purposes.” Two months later, the Councils approved the condemnation of the three row houses located there.
Construction was slow, considering the small size of the building. Electrical lines were installed in 1906. The Gray and Dormer Plumbing Company installed the water lines and drains in 1907. It wasn’t until the end of that year that the Front and Thompson Public Bath was opened. Public bath houses at the corners of 12th and Reed and 3rd and Queen–both long gone–opened at the same time.
Though the actual architect is unknown, all buildings erected by the City at the time of this bath’s construction was directed by one city architect, Washington Bleddyn Powell. Whoever did the design work in fact did a pretty good job. A large brick arch provides a grand entrance, the front door being set back behind it. The facade is decorated with patterns, sculpture, and a few limestone details. Unlike many of the others of its type, this particular bath was completely indoors. Its roof had a raised section in the middle, a long rectangular segment with windows on all sides. From street level it gave the appearance of a fancy cupola. A large plaque emblazoned with the words “PUBLIC BATH” stood above the grand arch, which was enclosed with an iron fence when not in use.
By 1913, the city’s 20 bath houses drew over six million visits per year. The Front and Thompson Public Bath took in nearly 300,000 of that figure, the vast majority being boys. By 1919, the bath houses were now known as swimming pools and dedicated two days a week for boys, two for girls, and were open 13 hours a day during the summer months.
The Front and Thompson Public Swimming Pool stayed in use for five decades. It was even modernized in 1953. The pool was closed around 1960 and stood vacant for years thereafter.
In 1968, the AAA Shoe Refinishing Corporation purchased the derelict building and converted it to industrial use under the designs of architect Ollie Chernianivsky. The collapsed roof was replaced and all the interior details were gutted and rebuilt. The AAA Corp would make use of the old bath house until 1992, when Bob Buraczyk purchased the building for $40,000 and moved his Silber Brush Manufacturing Company in from across the street.
To this day, Silber produces brushes and brooms while the El screams overhead.
The only other example a of surviving municipal pool from the 20 that were built during the “bathhouse” building spree is the Station and Cotton Public Bath House in Manayunk which is now being used as a parking garage. A few of the Public Bath Association’s facilities still stand, most notably the Gaskill Street Baths on the 400 block of Gaskill Street in Queen Village.Geert Wilders has heavy security because of his anti-Koran message The party of the right-wing Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, has come second in the country's elections for the European Parliament, partial results indicate. Mr Wilders, who is facing prosecution over anti-Islamic statements, said his Freedom Party (PVV) would get four of the 25 Dutch seats in the parliament. With more than 92% of votes counted, the ruling Christian Democrats are top. Voters are now going to the polls in the Czech Republic and the Republic of Ireland. The UK voted on Thursday. Dutch and British voters were the first to go to the polls to elect the EU's most powerful legislative body. Some 375 million people in 27 member states are eligible to vote. Most will cast their ballots over the weekend. We dare to talk about sensitive subjects like Islamisation and we use plain and simple words that the voter can understand
Geert Wilders
UK votes in MEP and council polls Euro election gets celebrity veneer Partial results released on Friday showed Mr Wilders' PVV was on course to win 16.9% of the votes in the Netherlands. The PVV currently has no seats in the European Parliament. Mr Wilders was refused entry to the UK in February on the grounds that he had sought to incite hatred with a film he made last year that equated Islam with violence and likened the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf. EU officials concerned Voters are deciding who gets the 736 seats up for grabs under various forms of proportional representation. The European Commission has asked for an explanation from Dutch officials, who broke EU rules by releasing partial results early. Results are not supposed to be announced until polls close across Europe on Sunday night. In the UK, elections were also held in some areas for local councils. EU PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS Thursday: UK and Netherlands Friday: Ireland, Czech Republic Saturday: Latvia, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia, Italy and Czech Republic Sunday: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden
Results from 2000 GMT Sunday
Q&A: European elections 2009 Euro election country-by-country Euro election country results The results of both UK polls are keenly awaited to see how they might affect the national political scene, following weeks of turmoil over MPs' expenses claims. Latvia, Cyprus, Malta and Slovakia vote on Saturday, while the Czech Republic and Italy vote over Friday and Saturday, and Saturday and Sunday respectively. People in the remaining 18 member states will vote on Sunday. In Ireland, the vote is seen as a key test ahead of a second referendum on the EU's controversial Lisbon Treaty, expected in October. The Irish government, stung by the voters' rejection of Lisbon last year, is opposed by Declan Ganley's Libertas. The millionaire entrepreneur, who helped fuel anti-Lisbon sentiment in Ireland, hopes to win one of the 12 Irish seats. Coalition ally hit The anti-immigration Dutch Freedom Party MEPs will be headed by Barry Madlener and Mr Wilders will remain an MP in The Hague, Radio Netherlands reports. The partial results in the Netherlands also showed gains for two staunchly pro-EU parties - the social-liberal D66 and Green Left. Each is on course to send three MEPs to Brussels. The Christian Democrats' governing coalition partner, the Labour Party (PvdA), was the biggest loser - its share of the Dutch vote fell nearly 10% percentage points to about 14%. "We dare to talk about sensitive subjects like Islamisation and we use plain and simple words that the voter can understand," Mr Wilders has said in the past. The controversial politician is facing prosecution in the Netherlands for making anti-Islamic statements, following a court ruling in January. Polls show that Euroscepticism among Dutch voters has increased since the last European elections, with EU enlargement and integration the most unpopular issues. Across Europe, far-right parties are hoping to win at least 15 seats. However, the centre-right European People's Party bloc is expected to remain the main force, followed by the European Socialists. Are you in the Netherlands? What is your reaction to the exit polls indicating gains for the far-right in the European Parliamentary elections? Send us your comments using the form below. Name
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionAN EDITOR’S NOTE TO OUR READERS: Because she is a minor, the name of the 13-year-old in this story has been omitted to protect the privacy of the girl and her family.
The 13-year-old held a knife against her throat one spring morning, looked her mom in the eyes and said she’d do it.
It was a threat built on depression, anger and despair. The teen had tried to run away from home. She twisted and pinched her skin until her arms and neck turned blue. She stole a cell phone from a student at school and used it to post photos of herself on an adult dating site. When her mother confronted her, the teen became upset.
She grabbed the blade.
In desperation, her mom called 911. It was the second time her daughter’s behavior forced her to dial the trio of digits, to reach out to strangers for help.
But unlike the last time, the two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who responded weren’t alone. They came with social workers who are part of the Mental Evaluation Teams, a growing program that the public and many in law enforcement across the nation want to see expanded. One of the goals of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health program is to divert people with psychiatric needs away from overcrowded jails and juvenile halls and even from scarce emergency room beds, and into consistent services.
Activists say these teams can be key to de-escalate situations between law enforcement and people who are mentally ill that can turn deadly.
But in L.A. County, where law enforcement officers serve a vast area stretching from Long Beach to the Antelope Valley and from the San Fernando Valley to the Inland Empire, there aren’t enough beds or teams to help people like the 13-year-old.
Not enough beds
The last time the teen fell into depression, she was taken to Martin Luther King Medical Center, Jr. Medical Center in Willowbrook. There, she waited for three days in the hallway until a psychiatric bed opened up at the Del Amo Behavioral Center in Torrance. But there was no follow up.
This time, the members of MET determined she needed long-term, consistent care. After about an hour on the telephone searching through the maze of Los Angeles County’s mental health system, a case worker found a psychiatric bed for her, but in Orange County.
Such distance has not gone unnoticed.
“We could put 1,000 mental health experts on the street, but if you don’t have the beds that need to be in hospitals, then it’s very frustrating for law enforcement and mental health workers,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said.
In Los Angeles County, Barger noted, the 2,305 beds designated to help patients with psychiatric emergencies is not enough. And the system currently in place to treat these patients leads to a costly cycle, public safety officials said. Medi-Cal recipients placed on psychiatric hold may be admitted for 72 hours then released unless their needs are especially dire.
Barger said she is working with Los Angeles County Mental Health director Dr. Jonathan Sherin, to add 100 more beds.
“I believe in this program,” Barger said of the MET units. But she also noted that even if teams increase, without more urgent mental health care centers or emergency psychiatric beds, the MET program won’t be as effective.
That’s because even getting admitted is an issue.
Average wait times at public emergency department hospitals is almost 3 hours.
“This equated to $18,000 in lost productivity in November of 2016,” according to a report by the Sheriff’s Department.
At private hospitals, the wait is about 42 minutes.
The psychiatric bed shortage means that Los Angeles County’s jails have become the largest de facto mental institution in the nation.
In 2010, inmates with mental illness in the county jails in 2010 totaled 2,475. As of 2016 that number
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, so it was made larger with a 1 3/4 inch hole saw. See below for lots of process pictures:
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Unlike my pots/pencil holders, the drilling operation was done before placing it on the lathe. This allowed me to chuck my workpiece up from the middle ( this is the first time I’d tried this) and turn the whole outer diameter. I made sure to set the stop up so I didn’t crash my tooling, using leftover links from a link belt to keep it separate from the chuck before locking the workpiece down. This belt runs my lathe, so use as a spacer was a cool secondary use for the extra pieces. After some lathe turning and sanding, the napkin holder was made round. Some bark was left of the edge for an interesting effect.
After two coats of eurethane/stain (Minwax Chestnut, available from Amazon), it looked quite good and held a napkin/knife/fork well. This picture is actually of the holder at 1 1/2 inches, before the holes were made larger. The walls are now slightly thinner.
I’ve done quite a few projects like this in my Lathe turning section, so be sure to check it out. For one of my favorites, why not check out this post where my LED-enabled natural edge “Master ‘Shroom” starts a cult (in glorious stop motion).
*Accurately. No, I didn’t own a sponge until I met my wife. Between paper towels and the dishwasher, they seemed quite useless. As for cleaning products, I originally bought a bottle of Greased Lightning in college because I heard it was a good degreaser for mountain bike parts. It is, and it does, as I eventually discovered, clean stuff. Apparently you need more than this to keep everything adequately clean.
This is the first time I’ve used the “slideshow” option for my photo gallery in a post. What do you guys think? I’d love your comments.By the time the dust finally settled in Virginia's primary election earthquake just 7,212 votes separated the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, from his Tea Party nemesis, David Brat.
Yet the shock upset could have immediate consequences for America's 11 million undocumented immigrants and the already slim chances of a national immigration reform bill that might just have brought them out of the legal shadows.
The narrow margin of Brat's primary win in the prosperous suburbs of Richmond– where barely 5% of the population is foreign-born – makes it hard to judge precisely how big a factor his public opposition to immigration reform ultimately proved in defeating Cantor.
It is also difficult to tell whether the Tea Party's first big decisive win of the 2014 election cycle marks a wider turning point in what had so far proved to be a disappointing year for a conservative bloc that once threatened a string of such primary upsets.
But the imminent removal of Cantor from the corridors of power on Capitol Hill will undoubtedly have one more immediate impact: on the Republican leadership's deliberations over whether to allow a House vote on immigration in the narrow window between now and November's midterm elections.
Buoyed by the Tea Party's weakness until now and opinion polls showing immigration reform would help win over Latino voters, campaigners had been hoping there was a chance that the Republican leadership might finally prevail in its effort to modernise the party in the eyes of non-white America.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Eric Canto delivers his concession speech in Richmond, Virginia. Photograph: Steve Helber/AP
The House speaker, John Boehner, whom Cantor was tipped to one day succeed, even mocked his Republican colleagues recently for being too scared to take difficult choices over immigration.
The White House had also risked alienating its own supporters by trying to help Boehner bridge the remaining gap and continuing with a controversial deportation policy while a comprehensive reform bill still looked a possibility.
Both the opinion pollsters and the Washington political strategists were humbled on Tuesday night, however, when the Tea Party once again showed its capacity to upset the carefully stacked apple cart.
Just days earlier the Washington Post carried internal polling from Cantor's team suggesting he would win by 34 percentage points.
With strong support from business groups – which back Republlican leaders on immigration reform – Cantor used his substantial funding advantage to run aggressive attack ads against the relatively unknown Brat.
And yet the economics professor who ran on a ticket of standing up to the Washington establishment slayed Capitol Hill's Goliath with a single blow, winning by 56% to 44%.
The longer term prospects for immigration reform, like so many of the other ramifications of the Virginia result, will only become clear in the weeks and months ahead. It is too late in the cycle for Tea Party-supported candidates to sweep aside much more of the Republican leadership before November. Boehner has already comfortably won his primary. Senate targets such as minority leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham have also seen off challenges from the right.
Yet Cantor is a big enough fish in his own right to rekindle fundamental questions about the future direction of the party. Will his defeat empower conservative challengers in the 2016 presidential race such as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul? Will Boehner risk standing up to his conservative wing in future or face a challenge to his own position as speaker?
Will Democrats be able to capitalise on the party's civil war and portray it as far too rightwing for the national mood – or will they too become seen as the same Washington establishment that the voters of Virginia's 7th district so dramatically rejected on Tuesday night?In celebration of the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming film (due July 7 of this year), Build-A-Bear has officially made available the Spider-Man Bear and Spider-Man costume.
The Spider-Man Bear already has his costume on, so there is no need to buy the extra one unless you like the look of it better. The bear goes for $28 and “features an exclusive Spider-Man graphic on his left paw.” He’s also got beautiful green eyes and is 16 inches tall.
The Spider-Man costume goes for $16 and is described as “ultra-cool,” something I can picture Spider-Man himself saying. The costume is a two piece set that fits any bear from the Build-A-Bear shop, so if you want to give your teddy bear an alter-ego as the hero Spider-Man, you can.
You can also purchase the 5-in-1 Spider-Man Sound for $7. This is the usual sound recording that you can insert into your bear, presumably this sound has something iconic from Spider-Man. There are no details on what exactly, so be sure to check out the website linked above and sign-up for updates.
For more of the latest ridiculously cool stuff, stay tuned to Nerdmuch.com.To increase your happiness, you may want to consider friending more miserable-seeming people on Facebook.
A big part of our happiness is predicated on how happy we judge ourselves to be in comparison to others. We have a tendency, though, to overestimate how happy people around us are, and it makes us feel even more dejected, according to a study out of Stanford, led by Alex Jordan, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Libby Copeland at Slate opines:
[S]ocial networking may be making this tendency worse. Jordan's research doesn't look at Facebook explicitly, but if his conclusions are correct, it follows that the site would have a special power to make us sadder and lonelier. By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people's lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles' heel of human nature. And women—an especially unhappy bunch of late—may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses. via Is Facebook making us sad? Stanford University research and Sherry Turkle's new book Alone Together suggest that social networking may foster loneliness.
There's certainly a pressure to put your best face forward on the site (no matter how many photos you have to untag). Most people carefully curate their pages to present the most interesting and exciting parts of their lives. When people do post about problems or depression, it's not always well-received -- like the "suicide note that was mocked that turned out to be real."
Facebook is designed, after all, to bring out our happiest selves, observes Copeland:
[Facebook's] very design—the presence of a "Like" button, without a corresponding "Hate" button—reinforces a kind of upbeat spin doctoring.
So, do your friends a favor and post a sad status update today. Or perhaps Facebook can help protect its hundreds of millions of users from depression by finally creating a Dislike button.Play Facebook
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What economic policy concessions might Hillary Clinton offer up to woo Republicans? If her speech Thursday in Warren, Michigan is any indication, the answer is: Nothing.
In her first major economic address since her campaign began actively courting the Republicans turned off by Donald Trump, Clinton made no major pivot to the ideological center.
Instead, Clinton reiterated several of the policy positions she adopted during her primary fight against Bernie Sanders, even while making a direct appeal to Independent voters and Republicans.
Clinton didn’t toy with entitlement reform or hint at grand bargains on deficit reduction. Instead, she talked about expanding Social Security, debt-free college, making corporations pay higher taxes, a public option for health care, raising the minimum wage, opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the concentration of wealth in “the top 1 percent.”
First Read: What Happens to the Clinton Foundation if Hillary Wins?
“I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages -– including the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Clinton said. “I oppose it now, I’ll oppose it after the election, and I’ll oppose it as president.”
It was only a few years that President Obama angered the left by offering to cut Social Security benefits in order to get a deal with Republicans to reduce the deficit. He's since ruled out the idea and progressive activists, as reflected in Clinton's speech, have pushed the Democratic Party decisively in the opposite direction.
Still, by disaggregating Trump from the rest of the GOP, Clinton is trying to have it both ways -- make it safe for Republicans to support her candidacy while keeping liberals in her corner by running on the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.
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“Today's speech shows that getting some Republicans to say Donald Trump is unfit to be president is not mutually exclusive with Clinton running on bold progressives ideas like debt-free college, expanding Social Security benefits and Wall Street reform,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Clinton has paid no price for leftward shift, since Trump is more interested in litigating her character than her policy in any kind of traditionally ideological way. Trump's own rhetoric on taxes and spending have undercut his and other Republicans' ability to tag Clinton as, say, a tax-and-spend liberal.
Republicans siding with Clinton are doing so in spite of her policy, not because of it.
That helps explain why her main argument -- with Thursday’s speech being a notable exception -- is policy-agnostic. She talks much more about Trump’s temperament and fitness to be commander-in-chief than his tax policy.
Even in Thursday’s speech, Clinton was careful to separate the GOP nominee from his party when criticizing the philosophy underlying his economic plan.
Related: Unforced Errors: Donald Trump Misses on Two Hillary Clinton Stories
“All he does offer is an even more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics, with the addition of his own unique Trumpian ideas -– outlandish ideas that even many Republicans reject,” Clinton said, even though Trump’s latest tax plan is reflective of conservative orthodoxy.
“I hope that after giving a fair hearing to both sides, you’ll join the millions of people across the country supporting our campaign –- not just Democrats, but a growing number of Republicans and Independents as well,” Clinton said.
Some liberals have been worried about what Clinton’s GOP outreach might mean for the concessions they fought for and won during the primary.
Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, famously tacked to the center to win over swing voters during the 1992 election, and he made a show of breaking with the left wing of his party by publicly condemning rapper Sista Souljah.
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But the Democratic Party of 2016 is not the Democratic Party of 1992, and Donald Trump is not George H.W. Bush, the incumbent president Bill Clinton sought to defeat.
Meanwhile, Clinton doesn’t really need many Republican votes, since Democrats have won two presidential elections in a row on their own, giving the breakaway Republicans little leverage over Clinton.
Instead, Republicans are mainly valuable to Clinton as validators of her message to Independent voters, so she only needs a handful to publicly split with Trump.
But some nervous progressives, who still don’t fully trust Clinton, say the real test of her commitment will come in whom she appoints to her administration if she wins, starting with her transition team.
"In addition to laying out legislative goals, Secretary Clinton made personnel commitments throughout the primary process,” said Jeff Hauser, the director of the Revolving Door Project, which is working to keep corporate officials out of the next administration.The day after someone left a racist jack-o-lantern outside Native Studies at the University of Alberta, a message reading ‘It’s okay to be white’ was taped to the building’s front door.
Native Studies Dean Chris Andersen said he found it when he got to work Tuesday morning, and tore it down before too many people saw it. He said he’s not sure whether it was targeted at his office, or at East Asian Studies, which is on the floor above.
“It’s juvenile, but these are the kinds of petty imbecilities that are symbolic of feelings of fragility and frailty present in mainstream society,” he said.
The poster was just one of many found across campus Monday morning.
Graduate student Jan Buterman said he saw one on a bulletin board at the Edmonton Clinic Health Academy, but before he could take a picture a guy ripped it off the wall and crumpled it up. He estimates there were three or four in the hallway.
Buterman points out that he is white, but finds the poster “stupid and horrifying.”
“This was not directed at me, I don’t need people to tell me it’s okay to be white. It’s okay to be human, and this is just bullshit,” he said.
Irfan Chaudhry, a criminology instructor at MacEwan University, said this latest crop of posters seem to be a more organized effort than in the past.
He pointed to online forums that instruct readers to create the posters, but strip them of any obvious symbols like swastikas so they’re viewed as less obviously hateful.
A poster on a forum called endchan, for example, notes that “based on past media response to similar messaging, we expect the anti-white media to produce a shit-storm about these ‘racist, hateful, bigoted fliers’ … with a completely innocuous message.”
Irfan said instigators create these posters to highlight what they see as a double standard around who is affected by discrimination.
“[They think that] if it happens to white people it doesn’t really count, that’s the underlying theme that some of these groups are trying to highlight,” he said.
The issue with this? The lack of historical context, he says.
He said it’s important to acknowledge that inequality still exists between racial groups in Canada, often based on historical reasons.
“A lot of these groups that are saying that Black Lives Matters should be classified as a hate group, for example, are the same ones that maybe don’t have the historical understanding around the significance of what has led us to this situation,” he said.
This comes a day after a pumpkin with a mock headdress was found outside Pembina Hall Monday, which houses the Faculty of Native Studies.
In a statement posted to the university website Tuesday afternoon, President David Turpin said “the university is aware of several incidents of racism that have occurred on north campus in recent days.”
The statement referred to both the pumpkin and the posters.
“Messaging or displays that target or marginalize any individuals or groups will not be tolerated. We are working with University of Alberta Protective Services to find the parties responsible.”
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Rice didn’t hold out of training camp like Chris Johnson. He hasn’t publicly campaigned for a new deal like Matt Forte. He certainly hasn’t poisoned his relationship with his teammates like Peyton Hillis.
Rice has just shown up for work in his contract year, got paid his $600,000, and tried to keep the spotlight off his situation.
“It’s hard to think about it now — I’m being honest,” Rice told the Baltimore Sun. “I’ve had the ability to not even think about it because, No. 1, I respect my teammates. And I didn’t want to bring my contract, my personal decisions, my life in... to this locker room.”
Rice doesn’t need to say anything. His play does the talking. Rice leads the NFL in yards from scrimmage with 1,622. He has a career high 12 touchdowns and has already caught over 60 passes for a third straight year.
Don’t expect Rice to start talking about his contract now.
“I have enough respect for the organization to keep it that way,” he said. “And we’re winning. If you love the game enough, you love winning and you appreciate it and live by it. If you take care of the game, the game will take care of you.”
The Ravens have a long track record of taking care of their star players. It’s hard to imagine that Baltimore won’t pay Rice handsomely in the offseason.
He’ll get his big money, without any of the usual drama.
“I mean, I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere,” Rice said. “That I can almost assure.... I love it here.”Germany is to deploy several hundred extra troops to Kosovo to boost the NATO peacekeeping mission there ahead of elections next month in neighboring Serbia, the military said Saturday.
Some 550 German troops and 130 Austrian troops are to be sent to Kosovo by May 1 ahead of parliamentary and local elections in Serbia on May 5, German central command spokesman Hauke Bunks said.
"In their evaluation of the situation, NATO and the European Union found that the KFOR forces on the ground might not be sufficient to appropriately react to possible Kosovo-wide security incidents in connection with the elections," the German military, the Bundeswehr, said in a statement.
KFOR, the NATO-led mission in Kosovo, currently has about 5,500 troops, 1,300 of them from Germany.
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have risen in recent weeks after Serbia said it would include its neighbor in the elections. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and has been recognized by about 90 countries, but Serbia still considers it a renegade province.
Ethnic Serbs are a minority in Kosovo but make up a majority in the north of the country. Many Serbs in the north plan to vote in the elections despite threats from the government in Pristina, dominated by ethnic Albanians, to use "all legal force" to stop them.
acb/jm (AP, AFP, Reuters)Patois is a dialect spoken by Jamaicans. Many phrases and words have been appropriated by our very own Torontionians and are often used in everyday conversations. Here are some Torontonian slangs and what they really mean in Patois.
1. Man Dem
Jamaicans use the word 'Dem' as a way to pluralize any noun. Torontonians on the other hand have caught on with this short form of pluralization by saying things like "man dem". For instance when used in a sentence.
Jamaican- "De man dem rude eehh?"
English- "Those men are so rude. Am I right?"
Torontonian- "Yo I'm about to link up with the man dem."
English- " Hey. I'm just going to hang out with my male friends right now."
2. Real Talk
Basically means that whatever is being said is the truth. No lies being told here. This is a real and truthful conversation. Or in Torontontian slang, it could also be a way to emphasize your point.
Jamaican- " Yow real talk bredrin. She did ah tell lie."
English- "It's true. She was lying"
Torontonian- "You need to cop that new game bro. Real talk, it's boss"
English- "You should get the game that just came out. I am telling you. It's good."
3. Gwan
A medley of the two words 'go' and 'on' merged into one rambunctious word. It is a Jamaican's way of greeting another human being. Jamaicans really love to shorten words by creating new ones. By merging two words you can cut back on the length of a sentence. By saying, "Whata gwan?" you really mean "What is going on?" Or it's just a long way to say "hi". To respond, you can say "everything is cris", which simply means you are doing well. Torontonians on the other hand use this word as a sentiment of approval, while also using it to greet others.
Jamaican- "Yow. Wah gwan? Everyting cris?"
English- "Hey! How are you? Is everything going well?"
Torontonian- " Eyyy. This song can gwan still, ahlie?"
English- " Wow. This song is really good. Am I right?"
4. Tingz
The word 'tingz' is probably one of the most versatile in the Jamaican vocabulary. Almost anything can be classified as a 'ting'. "Bring mi di tingz" "Whe de tingz de?" or simply "How are tingz?" As stated before, Jamaicans just really love to shorten their words, so 'tingz' is really just 'things' without the 'h'.
Jamaican- "Bare tingz a gwan tonight."
English- "There are a lot of things happening tonight"
Torontonian- "So I was chilling wit my ting the other day yo. She's a proper ting still eh?"
English- "I was hanging out with my girl the other day. She's really great."
5. Dun Know
A term of agreement or declaration of knowledge in Torontonian terms. Jamaicans say "you dun know" to replace words like "I know/ you know", "realize" or "of course".
Jamaican- "Yu dun know mi a go eat nuff food caus mi ungri"
English- "You know. I am about to eat a lot because I am so hungry"
Torontonian- "You dun know these are a decent pair of shoes still eh?"
English- "Hey, these are a really great pair of shoes. Do you think so?"
6. Ahlie
Another term of agreement for Torontonians. On the other hand, this word is more of an expression of disbelief for Jamaicans.
Jamaicans- "Shi a really go wit him? Ahlie!"
English- "Is she really dating him? You're lying!"
Torontonian- Friend:"Yo this food is blessed" You: "Ahlie?!"
English- Friend: "This food is so good." You: "I know right?!"From The Cutting Room Floor
This page details one or more prototype versions of Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand.
"E3 Version" demo of Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand, playable through the end of Bloodrust Mansion. Leaked a couple months prior to US release, it likely comes from one of the carts given out to the press at E3.
Sub-Page
Text Differences
Sunflowers monologuing into infinity. (Intro to Sunwishing Plaza)
Text Differences 3
Blatant palette swap evil twin. (Re: Sunwishing Plaza to Dark Castle)
Text Differences 4
No sane person has ever 100 percented this game. (New Game+, Azure Sky Tower, Etc.)
General Differences
Still uses Japanese voice clips.
Does not play a second sound clip after "Bokura no Taiyou!" on title screen.
Text has an additional pixel between characters.
Many line breaks are in different places.
Uses way more text boxes.
Text also displays much slower in this version.
(x) Button and (x) Key consistently have an extra space after the special character.
Has a small selection of American and European locations to choose from. The Sunrise/Sunset times programmed in for them differ somewhat from the ones used in the NA and EU finals:
City Sunrise Sunset Los Angeles 1 min late 1 min late Chicago 1 min late 1 min late New York 2 min early 2 min early Madrid same as final same as final London 1 min early 1 min early Paris 1 min early same as final Frankfurt same as final same as final Rome 1 min late 1 min late
Menu Differences
The changes noted here are of text graphics, rather than of text text.
First Startup
Prototype Final
Whoops! Looks like someone hadn't read up on their Official Nintendo nomenclature™.
Solar Sensor Setup
Prototype Final
And again. Tightened up the spacing on "A Button" even in graphics.
Time Settings
Prototype Final
Hadn't put in Daylight Savings Time yet.
The default date is set to July 11th, 2003, six days earlier than the JP final. Unlikely to be a build date, given that the defaults in the final versions are on the release date or within a few days of them.
Options
Prototype Final
Demo has "CONFIRM" rather than "OK" in all menus.
No tutorial demos, trying to access them via memory hacking just resets the game.
Sound Test
Prototype Final
You can access the sound test in the demo by, at the title screen menu, changing the value at 0200351A to 03 and pressing A.
The demo has an extra BGM track. The 22nd track is the little "Da-da-da-dan!" that plays when you enter a miniboss room. This is used ingame in all versions, but is only in the sound test of the demo. Unfortunately, the track titles are not included in the demo's text, so it goes unnamed.
Apparently the tracks "Azure Sky Tower 1, 2 and 3" weren't finished yet, as their slots just have the track "Remains" as a placeholder.
Also:
They added more space for the track titles in the NA Version.
There is no sound effect played when moving through the menu.
More sound effects, and many of them are quite different.
More slots for voice clips, but most of the samples do not seem to have been included in the rom.
Creating New Game
Prototype Final
Localization change, Japanese style ellipses to English style. Looks fine here but...
Prototype Final
Looked pretty awkward here.
Prototype Final
Changed from Region to City, region being a more direct translation (The JP version has you choose your prefecture), city for localization (NA and EU have you choose the nearest city).
Prototype Final
Cartridge to Game Pak again. Ends up looking a little out of place.
Ingame Differences
Starting Screen
Prototype Final
Different chest placement on the first screen.
Fog Castle
Prototype Final
The camera drifts a good bit further down during the first Pile Driver creation cutscene.
Also note that Otenko's position is a bit off when he's below the text box during daytime. The positioning is the same as final at night, aside from one case (see below).
Exiting Fog Castle
Prototype Final
Django runs into place for the lecture about overheating, then... nothing happens. The text for it isn't anywhere in the rom.
Undead Dungeons
Prototype Final
The wipe when you enter an Undead dungeon is a lighter color than in the final, because the darkest entries in many of the background palettes are a bit lighter in the demo. Doesn't seem to be noticeable anywhere else, though.
Inventory
Prototype Final
One more bit of text graphic. Very thorough with the symbol spacing change.
Bloodrust Mansion
Prototype Final
Doesn't move the camera to highlight the lattice door during the explanation of weight switches. Also Otenko's position is way off here for some reason at night.
Prototype Final
The reward chests don't spawn after you Pile Drive the Count (makes sense since you don't get the opportunity to collect them), and the music track "Victory" plays instead of "Bloodrust Mansion".
Audio Differences
Prototype Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. Final Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser.
The little jingle when you save your game is completely different.Environmental controls in the office are very important, as the loss of HVAC can result in significant loss to servers, network gear, employee productivity, etc. A few days ago, we decided to prototype a facilities monitoring system that will be able to cover following use cases:
Monitoring temperature and humidity in different zones of the office building.
Processing collected telemetry with various alert rules based on zone type: workspace, meeting, and server rooms.
Distribution of collected alarms to assigned facility managers.
Visualization of real-time and historical values on the configurable web dashboards.
This article describes the development and configuration steps we took in order to build the PoC. The prototype is open-source and is also based on open-source technologies, so you are able to use it for building commercial products.
Data flow diagram
Devices and Connectivity
We decided to use cheap hardware based on the ESP8266 and DHT22 sensor.
The total cost of each device that includes sensor and connectivity module is approximately $5. Because this is a prototype, we decided to use MQTT over Wi-Fi and have not discussed other connectivity options.
Server-Side Infrastructure
The server-side part of the solution will be based on the Thingsboard IoT platform, which is 100% open-source and can be deployed both in the cloud, on-premises, or even on the Raspberry Pi 3. The collected data is stored in a Cassandra database due to the built-in fault-tolerance and scalability. We have recently launched a Live Demo instance to simplify the getting-started process, so we will use this instance in the tutorial.
Development and Configuration Steps
Step 1. Device provisioning
The initial step of the PoC was to provision several devices and their attributes. We’ve decided to support three types of zones: work area, meeting, and server rooms. We have registered three buildings with four rooms each. During registration, we have populated the Zone Id, Zone Type, and server-side attributes. Note that the server-side device attributes may be used by the processing rules but are not visible to the device itself.
Step 2. Flushing the Devices
During this step, we flushed the firmware update with individual device credentials built into the firmware. The firmware code and corresponding instructions are available in the links at the end of the article. We have used code from our previous article without modification, since all the logic is on the server side.
Please note that steps 1 and 2 may be automated — we’ve developed a simple Java-based application that performs provisioning of the devices and other entities using a REST API and also emulates this device for live demo purposes.
Step 3. Processing Rules
During this step, we have provisioned rules that analyze temperature and humidity against configurable thresholds based on zone type. For example, the acceptable humidity range in the server room is between 40% and 60%, but the humidity range for a work zone is from 30% to 70%.
The rules are basically set of logical expressions written using a JavaScript syntax. For example, the rule for a server room consists of two parts: attribute and telemetry filter. These filters may be combined, but we decided to separate them to simplify the PoC.
Attributes filter body example:
typeof ss.ZoneType!== 'undefined' && ss.ZoneType === 'Server Room'
Telemetry filter body example:
( typeof temperature!== 'undefined' && (temperature <= 10 || temperature >= 25) ) || ( typeof humidity!== 'undefined' && (humidity <= 40 || humidity >= 60) )
You may notice “null” checks in the filter body. This is basically a good practice because you may use the same server for multiple device applications. Some of them report humidity and temperature, whereas some of them upload other sensor readings, and this should not affect rules processing.
Step 4. Alarms Distribution
Now we configure an email plugin to distribute data using the SendGrid mail service and a provisioned rule action to send data to the configured mail address. The rule action consists of several templates that allow flexible configuration of the email topic, body, and address list based on substitution of device attributes and telemetry values. For example, following email body template:
[$date.get('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')] $ss.get('ZoneId') HVAC malfunction detected. Temperature - $temperature.valueAsString (°C). Humidity - $humidity.valueAsString (%)!
Will be evaluated to the following email body:
[2016-12-22 15:06:09] Server Room C HVAC malfunction detected. Temperature – 45.0 (°C). Humidity – 70.0 (%)!
The evaluation and template syntax is based on the Velocity engine.
Step 5. Data visualization
Now we provisioned several dashboards to visualize the data. We will describe them below.
Map Dashboard
This dashboard shows multiple buildings on the map with their short status available in the tooltip. You can use links in the tooltips to navigate to the Floor Plan and Historical Data dashboards.
Floor Plan Dashboard
This dashboard uses a static background image with the floor plan. We have placed widgets that show temperature and humidity in each room being monitored.
Historical Dashboard
This dashboard shows last minute of sensor readings that are reported each second.
Live Demo
In order to demonstrate this PoC in action, you need to follow two simple steps:
Sign-up or login to the live demo instance and save your login and password. Download and launch a device emulator using this link.
java -jar facilities-monitoring.jar demo.thingsboard.io
Once started, the emulator will ask you for your live demo login and password. This information will be used to get the JWT token and execute REST API calls in order to:
Provision demo devices. Create rules and dashboards. Start emulation of the temperature and humidity sensor data for provisioned devices using MQTT.
Conclusion
This prototype was written by two engineers literally in one day. Most of the time was spent on the client-side code (Lua script for real device and emulator). The server-side part of the prototype has zero coding and was all about configuring the rules, plugins, and dashboards.
This demonstrates how easy is to prototype and build IoT solutions using Thingsboard. Of course, there is certain learning curve that you need to pass, but we hope that this article and other docs will help you to do just that.
If you found this article interesting, please leave your feedback, questions or feature requests in the comments section and “star” our project on the GitHub in order to stay tuned for new releases and tutorials.
LinksA man walks into a bar and, two years later, the bartender has a publishing deal. That’s how it went for Patrick deWitt and, three books later, this stroke of good fortune still unnerves him. “If I hadn’t gone into work that day or if that man had decided to drink somewhere else … There’s so much luck involved in anyone’s success. I’m sure I would have seen it through in some other way but you have to take a moment.”
That was in the middle of the last decade, since when DeWitt has become a successful full-time writer based in Portland, Oregon. His second novel, a first-person cowboy and gold rush story with a very clever title – The Sisters Brothers – was a huge hit. It was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker prize, and next year will be made into a film directed by Palme d’Or winner Jacques Audiard. I meet DeWitt a few weeks before publication of the keenly anticipated follow-up to his bestseller, the less catchy sounding Undermajordomo Minor, which DeWitt says could be thought of as the second part in a loose trilogy of adventures.
The book tells the story of Lucien Minor, known as “Lucy”, who leaves home at 17 and travels with a first-class train ticket to a job at the Castle Von Aux at the foot of a snow-covered mountain. There, as undermajordomo, he must wait on and assist the majordomo Mr Olderglough, do the shopping, avoid the demented Baron who prowls the castle at night, and start to realise his own thwarted personality and ambitions.
In the village he meets and falls in love with Klara, who unfortunately is already romantically entangled with a soldier. Between making cosy visits to her small family, fretting about his alarming rival, uncovering the mysterious fate of his predecessor, witnessing an aristocratic orgy and going about his daily business, Lucy becomes the hero of a grownup gothic fairytale that is recounted in a distinctive, mannered diction that will be familiar to readers of DeWitt’s previous novel – so the Baron waits for a train “on the appointed day and at the appointed hour”; thieves in the night are “an untoward happening”; Lucy’s feelings are a “cleaved combination of adoration and acrimony”.
If this sounds unnatural, it is. But that is the point of DeWitt’s prose, and particularly his dialogue, which is highly stylised for comic effect: he thinks the fact that The Sisters Brothers made readers laugh was the secret of its success.
He also talks in this way, using words like “avail”, “malady” and “departed” where others might say “help”, “illness” and “left”. While he cuts a thoroughly modern figure with his smart glasses, shirt, jeans and tattoos, his vocabulary is quaint, and this old-fashioned side of him also comes out in the way he writes about, or rather avoids, the subject of sex: “I am a bit prudish, I think. It’s hard for me to write about sex, and I don’t really care to read about it either. Maybe sex is more sacred to me than violence, which being raised in a society where violence is so prevalent I can approach in a very casual
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="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>>, "<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>" <<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>>, "<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>" <<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>>, "<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>" <<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>>, "<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>" <<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>>, "<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>" <<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> <b>Site Blocking Confab | October 8, 2014, 8:30am to 12:30pm PT | PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL</b><o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote><blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><div><p class=MsoNormal>PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL<br>ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATION<br>ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT<br><br>We are looking forward to seeing everyone on October 8th for the Site Blocking Confab. This email, and its attachments, will provide background and logistical information.<br><br>DETAILS:<br><br>Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014<br>Breakfast from 8am PT<br>Program from 8:30am to 12:30pm PT<br>MPAA Sherman Oaks Office<br><br>AGENDA: Attached.<br><br>BACKGROUND MATERIALS: Attached. Please keep confidential and do not forward.<br><br>1. Background on and analysis of technical issues and related policy considerations. This was previously circulated with the initial legal analysis as Attachment D.<br>2. Analysis of site blocking efficacy. This was previously circulated with the initial legal analysis as Attachment E.<br>3. Reference list of site blocking related research.<br>4. One-pager on other possible antipiracy measures.<br><br>ATTENDEES:<br><br>Fox<br>Gary Roberts<br>Ron Wheeler<br>Hanno Basse<br><br>Disney<br>Alan Braverman<br>Jonathan Whitehead<br>Troy Dow<br>Mark Arana<br><br>NBCUniversal<br>Maren Christensen<br>Steve Kang<br>Braxton Perkins<br><br>Paramount/Viacom<br>Rebecca Prentice<br>Michael Fricklas<br>Stanley Pierre-Louis<br>Stacey Dansky<br><br>Sony<br>Aimee Wolfson<br>Spencer Stephens<br>Sean Jaquez<br><br>Warner Bros.<br>John Rogovin<br>Jeremy Williams<br>Dean Marks<br>David Kaplan<br><br>If our list of attendees is incorrect or incomplete, please let us know asap.<br><br>In addition to our in-house experts — John McCoskey and Alex Deacon (technology) and Julia Jenks (research) — we will be joined by several outside technical experts: Jason Livingood (senior Comcast engineer), Joe Touch (CV attached), Michael Walsh (CV attached), and Kelly Truelove. Additionally, we have asked an outside statistician, Dr. Richard Waterman (Wharton School), to review the available efficacy studies and data, and offer his views as to what we can fairly conclude about site blocking from the body of available research. (Dr. Waterman cannot join us in LA, but we will be able to convey his thoughts.)<br><br>OBJECTIVE OF CONFAB:<br><br>The objective of the session is to put us in the best position possible to make a decision as to whether we should proceed to the next steps in seeking site blocking in the US.<br><br>* The first step is a pre-phase in which we will get prepared and try to create a more favorable environment for site blocking. This would involve multiple parallel tracks. Without attempting to be exhaustive, those tracks include:<br> * Outreach to respected technologists to begin to forge agreement on technical facts and site blocking efficacy — and, where possible, garner policy support for site blocking (or at least dampen opposition to it).<br> * Continued research and record building on the effectiveness of site blocking.<br> * Outreach to academics, think tanks and other third parties to foster the publication of research papers, white papers and other articles that tell the positive story of site blocking: e.g., it is commonplace around the world and working smoothly; it has not broken the internet; it is not incompatible with DNSSEC; it is effective; legitimate sites/content have not been blocked; etc.<br> * Building the record (and telling the story) that the sorts of sites at issue are dangerous. It is not just copyright infringement. Kids are one-click away from identity theft, graphic porn, malware, etc. Parent groups, consumer protection groups and other third parties can be cultivated to speak out against such predatory sites.<br> * Telling the positive story of the widespread availability of legitimate content.<br><br>* At the right time, we would quietly approach ISPs with which we have good relationships and which we believe might consider cooperating with us to test US site blocking.<br><br>If any US ISPs are prepared to cooperate — and we can create a track record of effective site blocking in the US — the environment for US site blocking more broadly will become significantly more favorable.<br><br>We do not need to decide in advance how to proceed if no US ISP is prepared to work with us cooperatively. We recommend that we cross that bridge only if and when we need to, in context of the landscape we face at that point in time.<br><br>- - - - - -<br><br>We look forward to a productive session. Let us know if you have any questions.<br><br>SBF<br>—————————————————————<br>[cid:2C542DC0-B90E-4A61-BE50-AFD959E325F0]<br> Steven B. Fabrizio<br> Senior Executive Vice President &<br> Global General Counsel<br> Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.<br> 1600 Eye Street, N.W.<br> Washington, DC 20006<br> 202-378-9120 direct<br> 703-307-7125 cell<br> <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a><<a href="mailto:[email protected]">mailto:[email protected]</a>><o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote></div></body></html> ----boundary-LibPST-iamunique-91827533_-_---High School Freak
Series: High School Freak, Book 1
One day the school bullies push him too far, and he strikes back. But the consequences are too much for him to handle. His new powers might be too special for his own good.
Before he knows it, John is thrown into a world, where people try to hunt him down. How will he survive now? John lives alone with his mother. He's resigned himself to surviving high school by not being seen.One day the school bullies push him too far, and he strikes back. But the consequences are too much for him to handle. His new powers might be too special for his own good.Before he knows it, John is thrown into a world, where people try to hunt him down. How will he survive now? More
John lives alone with his mother, who is much too protective for his tastes. He gets made fun of at school, and hates every minute he spends there. He's resigned himself to surviving high school by not being seen.
One day the school bullies push him too far, and he strikes back. But the consequences are too much for him to handle. He knows he's special, his mother always says so, but these new powers might be too special for his own good.
Before he knows it, John is thrown into a world, where people try to hunt him down. With his life on the line, he cannot fathom what will happen to him next. How will he survive now?Shots fired by former Mexican President Vicente Fox: Trump has no “balls”:
.@realDonaldTrump cancelled the future of 800,000 kids who are the cornerstone of America and didn't even had the balls to say it himself. pic.twitter.com/hM3KejSzaW — Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) September 6, 2017
Because lectures and insutls from our neighbors to the south worked so well during the election, why not escalate it now?
"The future of any country is the minority, which will be the majority, in a few years." https://t.co/a9Dh004sAR — Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 6, 2017
That’s what Hillary voters said, too. At this rate, Vicente Fox will be insulting President Trump well into his second term.
***
Related:
‘You can’t trump the dream’: Vicente Fox concern-trolls POTUS over DACA program, is owned https://t.co/gm8v6mwiSX — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 2, 2017
Vicente Fox compares Trump to Hitler; Says spotting dictators is like finding Pokémon https://t.co/Cpka9i0hif — Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 22, 2016About Gene's Work
Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novelist and cartoonist whose work for young adults demonstrates the potential of comics to broaden our understanding of diverse cultures and people. Yang has produced full-length graphic novels, short stories, and serial comics, many of which explore present-day and historical events through a contemporary Chinese American lens.
In American-Born Chinese (2006), Yang integrates tropes from American comics, Chinese folklore, and the Chinese immigrant experience. Three interlocking narratives contribute to a nuanced depiction of the struggles of adolescent Jin Wang as he comes to terms with his bicultural identity and attempts to assimilate in America. Yang employs elements of mythology and realism in his retelling of the legend of the Chinese folk hero the Monkey King, who offers a lesson on the need to accept oneself in order to thrive, and the character of Chin-Kee represents Jin Wang’s confrontation with the stereotypes of Chinese culture. In an ambitious two-volume work of historical fiction entitled Boxers and Saints (2011), Yang chronicles the peasant uprising against Western influences in China in 1900. The story of the Boxer Rebellion is told from two contrasting points of view: a boy who joins the rebels, and a girl taken in by Christian missionaries to whom she offers allegiance. Boxers and Saints is an immersive adventure tale, an educational primer on the Boxer Rebellion, and an illustration of how consideration of multiple perspectives enriches understanding of historical events.
Having written much of his work while employed as a high school computer science teacher, Yang recognizes the instructional value of comics. He is currently writing a series of graphic novels, Secret Coders (2015– ), that cleverly introduces computer coding within an engaging mystery plot. In these and other projects, such as the New Super-Man series, Yang is leading the way in bringing diverse characters to children’s and young adult literature and confirming comics’ place as an important creative and imaginative force within literature and art.
Biography
Gene Luen Yang received a B.S. (1995) from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. (2003) from California State University at East Bay. From 1998 to 2015, he taught computer science and served as director of information services at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California. His additional publications include The Shadow Hero (2014) and Level Up (2011), and he has written for Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yang has taught in Hamline University’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults since 2012 and is currently serving as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (2015–2016).Get the biggest politics stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Hospitals are abusing David Cameron’s NHS reforms to charge patients for treatment which used to be free, Labour has revealed.
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said the secret development was the “next scandal” to hit the NHS.
He revealed under the Government’s reforms, the NHS had started rationing healthcare to save cash - while at the same time offering patients the chance to “self fund” their treatment to jump the queue.
Warrington and Halton Hospitals in the North West have admitted that “some treatments provided in the past may no longer be accessible through local NHS funding”.
But the hospitals add patients can “pay to have these procedures with us at the standard NHS price” instead.
Chelsea and Westminster, Southampton, Great Yarmouth and James Paget University Hospitals Trust all offer similar deals, Freedom of Information requests released by Labour showed.
In total, NHS hospitals have increased their private work by almost £100million since Mr Cameron opened up the health service to profit-making firms.
In October 2012, the Government gave hospitals the freedom to generate up to 49% of their income from private patients.
Over the following year, hospitals raked in £434 million from private treatment - a boost of some £47 million on 2010/11 when the Tories took power.
This will increase by a further £45 million to £479 million by next year, according to projections.
The boost in paid-for treatment has coincided with an increase in rationing brought in under the government’s reforms.
Former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley introduced new “clinical commissioning groups” - run by doctors and nurses - which have the power to decide which treatments are available in their local area.
In the last six months one in seven of these bodies have brought in new restrictions over what treatments people can get, according to a survey by the British Medical Journal.
(Image: Mirrorpix)
These included eight restricting treatment for recurrent migraines, three putting up new barriers to hip or knee replacement surgery, two rationing cataract surgery and four stopping Caesarean operations for non-medical reasons.
Hospitals have jumped on the restrictions to offer patients the chance to pay for the treatment instead.
Southampton General Hospital’s website states: “Fewer non-urgent services can be paid for by the NHS but we know that patients still want to see our expert staff and be treated within the advanced care environment of a specialist teaching hospital.
“We offer the full range of consultations, investigations and treatments that you would expect from a specialist hospital.”
But it adds: “Our premier cataract service offers a new option, between the traditional private sector and the NHS, bringing private healthcare within the reach of many more people.
“This service offers you the option of cataract surgery even if your vision is better than the current level required for NHS surgery. We offer surgery when you feel you need it.”
Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust offers private removal of varicose veins.
Their website states: “There are some treatments provided in the past that may no longer be accessible through local NHS funding.
“However, we know that many patients still want to have these procedures with us. In order to give our patients choice around their care, we have developed the MyChoice service.
“This allows you to pay (self-fund) to have these procedures with us at the standard NHS price. Private health insurance may also cover the cost of these procedures with us.”
Chelsea and Westminster hospital offers patients the chance to pay for “all medical and surgical specialities”.
Mr Burnham promised to roll back the growing privatisation in the health service - and repeal the Government’s controversial overhaul of the system within months of winning power in 2015.
(Image: PA)
He accused the Prime Minister of launching the “most audacious attack ever on NHS values”.
He said private health firms, run by people who have donated £1.5 million to the Tories, had won £1.5 billion in NHS contracts.
The Shadow Health Secretary said: “Who gave this Prime Minister permission to sell the NHS to his friends? Nobody. He just did it, as born-to-rule Tories do.”
He added: “NHS hospitals, pushed by Mr Cameron to earn half their income from private patients, charging for beds left empty by these restrictions.
“Think about that. NHS hospitals, built with public money, charging people for treatments that used to be free - and still free to people living elsewhere.
“NHS staff turned over to priority care of those who can pay or are in such pain they have to dig deep. Suffer or pay - the same old choice in a two-tier Tory NHS.
“We’ve got to wake people up to what is happening. The first steps towards an American healthcare system - English hospitals now asking for credit cards before they give care.
Mr Burnham also pledged to roll back NHS privitisation - introduced under Tony Blair.
He said: “For too long, market forces have been allowed to advance into the NHS.
“Well no more. We will make a clear break with that. If we carry on down this path, the market will devour everything precious about the NHS - those values the country celebrated at London 2012.”
Mr Burnham’s speech came on the closing day of the Labour conference in Brighton yesterday before a Question and Answer session with Ed Miliband.
Mr Miliband fuelled rumours there could soon be a reshuffle of his frontbench team after refusing to confirm Mr Burnham will stay as shadow health secretary.
There have been suggestions Mr Burnham could swap jobs with shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
(Image: Getty)
In the Q&A with delegates, Mr Miliband was asked by party member Margaret Barr to keep Mr Burnham in his post.
She said: “We need a new ‘B’ to Beveridge and Bevan, we need the Burnham plan for health and social care. Will you prioritise this social care initiative? Lots of us want to keep Andy in that post thank you.”
But Mr Miliband was non-committal about the future of his shadow health secretary.
He said: “I am four-square behind Andy’s idea, which he talked about in his speech and I talked about in my speech yesterday, that we have got to integrate mental health, physical health and social care because if we don’t do that we are never going to deal with the crunch we have in the health service, the resource crunch we have in the health service,” he said.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman, closing the Conference, turned her fire on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems for “colluding” with the Tories.
“Week in week out - the Tories bring forward their nasty policies and the Lib Dems - they vote them through.
“They call it coalition - we call it collusion. And then Nick Clegg had the nerve to stand up at his conference and claim that he had been a brake on the Tories.
“With the Lib Dems, it’s not just collusion - it’s delusion,” she said.A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that will carry supplies to the International Space Station stands ready at complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Monday, April 17, 2017, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launch is scheduled for Tuesday morning and for the first time, NASA cameras will provide live 360-degree video of the rocket heading toward space. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Want the world’s best, up-close view of a rocket launch without being right there at the pad?
For the first time, cameras will provide live 360-degree video of a rocket heading toward space.
NASA will provide the 360 stream Tuesday as an unmanned Atlas rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a capsule full of space station supplies. The stream will begin 10 minutes before the scheduled 11:11 a.m. liftoff and continue until the rocket is out of sight.
The four fisheye-lens cameras are located at the periphery of the pad, about 300 feet (100 meters) from the rocket. A computer in a blast-proof box will stitch together the images for a full, in-the-round view. There will be about a minute lag time.
It will be shown on NASA’s YouTube channel.
“It’s great, I mean, to be able to get in there and experience that 360-degree view,” said Vern Thorp, a program manager for rocket maker United Launch Alliance. Combining that with virtual reality goggles, “it really gives you a new perspective that we’ve never been able to do before,” he said at a Monday news conference.
United Launch Alliance has released 360-degree video of two previous launches, but later — not live.
Orbital ATK, one of NASA’s main delivery services for the International Space Station, opted to use an Atlas V for this supply run from Cape Canaveral versus its own smaller, Virginia-based Antares rocket in order to haul up more items. The supply ship is known as the Cygnus after the swan constellation, and in this case has been named the S.S. John Glenn.
Glenn became the first American to orbit the world in 1962 — launching on an Atlas rocket — and the oldest person to fly in space in 1998 aboard the shuttle Discovery. He died at age 95 in December. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this month.
“It’s an honor to launch the spacecraft which has been named in memory of John Glenn,” Thorp told reporters. Given that Glenn flew on an Atlas rocket and Tuesday’s rocket is an Atlas, “I feel like we’re bridging history.”
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Online:
NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/
United Launch Alliance: http://www.ulalaunch.com/360.aspx
Orbital ATK: http://www.orbitalatk.com/(CNN) A Swedish doctor who authorities said imprisoned a woman for six days in a windowless cement bunker has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, a Stockholm district court said Tuesday.
Martin Peter Trenneborg, 38, was convicted of kidnapping after a trial in which prosecutors said he drugged the woman and then brought her to an underground bunker near his home in southern Sweden in September so that he could have a girlfriend.
Trenneborg also was charged with rape, but he was acquitted of that charge because of insufficient evidence, the court said. Authorities said Trenneborg admitted drugging the woman but denied raping her.
Rohypnol used
Stockholm chief prosecutor Peter Claeson said the woman's ordeal began in her apartment when the doctor served her chocolate-dipped strawberries that had been spiked with Rohypnol, a potent sedative known as a date-rape drug.
Once she was unconscious, the doctor put her in a wheelchair and wheeled her to his car. He drove her about six hours to his home outside the city of Kristianstad in southern Sweden, where he had built the bunker with its own plumbing and water supply, Claeson said.
Authorities said the woman was held for six days, and escaped only through an unlikely series of events. Once the man realized police were looking for the victim, he drove with her to a police station, armed with a gun, to tell officers that they were a couple, the prosecutor said.
But police asked to speak to the woman in private, and she told them of her ordeal, Claeson said.
During testimony, Trenneborg denied that any sexual activity had occurred while the woman was drugged, and said that he wanted the woman to be his girlfriend.
The doctor's lawyer, Mari Schaub, also told CNN last month that Trenneborg denied the rape allegation. While Trenneborg admitted building the bunker, he had no intention of sexually harming the woman, Schaub said.
"He is a man who was mentally depressed and when at the police station, complied with all the requests of the police," Schaub said.
"He is very much in regret of what he has done."
In court, Trenneborg attributed his actions to a mental disorder. A judge, however, decided that the disorder was not serious enough to mitigate the sentence, the court said.As joint General Managers of the Union we can not think of the best three goalkeepers in MLS in a vacuum. The three golakeepers Rais Mbolhi, Zac MacMath and Andrew Blake are inextricably linked in a web so tangled not even Jim Curtin will be able to make it optimal by the start of next season.
Before we get started here are the facts and stats from 2014:
Player Games Minutes Saves Goals Allowed GAA PPG Shutouts Save % Zac MacMath 29 2610 77 45 1.55 1.28 5 63% Rais Mbolhi 4 360 7 4 1.00 1.25 1 64% Andre Blake 1 90 7 2 2.00 0.00 0 78%
MBolhi - $240K salary
MacMath - $120K
Blake - $75K (Generation Adidas player meaning compensation does not count against the budget)
It is important to note that Zac MacMath's save rate dropped from 69% in 2013 to 63% in 2014. That drop can certainly be blamed on the defense allowing closer shots but there's little evidence to suggest MacMath made big improvements in 2014. Rais Mbolhi's numbers don't impress much either in his 4 games, and Blake just didn't get enough playing time to factor in.
The "Real" Situation
MBolhi is the incumbent starter going into the season. That needs to be assumed. Andre Blake is less than one year removed from being the heralded number one overall pick in the SuperDraft. Given that investment, Blake is worth more as a member of the Union than he would be in a trade. A loan would be a solid option for Blake so that he can get valuable playing time.
The rub in all this is that MBolhi and Blake are both popular with their international teams, Algeria and Jamaica respectively. Such popularity means they will miss a meaningful number of games in 2015 while playing for their countries. Therefore the Union need to have a backup that does not get International call ups. Someone, like say Zac MacMath.
However, the relationship between MacMath and the Union likely has soured to a degree necessitating an end to the relationship. Zac tasted being a starter for years and its unlikely he wants to play 8-10 games now in a backup role. The Union are no doubt trying to move MacMath but have little leverage to do so, especially with Dan Kennedy looming as an option in the Chivas USA dispersal draft.
The Choice
But that's the reality of the situation. In this world the GM has a blank slate, and here are the options.
1. Continue with what appears to be the Union's plan. Keep MBolhi as the starter, trade MacMath or tragically leave him exposed in the expansion draft, keep Blake as your 3rd GK and find a new backup.
2. Keep Zac MacMath as the starter, expose MBolhi in the expansion draft or trade him (after all he does cost a good deal more money), keep Blake as the main backup.
3. Start over and go for Dan Kennedy as the starter. Trade Mbolhi and MacMath.
4. Next year is a waste, put Blake between the pipes and reinvest that money saved elsewhere.
You are the GM. What do you do?
Previous You Be The GM votes:
Brian Carroll
Conor Casey
Brian Brown
Maurice Edu
Amobi OkugoWhen I see Arab hatred directed at Israel, such as the Palestinian Authority’s repeated attempts through UNESCO to deny Jewish history in Jerusalem, I shake my head in disbelief. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Arab countries, even Egypt and Jordan which have signed peace agreements with Israel, gag pro-Israel opinions and promote antisemitic fallacies, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery. In Lebanon, it is a criminal offense to communicate with an Israeli for any reason.
If Jews behaved like us, Israeli media would ban any criticism of Israel and the Israeli government would disseminate lies about Arabs and Muslims. Instead, Israeli media and the Israeli parliament provide platforms for a wide range of opinions, including the most extreme anti-Israel opinions. In the Knesset, the Arab members who support Hamas, a terrorist organization openly calling for the killing of Jews, are free to speak just like everyone else. When Israel’s prime minister made a comment that was perceived as anti-Arab, he was widely denounced by other Israelis, including the Israeli president, and the prime minister later apologized.
During the Israel-Arab war in May 1948, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, announced, “This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades”. Before the Israel-Arab war of 1967, Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad boasted, “The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation”, and Egypt’s President Abdul Nasser threatened, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel”.
If Jews behaved like us, when Israel defended itself against attacks from Gaza and Lebanon, it would have used its military superiority to wipe out those entities and to force their inhabitants to flee, leaving only deserted land that Israel could easily control. Instead, in each case, Israel took extraordinary care to avoid civilian casualties. A former Commander of British Forces said that, “During its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. Israel even provides free medical assistance to Syrians, which it has absolutely no obligation to do.
As explained in Forward, Arab Jews were practically all killed or forced to leave the Arab world. During the Israel-Arab war of 1947-48, Arab armies expelled all Jews from the land that they occupied, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While they occupied East Jerusalem, Jordanian authorities undertook a systematic destruction of the Mount of Olives cemetery. They also performed careless excavation resulting in the damage of important Jewish religious artifacts.
If Jews behaved like us, after the war of 1947-48, they would have expelled all Arabs from Israel. Also in the war of 1967, the Jews would have expelled all Arabs from the Sinai Desert, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, and they would have desecrated non-Jewish religious sites. Instead, Israel did none of those things. Today 20% of the Israeli population is Arab, and five million Arabs live in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel also gave all of the Sinai back to Egypt in a peace agreement. The protection of all religious sites, including Christian and Muslim sites, is standard Israeli practice and is guaranteed by Israel’s Basic Laws.
Any Arab who looks at the history of the Israel-Arab conflict with honesty realizes that we Arabs are damn lucky that Jews do not behave like Arabs. We demonize Israel over imperfections such as delays at legitimate security checkpoints, but we have done hundreds of times worse to Jews, and we would have done even worse if we could. We demonize Israel over total fabrications that we shamelessly create, such as the claim of a massacre in the West Bank city of Jenin, which was later recognized to be a lie.
In addition to this, we Arabs are also damn lucky that the world applies a different standard to us than to Jews. We get to behave badly while Jews behave far better than us, yet the world blames them. So not only do we benefit from our own antisemitism, but we also benefit from the antisemitism of non-Arabs. Wow!
But that “luck” is a double-edged sword. Jews know that they can count on no one but themselves, and so they work tirelessly at building a beautiful country, a strong economy, and a highly skilled military. While we rely on whining and obstructionism to get what we want, the Jews rely on hard work and perseverance. While we use brainwashing and fanaticism as our primary tools, they use knowledge and diversity.
From the years 2002 to 2015, Israel had 35,900 patents granted while Saudi Arabia, the Arab country with the most patents granted during that period, only had 1,513 patents granted, yet Saudi Arabia has almost four times the population of Israel and more than double its GDP. We can lie all we want, but plain numbers tell the world the truth about us Arabs.
If we Arabs wanted to grow as a people rather than continue to be the world’s basket case, we would not only stop demonizing Israel, but we would also thank the Jews for having treated us far better than our actions deserved, and we would measure our success based on our own achievements, not based on how many lies we get away with.
Many Arabs know this, but few of us admit it, so we continue to lie, not only to the world, but also to ourselves.
Please show your support for peace by signing this petition directed at the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, and Australia demanding that pressure be placed on Russia and others to disarm the Hezbullah terrorist organization.Fantastical fiction and harsh reality aren't so far apart in the winning narratives of the 2016 Fairy Tales Architecture Competition. Living in a time when the inevitable future is constantly on everyone's mind, this year's stories beautifully visualize and perhaps forewarn of what possibly awaits. Created by Blank Space, the international contest invites architects, artists, writers and the creatively inclined to pen their own architectural fairy tale narrative.
Since Blank Space revealed their first set of winners in 2014, the competition's rapid growth can be worthy of its own story. The 2016 edition reeled in more than 1,500 entries from 67 countries — the largest pool of submissions in the competition's history by far. Plus, the level of creativity was as strong as ever, with poignant tales based on recent real-world incidents to thought-provoking critiques on architecture's current state — and future, of course.
Blank Space's "Fairy Tales: Volume 3"
This year's jury also included notable members like DS+R's Elizabeth Diller; Serpentine Gallery Co-Director Hans-Ulrich Obrist; Aaron Betsky, dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture; SPUR Editorial Director Allison Arieff; Dror Founder Dror Benshetrit; Sylvia Lavin, Director of Critical Studies in Architecture at UCLA; and Bustler + Archinect's very own Alexander Walter — to name a few!
After rigorous deliberation, the jury selected architecture practice Olson Kundig, Hagai Ben Naim, and architecture student Kobi Logendrarajah as the top prize winners. Ten Honorable Mentions were also revealed. If you want to add these stories to your book shelf, they'll be published in Blank Space's upcoming Fairy Tales: Vol.3.
Get a glimpse of the winning narratives below.
↓ First Prize: "Welcome to the 5th Facade" by Olson Kundig - Alan Maskin, Jerome Tryon, Kevin Scott, Gabriela Frank & Katie Miller
Synopsis: “Seattle-based architecture practice Olson Kundig won first prize for their story titled “Welcome to the 5th Facade”. Led by Principal Alan Maskin, the team crafted a beautifully rendered story that launches us headlong into the future — a future that is similar enough to our own, yet ripe with new challenges, opportunities, and issues.”
From the winning team: “Our Fairy Tales 2016 submittal became a tangential detour from Olson Kundig's ongoing investigation into urban rooftops, the largely neglected uppermost layer of cities. The idea of applying a narrative filter to both built and conceptual projects became another way to look at and critique design ideas. 'Welcome To The 5th Facade' used science fiction as it is traditionally used as a modality to visualize and imagine a particular future in terms of both the pitfalls and the potential.” — Alan Maskin, Principal at Olson Kundig
↓ Second Prize: "Parisian Lullaby" by Hagai Ben Naim
Synopsis: “The Second Prize was awarded to 'Parisian Lullaby' by Hagai Ben Naim, whose story deftly leverages satire to address the current climate in Paris, France, and how recent events have affected policy, park space, and the public domain.”
From the winner: “Parisian Lullaby is the product of a personal encounter with the urban space and political climate of contemporary Paris, and was triggered by the recent heartbreaking events that took place in the city. The Parisian municipal obsession with governing and ordering life in the public domain gave birth to a series of regulations regarding preservation, maintenance and security. Some of these rules, such as the Second Empire requirement to close public parks at nightfall, date back to the nineteenth century. Through a satirical reworking of the master plan for the new Clichy Batignolles district, Parisian Lullaby raises the question of the relevance of these anachronistic municipal regulations in contemporary Paris. It opens a Pandora’s box of cultural critique that unleashes fundamental interrogations related to space and identity, freedom, prejudice, cultural dogma and hypocrisy.” — Hagai Ben Naim
↓ Third Prize: “12 Nautical Miles” by Kobi Logendrarajah
Synopsis: “Third Prize goes to Kobi Logendrarajah, an architecture student at the University of Waterloo, for '12 Nautical Miles', an imaginative story that explores how architecture might be created, leveraged, traded, and grown in a literal no-man's-land.”
From the winner: “The spark behind the story was inspired by an anime I used to watch back in the day called Black Lagoon that was based on a fictitious island neighbouring Thailand. The island was home to many of the world's outcasts, ranging from pirates to deserting soldiers from the Vietnam War. I honed the
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millennials surpassing baby boomers as the nation's largest living generation and approaching the precipice of their prime spending years, retailers are scrambling to figure out what makes members of gen Y open their wallets to spend.
Recent statements from Macy's and Whole Foods announcing plans to open off-price counterparts to their current operations suggest that retailers understand the reality of a shifting consumer value system taking hold in this younger generation. But is slashing prices the solution to winning over millennial business?
If it were, we'd probably see millennials flocking to Walmart in droves -- and that's just not happening.
With record student loan debt and an entry into the workforce characterized by vast un- and under-employment courtesy of the Great Recession, millennials have less spending power than previous generations. As such, they tend to be frugal shoppers. But what retailers seem to be forgetting is that frugality isn't just about the bottom line, it's about maximizing total value.
To capture the millennial consumer, retailers need to look beyond price and ask themselves how millennials define and assess value.
"Millennials value access over ownership," says Joan Kuhl, founder of Why Millennials Matter. Kuhl cites the rise of popular services like ZipCar, AirBnB, Uber and Rent the Runway as evidence of millennials' "restless quest for efficiency." These companies have "served them a whole new, on demand, experiential style of living," Kuhl notes.
The prioritization of experiences over traditional products is a theme noted by many experts. "They are far more likely to spend money on an international trip with their friends than designer clothes. They value how something will make them feel over stuff," says Christine Hassler, author of "20-Something Manifesto."
Jason Dorsey, lead millennial researcher at The Center for Generational Kinetics, attributes this behavior to the ongoing financial recovery and lack of firm financial footing millennials face. "Experiences are more financially accessible than say buying a house or fancy car," Dorsey explains.
This kind of cost consciousness also affects how millennials shop for the products they do purchase. Millennial Chelsea Krost notes how her gen Y counterparts "take the extra step to research an item" before buying.
A 2015 millennial consumer study conducted by millennial expert Dan Schawbel, in partnership with Elite Daily, confirmed the gen Y tendency to rely on peer reviews before making a purchase, with 33 percent of millennials using blogs as their primary research resource. Millennials look to peer content and social media over more traditional media outlets for an authentic look at what's going on in the world.
"[Millennials] want to build relationships with brands that are honest and open. Part of how millennials define value is by the utility they get for what they purchase and how socially acceptable it is for them to be using the product or engaging in the service. You know if they find a product socially acceptable when they take a selfie with it and post it publicly," says Schawbel.
Millennial CEO of Findspark Emily Miethner also notes how millennial value assessments extend beyond utilitarianism. "Millennials consider how the things they buy reflect on them and want brand values to reflect their own values," Miethner says. It's not just about the product and what it does, but how it identifies the individual to others and how that identity makes them feel. That explains the popularity of brands that make outreach part of their business model, like Tom's and Warby Parker.
Hassler has also observed the influence of brand values in shaping millennial consumer habits. "They value brands that have a positive social and environmental impact over the big brands," she says. Findings from Schawbel and Elite Daily's millennial consumer study emphasize the importance of a company's policy on giving back, with 75 percent of millennials ranking those company ideals and efforts as fairly or very important. For a generation burned by the recession and characterized by Occupy Wall Street, it's no surprise that corporate greed is unpopular. Millennials are willing to go out of their way to purchase from competitors with a more favorable history of supporting local communities.Story highlights Ex-prosecutor trashed defendants as jury selection started, order states
Justice official "fanned the flames" during trial, judge says
A federal judge tosses Danziger Bridge convictions over "grotesque" misconduct
"This is indeed a bitter pill to swallow," the judge wrote
Jury selection was minutes away for five ex-New Orleans police officers accused of shooting unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina when a commenter ripped into the defendants on a newspaper website.
"NONE of these guys should had have [sic] ever been given a badge," the commenter, identified only as "legacyusa," wrote. "We should research how they got on the police department, who trained them, who supervised them and why were they ever been promoted. You put crap in -- you get crap out!!!"
"Legacyusa" turned out to be one of the top federal prosecutors in New Orleans. His post was just one of many anonymous barbs that led a federal judge Tuesday to throw out the convictions of those ex-cops in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which left two people dead and four seriously wounded.
In a 129-page ruling, District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt cited long list of "egregious and inflammatory" comments by at least three Justice Department officials using a variety of online identities. Those comments fueled a "21st century carnival atmosphere" that tainted the 2011 trial and will require a new one, Engelhardt wrote.
"This case started as one featuring allegations of brazen abuse of authority, violation of the law and corruption of the criminal justice system; unfortunately, though the focus has switched from the accused to the accusers, it has continued to be about those very issues," the order states. "After much reflection, the court cannot journey as far as it has in this case only to ironically accept grotesque prosecutorial misconduct in the end."
In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department said, "We are disappointed with the court's ruling. We are reviewing the decision and considering our options."
JUST WATCHED 2012: Family reacts to Danziger sentence Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 2012: Family reacts to Danziger sentence 03:10
The five officers were charged with firing on an unarmed family at the New Orleans bridge and at others who were attempting to flee the scene, which unfolded six days after Katrina flooded most of the city. They were found guilty on a total of 25 counts of civil rights violations, and in 2012, Engelhardt sentenced them to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years.
Justice Department rules forbid prosecutors from making public comments that might influence the outcome of a case. But lawyers for the convicted officers accused prosecutors of mounting "a secret public relations campaign" aimed at discrediting the defendants before trial.
"The government's actions, and initial lack of candor and credibility thereafter, is like scar tissue that will long evidence infidelity to the principles of ethics, professionalism and basic fairness and common sense necessary to every criminal prosecutor, wherever it should occur in this country," Engelhardt wrote in granting them a new trial.
"Given the time, effort and energy invested by the court in this matter from the beginning, this is indeed a bitter pill to swallow," he added.
Two top lieutenants of then-U.S. Attorney Jim Letten -- the office's top trial lawyer, Sal Perricone, aka "legacyusa" and other handles; and Jan Mann, the first assistant U.S. attorney -- had already been identified as having posted disparaging comments anonymously.
Perricone had been trash-talking the New Orleans Police Department from then-Superintendent Warren Riley on down since at least 2008, Tuesday's order states. Six months before the Danziger Bridge trials opened, with other officers on trial for their conduct in the post-Katrina chaos, Perricone called the NOPD "a collection of self-centered, self-promoting, insular, arrogant, overweening, prevaricating, libidinous fools... the entire agency should be re-engineered from the ground up."
The third official cited in the order was Karla Dobinski, a senior attorney in the Justice Department's civil rights division. In the Danziger Bridge case, Dobinski had led the department's "taint team" -- the group charged with reviewing evidence to make sure no statements given under a grant of immunity get used against defendants.
Though not part of the prosecution, she posted to the New Orleans Times-Picayune six times during the trial to praise pro-prosecution commenters, according to Engelhardt's order. Dobinski told investigators she was trying to get information "otherwise unavailable from the prosecution team," the order states. But Engelhardt said it was "difficult to accept" that explanation and said she "fanned the flames" of those calling for a guilty verdict.
Mann and Perricone have left since their involvement was revealed in 2012, said Anna Christman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions about Dobinski.
Former officer Robert Faulcon got the longest sentence of the Danziger Bridge defendants, at 65 years. The lightest term went to former detective Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, who was sentenced to six years for attempting to cover up what the officers had done.
Two former sergeants, Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius, got 40-year terms for their roles. Ex-officer Robert Villavaso was sentenced to 38 years.Last September, less than a week after he began kneeling for the national anthem to protest social injustice and police brutality in the U.S., Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall met with Denver police chief Robert White and vowed to return to the police academy to take White up on his offer to try its training simulator.
“It became pretty clear to me that his kneeling was to speak to the injustices that he feels are going across in our country,” White said after his meeting with Marshall. “But I also think he recognizes — and we talked about this — that most of the men and women in law enforcement, and certainly those in Denver, are out doing the right thing every single day. And it’s that small percentage that is a challenge for our community (that) is a challenge for me.”
Marshall said throughout his protest that taking a knee was merely a symbol and a chance for him to bring attention to social injustice. It was a costly one for him; he lost two endorsements deals and received an onslaught of racist and threatening mail.
But his plan was to follow his protest with action.
“Whenever I stand up, I’ll stand up and I think it’ll be a good thing and I think I’ll make an impact,” Marshall said in September. “I’m trying to make an impact in the community as well. When I do stand up it’ll be because kneeling really was just to bring attentions to the issues, an awareness factor, a symbol, so to speak, just like the flag is a symbol. That’s really what everything’s about. It’s not about kneeling; it’s about other things, so now I’m doing the donation thing and I’m going to do other things to back up my kneeling.”
Marshall’s meeting with White was the first step. Continuing his community work and involvement in local schools that he started before his protest was another. Trying the simulator and joining a ride-along to experience first-hand — or as close to first-hand as possible — the dangers and difficulty of law enforcement’s daily work, was yet another.
Earlier this week, Marshall tested the VirTra V-300 simulator used to train officers in shoot and don’t-shoot scenarios. The Denver Police Department posted a preview of Marshall’s experience and will show the full video Sunday at 1:05 p.m. on its Facebook page.
This week the Denver police also shared its revised use-of-force policy that directs officers to employ de-escalation techniques instead of rushing into volatile situations. The policy was at the heart of Marshall’s discussion with White in September and was a primary reason Marshall decided to stand for the national anthem mid-way through the Broncos’ season.
“For the 1st half of the season, I’ve been taking a knee for the National Anthem to raise awareness for social injustice and to start conversation about what all of us can do to make a positive change,” Marshall wrote in an Instagram post. “I’m encouraged with the many productive discussions and progress that has taken place as the Denver Police department has decided to review its use of force policy. I’m proud to have joined so many of my peers throughout sports who’ve also made their own statements.”A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long vertical pages (typically 22 inches or 56 centimetres).
Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner and tabloid/compact formats.
Description [ edit ]
Comparison of some newspaper sizes with metric paper sizes. Approximate nominal dimensions are in millimetres.
Many broadsheets measure approximately 29 1⁄ 2 by 23 1⁄ 2 inches (749 by 597 mm) per full broadsheet spread, twice the size of a standard tabloid. Australian and New Zealand broadsheets always have a paper size of A1 per spread (841 by 594 mm or 33.1 by 23.4 in). South African broadsheet newspapers have a double-page spread sheet size of 820 by 578 mm or 32.3 by 22.8 in (single-page live print area of 380 x 545 mm). Others measure 22 inches or 560 millimetres vertically.
In the United States, the traditional dimensions for the front page half of a broadsheet are 15 inches (381 mm) wide by 22 3⁄ 4 inches (578 mm) long. However, in efforts to save newsprint costs many U.S. newspapers [1] have downsized to 12 inches (305 mm) wide by 22 3⁄ 4 inches (578 mm) long for a folded page.[2][3]
Many rate cards and specification cards refer to the "broadsheet size" with dimensions representing the front page "half of a broadsheet" size, rather than the full, unfolded broadsheet spread. Some quote actual page size and others quote the "printed area" size.
The two versions of the broadsheet are:
Full broadsheet – The full broadsheet typically is folded vertically in half so that it forms four pages (the front page front and back and the back page front and back). The four pages are called a spread. Inside broadsheets are nested accordingly.
Half broadsheet – The half broadsheet is usually an inside page that is not folded vertically and just includes a front and back.
In uncommon instances, an entire newspaper can be a two-page half broadsheet or four-page full broadsheet. Totally self-contained advertising circulars inserted in a newspaper in the same format are referred to as broadsheets.
Broadsheets typically are also folded horizontally in half to accommodate newsstand display space. The horizontal fold however does not affect the page numbers and the content remains vertical. The most important newspaper stories are placed "above the (horizontal) fold." This contrasts with tabloids which typically do not have a horizontal fold (although tabloids usually have the four page to a sheet spread format).
The broadsheet has since emerged as the most popular format for the dissemination of printed news. The world's most widely circulated English-language daily broadsheet is The Times of India, a leading English-language daily newspaper from India, followed closely by Wall Street Journal from the United States, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
History [ edit ]
The broadsheet, broadside, was used as a format for musical and popular prints in the 17th century. Eventually the people began using the broadsheet as a source for political activism by reprinting speeches.
Broadsheet newspapers developed after the British in 1712 placed a tax on newspapers based on the number of their pages. Larger formats, however, had long been signs of status in printed objects, and still are in many places, and outside Britain the broadsheet developed for other reasons, including style and authority, unrelated to the British tax structure.
With the early mechanization of the 19th century came an increased production of printed materials including the broadside as well as the competing penny dreadful. In this period newspapers all over Europe began to print their issues on broadsheets. However, in the United Kingdom, the main competition for the broadside was the gradual reduction of the newspaper tax, beginning in the 1830s, and eventually its dismissal in 1855.[4]
With the increased production of newspapers and literacy, the demand for visual reporting and journalists led to the blending of broadsides and newspapers, creating the modern broadsheet newspaper.
Printing considerations [ edit ]
Modern printing facilities most efficiently print broadsheet sections in multiples of eight pages (with four front pages and four back pages). The broadsheet is then cut in half during the process. Thus the newsprint rolls used are defined by the width necessary to print four front pages. The width of a newsprint roll is called its web. Thus the new 12-inch-wide front page broadsheet newspapers in the United States use a 48-inch web newsprint roll.
With profit margins narrowing for newspapers in the wake of competition from broadcast, cable television, and the internet, newspapers are looking to standardize the size of the newsprint roll. The Wall Street Journal with its 12-inch wide frontpage was printed on 48-inch web newsprint. Early adopters in the downsizing of broadsheets used a 50-inch web (12 1⁄ 2 -inch front pages). However the 48-inch web is now rapidly becoming the definitive standard in the U.S. The New York Times held out on the downsizing until July 2006, saying it would stick to its 54-inch web (13 1⁄ 2 -inch front page)[citation needed]. However, the paper adopted the narrower format beginning Monday, 6 August 2007.
The smaller newspapers also have the advantage of being easier to handle, particularly among commuters.
Connotations [ edit ]
In some countries, especially Australia, Canada, the UK, and the U.S., broadsheet newspapers are commonly perceived to be more intellectual in content than their tabloid counterparts. They tend to use their greater size to publish stories exploring topics in depth, while carrying less sensationalist and celebrity-oriented material. This distinction is most obvious on the front page: whereas tabloids tend to have a single story dominated by a headline, broadsheets allow two or more stories to be displayed, of which the most important sit at the top of the page—"above the fold". In other countries, such as Spain, a small format is the universal standard for newspapers—a popular, sensational press has had difficulty taking root—and the tabloid size does not carry pejorative connotations.
On the other hand, a few newspapers, such as the German Bild-Zeitung and others throughout central Europe are clearly tabloids in terms of content, but use the physical broadsheet format.
Switch to smaller sizes [ edit ]
In the United Kingdom [ edit ]
In 2003, The Independent started concurrent production of both broadsheet and tabloid ("compact") editions, carrying exactly the same content. The Times did likewise, but with less apparent success, with readers vocally opposing the change. The Independent ceased to be available in broadsheet format in May 2004, and The Times followed suit from November 2004; The Scotsman is also now published only in tabloid format. The Guardian switched to the "Berliner" or "midi" format found in some other European countries (slightly larger than a traditional tabloid) on 12 September 2005. It was announced in June 2017 that the Guardian would again change format to tabloid size – the first tabloid edition was published on 15 January 2018.
The main motivation cited for this shift is that commuters prefer papers which they can hold easily on public transport, and it is presumably hoped that other readers will also find the smaller formats more convenient.
In the United States [ edit ]
In the United States, The Wall Street Journal made headlines when it announced its overseas version would convert to a tabloid on 17 October 2005.[5] There was strong debate in the U.S. on whether or not the rest of the national papers will, or even should, follow the trend of the British papers and The Wall Street Journal.[6] The Wall Street Journal overseas edition switched back to a broadsheet format in 2015.[7][8]
Notable broadsheets [ edit ]
Argentina [ edit ]
Australia [ edit ]
The Australian, a national newspaper
Bangladesh [ edit ]
Most Bangladeshi daily newspapers are broadsheets.
Brazil [ edit ]
Most Brazilian newspapers are broadsheets, including the four most important:
Canada [ edit ]
Almost all of Canada's major daily newspapers are broadsheets.[10] Newspapers are in English, unless stated otherwise.
National [ edit ]
Atlantic Canada [ edit ]
Quebec [ edit ]
Ontario [ edit ]
The Prairies [ edit ]
West Coast [ edit ]
Chile [ edit ]
China [ edit ]
Colombia [ edit ]
Denmark [ edit ]
Jyllands-Posten (switched to tabloid in 2008)
(switched to tabloid in 2008) Politiken[12]
Dominican Republic [ edit ]
Listín Diario
Hoy
La Información, Santiago de los Caballeros
Ecuador [ edit ]
Most are broadsheets
Finland [ edit ]
France [ edit ]
Germany [ edit ]
Greece [ edit ]
Hong Kong [ edit ]
Hungary [ edit ]
India [ edit ]
Almost all major newspapers in India are broadsheets. Tabloids are mostly found in small-circulation local or rural papers.
Indonesia [ edit ]
Ireland [ edit ]
Israel [ edit ]
Italy [ edit ]
Japan [ edit ]
Lebanon [ edit ]
Libya [ edit ]
Malaysia [ edit ]
Newspapers such as New Straits Times and Berita Harian used to be published in broadsheet, but were published in smaller size instead, from 2005 and 2008, respectively. However, almost all Chinese newspapers in the country continue to publish in broadsheet.
Mauritius [ edit ]
Mexico [ edit ]
New Zealand [ edit ]
Pakistan [ edit ]
All Pakistan regional and national newspapers are broadsheets. Pakistan Today is the first and only paper in Berliner format.
Panama [ edit ]
Peru [ edit ]
Philippines [ edit ]
Poland [ edit ]
All of Poland's quality national dailies (Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, Nasz Dziennik, and Dziennik Polska-Europa-Świat) are now published in compact format.
Portugal [ edit ]
Puerto Rico [ edit ]
Romania [ edit ]
Russia [ edit ]
Serbia [ edit ]
Singapore [ edit ]
Sri Lanka [ edit ]
South Africa [ edit ]
Spain [ edit ]
All newspapers in Spain are printed in compact format.
Sweden [ edit ]
The first major Swedish newspaper to leave the broadsheet format and start printing in tabloid format was Svenska Dagbladet, on 16 November 2000. As of August 2004, there were 26 broadsheet newspapers in total, with a combined circulation of 1,577,700 and 50 newspapers in tabloid with a combined circulation of 1,129,400. On 5 October 2004, the morning newspapers Göteborgs-Posten, Dagens Nyheter, Sydsvenskan and Östersunds-Posten all switched to tabloid, thus making it the leading format for morning newspapers in Sweden by volume of circulation. Most other broadsheet newspapers have followed since. The last daily Swedish newspaper to switch to tabloid was Jönköpings-Posten, 6 November 2013.[14]
Thailand [ edit ]
Turkey [ edit ]
Most of the newspapers in Turkey are printed on this format. Notable ones include:
Ukraine [ edit ]
United Arab Emirates [ edit ]
United Kingdom [ edit ]
UK wide [ edit ]
England [ edit ]
Scotland [ edit ]
United States [ edit ]
Almost all major papers in the United States are broadsheets.
Vatican City [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]Canceling Dish is a PITA
An update on our plans to cut the Satellite TV cord:
I contacted Dish to cancel their service. Their web site doesn’t have a link for doing this, so I e-mailed them. They replied, asking me to speak with a customer service rep to, “finalize the cancellation request.”
This was a little bothersome.
I called and got the, “Why are you canceling?” routine. I explained nicely that we watch only five or six channels. “Which channels do you watch?” I deflected that line of questioning, and asked again to cancel the service. She offered a discount on our monthly bill. I said no thanks. She then had to speak to her manager.
She comes back on the line and offers me a bigger discount. I said no thanks, I really want to cancel. She then asks me to hold on because she needs to consult her records.
She comes back and offers me an even bigger discount. Worth $800 or so over the next year. Free movies, free this, discounted whatever. I again say, thank you, I appreciate that, I just want to close my account. How do I do this?
She tells me that I have four months left on our Hopper DVR contract. Arg! But the cancellation fee is only $50. $50 to walk away, or keep paying $130 a month until the end of June? That’s an easy decision. She tries selling me on staying with Dish until the end of June, “to take advantage of all the savings.”
I say no thanks, I still want to cancel. What’s the next step?
Her tone now changes. (I understand — she’s probably compensated partly on the account closures she prevents.) They’ll send me a box with shipment instructions, and I have to return the equipment within 30 days of the account closure. I have to return the Hoppers, remotes, and the LNBF.
Wait a sec. The LNBF?
Yes. I have to go up on my roof and unhook the LNBF from the Dish receiver dish.
Up until now, I was mostly amused by all this. But now I’m irked. They protect their transmitted content with DVR decryption and security measures. Asking me to go up on my roof to remove the dish’s LNBF is nonsense, and it feels like a punishment. It’s meant to artificially inflate the customer’s cancellation pain.
Having to do this completely unnecessary action only cements my decision. They now could offer their service for $10/month and I wouldn’t take it.
This was an 18 minute phone call, and now I have to go up on my roof. Bye Dish.Migrants Set On Getting To Europe Try Crossing Between Turkey And Bulgaria
Many migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Bulgaria is now seeing a surge of migrants attempting to enter Europe by land from Turkey.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have a glimpse, next, of the border between two worlds. On one side is the Middle East - much instability and danger.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
On the other side is the European Union and the prospect, for many, of safety. And that prospect is drawing many desperate migrants. A U.N. report is expected to confirm this week what many have suspected. Europe is undergoing its worst refugee crisis since World War II.
INSKEEP: People are entering Europe across the Mediterranean Sea, as we've heard a lot in recent months. They are also coming by land, crossing the border from Turkey into Bulgaria. NPR's Ari Shapiro visited Bulgaria, and we reached him near the border with Turkey.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: We went up to the top of this hill, actually overlooking the Bulgarian-Turkish border. On one side, there was a huge Turkish flag flying in the wind. On the other side, an enormous Bulgarian flag, but even more importantly, next to it, an EU flag - a flag of the European Union because this is the easternmost border of the European Union. And if you are escaping a Middle Eastern war on foot and you want to enter Europe by land, this is where you're going to do it.
INSKEEP: And are people crossing legally and appealing for asylum, or are they crossing illegally, doing both? What's happening?
SHAPIRO: Frankly, both. We met with the head of the intelligence services for the border guard. He said last weekend alone, 650 people were intercepted trying to cross the border illegally. Almost all of them were turned back. Some were let in. And, he said, if you're a smuggler, in two hours bringing a family across the border, you can make as much as a border guard makes in three months. And so there's huge incentive for people to help folks across the border. And, you know, smuggling is something that people on the border of Eastern Europe and Bulgaria have dealt with for a long time. But now, instead of looking at people smuggling drugs or cigarettes, they're smuggling refugees, families, children, folks who are escaping war.
INSKEEP: So what are Bulgarian officials trying to do about this?
SHAPIRO: Well, at the border, there are surveillance cameras. There are teams of people. There is a 3 meter high fence. On the broader picture, this is a problem that no amount of cameras seems capable of solving. I spoke with Elena Poptodorova, who is the Bulgarian ambassador to the United States. She told me they have beds for 1,000 people. So far this year, they have had 7,000 people.
ELENA POPTODOROVA: Until a year and a half ago, that seemed to, more or less, take care of the numbers. Now it's literally impossible. There are no physical conditions to accommodate these people. And so it is quietly moving into a tragic situation.
SHAPIRO: And, Steve, she says quietly moving, but these numbers are growing so quickly, so dramatically. Everyone in Bulgaria is intensely focused on this, as are people in the rest of Europe because many of the people entering Bulgaria then go on west to other European countries.
INSKEEP: Well, I'm trying to keep the map in my head here, Ari Shapiro. Where are people starting from, and where are they trying to get to as they arrive at that border between Turkey and Bulgaria?
SHAPIRO: The vast majority of people entering Bulgaria these days are coming from Syria or Iraq, although there are other countries as well. And they are just trying to get inside the European Union because once you're here and you are recognized as a refugee, then you're allowed to stay in the European Union, which can give you all kinds of opportunities for work and life and a future that you're not going to have in a war-torn country like Syria.
INSKEEP: What are you hearing when you talk with refugees, as well as ordinary Bulgarians, in the middle of this flow?
SHAPIRO: As a matter of fact, you've reached me at a lunch table where I'm speaking with some refugees from Syria. And they've found jobs at this little fast food restaurant owned by Bulgarians. They've employed Syrians. They're serving Syrian food. And so people are trying to get by. Obviously, there are some clashes and some tensions. But on the whole, people I talk with who have come across the border say they're happy and relieved to be here. And Bulgarians say they're trying to figure out how to cope with this new reality.
INSKEEP: Well, Ari, I hope you get a good lunch.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Thanks very much.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Ari Shapiro, speaking with us from near Bulgaria's border with Turkey.
Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.UPDATE –– Hannity has now hit back on Twitter over this in a BIG way. More here and here.
Megyn Kelly threw some shade at Sean Hannity after the debate last week, but tonight she took a far more direct shot at her colleague and fellow Fox primetime host.
To be fair, it was more of a shot at Donald Trump in a segment where Kelly called out both him and Hillary Clinton for sticking with softball interviews instead of subjecting themselves to hard-hitting questions.
And after ripping Clinton for doing interviews with entertainment outlets, Kelly said this:
“Donald Trump, with all due respect to my friend at 10:00, will go on Hannity and pretty much only Hannity and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days, which doesn’t exactly expand the tent.”
Watch above, via Fox News.
UPDATE –– 10/6, 10:22 pm ET: Both of them appear to have made up. More here.
[image via screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] July 1st I discovered a puddle of liquid mercury in our house. It was the evening before the holiday weekend and I was preparing to do some more demolition for the
bathroom I've been working on. I was putting down plastic to make cleanup easier, and when I got to the corner there was a dusty little puddle. That seemed peculiar, so I poked it. It wiggled. I knew exactly what liquid moves like that. Completely dumbfounded, I went downstairs to wash my hands.
A bit of looking online, it looked like I was dealing with a spill of about a tablespoon, and following their advice I called the fire department. And posted on facebook. Some firefighters came out, poked at it with a stick, and said "yup, that's mercury". They called out their chief, who also poked at it and agreed it was mercury. Around this time we decided it was getting late and our 1.5 year-old daughter should get to bed, so my wife, daughter, and one of our housemates went to my dad's house to spend the night.
A truck from the DEP showed up with hazmat suits and a mercury vacuum, and some firefighters suited up and started seeing if they could clean up the spill. After a couple hours they realized there was too much, and a civil engineer with the DEP told me that we would need to hire hazmat cleanup contractors to finish the work. A representative from the Somerville board of health officially closed the house, and my other housemate and I went back to my dad's for the night.
The next morning (Thursday) I called around for contractors and found Clean Harbors. They were able to start work that day, and by the end of the day they measured levels of 0.0 everywhere outside the room with the spill. They were using a Jerome meter, which can only measure down to 3000 ng/m3 when the safe indoor limit is 300 ng/m3, but they were pretty sure the effects of the spill was limited to that one corner now.
Friday morning was a holiday for them so we would have needed to pay big overtime costs to get them to come out and finish, but they did send me a letter (pdf) to give to the Somerville Board of Health:
Clean Harbors responded to a mercury spill @ the above address on 7/2/15. Our Foreman George Falzarano who is experienced with a Jerome meter took readings and the first and second floor were reading 0 on the meter. The third floor also read 0 except for the small room that had the initial spill. There were still areas in that room that were.037 milligrams per cubic meter. That area is still contaminated and will be cleaned on Monday. These readings were taken on 7/2/15 at approximately 5:40PM
I got the letter just after noon that day and immediately called the city to ask if we could go back in the house, as long as we stayed out of the contaminated room. Unfortunately this being the Friday of the holiday weekend they closed at noon, and I was too late.
First thing Monday morning I called them up again, forwarded them the letter, and they cleared the house. Our housemates decided to move back in that afternoon, while we decided to wait until the cleanup was done, which we thought would be just a couple more days. Clean Harbors worked all day Monday, told me they making good progress.
That evening I got a call from our housemates. They'd been sweeping up in the kitchen and they'd noticed mercury in the dustpan. I drive over and pick them up, and they come back to my dad's house, this time bringing their cats.
The spill turns out to be much larger than we'd thought, far more than a tablespoon, more like several cups. Over the next few weeks the contractors keep working on the cleanup, carefully removing floor and wall to get up any they can. They end up needing to take down the kitchen ceiling, below the spill, and remove the tiles from the kitchen floor. All contaminated. Even the fridge has to go.
Eventually they think they've got it all. They bring in their super sensitive Lumex meter which can measure down to 200 ng/m3, remove a few more contaminated things, and then they're hopeful they're done.
The next step is an 8hr air quality sample, with the house sealed up like it would be in wintertime. I call around for a hygenist to make the sample, and the only people I find who are willing to do residential work are OccuHealth. They send me a proposal (pdf), we schedule a testing date.
I close up the house tight for 60+hr, the test takes a day, then there's lab time, and we eventually hear back on September 7th that levels are below the threshold of detection (pdf). It was a long time coming, but the house is now definitely mercury-free!
So where did this mercury come from? The largest concentration was immediately below a pipe in the attic that was probably for an expansion tank for the original heating system. The house was built with hot-water radiators, but this was back before pumps were cheap enough to put in houses so it was a gravity based system. Hot water rises relative to cold water. This works better at hotter temperatures but you can only get water so hot before it boils. Unless you pressurize it! So people would use a mercury seal to put pressure on the water, allowing the system to run hotter without boiling. This is a "heat generator," and was the first product of the Honeywell corporation.
In the 1970s, when this system was converted from gravity-circulation to pumping, they apparently removed the heat generator, and spilled the mercury all over the floor. It ran under the floor, along the subfloor, seeped through the
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$1,000 will get you backstage for dinner and relaxing with the band, as well as stage-side viewing for the show, autographs and pictures. For fans without tickets, a $1,200 donation comes with two tickets to the show and VIP treatment backstage. This is NIN's final tour, so fans of the band will want to seize this opportunity.
De La Cruz was turned down from transplant lists because of the lack of transplant centers in Nevada. Reznor became aware of his situation after De La Cruz's sister, former CNN.com news anchor Veronica De La Cruz, began a fundraising campaign on her website. The campaign is as much to raise money for Eric as it is to raise awareness of Nevada's limited transplant opportunities, and to petition Senator Harry Reid and other Congress members for improved legislation.
In part thanks to Reznor's Twitter presence and the letter he posted on the NIN website, the results of his fundraising were pretty astounding, collecting over $260,000 in one day. The total is still climbing, past $645,000 towards a goal set by Veronica of $706,968.Camilo Zuniga insists Watford's players are not concerned by coming up against Premier League superstars every week.
The Colombia international came off the bench on Sunday to put the Hornets ahead against Jose Mourinho's expensively-assembled Manchester United side, before being fouled in injury-time to allow Troy Deeney to blast home a penalty and seal a 3-1 win.
Etienne Capoue had given Watford the lead at Vicarage Road with his fourth goal in six games, with Marcus Rashford equalising for a United side which struggled to create many chances throughout the contest.
Watford Watford Manchester United Manchester United 3 1 FT Game Details GameCast
Lineups and Stats
Having already lost at home to Chelsea and Arsenal this season, the victory over United -- Watford's first in 30 years -- was also manager Walter Mazzarri's maiden home win since taking charge in the summer.
And Zuniga says that Mazzarri has instilled in his players the belief they should not be worried by the names or cost of the opposition and focus on playing their own game.
"That is the mentality from our manager, a winning mentality," he replied when asked about not being intimidated by the likes of Paul Pogba, Wayne Rooney and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
"We don't need to look at the name on the shirts against Manchester United or Chelsea or Arsenal, we just try and do our best -- that is the manager's opinion on how to play football.
"In football today it doesn't matter what name is on the shirt, you just go in and be professional and give everything. Each game is different but we do the same, we go out and do our best."
Zuniga scored with just his second touch, having been introduced my Mazzarri with the scores level.
Watford stunned Manchester United 3-1 on Sunday.
It was the 30 year-old's first Watford goal since he joined on loan from Napoli in the summer and his first goal for anyone since 2012.
The Colombia international, perhaps best known for his foul on Neymar in the 2014 World Cup quarterfinal which left the Brazil star with a fractured bone in his back, has suffered from a bad knee injury himself in recent years, but has moved on since then.
"It was a long time since I last scored, I can't remember when, this one is very important," Zuniga said.
"I had an injury before and this is the first goal after the injury, I hadn't been well for a while. The injury was a long time ago and I'm fine and try and help the team when I get a chance to do it.
"It [the win] is not thanks to me, it is thanks to the team. From the first minute we were doing well to get the points.
Zuniga also revealed he and Mourinho shared a joke as he prepared to come on and help dish out a third defeat of the week for United.
"I know him from Italy," explained Zuniga.
"We just shook hands and talked about the past, but I was just thinking about doing my best for Watford. We were just joking, asking how each other was."
Asked if Mourinho spoke and shook hands after his pivotal appearance, Zuniga said: "Yes.
"When I came on, I wanted to give everything against Man United, when I go on the pitch I am professional."A would-be Lib Dem MP who describes himself as a feminist has been filmed repeatedly trying to touch a naked lap dancer.
Married father-of-one Maajid Nawaz asked for two private sessions at a strip club in east London.
Footage shows the prospective parliamentary candidate – who calls himself an advocate of women’s rights – attempting to touch her arms and thighs, which is against the venue’s policy.
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Up close: Would-be MP Maajid Nawaz with a scantily-clad lap dancer in the club in east London
Seedy: The married father-of-one asked for two private sessions at a strip club in east London
Staff said Nawaz had been pestering the girl all night and his actions had been ‘outrageous’.
In the film, Nawaz – a convicted former extremist – can be seen repeatedly trying to make contact with the girl as she dances naked for him in a private room during two £20 lap dances.
Manager Jay Shah, who witnessed Nawaz’s behaviour, said he was ‘very drunk’ and bouncers threatened to throw him out several times.
‘He was asking her to touch him and he was touching her,’ he said. ‘In general he was quite persistent with her, asking to take her out and for her number.’
A rising star of the Liberal Democrats, 37-year-old Nawaz is also a leading figure in the Muslim community and head of anti-extremism charity the Quilliam Foundation, which he set up.
Rising star: The prospective parliamentary candidate with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
A regular guest on BBC News programmes, he declared on Newsnight in 2013: ‘I consider myself a feminist.’ He once wrote on Twitter: ‘You don’t need to be a woman to stand for women’s rights.’
He often throws his weight behind gender issues such as the campaign against female genital mutilation and paints himself as a role model for young Muslim men at risk of radicalisation.
But Abdul Malik, the club’s owner, said he wanted the video to be seen by the public because of the way Nawaz portrays himself as a feminist and a family man. ‘He’s always talking about religion on TV and I thought, what a hypocrite,’ he said.
He claimed ‘arrogant’ Nawaz acts like a ‘spokesman for Islam’ – but visited the club during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Staff said Nawaz had been pestering the girl all night and his actions had been ‘outrageous’
The full strip club footage, obtained by the Mail, clearly shows Nawaz receiving two five-minute lap dances an hour apart.
He and two friends paid £10 entry to the small ‘gentleman’s club’ in Whitechapel and were seen drinking heavily. He left the club alone in the early hours of the morning.
During the first session – in which the dancer gets naked – she has to repeatedly remove his hands from her body and pushes him away at one point.
During the second dance with the same woman, he also spends time chatting to her – whispering into her ear and trying to touch her hair.
Newlywed: Nawaz's second wife Rachel Maggart
She later informed the manager, who told security to ‘keep an eye on her’.
Club boss Mr Shah claimed Nawaz had been ‘bragging’ but the dancer later told him: ‘Who does he think he is?’
Tory MP Nadine Dorries last night called for Nawaz to quit his candidacy. ‘In politics, you can’t advocate one cause or manner of behaviour then act differently in your personal life,’ she said.
Labour MP Khalid Mahmood added: ‘The message this sends to women is not one of respect.’
British-born Nawaz was jailed in Egypt in 2005 for his role in radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
On his return to England in 2006, he renounced his views and quickly established himself as a spokesman on extremism issues.
He has been selected by party leader Nick Clegg to fight the London marginal seat of Hampstead and Kilburn and has been married to US-born writer and artist Rachel Maggart, 29, since October.
They were engaged and believed to have been living together at his West London home when he visited the club on July 9 last year.
He has a young son from his previous marriage to Rabia Nawaz – who is also known to have supported Hizb ut-Tahrir.
A spokesman for Nawaz said he denied touching the dancer ‘inappropriately’ and added that his reputation for advocating women’s rights was ‘in the context of Islamic extremism’.
He said he had not been warned about his behaviour, and was not ‘out of control’ through drink or breaching the rules.
The spokesman said: ‘The evening you refer to was our client’s stag night before his marriage.
‘His best man took him to the gentleman’s club with the full knowledge of our client’s then future wife (now his wife).’
Nawaz can be seen repeatedly trying to make contact with the girl as she dances naked for himI owe everyone an apology. This past March, I stated that "Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor validates owning a Kinect." As it turns out, I was so, so wrong. We went as far as having the Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor review pass through the hands of three different Destructoid editors in an attempt to get the game to work, until finally realizing that Heavy Armor is, in fact, simply broken.
The reason why I was so hyped for Steel Battalion in the first place, other than loving the original Xbox game, was because I wanted to believe that the Kinect could actually succeed with a real core game. Up until this point, Kinect seemed designed to work with a few specific types of games: exercise games, on-rails experiences, and party games.
The key driving force here was that Steel Battalion was going to be the first game to use the actual controller in conjunction with the Kinect motion detection. That's what I, and I'm sure many others, believed would be key to making a legitimate experience on the Kinect.
After yesterday's review, however, I've come to the realization that the Kinect is a glorified beta test that we've all been suckered into buying.
First, I need to address my earlier hyperbolic statements. When I went hands-on with Steel Battalion just prior to GDC a few months back, the setup of the room was the most ideal environment one could have to play any Kinect game. Brightly lit, lots of room, and optimal spacing between the Kinect and player. When I played it there, Heavy Armor was functioning just fine for me.
So you can hopefully understand where I was coming from when I made what is now an obviously outlandish statement. I downloaded the Steel Battalion demo last night to see how the game would do in my living room. It was barely five minutes into the demo before I rage-quit after getting stuck in a loop where I was entering and exiting the cockpit view. I was sitting as instructed, with my hands and controller in my lap, yet the Kinect was just unable to process that I wasn't moving my arms at all.
It was then a realization dawned over me. I've been making excuses with every Kinect game up until this point. Every time a motion or voice command failed with any game, I would shrug it off until I got whatever I was trying to make happen. Why have I been so forgiving all this time? We would cry bloody murder if we had to press a button on our controller or keyboard multiple times to get an action working. Imagine trying to shoot a weapon in something like Call of Duty, where your gun would only fire on every third or fourth pull of the trigger. That would be unacceptable, and yet nearly two years since the launch of the device "Kinect forgiveness" is applied to every Kinect game released.
I'm done making excuses, as it's become grossly obvious to me that the device doesn't work, and I doubt it will ever be fixed in its current form. We've all just been test subjects, feeding the device data that will shape the next iteration of the Kinect. The rumors regarding the next Xbox console have been increasing since the start of the year, and this supposed leaked document detailing Microsoft's future vision proposes the Kinect 2 with higher accuracy, improved voice recognition, four-player support, and a dedicated hardware processor. Wait, some of that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Oh yeah. All this and more was promised when the Kinect was known as Project Natal. Instead, what we got was a shadow of what was shown. As for the voice recognition, the whole feature is about as useful to me as it is to say "Xbox, open disc tray."
I think the main problem with Kinect is that seemingly no one in the industry is pushing the hardware at all when developing for it, with most attempts feeling like half-assed cash-ins. It's rather telling when a first party published title doesn't even try, as was the case with Kinect Joy Ride.
I say most. Like I said earlier, the Dance Central series is done rather well, and titles such as Twisted Pixel's The Gunstringer and Grasshopper's Diabolical Pitch have been fun, but they seem to be fun in spite of the Kinect features rather than because of them. The best Kinect-enabled games that really take advantage of the device seem to only be the ones directed at children, with Double Fine's Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, and Kinectimals being some shining examples. If anything, kids are the perfect target for the Kinect, as they're hyper little monsters that won't be fazed from having to repeatedly wave their arms or scream at their TV trying to make something happen.
The Kinect was designed for gaming, but the areas where it actually excels have nothing to do with games. Hacks of all sorts have been designed for the Kinect, from acting as a virtual dressing room, making autonomous flying robots, helping doctors in the operating room, to so much more. There's a serious problem when the hacks and mods do so much more with the Kinect than the games do.
I'm mad because Microsoft has been shoving the Kinect in everyone's faces since 2010 as if we need it, like Xbox 360 owners can't live without it. It is not an enjoyable experience at all having to repeat the swipe of your hand or voice command to do something as simple as navigate the poor layout of the Xbox 360 Dashboard, especially when it's far easier to do anything with the controller itself.
None of the motion controller experiences are flawless, but between the big three, the Kinect is the worst offender of them all. I can't help but feel all this is moot at this point. Microsoft has laughed all the way to the bank, selling 18 million Kinects worldwide as of January 2012. Perhaps my grievances with the Kinect are too little, too late. Still, there's this odd sense of peace knowing that I'm done with the Kinect this generation.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upApostle Guillermo Maldonado
For decades, the Dade County Farm bureau found back door ways to open up urban uses outside the UDB. They did this for their large parcel owner/ board members, not the involuntary members of the "Farm Bureau" who have to become members to buy Farmer's insurance policies through them.The insiders at the Dade County Farm Bureau did a lot of damage to the farming community by lobbying the county commission to permit an excessive amount of farmland to be deemed "ancillary" when it was not by any stretch of the imagination. The big land owners have always been connected to the lawyers and downtown lobbyists and bankers who extend mortgages, often based on the developable value of the land and not its use as agriculture. It is a witches' coven that transformed the beautiful South Florida landscape from trees and fields and farms into whatever made the most money, quickest.South Dade couldn't wait to become Kendall: featureless and dominated by strip malls.There is a new tidbit of a few words in a recent Land Use Element change in the EAR which basically say's Churches have more rights than Jesus! All of the sudden, appearing out of nowhere, religious facilities are written in a Land Use amendment as "Ancillary to Agriculture".This is problematic for a whole bunch of reasons, including actual farming going on inside the Ag areas, outside the UDB. There are religious groups, well one really huge one, buying land outside the UDB. This will allow them to operate let's say on the low end, a 5,000 member or upward mega church in the middle of a Redland or near west of Krome Avenue abutting the Everglades north of there.Take for example this group run by the Maldonado empire: 100's of acres of productive Agriculture, farming going on around it, out pops a massive religious building, the traffic and noise follow. Outside the Urban Development Boundary is just that: there should be no urban uses. Period. No street lighting, a lot of roads are not paved, and it is a way of life people who live there love. Talk about taking away one group of property rights in plane sight to allow something that is not by any definition "ancillary".So which county commissioner put this in the proposed Land Use changes? Does his or her photo appear as a dedicated worshipper on Sundays during political season at Guillermo Maldonado's Ministerio Internacioal El Rey Jesus? It is absurd. Religious facilities are allowed by right in residential areas and other zoning. To say Religious Facilities are now "ancillary to agriculture" isn't appropriate. It is a smoke screen for building a constituency for moving the Urban Development Boundary. Jesus!In addition to destroying the farming communities, Churches are tax exempt, so we get to pay for their damage as well since they, by law, don't have to do that either! If this change to the county land use plan is allowed, next will be the need to build roads, etc. in an area they are not supposed to be in the first place.We have crumbling infrastructure all over Miami Dade County. We don't need new problems, which this will create a whole bunch of very expensive messes and probably litigation for years when the Ag interest (I mean those who actually farm) revolt against the land use give away currently taking place in plain view.As an Elm developer, you’re probably familiar with the forward function application operator (|>). And you may have used the NoRedInk/elm-decode-pipeline package to create JSON decoders like so:
userDecoder : Decoder User userDecoder = decode User |> required "id" int |> required "email" ( nullable string ) |> optional "name" string "N/A"
But have you really taken the time to sit down and think about what the |> is really doing in this case?
In this post, I’ll show you how to use the |> operator to create pipelines and to simplify your existing Elm code.
You’ll end up with a technique to simplify the code in your update function. Here’s a teaser:
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of Increment -> ( model, Cmd. none ) |> updateCounter 1 |> recordAnalyticsEvent "counterIncremented" |> addSuccessMessage "You incremented the counter!"
First, let’s quickly review the forward function application operator. It takes the value on the left and applies it to the function on the right (follow along in elm-repl if you wish):
import String exposing (..) "Hello" |> isEmpty -- False "" |> isEmpty -- True
Pretty simple, right? Next, let’s follow this pattern to manipulate a string:
"Hello everyone" |> left 5 |> toLower |> append "I say " -- "I say hello"
Now we’re passing the value returned from each function to the next, starting with the base value of "Hello everyone" and ending with the final value of "I say hello".
Let’s examine what enables us to do this by looking at the type signatures of each of the functions we’re using:
left : Int -> String -> String toLower : String -> String append : String -> String -> String
While all three type signatures differ, they have one important thing in common: they all end with String -> String.
To generalize this concept, we can say that if we have a function that returns a type a, then we can create pipeline functions for it where each pipeline function type signature ends with a -> a.
Let’s take this knowledge and apply it to the update function in The Elm Architecture. We’ll start by examining its signature:
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg )
Since update returns (Model, Cmd Msg) we can create pipelines for it with functions that end with (Model, Cmd Msg) -> (Model, Cmd Msg).
Here’s a (really simple) example:
incrementCounter : ( Model, Cmd Msg ) -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) incrementCounter ( model, cmd ) = ({ model | counter = model. counter + 1 }, cmd )
And here’s how to use it:
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of Increment -> ( model, Cmd. none ) |> incrementCounter
Unfortunately, incrementCounter is very brittle, as it can only do one thing: increment the counter field of the Model by exactly one. Since our app will also feature a decrement button, let’s change incrementCounter to take a parameter and rename it:
updateCounter : Int -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) updateCounter delta ( model, cmd ) = ({ model | counter = model. counter + delta }, cmd )
Now we can add the Decrement action to our update function:
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of Increment -> ( model, Cmd. none ) |> updateCounter 1 Decrement -> ( model, Cmd. none ) |> updateCounter - 1
While this example is quite trivial, you can apply it to a variety of use cases to create reusable building blocks.
Let’s say you have an app that calls an external service to record analytics events and presents the user with a list of disappearing success and error messages. You might write something like:
recordAnalyticsEvent : String -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) recordAnalyticsEvent eventName ( model, cmd ) = let analyticsCmd = -- A bunch of code to call the analytics server in ( model, Cmd. batch [ cmd, analyticsCmd ]) addSuccessMessage : String -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) addSuccessMessage m ( model, cmd ) = let removeUserMessageCmd = -- Cmd to remove the message after 5 seconds in ({ model | userMessages = SuccessMessage m :: model. userMessages }, Cmd. batch [ cmd, removeUserMessageCmd ])
And then in your update function:
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) update msg model = case msg of Increment -> ( model, Cmd. none ) |> updateCounter 1 |> recordAnalyticsEvent "counterIncremented" |> addSuccessMessage "You incremented the counter!" Decrement -> ( model, Cmd. none ) |> updateCounter - 1 |> recordAnalyticsEvent "counterDecremented" |> addSuccessMessage "You decremented the counter!"...
Great! Now we have a bunch of reusable functions that can be sequenced to build complex update logic in our Elm application! Any time we need to record another analytics event or add a success message, we simply just pipe our update return value to the functions we created above.
Bonus Round
Let’s explore how we can create pipelines with the Maybe type in Elm using our string manipulation example above:
Just "Hello everyone" |> map ( left 5 ) |> map ( toLower ) |> map ( append "I say " )
Notice that the only difference is the map call before each function call. I’ll leave the reasoning to the reader - but a good place to start is the Elm documentation for Maybe.What's blooming now? Wildflower Report Blog When and Where Will the Wildflowers Bloom?
Wildflowers may begin blooming in the lower elevations of the Pinto Basin and along the park's south boundary in February and at higher elevations in March and April. Desert regions above 5,000 feet may have plants blooming as late as June.
The extent and timing of spring wildflower blooms in Joshua Tree vary from one year to the next. Fall and winter precipitation and spring temperatures are key environmental factors affecting the spring blooming period. Normally, desert annuals germinate between September and December. Many need a good soaking rain to get started. In addition to rains at the right time, plants also require temperatures to warm a bit before flower stalks will grow. Green-leaf rosettes may cover the ground in January, but flower stalks wait until temperatures rise.
Park staff and volunteers compile their wildflower observations weekly during the spring season to produce a list of the wildflowers that are currently in bloom and where you can see them. You can help! We've partnered with
Wildflowers may begin blooming in the lower elevations of the Pinto Basin and along the park's south boundary in February and at higher elevations in March and April. Desert regions above 5,000 feet may have plants blooming as late as June.The extent and timing of spring wildflower blooms in Joshua Tree vary from one year to the next. Fall and winter precipitation and spring temperatures are key environmental factors affecting the spring blooming period. Normally, desert annuals germinate between September and December. Many need a good soaking rain to get started. In addition to rains at the right time, plants also require temperatures to warm a bit before flower stalks will grow. Green-leaf rosettes may cover the ground in January, but flower stalks wait until temperatures rise.Park staff and volunteers compile their wildflower observations weekly during the spring season to produce a list of the wildflowers that are currently in bloom and where you can see them. Check out our Wildflower Report Blog to learn more.We've partnered with iNaturalist, a free citizen science app for mobile devices. Use iNaturalist to report your flower observations to the Joshua Tree National Park Wildflower Watch projectSeafood caught by slave fishermen is ending up in supermarkets, restaurants and pet shops across America, an investigation has found.
Burmese men are being kept in cages on a tiny Indonesian island and forced to fish - or risk being kicked, beaten and whipped with stingray tails.
Seafood caught by the slaves is entering major supply networks in the US with tainted produce appearing in sushi, canned pet food and bags of frozen fish, it is claimed.
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Slaves are being locked up in cages on a tropical Indonesian island and forced to catch fish which ends up in US supply chains
Workers in Benjina, Indonesia, load fish onto a cargo ship bound for Thailand. Seafood caught by slaves mixes in with other fish at a number of sites in Thailand, including processing plants
The Associated Press says the men were brought to the village of Benjina through Thailand and the fish they are forced to catch is shipped back to Thailand before entering the global commerce stream.
It claims tainted fish can wind up in the supply chains of some of America's major grocery stores, such as Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway; the nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart; and the biggest food distributor, Sysco.
It can also find its way into the supply chains of some of the most popular brands of canned pet food, including Fancy Feast, Meow Mix and Iams.
There are also suggestions it can turn up as calamari at fine dining restaurants, as imitation crab in a California sushi roll or as packages of frozen snapper relabeled with store brands that land on dinner tables.
In a year-long investigation, the AP interviewed more than 40 current and former slaves in Benjina.
It charted the journey of a single large shipment of slave-caught seafood from the Indonesian village, including squid, snapper, grouper and shrimp, and tracked it by satellite to a Thai harbor.
Upon its arrival, journalists followed trucks that loaded and drove the seafood over four nights to dozens of factories, cold storage plants and the country's biggest fish market.
Captive: A security guard talks to detainees inside a cell at the compound of a fishing company in Benjina, Indonesia
Locked up: The men are forced to work 22-hour shifts or risk being kicked, beaten and whipped with stingray tails
Some fishermen, risking their lives, begged reporters for help.
'I want to go home. We all do,' one Burmese slave called out over the side of his boat, a cry repeated by many men.
'Our parents haven't heard from us for a long time, I'm sure they think we are dead.'
Their catch mixes in with other fish at numerous sites in Thailand, including processing plants. US Customs records show that several of those Thai factories ship to America.
They also ship to Europe and Asia, but the Associated Press traced shipments to the US, where trade records are public.
The major corporations identified by AP declined interviews but issued statements that strongly condemned labor abuses. Many described their work with human rights groups to hold subcontractors accountable.
National Fisheries Institute spokesman Gavin Gibbons, speaking on behalf of 300 US seafood firms that make up 75 percent of the industry, said his members are troubled by the findings.
'It's not only disturbing, it's disheartening because our companies have zero tolerance for labor abuses,' he said. 'These type of things flourish in the shadows.'
The slaves interviewed by the AP described 20 to 22-hour shifts and unclean drinking water.
Almost all said they were kicked, beaten or whipped with toxic stingray tails if they complained or tried to rest. They were paid little or nothing.
An investigation suggests seafood caught by the slaves is ending up in major supply networks in the US with tainted produce appearing in sushi, canned pet food and bags of frozen fish
A refrigerated cargo ship called the Silver Sea Line, second from right, is docked at Thajeen Port in Thailand, 15 days after it set sail from Benjina, Indonesia with a load of wild-caught seafood
Runaway Hlaing Min said many died at sea.
'If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us. There must be a mountain of bones under the sea,' he said.
'The bones of the people could be an island, it's that many.'
In the small harbor in the village is a five-story office compound which includes the cage with the slaves, AP reports.
At the Benjina port, the AP interviewed slaves from a dozen fishing vessels offloading their catch into a large refrigerated cargo ship, the Silver Sea Line.
The ship belonged to the Silver Sea Reefer Co., which is registered in Thailand and has at least nine refrigerated cargo boats. The company said it is not involved with the fishermen.
'We only carry the shipment and we are hired in general by clients,' said company owner Panya Luangsomboon. 'We're separated from the fishing boats.'
AP followed that ship, using satellite tracking over 15 days to Samut Sakhon, Thailand, and journalists watched as workers packed the seafood over four nights onto more than 150 trucks, following deliveries to factories around the city.
Slaves from Myanmar lean over the deck of their fishing trawler. Many of the men were brought to the village of Benjina through Thailand
Frozen seafood is off-loaded from a refrigerated 3,000-ton cargo ship in Thailand. The ship belongs to the Silver Sea Reefer Co. but the company said it is not involved with the slave fishermen
Inside those plants, representatives said they sold seafood to other Thai processors and distributors. US Customs bills of lading identify specific shipments from those plants to American firms, including well-known brand names.
For example, one truck bore the name and bird logo of Kingfisher Holdings Ltd., which supplies frozen and canned seafood around the world.
Another truck went to Mahachai Marine Foods Co., a cold storage business that also supplies Kingfisher, according to Kawin Ngernanek, whose family runs it.
'Yes, yes, yes, yes,' said Kawin, who also serves as spokesman for the Thai Overseas Fisheries Association. 'Kingfisher buys several types of products.'
When later asked about abusive labor practices, Kawin was not available.
Instead, Mahachai Marine Foods manager Narongdet Prasertsri responded: 'I have no idea about it at all.' Kingfisher did not answer repeated requests for comment.
Every month, Kingfisher and its subsidiary KF Foods Ltd. sends about 100 metric tons of seafood from Thailand to America, according to US Customs records.
Slaves use this warehouse in Benjina as a makeshift dormitory after finishing shifts that last up to 22 hours
Workers from Myanmar load fish onto a Thai-flagged cargo ship in Benjina, Indonesia. An investigation has suggested seafood caught by the slaves is ending up on plates across America
Maung Soe of Myanmar holds up a copy of the seafarer's book given to him before he boarded a Thai fishing trawler, in Benjina, Indonesia
Tun Lin Maung sits with a group of slave fishermen from Myanmar behind a fishing company building. He says it has been two years since he escaped from the fishing trawler he was working on
These shipments have gone to Stavis Seafoods, a Boston-based Sysco supplier, and other distributors.
'The truth is, these are the kind of things that keep you up at night,' said CEO Richard Stavis, whose grandfather started the company.
He said his business visits international processors, requires notarized certification of legal practices and uses third-party audits.
'There are companies like ours that care and are working as hard as they can,' he said.
A similar pattern repeats itself with other companies and shipments.
The AP followed another truck to Niwat Co., where part owner Prasert Luangsomboon said the company sells to Thai Union Manufacturing.
Weeks later, when confronted about forced labor in their supply chain, Niwat referred several requests for comment to Luangsomboon, who could not be reached for further comment.
Thai Union Manufacturing Co. is a subsidiary of Thai Union Frozen Products PCL., Thailand's largest seafood corporation, with $3.5billion in annual sales.
This parent company, known simply as Thai Union, owns Chicken of the Sea and is buying Bumble Bee, although the AP did not observe any tuna fisheries.
Thai Union says its direct clients include Wal-Mart, and ships thousands of cans of cat food to the U.S. every month, including household brands like Fancy Feast, Meow Mix and Iams.
These end up on shelves of major grocery chains, such as Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, as well as pet stores.
Hla Phyo stands next to a grave marker of a man he helped bury - a Burmese fisherman slave who died on a fishing boat - at a cemetery in Benjina
A group of former slaves from Myanmar, who worked on fishing ships, walk in the densely forested interior of an island in the Arafura Sea after escaping from Benjina
Free: A former slave from Myanmar, who goes by the name Mozet (centre) is one of those who escaped or ran away while trawlers were docked at the Benjina port
Again, however, it's impossible to tell if a particular can of cat food might have slave-caught seafood.
Thai Union said it takes multiple stakeholders to eradicate labor abuses.
'We all have to admit that it is difficult to ensure the Thai seafood industry's supply chain is 100 percent clean,' Thai Union CEO Thiraphong Chansiri said in an emailed statement.
The enslaved fishermen on Benjina had no idea where the fish went, only that it was too valuable for them to eat. Their desperation was palpable.
A crude cemetery holds more than 60 graves strangled by tall grasses and jungle vines.
The small wooden markers are neatly labeled, some with the falsified names of slaves and boats. Only their friends remember where they were laid to rest.
In the past, former slave Hla Phyo said, supervisors on ships simply tossed bodies into the sea to be devoured by sharks.
But after authorities and companies started demanding that every man be accounted for on the roster upon return, captains began stowing corpses alongside the fish in ship freezers until they arrived back in Benjina.
'I'm starting to feel like I will be in Indonesia forever,' said Phyo, wiping a tear away.2011 soundtrack album by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa
Mac & Devin Go to High School is the collaborative soundtrack to the film of the same name, by American West Coast hip hop recording artist Snoop Dogg and American rapper Wiz Khalifa. It was released on December 13, 2011, by Atlantic Records. The album features guest appearances from Bruno Mars, Juicy J, Curren$y and Mike Posner. The album is supported by the lone hit single, "Young, Wild & Free". The album received positive reviews from music critics, who praised Snoop's and Khalifa's technical rapping abilities and production choices. The soundtrack debuted at number 29 on the US Billboard 200, and has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Background [ edit ]
Snoop Dogg announced plans for the release of a film, and soundtrack alongside Wiz Khalifa back in January, with the release of the song "That Good", originally intended to be the soundtrack's lead single.[13] Wiz Khalifa spoke on the soundtrack saying "It's a real big deal because nobody's done it like that as far as a veteran in the game, an OG, a pioneer and then the newest, youngest, most exciting dude in rap coming through, and really just giving people a complete project," Wiz said. "I'm a fan of it, separate myself from making it, [I'm] a huge fan of it. Can't wait." As far as the musical vibe of the soundtrack, Snoop described it, "It's something to relax you and get you through the day; it's some real good music. The music is quality, I don't even have no title for it, as far as what kinda music is it, it's centric, it's...," Dogg said searching for the right words before his partner-in-rhyme lent a hand. "Eclectic," Wiz chimed in.[14]
Singles [ edit ]
"Young, Wild & Free", the soundtrack's lead single which features Bruno Mars, and produced by The Smeezingtons, was released on October 11, 2011.[15] In its first week it sold 159,000 digital copies,[16] debuting at number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number 44 on the Canadian Hot
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20, the Post, yet again, was privy to a leaked State Department directive in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned of the dangers of leaking by State Department employees.
While the relationship between the Post, the U.S. intelligence community, and the Trump leaks remains speculative, it’s noteworthy that the clear conflict of interest between the Bezos empire and elements of the U.S. political establishment has been absent from mainstream media coverage of the leaks. Indeed, this glaring omission seems to suggest that this connection, at the very least, is worth investigating.After leaking the new product branding for Roku's upcoming hardware refresh, Zatz Not Funny has now published the first photos of the company's latest streaming boxes. And they look... like Rokus. At the bottom of the yet-to-be-announced lineup are the Roku Express and Roku Express Plus — two models meant to take the place of the existing Roku 1. These are actually the most unique of the bunch from a design perspective; it looks like Roku just chopped one of its current boxes in half. Zatz isn't sure what the difference between the regular and "Plus" models are, so Roku has managed to keep a lid on some things.
Next are the Roku Premiere and Premiere+, which return to the regular Roku aesthetic and replace the Roku 2 and 3, respectively. They're actually closer in design to the Roku 4, though, and both "may" share the 4K capabilities of that box. The Premiere+ version gets an ethernet port for speedy, reliable streaming and a microSD card slot — both absent from the regular model. The Plus may gain HDR as well.
The Roku Ultra headlines the new portfolio with optical audio out, and a clever remote locator button located right on top of the set-top box. Says Zatz:
This flagship Roku appears to be a lock for HDR in 2016 and may be the only model to feature USB for accessing local media. The Ultra may also be the only model to ship with a motion-control gaming remote capabilities this time around.
So that's a pretty thorough look at the 2016 Roku family. These devices haven't been announced just yet, but with these product shots now floating around, it probably won't be long until they're official. Once we know the full story and feature set, we should have a better idea of whether they'll be worth the upgrade.SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea’s next step after rattling the world by putting a satellite into orbit for the first time will likely be a nuclear test, the third conducted by the reclusive and unpredictable state.
A nuclear test would be the logical follow-up to Wednesday’s successful rocket launch, analysts said. The North’s 2009 test came on May 25, a month after a rocket launch.
For the North and its absolute ruler Kim Jong-un, the costs of the rocket program and its allied nuclear weapons efforts - estimated by South Korea’s government at $2.8-$3.2 billion since 1998 - and the risk of additional U.N. or unilateral sanctions are simply not part of the calculation.
“North Korea will insist any sanctions are unjust, and if sanctions get toughened, the likelihood of North Korea carrying out a nuclear test is high,” said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses.
The United Nations Security Council is to discuss how to respond to the launch, which it says is a breach of sanctions imposed in 2006 and 2009 that banned the isolated and impoverished state from missile and nuclear developments in the wake of its two nuclear weapons tests.
The only surprise is that the Security Council appears to believe it can dissuade Pyongyang, now on its third hereditary ruler since its foundation in 1948, from further nuclear or rocket tests.
Even China, the North’s only major diplomatic backer, has limited clout on a state whose policy of self reliance is backed up by an ideology that states: “No matter how precious peace is, we will never beg for peace. Peace lies at the end of the barrel of our gun.”
As recently as August, North Korea showed it was well aware of how a second rocket launch this year, after a failed attempt in April, would be received in Washington.
“It is true that both satellite carrier rocket and (a) missile with warhead use similar technology,” its Foreign Ministry said in an eight-page statement carried by state news agency KCNA on August 31.
“The U.S. saw our satellite carrier rocket as a long-range missile that would one day reach the U.S. because it regards the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) as an enemy.”
CASH IN EXCHANGED FOR COLDER WAR
The end-game for the North is a formal peace treaty with Washington, diplomatic recognition and bundles of cash to help bolster its moribund economy.
A video grab from KCNA shows the Unha-3 (Milky Way 3) rocket before it was launched at the North Korea's West Sea Satellite Launch Site, at the satellite control centre in Cholsan county, North Pyongan province released by KCNA in Pyongyang December 13, 2012. KCNA said the video was taken December 12, 2012. REUTERS/KCNA
“They might hope that the U.S. will finally face the unpleasant reality and will start negotiations aimed at slowing down or freezing, but not reversing, their nuclear and missile programs,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul.
“If such a deal is possible, mere cognition is not enough. The U.S. will have to pay, will have to provide generous ‘aid’ as a reward for North Koreans’ willingness to slow down or stop for a while.”
Recent commercially available satellite imagery shows that North Korea has rebuilt an old road leading to its nuclear test site in the mountainous northeast of the country. It has also shoveled away snow and dirt from one of the entrances to the test tunnel as recently as November.
At the same time as developing its nuclear weapons test site, the North has pushed ahead with what it says is a civil nuclear program.
At the end of November, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the construction of a light water reactor was moving ahead and that North Korea had largely completed work on the exterior of the main buildings.
North Korea says it needs nuclear power to provide electricity, but has also boasted of its nuclear deterrence capability and has traded nuclear technology with Syria, Libya and probably Pakistan, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
It terms its nuclear weapons program a “treasured sword”.
Slideshow (14 Images)
The missile and the nuclear tests both serve as a “shop window” for Pyongyang’s technology and Kookmin’s Lankov adds that the attractions for other states could rise if North Korea carries out a test using highly enriched uranium (HEU).
In its two nuclear tests so far, the North has used plutonium, of which it has limited stocks. However it sits on vast reserves of uranium minerals, which could give it a second path to a nuclear weapon.
“An HEU-based device will have a great political impact, since it will demonstrate that North Korean engineers know how to enrich uranium, and this knowledge is in high demand among aspiring nuclear states,” Lankov said.Indian Creek Design made a name for itself in the paintball world, then branched out into firearms last summer with their handy Blast Forwarding Device. In keeping with their theme of creating affordable products that satisfy a perceived market void, they’ve just released a modern aluminum chassis system for the under-served Ruger American Rifle. ICD’s press release and more photos follow...
A truly modular chassis for the Ruger American line
Nampa, Idaho, December 5, 2017 – Sturm, Ruger and Co. has unwittingly expanded the vocabulary of tens of thousands of rifle shooters since 2012 with their Ruger American line of centerfire rifles. They brought terms such as “sub-moa”,”milliradian”, and “ballistic coefficient” out of the realm of precision shooters and to the masses as Ruger American (RA) owners realized the phenomenal intrinsic accuracy available in their budget rifle. This has spawned a booming wave of RA groups on social media and the internet where like-minded owners of the Ruger bolt guns get together and compare shot groups and match scores while collectively wishing for more aftermarket support for their chosen brand and model.
While easy access via a modest price point seals the initial purchase deal for many who may be new to the bolt gun arena, those coming from the AR world are used to having a mountain of accessories readily available to choose from which they can personalize their rifles. Couple this with the increase in the popularity of long range shooting and the Precision Rifle Series (PRS) and now there are tens of thousands of folks looking to hot rod their budget rifle, converting them into personalized precision rifles. The Ruger American, American Ranch, and the American Predator all punch well above their weight class in the accuracy department so the desire for customization is a natural progression for many owners. An increase in various vendors offering stocks, tactical bolt handles, and other accessories to satisfy the growing appetite of the ever expanding group of RA owners has emerged but the choices for a chassis system remained very slim.
There are literally dozens of chassis designs available for a Remington 700 action but the Ruger American market has been quite underserved, until now that is. The challenge at Indian Creek Design was to make a chassis that spoke to the value-oriented owners of the RA, enhancing its capabilities without any overly extravagant bells and whistles that would add unnecessary expense. Offering features that are meaningful and that add to the performance and enjoyment of the rifle were imperatives while specifically addressing the two most glaring negatives associated with the RA, the OEM stock’s carnival contortionist level of flexibility and the OEM rotary magazine’s seemingly willful disregard for reliable feeding.
Drawing from our 3 decades of experience in action sports and firearm component design and manufacturing, along with feedback from both RA owners and a pool of long range/tactical sport shooters, we identified certain features and attributes that were desired. From this data and our experience we developed a fully modular RA Short Action “action housing” and modular fore-ends that combine into our RA “MoFo” (Modular Fore-end) Chassis. Weighing in at a svelte 1.6 pounds before adding other components, the chassis/fore-end user who wants more weight in their rifle can simply add it where they desire to manipulate the balance as they see fit. The “MoFo” chassis fits both the Ruger American as well as the American Predator short actions and is available for lefty’s as well as those who shoot from the right side, with a long action model in development as well.
The ICD chassis accepts both commercial and Mil-Spec AR style buffer tubes, collapsible buttstocks, and AR grips while featuring the buyer’s choice of 1 of our 2 standard fore-ends for a more personalized feel. One fore-end, aptly called Slimmy, offers a minimalist approach while still having multiple flats for barrier shooting. A more rectangular version, reminiscent of the Thompson submachine gun fore-end of WWII fame, affectionately known as the Tommy, features a full length flat from the action housing’s mag well/ barrier stop all the way to the tip of the fore-end, perfect for barrier or improvised shooting positions. Both standard fore-ends feature threaded holes spaced for mounting pic rail for any accessories a shooter may desire, and both come standard with a sling swivel so mounting the ubiquitous “Harris” style bipod is a snap.
In addition to the modularity, fore-end length was a design factor as users wanted to not have to make a choice between bipod use or being able to use the fore-end as a handhold or for resting on a barricade. Both choices of fore-ends are the same length as the OEM stock, offering ample room for the shooter while maintaining absolute rigidity. The chassis and fore-ends will accept a zero taper barrel all the way up to a massive 1.4″ in diameter. There are more optional fore-ends being developed to fi the action housing, including one that accepts AR style hand guards as well as a “tactical match” specific design featuring a built in swiss rail cut and Magpul’s M-lok cutouts for other accessory additions.
The CNC milled 6061 aluminum chassis and fore-ends are finished in Matte Black or Gunner Gray in a Type III hardcoat anodize, with options to purchase them in the raw if a custom finish is desired. The Indian Creek Design “MoFo” Chassis is 100% American made with a MSRP of $399.95. The chassis is competitively priced, properly outfitted, and ready to satisfy the long distance shooter, precision rifle competitor, hunter, or just the firearm hot-rodder in all of us.India is joining some of the world’s largest nations in testing the technology for affordable internet access. deploys idle spectrum between television channels and is a cheaper alternative to fibre and wireless technology. Education and Research in Computer Networking (ERNET), the research and development arm of the information technology ministry, has received approval in principle to conduct two pilots of the technology with and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. ALSO READ: Govt promises 'non-discriminatory' access to internet Technology companies like and Google are aggressively pushing the white space technology. During his recent trip to India, chief pitched it to Prime Minister and Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology
Neena Pahuja, director-general of ERNET, said the agency wrote to the department of telecommunications on the use of white space one-and-a-half years ago. The technology gained traction after Microsoft adopted it.
MAKING INTERNET AFFORDABLE White space deploys idle spectrum between television channels
It is a cheaper alternative to fibre and wireless technology
ERNET has received approval in principle to conduct two pilots of the white space technology with Microsoft and the IIT-Bombay, in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh
Microsoft and Google are aggressively pushing the white space technology
White space has been deployed in the US and in Singapore
It's being tested in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and the Philippines
White space has been deployed in the US and in Singapore, and is being tested in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and the Philippines. Some of these countries have low Internet penetration because of terrain that makes laying underground fibre expensive.The ambitious National Optical Fibre Network project, which aims to connect 250,000 panchayats with high-speed broadband, has been marred by delays. The government is trying to revamp it and is also looking at other methods of providing last-mile connectivity.Pahuja said the spectrum needed to transmit signals with white space was between 400 MHz and 700 MHz and did not require many towers. “White space has a radius of 10 km and works with line of sight,” she added.Apart from the pilot with ERNET, Microsoft has sought approval for two other projects in the country.Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said, “White space can be the affordable answer to last-mile connectivity challenges in India, especially for remote areas that lack electricity.”He added the company was waiting to hear from the government on its requests for running pilots.
ERNET chose Srikakulam to see how the technology will work near the sea. The pilot will be conducted over six months in schools within a 10 km radius. The findings will be submitted to the government, which will decide how to deploy the technology. Large-scale use of white space may require regulatory changes because it uses radio frequencies. Since the frequencies are going waste, the government can give them away free.Cloud over criminal convictions
Updated
Victoria's Criminal Bar Association says criminal cases could be jeopardised by police failing to follow proper protocols when signing affidavits.
A police officer told a Melbourne court yesterday that most officers do not take the required oath when signing affidavits used to obtain search warrants, or as evidence.
Victoria Police says it is seeking legal advice and has written to all inspectors to remind them about the proper process.
The association's chairman, Greg Lyon SC, has told ABC Local Radio that it is a breach of one of the most fundamental tenets of the criminal law.
"If this is widespread practice, the so-called affidavits that are going before the courts in relation to the execution of search warrants are not affidavits," he said.
"Magistrates have been granting search warrants in good faith, on the belief that they were receiving evidence on oath or affidavit, but they haven't been."
Mr Lyon says that could make the evidence invalid and could lead to appeals, even though the courts have discretion to allow illegally obtained evidence.
The secretary of the Police Association, Greg Davies, says most officers do not take an oath when signing an affidavit.
"It's an issue of training and it's an issue of reinforcing the standards that perhaps we were all imbued with several decades ago, but appear to have fallen by the wayside," he said.
Mr Davies says the oversight is going to be problematic at best.
"Clearly on the evidence that has been provided, there's suggestion that it will be a problem in many more than one instance."
Mr Lyon says it is an extraordinary breach.
"There are fundamental principles that really have to be re-instilled in the police, and this is one of them," he said.
"If they're not taught, they don't know, and the problem goes back to those in charge of teaching, and this has got to be a red flag for Victoria Police."
The acting president of the Law Institute of Victoria, Michael Holcroft, says it is a matter of great concern.
"It is simply beyond belief that Victoria Police had admitted during a serious criminal trial that they have not been following proper procedure with affidavits," he said.
"The effect is that evidence that has been put to the court may have been improperly obtained and could have been excluded."
Mr Holcroft says it is possible that appeals could result in cases where the only evidence upon which a conviction was based resulted from an improperly obtained search warrant.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, police, courts-and-trials, vic
First postedTHUNDER BAY -- A 34-year-old woman found unconscious on the Pacific Ave. Bridge was pronounced dead in hospital on Friday night. Emergency services responded to a passerby's call at 10 p.m..
THUNDER BAY -- A 34-year-old woman found unconscious on the Pacific Ave. Bridge was pronounced dead in hospital on Friday night.
Emergency services responded to a passerby's call at 10 p.m..that a woman was discovered atop the bridge that connects the East End with Simpson Street. Thunder Bay Police Service officers attempted life-saving procedures at the scene but were unable to save her life.
Police say there's no indication the woman was struck by a vehicle on the bridge but it's not yet clear whether violence, drugs or alcohol were factors in her death.
A press release was issued Saturday morning calling on anyone who has information regarding this matter please contact Thunder Bay Police Criminal Investigations Branch.
The investigation is ongoing and a post-mortem examination is scheduled for Monday.The Subaru Pleo is a kei car made by the Japanese automaker Subaru since 1998.
The Pleo is taller than conventional kei car hatchbacks, but shorter than the definitive microvan, the Suzuki Wagon R, and is available with a variety of 658 cc I4 engines: SOHC, DOHC, and supercharged in two different trim levels. It competes with the Honda Life, Daihatsu Move, and the Mitsubishi Toppo in the tall wagon segment of kei cars in Japan.
The name "pleo" is Latin meaning "to fill" or "to fulfill."
First generation – RA1/RA2/RV1/RV2 (1998-2009) [ edit ]
The first-generation Pleo first went on sale in Japan on October 9, 1998, replacing the Vivio, when Japanese regulations dictated a size change in the kei car tax bracket, and every kei car model from every make was redesigned as a result. The commercial for the Pleo’s launch featured a hip hop remix for the aria Un bel dì vedremo from the opera Madama Butterfly by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini as its background music.[1] The car was available with three variations of the EN07 engine; a naturally aspirated one with 46 PS (34 kW), a sporty supercharged one with 64 PS (47 kW), and also a "mildcharged" version which aimed for power characteristics similar to those of a one-liter car. The mildcharged version has a supercharger (with lower boost pressure) and 60 PS (44 kW).
In June 1999, Subaru launched a retro-styled and better equipped edition of the Pleo, called the Nesta. This has a whole new front design, including new fenders, to accommodate a chromed grille and (twin) round headlights. It featured the entire engine range of the Pleo.[2] In October, a sporty edition was launched, called the LS. At the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show, an LPG-powered prototype with a modernized version of the Nesta's front end was shown, with the name "Pleo Nicot," although it was not to enter production for another year. In December, an Le edition was launched.
In May 2000, Subaru launched a G Edition of the Pleo Nesta. In October, the first facelifted edition was launched. In December, the cheery-looking model called the Pleo Nicot was finally launched.[2] Using single round headlights and a small smile-shaped grille, it used the Nesta's model-specific front fenders in a more modern way. The only engine option was the (gasoline-powered) mildcharged version.
In May 2001, a more upgraded sporty version of the Pleo was launched, called the RS. This model is sometimes called the RM. In October, a second facelifted edition was launched.
In January 2002, the L Plus Package and F Special editions were both launched. In May, three four-wheel drive editions, the RS Limited II, the LS Limited and the F Limited, were launched to commemorate Subaru 4WD's fortieth anniversary. In October, a third facelifted edition was launched.
In May 2003, four editions of the Pleo, the FS Limited, the FS Special, the L Special and the Nesta GS Special, were launched. In June, the RS Limited and LS Limited were both facelifted. Meanwhile, a new edition of the Pleo, the L Special Color Selection, was launched. The R2, was introduced on December 8. After 2003, the Pleo was sold alongside the R2. As of January 2004, the supercharged engines were no longer available, leaving only the naturally aspirated version as the Pleo was repositioned beneath Subaru's newer kei class offerings. The mildcharged option returned twelve months later, only to disappear definitely in June 2006, after the Stella's introduction.
In June 2007, the F model was discontinued. The discontinuation left the Van A model as the only trim level.
In December 2009, the Pleo was discontinued.
Rear view
The retro-styled Pleo Nesta
The Pleo Nicot
The sporting Pleo RM
Second generation - L275F/L285F/L275B/L285B (2010-2018) [ edit ]
The second-generation Pleo first went on sale in Japan on April 20, 2010. Due to Subaru's corporate investment by Toyota, this second generation is manufactured by Daihatsu instead of Subaru, and is a rebadged Daihatsu Mira.[3]President Trump. Mario Tama/Getty Images
President Trump dubbed the news media "the enemy of the American people" in a Friday-afternoon tweet, opening a new front in an ever-escalating battle with the press.
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" he wrote.
That tweet followed a tweet that he deleted in which he made a nearly identical attack.
"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people," he wrote. "SICK!"
Trump posted his fix to the original tweet 16 minutes later, replacing "SICK!" with the names of two additional news outlets, ABC and CBS.
The president's attack on the media came one day after a wide-ranging press conference from the White House during which he lambasted news outlets and attempted to discredit negative reporting on his administration as "fake news" and "very fake news."
Of particular focus were stories pertaining to his campaign's and administration's ties to Russia. Reports during the week suggested Trump associates had contact with Russian officials before the election. Trump called such reports a "joke" on Thursday but refused to categorically deny them.Greetings, MechWarriors!
We’re excited to announce a sale this weekend on all trial Mechs. Like Trebuchets? Always wanted that Stalker? How about that Dragon? You’re in Luck!
Presenting, the 3rd Trial By Fire sale!
Now, you can buy the Trial Mech variant(s) you want (COM-3A, TBT-7M, DRG-1C, STK-4N), for FIFTY PERCENT OFF the price! Again, yes, fifty percent off! That’s higher than both 30, and 40 percent!
This means you could get a Commado 3A and TBT-7M for 1875! Or maybe you want a COM-3A and DRG-1C – now you can get both for 1270! Heck, go all Heavy/Assault and get the DRG-1C and the STK-4N for 2432! Any way you do it, this is a great time to pick up those variants!
This sale will be on this weekend (but starting Thursday due to the Good Friday holiday) from March 28th at 10am PST till April 2nd at 10am PST. So act now, MechWarrior!
To further celebrate the Trial By Fire Sale, we’re giving double XP rewards all of this Easter Weekend! This means any XP you earned is doubled; 2x, 200%, increased!
This event will last from this Thursday, March 28th at 10am, till Monday, April 2nd at 10am.
So if you’re using a new Mech, eliting out an existing mech, now is your chance! We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield, and good luck, MechWarriors!Operation Plate (Portuguese: Operação Prato) was an investigation carried out between 1977 and 1978 by the Brazilian Air Force following alleged UFO sightings in the city of Colares. The investigation was closed after finding no unusual phenomena.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
History [ edit ]
Precedent events [ edit ]
In 1977, numerous UFOs were reported in the Brazilian city of Colares, Pará. Local residents claimed that scars on their bodies were caused by the lights in the sky, and named the lights "Chupa Chupa"[3] (literally Sucker-Sucker).[7] Believing it would keep the lights away, residents of Colares organized night vigils[2] lit fires, and ignited fireworks.[4] Mayor José Ildone Favacho Soeiro requested help from the Air Force.[8]
The Operation [ edit ]
The operation was commanded by Captain Uyrangê Bolivar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima.[3] During late 1977, several pictures of lights were recorded but the military remained skeptical.[9][2][3] After approximately four months, the operation was closed after finding no unusual phenomena.[1] The official documents can be obtained from the Brazilian National Archives (Arquivo Nacional).[10]
Conspiracy theories [ edit ]
In 1997, two decades after the operation, Captain Uyrangê gave an interview to UFOlogists Ademar José Gevaerd and Marco Antônio Petit where he recounted his experiences living alongside his men. Three months after the interview, he was found dead in his home "after he seemingly hung himself using the belt of his bathrobe", prompting suspicion and speculation from UFOlogists.[11][9]
UFOlogists [ edit ]
According to ufologist Jacques Vallée, a number of individuals were reportedly killed as a result of the "lights" fired upon them by the UFOs, and injuries were consistent with radiation effects from microwaves.[12] Other ufologists claimed that the lights from UFOs sucked blood from 400 people.[3][4][6]
See also [ edit ]Google is getting ready to alert Gmail users when messages are received in the clear instead of via encrypted transport, in response both to slow adoption of encryption by some hosts, and apparent hostility to encryption in some countries.
Seven countries – Tunisia, Iraq, Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Kenya, Uganda and Lesotho – should be regarded as dangerous places to send emails, according to Google's research.
In all of those cases, “STARTTLS stripping” – forcing the sending machine to skip encryption and degrade the communication to plain text – results in more than 20 per cent of messages arriving without protection.
Most of them are in the twenties, from Lesotho (20.25 per cent) to Iraq (25.61 per cent), but Tunisia is a standout: it degrades e-mail communications back to clear text in 96.13 per cent of cases.
As readers will remember, the world is just catching up with the idea that e-mail security is lagging far behind our use of encryption for other services.
Google's multi-year project, published by the Association for Computing Machinery, comes to a similar conclusion: there's a long tail of servers managed that aren't keeping up with the need to encrypt.
And there's a lot such machines out there, the research finds: “best practices have yet to reach widespread adoption in a long tail of over 700,000 SMTP servers, of which only 35 per cent successfully configure encryption, and 1.1 per cent specify a DMARC authentication policy”, the research states.
“This security patchwork— paired with SMTP policies that favor failing open to allow gradual deployment— exposes users to attackers who downgrade TLS connections in favour of cleartext and who falsify MX (mail exchanger) records to reroute messages.”
The MX record is a DNS entry indicating where to send messages for a particular target domain. The worst offender in terms of fake MX records was Slovakia, followed by Romania, Bulgaria, India, Israel, Switzerland, Poland and Ukraine.
“Whether malicious or well-intentioned, STARTTLS stripping and falsified DNS records highlight the weakness inherent in the failopen nature and lack of authentication of the STARTTLS protocol.”
There's good news in the research, however: between December 2013 and October 2015, the proportion of encrypted emails Gmail received from non-Gmail addresses nearly doubled, from 33 per cent to 61 per cent, and the proportion of outgoing Gmails using TLS rose from 60 per cent to 80 per cent.
More than 94 per cent of inbound messages to Gmail use some form of authentication, the post notes.
Google's post discussing the research is here, and the paper is here. ®Have you been a true Pokemon Fan since you were a kid? Have you ever read Pokemon Adventure Manga and wanted to be a member of Pokemon World? If your answer is yes, now you have a chance to make your dream come true now. Today, we are happy to introduce to you an excellent Pokemon Hack ROM: Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter Hack. This is a ROM Hack you should play because of good gameplay and cool color schemes. On pokemonadventurered.com website, we will support you with Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter Download, Walkthrough, Cheats, Gameshark Codes. All of them are free.
Welcome to Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter Official Website.
Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter
Pokemon Adventure Red Chapter is totally 100% based on the story of Pokemon Adventure Manga. This game is a Pokemon Fire Red Hack by Aethestode. Only language version published is English version. All events in the game are followed nearly the one in the manga. We are sure that you will need much time to solve all these events. One point you have to notice that you can not choose your starter Pokemon because the game will set it for you. Hope you have fun.
Sponsored Links
This ROM Hack is received a lot awards from the community such as: Hack of the year, Hack of the Month, Best Scripting, Best Storyline, Most Engaging, Most Votes.
Storyline
Almost the story events are the same as Pokemon Adventure Manga. You will be Red, the main character. After the fateful encounter of Mew in Pallet Forest, Red found himself in a Pokemon Journey across Kanto to become the best Pokemon Trainer in the world. However, it won’t be easy when his rival, Blue and later Green is also following the same dream. Things then becomes difficult when Team Rocket began to perform their cruel experiment which may destroy the world. How can the good trainers save the Pokemon World? Besides the main story, there are several side stories you can enjoy. They are known as bonus events and regions such as: Orange Islands, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Orre, Sevii Islands, Orange Archipelago, Decolore Archipelago, Nanomi, Mirage Island.
For more informations, view the Hack Lore at this link.
New Features
New story follows the Manga.
Only boy is playable.
Pokemon can follow you.
Several Pokemon got buffed/nerfed.
New tiles, maps, textures, items, trainer class and Pokemon sprites.
A few bonus events.
Fairy Type is in the game.
Day and night system.
Able to change outfit.
TM are reusable.
New and different regions: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Orre, Sevii Islands, Orange Archipelago, Decolore Archipelago, Nanomi, Mirage Island.
Sponsored Links
More features will be added in the next version.
ROM Hack Informations
Orginal Version: Pokemon FireRed – Nintendo
Pokemon FireRed – Nintendo Platform: GBA
GBA The Creator: Aethestode
Aethestode Published Year: 2013
2013 Available Language: English
English Progress: 99%
99% The Lastest Version: Beta 11E
Screenshots
Videos
Thank you very much for reading all.do your lenses even do notation?
posted on 2014-06-11
It’s round 5 of typeparams versus GHC. We’ll be extending our Functor and Applicative classes to define a new Monad class. It’s all pretty simple if you just remember: lensified monads are like burritos with fiber optic cables telling you where to bite next. They’re also just monoids in the category of lens-enhanced endofunctors. Piece of cake.
some naughty extensions
We’ll be using all the same extensions as before:
> {-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-} > {-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-} > {-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures #-} > {-# LANGUAGE TypeFamilies #-} > {-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-} > {-# LANGUAGE UndecidableInstances #-} > {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-} > {-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes #-}
But we’ll be adding some pretty nasty ones today:
> {-# LANGUAGE OverlappingInstances #-} > {-# LANGUAGE RebindableSyntax #-}
We need RebindableSyntax to get do notation, but OverlappingInstances is just a product of the Monad class’s definition. I’ll give infinite haskell points to anyone who can refactor this code so we don’t need the extension!
We’ll also be needing all of our previous work on Functors and Applicatives. It has been uploaded to hackage and is sitting in the appropriate modules:
> import Control.Category > import Prelude hiding ( (.), id, Functor(..), Applicative(..), Monad(..) ) > import qualified Prelude as P > import GHC.Exts > import Data.Params > import Data.Params.Applicative > import Data.Params.Functor
And we’re off!
joins and cojoins
We will define our monads in terms of their join function. In the standard libraries, join has the type:
join :: m (m a) -> m a
The input has the same type as the output, except that the Monad m is repeated twice. There are two differences in the lensified join function: First, the monad we’re working with might be nested arbitrarily deeply in other data types. Second, the argument it is monadic in might not be the last one. Here is an example of what the join type signature would look like for the Left Either monad sitting within a Maybe Monad:
join :: TypeLens Base (Param_a (Param_a Base)) -> Maybe (Either (Either String Int) Int) -> Maybe (Either String Int)
Since we’re all wannabe category theorists here, we’ll create a CoJoin type family that transforms the output of the join function by duplicating the type at location specified by the lens:
> type family CoJoin (lens :: * -> Constraint) t > type instance CoJoin lens t > = SetParam' > lens > ( SetParam' > ( Objective lens ) > ( GetParam lens t ) > ( GetParam (RemoveObjective lens) t ) > ) > t
(We covered the Objective and RemoveObjective families in a previous post. As a reminder, the Objective family returns the innermost type lens from our input, and the RemoveObjective family returns the lens that results when the innermost lens is taken away.)
CoJoin only has one instance, so we could have just used a type synonym. That would make debugging harder, however. The advantage of a type family is that when we ask GHCi what the type is, it will perform the substitutions for us. For example:
ghci> :t undefined :: CoJoin (Param_a Base) (Maybe (Either String Int)) :: Maybe (Maybe (Either String Int)) ghci> :t undefined :: CoJoin (Param_a (Param_a Base)) (Maybe (Either String Int)) :: Maybe (Either (Either String Int) Int)
making the monad
Now we’re ready to see our new Monad class:
> class Applicative lens tfb => Monad lens tfb where > join :: > ( tffb ~ CoJoin lens tfb > ) => TypeLens Base lens > -> tffb -> tfb
The Left and Right Either instances are:
> instance Monad (Param_a Base) (Either a b) where > join lens (Left (Left a)) = Left a > join lens (Left (Right b)) = Right b > join lens (Right b) = Right b > instance Monad (Param_b Base) (Either a b) where > join
|
Pennsylvania. On July 1, some Confederate infantry headed to Gettysburg to seize much-needed shoes and clashed west of town with Union cavalry. The Union commander, recognizing the importance of holding Gettysburg because a dozen roads converged there, fought desperately to hold off the Rebel advance. Other Union troops briefly stopped some Rebels north of town. During heavy fighting, the Confederates drove the Union troops through the streets of Gettysburg to Cemetery Hill south of the town. Lee ordered General Richard Ewell, now commander of the late Stonewall Jackson's old units, to attack this position "if practicable", a vague order that Jackson normally took to mean launch an all-out attack. Ewell was not Jackson. He decided not to attack once he saw the Union artillery atop the hill. Had he attacked and succeeded, it might have changed the course of the war. The rest of the armies arrived that first night. The Union army established a defensive position resembling a fish hook, with Culp's Hill and the two Round Tops anchoring each end. Lee decided to attack both flanks the next day. On his right flank, Union troops mistakenly shifted out of position, leaving Little Round Top undefended. At the last moment, a Union general rushed troops in just ahead of the charging Confederates. After a long day of fighting, they barely held the position. The misplaced bluecoats were pushed back through The Peach Orchard, The Wheat Field, and Devil's Den. On the left, Ewell's assault failed due mainly to his poor leadership. Thinking the Union center had weakened from these attacks, Lee decided the next day to hit it first with artillery, and then an infantry charge led by George Pickett's division. Stuart's late-arriving cavalry was to come in behind the Union center at the same time, but they were held off by Union cavalry led by a young General George Custer. After an hour's duel, Union artillery deceived the Confederates into thinking their guns were knocked out. Then 13,000 Rebels marched across the field in front of Cemetery Hill, only to have the Union artillery open up on them, followed by deadly Federal infantry firepower. Scarcely half made it back to their own lines. In all, Lee lost more than a third of his men before retreating to Virginia. Meade, a naturally cautious man, decided the loss of one-quarter of his men had been enough, and only feebly tried to pursue Lee, missing an opportunity to crush him. ADVERTISMENT Memories of a teenage girl.
Tillie Pierce was born in 1848 and when the battle began, had lived all her life in the village of Gettysburg. Her father made his living as a butcher and the family lived above his shop in the heart of town. Tillie witnessed the entire battle and published her observations twenty-six years after the event. Tillie attended the "Young Ladies Seminary" a finishing school near her home. She was attending school on June 26 when the cry "the Rebels are coming!" reverberated through the town's sleepy streets: "We were having our literary exercises on Friday afternoon, at our Seminary, when the cry reached our ears. Rushing to the door, and standing on the front portico we beheld in the direction of the Theological Seminary, a dark, dense mass, moving toward town. Our teacher, Mrs. Eyster, at once said: 'Children, run home as quickly as you can.' "It did not require repeating. I am satisfied some of the girls did not reach their homes before the Rebels were in the streets. "As for myself, I had scarcely reached the front door, when, on looking up the street, I saw some of the men on horseback. I scrambled in, slammed shut the door, and hastening to the sitting room, peeped out between the shutters. "What a horrible sight! There they were, human beings! Clad almost in rags, covered with dust, riding wildly, pell-mell down the hill toward our home! Shouting, yelling most unearthly, cursing, brandishing their revolvers, and firing right and left. "I was fully persuaded that the Rebels had actually come at last. What they would do with us was a fearful question to my young mind. "Soon the town was filled with infantry, and then the searching and ransacking began in earnest. "They wanted horses, clothing, anything and almost everything they could conveniently carry away. "Nor were they particular about asking. Whatever suited them they took. They did, however, make a formal demand of the town authorities, for a large supply of flour, meat, groceries, shoes, hats and (doubtless, not least in their estimations), ten barrels of whisky; or, in lieu of this five thousand dollars. "But our merchants and bankers had too often heard of their coming, and had already shipped their wealth to places of safety. Thus it was, that a few days after, the citizens of York were compelled to make up our proportion of the Rebel requisition." Continued... "Escape to a Safe House"Link of the day - Free $50 Kmart card.
Advertisers like to say sex sells, but the rules of the game change when gas prices go up.
As the Silver State's fuel prices hit all-time highs, Nevada's brothel employees find it harder to make a living these days, leaving some people wondering whether they should stay in the business.
At the Stardust Ranch in eastern Nevada, bartender Cindy Howe says they're "down to only two girls. They don't want to come here because business is down."
The brothel is about to change hands after soaring gas prices affected the number of customers willing to drive out to Ely. Now its owners are forced to sell.
Truckers, who provide steady business to many of Nevada's 28 legal brothels, are now paying 40 percent more this year to fill up their rigs. A gallon of diesel averages $4.69 across the country, up $1.89, or 67.5 percent, from a year ago, according to the Department of Energy.
"Most of these truckers used to have $100 they could spend," Howe says. Now they're struggling to pay for fuel.
The Stardust's out-of-the-way location in downtown Ely doesn't help matters. Ely is 240 miles from Las Vegas, 320 miles from Reno and 240 miles from Salt Lake City, surrounded by open spaces.
"The cost of fuel is killing us," says Karl Hardy, who also works at the Stardust as a bartender. "Tourists can't afford it."
Hardy says he's worried about his job, but may find other work welding for a nearby mining company.
To provide customers with incentives, the Ranch offered free showers, parking and coffee. None of these perks translated into more business.
George Flint, a lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Owners' Association, says many of the brothels are seeing decreases in revenue anywhere from 20 to 45 percent. He says he has "never seen it this dramatic" in 48 years.
"There are more and more women having second thoughts about staying in the business," he says. "The return for their time is not there. In northern Nevada, most of our business is supported by the truckers. They don't have much disposable income left."
Other brothels rely on tourists who are no less cash-strapped. In western Nevada at the Kit Kat Guest Ranch in Carson City, co-owners Jacie Caramella, 23, and her mother Shelia, 50, says they've cut costs to trim their overhead.
"We could be buried right now," Jacie Caramella says. "This year really hasn't been a good year."
Their clients, who tend to come from San Francisco and Sacramento, aren't traveling as often now that gas prices are so high. "I would say we're probably down 25 percent," Sheila Caramella says. "We had a really bad winter up near Reno, so you don't have the people coming over the hill."
Crafty Strategies
But some of these Nevada institutions aren't lacking for customers.
Jim Davis and his wife, Bobbi Davis, co-own the Shady Lady Ranch in Esmeralda County, near Las Vegas. In between answering the door to let in three different customers, Jim Davis explained that unlike most brothels where the women negotiate one-on-one with their clients behind closed doors in a private room, the Shady Lady posts its prices online. The business also advertises monthly promotions, such as June's $25 discount off the regular 40-minute rate of $200.
"Other brothels play the negotiation game," he says. "It's too far to drive for that kind of thing."
Davis, 76, who attributes much of Shady Lady's success to his 54-year-old wife's "brilliance and marketing," says that the majority of its profits come from people driving out from Vegas, mostly men on business trips who generate "a ton of repeat business."
"Next month we're going to give a gas card out and we think that will help some," Jim Davis says.
July's promotion offers customers a $50 gas card if they spend at least $300 on services there.
"Good service and a friendly atmosphere will win over gas prices any day," he says.
One-man promotional machine Dennis Hof, the self-proclaimed "PT Barnum of booty," says he lives in another world, "the bunny world."
The owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch has been insulated from economic trouble, thanks to frequent national news coverage and HBO's cinema verite series "Cathouse," a documentary-style portrayal of the Bunny Ranch that debuted in 2002.
Business is up 20 percent for the year, says Hof, thanks in part to his latest promotions. His nationwide Father's Day radio contest asked callers to nominate their dad for a VIP Bunny Ranch booty pass, and June 11 Hof vowed to double the value of any IRS stimulus check that a customer cashed at the brothel and used on a Ranch Pleasure Party.
"The sex doesn't last long," he says. "The party is what it's all about."
Hof's persistence has paid off in a Web site that gets 125 million hits a month and a database of more than 17,000 women who have expressed interest in working for him. "Most girls are making a six figure income in a year, some a mid-six figure income," he says. He hires around eight women a month and loses six or so every year.
Naudia, 26, is one of the many women who entered the brothel business last year. She joined the Wild Horse Adult Resort and Spa about seven months ago, a place she describes as the "five star of all brothels."
Longing to leave her nine-to-five "average lifestyle" in California, Naudia began researching other jobs on the Internet. "I wanted to be a dancer -- that's how I got involved in this," she says. By searching online she found a brothel advertisement.
"I had never even heard of a brothel before," she says. "It advertised that girls sometimes make $20,000 to $40,000 a week."
Her income isn't nearly as lavish, but it's lucrative enough that she says her "lifestyle has turned around."
The Wild Horse brothel is doing better than expected this quarter. Even so, Naudia says some of her fellow workers reminisce about earlier times when business was more robust.
"The girls tell me it used to be so much better," she says. "But I can't miss something I never had."
Rise of the 'Stay-cation'
Right now the Nevada Commission on Tourism is running commercials across state lines to lure tourists into the state. Within Nevada they're asking Las Vegas residents to visit Lake Tahoe, and encouraging people in Reno to go up highway 80 to Elko, a place commission spokeswoman Bethany Drysdale describes as the "heart of cowboy country."
She says Nevada's tourism industry is good overall, despite tough times in Sin City and Reno.
"Of course, gas prices are going to affect us," Drysdale says. "Gas prices are raising, airfare and everything, but we are such a drive destination as well. The whole state is projecting less tourism income than what was originally projected."
In 2007, 57 percent of visitors who came to rural Nevada traveled in their cars. Today gas prices are at an all-time high in Nevada and the rest of the country. Tourists and locals are paying $4.27 a gallon in Las Vegas and $4.21 a gallon in Reno, according to AAA.
The rise in fuel costs has prompted the Nevada Commission on Tourism to rethink some of its initiatives. "We're trying to get more in-state travel. People really are looking closer to home," Drysdale says. "There's a new trend called'stay-cations' -- people vacationing in their own towns or nearby towns."
At the "world famous" Mustang Ranch and the Wild Horse Adult Resort and Spa brothels near Reno, general manager Susan Austin says she has noticed that the average tourist isn't traveling as far as he normally would.
The Mustang Ranch made headlines recently when production began on "Love Ranch," a movie starring Helen Mirren that's based on the ranch's infamous history. Austin serves as a consultant for the film.
Her reality, however, was a bit less glamorous earlier this year. After observing the sagging economy, she decided to lay off employees and trim back in the kitchen "and everywhere across the board to save one or two thousand a month." But in the past two weeks, business has picked up, partly due to "Love Ranch."
Several women have approached Austin looking for work. "When you see a huge influx of girls, you know they're not getting a lot of business," she says.
One of those women was Nyoka, 45, who was been working at the Mustang for the past three months. "This business is so unpredictable," she says. "You can be having sex all day and not having sex the next day, but it has a way of averaging out."
Nyoka, a former nurse, left the health care industry after a divorce, an ailing parent and the pressures of supporting both her daughter and granddaughter made it difficult to pay the bills. At the encouragement of a friend, she began working at the Sagebrush Ranch brothel, outside Carson City, where she stayed for four years.
"The business just died down there," she says. "There's a couple of girls there who are doing very badly, and it's a sign of the times." Nyoka says women at the Sagebrush who used to work one week, then take the next week off, now work three months in a row.
When several of Nyoka's friends decided to leave the Sagebrush for the Mustang Ranch, Nyoka followed and hasn't looked back.
"I average three grand a week," she says. "I'm a little higher than average -- I'm a very young 45, but I have the mindset of a 45-year-old and I know what guys like. I think my secret talent is drawing out their fetishes."
Austin's brothels still draw customers, who drive in from four or five hours away, but she says they're "not getting fellows from Chicago or the East Coast -- if you know what I mean." Her resort compound typically holds up to 150 men during the course of a day. "Last year was a banner year," she says. But 2008 started out slow.
Even so, she's not worried about the future.
"I've got some great smiling ladies, let's put it that way," she says. "We'll survive this. And we'll be here and smiling when all this picks back up."
"Sex is sex," says Nyoka. "So, they'll make a budget for it."
[Via - ABC]
Data Fudging 101. The History Of US Government Statistics Manipulation
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Mariage Annulled, After Bride Turns Out To Be Not A Virgin.
Weird $4 Gas Side-Effect
Good life in prison - Brazil inmate had $173K, guns, TV, fridge in cellL.L.Bean Celebrates Grand Opening of its Newest Retail Store in Freehold, New Jersey by
Tuesday, September 10 2013 @ 04:20 PM EDT
Posted in News & Views
Three-day grand opening celebration at Freehold Raceway Mall to include giveaways, seminars, clinics, the famous Bootmobile, free on-water kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding courses, family activities and more
Internationally known outdoor retailer L.L.Bean, best known for its Bean Boot and 100% satisfaction guarantee is pleased to celebrate the grand opening of its newest retail store in Freehold, New Jersey, Friday, September 20 through Sunday, September 22. Everyone is invited to the three-day event featuring giveaways, seminars, free on-water kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding lessons, a variety of family activities and more.
• Friday: Free L.L.Bean Gift Card worth up to $500 to the first 200 customers—doors open at 9:00 a.m.
• Saturday: Kayak package giveaway worth up to $500 to five lucky winners
• Sunday: Boat and Tote giveaway to the first 100 customers
• Friday, Saturday and Sunday: L.L.Bean Boot giveaway--guess how many boots are inside a giant display case and win Bean Boots for the whole family
Experts from L.L.Bean’s Outdoor Discovery Schools will offer free on-water kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding courses on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, plus there will be a wide variety of demonstrations and clinics on everything from tying flies, camping, navigation, knot tying and more.
“The Monmouth County area has a terrific array of outdoor recreational opportunities. Having one of our retail stores here will give our customers the chance to be outfitted in the very best, most appropriate gear and apparel for their adventures,” said Ken Kacere, senior vice-president and general manager of retail at L.L.Bean. “Customers will also receive expert advice from our Outdoor Discovery Schools, through a variety of seminars, clinics, and hands-on activities.”
There will also be a live birds of prey exhibit featuring falcons, hawks and owls. Folks can also have their photo taken with L.L.Bean’s famous Bootmobile, a mobile version of L.L.Bean’s first and most iconic product, the L.L.Bean Boot. This unique bio-diesel-fueled vehicle is 13-feet high, over 20-feet long and if it were a real boot, it would be a size 747.
This will be L.L.Bean’s 3rd retail store in New Jersey, with locations currently in Marlton and Paramus. For more information about the grand opening weekend and the store, please visit http://www.llbean.com/freehold.
About L.L.Bean, Inc.
L.L.Bean, Inc. is a leading multi-channel merchant of quality outdoor gear and apparel. Founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean, the company began as a one-room operation selling a single product, the Maine Hunting Shoe. While its business has grown substantially, the company remains committed to the same honest principles upon which it was built--a focus on the customer, continuous product improvement and innovation, respect for people, preservation of the natural environment and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. L.L.Bean products are rigorously tested, guaranteed to last and always shipped free. The 220,000 sq. ft. Flagship campus of stores in Freeport, Maine is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and welcomes more than three million visitors each year. L.L.Bean can be found worldwide at llbean.com. Join L.L.Bean on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
AdvertisementThe Cavaliers won the Eastern Conference last season. Will LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and company rule the East again? If Cleveland stumbles, which team is ready to step up?
We asked our ESPN Forecast panel to predict who will emerge as the Eastern Conference champion in 2015-16.
To participate in the discussion and perhaps get your opinion published on this page, #ESPNForecast is the Twitter hashtag to use. Or you can just follow along @ESPNNBA.
Who'll be beast of the East? Read on:
Eastern Conference champions projections
1. Cleveland Cavaliers
Proj. record: 59-23
Points: 158
Join the conversation on Twitter using #ESPNForecast
2. Chicago Bulls
Proj. record: 50-32
Points: 53
With the same roster as last season, it's all about Fred Hoiberg to see if he can't take this Bulls team over the top #ESPNForecast - Jamaal Aflatooni (@jaflatooni) August 31, 2015
3. Miami Heat
Proj. record: 47-35
Points: 29
@MiamiHEAT are a legitimate threat to dethrone @cavs and bring another championship to Miami! #ESPNForecast - Victor Arroliga (@vicarroliga14) August 31, 2015
Miami can realistically win the EC if they are healthy. Only CLE has a better shot #ESPNForecast - Tom (@MiamiHeatFan) August 31, 2015
4. Washington Wizards
Proj. record: 46-36
Points: 15
@ESPNNBA @WashWizards they should be higher. John Wall and Bradley Beal will step up a ton now that Pierce is gone. #espnforecast - DC Rising (@mab200216) August 31, 2015
@ESPNNBA @WashWizards Summer Forecast has D.C. as 4th most likely to win the East #ESPNForecast More Motivation...Keep Sleeping!! #DCRising - Blue Moses (@bluemoses22) August 31, 2015
5. Atlanta Hawks
Proj. record: 50-32
Points: 14
6. (tie) Indiana Pacers
Proj. record: 39-43
Points: 3
Join the conversation on Twitter using #ESPNForecast
6.(tie) Toronto Raptors
Proj. record: 44-38
Points: 3
6. (tie) Boston Celtics
Proj. record: 40-42
Points: 3
Join the conversation on Twitter using #ESPNForecastIt’s not just enough to be good – you’ve got to find your own unique voice. The question is – how?
This article will take you though several things that you can to do help you discover and carve out your own one-of-a-kind path as a photographer.
1. Focus on what interests you
This may seem obvious, but there are still a lot of people who go about this all the wrong way. They ask themselves, “What field of photography has the most demand right now? What area will be the most lucrative?” And then they go out and try to fit themselves into that picture.
But you will never be as successful doing this as you could be taking pictures of what interests you.
Why? Because when you are interested in something, you will enjoy it more. You will go out of your way to portray it in a good light. You will be more creative and want to try new things. This is so important and yet most people don’t even think twice about it.
If you love food, take pictures of food. If you are an animal whisperer, maybe you would adore being a pet photographer. If there’s nothing in the world that feeds your soul like going for a hike, you would probably make an excellent nature or landscape photographer.
When you are passionate about what you do, it is a simple fact that your joy will propel you forward. You will not be dragging yourself out of bed, you will be leaping from the mattress full of excitement and enthusiasm, and that in turn will carry over into your work.
2. Ask yourself: “How could I do this in another way?”
This powerful question will get your mind working on new possibilities. Though you may not have an epiphany each time you ask yourself this, you are always encouraging your brain to make new pathways and connections. And every once in a while, you will have an “ah-HA!” that makes it all worthwhile.
If you are serious about photography, you should always be taking pictures of what you are most passionate about. But it’s also just as beneficial to try new things and take pictures of different subjects, too. This doesn’t necessarily mean forcing yourself to take pictures of things that you aren’t interested in, but finding ways of taking pictures of anything in such a way that you find it interesting. It pushes you to always stay fresh and always continue learning and growing. Reading books and taking classes is fine, but I believe that the best teacher is firsthand experience. If you are continually searching for new subjects and new ways of photographing them then you are keeping yourself on your toes, and you work will never become stale.
Passion and excitement are the fires that fuel brilliance, and in order to keep that flame stoked you will need to look for ways to keep your own interest pulsing within you. I know from firsthand experience that when I go out and do something I’ve never done before with my photography I take a giant creative leap and everything that I learn carries over into each project I take on next.
3. Avoid the #1 creativity killer
Contrary to popular belief, reading more books and taking more classes does not always make you a better photographer. Don’t get me wrong; they can be incredibly helpful tools that help you learn and grow – to an extent. However, there is a point that most photographers reach where studying and learning stops being helpful and becomes counterproductive. How do you know that you’ve reached that point?
When you find yourself critiquing and criticizing your work more than you are simply enjoying it.
You might be thinking, “Now wait a minute. Hold on. Critiquing helps me to get better! That’s how I learn. I see what worked, what didn’t, and I can correct and improve.”
Yes, in an ideal world. And usually this works in moderation. However, I’ve seen more photographers shut themselves down long before they ever truly delved into their potential because of this #1 creativity-killer: perfectionism. They over-analyze all of the details of their photos, attempting to make everything in each one of them just right.
Photography is not supposed to be perfect. There are technical tools that we can use to improve our photographs, but they are only that: tools – not rules. Just like people, photos are technically imperfect – and yet that’s what makes them so beautiful. Each photo is an impression of a moment in time that will never again be recaptured. And only you, from your unique viewpoint, have the ability to take that picture.
Some of the most famous photos, considered by many to be the best of the best, have imperfections! In fact, most of them do! Not only that, everyone has different tastes. Something that one person might call a “problem area” might be the reason that someone else LOVES that exact same photo. Are you going to deprive dozens of people the enjoyment of your art simply because one person said “this part isn’t in perfect focus.” Screw focus! Seriously!
If you take the picture and you like it, then what anyone else says doesn’t matter. The “rules” are great to a certain extent, and then after that they start to hinder you. You may discover that you like those blurry abstract photos more than the ones in crisp, clear focus. And you might just find that there are a lot of other people out there who love this type of photography and would even hang it on their wall. But if you stop after that first blurry photo because some teacher or even just random person said that it makes it a bad photo, you may have just shut down the possibility of an incredible photography career because you limited yourself to the same box that everyone else lives in.
Stop trying to make your photos adhere to everyone else’s rules, and they will stop looking like everyone else’s photos.
The true “greats” in any field not only break the rules, but reinvent them.
4. Take photos every single day
Most photographers believe that searching for the problems and imperfections is not just the best way to improve, but the only way to improve. I disagree. Although this can be helpful to an extent, it is way more beneficial to just go out and take photos.
In fact, this is the best way to get good at anything: do it. Over and over and over and over and over again. By doing it, you train yourself to see the beauty in things and intuitively find the best angles. You get to the point where you don’t even have to think about it any more because it comes so naturally.
Take hundreds of photos. Don’t limit yourself. Yes, you can ask yourself as you are taking the picture, “How can I make this better? How can I frame this in order to enhance the features that I want?” But in this day and age, there’s no excuse not to take a photo if something catches your eye. With a digital camera, there are no negative consequences for filling up your memory card (unless you don’t have another one and still need to take more photos.) The more you take, the more selection you have to choose from.
Some of my very favorite photos that I’ve taken were simply on a whim. I saw something and thought, “hmm, I like that. I don’t know if it’ll make a very good photo, but there’s only one way to find out.” Click, click, click, click…. click. I’ll take the same picture from a few different angles. I’ll zoom out, zoom in, try different things. And often the one that I took as an extra is the very best one.
Try different things! Take the “technically correct” photo. Then break ALL off the rules! That’s how you step outside of the box and do new things.
Oh, and avoid those stupid forums where photographers sit around critique each others’ work. Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I’ve learned to stay away from them. People spend more time critiquing photos than they do taking them, and they’ve gotten so good at looking for problems that they see them everywhere. I’ve uploaded pieces of my best work to those sites, pieces are well loved by my agent, the design industry, my followers, and gotten critiques like, “Sorry, but there are parts of this that aren’t in focus. It’s just confusing and the photo doesn’t work.” Then other people rave over it and hang it on their wall and treasure it.
Just because one person says it doesn’t mean it’s true. Don’t let yourself get discouraged. Photography should be first and foremost, fun!
5. Don’t worry if you “miss” opportunities
Every photographer experiences those moments when we miss that perfect shot. That rare species of eagle (so to speak) flies over our head and we weren’t ready, or the exposure wasn’t right, or we got the shot, but it was blurry, and so on. I’ve seen a lot of people spend hours, and even occasionally days, agonizing over what they missed.
Photography isn’t how many shots you get or miss, it’s about how many you take – and keep taking. I have missed thousands of great shots – and screwed up thousands more. I take more “bad” photos than good, and though I do feel disappointed sometimes when I really wanted to get something and it didn’t work out, I always shrug my shoulders and say, “hey, it wasn’t meant to be.” Then I get out my camera, and go take some more pictures.
I can’t even tell you how many times I tried to get pictures of a bird of prey feasting on it’s dinner, and the shots didn’t turn out. I had so many “missed” opportunities. And then one day I looked out my grandmother’s kitchen window and just two yards away was this hawk eating a mouse. Because of the window between us, I was able to get as close as I wanted without scaring the bird away. There are always more opportunities.
When you have the attitude of not worrying about whether you get a shot or not and just enjoy the process, you invite more opportunities in. Life becomes magical.
6. Take photos because you love to – for no other reason
The #1 most important thing you can do to improve your photos and find your unique voice is to HAVE FUN!
Is it really that simple? Yes, yes, and yes!
When you are having fun and trying new things and exploring and enjoying yourself, you are naturally more creative. Ideas will occur to you that you never thought of before. Things will naturally fall into place. Having fun is the key to being good. Seriously.
Taking beautiful photographs is something that comes from the heart, not the mind. So many photographers spend all their energy researching the perfect equipment and collecting fancy lenses and filters. They strive for the technically perfect photo, and if they don’t achieve it they criticize their own work and hide it away.
Before I started photography, I don’t think I ever truly saw what was around me. In a sense, I was walking blind through my world, never noticing how pretty the cracks in the sidewalk were, or just how many colors there are in a single flower. To me, that’s the gift of photography; not the end result, but the ability to see the beauty of the world around me in a new way, and have the chance to capture it and share it with others. I do it for the joy of it, and if other people can share in that joy then it is wonderful. Still, even if others don’t, photography has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Photography is a journey. If you are trying to create work in order to sell it, you are probably over-thinking it. If you do it because you love it, you are creating what comes from your heart and soul. Do it because taking photos makes you feel good, and people will see it and like it because it resonates with them, and makes them feel good.
7. Get inspired!
Being truly unique is about getting all of the other voices out of your head about what you could do and what you should do and how things are supposed to be done. It’s about quieting all your thoughts and then listening to the stillness and the silence where all of the new ideas are and getting in touch with your spirit. This is where you will hear the inspiration that will cause you to make uncommon connections and spawn new and great creations.
Do those things that feed your soul – eat delicious foods, read inspiring books, spend time with creative people, listen to music that transports you to a whole new world. It is often in those moments when you are simply enjoying life that the best ideas occur or you have the most wonderful photo opportunities.
Those very things that inspire you are often hints and nudges in the direction that you could take your photography to move it to the next level.
About the Author:
Tien Frogget (www.tienfrogget.com) is a third generation artist with a passion for creativity and beauty. She is a virtual renaissance woman and enjoys a wide variety of creative media besides photography, including painting, writing, filmmaking, music, cooking, dancing, and graphic design. It is the diversity of her experiences and passion for living that fills her creations with unique perspective.Although he had excellent records in pro football, he never was able to produce an N.F.L. champion. The closest he came was with the Redskins in the 1972 season, when they lost, 14-7, to the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII.
Mr. Allen was known for wild spending to build a winner and trading draft choices for veterans. The Redskins kept winning but he was dismissed after the 1977 season. The late Edward Bennett Williams, who owned the team, said, "George was given an unlimited budget -- and exceeded it." A Start in 1948
Mr. Allen's celebrated coaching career, which covered six decades, began in 1948 at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. In his first year, the team had a 3-6 record. That was one of only three times he had a losing record, the other two coming at Whittier College in 1951 and 1954.
He took over the struggling Rams in 1966 and led the team to a 8-6 record, their first winning season in eight years. The next year, the Rams finished first in the division with an 11-1-2 record, Mr. Allen's best single-season mark.
Building the Redskins by trading away future draft choices for older players that other teams had given up on, Mr. Allen led the Redksins into the Super Bowl with an 11-3 regular-season record and playoff victories over Green Bay and Dallas.
"I talked to Coach Allen a few weeks ago and he was just so excited about the winning season he had a Long Beach State," said the Houston Oilers' coach, Jack Pardee, who played under Mr. Allen as a linebacker with the Redskins. "Coach Allen always thrived on building something out of very little. And he was very excited about the continuing challenge that he had at Long Beach."
Mr. Allen was constantly surrounded by controversy. After he was dismissed by the Redskins after the 1977 season, he was hired back by the Rams. But the Rams let him go him just two games into the 1978 exhibition schedule. He also had two winning seasons in the U.S.F.L. in the mid-1980's.
His most recent pro coaching job was with the Arizona Wranglers of the United States Football League in 1984, when he was 10-8. Mr. Allen also coached the Chicago Blitz of the U.S.F.L. in 1983, leading them to a 12-6 mark.
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He is survived by his wife, Etty; a daughter, and three sons.A man who doesn’t want to watch his wife give birth is a jerk. This was the overwhelming consensus reached by a host of respected blogs after the publication last Tuesday in the New York Times of a piece by a therapist noting an unhappy trend: A number of his male patients have reported that after witnessing their wives have babies they no longer feel attracted to them. “I mean, how are you supposed to go from seeing that to wanting to be with …?” one husband asked, unable to finish his sentence. It made no difference that these men were patients in search of help, not Neanderthals who’d ditched their wives; the bloggers —many of whom are usually temperate—were outraged. “Would it hurt if I call you a big pussy?”one woman queried, adding, “Luckily for me, I didn’t marry a total asshole, so I didn’t have this problem.” According to one post, a husband who finds his libido gone in the wake of the delivery room merits the same scorn we’d direct at a man who leaves a woman after finding out that she has a black grandparent.
Dr. Keith Ablow, the author of the article, certainly can be faulted for blithely suggesting that the solution lies mostly in mothers’ hands.
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is something that should matter more, that enriches this country.
The craziest thing is that Patrick is a mainstream film. It’s not a sadistic, gory slasher: it’s a funny and silly and camp horror-romp with great actors such as Rachel Griffiths.
But it’s doomed to die in the art-house ghetto, corralled away from its ideal audience member, the cashed-up teenage guy at the local mall’s multiplex.
Should we be shocked when local films fail to reach audiences after opening on a handful of screens, and on video-on-demand and DVD a undetermined months down the track when the marketing and news of their release is well and truly lost in time?
By way of testing this hypothesis, let’s conduct a little test. There are three new Australian films that have opened in the last month or so: Patrick, Mystery Road and The Turning.
I’ve seen them all and I’d seen them again (in fact, I did see Mystery Road again); they’re as good or better than most of the films in wider release this week. But look in your local paper, search Google and see how many cinemas within a 20-minute drive from your house are playing them.
It’s not easy, is it? Local films are largely inaccessible, unavailable at the cinema. And that’s a big part of the problem.
Although many have talked about the economic impossibility of competing with the mega-might of the Hollywood machine – essentially an imperial force in the cinemas – it is worth emphasising that, the distribution sector is the mechanism that allows Hollywood’s domination of film screens.
The major film distribution companies – linked to the major studios – have the Australian market stitched up. Between them, they took an 88% market share of the box office in 2012. Where does that leave Australian films, most of which are signed and co-funded by smaller distribution companies?
Why would a multiplex chain take on a film such as Patrick? Its main interest is to serve its corporate partners, the major distributors. This market domination circumscribes filmmakers’ access to screens and audiences’ choices.
It constitutes a major part of what limits the possibility of a more diverse film culture – Australian audiences don’t really get to choose what’s available to watch on Australian screens; Hollywood distributors do.
The result is a two-tier film distribution market, in which the big films get big releases and local films are shut out from mass audiences, left to vie for a handful of art-house screens.
Recently, some have argued steering away from feature-film funding to high-end television.
There’s truth to this, but it’s symptomatic of something bigger: we need to examine how and where audiences are accessing local content and reorient to these popular viewing sites. Access and availability: these are the lynchpin words.
Audiences for local content are coming through DVD, online and television, rather than the cinema. There are many titles such as Patrick that cannot survive in the cinema market – a fact that has nothing to do with their quality – but are much better suited to the lively audiences at festivals, on video-on-demand or through creative, boutique releases such as The Turning.
We need a total turn-around in the way we approach the film industry: we need to put distribution and exhibition at the forefront of our policies and our approach to attracting and developing audiences.
The Australian film industry is not limited to the production sector or the cinema. Television, DVD and video-on-demand are where audiences are watching local content: they should be seen as the main domain for first-run Australian film features. The myopic spotlight on production and development has to end. It’s time to ditch the box office focus.
We need a new distribution model for the digital age.Downstate Brewers Coming To Town For Craft Beer Week
By Paul Schneider in Food on Apr 28, 2012 7:30PM
Chicago craft beer drinkers know and love local craft breweries like Haymarket, Revolution, Half Acre, and Three Floyds. But how about Six Row? Bent River? Rolling Meadows? Big Muddy? These downstate brewers have been flying under the radar here in Chicago, but that will change when they share their brews under the bright lights of Chicago Craft Beer Week.
Guys Drinking Beer, the blogging team that provides top-notch coverage of Illinois beer legislation and politics, is calling on its downstate connections to put on "South of 80: A Celebration of Downstate Brewers," a showcase of some of Illinois' (and St. Louis in the case of Six Row) most under-appreciated yeast wranglers. Reps from each brewery will be pouring beers that rarely or never make it to Chicagoland at The Green Lady on Tuesday, May 22 from 7-10 p.m.Thanks to a reduction in parental willingness to immunize children, vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise. Last year, the U.S. witnessed three times as many measles cases as the previous year. Scientists are therefore trying to raise awareness of the importance of vaccinations, but this often seems a fruitless endeavor.
Now, scientists believe they could have come up with an effective intervention to help positively change people’s attitudes. Rather than focusing on reiterating scientific evidence, a group from the University of Illinois found they could moderate beliefs by reminding people of the harms that vaccine refusal can have. The findings have been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Predominantly sparked by a now-retracted and scientifically flawed study claiming tenuous links between the MMR and autism, fears over the potential negative impacts of vaccines have been difficult to shake, and the web continues to be loaded with scaremongering pages spouting inaccuracies and misinformation about life-saving jabs. But if you’ve ever tried to argue in defense of immunization, you’ll probably be well aware that reminding anti-vaxxers of the evidence supporting their use is usually a redundant activity.
In fact, not only has this approach shown to be ineffective, but studies have also demonstrated that providing information that attempts to undermine misbeliefs about the supposed dangers of vaccination can actually backfire and strengthen negative attitudes.
“Perhaps we need to direct people’s attention to the other aspect of the decision,” lead author Zachary Horne said in a statement. “You may be focused on the risk of getting the shot. But there’s also the risk of not getting the shot. You or your child could get measles.”
With this in mind, researchers conducted a new study designed to test out the effectiveness of one potential intervention aimed at changing people’s anti-vaccination attitudes: highlighting factual information about the dangers of communicable diseases. After recruiting 315 volunteers, the researchers used questionnaires to probe their views on a variety of divisive subjects, including vaccination.
Participants were then randomly split into three groups that received different study conditions. One group was provided with scientific literature that refuted common vaccination myths. The second, a so-called “disease risk group,” was given various materials highlighting the risks associated with three vaccine-preventable diseases: measles, mumps and rubella. These included stories from parents whose children had suffered such diseases, images of infants with the infections and information regarding the potential consequences of failing to vaccinate. The final group was a control that was given unrelated reading material.
At the end of the study, participants’ attitudes were reassessed to see whether the intention to vaccinate their children had changed. Encouragingly, the researchers report, they found that the second intervention successfully changed people’s vaccination attitudes in a positive manner; even those with the strongest anti-vaccination beliefs could be countered with this technique.
“Of course, the skeptics are the people with the greatest amount of room to move, so in a sense that finding is unsurprising,” study author John Hummel said in a statement. “But it’s also extremely important, because those are precisely the people you want to move.”
Whether or not this intervention will be successful with the general population remains to be seen, but it would be interesting to see whether implementation in target areas could yield similarly positive outcomes.A recent decision by the Department of the Army Human Resources Command has made a more reservists eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill.
On February 10 MILPER message 17-059 was issued, stating that reservists who had certain types of active duty after September 10, 2001 may now use that time to qualify for the Post-9/11 GI Bill under 10 USC 12301(d). That new active duty time includes:
Active Duty for Training (ADT),
Active Duty for Special Work (ADSW)
Active Duty for Operational Support - Reserve Component (ADOS-RC)
These new qualifying types of service also qualify reservists for the ability to transfer their GI Bill entitlement to their dependents.
According to the Army, this qualifying service includes school training, special training, branch officers basic course, and officer initial military training.
Reservists and veterans should review their records in the Reserve Component Manpower System self-service site, or contact their Unit Administrator, or Reserve Personnel Administration Center to verify that all qualifying ADT, ADSW, ADOS-RC time has been added to their record. Soldiers and veterans claiming to have served more qualifying ADT, ADSW, and ADOS-RC after September 10, 2001 than is documented in the RCMS ADOS table should submit their orders and pay account documentation for review or update as necessary.
New Eligibility to Transfer Education Benefits USAR Soldiers with at least 90 days of Post 9/11 GI Bill qualifying service, including the new qualifying service listed above, after September 10, 2001 may submit a Transfer of Education Benefits request via the milConnect website.USAR Soldiers must have four years from the transfer request date remaining in service. Those who submitted a request to transfer their education benefits before October 1, 2016 and were rejected because they had less than 90 days of qualifying service will have their requests reviewed again by the HRC Education Incentives Team. Following a review, the HRC Education Incentives Team will contact the Soldier/Veteran to inform them either of a change from "rejected" to "approved" status, or whether the transfer request will continue to remain in a "rejected" status. No action is necessary on your part.
For more information about these programs see our Post-9/11 GI Bill overview page and our Transfer of Benefits details page.Iowa's lone ObamaCare insurer has requested a 57 percent rate increase for 2018, citing uncertainty over how the Trump administration will handle the healthcare law.
In a revised rate request, Medica on Wednesday asked for an increase 13 percentage points higher than its original request filed in June.
Medica and other insurers have worried about whether the Trump administration will continue funding key ObamaCare payments known as cost-sharing reductions.
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These subsidies reimburse insurers for giving discounted deductibles and copays to low-income patients. The Trump administration has been making the payments on a month-to-month basis and could cancel them at any time. Insurers, who have asked for long-term certainty, have threatened to raise premiums or leave the ObamaCare market altogether if the payments don't continue.
“We remain hopeful the federal government will fund the cost-sharing reductions, but we are working with the Iowa Insurance Division to help consumers understand the implications of lack of this funding,” Geoff Bartsh, Medica vice president of individual and family business, said in a statement. “We regret the disruption this creates for consumers.”
An analysis released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this week said insurance companies would raise premium prices about 20 percent for ObamaCare's mid-level silver plans if the payments are ended.
Premiums for silver plans would be 25 percent higher by 2020, according to the CBO. The analysis also found that halting payments would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion through 2026.
While ending the payments would increase premiums, many people would be cushioned from the impact because federal tax credits rise automatically when premiums do.Let's Slam Dunk History Y'all!Together we can be the first fully crowd funded professional sports team in history! Yes, we can make history together.Imagine that. A fully crowd funded professional sports team. It would be everyone's team. The first internet based sports franchise. You, me and everyone we know can be a Hawks fan and contributor. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, or if you're into professional basketball or not. It's simple, let's make history.We just found out that the Atlanta Hawks franchise will go up for sale next week. See the Atlanta Journal Constitution story on the sale here.Yes, we can we do this. Let's raise $600,000,000 dollars!? That may sound like a lot of money, because it is. It's actually more than a lot, its a sh*t load of money. Let's try and raise a sh*t load of money together to buy the Atlanta Hawks!If you're hesitant about donating, please be aware that this is an all-or-nothing campaign. So, if we don't raise all 600 million dollars, then all the money goes back to the donors.Who wants to make history and be part of the first crowd funded professional sports team? Help us buy the Atlanta Hawks and tell you friends!Who am I you ask?I was born and raised in Atlanta. I love the ATL. I've never owned a professional basketball team before. But I can dribble between my legs 60% of the time. I can't dunk because I can't jump that high. But, I do dream big and I know that the ATL is just weird enough to dream with me. Let's rise up and slam dunk history y'all.Media Links:NPR - Radio InterviewCombat Rules: http://falloutpenand...com/wiki/Combat Crafting List: http://falloutpenand...m/wiki/Crafting Goodsprings Tutorial Town: http://falloutpenand...iki/Goodsprings I used the vault to help me with the rules, and I don't really care if the article is almost word from word, with a few variations. As long as I can get my point across, I'm pleased. The Crafting List and Goodsprings aren't down. Additionally, this campaign does not fit into the Fallout continuity. There was no Vault Dweller and all the settlements exist simultaneously, as well as out of order. Goodsprings replaces Shady Sands since Shady Sands went on to become NCR and I really liked the atmosphere and missions of Goodsprings from New Vegas. I will probably add some custom towns that take place in Chicago.
Edited by NotoriousLynx, 26 April 2012 - 04:58 PM.He became violent with a relative who didn’t wear her hijab:
A Benghazi native who recently served as a teaching assistant at the University of Missouri was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of child abuse after police said he “very violently” pulled a 14-year-old female relative out of school by her hair because she wasn’t wearing a Muslim headscarf, the Columbia Tribune reported.
Youssif Z. Omar pulled the female relative down a flight of stairs and outside of Hickman High School on Tuesday when he noticed she was not wearing a hijab, Officer Latisha Stroer said in an email to the Tribune. Omar is also accused of slapping the girl’s face, Stroer said.
I’m sure the Univ of Missouri’s ‘safe spaces’ crowd will come to her defense and strongly protest the belief system that perpetuates such violent behavior.Young specimens like this are sometimes confused with puffballs or other non-deadly mushrooms
The name destroying angel applies to several similar, closely related species of deadly all-white mushrooms in the genus Amanita.[1] They are Amanita bisporigera and A. ocreata in eastern and western North America, and A. virosa in Europe.[1] Another very similar species, A. verna or fool's mushroom, was first described in France.[citation needed]
Destroying angels are among the most toxic known mushrooms; both they and the closely related death caps (A. phalloides) contain amatoxins.[1]
Description [ edit ]
Destroying angels are characterized by having a white stalk and gills. The cap can be pure white, or white at the edge and yellowish, pinkish, or tan at the center. It has a partial veil, or ring (annulus) circling the upper stalk, and the gills are "free", not attached to the stalk. Perhaps the most telltale of the features is the presence of a volva, or universal veil, so called because it is a membrane that encapsulates the entire mushroom, rather like an egg, when it is very young. This structure breaks as the young mushroom expands, leaving parts that can be found at the base of the stalk as a boot or cuplike structure, and there may be patches of removable material on the cap surface. This combination of features, all found together in the same mushroom, is the hallmark of the family. While other families may have any one or two of these features, none has them all. The cap is usually about 5–12 cm across; the stipe is usually 7 1⁄ 2 –20 cm long and about 1⁄ 2 –2 cm thick. They are found singly or in small groups.[citation needed]
Destroying angels can be mistaken for edible fungi such as the button mushroom, meadow mushroom, or the horse mushroom. Young destroying angels that are still enclosed in their universal veil can be mistaken for puffballs, but slicing them in half longitudinally will reveal internal mushroom structures. This is the basis for the common recommendation to slice in half all puffball-like mushrooms picked when mushroom hunting. Mushroom hunters recommend that people know how to recognize both the death cap and the destroying angel in all of their forms before collecting any white gilled mushroom for consumption.[citation needed]
Distribution and habitat [ edit ]
A half-grown destroying angel
All Amanita species form ectomycorrhizal relationships with the roots of certain trees. Thus destroying angels grow in or near the edges of woodlands. They can also be found on lawns or grassy meadows near trees or shrubs. Several species called destroying angel are found all over the world.[citation needed]
Toxicity [ edit ]
The destroying angel (Amanita bisporigera) and the death cap (Amanita phalloides) account for the overwhelming majority of deaths due to mushroom poisoning. The toxin responsible for this is amatoxin, which inhibits RNA polymerase II and III. Symptoms do not appear for 5 to 24 hours, when the toxins may already be absorbed and the damage (destruction of liver and kidney tissues) is irreversible. As little as half a mushroom cap can be fatal if the victim is not treated quickly enough. The symptoms include vomiting, cramps, delirium, convulsions, and diarrhea. In one study, people who had ingested the toxin were treated with "fluid and electrolyte replacement, oral activated charcoal and lactulose, IV penicillin, combined hemodialysis and hemoperfusion in two 8-hour sessions", some with "IV thioctic acid, others IV silibinin" and all received a "special diet". It was concluded that "...intensive combined treatment applied in these cases is effective in relieving patients with both moderate and severe amanitin poisoning.".[2]
Physicians have had success in treatment of amatoxin poisoning using "anti-hepatotoxic" compounds from the milk thistle, Silybum marianum. A crude extract of flavolignans from S. marianum seeds, called silymarin (trade name Legalon) has proven useful in amatoxin poisoning cases. In a trial of one of the flavolignans silybin, in 60 patients poisoned by amatoxin-containing Amanita species, there were no deaths. (see Der Marderosian & Liberti 1988 and Foster 1991 for a summary of this work).[3]
See also [ edit ]Two South Korean photojournalists were grabbed by the collar, thrown to the ground and kicked and punched by about 15 Chinese security guards around 11 a.m. at a business exhibition venue in Beijing. / Yonhap
By Park Si-soo, Kim Rahn, Choi Ha-young
BEIJING/SEOUL – Chinese security guards assaulted Korean photojournalists covering President Moon Jae-in's state visit to China during an economic event in Beijing, Thursday.
Korea's foreign ministry made an official complaint to its Chinese counterpart, and asked the Chinese authorities to investigate the case. The latter launched investigation in the evening.
According to witnesses, the incident took place at around 10:56 a.m. when Moon was looking around Korean companies' booths at a Korea-China economy and trade partnership event in the China National Convention Center and moving toward another hall there.
As Moon and his security left the first hall, Chinese guards blocked Korean reporters and photojournalists from following the President. While journalists scuffled with the guards and told them they needed to follow Moon, the Chinese guards grabbed a photographer from the Hankook Ilbo, Koh Young-kwon, by the collar and pushed him to the floor.
Koh was unable to stand for a while. Another photojournalist taking photos of the scene had his camera taken from him.
After the short clash, the journalists were allowed to move to the second hall, but about 15 other guards prevented them from entering again although the journalists showed their press IDs which proved they could enter.
As Lee Chung-woo, another photojournalist from the Maeil Business News, protested, the guards took him aside, surrounded him and hit him with their fists. One guard kicked Lee's face while he was on the ground. The guards did not listen to Korean staffers from Cheong Wa Dae who were trying to stop them, witnesses said.
Two South Korean photojournalists were grabbed by the collar, thrown to the ground and kicked and punched by about 15 Chinese police officers around 11 a.m. at a business exhibition venue. / Yonhap
Most of the Korean security staff were not at the scene as they were with Moon, but a couple of them tried to stop the melee.
The two photojournalists were moved to Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, where Moon is staying, for emergency treatment by the President's medical team. Koh was suffering from back pain, while Lee's eyes were swollen and he was bleeding from both nostrils, according to witnesses. The latter said he had dizziness and nausea, so he was taken to a hospital for MRI and CT scans, a Cheong Wa Dae official said.
It is unclear yet whether the guards were police officers or private security hired by KOTRA for the event, as the Korean authorities are still identifying them. Private security guards there were also supposed to follow guidelines given by the Chinese police, according to the official.
The Korean government made a strong complaint about the incident to the Chinese authorities through diplomatic channels. As the two photojournalists want punishment of the guards involved, it also asked the Chinese government to investigate the case, planning to provide necessary medical certificates and photos of the scenes as evidence today. The relevant Chinese authorities launched investigation at around 9 p.m., he said.
Chinese state media slams S. Korean media reports
In the meantime, Chinese state-run media Huanqiu Shibao sharply attacked South Korean media reports, claiming they were spreading a "pessimistic analysis" of President Moon's state visit to Beijing.
An editorial Wednesday, the first day of Moon's four-day trip to China, responded to some South Korean media reports that forecast a fruitless bilateral summit slated for Thursday as no joint press conference will be held.
Earlier, Cheong Wa Dae said the two leaders will not issue a joint statement, saying the two countries did not have a consensus on current issues, apparently due to Seoul's deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system.
"China made meticulous arrangements for the warm reception of President Moon," the Huanqiu Shibao editorial reads. "However, some South Korean media spread a pessimistic analysis claiming the Chinese government ‘downgraded' respect for the President and ‘did not give him due courtesy.'"
Calling the media reports "narrow-minded," the state-run outlet reported on China's stance over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.
"The issue has become the biggest obstacle to the Bejing-Seoul relationship. The two governments partly reached an agreement on how to solve the problem, but some differences remain unsolved. The fact that the two sides will not issue a joint statement is a reflection of the differences."
Lee Chang-ju, researcher for the Korea Logistics Forum, said the provocative editorial mirrors lingering domestic concerns in China. The Huanqiu Shibao has been outspoken in defending China's national interest.
"If the two countries had issued a joint statement focusing on economic cooperation without mentioning THAAD, South Korea would have viewed it as a full-fledged solution to the THAAD, which China cannot accept," Lee said
An unprecedentedly large number of top businessmen accompanied Moon's visit, showing the administration's desire to revamp bilateral trade. However, this is not the time to address the economy for China, according to Lee.
"Distrust remains in China about Seoul's stance in October ― not to join a U.S.-led missile defense system, not to deploy more THAAD batteries and not to join a Seoul-Washington-Tokyo alliance," Lee said.
Seoul has said they were not promises but just the government's current position.
The two countries' media outlets exchanged barbs before Moon's departure. Regarding Moon's interview with China Central Television (CCTV) aired Dec. 11, South Korean media pointed out its "intentional omission" of Moon's remarks, in an apparent attempt to induce his clear-cut commitment to the agreement signed in October.
Some parts of the broadcast interview were different from the transcript distributed by Cheong Wa Dae to South Korean reporters. The CCTV omitted Moon's quote, "the agreement is nothing new," in order to make it look like a fresh one. Moon's description about North Korea as an "economically underdeveloped country" was also removed from the interview, possibly to not irritate its ally.Jared Kushner’s family company owns 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, shown here in March. (ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty Images)
Jared Kushner and his family company seemed close to striking a deal in 2016 to transform their aging, money-losing 41-story Manhattan office tower into a new and profitable Fifth Avenue skyscraper twice as tall.
A team led by Kushner and his father, Charles, courted global investors and prospective tenants.
Then Donald Trump became president and Kushner became his father-in-law's senior White House adviser. Problems ensued.
Kushner met in December with a Russian banker, leading to questions about whether he was mixing his role in the coming Trump administration with his business. A Chinese insurance fund and a former Qatari foreign minister backed away from a potential $900 million investment in the skyscraper. Another foreign funding stream was disrupted when Kushner Cos. came under federal scrutiny for its use of a controversial federal visas-for-investment program at another project.
Today, 666 Fifth Avenue appears to be the most troubled of the projects Kushner left behind for his family to manage. With one-fourth of its offices empty, lease revenue does not cover monthly interest payments, according to lending documents. A $1.2 billion mortgage, with escalating interest rates, comes due in 18 months. A ratings agency has classified a $115 million portion of the loan as "troubled," and company officials decline to say whether it will be fully repaid.
"They were crushed by this," said Thomas Barrack, a friend of Trump and Kushner's and former project investor. Kushner's move to the White House "just about completely chilled the market, and [potential investors] just said, 'No way — can't be associated with any appearances of conflict of interest,' even though there was none."
Laurent Morali, who became president of Kushner Cos. last year, said in an interview that he is marketing a 60-year-old aluminum-clad building "that is not competitive" with more-modern properties. He said the company will decide soon whether to proceed with its ambitious redevelopment plan or scale back.
Morali said the company is current on its loans. The company says it has a strong national portfolio of properties, including 20,000 residential apartments and 13 million square feet of commercial space.
"This is one asset owned by Kushner [Companies], Morali said, describing 666 Fifth Avenue. "It is a small fraction of our assets."
Kushner divested his stake in the property in January, selling it for an undisclosed amount to a trust controlled by his sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer.
Kushner declined to be interviewed. White House spokesman Josh Raffel said in a statement that in the lead-up to the election, Kushner focused on winding down his real estate work.
"Throughout the campaign, Jared gradually reduced his day-to-day-role in Kushner Companies," Raffel said. "Starting several weeks before the election until he fully resigned, his focus at the company was on transitioning over his responsibilities and relationships."
The Manhattan skyscraper is not the only Kushner project to draw attention since the election. The company has acknowledged that federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York have subpoenaed documents about use of the EB-5 visa program at One Journal Square, a planned Jersey City development. Meyer touted her brother's White House position in courting Chinese investors under the program, which offers temporary visas in exchange for $500,000 investments.
Meyer later apologized, but the Jersey City project lost a state tax break and is parting ways with co-working start-up WeWork.
[Days after sister’s visa pitch, Kushner divested asset related to N.J. project]
The family's network of federally subsidized apartments has come under fire from congressional Democrats over the company's hard-nosed pursuit of delinquent renters.
In his White House role, Kushner appeared before Senate committees to explain meetings with foreign officials that he said he inadvertently omitted from his security clearance questionnaire. And special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating whether Russia colluded with the Trump campaign, is examining Kushner's dealings, The Washington Post has reported.
As investigations proceed, pressures at 666 Fifth Avenue are building. The problems trace back to a brash decision Kushner, then 26 and a Manhattan real estate novice, made a decade ago.
Under pressure
Manhattan commercial real estate was booming when Kushner bought 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007 for $1.8 billion — the highest price paid at that time for an office tower in the United States. Experts speculated that Kushner had vastly overpaid.
Kushner had taken over the company because his father, Charles, had just served time in federal prison for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering. Eager to re-brand their company, the Kushners had sold much of their New Jersey real estate holdings to make the Manhattan gamble.
To back up a colossal loan package, the Kushners had a $2 billion appraisal, based largely on the premier retail space fronting Fifth Avenue, but months after buying the building, the Great Recession pummeled values.
By 2010, Kushner risked losing the building. He was delinquent on payments, according to a report by Trepp, which analyzes real estate transactions, and he entered debt restructuring negotiations. He sold the retail portion at a profit, which helped cover the Kushner family's investment, but the office portion was hemorrhaging, according to losses outlined in lending documents.
Kushner was under extraordinary pressure from other investors. Kushner, who had married Ivanka Trump in 2009, turned to two friends of his father-in-law for help.
Barrack, who ran a California investment company called Colony Capital, had met Donald Trump in the 1980s when he negotiated on behalf of a client for the sale of the Plaza Hotel.
In 2010, Barrack's company acquired part of the distressed debt on 666 Fifth Avenue. He invested $45 million and eventually made a profit, he said.
In 2011, Trump called Barrack to arrange a meeting for Kushner. As Barrack recalled it, "Donald called and said: 'Look, I have no idea what's going on. Jared has some deal you have an interest in.' "
Kushner flew to California and told Barrack about his plan to salvage the project. He came alone, without lawyers, and Barrack was impressed. Kushner told him that investors should accept a restructuring plan to keep the project afloat — even though some of them would get less than they expected from their investment.
After 75 minutes, Barrack agreed to help, concluding that "it seems like it is in everyone's interest to restructure this." He said he called Trump and told him: "You should get down on your knees that your daughter found this kid. He is out of central casting. He was respectful, he was totally up to date on the facts and the numbers and had a very persuasive demeanor."
Kushner also turned to Steve Roth, Trump's partner in another Manhattan office building. Roth's company is Vornado Realty Trust. Its ties to Trump attracted attention recently when it bid on a new FBI headquarters building, a project the administration later canceled. Roth declined to comment for this article.
In 2011, Roth's company bought 49.5 percent of the office portion of 666 Fifth Avenue, enabling Kushner to restructure the debt and extend the $1.2 billion loan to 2019, according to lending documents. Vornado announced in late 2012 that it paid $707 million for the retail portion.
Other investors were not as lucky. Area Property Partners held $105.4 million of Kushner's debt, according to lending documents, and objected to the restructuring terms. The Post reported in May how Kushner, as owner of the New York Observer media outlet, urged reporters to pursue a negative tip about Area Property's chief executive. The Observer reporters said the tip was unfounded and no story was published. Area declined to comment. Kushner has declined to comment when asked about the Observer matter.
[A high-stakes gamble: How Jared Kushner reacted to previous crises]
At the time, Kushner was optimistic about 666 Fifth Avenue and his ability to attract new tenants.
Since then, the occupancy rate has plummeted to 70 percent, far short of expectations, according to lending documents. Citibank, a primary tenant when Kushner bought the building, has vacated the property except for a small retail space. Phillips Nizer, a law firm that has been a tenant for 22 years and occupies two floors of the building, is leaving at the end of this year, according to managing partner Marc Landis.
Revenue has declined. When Kushner Cos. took over the property in 2007, the net operating income was $61 million. That dropped to $41 million in 2016 because of the sale of the retail portion and declining office occupancy, according to Trepp.
Morali said that the building struggles to compete in a soft commercial market in which office leases have shifted to trendier Manhattan spaces such as Hudson Yards.
The strain on the Kushners is hard to quantify. The company is privately held, and it declined to provide an independent financial report.
The company has taken steps to bolster its finances. In 2016, just before Trump's election, it refinanced its portion of the former New York Times building, including a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank, giving it $74 million more than Kushner had paid a year earlier, according to securities filings. The company declined to specify how the $74 million has been used.
[Kushner firm’s $285 million Deutsche Bank loan came just before Election Day]
The company's biggest challenge was finding a way to turn 666 Fifth Avenue into a moneymaker before the debt came due.
Tall order
The plan for turning 666 Fifth Avenue into an 80-story office tower was distributed to prospective investors and greeted with skepticism when it became publicly known last year. The Real Deal, a New York real estate publication, described it as a "tower of hubris" for the Kushners.
The plan called for vacating the building and constructing the taller tower, including hotel rooms and luxury housing, under a design by famed architect Zaha Hadid, who died last year. Much of the proposal is conceptual, but a rendering showed a structure with a squat base with top-flight retail and a tall, thin tower for luxury residences. While financing details have not been disclosed, a key component of the plan would be to have new investors foot much of the bill, enabling the Kushner Cos. debt to be retired or renegotiated and giving the company a stake in the new property.
Kushner Cos. valued the renovation at $7.5 billion. A number of New York City's biggest real estate firms that preferred quick returns declined to get involved, according to New York real estate executives and analysts. The plan relied partly on raising money from foreign investors through the EB-5 program. The company has said that applying for such funds was allowed under the rules.
Kushner and his company also recruited deep-pocketed global investors who might see the building as a way to make a distinctive mark in Manhattan. But the effort posed ethical questions as Kushner moved into his role with Trump. In 2016, Kushner simultaneously helped run Trump's presidential campaign and served as president of a company seeking billions of dollars from foreign entities.
One deal that came close to fruition was with Anbang, a company closely affiliated with the Chinese government that considered investing $400 million, according to Bloomberg News. Anbang had just bought the landmark Waldorf Astoria hotel when Kushner met with its representatives there a week after the election, according to the New York Times. Anbang later issued a statement saying that "there is no investment" and declined to comment further.
Another potential investor was a fund run by the former prime minister of Qatar, Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, one of the world's wealthiest men, who would have lent $500 million, according to the Intercept. Hamad did not respond to a request for comment. Kushner Cos. has confirmed the China and Qatar efforts. Neither effort succeeded.
Concerns about Kushner's business dealings intensified when it was disclosed earlier this year that he met in December with the top executive of the Russian bank Vnesheconombank, or VEB. The bank has said that the executive, Sergey Gorkov, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, discussed "promising business lines and sectors" with Kushner. VEB is Russia's economic development bank and is considered an arm of the Kremlin.
Kushner assured Congress in a July 24 statement that the meeting did not involve "any discussion about my companies, business transactions, real estate projects, loans, banking arrangements or any private business of any kind." Democrats have demanded an investigation.
Kushner's family company said that as of January it had not sought investments from entities connected to foreign governments, although that does not rule out taking money from wealthy foreigners who also have business before the U.S. government. A person close to the company said that company officials continue to meet with potential investors from the United States and other countries.
Morali said that excluding foreign government funds will not preclude him from finding investors. "We happen to be at a point where we've explored a lot of different options and I'm pleased with the progress
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reactive programming you can take actions on any data stream that you're observing. In our scenario we just wanted to load a CSV file into Couchbase.
If you've got a massive dataset, you can take this tutorial to the next level by using Apache Spark. I wrote a very similar CSV loader found here that makes use of Spark.13.9K Shares Share
“Straighten out your wrist, Brotha!” When my boxing coach yelled these words, I knew his call was about more than perfecting my jab.
I have experienced the demands of Black masculinity and the responses to my failure to perform properly are not all that different from the experiences of failed masculinity that I felt within Black lesbian communities.
But it is true, I am now a young Black American Male. People usually assume that I am somewhere between the age of 15 and 20. I’m 28.
The world is unkind to Black bois. The world is unkind to Black girls. But the way our gendered bodies are policed is different. Black bois are assumed thugs, thieves, rapists, and overly aggressive.
I knew this already, but I feel it more now like when I got kicked out of a Hollywood store because the owner assumed I was there to steal something.
He didn’t just make that assumption. This white man came over and hovered over me yelling for me to get out and to never return because “he knew my kind.”
I spoke calmly, but he kept yelling. I couldn’t help but think, “this man can’t see or hear me.”
He could only see what he believed to be true about young black bois, and it didn’t matter who I was, who I had been, or who I might become. My future and past were predetermined in his mind.
I was the dangerous body that needed to be policed.
And Black women have it too. Bearing the brunt of pathology, the Black woman has been told that she is the reason why Black people suffer. Because she has been too strong and emasculating. Because she is crazy and angry.
She needs to be put in her place by Black men and those outside her racialized community.
When my boxing coach told me to straighten out my wrist, it came after lots of criticism around my push-up form, my strength (or weakness). The way my body moved was sub-par especially in comparison to this ripped Black man.
I have gone from being a big, strong looking Black woman to occupying the body of a young, lanky Black man. The more my body masculinizes, the more I feel my femininity stands out as contradictory to those who invest in normative types of masculinity.
So What is Masculinity? How Did I Come To Learn How To Wear It?
When I was in high school, I learned there was a code to same gender loving life. You were either masculine or femme, a stud or her girlfriend.
I was told that my look was confusing. People couldn’t tell what I was. Someone told me that I was sporty “femme.” I didn’t know what that meant but I was happy that I had a name to call myself, a place to belong.
The first woman I went on a date with was masculine presenting, a stud. She had a way of making me feel her masculinity as a direct opposite to my femininity.
I didn’t like the room I was given to move or to not move.
I know that this interaction was circumscribed by chivalry. She opened my door and closed it. She paid for dinner. Something about this interaction made me feel trapped.
I decided that I would be nobody’s femme and therefore I must be like her, a masculine woman, a stud.
I wanted to be in control.
I took the summer to learn my gendered role. I became a stud. And it worked because I was able to get the attention of the femmes that I was attracted to.
In those early teenage years, I mostly learned from other studs how to be. I remember the first time I learned about stud misogyny. I was 18 or 19 at the time and I was at a house party in the Bay.
There were many beautiful Black women in the space. There were studs and femmes. The host was a stud who wore cornrows, baggy jeans, and perhaps a polo or a jersey. She was good looking, but somehow I knew that was something I wasn’t supposed to articulate aloud.
I remember looking at her and examining the family photos that had been on display in her house.
The girl in the picture was different. She was femme. She smiled.
I wonder if the girl in the picture felt like she needed more room. I wonder if the stud she had become gave her more room.
I wonder how that room, that liberation that she felt came from dominating feminine women or perhaps the feminine that might have been a part of her.
I remember walking in on a conversation between two studs. One told the story of how her girlfriend broke her chain and how upset she was.
The other stud chimed in, “If that had been my girl, I would have slapped her.”
Everyone laughed, but I was afraid.
That’s probably one of the earliest moments that I felt uneasy about being a stud and the kind of masculinity we were creating and inheriting. Another lesson in studly masculinity came for me when I was in college. I had fallen for an older femme woman. We’d spend time walking and holding hands in the New England chill. She taught me how to be a good stud. “You should always walk on this side of the street, so that I feel protected.” “You should always open the door for the lady.” I was getting schooled in old-fashioned chivalry and I was good at it. I was in love with it. The giving, the idea that I could somehow protect. But it wasn’t simply that I could protect. There was an insistence that I MUST. Anything else meant failure. What if I was afraid? What if I needed to feel/be protected? Well, that was the sacrifice of normative masculinity. After I had top-surgery, I needed help with my carry-on bags when flying. I wasn’t able to raise my arms above my head. No one could see that I needed help. I didn’t have any visible wounds, so I had to ask. I asked a white stewardess for help and she glared at me. She was annoyed and she didn’t want to help me. I explained to her that I had just had surgery and still annoyed, she told me that next time I would need to check my bag if I couldn’t do it myself. I was a young, seemingly able-bodied Black man. I wasn’t elderly. Why did I need help? How can we expect to create healthy men and bois, if they live in a society where asking for help is met with punishment and enforced shame? Is there room for vulnerability in masculinity? We must make room. Who I Am Today I walk in the world today as an effeminate Black transman. Queer, indeed! I never want to straighten out my wrist. I want it to flare, I want it to paint flame across canvass because I am unafraid of femininity. It is the place from which I garner my strength. The term Masculine of Center has been one that I have clung to for sometime now. Masculine of center (MOC) coined by B. Cole of the Brown Boi Project, recognizes the breadth and depth of identity for lesbian/queer/womyn who tilt toward the masculine side of the gender scale and includes a wide range of identities such as butch, stud, aggressive/AG, dom, macha, tomboi, trans-masculine etc. When I discovered it, I thought, “Finally, a term that can hold me!” But as I sit here today and write, my center feels feminine. Is there room for that? We must make it. I have always carried with me both masculine and feminine energies, but I have often been forced to choose one over the other depending upon the space around me. I have been on hormones since July 2011. I had top surgery in May 2012. It is 2013 and while some things have clearly changed physically and emotionally, some things have stayed the same. I still bleed every month. For many this may seem to be a contradiction to my masculinity or maleness, but I cherish the moments. I am thankful that my body carries both masculinity and femininity at its core, because at the end of the day, what we should all be striving towards is balance. We need to build relationships between men and women that allow space for both parties to grow. We need to build relationships between men and men, women and women, that allow space for both parties to move freely. The gender binary affects us all in detrimental ways. And while masculinity may seem to offer more room, it also has its limitations. And femininity, if only understood as masculinity’s property, is detrimental to women and other people who identify as femme. Hi, my name is Kai M. Green. I am a Black Transman. I am a Black feminist and my center is just as feminine as it is Black. 13.9K Shares Share Kai M. Green is a filmmaker and a spoken word poet who examines through film and poetry questions of gendered and racialized violence and a PhD candidate in the department of American Studies and Ethnicity at The University of Southern California. Learn more about him on Youtube and his blogs, Kai’s (Bi)Weekly Jams and In The Darkness: My Dissertation Journey, book him for speaking engagements here, and follow him on Twitter @Kai_MG. Found this article helpful?
Help us keep publishing more like it by Help us keep publishing more like it by becoming a member!“If you can, you should.”
Never has this phrase been more applicable than in the realm of open source technology. For those not in the know, “open source” refers to any code or blueprint that has been deliberately made available for reproduction–basically, one not subject to copyright restrictions. Bitcoin, of course, is a prime example.
It sounds simple, but the effects of open source technology are quite profound. Advocates love to talk about freedom and creativity, but the greatest aspect of the open source community is how efficient it is. Everyone can see exactly how an open source product was made; those working on similar projects can save resources by borrowing bits and pieces, while making improvements in the process. Sharing costs nothing.
Since every open source product is effectively free, people can now allocate their resources elsewhere. While that might mean more spending money for some, for others it might mean the success of their small business, or a means to pay the bills. Open source technology is essentially creative infrastructure, an asset held by and benefiting society as a whole. Coders and engineers can put their minds to use elsewhere, building off each other as more free information becomes available.
But how will great minds make a living? Not all services can be open sourced. Many require ongoing support or complex installation–labor, in other words. While holding onto a patent requires no real work, technical support certainly does, and such employees would not go unpaid. The expansion of the open source community will lead to a wider array of products and services available, so there will always be real jobs for the taking.
Of course, there will often still need to be some incentive for open source work, especially on projects that don’t directly benefit the developer (aside from credit and reputation). If you don’t mind (or have no choice but) to pay taxes, the central authority in charge of those funds come allocate them to development. Otherwise, crowdfunding solutions like CoinFunder, BitcoinStarter or Crowdtilt are rapidly becoming effective means of acquiring capital voluntarily.
So why haven’t we done this already? Most of the time, it’s because withholding a technology yields a competitive advantage. If none can develop your solution on their own, you are free to charge whatever you wish for their service. It leads to scenarios like we have in the traditional financial system, with absurd fees and and restrictions upon property (money) that is ostensibly ours. If Bitcoin can open source the financial system, then it definitely should.‘The Joker’ is no doubt one of DC’s most iconic villains to date, with every incarnation bringing something a little different to our screens. The first Joker most audiences ever saw was Cesar Romero’s, in 1966-68 TV and film versions of ‘Batman’, and what a brilliant starter block he created. His refusal to shave for the role made his moustache prominent underneath the make-up, and his slapstick style fighting throughout, and the exaggerated laugh made him and the first version ‘The Clown’.
The next version to grace our screens was Jack Nicholson’s from Batman in 1989. Jack’s outfit and laugh felt a lot closer to the mark. His stretched out unnatural smile also made him quite scary to look at.
Throw in a bunch of professional criminals and suddenly he was a force to be reckoned with, and not just another Batman villain. If Cesar Romero was the clown, then Jack Nicholson’s version was no doubt ‘The Gangster’.
Next up was Heath Ledger’s version in The Dark Knight back in 2008. This version was no doubt my favourite to date and brutally took the character places it hadn’t gone before.
His make-up and demeanour were deliberately messy, his character switching between intelligent calm to crazy clown with the drop of a proverbial hat. Heath’s sublime performance cemented him in iconic movie history by famously winning a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his efforts. His version was obviously ‘The Anarchist’.
The next and latest actor to take on the mantle was Jared Leto, starring in 2016’s Suicide Squad. This version again took the character in new unexpected ways. His subtle make-up, grilled-teeth, array of tattoos and expensive clothes easily separated him from what had come before.
His style of acting on the other hand seemed familiar; it seems like Jared has drawn influence from all of the actors that come before. I can see a little bit of Cesar, Jack, and Heath in his performances (deliberate or not), but I also see Jared as his own Joker, ‘The Psychopath’. But what was most interesting about this version was seeing emotions we hadn’t seen in a Joker character before. Jealously, lust, and possibly even sympathy, all brought-on by fellow psychopath Harley Quinn (Brilliantly played by Margot Robbie).
These aren’t the only Jokers we have seen of course, but they are the mainstream versions most people will have seen and heard of. We have also seen a bunch of cartoon versions, the best of them is probably one of the most recent, ‘The Killing Joke’, where the Joker is played fantastically by Mark Hammill. Hamill also provided the voice of ‘The Joker’ for the game ‘Arkham Asylum’.
Another version we saw was in the TV series Gotham, albeit briefly (if it is even him!). Sound complicated? It is. Cutting the long story short, there is a character that is basically the foundation of what the Joker would go on to become and he was fantastic too.
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What’s next for Joker? Well the rumour mill is in full-flow at the minute with many conflicting and crazy ideas. The first and most obvious is Suicide Squad 2, where the Joker will apparently be a main character this time around and no longer a cameo. The second rumour is Gotham City Sirens. This would star Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn as the Sirens and main characters of the movie (With an expected cameo from The Joker played by Leto). The third is that Leto’s Joker will star in The Batman movie (which is about to go into production).
There is also rumours The Joker will get his own standalone film, but it is unknown whether Leto is expected to star in this one. It doesn’t matter in what context, or even who plays him. But, the quicker they get The Joker back on our screen again, the better.Blumenthal says his proposal is one piece of a comprehensive violence control strategy. Conn. senator floats ammunition bill
Sen. Richard Blumenthal plans to introduce a bill to toughen requirements for purchasing ammunition — a response to the mass shooting last month that claimed 26 lives at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
The bill from the Connecticut Democrat, who served as the state’s attorney general, would require retailers to use an FBI database to conduct background checks on anyone who buys bullets and report to law enforcement when someone purchases more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
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Background checks are currently only required for the sale of firearms.
“Ammunition is the black hole of gun violence prevention,” Blumenthal said on a conference call with reporters. “Felons, fugitives, domestic violence abusers, seriously mentally ill people — all are barred by law from buying ammunition and guns, but there are no checks for ammunition sales to enforce the law.”
The bill would also ban Teflon-coated bullets, which can pierce body armor.
Blumenthal said that his proposal was only one piece of a comprehensive strategy to curb gun violence, including renewing the ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines; closing a loophole that allows unlicensed sellers to sell weapons a gun shows without background checks; and provisions to make it tougher for the mentally ill to acquire guns.
In recent weeks, the first-term senator has been meeting with families of the victims of the Newtown tragedy and Senate colleagues to try to build support for the ammunition bill. He’s also recently pitched the idea to Vice President Job Biden, who is leading a White House task force to come up with recommendations on how to prevent future mass shootings.
The task force is charged with making recommendations before President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
“I’m hopeful a sustained effort will help overcome what has been regarded as strong or difficult obstacles in the past,” Blumenthal said. “The political landscape is changing for the better. A common sense enforcement tool will have traction and success.”The majority of those lucky enough to have visited a beach in their lifetime will have experienced what is essentially a common sight at the coast; a strip of golden sand; a few dozen sunbeds; calm blue sea and clear skies. Of course, things aren't always normal depending on your location. Here are some incredible, uncommon sights at the beach. Haeundae Beach Image Source Haeundae Beach in South Korea is not the place to go should you be looking for a peaceful bout of sunbathing, as the mile long stretch of sand is apparently the world's most populous during summer months. As illustrated by the claustrophobia-inducing photo, over 100'000 people have been known to fill the beach simultaneously at its peak. More pictures are here. Cappuccino Coast Image Source In August 2007, visitors to the the coast of Yamba, New South Wales - especially Main Beach - were treated to a case of sea foam so extreme that the majority of onlookers were completely baffled. Caused by 'impurities in the ocean', this particular case of what is actually a common event was further intensified by storms just off the coast which whipped up the foam to the extent seen in the photo above. More can be seen here. Seagaia Ocean Dome Image Source At first sight the beautiful, inviting beach shown in the photo above seems as normal as most. In truth though, it's entirely man-made, and indoors. The building in which it resides was, prior to its closure in 2007, called Seagaia Ocean Dome and located in Japan proudly held the title of 'world's largest indoor waterpark'. An engineering masterpiece. Red Tide Image Source Surprisingly, the red water seen sweeping towards the beach in the photo above is entirely natural, and the result of a very often harmful onset of Algal Bloom; a phenomenon in which algae accumulate in a body of water to such a degree that its colour actually changes. Visually stunning, but potentially dangerous. Duck! Image Source Had countless similar photos not circulated the internet over the past few years, it would be easy to dismiss this picture as fake, but of course it isn't, and still deserves mention. The beach pictured can be found on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean, and is unfortunately located directly underneath the landing path of planes approaching Princess Juliana International Airport. If you haven't already done so, I strongly suggest a visit to Youtube for video footage. Couple Image Source As you sit on the beach in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, England and look out at sea, you will no doubt notice two enormous characters - each five metres in height - standing above the water on a frame. The permanent sculpture, entitled 'Couple', was created by artist Sean Henry and has been puzzling tourists since 2007.More women than ever are using contraception, giving hope for a global slowdown in population growth. But despite improvements in family planning services, particularly in low-income countries, the UN estimates 225 million women and girls who would like to delay or avoid pregnancy do not have access to a modern form of contraception.
Following the publication of our interactive on contraception rates around the world, which used UN figures, we asked readers to share their experiences of accessing family planning services. There were many positive responses from women in countries including the UK, Sweden, Australia, Jamaica, Spain and Argentina, who said they experienced little or no problems accessing contraception.
Others – including in Zimbabwe, Japan and Ireland – described the barriers they faced, including cultural or religious opposition to contraception, supply shortages and frustrations in having their views heard by medical professionals. Below are four of the most common responses from readers, some of whom wish to remain anonymous.
Rise in use of contraception offers hope for containing global population Read more
‘The family planning services aren’t there’
In Kenya, national health surveys show more than 60% of young women and girls who have had sex have not used contraception. One reader, Raymond Obare, who works on a project providing contraception to young people in Nairobi, said women face a multitude of barriers. “In Kenya, family planning services in government hospitals are limited and inconsistent,” Obare said. “Unintended pregnancy is a big challenge to girls and young women, resulting in high unsafe abortion rates and school drop-outs.”
A reader from Ghana, aged 23, said people in rural areas face the biggest challenges in accessing long-term contraception. “If you are in a city it is easy to get contraception from a walk-in clinic or the hospital, but women outside of the city can’t because they sometimes have to travel a long way to the clinic, or if you can get the pill close by you might not want to in case family members see you,” she said. “Also people talk about side effects so some girls don’t want to use the pill because they’re afraid. Then they are faced with relying on condoms and making sure men put them on.”
‘I was denied contraception on religious grounds’
One reader from Jamaica, aged 35, said she was unable to access emergency contraception while in the US. “I remember being in Florida, and being denied the morning-after pill, because the doctor felt it went against her religious beliefs,” she said. A reader from the UK, aged 24, said she had to change clinics after the first nurse said she knew her Catholic parents and hinted she would tell them she was using contraceptives.
In many countries it is difficult for single women to get full access to family planning services. “It’s fine for married women, but if you’re unmarried it’s difficult,” said a reader from the Philippines. “It’s expected that you will not have sex until you are married, so if you want to go on the pill when you just have a boyfriend, you have to find the right place to ask.”
‘My method of choice is unavailable’
Of those women who live in countries where some forms of contraception are readily available, the majority said their biggest issue was accessing their method of choice. Rachael Ingram, 19, from the UK, said fitting into clinics’ schedules was difficult. “There are many clinics around my area to get contraception, however most of them only offer certain types of contraception on certain days of the week, and as a woman working full-time it just isn’t viable to go to the clinic or doctor on for example a Wednesday morning just to get a specific form of contraception that I want,” she said.
A particular concern from readers was the difficulty in finding medical staff who could fit and remove IUDs. One Australian woman, aged 25, said she faced a $300 bill at a private clinic after facing a six-month wait at a public hospital and no local GPs with the required specialised training to fit her IUD. “Most doctors will just prescribe the pill. IUDs are hard to access even though they’re well-regarded and effective,” she said.
‘Not all doctors are willing to listen to what I want’
Some readers said they were childless by choice, but were unable to access long-term or permanent methods of contraception. “I feel like even the term family planning assumes we all want children,” one reader from Canada said. A woman from Scotland said she had experienced “debilitating side effects from contraceptives” and had requested sterilisation since she didn’t want to have children. “I have been met with the ‘you’ll change your mind’ attitude every time I have requested sterilisation, and have at the age of 34 given up asking,” she said.
In China, Kirsty Grace, 27, said cultural factors made it difficult for women to take control over their reproductive health. “In a country where the permitted number of children is dictated and penalised severely, women are incredibly restricted in their means of prevention,” Grace said. “China has seen such rapid progression: academically, economically and technologically in the past couple of decades, however my experience here leads me to conclude that the treatment of women lags far behind.”LOVELOCK, Nev. — He just won’t let it go.
O.J. Simpson insisted Thursday that the trove of sports memorabilia he’s in prison for stealing in 2007 was his to take.
“It’s kind of mind-boggling that they [the state of California] turned over to me my property that I’m in jail for for trying to retrieve it. It was my property — I would never try to steal from anybody,” Simpson told the four-member parole board that’s considering his release.
The Juice’s rambling, unapologetic explanation came in response to the question, “What were you thinking?” regarding the night in 2007 when he led a group of armed men and stormed a Las Vegas hotel room to steal various sports memorabilia.
“The property was yours?” one of the board members asked Simpson, who appeared via a closed-circuit video feed from Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada, where he’s been locked up on a nine-to-33-year sentence.
That’s when a tense-looking Simpson grew serious.
“It’s been ruled legally by the state of California that it was my property,” he sternly answered.You can buy all kinds of weird things from vending machines these days – from live crabs to blue jeans to gold bars – but this new iteration is more entertaining than most, and it’ll certainly keep you busy longer than a bag of Skittles. Peruse the covers of a curated selection of books through the glass of these BooksActually vending machines in Singapore for a new distraction on demand. If only this idea caught on everywhere, maybe we’d spend a bit less time standing around staring at our phones.
Two of the machines are now ready for reading enthusiasts in high-traffic areas, including the National Museum of Singapore and the Singapore Visitor Center. Fittingly for these locations, the selections appear to be Singapore-centric, including books by local authors as well as helpful guides for tourists. Each machine contains about 150 books with up to 22 titles, and the outsides of the machines are painted by local artists to indicate what’s inside.
“The whole idea is about accessibility and eyeballs,” says Kenny Leck, owner of BooksActually. “There are not enough bookstores in Singapore… these vending machines could be a visual touchpoint. You may not buy [a book] but we’ll let you know these exist. And from there, there could be more possibilities. We start with visual awareness: books where you see a local author’s name. The ultimate place we want to put them are at train stations.”
Of course, book vending machines aren’t entirely new, though they’re far more popular in Asia than they are stateside. The first book-dispensing machine, called the Penguincubator, was installed in London way back in 1937. An Irish company called ‘A Novel Idea’ installed a machine at London’s Heathrow airport, but went out of business. It’s kind of hard to pick out a book when you can’t even read the back cover, but the concept could work with highly recognizable beach-read-type titles that are about the equivalent of junk food for your brain, anyway.An Amazon Fresh delivery van moves down Pico Bloulevard in Los Angeles, California, June 14, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc launched a new product named Amazon Dash on Friday that allows the user to add groceries and household goods to their shopping lists using the company’s AmazonFresh service.
A black-and-white hand-held wand-shaped remote-control features a microphone, speaker as well as a bar-code reader and links directly to the user’s AmazonFresh account.
However, the device is available only for users of the AmazonFresh which currently operates exclusively in Southern California, San Francisco and Seattle. The device is free during the trial period, according to the product’s website.
However, signing up for Amazon Dash is by invitation only while the AmazonFresh service is currently available only Southern California, San Francisco and Seattle.
The online retailer has been steadily expanding towards electronics manufacturing businesses, starting with the Kindle e-reader which was first launched in 2007, and the Fire TV streaming set-top box announced earlier this week, even as it seeks new ways to energize a gradually slowing core retail business.
Amazon has been steadily expanding its “Fresh” online grocery business, targeting one of the largest retail sectors yet to be upended by online commerce. The company has plans to launch AmazonFresh, which has operated in Seattle for years, in roughly 20 urban areas in 2014, including some outside the United States.
A successful foray into groceries could also help underwrite the development of a broad-based delivery service employing Amazon trucks to deliver directly to homes, which could have implications for UPS, FedEx and other package delivery companies that currently ship Amazon goods.
Still, groceries have proven to be one of the most difficult sectors for online retailers to manage successfully. One of the most richly-funded start-ups of the dot-com era, Webvan, was a spectacular failure as the cost of developing the warehouse and delivery infrastructure proved overwhelming.
Amazon was unavailable for comment regarding the public availability of the device.Muslim persecution of Christians is at a high tide — and there are grave fears of more sectarian bloodletting as millions of people in Nigeria, which is half Muslim and half Christian, vote for their national leaders next month.
These religious atrocities cry out for media attention and political awareness, said Raymond Ibrahim, author of the monthly report “Muslim Persecution of Christians,” which has chronicled attacks on Christians in dozens of countries since July 2011.
Mainstream media rarely cover attacks on Christians, even though they happen “all around the Islamic world,” Mr. Ibrahim said Tuesday.
Muslim-on-Muslim attacks can get broad attention — such as the April kidnappings of some 230 Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram. The mass abductions so alarmed the world that first lady Michelle Obama brought attention to the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls.
But from August to October, Boko Haram and its radical Islamist allies destroyed nearly 200 Christian churches as they rampaged through towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria, said Mr. Ibrahim, a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
His monthly report is published by Gatestone Institute, an international think tank led by John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
In just four years, he said, Boko Haram has destroyed around 1,000 churches.
The “sheer volume” of the attacks on Christians in Nigeria “makes it one of the worst” places for them, Mr. Ibrahim said.
The peril in Nigeria was driven home Tuesday during a House hearing.
Nigerians are scheduled to vote Feb. 14 from a slate of several presidential candidates, including Christian incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and Muslim challenger Mohammadu Buhari, to lead the nation’s 173 million people. An election for local leadership will be held Feb. 28.
In 2011, Mr. Jonathan’s victory over Mr. Buhari triggered terrible sectarian violence in the Muslim north. More than 700 churches were burned, hundreds of Christians were targeted and killed, and thousands of Christian businesses and homes were torched.
That violence occurred at a time when Boko Haram was waging its “campaign of terror,” human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said in his testimony Tuesday to the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, global health, global human rights and international organizations.
“Boko Haram has never seen a live Christian male it liked,” Mr. Ogebe said. Depending on the election outcome, Feb. 14 could turn into “a Valentine’s Day massacre for the poor Christians in northern Nigeria.”
“The fear of political explosion is real,” lawyer Jadegoke Badejo said at the hearing.
Just this year, as many as 2,000 people have been killed by Boko Haram in its attack on the town of Baga and nearby villages, said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican and subcommittee chairman. “Clearly, Boko Haram violence is escalating drastically,” he said.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to Lagos last week to meet with Mr. Jonathan and Mr. Buhari. Mr. Kerry later told reporters that he was assured by both men that they would urge their followers to refrain from postelection violence and to accept the results of the election.
Mr. Kerry also said the elections should take place on time and that the United States would do more to support the fight against Boko Haram if the elections are democratic and peaceful.
“A peaceful and smooth transition is equally essential, so that whoever is elected can quickly turn his focus to confronting and defeating Boko Haram,” Ambassador Robert P. Jackson, acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told the House hearing.
“We are appalled by the accelerated pace and brutality of Boko Haram’s attacks. This unchecked killing must stop,” Mr. Jackson said.
Attacks follow a pattern
In terms of persecution of Christians, Mr. Ibrahim is not alone in sounding the alarm: The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which is part of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has estimated that 1 million Christians were killed from 2000 to 2010 for their faith, an average of 100,000 martyrs a year.
This month, the Open Doors World Watch List, which surveys religious liberty conditions for Christians, said persecution of Christians had reached “historic levels.” North Korea was rated the most oppressive country for Christians, but “Africa saw the most rapid growth of persecution,” according to the group.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations warn against “Islamophobia,” and Mr. Kerry has cautioned against conflating ultraradical groups such as the Islamic State and Boko Haram with all Muslims.
These militants are “a collection of monsters,” Mr. Kerry told a Jan. 23 World Economic Forum, according to Reuters.
He urged the civilized world to “make clear” that it “will not cower in the face of this violence,” but said “the biggest error that we could make would be to blame Muslims collectively for crimes not committed by Muslims alone.”
Mr. Ibrahim, who is the son of Coptic Christians, said his research makes it clear that Muslim attacks on Christians are not isolated incidents stemming from conflicts over geography or some local grievance, but are “attacks on Christianity itself.” For instance, a primary target for Muslim violence is a Christian church, which may be firebombed or destroyed while people are congregating inside for worship services, Mr. Ibrahim said.
Christians also are punished or killed for perceived acts of blasphemy, evangelizing and even converting from Islam, he said.
Another kind of Muslim persecution is to treat the Christians in primarily Islamic lands as “third-class” citizens, denying them permission to repair or build their churches or hold Bibles in public, and requiring them to live under special rules such as paying a tribute to the Muslim government.
The countries where these abuses happen are all different in many ways, but the “common denominator” is that these are all countries with large Muslim populations, said Mr. Ibrahim, who detailed these issues in his 2013 book, “Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians.”
In an interview with The Washington Times on Tuesday, Mr. Ibrahim said he once thought he wouldn’t be able to continue the “Muslim Persecution of Christians” report because “surely, a month will come” when there would be “only one or two stories” to write about.”
“But lo and behold, every month that’s gone by” has produced even more atrocities, making the report much longer, he said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Donald Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, doesn’t control the nation’s military, like the secretary of defense. He doesn’t tell America’s diplomats what messages to pass to foreign leaders, like the secretary of state. And he doesn’t tell US spies which governments to infiltrate or which terror leaders to target, like the director of the CIA.
Flynn’s powers are less tangible, but his role is critically important all the same. National security advisers help determine which foreign policy and national security questions reach the president and offer suggestions for how they should be resolved.
That means Flynn will spend more time with President-elect Trump than any other member of the administration’s national security team. He is already helping choose candidates for senior posts while vetoing others, which means Trump’s Cabinet will clearly reflect Flynn’s thinking.
Flynn will have one other responsibility — and this is where the retired general, despite his decades of generally exemplary military service, may be uniquely ill-suited to his role.
From his insistence that President Obama was born abroad to his lies about black-on-white violence, Trump has shown a consistent and troubling habit of absorbing information from semi-factual news sources and treating it as though it were true. That was bad enough when he was just a candidate; it could be disastrous when he’s president.
As Trump begins to slowly roll out picks for key Cabinet posts, it’s unclear whether he will fill his White House with aides willing to present him with information from reputable sources inside and outside of the government that may conflict with his general worldview or beliefs about a specific issue — or whether he will choose staffers who will shape the information flow to reinforce the new president’s existing views about issues like Russia and ISIS.
And that’s
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, a claim that Romney’s campaign appeared to have embraced as well, and declared that the polls must be “unskewed” to find the truth.
Of course, the polls, if anything, underestimated President Obama’s lead, and conservatives who urged Romney supportersnot to believe the polls and instead to expect a Romney landslide were, at least briefly, mocked and humiliated.
One such person who promoted the idea that polls were biased against Romney was Donald Trump, who said that polling firms oversampled Democrats to create an anti-Romney narrative:
All these polls released by news outlets are oversampling Democrats. They want to influence public perception of the race. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2012
Naturally, Trump is now saying the same thing about the polls, or “poles,” that are showing him lagging behind Hillary Clinton:
The “dirty” poll done by @ABC @washingtonpost is a disgrace. Even they admit that many more Democrats were polled. Other polls were good. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2016
“@JimVitari: @ABC @washingtonpost we know they’re fake just like poles during primary. I’m sure u will crush #CrookedHillary in general” — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2016
Several Trump backers also believe that the polls, which uniformly show him trailing Clinton, have been skewed against him.
Yesterday, radio host Alex Jones and WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah urged Jones’ listeners not to believe the polls showing Trump trailing Clinton, saying that in reality the two are either neck-and-neck or Trump has a double-digit lead.
Jones said that liberals are “attacking” and “stabbing people” in hopes of intimidating Trump supporters from voting because they know “Trump’s going to win with a Reagan-style landslide.” Trump campaign sources, according to Jones, tell him that “Hillary is just trying to act like she’s really winning and have the media say it because they’re looking at stealing the election.”
The bogus polls, he said, will help Clinton get away with the theft. He added that he wears his Trump hat in “communist areas” to inspire people to be more open about their support for the presumptive GOP nominee.
Farah agreed that polls aren’t to be trusted, adding that he knows Trump is ahead based on his analysis of “anecdotal relationships,” warning that “if they steal the election from him it’s all over, America’s over.”
Oliver Willis of Media Matters also found conservative pundits such as Sean Hannity and Jim Hoft alleging that the polls are skewed against Trump, just as they falsely claimed that the polls were skewed against Romney :
On Fox News host Sean Hannity’s official website, a blog post complained the poll “is heavily skewed.” On his June 27 radio show, Hannity cited the partisan breakdown and described it as a “misleading poll” because the media is “in the tank for Hillary.” Hannity apparently didn’t learn his lesson about attempting to unskew polls in 2012, when he was saying things like, “These polls are so skewed, so phony, that we need to start paying attention to what’s going on so that you won’t be deflated.” In a post purporting to highlight “More Polling Tricks” from an “EXTREMELY SKEWED” poll, conservative blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit complained this week that “Reuters freighted their poll with 20 percent more Democrats than Republicans” and concluded that “we can safely say that Trump appears to be in much better shape than the poll suggests and could likely be headed to a landslide victory in November.” Hoft made a similar argument in September of 2012, complaining that a CNN poll showing Obama leading Romney “drastically oversampled Democrats to get this stunning result.” He then went on to cite Dean Chambers, who said that when “unskewed” the CNN poll showed Romney leading by eight percent.
Dick Morris, who guaranteed a Romney landslide and dismissed the 2012 polls as biased “propaganda,” is now advising Trump.Send your comments to [email protected]. (Photo: ALAN WARD/DAILY PRESS & ARGUS)
The Michigan Court of Appeals this week is hearing a challenge to a Grand Rapids law that makes possession of small amounts of marijuana a civil offense similar to a traffic ticket.
The arguments Friday come as more Michigan communities are choosing to take it easy on marijuana. Voters in six cities last week approved proposals to allow use on private property or make enforcement of marijuana laws a low priority. Five more voted no.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan's second-largest city, "the horror stories about marijuana smoke wafting over playgrounds and downtown being overrun by drug dealers just haven't happened," attorney Jack Hoffman said Tuesday.
He represents DeCriminalizeGR, a group that put the question on the ballot in 2012. Nearly 60 percent of Grand Rapids voters amended the City Charter by making marijuana possession a civil infraction with fines ranging from $25 to $100.
Police officers have been told not to report cases to the Kent County prosecutor unless they involve growing operations or a drug house; someone has more than 2.5 ounces of marijuana; or a person is caught with pot during another crime. Medical marijuana users registered with the state are not affected.
The prosecutor, Bill Forsyth, is challenging the law. In court filings, his staff argues that Grand Rapids voters can't trump state law, which says marijuana use is a crime.
"Reasonable people can disagree with whether the possession or use of marijuana should be criminal.... What reasonable people cannot do, however, is countenance a direct violation of the laws of the state," wrote Timothy McMorrow, chief appellate attorney for the county.
Forsyth appealed after Kent County Circuit Judge Paul Sullivan last year ruled in favor of Grand Rapids. The judge said voters didn't actually make marijuana legal but adopted a policy about how their police should address it.
The prosecutor "is free to investigate whatever state law violations he believes are occurring in his jurisdiction," City Attorney Catherine Mish said in a court filing. "What he cannot do, in wake of the City Charter amendment, is avail himself of the free flow of city resources in exercising his discretion to prosecute state marijuana laws."
Ann Arbor made marijuana use a civil offense in the early 1970s, the first community in Michigan to do so, but it has not been challenged.
Read or Share this story: https://www.livingstondaily.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/11/12/prosecutor-fights-grand-rapids-pot-law/18899901/Overpopulation debate comes to one conclusion
Overpopulation is the world’s biggest problem, write biologists Mary Ellen Harte and Anne Ehrlich in Thursday’s Op-Ed pages. They contend that the world’s growing population is creating an unsustainable strain on Earth’s resources and forcing the future of humanity to hang in the balance.
Our editorial board recently took a similar position in “Diffusing the population bomb.” “Nations cannot indefinitely produce larger and larger generations to support older ones,” they wrote. “Humans may have the reproductive ability to keep raising their numbers, but the planet on which they do it is finite.”
RealClearScience’s Alex B. Berezow, however, debates whether overpopulation is actually a crisis. He writes that we don’t need to worry about overpopulation because, in fact, in some places the population is actually decreasing. He offers birthrates in Russia as one example:
The problem is so bad in Russia, which may shrink by 25 million people in the next 40 years, that demographers are referring to a population crisis. This will put an enormous strain on Russia’s economy as the government struggles to care for its aging population.
The real issue, Berezow says, is the distribution of the world’s population. “After all, only so many people can fit on the coasts of China, India, and the United States,” he writes. “There are many wide-open spaces for the population to expand. The trick will be to figure out a way to incentivize responsible growth, not to discourage it entirely.”
That last bit about responsibility is a perspective all three parties agree on in one way or another. What we need, they say, is access to better education.
Here’s Harte and Ehrlich:
Promote and support family planning education at the family and community levels as a cheap way to reduce poverty and severe climate change. Support organizations that are trying to get contraceptives to the 200 million women in the world who lack and want them, and help them obtain equal rights, education and job opportunities. Access to contraceptives and reproductive freedom are rights, not luxuries, that ultimately benefit all of humanity. Vote for leaders who vigorously promote those humane solutions. And demand that media start educating the public every day on the role played by the unsustainable human numbers behind environmental degradation and human calamities — and start covering the solutions. The public needs a constant message: “It’s time to stop growing and become sustainable.”
Here’s our editorial board:
Women who have no schooling give birth to an average of 4.5 children; with just a year or more of schooling, the number drops to 3. As education increases, the number of births drops. Girls in Africa who receive some education will have fewer children and have them later in life. Their children will be healthier, and more educated as well.
Here’s Berezow:
The reason is that birth rates are naturally falling around the world. The current growth in world population exceeds the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman, but there are good reasons to believe that growth will slow down in the future. As countries become more technologically and economically advanced, people naturally choose to have fewer children. Also, there is a link between increasing female education and a declining birth rate.
When they put it like that, it’s astonishing we ever consider budget cuts to education. But I’ll let the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof talk your ear off about that.
LA TimesThe main problem with the text is that it's written back-to-front. Arabic is read from right to the left but this seems to be written from left to right.
On Facebook many puzzled users suggested that the new sign was perhaps written in Kurdish or Persian. But it's supposed to be Arabic.
Cecilia Granath, press officer of the station's operator, Jernhusen, told Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan: “If this is true, then this is very unfortunate. We had help from Red Cross interpreters and the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket). They told us that it is difficult to make a precise direct translation from Swedish to Arabic.”
“However, we will check on it. If it is wrong, we obviously put up a new sign.”
Just two months ago Landskrona in southern Sweden attempted to introduce new immigrants to sport and culture in the town by including information in Arabic in a new brochure. But the text used was described as 'incomprehensible' by residents who spoke the language.The Health Minister of the coup government in Sanaa, Mohammed Salem bin Hafeez, has accused Houthi gunmen of storming his office in the Yemeni capital and issuing a decision appointing one of their leaders instead.
The dramatic developments were revealed in a statement by the minister loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh on Saturday, that armed groups accompanied by the Undersecretary of the Minister, Abdul Salam al-Madani, a Houthi leader, and Nashwan Al-Atab, another Houthi leader, broke into his office.
Hafeez also revealed in a statement to a news agency, that the gunmen broke up a medical meeting he was holding with the directors of the offices of the Ministry of Health.
He said that “the meeting was canceled and a pistol was pointed to my face.”
In addition, sources in the Ministry of Health confirmed that there have recently been differences between those loyal to Saleh and Houthi militias.
Last Update: Sunday, 1 October 2017 KSA 14:57 - GMT 11:57Donation from Barry and Joy Lambert made ‘not only for benefit of those with childhood epilepsy, like our Katelyn, but for wide range of other conditions’
The grandparents of three-year-old girl with a rare form of epilepsy have made a $33.7m donation to the University of Sydney to fund medicinal cannabis research.
Announcing their donation at the university on Friday, Barry and Joy Lambert said international research suggested their granddaughter Katelyn, who suffers hundreds of seizures each day, may benefit from medicinal cannabis treatment.
A meeting with researchers at the university to discuss Katelyn’s condition, known as Dravet syndrome, led her family to believe that more detailed research needed to be carried out, Barry Lambert said.
“Not only for the possible benefit of children with childhood epilepsy, like our Katelyn, but also for its potential benefits for a wide range of other conditions that may benefit from extensive research into the cannabis plant,” he said.
Victoria and Queensland announce medicinal marijuana trials Read more
“The experience of our granddaughter … has opened our eyes to the extraordinary possibility of cannabinoids treating not only her condition but a range of chronic illnesses that don’t often respond to conventional treatments.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barry Lambert, grandfather of Katelyn Lambert, speaks at the University of Sydney on Friday. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Dravet syndrome begins in childhood and places sufferers at a higher risk of sudden death. Treatment options are poor and many with the condition suffer difficulties with speech, delayed growth, movement and balance. The syndrome is not as responsive as other types of epilepsy to conventional treatments.
A US-led study published in April that examined 75 child epilepsy sufferers found that of those with Dravet syndrome, 23% responded to treatment with oral cannabis extracts. The authors concluded there was a need for larger and more rigorous studies to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the treatment for paediatric epilepsies, but found it was well tolerated in their sample.
The donation will go towards the university’s “Lambert initiative” for clinical and scientific cannabinoid-related research, in the hope of ultimately producing cannabinoid-based medicines.
NSW cannabis trial: terminally ill adults and children with epilepsy to take part Read more
In December, the New South Wales government announced that it would sponsor clinical trials for the substance, and in March, Queensland and Victoria said they would hold similar trials.
The NSW premier, Mike Baird, said the donation from the Lamberts would give that state a reputation for being at the forefront of research in the field.
“NSW is breaking new ground in terms of medical cannabis research and this major investment confirms our state’s leadership in this area,” Baird said.
“The Lamberts’ investment gives our cause enormous momentum, and my hope is it dramatically increases the cross-sector knowledge sharing required to ultimately produce cannabinoid-based medicines that are safe, reliable and affordable.”
A priority of the Lambert initiative will be to examine how cannabidiol, a non-intoxicating compound in cannabis, works to treat paediatric epilepsy, and to explore whether other compounds identified as having the most potential can treat the condition.
The Lamberts’ donation is one of the largest made by the public to medical research. In August, Queensland property developer Clive Berghofer donated $50.1m to the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, the largest single philanthropic donation from an Australian.Look at a map of states president-elect Donald Trump won in November alongside a map of states with the highest rates of opioid prescriptions, and you’ll see they mostly overlap. Look more closely at the data, as one Penn State professor recently did, and you’ll find that Trump outperformed his Republican predecessor Mitt Romney the most in counties where opiate and suicide mortality rates are highest.
It’s little wonder, then, that mental health and substance abuse issues have become a key talking point for Trump, who has promised to crack down on drug cartels and called America's mass shootings an issue of mental health—not guns.
He’s not the only Republican to adopt behavioral health as a priority. House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed for mental health legislation in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose home state of Kentucky is a leader in opioid deaths, recently penned an op-ed titled “More Must Be Done on Heroin - soon.” And the Republican-authored 21st Century Cures Act, signed into law in December, will set aside $1 billion over two years to fight opioid abuse.
And yet, late last week, Senate and House Republicans set in motion the first steps of a plan that researchers warn could cut mental health and substance abuse treatment off at the knees: the repeal of Obamacare.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in the mental health community who thinks withdrawing the Affordable Care Act would be good for behavioral health,” says Sherry Glied, dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, who advised the George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations on health policy. “It’s hard to even conceive of how that would be true.”
Mouse v. Elephant
Under the Affordable Care Act, all insurance plans sold on the exchange must include mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral health coverage as one of ten "essential benefits." The legislation also made it impossible for insurers to deny people with pre-existing conditions, enabled young adults to stay on their parents' plans until the age of 26, and provided mental health parity to people through the expansion of Medicaid in the states. Taken together, these changes have created a watershed moment for both behavioral providers and the people who need their services.
A recent CDC report shows that the percentage of adults with serious psychological distress who are uninsured has dropped from 28.1 percent in 2012 to 19.5 percent in the first nine months of 2015. Other studies have shown a spike in mental health treatment, particularly among young adults. Perhaps counterintuitively, researchers welcome those spikes, because of the persistent treatment gap that often keeps people from getting help, even when they have coverage.
Researchers fear that repealing Obamacare could undercut that progress, without a plan to protect people with pre-existing conditions and mandate mental health and substance abuse coverage. According to Richard Frank, health economist at Harvard Medical School, approximately 1.8 million of the 21 million people covered under the ACA are currently receiving mental health services and subsidies. That amounts to approximately $5.5 billion in coverage, he estimates—coverage that would disappear if Obamacare were repealed.
All of this, experts say, makes the much-celebrated Cures Act look tiny and ineffectual by comparison. That bill, which covers a range of health and research related issues from cancer research to a precision medicine initiative, includes just $1 billion in grants to be doled out over two years for drug addiction and treatment programs. "The Cures Act is great, but the amount of money in the Cures Act for mental health, compared to the ACA is like a mouse and an elephant," says Glied.
Tip of the Iceberg
It's not just the loss of billions of dollars in coverage that is problematic. By pushing legislation that funds programs for people already seeking treatment, members of Congress seem to believe that opioid abuse and mental health issues can be addressed with targeted interventions. That kind of thinking assumes that people with mental health and substance abuse issues belong to some self-contained, finite group. "The reality is, everybody is at risk of mental health problems," says Glied.
That's been one of the biggest challenges in closing the so-called treatment gap: People who have coverage don't seek treatment, either because of stigma or because they don't think they need it. "People's primary care providers are often the first point of care for mental health treatment," says Brendan Saloner, assistant professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Just getting people into the doctor's office can be a really important tool."
That's especially true of people with substance abuse issues, Glied says. "To have a special program for opioids is fine if you know a person's problem is opioids," she says. "But what about a person who says their problem is chronic pain, and they need to keep increasing their painkillers, but they don't think of themselves as opioid users? There's a real challenge there."
Without broad-based coverage, these types of cases become harder to detect.
Silver Lining
It's still unclear what exactly Republicans in Congress and Trump have in mind in terms of a replacement plan. While some have warned that such a replacement would take time, in his press conference this week, the president-elect promised the introduction of a new plan would happen "essentially simultaneously."
But people like Glied are heartened—if ever so slightly—by plans floated by the likes of Speaker Ryan that include provisions for so-called "continuous coverage." That means people who have coverage and keep it will be protected from insurance price gouging and rejection, even if they have pre-existing conditions.
"Bizarrely enough, even though the whole system may be falling apart, this is the moment to get covered," Glied says.
Others, like Saloner, are placing their faith in red state governments that will likely bear the financial burden of a repeal, as state and local hospitals become the final safety net for people with mental health and substance abuse issues. "Those voices can have some influence on federal policy," says Saloner.
Already, Gov. John Kasich, whose home state of Ohio has been plagued by opioid deaths, has been doing just that. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, he cautioned against repealing the legislation, asking, "What happens to drug treatment? What happens to mental health counseling?"
The answer may be hard for the president-elect and Republicans in Congress to square with their promises to address these mental health crises, once and for all.Plenty of what goes by the names of cardio or conditioning these days feels unnatural, to say the least. You strap yourself into a machine, gyrate a little for a while, and you're done. Somehow, this is supposed to be making you a better athlete, but it sure doesn't feel like it!
This MMA workout is the exact opposite. You'll be slamming and dragging dummies, going after a heavy bag with fists and elbows ablaze, pushing the sled until your quads burn, rumbling through wrestling drills—all nonstop, just like fighting for the title. It comes from the mind of one of the best young fighters on the planet, UFC standout Sage Northcutt. And his willing victim was none other than bodybuilder Hunter Labrada!
To follow this routine to the letter, you're going to need equipment you might not find outside of a fighting- or wrestling-focused gym or school facility. Ideally, you'll need a grappling dummy or something like it, one kind of heavy bag for boxing drills, and another, shorter kind for diving and dodging. If you don't have the equipment or gym access, do the best you can, or sub out the most equipment-specific drills. (Dummy suplexes on an unpadded gym floor? Yeah right!)
No matter how you approach it, this is a full-body workout that will test your coordination, endurance, and explosiveness. Take breaks if you have to, but keep them short, and don't let your heart rate return to normal any time during the workout.
Sage's Technique Keys
Dummy suplex/body slam: Using a gable grip with your thumbs tucked, lock your hands tight around the dummy. Keep your pelvis back as you push your hips up against the dummy. Keep your head tight underneath the dummy's shoulder, then use an explosive motion to flip the dummy back over your shoulder and onto the mat.
Box run-up: Count each time you lift a foot onto the elevated surface. Go at your own pace, and continue counting to 50.
Stationary rowing: Start with an overhand grip for 1 minute, switch to an underhand grip, and repeat. Row at a fast pace, attempting to keep the calories-per-hour readings between 600 and 1000.
Heavy bag work: Using both hands, do a burst of four punches at the bag, then take a beat to bounce on the balls of your feet. Repeat "burst and bounce" sequence for a total of 1 minute. Then, do the bursts using your elbows, 30 seconds with each elbow and with your hands open. Finish up with 30 seconds of hook punches. The idea with this heavy bag work is to be light on your feet, using explosive movements to get the bag swinging.
Sled push: Ideally, perform this superset using the "I go, you go"-style with a training partner. When you push the sled in one direction, keep your elbows in at your sides. When you push it back, stick your elbows out away from your sides. Ideally, use your workout partner as resistance. Push hard! You've got multiple sets to survive here, but you get to rest while your partner does their work.
Push-up with resistance: Lay on the floor and have your partner put one hand on the back of your head and the other in the middle of your back. Have your partner exert pressure on you as you do a set of push-ups to failure, or 10 reps.
Double leg shot: When you do this movement, make sure that your front knee touches the mat first, then use your back foot to explode off the mat. Once you've finished the double leg shot, keep your fingertips touching the mat as you circle 360 degrees in one direction, then 360 degrees back. Do another double leg shot, then do your circles again. Keep this up for one minute. Make all of your movements explosive, and minimize rest to maximize endurance.
Duck and dodge: Keep your legs far apart on this movement so you can get low enough to dodge the swinging bag. While you want to stay in the same basic position, you can straighten each leg as needed to help you dodge the bag.The jihad playbook: Why terrorists attack children
Police and other emergency services are seen near the Manchester Arena after reports of an explosion.
The attack in Manchester, England, that has so far killed at least 19 and wounded at least 50 is ghastly. That it targeted children is as unforgivable as it is consistent with the jihadist playbook.
Conservative Review’s Jordan Schachtel has the full story from Monday night, and details are still coming out at the time of this writing.
Among of the bigger observations that has been made about this attack, however, is that it was waged against young adults, teenagers, and children attending a pop concert.
“All acts of terrorism are cowardly attacks on innocent people,” Prime Minister Teresa May said in a statement, “but this attack stands out for its appalling, sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenceless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives.”
One such victim – eight-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos – was confirmed dead by the Telegraph Tuesday afternoon.
During a Facebook live broadcast this morning, a viewer asked why terrorists would do such a thing. This is a more detailed response to that question.
Targeting the innocent is common; sadly, perhaps even commonplace by now. Targeting innocent youth brings the horror of the attack to a whole new level. But horror is the whole point, and it goes back decades. One only has to understand the playbook.
ISIS, its followers, and its sympathizers are ideological adherents to the jihadist tactical theories of Abu Bakr Naji. If you want to understand most of the political Left in America, you should start by reading Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” If you want to understand how Islamist terrorist operate, you should start with Naji’s “The Mastery of Savagery.”
In his book, the 20th-century Islamist theorist says that societies and nations of infidels should be brought to submission to Allah by a three-phase plan of savagery
These phases, as explained by Trump advisor Dr. Sebastian Gorka in 2015, are:
Vexation. Spread savagery. Administer savagery.
A talk Gorka gave at the Heritage Foundation in 2015 further illuminates how this strategy works. Here’s a synopsis of the lecture from the Institute of World Politics:
Phase 1, “vexation,” is comprised of operations to distract and exhaust the infidel enemy and his allies. It puts emphasis on smaller dramatic operations (as opposed to dramatic transnational attacks) and is used to prepare fighting units for phase 2. Phase 2, as Dr. Gorka explained, is the “spread savagery” stage, which ISIS has already begun. In this phase, leaders of the insurgency coordinate unconventional warfare to “dislodge” nations from local control. Phase 3, “administer savagery/consolidate/expand,” is designed to out-govern the government. In this phase, the leaders stabilize held areas, unite the population as a fighting community, and implement sharia law and government as a means to establish a base-state. This base-state is a new type of hybrid caliphate used to attack and expand into neighboring countries.
This is the big picture that it is so important to keep in mind when it comes to these sorts of terror attacks. It’s vexing enough for people in the West to worry whether a small explosion will make their trip to the market a fatal one. It’s more vexing when those same kinds of attacks become a monthly occurrence. And it’s even more vexing when those attacks are focused on a society’s children.
The bloodier and more horrific, the better. If ISIS is indeed responsible for this attack, as it has claimed, this is completely consistent with its tactics.
In short, that the Manchester bombing was aimed at killing children is shocking and barbaric indeed, but barbaric – for jihadists – is just part of the playbook.
Terror in Manchester, the aftermath … #CRLive with Nate Madden and Rob Eno Posted by Conservative Review on Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Editor’s note: This piece has been amended to correct a typographical error.The Other Side of the Tracks
Opiate maintenance treatment is a tale of two cultures. People who can afford Suboxone get to keep their addiction private. People who are restricted to methadone clinics pay the price of stigma.
Traditional approaches to addiction recovery have championed abstinence as the “right” path. Maintenance treatment for heroin or opiate painkillers has been used very cautiously—typically to rapidly taper addicts off opiods rather than for long-term use. As a result, when Hazelden announced last month that it will begin using medication-assisted treatment indefinitely for appropriate patients, many traditionalists responded with incredulity.
Opiod maintenance in the US primarily relies on two drug options: methadone, which has been around since the 1960s, and buprenorphine, which came on the market 10 years ago. Both drugs work by triggering opiate receptors in the brain, easing withdrawal and reducing the euphoric effects of heroin. Buprenorphine (brand name Suboxone) also includes naloxone, the anti-overdose drug that is added to prevent abuse.
Experts generally agree that methadone is more effective than Suboxone, but not by much. Studies have found that the recommended dose of Suboxone is better than low-dose methadone, but no better than high-dose. Yet methadone poses a greater risk of overdose and is easier to abuse. All things being equal, therefore, bupe is the preferred treatment. But all things are not equal, and most unequal is a patient's ability to pay.
The cost of bupe maintenance varies: many private insurance plans cover the drug, together with prescribing doctor’s visit; for people who pay out of pocket, the cost ranges roughly between $250 and $500 a month, not including doctor’s visit. Long a cheap generic, methadone is much less expensive. It is also more likely than Suboxone to be covered by public health insurance—though this varies by state—and some nonprofit and government-funded methadone clinics use a sliding scale to set patient co-pays.
“Suboxone is a white-collar alternative to methadone and NA," Tom says.
The cheaper generic version of Suboxone expected in 2013 may be postponed. Manufacturer Reckitt began hiking prices on Suboxone tablets earlier this year, likely in an effort to migrate Suboxone maintenance patients to the costlier sublingual film version for which they hold a patent through 2022. Now, Reckitt has announced its intention to withdraw the tablet form over the next six months, citing an increased risk of accidental pediatric exposure and poisoning. (Oddly, Reckitt did not move to immediately pull the tablets.) As a result, cheaper generic buprenorphine that would likely expand access is set to be delayed for "safety concerns."
Compare the situations of Tom and Jenna, who in many ways exemplify our nation's two classes of opiate maintenance patients.
Tom, who lives in Atlanta and is 25, began using opiods as a freshman in college. Throughout high school he had experimented with “alternative” drugs like psilocybin mushrooms and LSD, and steeping an opiod tea seemed like the next step in his drug evolution. But when eBay began prohibiting the sale of the dried poppies he had been purchasing, Tom went into withdrawal for the first time. He moved from snorting heroin to shooting it, eventually dropping out of college to become, as he put it, a “full-time junkie."
By the time Tom decided to get a handle on his habit and return to school, he had defaulted on his college loans. His school has a hardship clause; if he could demonstrate that chemical dependency was at the root of his default—and agree to maintenance therapy—he would could go back to college and be granted partial forgiveness on his loan interest. His private psychiatrist wrote him a prescription for a 30-day supply of Suboxone. He’s been on the drug for the past two years and is set to graduate this spring.
Tom’s Suboxone regime is expensive—$500 a month with doctor's visit—but health insurance through his parents’ policy covers the entire cost. And he is happy with the treatment. It has allowed him to be more functional with no “druggy side effects.” He has gone off Suboxone occasionally to binge on other opiods, but infrequently, he says. For now, he has no plans to stop buprenorphine, and his parents are willing to foot the bill for health insurance after he ages out of their policy.
Tom has not gone to 12-step meetings or other addiction-related therapy during his maintenance treatment—such attendance is rarely a requirement for bupe. By contrast, most methadone maintenance programs are highly regulated and often require meetings for eligibility. Tom never considered taking methadone for maintenance, saying that he wanted to avoid daily clinic visits and registering with the government for a program for people who are chemically dependent. “Suboxone is a kind of white-collar alternative to methadone and NA," he says. "If you come from a family with money and have health insurance, you can take it and you don’t have to do any program.”
Jenna, a 34-year-old mother in Denver, has taken methadone almost continuously for 15 years. She is on Medicaid—public health coverage for low-income Americans—and her local methadone clinic has a special program for mothers. Her weekly co-pay for methadone is $27. She also attends 12-step meetings where her fellow members are generally accepting of her methadone maintenance. Jenna says that she and most of her friends on methadone would prefer to take Suboxone, but they can’t afford it: Colorado’s Medicaid program does not cover bupe, and private health insurance is too expensive.
The growing number of private doctors prescribing Suboxone is causing a quiet treatment revolution.
An ongoing study of buprenorphine maintenance in New York CIty has found that it is typically available based not on a patient's need but on their pocketbook, and poor people need not apply, according to Laura G. Duncan, the study's research coordinator. As for those on Medicaid, coverage of bupe, when available, usually requires jumping through a series of bureaucratic hoops. Patients sometimes need a referral from a primary care physician or specialist, which further jacks up the price.
Methadone maintenance is generally provided through Opiod Treatment Programs (OTPs), some of which also offer other services such as inpatient detox and counseling. A 2008 SAMHSA study found that 72% of OTPs without additional services used only methadone—no buprenorphine. In 2010 some 304,500 opiate users in the US got medication-based treatment from an OPS; of these only 2% were on bupe. A total of 27,500 opiate users received buprenorphine; of these 76% were prescribed the drug outside of OTPs—through private insurance.
The growing number of private doctors prescribing Suboxone is causing a quiet revolution in addiction treatment. In order to write a scrip for bupe, which is a Schedule III narcotic, doctors have to receive a waiver, which involves completing at least eight hours of training. A recent SAMHSA survey found that 53% of waivered physicians had no prior experience using methadone for maintenance; 56% were in nonaddiction specialties.
The vast majority of doctors who prescribe bupe have affluent caseloads. Those who serve poor and uninsured patients tend not to get the waiver, presumably on the assumption that their patients cannot afford the treatment, according to Duncan. “Bupe is still unusual in low-income medical settings due to economic inaccessibility, so providers there may not be as knowledgeable about it." Even those doctors who are aware of Suboxone tend not to waste time educating patients about unavailable treatments. This cycle reinforces itself.In updating the Blue Jays' Top 30 rankings a few weeks back, MLB.com's Prospect Pipeline team graded No. 9 prospect Conner Greene's breaking pitch as a "below-average curveball."
After a week of work with pitching coach Vince Horsman, Greene is rewriting the scouting reports.
The right-hander added 7 mph to his breaking pitch in the past week and deployed it as a swing-and-miss offering Thursday. That led to a career-high 10 strikeouts en route to Class A Advanced Dunedin's 3-1 win over Daytona. He allowed an unearned run on two hits without issuing a walk.
Greene (2-3) described his breaking ball as a "loopy, very slow" offering that used to register around 74 mph until Horsman last week instructed him to add some zip to the pitch. Greene toyed with a harder heater when he tossed six scoreless frames against Palm Beach on July 31, but the breaking pitch was a whole new offering Thursday, registering as high as 81 mph on the Blue Jays' gun.
"That's a good progression," Greene said. "That's actually probably what got me more strikeouts."
The 20-year-old has been a breakout performer this year while pitching largely off his fastball and changeup. He entered the game with a 2.73
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tree which happened to make it to the front page of magazines and newspapers. It's the first breaking of the waters as a coming into popular consciousness and it was specifically this popularity and the attraction of public view, I believe, which led mathematicians to attack and kill catastrophe theory just a few years later.Could you say something then about attractors, basins and bifurcations?This is the main paradigm that mathematics provides you for all dynamical processes in the sciences. Bifurcation is a loose term denoting a special kind of change in the map of the dynamical behavior of a complex system. By the map, I mean the configuration of the attractors and the basins. In each basin, there is one attractor somewhere down in the center, some diffuse thing like a galaxy of stars: that's the attractor. In between the basins there are boundaries which separate one basin from another. And in this map, the attractors are diffuse and complex fractals, so that when you look at them in the microscope you see a recursive representation that looks the same as the unmagnified view.Now when the underlying rule of the dynamical system is changed for some reason, for example, by the increase of an external force or temperature or the wind pressure or whatever, then the map changes and sometimes it changes in an insignificant way and sometimes it does a sort of snap and settles into a recognizably different map. That's a bifurcation. It's when the dynamical system is changed by external forces and something significant happens. Bifurcations generally are classified into 3 different sorts, called catastrophic, subtle and explosive bifurcations. The catastrophic bifurcations are also known by the pop name "catastrophes."All of this picture, how it can be applied in the sciences, and why it's important, is a way of thinking which is now called dynamical literacy, and the way of thinking is more important than the mathematical theory or the specific models in which it's applied, as for example, fluid dynamical turbulence, or the origin of the universe or whatever. Rene Thom popularized this way of thinking in the special case of chaos theory called catastrophe theory. He made it understandable. He drew into dynamical literacy people from every branch of the sciences through his writings and exemplary applications to biology, linguistics, the social sciences, and so on.And his book is Structural Stability and Morphogenesis?That's right.Could you give a more concrete example of these phase changes?Well, the simplest one and I think the most familiar example to anybody in the world, is called the Benard convection effect. This is what you do: put an inch of water in the bottom of a pan and put it on the stove and turn up the heat and eventually the water boils. Now this is something we've all seen. On the way to boiling, there is a pre-boiling stage in which bubbles begin to rise and if you could look into the water when it first begins to heat and actually see the motion of the water, then you would see that there are these so-called vortices, or Benard cells, like little stacks or cylinders of water within which there is a heaping motion going on, where the water streams up on the outside of the cylinder and then turns and goes back down again through the middle and then up on the outside and down through the middle, round and round. Like, for example, say you had a rubber bagle that you could turn so that you pushed down in the middle with your thumbs while pulling up around the edges with your fingers. That motion is called a Benard vortex and it's happening in the water as it heats up before it starts to boil.So when the heat is very low there are no Benard cells and when you turn up the flame a little bit higher there is a certain moment when the difference in temperature between the top of the water exposed to the air and the bottom of the water exposed to the flame reaches a critical value where a catastrophic bifurcation takes place. Now before that bifurcation there are no Benard cells and after it there are Benard cells. A certain number of them fit together as a hexagonal lattice of vortices, all held together by mathematics alone. There are no partitions to keep the boundaries between the vortices stable, and yet they stabilize into a perfectly still picture of Benard cells.Now, as you increase the flame a little more so that the temperature gradient between the bottom and the top of the water is increased, there is a further bifurcation in which the boundaries between the Benard cells are no longer static, they begin to waver a little bit, vibrating back and forth: that's a further bifurcation, a subtle one, in that what's happening is very subtle, and it doesn't make that much difference if you turn up the heat a little more, the waving of the boundaries of the cells becomes more pronounced and eventually is pronounced enough to be visible.So there's an example of a classical bifurcation sequence with two events: the first one is a catastrophic bifurcation in which the Benard cells appear out of the blue; and the second one is a subtle bifurcation in which the boundaries begin to oscillate. If you turn up the heat some more, you get true boiling, which is chaos and that's another bifurcation.Now in your book you introduce a concept called "dynamical historiography," where you create this model of history based on these phase changes with three different knds of attractors. Can you explain that?This is based on an idea of Thom or perhaps Christopher Zeeman, his main popularizer. The idea has to do with relating the history of mathematics to cultural history. As a culture evolves, through the practice of what they already know, people become more and more prepared to know more. So there is eventually a critical moment in which a new idea can come into the group mind of the culture because the culture has in its evolution arrived at the first moment in which it is capable of having that idea. In primitive times people would be unable to conceive such a thing as the cusp catastrophe, it wouldn't even fit into the mind because the connectivity of the neural net was too simple to envision such a complex mathematical object.I have expanded this idea into what I call dynamical historiography in my book Chaos, Gaia, Eros, and also in various articles published earlier, in the last decade or so. I particularly applied this idea that certain mathematical objects come into the mind of a culture as soon as they can. I apply this idea to these three basic attractors of chaos theory: the static attractor--which is just an isolated point, obviously much simpler than a circle--came into the culture through fixation of nature in the form of gardens during the agricultural revolution; and the circular attractor, in which a sequence of states is repeated over and over again, each cycle being completed in exacly the same span of time, hence periodic attractor, came in when the wheel was discovered 6000 years ago, as a toy wheel, then a pottery wheel, and then a cart wheel, and a model for the zodiacal belt and the solar sytem and the paths followed by the planets. All of this occured suddenly in the period of 3500-4000 b.c.e. This is a much more complicated idea than a point attractor and yet it doesn't seem too complicated to us because we've had circles in our culture for 6000 years.And now we're in a similar phase change, or paradigm shift, as Thomas Kuhn would say, with the chaotic attractor having just appeared. During my lifetime, I saw the complete process though which the chaotic attractor passed through a period of transition from heretical idea to orthodox science. And this occured during the span of my professional career. I personally experienced it in the context of my relationships with many different friends. I could feel the essence of it and I could imagine therefore very vividly how this paradigm shift happened. So that's my idea of dynamical historiography. These transformations happened on two sides, on one side as a mathematical model and on the other as a cultural manifestation that swung history on its axis.You often mention in your writings the work of William Irwin Thompson who also sees a series of these phase changes throughout history. Would you say that your theories are isomorphic for the most part with Thompson's?Yes. In one of his earlier works, Pacific Shift, he had already presented a model of cultural history in four phases which he traced back to ancient Mesopotamia. So on the level of the big ones only there was, as you say, an isomorphism between my model and Bill Thompson's. In fact, my book was fairly complete when I sent a copy of the manuscript to Bill Thomspon and he immediately fired back a letter saying, "look here, look there, look on this other page," and so on in his book. And I already knew him and had two or three of his books on my shelf, and hadn't really noticed this. But when he called my attention to it I looked back and, yes, indeed, he had anticipated my view of history in almost exactly the same bifurcations and paradigm shifts on the largest level. However, when he saw my book he realized for the first time I think, that his view of history must be mathematical and on that basis was formed our friendship, which goes on to this day.He and I are engaged now in an interesting exercise which is a further working out of this mathematical view of cultural history. And that is a new curriculum for elementary schools, grades K through 12. And the major bifurcations in culture history are mapped onto the major bifurcations in psychological development in the sense of Piaget, so that in kindergarten you're in the early paleolithic culture; and in the first grade you're in the epi-paleolithic; in the second grade, you experience the agricultural revolution; in the third grade comes the wheel, the first cities: Sumer, Egypt, Babylon, Canaan and so on, in the 6th grade you're in ancient Greece; and in the seventh grade comes late antiquity and medieval Islam and so on.You've also worked with Rupert Sheldrake. Would you say that his morphogenetic fields are similar in any way to attractors, bifurcations and so forth?Well, his theory is very consistent with chaos theory. Sheldrake has a slightly larger view than any of the views we've discussed so far in our conversation except possibly what I've described as the pre-patriarchal or the Orphic view about the emanations of the stars, the anima mundi and so on. Rupert Sheldrake's idea could be seen in this way: that when we have been talking about concordance between mathematical evolution and cultural evolution, Rupert Sheldrake would have put in here a third thing, which is the soul of the world or the morphogenetic field. He would see mathematical evolution and cultural evolution as manifestations of an evolution which is going on in the morphogenetic field. It's a slightly bigger picture than we've talked about and I think it is compatible with Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance hermetical philosophy but his idea also breaks with the perennial philosophy of the prisci theologi in that he sees the field as evolving in a coevolutionary process with culture, the human mind, the biosphere, and so on. So that in having this talk, we are giving nutritional support to the growth of the morphogenetic field; and the morphogenetic field is giving a certain guidance to the form of our conversation and the evolution of our thoughts and relationship. All of this is evolving together. It seems to me that this is an essentially novel and original contribution to our model of the universe by Sheldrake.Chaos theory has a lot to do with pattern recognition in the processes of nature. A great deal of Carl Jung's work involved the recognition of patterns structuring processes in the psyche, and he termed these patterns "archetypes of the collective unconscious". Do you see any relationship here between chaos theory and the work of Jung?Oh, absolutely. For example, myth and ritual--as remnants of archetypal processes in the minds of earlier peoples--can be regarded as the most stable and long lasting mental cycles or trajectories of the historical past, and in dynamical theory we would translate these states into mathematical models, such as these attractors.Now, mathematics is not everything, there's a lot more to an archetype than simply its mathematical model so I don't want to imply here that understanding the mathematics would complete an understanding of all and everything. The insights of Jung and people of that sort are ultimately transcendent of mathematics.However, mathematics as we understand it today involves spacetime patterns and a spacetime pattern is an ordinary pattern that's moving, and therefore a model for a process. There are certain special kinds of process models which can be recognized in processes occuring in nature and even in the collective unconscious, so in terms of Jung's theory we would have to say that the mathematics is suggesting that we look at myths transforming into other myths. In other words, the mythogenetic process itself might be an archetypal object in the collective unconscious, and if we understand these archetypes correctly, then the past and the present are simply stages on the way to the future and the whole thing is an archetype in spacetime. So it could be that a development in mathematics would enable us to see more deeply into the collective unconscious.So you see myths as dynamical models for morphological processes in the psyche as well as in patterns of culture?Well, the transformation myth is a manifestation of an archetypal process in the psyche, yes. Even within a generation we can see the myth of Jesus Christ for example, being completely transformed, and that transformation is archetypal, and as a mathematical object it's had many manifestations in the past. Or say, the birth of Christ or the arrival of Mohammad and his vision of the angel Gabriel: these are different manifestations of a special kind of movement, a bifurcation in the collective unconscious, which as a mathematical model is manifest through history many times over. So understanding the process of transformation is possibly a step toward understanding the myth itself.Do you see the possibility of all the various domains of the sciences ever fusing together into a single internally consistent paradigm?Well, yes, it's possible. You see, all of the sciences are fine in themselves. What's missing is a general systems theory, a synthesis of the sciences into a single understanding. Over the years, as everybody knows, science has been afflicted by a disease of reductionism that manifests as an actual repression of synthesis. For example, if a scientist or a professor in a university gets too involved in interdisciplinary work, and let's say, makes a bridge between physical astronomy and botany, then his reputation will suffer and he will be punished or dissuaded from continuing in this way. What is necessary to synthesize the sciences in a significant way, to develop a synthetic scientific view that would actually be taught successfully in universities, high schools and elementary schools, is some kind of sea change in the dogma of science which gave more credit to the synthesis function, and therefore encouraged more synthesis. One way that synthesis could regain its prestige is through the acceptance of chaos theory and complexity theory into universities. That hasn't happened yet: universities are still abusing chaos theorists and excluding them.Speaking in terms, then of synthesis, you've mentioned that you see the Internet as a material manifestation of a synthesis of all the minds on the planet?A lot of people are really excited about the World Wide Web and a lot of other people are really petrified because of some wild fantasy of child porn or something. This polarization is taking place and so far I'm still optimistic because of its commercial utility that the Web will persevere. Within it there are many synthetic activities ongoing in which science, philosophy, religion, history and so on are being strung together by amateur intellectuals who have no restraint. There's no censorship and no pressure for them to abandon what they're doing and so there's a fantastic synthesis of the sciences, of mythology and so on. How long that will continue I don't know, but it looks good. I think we're up to about 30 million browsers participating in the Web and some of the access providers, America On Line for example, encourages people to have their own web pages, so there's something like 10 or 20 million people about to put up their own web pages and any idea they think is important will go there and other people can browse it with the aid of these brilliant indexing engines, web crawlers and robots. It still looks to me that the World Wide Web could actually be an occasion for the synthesis of knowledge on a world wide scale in which minds are not connected so they become one mind exactly, but there's a very strong coupling between all these minds.You've also mentioned that you're studying the history of Indian philosphy. Is that what you're engaged in now?Well, this is still for the future. I have projects in which I'm trying to trace the Orphic tradition through the arrival of the Aryans in India carrying the Rig Veda and so on. But my latest book is a high-level math text on chaos theory, Chaos in Discrete Dynamical Systems.I'm largely focused on one project now called the Euclid Project, which involves many volumes and CD-ROMs. Its aim is to revolutionize the teaching of mathematics in the schools. It would include The Roots of Euclid on sacred geometry and a volume on the connection between Euclid and chaos theory, Euclid's Voyage Into Chaos.For Newton and William Whiston see Ralph Abraham Chaos, Gaia, Eros (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994), pp. 180-86.Compare with the Kant-Laplace theory of the origin of the solar system, in which it was stated that the sun and planets had evolved from the condensation of a vast nebular cloud of dust and gas, the increasing rate of rotation of which eventually spun the planets into being."The notion of limitlessness or infinity, which the Copernican system implied, was bound to devour the space reserved for God on the Medieval astronomer's charts...The Aristotelian universe was centralized. It had one center of gravity, one hard core to which all movement referred...the Copernican universe is not only expanded towards the infinite, but at the same time decentralized...Would, in this case, God have to become incarnate on every star?...This meant, among other things, the end of intimacy between man and God. Homo sapiens had dwelt in a universe enveloped by divinity as by a womb; now he was being expelled from the womb." Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers pp. 217-18.The Western recovery of the Hermetic Tradition occured in two phases. The second, to which Abraham is referring, transpired in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Turks, spilling forth Greek-speaking Byzantine scholars and monks, some of whom were received by the Medici family in Florence. These scholars brought with them many esoteric writings from the Greco-Roman Hellenistic world which had been lost to the West after the fall of Rome in the fifth century and the closing of Plato's Academy under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the sixth.Subsequently, the learning of the Greek language was lost to the West with the sole exception of the monasteries of the Irish Celtic monks who mastered the language and synthesized their own version of Neoplatonism and Christianity, culminating in the masterwork of the Irish philosopher John Scotus Erigena, entitled De divisione naturae (c.865-870 a.d.). The Irish Celtic Christian world was ended by centuries of Viking invasions, beginning with the sacking of the Lindisfarne monastery in the eighth century and continuing to the tenth. The recovery of such texts as The Corpus Hermeticum and the dialogues of Plato during the fifteenth century inspired Cosimo de Medici to open an Academy of learning based on Plato's, and thus began the restoration of the learning of Greek by such scholars as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola.The first phase of this recovery, however, had already taken place in the twelfth century during the Crusades when Spanish scholars had recovered from the Arabs the entire copus of Aristotle along with the literature of alchemy, which constitutes one thread of the Hermetic Tradition. The subsequent impact of alchemy on the West was considerable: its first students were men such as Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas. The extent of its reach continued down through Newton, Goethe and Carl Jung.See Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).For an exposition of these ideas see the paper "Chaos in Myth and Science," by Ralph Abraham in Doing Science: The Reality Club 2, edited by John Brockman (NY: Prentice Hall Press, 1988) pp.193-210.For a popular presentation of catastrophe theory that includes a synopsis of Thom's views, see Alexander Woodcock and Monte Davis, Catastrophe Theory (NY: Avon Books, 1978).In this essay, "The Four Cultural Ecologies of the West," Thompson articulates his theory of Western civilization as a sequence of four distinct phases, each with its own kind of mathematics, technology and world view. These are, respectively, the Riverrine (or Mesopotamian), Meditteranean (Greco-Roman), Atlantic (Northern European) and Pacific (or global civilization). The corresponding forms of mathematic are: arithmetic, Euclidean geometry, calculus, and dynamical systems theory. See Thompson's book Pacific Shift (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985) pp. 65-151.Abraham and Thompson are collaborating on a book together. Abraham describes it as follows: "It deals with interactions between mathematics and art history. The first chapter would be a reprint of his chapter on the four cultural ecologies in Pacific Shift. And then there would be four other chapters, one for each shift. For the first one, about the Paleolithic, we've analyzed this prehistoric sculpture, the Venus of Lespugues, for its dimensions and found the Greek Doric scale represented there almost entire. And now we have a similar analysis of a Fra Angelico painting done in 1434 [Cortona Annunciation] which prefigures the discoveries of modern mathematics."Thompson and Abraham were employed by The Ross School, founded by Courtney Ross, heiress of Time-Warner. See the article "Life After Steve" by Michael Shnayerson in Vanity Fair Nov. 1996, p.190 and esp. pp. 194 and 234 for Abraham and Thompson.See the interview with Abraham, "Chaos and Karma" in Yoga Journal, March-April 1995.Vivek Singh for The WorldPost In Bundelkhand's sweltering heat, Dayaram and his wife remove silt from the bottom of a dried-out pond.
TIKAMGARH DISTRICT, India -- For years, Lakshman Pal, 28, planted wheat and tended to his small field here. Each season, he hoped for rain. He looked up at the sky and waited for the showers that normally came. But for the past two years, they've hardly come at all. His crops eventually withered and died, crumbling to dust.
In early May, Pal returned from a spell of work in the distant state of Haryana, where he earned 250 rupees, or about $3.70, a day toiling long hours as a laborer. Fifteen other members of his family also migrated to various cities, searching for work and leaving behind women, children, the elderly and a handful of younger men to tend to the land. Pal borrowed money from the bank and a local moneylender to pay for medical treatment for his mother, who has cancer, and he was now deep in debt.
Back in Khakron, his village, Pal found himself not only in debt, but also with no water for his fields, no crops to harvest, no food for his family, no money for his mother’s treatment. He awoke one morning in mid-May, before dawn, and killed himself in his field.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost A framed photo of Pal rests on a shelf in his home.
Life is precarious in Bundelkhand, a vast rural landscape in north-central India that I drove through on a weeklong trip for The WorldPost in late May. The region, which consists of over 27,000 square miles across the states Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, is one of India's poorest areas, populated mostly by poverty-stricken farmers living in rudimentary villages. And now, it's suffocating under an intense drought that's affected a staggering 330 million people nationwide.
As the crisis deepens, the country that celebrated the 1960s agricultural revolution and a resulting boom in production of food grains is now seeing its farmers dying in debt and despair. In many cases, farmers accrue debt from loans for seeds, fertilizers and equipment. And the debt can carry down to their children and grandchildren.
Stories like Pal’s are repeated with frightening regularity all over the country. More than 2,200 farmers reportedly died by suicide in just one state -- Madhya Pradesh -- between April and October of last year, and more than 12,000 reportedly killed themselves across the country in 2014.
Severe dry spells have become much more common in Bundelkhand in recent years, a consequence of both climate change and the lack of a robust irrigation system, turning this historically dry area into a parched and barren land. Groundwater reservoirs have been dangerously depleted, and agriculture has stagnated. Temperatures are consistently over 100 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes top 115. Since the early 2000s, droughts have become worse and the annual monsoon, which is critical for agriculture, has become erratic. The drought was especially bad from 2003 to 2010. In 2011, the region experienced much higher rainfall -- in some districts, more than 500 percent above normal -- and flooding was widespread. Disappointing monsoons in 2012 and 2013 gave way to drought again in 2014. It hasn't abated, and the network of lakes, rivers and wells, which had always supported the people, have gone almost completely dry.
Along the dusty streets of Dhikwaha, a small village in Uttar Pradesh a few hours' drive from Khakron, Narain Singh walked shirtless between brick houses. He is 65, down to four feet tall from six, bent over after decades of backbreaking labor. He has been a farmer here all his life; he tried to get a government job at one point in his younger years but a bribe was needed, and he didn't have the money. As the sun beat down, Singh went to a nearby market to spend his meager remaining money on food. India's Supreme Court recently ordered that food be distributed free to people in drought-hit areas, but nothing had arrived here yet.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost Weighed down by the burden of successive droughts, Narain Singh walks along a narrow village lane.
As I drove across this rocky land, village after village stood mostly empty and forlorn. Dead trees and cattle carcasses dotted the rocky terrain. Lakes and rivers were empty of water. Few crops can survive the intense heat and dryness; Bundelkhand has been called "the worst place in India to be a farmer." The monsoon rains have just begun, but the years-long drought has so severely damaged the earth that when the rain does come, it often runs off instead of being retained in the topsoil.
A couple hours away from Dhikwaha, in a village called Garroli, Avik Saha, 52, likened the drought to the recent “Mad Max” film, where bedraggled and downtrodden crowds of people fight over precious water. Saha works for a farmers' rights movement called Jai Kisan Andolan. The drought in Bundelkhand is “a man-made disaster,” he told The WorldPost.
Over the past 50 years, Saha went on, seeds developed in labs were introduced here and took precedence over the ancient local varieties that farmers had nurtured for decades. “The lab seed might work wonders in a controlled environment but it does poorly in sustained periods of drought and inhospitable temperatures, such as in Bundelkhand,” he said.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost The Dhasan River once flowed along the edge of Garroli. Now all that's left is a vast rocky bed and a few pools of water reflecting beams of sunlight.
The dryness and heat also wreak havoc on livestock. Less than two hours away from Garroli by car in a district called Mahoba, shepherds often free their cattle to roam during periods of drought. The cattle will forage for food and return after the driest period has ended. But the prolonged drought and scarcity of water has meant that many have perished this year in the unforgiving heat.
As India Today reported, political activist Yogendra Yadav, of the nonprofit Swaraj Abhiyan, recently said that more than 300,000 cattle had died in Bundelkhand in May alone. In some places, villagers have collected and stacked large numbers of carcasses. The smell of their decaying bodies is overwhelming.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost Piles of livestock carcasses are a common sight across the parched landscape of Bundelkhand.
In Mahoba, the Madan Sagar lake once stretched across 75 acres and served the local population in better days. But now, it is totally dry; large digging machines are at work 24 hours a day, clearing the lakebed. The silt deposited there must be removed before the rains come.
“It acts like polyethylene, preventing any water from seeping through,” explained Rajendra Nigam, who works for a small nonprofit in drought-hit areas near here. Hundreds of dump trucks move in and out of the lakebed, leaving behind a trail of thick, swirling dust. Fishermen squat in the lakebed. Other villagers, like 75-year-old Saraswati Raekwad and her 10-year-old granddaughter Bharti, pictured below, tend to small vegetable gardens they’ve planted in the few remaining patches of moist earth.
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As the agrarian economy collapses, millions have migrated to distant cities in search of work. According to CNN-News18, some 1.8 million people migrated out of Bundelkhand between April 2015 and March 2016. Fleeing famine-like conditions and drought, they pack into train compartments and standing-room-only buses that crawl out of the dust toward the promise, however faint, of regular work somewhere else. The CNN-News18 investigation tracked only migrants going to Delhi. Others have moved to similar large cities like Mumbai and Surat.
Many of those who migrate in distress leave under the cover of darkness. There's a sense of shame and helplessness that comes with relocation, a bit of social stigma within village circles. In some villages, only the elderly and children remain; in distant cities, migratory family members try to eke out a living and send back what they can.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost People are migrating away from Bundelkhand in droves. Here, a train arrives at Mahoba station.
Part of the reason for this mass migration has been the government’s ineffective implementation of a rural employment program known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The law guarantees 100 days of paid, unskilled work each year to every rural household. In the photo below, a man named Dayaram is carrying out work commissioned by the rural employment program -- digging out dirt from the bottom of what used to be a pond near Dhikwaha.
But farmers’ faith in the pioneering program is declining -- there are allegations of corruption and nonpayment to those who have taken up work under the scheme. Most say they wouldn’t be forced to leave if the government made regular work available. Villagers across Bundelkhand feel neglected by swindling politicians and an incompetent system. Even when there is work, it can take months to get paid. Many farmers have come to rely on these payments as a vital supplement during drought; delayed or disappeared payments can be devastating.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost Dayaram digs out dirt from the bottom of a dry pond near Dhikwaha.
On the outskirts of Bahru Tal, another village in Bundelkhand not far from Mahoba, I talked to 90-year-old Moti Raekwad. He was working on his tiny hut next to a field that lies empty and dry. His wife, Beti Bai, who is five years older and blind, swept dirt off of the floor inside. Their house is made of mud with a roof of dry branches; it barely stands. Their belongings -- a tarpaulin, a few blankets, a few cooking utensils -- sat outside on a small charpoy, a traditional Indian daybed made of rope and wood.
“In the last drought,” Raekwad recalled, “we survived on whatever fruits and leaves remained on trees. This time, even that's gone.” He and his wife now rely on handouts from villagers. He pointed to his weak legs and said he can’t do hard labor anymore.
Vivek Singh for The WorldPost Too old to work, Beti and her husband must survive on handouts from villagers.
Back in Khakron, Pal’s wife, Sukhwati, is barely scraping by after the death of her husband. He is survived by two children ― one is two years old, the other six months. Sukhwati must now support them with handouts from the rest of the family. Meanwhile, all around her, more people continue to flee.
Thousands, if not more, are migrating, many to India’s already overcrowded cities, leaving behind ghost villages and a landscape of barren fields, dead trees, parched rivers and lonely cattle ― a looming catastrophe.
Those who remain live perilously, the old and the very young alike walking miles in searing temperatures to hunt for water. Sometimes, in the empty landscape, it can seem like their only companion is the drought.
In India, if you struggle with suicidal thoughts, please call any of these helplines: Aasra 912-227546669, Sneha 044-24640050, Jeevan 009-16576453841, Pratheeksha 048-42448830. In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. In other countries, visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of international resources.
This was produced by The WorldPost, which is published by the Berggruen Institute.The Hills Shire Council has called for an audit on medium to highrise buildings after it was revealed that two Castle Hill buildings have failed to meet fire safety standards in recent months.
Hills mayor Yvonne Keane has appealed to the Department of Planning and Environment to review the role, function and the accountability of private certifiers in the certification process.
The move comes after an inspection by Fire and Rescue NSW on a unit complex on Crane Rd revealed several fire safety deficiencies.
The 160-unit complex was found to have an insufficient fire hydrant booster assembly, lack of fire hose reels and an unsatisfactory emergency evacuation route.
The report, tabled at last week’s council meeting, was met with outrage by councillors.
“Do we have to wait until there are body bags?” Cr Tony Hay said.
Last month, the Times reported that a building on Garthowen Crescent was found to have “a number of fire safety deficiencies”.
Cr Keane said the lack of building construction oversight was “nothing short of alarming”.
“I am deeply concerned that this could just be the tip of the iceberg,” she said.
Cr Keane said she was asking the Department of Planning and Environment to “step in and co-ordinate a comprehensive audit of medium to highrise buildings to make sure all residents in Sydney are safe”.
Cr Keane called on the Building Professionals Board, an independent State Government authority that accredits and regulates certifiers in NSW, to give private certifiers tougher fines if developments fail to pass building codes and standards.
“Any certifier that approves a building without the minimum fire safety standards is risking residents’ lives,” she said.
“Some of the penalties I’ve seen given out to private certifiers are around the $5000 – $15,000 mark, which is ridiculous for developments worth tens of millions of dollars.”
She said council had “consistently argued against the use of private certifiers because they remove the independence from the building inspection/certifying process”.
“Council has seen some very bad examples, including the Garthowen Crescent apartment complex, and as a result we’ve had to report these unaccountable private certifiers to the Building Professionals Board for further investigation and action,” she said.
Cr Raymond Harty told the Times that more resources were needed to ensure buildings were “properly inspected”.
He said he would bring up the issue at the June meeting of the Local Government NSW Board, where he sits as a director along with Cr Keane.
Cr Harty said he would ask LGNSW to make a submission to the State Government about “addressing the serious issues of defects in highrise apartments, the role of the Professional Standards Board and how this is going to be policed”.
“This has got to be an issue for the State Government,” he said.
Cr Harty said it was a “very big issue” given the amount of highrise developments that would be built around The Hills district, particularly around the Sydney Metro Northwest train stations.
“We’ve had two high profile ones identified in the last few weeks but how many more are out there that we don’t know about?” he said.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman said the council had written to the Minister for Planning Anthony Roberts and the Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Matt Kean requesting “investigations be conducted into the standard of certification of apartment buildings and the actions of the Building Professionals Board in relation to apartment building errors being passed on as acceptable by private certifiers”.
“Council is currently awaiting their response on these matters,” the spokeswoman said.It looks like Mobius Final Fantasy is going to hit the ground running when it releases in a few weeks as over 125,000 gamers have already pre-registered for the title.
The actual number currently sits at 129,643 (as of 11am this morning) and it means that all of the pre-planned reward tiers have already been met. This will entitle gamers to items such as a free phoenix down, elixir, crystal, all the way through to Tidus' Brotherhood weapon and a Yuna Card from Final Fantasy X. These will all be gifted, with the items being one-time use only.
Such has been the level of demand, the team working on the game are considering adding additional rewards as a thank you to fans who are continuing to pre-register for the game.
The title itself has been created by some of Square
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Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority], we have two camps with a 20,000-person capacity. We are increasing their capacity. We have been trying to provide almost 6.5 million displaced people inside Syria with 20 trucks of humanitarian aid daily, but the crisis is big and this aid isn't enough." Kinik said the aid sometimes stops when convoys are targeted, ceasefires are violated and Syria grows more unsafe.
Kınık also touted the new Kızılay charity debit card, which uses the Red Crescent's Turkish name, and has so far provided nearly 300,000 Syrians with TL 450 million. Calling on people in Turkey and abroad to help further, Kinik said they can donate TL 10 to the "Mosul is your home" campaign by sending an SMS to 2868.In light of Kevin Durant‘s injury, it brings even more questions to the table about Coach Donovan’s rotations in the lineup. What is the most efficient starting lineup for this team? Is there a starter who should come off the bench? Is there a bench player who should start? And whats going on with Coach Donovan and Anthony Morrow?
It was announced yesterday via Sam Presti that Kevin Durant will miss the next 7 to 10 days at least with a strained left hamstring. Now, before we freak out, call the season over, and lose all hope of a title run, let me offer a positive within this negative. First off, the upcoming schedule for Oklahoma City is moderately favorable. Among the tougher teams will be Boston, Memphis, and New York, all 3 of which are below 500 on the season with Memphis being the biggest surprise at 3-6. Which means, with Kevin Durant out; Coach Donovan will have the opportunity to experiment even more with the lineups. There might be a hidden lineup that we have yet to see that could really make this team a top notch team on both ends of the floor.
As I’ve stated many times via twitter, facebook, or just walking around Oklahoma City screaming at whoever will listen, Enes Kanter needs to get the ball in the post. When Kanter is on the floor with the second unit, hes not getting the ball in the pick-and-roll setting. Kanter does a great job fighting for rebounds and put backs and even getting some and-1 opportunities. But, D.J. Augustin doesn’t get Kanter the ball in the post off of a pick-and-roll. Dion Waiters gets a majority of the shots on the second unit. Which isn’t always a bad thing, Waiters is shooting 48% from the floor, and he’s 52% percent from 3. This is by far the most impressive that he has looked in his career. He’s averaging a 2.3 on his offensive +/- for the first time in his career. So, by those numbers you give him the green light with shooting. However, you have to get other players involved. Unless you have defensive players on the floor with you.
If you look at Andre Roberson, (Shawn Woods don’t hate me) he has under performed this season. Yeah, his 3-point percentage is up to 35%, which is nice and he’s finishing in the open floor more; But, his defense is still overrated and there’s numbers to confirm that. Roberson’s defensive +/- is -0.4 which makes him about an average defender. He’s not shutting players down and making the opposition change how they attack the Thunder defense. In the per 100 possessions category, Andre Roberson is allowing 100 points per 100 possessions. Which means 1 out of every 2 plays someone is scoring on Andre Roberson. Offensively, Andre Roberson is not the most dynamic piece to the Thunder’s offense. With Westbrook and Durant on the floor there’s no need for him to be. Roberson can space the floor and allow KD and Russ to operate in the offense. In theory, this can also be applied with Dion Waiters.
The second unit has some defensive struggles, and its more than noticeable. So, why not try to bridge the gap on the defensive side of the ball. Move Kanter and Morrow into the starting lineup. Then, you have Roberson and Adams to help the second unit defensively while Waiters and Augustin can still score the ball maintaining a consistent flow of the game. Now, with Kanter and Morrow in the starting lineup, you lose some defensive pressure. however, Serge can maintain the paint and Durant can switch on tougher more elite scoring options. (once he returns) Not only that, but, Westbrook and Kanter can revisit the pick-and-roll offense that they had last season. Thus adding more of an offensive mindset to this team. Oklahoma City can outscore any team in the league, they have too many weapons. It’s when the second unit is in that teams come back and close the gap making the game respectable. So, why not combat that by adjusting the lineup and see if you can maintain offensive rhythm and defensive pressure with both units?
It will be interesting to see who Coach Donovan starts friday versus the 76ers. I am sure most people are with me in hoping its not Kyle Singler. He belongs on the second unit with Dion, D.J., Adams, and Roberson. This way, you have scoring and defense on the second unit where you clearly need it them most. However, we could very well see Singler in the starting lineup.The recruitment embargo introduced by the HSE in 2009 meant there were absolutely no staff jobs in the health service for the 1,500 nurses and 727 doctors graduating each year.
This coincided with aggressive overseas recruitment campaigns by health services in Australia and the UK, which were experiencing acute shortages of healthcare staff.
The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland has received almost 10,000 applications since the beginning of 2010 for Certificates of Current Professional Status, which are necessary for Irish-registered nurses and midwives who want to work abroad. The UK has been the most popular destination, with 4,270 applications, followed by Australia with 3,594. A total of 1,214 nurses applied to go to Australia in 2011 alone.
This year, the United Arab Emirates has been particularly popular, with 53 applications to go there since January. This largely reflects the targeted recruitment of Irish nurses to work in the Cleveland Clinic, a private hospital which opened in Abu Dhabi in March.
About a quarter of the stands at the popular Working Abroad fairs across the country in the past few years were taken by overseas healthcare employers.
Australia has predicted a shortage of 110,000 nurses and 2,700 doctors by 2025, and Ireland has been designated one of five “competent authority” countries, where qualifications are recognised by the medical board as comparable with Australian standards.
As a result, public and private healthcare providers have been targeting Irish doctors and nurses, sending delegations to recruit at Irish fairs.
In the 12 months to June 2014, 527 Irish “healthcare and social assistance workers” moved to Australia under the employer-sponsored 457-visa scheme, bringing the number for the last eight years to 4,052.
This excludes thousands more Irish doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers employed on working holiday visas or under permanent residency programmes.
The salaries in Australia are an incentive. Newly qualified nurses and midwives in New South Wales start on nearly $58,000 (€36,000) a year. In Ireland, a staff nurse on the first level of pay earns €27,211.
Speciality
While some experience or a speciality is needed to work in Australia, the US, Canada and New Zealand, especially for nurses, the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK has been so desperate for staff in all areas they have been willing to take new graduates, offering them rotational positions with attractive opportunities for postgraduate training.
Ireland has consistently been one of the NHS’s top five source countries for nursing recruitment since 2009.
Last year, 322 Irish nurses joined the register to work in the UK. It has also been a popular destination for Irish GPs, with more than 1,000 travelling across the Irish Sea between 2009 and 2013, a staggering figure, given that Ireland only trains 157 GPs a year.
In the past year, the NHS introduced more incentives, including sign-on bonuses, free car parking, free uniforms and meals.
While salaries are broadly similar between the HSE and NHS, take-home pay is higher because the UK doesn’t have the universal social charge.
But a study in May found young Irish doctors and nurses are not choosing to go abroad only for financial reasons, but because of poor working conditions, training and career opportunities here.
The survey of more than 500 junior doctors and nurses, by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), reported a feeling of “general disrespect” for health professionals in Ireland from the media and HSE.
Many said they had “rediscovered the joy” of practising their profession in Australia, the UK and US.
Hiring again
“In these countries, they are welcomed; applauded for their work,” says Dr Ray Walley, president of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), who is a GP in Dublin’s north inner city.
“Doctors in Ireland can’t use their training and skillset. You have to surrender your professional values to stay in this country.
“This generation are not willing to put up with that. They are not willing to work themselves into the ground.”
Will they come back? The recruitment embargo is over and the HSE is hiring again, but the health service could have a difficult job attracting Irish doctors and nurses back to Ireland.
While many of the participants in the RCSI survey indicated a desire to return to live in Ireland, they said the health service would have to reform to improve staffing levels and offer packages comparable to those in other countries.
The HSE announced a new three-month recruitment campaign in July aiming to attract 500 nurses and midwives working abroad, particularly in the UK.
The package includes a tax-free sum of €1,500 to cover relocation. By the end of last week, 320 applications had been received and 10 people hired, with a further 20 selected candidates expected to start in the coming weeks, pending Garda clearance.
Home
Home is still an attraction for many of them, particularly when permanent posts are available for the first time in years.
But general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation Liam Doran, who estimates that more than 4,000 nurses will need to be hired to return the Irish nursing workforce to pre-crash levels of 39,000, says what is being offered might not be enough.
“While the recruitment campaign is welcome, it is not being incentivised to the extent necessary. Our fear is that it won’t attract the quantum of nurses needed,” he says.
“The NHS offers a shorter working week (37 hours as opposed to 39 in Ireland), staffing levels are better with much less overcrowding, and there are much more opportunities for training.”
He says the salaries on offer under the scheme – between €27,211 and €43,800 basic pay – just don’t compete with other countries.
And it doesn’t look like the number of doctors and nurses leaving Ireland will slow soon.
A survey of more than 2,000 students at the State’s six medical schools by NUI Galway found almost nine in 10 plan to leave or are “contemplating” leaving Ireland when they qualify.
Career opportunities, working conditions and lifestyle were the top three reasons.
“Just offering a permanent job in green old Erin is not going to cut it anymore,” Mr Doran says.
Series concluded.Firms are scrambling for lucrative civilian and military contracts in the post-space shuttle era. Space new frontier for tech lobbying
President Barack Obama’s élan for Elon Musk, the serial entrepreneur bent on launching private rockets into space cheaply, includes multiple personal visits, high praise and apparent reciprocation: Musk this year attended a $35,800-a-head Obama fundraiser and has filled other Democratic coffers with cash.
But in the new post-space shuttle space race, it takes more than glad-handing with the president to get the lucrative civilian and military contracts involving both human and cargo transport.
Story Continued Below
Musk, who founded PayPal and Tesla Motors, is no pauper. His outfit, Space Exploration Technologies — SpaceX — and other relative newcomers such as Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Orbital Sciences Corp., are all fighting to wrestle a greater share of riches from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which are to space launches as the USS Enterprise is to “Star Trek” and still lord over all other firms when it comes to government contracts.
To a point, they’ve made a successful case. SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., and Orbital Sciences, based in Dulles, Va., are under NASA contract, worth up to $3.5 billion, to lift 40 tons of cargo to the International Space Station over 20 flights.
Even so, Musk says the young crowd is having trouble also convincing the Pentagon they can provide high-quality launch vehicles at lower costs than the industry’s standard-bearers, and he's pointing the finger at the Obama administration.
“People think Obama is my best friend. If he has been my best friend, he sure hasn’t been very good at helping me out,” Musk said in an interview. “Obama has been doing a good job within the scope of what he can do … but not pushing further. And Congress has done quite a bad job."
SpaceX's Falcon rockets are under consideration for use to transport people, as are the Atlas V rockets from Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s United Launch Alliance. And SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket will compete for parts of the lucrative communications and spy satellite launch business, which can earn contractors into the billions of dollars.
Since 2003, SpaceX’s lobbying expenditures have steadily increased each year, nearly reaching the $600,000 mark in 2010, federal records show. Through June 30, the company has this year spent $320,000 lobbying federal entities from the Senate and Office of Management and Budget to NASA and the Air Force, putting it on pace to again exceed the previous year’s total.
Musk has personally made more than $200,000 in campaign contributions to federal candidates and committees since the 2008 election cycle, Federal Election Commission records indicate.
During the 2010 election cycle, the SpaceX PAC donated $67,900 to federal candidates, with nearly $4 going to Democrats for every $1 going to Republicans. In contrast, Boeing’s PAC made more than $2.2 million in candidate contributions during the 2010 cycle.
But Musk says that's not enough.
“We don’t have nearly the political base as other companies do — at this time,” he said. “They talk about ‘super PACs.’ We’re a micro PAC. We may be one percent of their political power. So hopefully, we’ll start with bringing it up to 2 percent. We have more will. And we will reach out to the public directly.”
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are aggressively defending their long-standing business, with Boeing having spent at least $7 million every year since 2000 on federal lobbying efforts and Lockheed Martin spending at least $6 million. Their joint venture, United Launch Alliance, has spent an additional $120,000 annually since 2008. Both companies employ multiple former members of Congress on their federal lobbying rosters, which include dozens of lobbyists.
This article tagged under: Technology
Space
LobbyistsJurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is out doing press for the home video release of the Jurassic Park sequel. Earlier today we wrote about his comments regarding which Jurassic Park quote inspired Jurassic World, and which quote will inspire Jurassic World 2. But Trevorrow also talked about that other little sequel he is attached to direct coming out in 2019: Star Wars Episode IX. Hit the jump to read the Colin Trevorrow Star Wars comments.
Trevorrow talked briefly about Star Wars: Episode IX while he appeared on the Jurassic Park fan podcast Jurassic Cast:
“I obviously can’t talk too much about Star Wars, but the idea of that ‘Universe,’ that word gets thrown around a lot as far as movies are concerned and what people are building, that one’s an actual universe. I think that the size and scope of that. Every kind of story we can think of can be told in the Star Wars universe, because it is endless and boundless.”
Yeah, his quote doesn’t reveal much at all but it still gets me excited. So many movie studios are trying to put together connected movie universes, and so far no one has been able to do it on the scale that Marvel Studios has. The new Star Wars universe certainly will have have an epic scope, and between all the different stories that will be told on screen through the Skywalker saga to the “Star Wars Story” anthology films, and the abundance of interlinked cross media stories that will unfold from in video games, books, theme parks and comic books.
Now we don’t know much about Star Wars: Episode IX at this point as JJ Abrams‘ seventh episode of the Star Wars saga, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has yet to hit theaters, never mind Rian Johnson‘s follow-up Episode VIII which is due in 2017.
I originally asked Colin if he would direct a Star Wars movie during the Jurassic World junket, and this was his response back then:
Yeah, I can’t say no to that idea. Look, I think you’d know I was lying if I said I would never ever do a Star Wars film. I could tell you absolutely, 100 percent for sure I’m not doing or involved in the Boba Fett one. And I’m sure they’ll find a great filmmaker to do it. And I’m so impressed with the choices they have made. And I think specifically Rian Johnson is such an awesome filmmaker. And I’m so excited to see what he does.
After the huge box office performance of Jurassic World, Trevorrow was then rumored to be attached to Star Wars Episode IX. Originally rumors pegged that the filmmaker would be announced at San Diego Comic Con 2015, but Lucasfilm and Disney held the confirmation for their own D23 Expo 2015. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are expected to be the stars of the new Star Wars trilogy, which would be bookended with Trevorrow’s film. The only other thing that Trevorrow has said publicly about his upcoming Star Wars film was a statement in the press release:"CNN's Crap Polling" is so bad that it shows that "no one under the age of 50 has an opinion of Hillary Clinton."
A few days ago, we waded into the debate over a conspiracy theory circulating among some supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders -- the one that has CNN, among other media outlets, keeping favorable post-debate poll results for Sanders under wraps because the network, and other parts of the media establishment, are in the tank for Hillary Clinton.
After we gave a Pants on Fire rating to the claim that CNN deleted from its website an online poll favorable to Sanders, many readers attacked PolitiFact as being part of this conspiracy against Sanders.
Nonetheless, we’ve decided to wade in again after a reader sent us a Facebook post that added a new wrinkle to the alleged CNN conspiracy.
The reader sent us a post that showed an image of results from a CNN-ORC International poll taken between Oct. 14 and 17. On the image, two columns were circled in red -- two columns of sub-results by age group for a question about how favorably or unfavorably the respondent views Hillary Clinton.
The two columns show responses for survey participants ages 18 to 34 and ages 35 to 49. Every possible answer in those columns has been marked N/A -- "not applicable."
The creator of the image was dumbfounded, slapping this comment on the image in big red type: "CNN's Crap Polling: No one under the age of 50 has an opinion of Hillary Clinton?"
The reader who contacted PolitiFact wondered whether the image creator’s question was legitimate, so we took a closer look.
Bottom line: It’s all a misunderstanding about how CNN reports the results of its surveys. (After we emailed questions to the person who had posted it on their Facebook page, we didn’t receive a response, but the post was pulled down. We saved a screenshot, above.)
The easiest way to debunk the graphic’s assumption is to look a few columns to the right. There, one can find a heading that reads "under 50," with 74 percent of respondents in that age group saying they feel favorably about Clinton, 23 percent saying they feel unfavorably, 3 percent saying they have no opinion and 1 percent saying they’ve never heard of her. (Our real question: Who belongs to the 1 percent who have never heard of Hillary Clinton?)
So this column of poll results clearly shows that people under 50 did tell the survey takers about their opinions about Clinton.
What about those mysterious columns full of "N/A"?
They are there because of CNN’s polling policy. The policy is explained fully in the same document that the Facebook image was drawn from, though it appears on an earlier page not shown in the Facebook post. This section explains the CNN policy on "crosstabs" -- the polling industry’s term for results sorted by demographic subcategories such as age, race, gender or income level.
"Crosstabs on the following pages only include results for subgroups with enough unweighted cases to produce a sampling error of +/- 8.5 percentage points or less," CNN wrote. "Some subgroups represent too small a share of the national population to produce crosstabs with an acceptable sampling error. Interviews were conducted among these subgroups, but results for groups with a sampling error larger than +/-8.5 percentage points are not displayed and instead are denoted with ‘N/A.’ "
In other words, for the age ranges 18 to 34 and 35 to 49, the survey reached too few people to produce a statistically valid sample -- so to avoid publishing questionable numbers, CNN simply reported them as "N/A."
This pattern -- categories with larger sample sizes given specific figures, and those with smaller sample size marked "N/A" -- is echoed elsewhere in the full document.
"The CNN/ORC polls are highly regarded," said Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "They are one of the few partnerships to provide us subgroup data, which is invaluable. The Facebook question does a disservice to the poll."
Our ruling
The Internet graphic accused CNN of being such an incompetent pollster that it found that "no one under the age of 50 has an opinion of Hillary Clinton."
This is based on a misreading of the CNN-sponsored poll. Two age-range subcategories produced too few respondents to qualify as statistically valid results under CNN’s threshold, which was plainly spelled out in the survey-results document. The claim is even debunked on the graphic itself -- it showed a category with actual results for respondents under the age of 50. We rate the claim Pants on Fire.H ello and welcome to the first preview week for Scars of Mirrodin. Lords, creatures that give all other creatures of the same type +1/+1, have been an integral part of Magic since the beginning. Lords aren't just a gimmick either. Look at this deck list that Marijn Lybaert took all the way to the Top 8 at Pro Tour–Amsterdam just last weekend.
That's a lot of lords. Marijn was able to continue progressing the strength of his army long after the third turn when his creature curve stops. He was able to put all that mana that he wasn't tapping on subsequent turns to good use by casting spells like Mana Leak and Cryptic Command.
The lord I'm about to reveal is of a very rare pedigree. The "color lord" has always had a very interesting place. Celestial Crusader is still one of the best cards in a White Weenie cube draft deck. Without further ado, let's take a look at Grand Architect.
Here's a card! There's a lot to be said for a card like this. Let's dig right in!
First, Grand Architect has a fat behind. Other similar creatures are almost always 2/2s. Grand Architect's toughness can be extremely relevant—he can't be hit by Burst Lightning. It's always a disaster when you pay three mana for a lord and your opponent deals with it via a one-mana removal spell. Given, things of that sort can still happen if your opponent has a Bolt, there's a big difference between dying to eight one-mana spells in your opponent's deck and dying to four of them. Pyroclasm oscillates between the world of playability and bulk. Given the density of creature-based decks, I wouldn't be surprised if people started packing Pyroclasm at some point in the near future. Grand Architect does an excellent job dodging the Pyroclasm.
Vampires will almost assuredly be a real deck after the rotation. Grand Architect successfully blocks the majority of Vampires without any assistance.
Grand Architect's second ability is the least exciting of the three. For a single blue mana, its controller may make an artifact blue until the end of the turn. This ability has three uses: First, it can be used to ramp into larger artifacts with the Architects third ability. Second, it can be used to pump the artifact you just did so much work to put into play. Last, the ability can be used on an opponent's creature for profit. Doom Blade doesn't kill Sphinx of the Steel Wind? For an extra blue mana we can solve that problem. Turning an artifact creature blue using the second ability will override any other color(s) the creature previously had. It will still be an artifact and you can target a blue artifact creature with this ability.
"Burst Lightning with kicker your Platinum Angel."
"I'll make him blue."
The third and most exciting part about the Grand Architect is the ability to tap creatures for Mishra's Workshop. This type of thing has a lot of implications. The first thing I thought about when I saw this card was its favorable interaction with equipment. Players packing Grand Architects won't have to decide whether they want to equip their creature with their Sword of Body and Mind or cast another creature spell. You see, Grand Architect's ability has a lot in common with Heritage Druid. The ability can be used the same turn Grand Architect enters the battlefield. Because the last ability doesn't have a tap symbol in its cost, you can even tap a blue creature (including Grand Architect itself) that hasn't been under your control since your most recent turn began to pay the cost.
Aggressive blue decks would do themselves a great service to test this card as an inclusion. Its ability to pump the team is nothing to scoff at, but its synergy with equipment can be absolutely backbreaking if your deck is packing enough cheap critters. We still don't know the full extent of this ability, Scars of Mirrodin is sure to provide us with a lot of powerful equipment and Grand Architect is excellent at planning backbreaking equipment surprises. Think about how big a Sigil of Distinction can be if you have a Grand Architect on the table, it's pretty impressive.
Grand Architect can do a lot more than suit itself and others up with equipment, though. It is, after all, an architect. Grand Architect isn't the type to design houses or parks, no, Grand Architect is designing Platinum Angels, Triskelions, Steel Hellkites, and other gigantic game-breaking morsels of awesomeness.
This is where things can get really out of hand. If you untap on your fourth turn with a Grand Architect in play you already have enough mana to cast something as impressive as a Triskelion or Steel Hellkite. If you happened to have another blue creature in play then you can up the ante and drop a bomb like Platinum Angel.
Again, we still don't know the extent of this ability. Scars of Mirrodin is sure to offer up a lot of imposing artifacts and Grand Architect is the perfect man to put them together.
I like to keep my mind open when I'm looking at a new set. It's important to think about things like slapping an Eldrazi Conscription on a creature with infect. (Handshakes!) I try to imagine what a deck packing the new cards might look like. I've decided to make an aggressive blue deck for the new standard with the cards we know are available. Lets start by talking about the cards I've chosen to play with.
Coralhelm Commander is one of the best two-drops blue has ever seen. It does a lot of work without a lot of downside. It's evasive, big, and cheap. It also allows us to bluff countermagic in key spots and allows us to be explosively offensive when we want to be. Coralhelm Commander is very good at putting our opponent into awkward situations. People will probably wait to use their removal spells in response to key levels, the trick is leveling him to key points only when your opponent is tapped out or you have enough mana to counter their response. Your opponent will often leave their mana untapped in hopes of you putting in those key levels instead of presenting their own board presence. You can get a lot of free turns if you play it correctly.
Cosi's Trickster is an under-appreciated piece of cardboard at this point in time. It gets bigger every time your opponent pops a fetchland, casts a Stoneforge Mystic (this seems like it may be a pretty common occurrence), cast any type of Rampant Growth effect, or has any fun with a Primeval Titan. I wanted a one-drop and this seemed like the best available option in a blue deck.
Thada Adel, Acquisitor is another card that could easily gain a lot of usability given the right circumstances. Islandwalk is a nice bonus in a standard format with Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Scars of Mirrodin is sure to give us enough artifacts to make the ability relevant in most match-ups. One of the most important parts of Thada Adel is her ability to take your opponent's Basilisk Collar. A deck like this is obviously very weak to the Cunning Sparkmage / Basilisk Collar combo. If you're lucky enough to dodge the combo early on you can get Thada Adel, Acquisitor through their blockers via islandwalk, Sword of Body and Mind, or Sword of Vengeance.
Lighthouse Chronologist hasn't seen much play since Rise of the Eldrazi was released last spring. This card seems absolutely insane to me. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a good mono-blue creature-based deck in Standard. That could change quickly, though. I'd keep an eye on this wise old gentleman—he could become a sought after Mythic Rare very quickly.
I've already spoken at length about the applications of Grand Architect, but I'd like to reiterate how well this card works with equipment. It also pumps our whole team, which is nothing to really scoff at.
Mana Leak and Negate are obvious in my mind. Two-mana countermagic helps a deck like this battle spot removal and board sweepers. It becomes very difficult for an opponent to win when you have a fully leveled creature or any creature with equipment backed up by countermagic.
Sword of Vengeance, Darksteel Axe, and Sword of Body and Mind can turn the least threatening blue critter into a very impressive fighter. Grand Architect gives our equipment a lot of mobility and can really give an unexpecting opponent a lot of trouble. I understand that Sword of Body and Mind will likely be difficult to get a hold of, but I decided to include it in an effort to show off the power of Grand Architect. Having a Grand Architect on the battlefield means you can use your lands for things like countermagic and leveling while you use your creatures to cast and equip your metal.
A deck like this would have obvious trouble with cards like Baneslayer Angel, but against most decks it can successfully fight any sort of creature battle strictly on the back of the equipment. Sword of Vengeance even lets our Coralhelm Commander fight with Baneslayer. Cunning Sparkmage / Basilisk Collar is another issue, but Thada Adel can help us win that war. Decks that lack these pieces will have a lot of trouble here. It's hard to fully explain just how impressive these equipment cards are with the Grand Architect. My initial reaction with the Architect was to find the best mix of cheap blue creatures and expensive artifacts. Equipment seems like it has a lot of value here. The evasion provided by Sword of Body and Mind's protection from green is actually pretty impressive. Jace, The Mind Sculptor can give most players equipping expensive toys a fit, but Sword of Body and Mind solves that problem without an issue.
Grand Architect can lead to a lot of absurd things. I'm sure there are a lot of exciting tricks a player can find within Scars of Mirrodin that pertain to this gem.
The Scars of Mirrodin prerelease is fast approaching. If you haven't made plans for Sept 25th or 26th then I strongly suggest you mark your calenders and find a few friends with which to make the trip out to your local Prerelease. Prereleases are a great way to get an introduction to the world of competitive Magic. Playing in a tournament setting is different than playing with your friends at home. There's a time limit and a protocol on shuffling an opponent's deck and other simple matters that come up in a game of Magic. Don't worry, though! Judges and other players at the Prerelease will help you learn how to navigate your way through these things without any judgments. Also, the upcoming Pro Tour Qualifier season is Scars of Mirrodin Limited. The Prerelease will be an excellent place to get a head start on practice building a sealed pool.
Enjoy the rest of the previews. There's an especially exciting one tomorrow! (Wink! Wink! You didn't hear it from me.)
Happy Brewing!The Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been approved for girls 26 and younger in British Columbia for a number of years now, but a 13-year-old B.C. boy is advocating for the provincial government to expand the program to all genders.
In 2013, the BC Centre for Disease Control has expanded the HPV vaccine program to allow women 26 years old and younger to get the vaccination for free. The provincial catch-up program previously only covered women aged 19 to 21 to provide cost coverage for women who were too old to receive the vaccine in high schools.
The program was later expanded to include at-risk boys and young men. But the rest have to pay for it.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a group of more than 100 different types of viruses. More than 40 types of HPV are transmitted through sexual intercourse, genital skin-to-skin contact and oral sex. These types can infect the genital areas of both men and women, including the penis, anus, vulva, vagina and cervix, as well as the oral cavity and throat.
Thirteen-year-old advocate Nelson Roy says he found out about the HPV vaccine from a documentary he watched a few years ago.
A few days later in school, Nelson had his Grade 6 immunizations, but the HPV vaccine was only designated for girls.
His father suggested that he write a letter to a local newspaper about it, Nelson did and the topic sparked a conversation.
“I can receive [HPV], transmit it and develop it,” says Nelson. “I don’t find it fair that we have to pay more to get this vaccine as it it a very severe problem and it can lead to many types of cancer.”
He has also filed a human rights complaint about it and a decision is expected soon, according to Nelson.
It is estimated that about 75 per cent of sexually active men and women will have at least one HPV infection in their lifetime.
Young women 20-24 years old generally have the highest rates of cancer-causing HPV infection.
Every year in B.C., 150 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 50 women die from the disease.
As well, 6,000 British Columbian women will develop high-risk changes to the cervix and 12,000 invasive procedures will be done to stop cancer from developing.
It is estimated that the HPV vaccine may prevent up to 70 per cent of cervical cancers and the same amount of precancerous high-risk cervical changes.
The goal of the vaccine is to cut down on cancer in women, but in men, HPV is associated with cancers of the mouth, nose, throat, anus and penis.
READ MORE: Doctors calling for increase in male HPV vaccinations
Nelson and his twin brother Elliot have previously advocated for the cause on Global BC, but there has not been any change since.
WATCH – Archival video (2013): BC has a comprehensive vaccination program against HPV, but it’s only free for girls. And that’s not going over well with twin brothers from New Westminster who may also be at risk. Tanya Beja explains.
At the time, B.C.’s Health Minister suggested the province was still weighing the evidence, but a cost-benefit analysis suggested to them that the vaccine should only be offered to girls.
READ MORE: Giving boys the HPV vaccine could cut health-care costs: study
But a national study released in 2015 suggests that giving boys the HPV vaccine could cut health-care costs over the long run. The researchers used mathematical modelling to estimate the effect of giving HPV vaccine to 12-year-old boys to prevent cancers of the mouth and throat. The work suggests if all the 12-year-old boys in Canada had been vaccinated in 2012, between $8 million and $28 million might have been saved because of oropharyngeal cancers averted in that group.
Manitoba has moved on to administer HPV vaccine to Grade 6 boys in 2015. Ontario will also expand its HPV vaccination program to include boys this month.
Global News has reached out to the Health Ministry for an update Monday morning.
Here is the full statement:
The human papillomavirus virus is the most common sexually transmitted infection and the number one cause of cervical cancer. Since 2008, the Ministry of Health has offered the HPV vaccine to protect British Columbia’s girls against the vast majority of cervical cancers. Last year we also began offering the vaccine for boys and young men up to age 26 who are at a higher risk of contracting HPV. This program includes those who self-identify as men who have sex with men and street-involved male youth, as they are at higher risk of early onset of sexual activity and survival sex, which is the practice of exchanging sex for items of basic need. This places them at a greater risk of contracting HPV. Evidence shows the burden of HPV-related disease in men falls disproportionately on men who have sex with men. Extending our HPV program to at-risk boys and young men provides protection to those who need it. As well, we’ve targeted the program to Grade 6 girls and at-risk boys because the HPV vaccine is most effective when administered before a child is first exposed to the virus. We review all potential vaccines with an eye to making decisions that reflect the most current research and evidence available, including cost-effectiveness and potential benefits. Despite an over $18 billion budget, all decisions in the health care system have to be weighed against other important health care needs — for example, the provision
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Round Table on the Environment and the Economy—which for years has urged the government to take a firmer stance on man-made climate change—was eliminated. So was a program that funds a dozen research stations in the Arctic and another that monitors greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions from power plants in Canada. Also cut was the climate adaptation research group within Environment Canada.
The move followed similar rounds of funding cuts since Harper took office in 2006.
The nonprofit Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, which awarded more than $100 million in research grants over the past decade, recently lost all its government funding. Funds were cut for the government's Experimental Lakes Area in Ontario, which runs a number of climate change studies, as well as for the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Data Center, a group run by Environment Canada that has measured ozone and radiation since the mid-1950s.
Twelve thousand government jobs are expected to be affected by the latest cuts, according to the journal Nature—thousands from the sciences.
Critics have questioned the Harper government's austerity claims partly because the environmental science programs that were cut receive so little funding. For instance, Experimental Lakes Area cost the government just $2 million and the National Round Table just $5 million, all from a roughly $11 billion science and technology budget.
At the same time, sectors expected to spur industry innovation like engineering and life sciences saw a boost from the law. For example, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, a nonprofit corporation that funds things like research equipment and labs, will receive $500 million over five years beginning in 2014.
Power, the spokesperson for Industry Canada, wrote in an email that while "discovery-driven basic research" (which environmental science falls under) remains an essential government priority, "we also believe in the transformative potential of science in the marketplace and the need to improve our business expenditure on research and development."
"In today's modern economy, our quality of life is driven by productivity and innovation in the private sector," she said.
Scientists interviewed for this story said they believe environmental programs, especially those focused on understanding and tackling climate change, are seen as a threat to government plans for energy security and economic growth, especially its plans to increase oil sands production and exports. Between 2010 and 2035, the oil sands patch could generate $2.1 trillion in economic activity across the economy, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
As an example of how Harper is obstructing scientific progress on climate change, critics point to its decision to shut the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL). The research station is one of the closest labs in the world to the North Pole and is considered one of the best in the Arctic. It has been collecting atmospheric data since 1992, but it lost its main funding stream earlier this year when the Harper government eliminated the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences.
At the same time PEARL's closure was announced, Harper unveiled final plans to build the new Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) in Cambridge Bay, nearly 800 miles south of the previous lab. The administration plans to spend $142.4 million over the next six years to build the facility and another $46.2 million over the next six years on research. PEARL's annual operating budget was just $1.5 million.
Cambridge Bay is too far south to measure ozone depletion or effectively capture the Arctic's response to climate change, according to Duck of Dalhousie University, who spent years conducting research at PEARL and had to lay off nearly his entire research team when funding was cut. Cambridge Bay is a hub of oil and gas exploration, located where the Northwest Passage is opening up because of declining sea ice.
Duck said it doesn't make financial sense to close PEARL and open CHARS if the economy is the biggest issue. "They are using science as cover for the building of the new observatory, but in reality it will be a command and control center for resource extraction and sovereignty."
The CHARS website says the lab "will be on the cutting edge of Arctic issues, including environmental science and resource development." It also notes that the building was announced under "the rubric for Strengthening Canada's Sovereignty and Place in the World."
Environmental Scientists Being Muzzled
In 2007, a year after Harper's Conservatives formed the government, Environment Canada—the country's equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—instituted a new Media Relations Policy. Materials presented to program heads said because there's "one department, one website" there will be "one department, one voice."
Suddenly, journalists couldn't contact scientists with whom they had close ties for years. Instead, they were funneled through media relations officers. Approval for interviews took days or weeks—if they were approved at all. In the United States, many, though not all, government scientists are allowed to speak to media without approval, including those at NOAA.
In 2011, for instance, Environment Canada scientist David Tarasick announced the discovery of the largest ozone hole ever reported above the Arctic, about twice the size of Ontario. The department denied all media interview requests with Tarasick for roughly three weeks following publication of the research. This month, news broke that Environment Canada scientists were restricted from talking with reporters about research showing contaminants in snow near oil sands operations.
The policy has had an impact on the coverage of climate science in Canadian media, according to an Environment Canada 2010 internal analysis of the media protocol obtained by Climate Action Network Canada (CAN), an advocacy group. The number of climate change stories declined by more than 80 percent between 2007 and 2008, the first year of the media policy. Hannah McKinnon, CAN's campaign director, said the situation has only grown worse in the past several years, with even fewer scientists being granted approval to speak with media.
One former Environment Canada atmospheric scientist who was fired last year in a round of budget cuts, and who asked not to be identified because the scientist's current employer collaborates with the department, said media relations managers would send researchers emails warning them not talk to reporters at conferences or public events. Other Environment Canada scientists have reported being shadowed by staff at meetings.
"It is ridiculous," the scientist said. "Morale is so low. People are scared to talk because they know their job is on the line. It doesn't make sense. These are publicly funded scientists doing work for the good of the Canadian public. Why shouldn't they be allowed to talk about it?"
Mike De Souza, a reporter covering energy and the environment for Postmedia News in Canada, told InsideClimate News he has dealt with the restrictions since they were established. Whereas Environment Canada used to be his first stop for sources, he now interviews scientists at private universities who can talk freely and under tight deadlines. But even that can be tricky, he said. "Any university researchers doing work with federal funding are often also constrained in what they say... because they are worried about getting their funding cut."
Environment Canada responded quickly to InsideClimate News' request for comment about its relationship with media. Previous attempts by this reporter to interview scientists for other stories were rerouted to media relations officers, who wrote back within 24 hours to a few days offering to help set up an interview (often not with the scientist requested) and requiring a list of questions in advance. Many times media officers would join the call when the interviews took place.
"Our response to media inquiries is exemplary," Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for Environment Canada, told InsideClimate News. In 2011, Environment Canada received more than 3,100 media calls, he said, citing internal records. Johnson said agency officials, including scientists, completed more than 1,200 media interviews plus hundreds of email responses.
Johnson did acknowledge that Environment Canada scientists face restrictions on what they can talk about, but he said the same rules apply to all public servants. "In Canada's democratic system of government, [commenting on government policy] is reserved for ministers and their designated spokespeople," he said. "This is a fundamental tenet of our public service values."
Canadian 'Brain Drain' and Growing Awareness
Scientists say Harper's policies are creating a Canadian "brain drain" as researchers flee the country for more stable research opportunities abroad.
Ted Shepherd, an atmospheric physicist, told InsideClimate News he left the University of Toronto in May for a position at the University of Reading in the UK partly because his funding got cut and partly because his wife, also an atmospheric scientist, couldn't find a job in Canada.
"It has been really devastating," Shepherd said. "Either you need an industrial link or be in a small targeted area to get funding, otherwise there is no place to go, especially not for climate.... The situation is completely different in Britain. Here they are investing heavily in climate science."
Jeff Pierce, another atmospheric scientist, said he is leaving Dalhousie University for Colorado State University at the end of the semester in part because the Environment Canada program he collaborated with, called CORALNet, vanished from the funding cuts.
Coverage by Canadian journalists like De Souza of the so-called war on science is raising awareness among Canadians, McKinnon of CAN said, nearly all of whom believe in climate change.
"Now that the issue is no longer behind the scenes, scientists are starting to feel comfortable standing up and voicing their concerns—and the general public is taking notice."
Weaver, the University of Victoria scientist, said he couldn't stay silent anymore after watching dozens of his colleagues and friends lose their jobs. He has since become one of the most outspoken scientists criticizing the Harper administration's policies. Weaver was a lead author on the IPCC's seminal fourth assessment of climate change trends and is also a lead author on the global panel's fifth assessment, which will published next year.
In September, Weaver announced plans to seek the Green Party nomination for a legislative position in the May 2013 provincial election—a position similar to a state legislator in the United States. He is currently up against two other candidates from the New Democratic Party and Liberal Party and plans to run mostly on an environmental platform.
"Canadians don't typically mobilize against things," Weaver said. "But what is happening has outraged a lot of people.... I think [the protesting] you're seeing now is just the beginning."FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- New York Jets backup quarterback Michael Vick admitted that he should’ve taken his scout team snaps more seriously before Sunday's game in San Diego, which might have made him ill-prepared to face the Chargers.
Vick was ineffective after entering the game in the second half in relief of ineffective starter Geno Smith, going 8-for-20 passing for 47 yards. The Chargers walloped the Jets 31-0.
“I felt like I, for some reason, being a quarterback in his 12th year, sometimes you to take things for granted,” Vick said Wednesday. “I think I took the scout team for granted.”
Earlier Vick said, “Maybe I didn’t prepare or I wasn’t prepared, but let me tell you it won’t happen again.”
Michael Vick struggled Sunday in his first full half of action. AP Photo/Denis Poroy
But later, he backtracked, saying, “I didn’t say I wasn’t ready because of the [scout team] snaps.”
Vick, a starter throughout his career up until recently, said he splits scout team reps with third-stringer Matt Simms.
“I mean, like I said, I’ve never been in this position before, so I try to let Matt Simms get as many reps as he can,” Vick said. “Being a young, growing quarterback, he’s trying to develop as well, and I understand how important it is for him, so we split reps and I still won’t be selfish in that regard. I’ll still allow Matt to get reps, and just take full advantage of mine and work on the small things, movement in the pocket, my presence, accuracy, everything the quarterback position entails.”
Vick, who hasn’t wanted to cause any sort of quarterback controversy, repeatedly making it clear that he signed a one-year, $5 million contract with the Jets in the offseason to mentor Smith, said he learned his lesson about being ready to enter the game.
“I learned my lesson last week: Always stay ready, always be prepared,” Vick said. “This is the first time I’ve been in this position [backup quarterback] for this length of time, and to just get thrown out there last week, it was fun to go out there and play. But it left a bitter taste in my mouth that I wasn’t able to points on the board or even help this team in any fashion.”
Was Vick caught off guard when he had to go in with the Jets down 21-0?
“I wasn’t really caught off guard because I knew anything could happen, but yeah, coming out at the start of the second half and just knowing the sense of urgency that we needed, it didn’t help,” he said. “But at the same time, we’re professionals and we’ve gotta get it done somehow, someway -- at least that’s how I feel. I feel like obviously at the end of the day I can always do something to make a difference, and if I don’t I’m going to be very hard on myself so I can keep my competitive edge, so that will never change.”
Vick’s message to younger signal-callers?
“Never take the scout team for granted, so to all the young guys out there, don’t take that scout team for granted,” he said. “You better take every rep and get 100 percent out of it, and I’ll never do that again. Football is football.”The flood of funding pumped into the clean-energy space by national stimulus packages around the world will peak this year and begin a gradual decline over the next two years, according to a report prepared for the World Economic Forum by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
The report estimated that clean energy, including wind power and solar energy, will receive roughly $67 billion, globally in 2011, reflecting an increase of nearly $10 billion over the amount of funds spent in 2010. This surge in clean-energy spending will not last beyond this year and will likely fall by nearly 50% in 2012 and about 80% in 2013, according to Bloomberg's analysis report.
The public funding provided through stimulus packages in 2010 resulted in a whopping $243 billion worth of investments in renewable energy globally, according New Energy Finance.
"It is scary to think what might have happened to clean-energy equipment providers' valuations had the stimulus funds not arrived," said Michael Liebreich, New Energy Finance's CEO, during an interview. "The stimulus has played an important part in maintaining the momentum of the sector."2010 studio album by Katy Perry
Teenage Dream is the third studio album by American singer Katy Perry.[2] It was released on August 24, 2010, through Capitol Records. Musically, Teenage Dream contains songs in the genres of pop,[2] with influences of disco, electronic, funk, house, gothic rock, Hi-NRG, and hip hop laced throughout the album. Lyrically, it revolves around young love, partying, self-empowerment, and personal growth. Perry co-wrote every song on the album, and also worked with a number of producers and writers, including Dr. Luke, Max Martin, Benny Blanco, Tricky Stewart, StarGate, Greg Kurstin, Bonnie McKee and Ester Dean.
Upon its release, Teenage Dream received generally mixed reviews from music critics, who complimented its production and themes while denouncing Perry's songwriting. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 192,000 copies in its first week. It was later certified three times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), sold 3 million copies in the United States, and charted within the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 year-end chart three years in a row.[3] The album also sold 1.3 million copies in the United Kingdom, where it was certified four times platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). As of July 2013, Teenage Dream has sold 6 million copies worldwide. The album and its singles earned Perry seven Grammy Award nominations including Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Record of the Year. It also won International Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2011.
The album was preceded by the number-one singles "California Gurls" and "Teenage Dream", and later produced the number-one singles "Firework", "E.T.", and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)". Its sixth "The One That Got Away" peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Teenage Dream is the second album in history to produce five number-one singles (after Michael Jackson's 1987 album Bad), the first by a woman to achieve this milestone and the third album in history to produce eight top five hits. All six of the aforementioned singles, in addition to two from its 2012 reissue, have sold over two million digital downloads each in the US, setting a record in the digital era for the most multi-Platinum singles from one album, breaking the previous record of Fergie's debut album The Dutchess (2006), which had five multi-Platinum songs[4]. To promote the album, Perry embarked on the California Dreams Tour from 2011 and 2012.[5]
Background [ edit ]
Prior to recording Teenage Dream, Perry told Rolling Stone she would "definitely keep it pop", in order to not "alienate" her fanbase.[6] Perry began recording the album on October 13, 2009, stating that she had "lots of layers to get through, thankfully Greg Wells is there to do the peeling".[7] Work on the album involved collaborating with numerous artists and producers including Wells. Guy Sigsworth, Dr. Luke, Max Martin,[8][9] Ryan Tedder,[10] Rivers Cuomo,[9] Kuk Harrell,[11] Greg Kurstin, Benny Blanco, Darkchild, Cathy Dennis, Ester Dean, and Tricky Stewart, who told Rap-Up magazine in December 2009 that the sound of the album would be pop and rock, like One of the Boys, though calling it a "different gear" for himself.[12] As for the visual component, Perry likens it to "going from Shirley Temple, Betty Boop to more of a Betty Paige [sic], pop art-sarcastic-fun-Lichtenstein picture: still bright, but the colors are more saturated, and it's more metallic fuchsia or purple than bubblegum pink."[13]
On March 27, 2010, at 2010 Kids' Choice Awards, Perry told Jose Ordonez that she considered the album "a summer record". She added that her previous teases about the album still fit, saying "it's what I said I wanted earlier".[9] She has also stated that the album is inspired by ABBA and The Cardigans. According to Perry, she gave her producer Dr. Luke a mixtape of songs by the two groups in order to demonstrate how she wanted her next record to sound. Perry described the album as "more groove-driven". She added, "When I went on tour, as much as I love all the in-between songs, I felt I was missing some of the stuff that made people bounce up and down."[14] During a Rolling Stone photo shoot in April 2010, Perry revealed details about what would be the album's lead single, "California Gurls". Allegedly a response to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys's "Empire State of Mind", she stated "everyone has the New York song, but what the fuck? What about LA? What about California?", adding that the song also took its inspiration from Prince.[15] The song features California rapper Snoop Dogg. USA Today gave the song a positive review, calling it "an effervescent toast to summer fun".[16] Perry also claimed that working with producers Max Martin and Dr. Luke was "a wonderful collaborative effort".[15]
Recording for the album finished on April 30, 2010. The album cover is a painting by Will Cotton, and was revealed on July 21, 2010.[17] via a live webstream with Cotton, at his Art Studio.[18] On July 23, 2010, the album's official track listing was posted on Perry's official website.[19] For the recording of Teenage Dream, Perry had recorded at a multitude of recording studios such as Playback Recording Studio, Roc the Mic Studios, Conway Recording Studios, Rocket Carousel Studio, Studio at the Palms, Triangle Sound Studios, Silent Sound Studios, The Boom Boom Boom, Henson Recording Studios, Capitol Studios, NightBird Recording Studios, and Eightysevenfourteen Studios.[20]
Music and lyrics [ edit ]
In June 2010, Perry stated some of the album's content "is a bit sugary sweet but when you listen to the record head to toe I think it's completely appetizing. I didn't want to have just club songs. People are living real lives, working jobs, having relationships. There's definitely a bit more substance and perspective on this record."[21] The music of Teenage Dream is derived from a wide variety of rock and pop genres, while heavily incorporating different musical styles not heard on her previous releases; disco and electronic are examples.[2] Musically, Teenage Dream is considered to be a departure from Perry's previous album, One of the Boys (2008), which was pop rock and soft rock driven. The album features a very wide range of rock music subgenres, which include disco rock,[22] glam metal,[23] indie rock,[24] pop rock,[25] hard rock,[26] electronic rock,[27] rock,[28] and goth rock.[29]
Songs [ edit ]
The album opens with the title track and second single "Teenage Dream", is written as a throwback record to Perry's teenage years.[30] It is a power pop and electropop song which features a "distinct retro sound",[31][32][33] and contains influences of disco, pop rock, and industrial music.[25][34][35] The song has been compared to several disco artists, including Madonna and The Cardigans.[36] The second song is "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)", the song recalls a true experience that Perry had while partying in Santa Barbara which included streaking in a park, dancing on tables, and partying at a club.[37] Musically, the song is styled in the genres of disco, indie rock, and Hi-NRG,[24][38][39] while also taking influence from dance-pop.[40] The lead single, "California Gurls", continues the "retro sound" carried from "Teenage Dream", and is written as an answer song to "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, and pays tribute to the beach lifestyle of California.[31][41] The song utilizes the genres of disco, funk-pop, and electropop,[22][23][42] while bearing influence of new wave music within its composition.[23][34][43] Written in tribute to The Beach Boys, the song has been compared to the song "September Gurls" by Big Star, as well as the group Flanger.[34]
The fourth track is the self-empowerment song "Firework". Written in a disco-rock style which runs over the backing track, consisting of a mix of violins and house music.[22][44][45] The song has generated comparisons to artists such as Coldplay and Leona Lewis.[36][46] According to Perry, the song was inspired by Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, and she has said on many occasions that it is her favorite song from the album.[47][48] "Peacock" is a dance-pop song, with an up-tempo house music beat.[22] Lyrically, the track contains a double entendre with suggestive wording. New York magazine writer Willa Paskin observed that Perry did the obvious with the song's hook ("she used a common word for penis and made it mean penis!").[49] Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone noticed the two songs shared a drum hook, and thought of "Peacock" as a sequel to Gwen Stefani's 2005 single, "Hollaback Girl".[50] The album follow with "Circle the Drain", a rant song where, lyrically, Perry is telling off a self-destructive drug-addicted ex-boyfriend. Its candid lyrics[51][52] also discuss the strains his addiction put on both of them. In the track's chorus, she sings about how she wants to be his lover, not someone who has to take care of him, such as a maternal figure. She also sings about how he had ultimately lost large opportunities.[51] The song is styled in the genres of disco-rock,[22] and gothic rock tones.[29] The sixth single from Teenage Dream is "The One That Got Away", which is a rock and pop ballad.[53] Perry stated that she wrote the song "about when you promise someone forever, but you end up not being able to follow through. It's a bittersweet story. Hopefully, the listener learns from hearing it and never has to say they had 'the one' get away."
The eighth song, "E.T." is a song about "falling in love with a foreigner".[55] A remix of the song features Kanye West. Musically, the track is an electronic and hip hop ballad influenced by drum n' bass, rave, and techno. The eleven track is "Hummingbird Heartbeat" was inspired by Perry's boyfriend at the time, Russell Brand.[56] Musically, it is a 1980s-styled hard rock song that contains a mixture of elements from rock and electronica. Lyrically, the song compares the feeling of being in love to the speed of a hummingbird's heartbeat.[57][28] The last track is "Not Like the Movies" a power ballad about a love relationship where a woman does not feel in love and still waits for the man of her dreams, or "charming prince", as a Terra reviewer put it.[58] Its melody was compared to Britney Spears' "Everytime" (2003) and Evanescence's "My Immortal" (2003).[59]
Release and artwork [ edit ]
Perry performing " Peacock " during a promotional concert in Budapest, October 2010.
"Teenage Dream" was released on August 24, 2010, in the United States[60] as a digital download on iTunes, and as a physical release by Capitol Records.[61] Worldwide, the album was released on August 30, 2010 and distributed by EMI.[62] A deluxe version was made available on August 27, 2010 in the US, and consists of two CDs with the twelve original tracks, plus two tracks from 2009 on which Perry had appeared as a featured artist — 3OH!3's "Starstrukk" and Timbaland's "If We Ever Meet Again".[63] The deluxe version also includes remixes of "California Gurls" and "Teenage Dream". The covers of the first two singles were photographed by Emma Summerton in April 2010, and three other pictures taken by the artist were released to promote the album in July.[64] The official album cover, which shows Perry lying naked on clouds of cotton candy, was painted on canvas by Will Cotton and released on July 21 via live webstream.[65]
In North America, the album was packaged in several different ways. The explicit version of the album is available in a three-panel (six-sided) digipak, which does not feature Perry's name or the album title on the cover, aside from the Parental Advisory warning label on the lower right-hand corner. This is also how the album is displayed if purchased digitally. The booklet contained inside this version reproduces the album's front artwork, without any labels or text. The explicit version is also offered in a standard jewel case, which has text printed on the booklet and has the smell of cotton candy. The cover with text is mainly used for releases outside of North America, while international deluxe editions are available in the digipak, with a bonus disc included. A limited number of the albums are scented like cotton candy indicated by a sticker on the cover. Artwork based on the album were also used by EA Games for the limited edition of the expansion pack "The Sims 3: Showtime" from The Sims game franchise. It was released on March 6, 2012.[66]
Promotion [ edit ]
On June 14, 2010, a beach themed Teenage Dream listening party took place in New York, a number of tracks were played, including: "Teenage Dream", "Firework", "Last Friday Night", "Circle The Drain", "Pearl", "The One That Got Away", "Peacock", and "Not Like the Movies".[67] Before the release of the album, three promotional singles were released exclusively on Apple's iTunes Store as a countdown to Teenage Dream. "Not Like the Movies", was released digitally on August 3, 2010,[68] and debuted at number 53 on the Billboard Hot 100.[69] "Circle the Drain" was released digitally on August 10, 2010 as the second promotional single,[70] and entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 58.[71] "E.T.", the third, was released the following week on August 17, 2010, and charted at number 42 on the Billboard Hot 100.[72] "Peacock" reached number 64 in Canada, number 52 in the Czech Republic,[73] and number 1 on the US Hot Dance Club Songs chart.[74] It has also sold over 500,000 copies in the US[75] and certified Gold on July 9, 2012. A dance remix of it was released on March 26, 2012.[76]
Promotion for the album began with a live performance of the album's lead single, "California Gurls" on May 20, 2010, at the CW networks' annual "upfronts" presentation in New York.[77][78] Perry alongside Snoop Dogg performed "California Gurls" at the MTV Movie Awards in June 2010.[79] She also promoted the song that same month on Germany's Next Topmodel 2010 and Le Grand Journal.[80] The Candifornia theme from the "California Gurls" video was used in the song's performance at the MuchMusic Video Awards 2010 and on The Graham Norton Show.[81] On September 5, 2010, Perry performed "Teenage Dream", "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)", "Firework" and "Not Like the Movies" in the show's launch of the Teenage Dream in Berlin. Perry performed "Teenage Dream" live for the first time in July 2010 in MTV World Stage Live in Malaysia, as well as opening the 2010 Teen Choice Awards with a rendition of it.[82] In August, Perry performed "California Gurls" and "Peacock" on The Morning Show and The Today Show.[83] That same month, "Firework" was performed live for the first time on the Late Show with David Letterman.[84]
While promoting the album, Perry expressed she wanted her upcoming tour to be very visual. On her Twitter account, she stated, "I hope that it's going to engage all of your senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch".[85] The California Dreams Tour was officially announced in October 2010 by various media outlets including Perry's official website, in conjunction with the release of her third single, "Firework". In 2011, Perry announced her North American leg during a live chat on social network Facebook. She then responded the tour will be very "super girl power" as vocalists Robyn, Yelle and Marina and the Diamonds will open her shows during the various legs. Perry further stated she will actively participate with fans during the tour on various social networks including Facebook and Twitter.[86] The tour beginning February 20, 2011 on Lisbon, Portugal and the end January 22, 2012 on Pasay, Philippines, the tour visited Europe, Oceania, Asia and the Americas.[87] The tour ranked 16th in Pollstar's "2011 Top 25 Worldwide Tours", earning over $59.5 million.[88] At the conclusion of 2011, the tour ranked 13th on Billboard's annual "Top 25 Tours", earning nearly $50 million with 98 shows.[89] It won an award for Favorite Tour Headliner at the 38th People's Choice Awards.[90] On November 24, 2011, Perry had tweeted that there will be a concert DVD released for the tour.[91]
Singles [ edit ]
"California Gurls" was the lead single from Teenage Dream, which features rapper Snoop Dogg. The single made its radio debut on May 7, 2010 and was digitally released four days later.[92][93][94] The song had received generally positive reviews from music critics, with many critics highlighting it as an album favorite. The song also received worldwide success as well, peaking at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, staying there for six consecutive weeks. It also peaked at number one in New Zealand, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and Scotland. It was the best selling digital song of 2010.[95]
"Teenage Dream" was released as the second single from the album. The song went to radio stations in the US on July 22, 2010.[96] The song received positive reviews from music critics, with Jocelyn Vena of MTV said it "picks up right where 'California Gurls' leaves off", describing it as having "a strong beat".[97] The song had also had chart success as similar to the first single, peaking at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 for two consecutive weeks, and also peaked at number one in Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, Slovakia and other sub-charts in the US.
"Firework" was released as the third offering from the album. The song was released on October 18, 2010 through radio airplay, followed by a digital release on November 2, 2010 in the UK. The music video for "Firework" is part of a cross-promotional deal with European telecommunications group Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Telekom hosted a series of activities and competitions from which fans around Europe were recruited to be in the video.[98] The song had commercial success as well, peaking at number one in the US and spent four non-consecutive weeks. The song also topped the charts in Brazil, Canada, New Zealand and subcharts in the US.
"E.T." was released on February 16, 2011. For its single release, the song was remixed to feature new verses from Kanye West.[99][100] The music video for the song, directed by Floria Sigismondi, was filmed in February 2011 and features both Perry and West. The video was released on March 31, 2011.[101] The song topped the charts in the US for five non-consecutive weeks, and also peaked at the top position in Canada, Germany, Poland and New Zealand.
"Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" was released on June 6, 2011 on US Top 40/Mainstream radio as the fifth single from the album.[102] The song received generally mixed reviews from music critics. The song also received commercial success, peaking at number one in Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the US, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two consecutive weeks. The music video was released worldwide on June 14, 2011. It guest stars Darren Criss, Rebecca Black, Kevin McHale, Kenny G, Hanson, Corey Feldman and Debbie Gibson. A remixed version of "Last Friday Night" was released on August 8, 2011, featuring American rapper Missy Elliott. On August 17, 2011, with "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)", Perry made history as the second artist overall, and first female, to achieve five number one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart from one album. The song also became Perry's fourth number one in Canada.
"The One That Got Away" was released as the sixth single from Teenage Dream. The song was released on October 4, 2011 on US Mainstream radio.[103][104][105] The song received mostly positive reviews from most music critics, who complimented Perry's serious tone. A teaser of the music video was also released in early November, and the full music video premiered on November 11, 2011 on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.[106] On November 24, the single entered the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100, making Teenage Dream one of only 7 albums in US history to have 6 or more top 10 singles. On December 14, it became one in two albums to yield 6 top 4 songs, when it soared to number 4, it later peaked at number 3.[107]
“Hummingbird Heartbeat” was released as the Australian exclusive seventh single on September 17, 2012, months after “Wide Awake” was released. It debuted at number 59 on the Australia Hot 100 Airplay Chart on the issue dated September 24, 2012 before it reached its peak position of 34 the following week.[1][108]
Promotional singles [ edit ]
"Not Like the Movies" and "Circle the Drain" were released as promotional singles as album previews in the United States.[citation needed]
"Peacock" was released on March 26, 2012 as the third and final promotional single of the album.[109]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Teenage Dream received generally mixed reviews upon release from music critics. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic criticized the album as "desperate vulgarity" and "tiring."[112] Mikael Wood of Spin gave a mixed review, noting that the album "won't disappoint parents looking for reasons to worry about their kids".[51] Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone described the album as "heavy on Eighties beats, light on melody, taking a long dip into the Daft Punk filter-disco house sound."[2] Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune gave a negative review to the album. He criticized the production, calling it "Frankenstein-like", as well as calling Perry's vocals "robotic" and lacking "any elegance or nuance".[29] Matthew Cole of Slant Magazine called it "over-produced bad-girl debauchery," claiming that Perry has "found a way to lower the bar."[36]
The Los Angeles Times gave it three stars, saying, "On 'Teenage Dream,' the songs alternate between weekend-bender celebrations of hedonism and self-help-style affirmations encouraging
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both during the week and on game day. We felt it was vital to maintain our continuity on offense and keep building on what we have established the past four seasons.
“I’m also really excited about adding Mike Canales to our staff. Mike has recruited, coached and developed numerous quarterbacks at the collegiate level. He will be of great benefit to our players and staff with his extensive experience and knowledge of the quarterback position.”
Scott, who has 16 years of coaching experience, joined UT in 2016 as tight ends/special teams coordinator and was part of an offensive unit that set a school-record with 63 touchdowns. The Vols averaged 47.8 points over the last five games and scored 30-plus points in nine of 13 games in 2016. Offensively, the Vols ranked second in the SEC in scoring offense and fifth with 449.2 yards per game.
The Vols averaged 443.7 yards of total offense and produced 400 yards of total offense in eight of their 13 games, and 450-plus yards in seven of 13 outings. With a red zone scoring percentage of 88.0 percent, the Vols ranked second in the SEC and 28th in the NCAA.
A native of Sebring, Florida, Scott spent three seasons (2013-15) as the Miami Hurricanes’ tight ends coach and served as interim coach for the final six games of the 2015 season. As an interim head coach, Scott led the Hurricanes to a 4-2 mark and a berth in the Sun Bowl. Scott spent eight seasons at the University of South Florida where he served a variety of roles, including tight ends, offensive line and running backs coach. He was part of a staff that helped USF to its fifth-straight eight-win season. He also spent time at Wharton High School, Freedom High School and Sebring High in Florida.
Canales arrives in Knoxville with 32 years of coaching experience, including 23 years as an offensive coordinator. He has coached five different quarterbacks that have earned All-America recognitions and been a part of teams that have appeared in eight bowl games. He spent the 2016 season at his alma mater, Utah State, where he served as the assistant head coach/running backs/tight ends coach.
From 2010-15, Canales served as the associate head coach/offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at North Texas from 2010-15. He also spent portions of the 2010 and 2015 seasons as an interim head coach for the Mean Green. During his six seasons at North Texas, he mentored 20 offensive players who earned all-conference honors, while helping the program win just their third bowl game in school history in 2013. He coordinated a unit in 2014 that ranked tops in the nation with a 94.3 percent red zone scoring percentage. In 2013, he directed an offense that scored 414 points, the second-most in school history and the most since 1951.
Under Canales’ guidance in 2013, quarterback Derek Thompson ranked second-best in school history for single-season passing yards (2,896), completions (251), completion percentage (64.4) and total offense (3,053). During the 2012 season, Thompson threw for a career-high 2,649 yards and set the school single-game record for completion percentage (89.3 pct.) against Kansas State when he completed 25 of 28 passes. Thompson finished his career with 7,457 passing yards and 42 touchdown passes. Canales spent a portion of the 2010 season as interim head coach at North Texas and led the team to a 2-3 mark.
Prior to joining North Texas, Canales served two stints at South Florida where he was the offensive coordinator from 2007-09 and the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach from 1996-2000. He directed a unit in 2008 that led the Big East Conference in scoring and finished second in total offense. He helped his team reach a national ranking as high as No. 2 during the 2007 season and No. 10 during the 2008 season. Under his leadership, South Florida quarterback Matt Grothe became the Big East Conference career leader in total offense.
Canales spent three seasons (2004-06) as the offensive coordinator at the University of Arizona. He was a part of Herm Edwards’ staff with the New York Jets in 2003 where he served as wide receivers coach. He tutored Santana Moss, who finished among the top 15 NFL receivers that season with 74 receptions for 1,105 yards and 10 touchdowns.
From 2001-02, Canales was passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach at North Carolina State, where he helped develop NFL All-Pro quarterback Philip Rivers of the San Diego Chargers. Rivers was a two-time All-ACC honoree and a Heisman Trophy candidate. North Carolina State finished 11-3 and ranked 12th in the final AP Poll in 2002, averaging 392.0 yards on offense. The offense featured a 3,000-yard passer in Rivers, a 1,000-yard receiver in Jerricho Cotchery and a 1,000-yard rusher in T.A. McLendon. Canales also spent time at Pacific (1995), Snow College (1987-94) and Brigham Young (1985-86). During his time at Snow College, the team ranked in the top 10 nationally in seven of his eight seasons. He also coached the softball team for seven years, leading the team to six region titles.
A former quarterback at Utah State from 1981-83, Canales earned a degree in speech communication. He earned a master’s degree in professional leadership from BYU in 1986.
Canales and his wife, Carol, have six children: Christopher, Tyler, Dakota, Aaron Norris, Christy Norris, and Cameron Canales and two grandchildren, Afton Norris and Micah Canales.
Forum discussion: Jones announces changes to coaching staffGreetings from Casa De Constant Crisis, home of me, Deb, and the two Younger Things, as well as several overstimulated dogs and (in their tiny minds, anyway) underappreciated cats.
As some of you have gathered, it has been a very roller-coastery ride this year at our place for a whole number of reasons. We came into it very high because I was finishing the first draft of ‘The Witchwood Crown’, the first volume in ‘The Last King Of Osten Ard’. It felt good to be back in Osten Ard and I think the bones of the novel are strong.
Then, as we were taking our first vacation in a goodly while, doing family things in Italy and England, we got some unexpected (and unwanted) news. Because of complications arising from the merger of American giants Penguin and Random House, ‘The Witchwood Crown’ had been bumped back a year to March 2017.
We know the disappointment many of you felt, because we heard from you. As for Casa Williams-Beale, we were in freak-out mode. When you’re a full-time writing household, a delay like that is also a delay in income. Many of you gave us cheers and loving support whilst we spent two months finessing a self-publishing program. But at the last moment, just before we put everything in motion, my publishers DAW Books (yes, they had been somewhat distracted…) said they wanted to publish the two short Osten Ard novels that came out of the venture themselves, instead of us going the indie route. Which has solved the income problem for now. Huzzah! And again, Huzzah!
SO, where we currently stand, books- and publication-wise, is:
‘The Heart of Regret’ (or possibly ‘The Heart of What Was Lost’) — a short novel (about seventy thousand words) will be published by DAW Books and Hodder & Stoughton sometime before The Witchwood Crown — I hope for Winter, 2016. The title may change (my wife and editors don’t like the original as much as I do) but the book is in rewrite and essentially complete. It takes place in the months after the Storm King’s fall, between the end of ‘To Green Angel Tower’ proper and the Afterword or epilogue or whatever I called it. The main human characters are Duke Isgrimnur, Sludig, and a young knight for hire named Porto, who decades later will become deeply embedded in the events of the new books. We will also meet some Norns up close, and learn a lot more about their culture.
The story follows Isgrimnur as he leads an army against the Storm King’s defeated warriors, who are looting and killing as they fall back to Nakkiga, their mountain home in the far north. Every step of this journey leads to more strategy, more deadly battles, and it ends with the siege of Nakkiga (and more than a few surprises).
The Witchwood Crown (volume one of ‘The Last King of Osten Ard’) — scheduled for Spring, 2017, and I’m rewriting the first draft now. It’s running about a thousand pages in manuscript form, so, a typical long Tad epic fantasy volume! In it we will rejoin many of the characters from MS&T some thirty-plus years later and meet many old friends (and enemies) again, as well as a host of new characters, including the newest generations of castle-folk at the Hayholt. Also, as with ‘Heart of Regret’, we will see a lot more of the Norns and the Sithi and their age-old troubles with each other and with mortals. And of course we will revisit some parts of Osten Ard, but also see others for the first time. And, as many have wondered, we will get some answers about the children of Josua and Vorzheva, the twins that prompted Aditu’s memorable and puzzling prophecy.
The other two volumes of new series will be titled Empire of Grass and The Navigator’s Children. We are waiting for publication dates on these and hope to have them soon, not least because they will map out the next few years’ writing for me.
The second short Osten Ard novel, currently unnamed:
I would guess that the second short novel will come out between The Witchwood Crown and Empire of Grass, but that’s a guess until we work out the schedule with publishers. The story at this stage is one of a number of possibilities, so I think I’ll talk about it next newsletter, or perhaps when actually I’m writing it and it’s jumping like the tree frogs around here whenever we get some rain. All the possibilities are pretty interesting, I have to say.
And finally, lots of you ask about film and television adaptations. Well, things are definitely happening, but they happen slowly. I’ve been waiting to tell you of one happy event, but I can’t break silence yet. Other good things are cooking; wait and see. And don’t forget the Otherland game – it’s on Steam in its early access form:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/376310/
Thanks for your attention, interest, and purchases of Tad-stuff. We know it’s fierce competition out there for your money and time and we just want to assure you that we’re very deserving. If you hear any clinking or rustling in the background, it’s not money but probably just the dogs going through the garbage. Or it might be the cats trying fiddling with the telephone to order more catnip. That’s the problem with modern phones — you don’t need thumbs to operate them.
Love and madness from our home to yours,
Tad (and Deborah)
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EmailCongress has rejected a veto by President Barack Obama for the first time since he became president. Ida Siegal reports. (Published Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2016)
In a resounding rebuke, Democrats joined with Republicans Wednesday to hand Barack Obama the first veto override of his presidency, voting overwhelmingly to allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts for its alleged backing of the attackers.
Both the House and Senate voted decisively to reverse Obama's decision to scuttle the legislation. Democrats in both chambers abandoned the president in large numbers despite warnings from Obama and top national security officials that flaws in the bill could put U.S. interests, troops, and intelligence personnel at risk.
The Senate vote was 97-1, with only Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., backing the president. The House vote a few hours later was 348-77, with 123 Democrats rebuffing the president and voting to override. Obama said during a CNN interview that overriding his veto was a mistake that may set a "dangerous precedent."
Lawmakers said their priority wasn't Saudi Arabia, but the 9/11 victims and their families who continue to demand justice 15 years after attackers killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, the Washington, D.C., area, and Pennsylvania. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis.
S. Carolina Pediatrician Stops Taking Unvaccinated Patients
A South Carolina pediatrics office is turning away unvaccinated patients, citing the health and safety of other immunocompromised children who are in danger of catching contagious diseases in the waiting room. Parents say their choices for their unvaccinated children are shrinking. (Published Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019)
"Overriding a presidential veto is something we don't take lightly, but it was important in this case that the families of the victims of 9/11 be allowed to pursue justice, even if that pursuit causes some diplomatic discomforts," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a chief sponsor of the bill.
Speaking at a forum in Washington, CIA Director John Brennan said he was concerned about how Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, would interpret the bill. He said the Saudis provide significant amounts of information to the U.S. to help foil extremist plots.
"It would be an absolute shame if this legislation, in any way, influenced the Saudi willingness to continue to be among our best counterterrorism partners," Brennan said.
R. Kelly Facing 10 Counts of Criminal Sexual Abuse
R. Kelly has been charged with 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse in Cook County, Illinois. (Published Friday, Feb. 22, 2019)
On CNN, Obama said that a few lawmakers who backed the bill weren't aware of its potential impact. He didn't name them. "And, frankly, I wish Congress here had done what's hard," he said. "It was, you know, basically a political vote."
But Republicans and Democrats said the White House had been slow to respond to the bill and miscalculated lawmakers' intent to act on the legislation along with the 15th anniversary of the terror attacks. When Obama and senior national security officials such as Defense Secretary Ash Carter finally weighed in, it was too late.
The Senate passed the bill by voice vote in May. The Obama White House then made the mistake of thinking the bill would stall in the Republican-controlled House. In August, 9/11 families pressured Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., while he was on a campaign swing in New York.
Avenatti: Today Is a ‘Watershed Moment’ in Case Against R. Kelly
Attorney Michael Avenatti, who said he is representing several women and families in a sexual misconduct case against recording artist R. Kelly, said he recovered a videotape from the 1990s that appears to show Kelly engaged in various acts with underaged women and teens. (edited) (Published Friday, Feb. 22, 2019)
On Sept. 9, two days before the 15th anniversary of 9/11, the House passed the bill by voice vote with little debate.
Despite reversing Obama's decision, a bipartisan group of 28 senators led by Bob Corker, R-Tenn., suggested that defects in the bill could open a legal Pandora's box, triggering lawsuits from people in other countries seeking redress for injuries or deaths caused by military actions in which the U.S. may have had a role.
Corker, the chairman of Foreign Relations Committee, chided the White House for being outraged over the outcome when the administration did so little to sustain the president's veto.
Full Prosecutors' Statement Against Jussie Smollett
Prosecutors unveiled the full statement in court on Thursday against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett, who is accused of fabricating a racist and homophobic attack against himself in a bid for publicity. (Published Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019)
"There was zero desire to sit down and talk about a way to get to a better outcome. Zero," Corker told The Associated Press. "To my knowledge, I don't know of a call from Obama to a single senator over this."
In a letter sent Tuesday to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Obama said the bill would erode sovereign immunity principles that prevent foreign litigants "from second-guessing our counterterrorism operations and other actions that we take every day."
But proponents of the bill dismissed Obama's concerns as unpersuasive. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, and other supporters said the bill is narrowly tailored and applies only to acts of terrorism that occur on U.S. soil.
Timeline: Jussie Smollett’s Alleged Chicago Attack
Actor Jussie Smollett was arrested and charged with filing a false police report in Chicago after he said he was the victim of a hate crime. (Published Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019)
Families of the victims and their attorneys dismissed concerns over the legislation as fearmongering. "We rejoice in this triumph and look forward to our day in court and a time when we may finally get more answers regarding who was truly behind the attacks," said Terry Strada, national chair of the 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism.
The legislation gives victims' families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks. Courts would be permitted to waive a claim of foreign sovereign immunity when an act of terrorism occurred inside U.S. borders, according to the terms of the bill.
Obama vetoed the measure last week, telling lawmakers the bill would make the U.S. vulnerable to retaliatory litigation.
Blaze in Bangladesh's Capital Kills Dozens
A devastating fire raced through buildings in an old part of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, and killed at least 81 people, officials and witnesses said Thursday. (Published Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019)
In a separate letter sent Monday to a senior House member, Defense Secretary Ash Carter described the potential for foreign litigants to seek classified intelligence data and analysis and sensitive operational information to establish their cases in what could be an "intrusive discovery process."
___
AP Writers Erica Werner and Deb Riechmann contributed to this article.
Copyright Associated Press"All leads must be pursued."
–Agent Kallus
Deploy your probes. Deploy your fighters. Pursue all leads of Rebel insurgency and make short work of those you successfully hunt down. The Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion Pack for X-Wing™ is now available at retailers throughout the United States!
Designed for use within the game’s Cinematic Play and Epic Play formats, the Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion Pack contains one Gozanti-class cruiser miniature, two TIE fighter miniatures with a variant paint scheme, eleven ship cards, twenty-six upgrade cards, and all the maneuver dials, damage decks, tokens, and game pieces that you need to fly your Gozanti cruiser and its escort fighters. Additionally, the expansion includes a set of four new missions for Cinematic Play, as well as rules for docking up to four starfighters and deploying them straight into battle.
Deploy Your Fighters
Equipped with the Docking Clamps upgrade, your Gozanti-class Cruiser can carry as many as four docked starfighters. They can be TIE fighters, TIE interceptors, TIE bombers, or TIE Advanced, but they must all share the same ship type and must be docked before the game begins.
While these fighters are docked, they are considered inactive for all purposes. They do not reveal maneuvers, they cannot attack, and they cannot be attacked. In fact, they are completely safe from your opponent's weapons so long as they remain docked.
However, while your fighters are docked, they are also doing nothing for you, apart from tying up the squad-building points that you invested in them. Naturally, you will want to find an appropriate time to deploy them.
The rules for deploying your docked ships work a lot like those that allow players with the Hound's Tooth Title to deploy the Nashtah Pup from their YV-666 just before it explodes. Step by step, you simply select a maneuver for the ship you wish to deploy, fit the matching maneuver template to the front or back of the Gozanti, and fly your ship to the opposite end. Then, so long as your ship didn't collect a stress token or overlap an obstacle or another ship, it can perform a single action.
Here, though, you will find one important distinction between the rules for deploying the Nashtah Pup and those for deploying your Gozanti's docked ships; the ships that your Gozanti deploys can attack at their pilot skill value immediately in the Combat phase. They do not suffer a round's delay like the Pup.
This presents you a range of tactical options that takes the idea of docking ships to your Gozanti far beyond the thematic appeal of using it to transport fighters without their own hyperdrives. Because you activate your huge-base ships after all small- and large-base ships have already activated, you gain an element of surprise, positional advantages, and an extra burst of speed. Moreover, depending upon the Title you equip for your Gozanti, you can even gain the opportunity to fire earlier in the Combat phase than you normally would.
Tactical Advantages
Outmaneuvering your opponents is one of the greatest challenges in X-Wing. Done right, it is also one of the game's most rewarding aspects. However, it is much easier said than done. Each round, you and your opponent must secretly plot the maneuvers for each of your ships, and to outmaneuver your opponent, you must guess the likeliest end position or possible end positions for each of his ships. Knowing your opponent's ships' range of maneuvers is helpful, here, but then you still have to account for the possibility those ships will perform barrel rolls or boost.
Likewise, you must anticipate the flow of the round and determine where to maneuver your ships. You will want to position them in what you expect are the most advantageous positions, but your opponent will expect as much and might try to block your ships by flying into their paths. So you might want to maneuver into a less likely position—one that still offers an advantage, even if slightly mitigated—but are you just hurting yourself with all this second guessing?
To a large extent, then, the greatest strength that the Gozanti brings to your Epic fleet is the fact that it allows you to bypass this guessing game for your docked fighters, even while it forces your opponent to pay an extraordinary amount of attention to the threat they pose.
Because you deploy your docked fighters after all the small- and large-base ships have executed their maneuvers and performed their actions, you can select their maneuvers and perform their actions with full and perfect knowledge of your opponent's fighter screen. Want your Alpha Squadron Pilot to get the drop on Wedge Antilles or Tycho Celchu? When you deploy it from the Gozanti, you can pick a maneuver that gives you a shot and denies their shots, and there is nothing they can do about it. You can even strip enemy ships of their defensive tokens by using the Suppressor Title and acquiring two target locks with a Weapons Engineer.
The ships you dock on the Gozanti can also get into battle much more quickly than they could on their own. After all, instead of maneuvering them from the edge of your deployment zone, you can now maneuver them from the front of a huge-base ship that has already surged forward on its own initiative.
This could be a good way to get early shots from the torpedoes on your TIE bombers or from the missiles on your TIE Advanced. Many of your X-Wing ships have different efficiencies in Epic Play than they do in Standard Play, and the Gozanti can help a bomber wing led by Captain Jonus perform a truly terrifying alpha strike—one that could very easily shape the course of the ensuing battle, especially if it involves four TIE bombers all deployed simultaneously from the Vector.
Finally, the Gozanti's Requiem Title allows the fighters that you deploy to fire at a pilot skill value of "8" later in the Combat phase. In this way, you can catch your opponent off-guard with your Academy Pilots or Alpha Squadron Pilots, or you can have your unique pilots fire in the order of your choice. For example, you could have Commander Alozen wear down an opponent's shields with his Cluster Missiles before you have Maarek Stele follow up against the same opponent, thereby increasing his chances of scoring a critical hit.
Fly to Battle
Whether or not you use it to carry your docked fighters directly into the heat of battle, the Gozanti-class Cruiser in the Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion Pack marks a significant maturation and shift in the dynamics of X-Wing Epic Play. Your huge-base ships become more potent and meaningful than ever, and the expansion's TIE fighters and upgrades offer new squad-building options for both Epic and Standard Play.
You can learn more about the Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion Pack from our previews, "Epic Tactics" and "Swarm Tactics," or you can simply head to your local retailer to pick up your copy now! The Imperial Assault Carrier Expansion Pack is available at retailers throughout the United States. Availability in other regions may vary.Grocery shopping is the worst, especially for the sober. Playing battle-carts while jostling other harried, hangry people for the last box of Froot Loops on Sunday afternoon is a drag; the lucky ones among us skate by on a lingering brunch buzz to power through to the checkout line. Thanks be to God, then, that DFW boasts multiple markets where you can drink while you shop.
The list is neatly divided in twos: two Texas-based, high-end supermarkets and two Italo-centric, wine mecca specialty shops. Whether you prefer the fruit of the barley or the fruit of the vine, all these stores afford some reprieve from the shopping list blues. With one reasonable exception, you can pop as many tops (or corks) as you like during business hours, so whether you're a harried young professional looking to combine buying-frozen-dinner business with happy hour pleasure or an off-duty night shifter looking to quench your thirst in earlier hours of the day, you've got options.
Continue Reading
Central Market
5750 E. Lovers Lane
10720 Preston Road #1018
320 Coit Road, Plano
1425 E. Southlake Blvd., Southlake
As the sole North Texas outpost of the San Antonio-based supermarket chain H-E-B, Central Market is a magnet for newcomers transplanted from other parts of the state. It’s still a hustle to fit your provisions in those mini-carts, so Central Market has graciously opened its taps to shoppers. Current licensing prevents them from pouring from the draft lines (those are reserved for growler fills), but guests are encouraged to pick up a bottle of beer or glass of wine and take it away in a plastic cup while they quest for kale.
The beer selection is extensive, and prices range from $1.50 to $5 per brew, with wines falling between $4 and $8. You can drink alcohol during all store hours (except Sundays, when you have to wait til noon thanks to antiquated Texas blue laws), and there’s no firm cutoff limit — though we’d urge you not to find yourself blacked out in a pile of organic avocados.
EXPAND JImmy's Food Store has been in operation for half a century. Drink a Birra Moretti and linger over its array of Italian offerings. Lance Higdon
Jimmy’s Food Store
4901 Bryan St.
Jimmy’s Food Store stands in contrast to Central Market and Whole Foods in a number of ways — it’s venerable (50 years and running), it’s small and it’s focused on all things Italian. Unsurprisingly, it’s really easy to drink wine while shopping at Jimmy’s, particularly regional varietals rarely found at other grocery stores. There are rows and rows of bottles from Sicily, Sardinia and beyond, all of which are very good, some of which are a bargain. You can buy and open a bottle while you pick out your pasta, or opt for wine by the glass for $4.99.
The beer selection can’t compete with all that wine, but it’s there, and you can sip a single longneck of Birra Morreti or Peroni for $2.99. Jimmy’s nicely enforces a two-drink maximum for beer and wine alike during store hours (9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., closed on Sundays), but unless you’re stocking up for a full-on Neapolitan feast, it is an easy limit to obey. Best of all, you don’t have to pay for your drink until you check out. Leave the bottle, take the cannoli.
EXPAND Whole Foods offers close to twenty beers on draft. You can drink it as you pick out dinner ingredients, or take a load off at the in-store bar. Lance Higdon
Whole Foods Market
2510 McKinney Ave.
2118 Abrams Road
8190 Park Lane, Suite 351
11700 Preston Road
4100 Lomo Alto Dr., Highland Park
5100 Belt Line Road, Suite 1012, Addison
6741 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving (Coming soon)
1411 E. Renner Road, Richardson
2201 Preston Road, Plano
801 East Lamar Blvd., Arlington
4801 Colleyville Blvd., Colleyville
105 Stacy Road, Fairview
4041 Waller Creek, Highland Village
3720 Vision Drive, Fort Worth
In contrast to Central Market, you can find Whole Foods stores all over the country, and whatever gripes you may carry about some whole-paycheck prices, they’re the other best bet for taking the edge off your grocery run. They offer a similar range of craft beer and fine wine as Central Market, but have the additional plus of carrying the license to set up a beer and wine bar right in the store.
Whole Foods has bet heavy on Texas craft beer. In addition to keeping locals like Peticolas and Texas Ale Project feature prominently on tap, they operate their own in-house brewery down in Houston, which produces beers like Hop Explorer, their American IPA. Drafts run higher than single bottle options at Central Market, generally between $5 and $9 dollars for an 11.5-ounce pour. Plan your trip right and you might luck into a freebie; last week, Revolver was pouring Third Shifts to the lucky ducks at the Addison store.
Drinks are available from 11 a.m. (noon on Sundays) until 9 p.m. (an hour before close) at most locations. Here, too, there’s no firm limit on imbibing. Just don’t overdo it.
EXPAND CiboDivino offers West Dallas a low-key spot to source Italian groceries and sip draft beer (or house wine). Noelle Higdon
CiboDivino
1868 Sylvan Ave. Suite #D-100
Oak Cliff's gourmet grocery/bar/pizza joint CiboDivino carries a more focused selection of Italian goods than Jimmy’s, but that’s not to say it’s an inferior experience, particularly when grocery-drinking. As our restaurant critic wrote last month, CiboDivino carries a well-curated wine selection, including their own in-house label, along with a rotating dozen or so craft beers (Birra Moretti is a bar fixture). Pint prices are fixed at $5 for 12 ounces and $7 for 16, which can free up your shopping budget considerably if you take advantage of heavy-hitting seasonal offerings like Tupps' 9.6 percent ABV McKinney Rye. Wine by the glass varies from $7 to $16 — and the price you pay to drink in-store is actually the same as the retail price, which is a great deal.
There's no beating CiboDivino's location, either. If you happen to be a loft-dweller in the encompassing Sylvan Thirty development, you can saunter over from breakfast taco bliss at Tacodeli, or a smoothie power-up at Juiceland, and put together all the trappings of a tapas meal after you've asana'd out at Sync Yoga. As an added bonus, Cox Farms Market, a great spot for organic produce, is in the same development. Maybe going to the grocery store doesn't have to drive you to drink after all.Update, February 14th, 2014: We've updated this post to reflect new Congressional Budget Office estimates.
The Murray-Ryan budget deal is a step in the right direction, but it provides only a temporary respite from the cuts in non-defense discretionary programs that sequestration requires.
This part of the budget includes a diverse set of public services, ranging from environmental protection and food safety to veterans’ health care and border security. It supports investments that can boost future productivity, such as in education and basic research, and helps low-income Americans meet basic needs and climb the economic ladder, such as through Head Start, job training, and services for frail elderly and disabled people.
The Murray-Ryan agreement provides $45 billion of relief from sequestration in 2014, evenly divided between defense and non-defense discretionary programs. For non-defense programs, that halts a sharp downward trend in funding — which fell by 18 percent between 2010 and 2013, after adjusting for inflation — and restores a modest amount of the cuts.
But the downward trend begins again the next year.
After accounting for inflation, non-defense discretionary funding is slated to fall in 2015 nearly back to the 2013 post-sequestration level. By 2016, funding will have dropped below the 2013 post-sequestration level, meaning that all of the gains from the Murray-Ryan deal will be gone (see graph). The 2016 funding level is $105 billion — or 18 percent — below the 2010 level, after adjusting for inflation.
Just to stay even with inflation (as projected by the Congressional Budget Office), non-defense funding would need to rise by 2.1 percent in 2015 and 2016. But under the deal, it will rise by less than 1 percent in those years.
Further, looking only at the effects of inflation understates the funding pressures that non-defense discretionary programs face. Many of them need additional funds to keep pace with population growth; grants to school districts and administering programs like Social Security and Medicare are just two examples.
Some programs can face cost pressures on top of inflation and population growth. For example, veterans’ medical care grew more rapidly than these factors over the past decade, largely because of rising per-person health care costs across the health care system (both public and private).
And the picture does not brighten after 2016. Under the Budget Control Act’s funding caps and sequestration, non-defense discretionary funding barely keeps pace with inflation each year from 2017 through 2021.
So while Murray-Ryan was a positive step, policymakers ultimately will need to revisit the funding limits in current law to prevent the further erosion of funding for critical programs.Awhile back I was asked if I wanted a feature on a web magazine known as the "Moogle Post" after I posted some sketches on the FFXIVart reddit. I said sure and offered to produce a new piece for it.That was back in January lol.The drawing obviously had to be FFXIV related, and while I could have drawn my own character, I chose to draw my guild mate Wendy Marvell in a bit of a lewd pose as a bit of a challenge to myself. I'd say it came out alright.The web mag can be found here (with this very drawing being found on page 41): www.mooglemedia.com/issue-15-m… The differences are that this version includes the finish date on it and is less edited, however the colour correction should be better than the magazine version.Made with Copic Markers and Copic Marker pad paper.The mass unrest in the garment industry continued on Monday (29 June) for a third day...
On the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital city, in the industrial zone; workers' rioting and demonstrations yesterday escalated to new heights. As thousands of workers gathered in the morning, at 10am a group set off towards the nearby Dhaka Export Processing Zone where many garment factories are located. Police blocked their way and fierce fighting began - in the pitched battle police teargas and rubber bullets left 100 workers injured.
Other workers soon joined the protesters and informed them that work was continuing as normal at the Hamim Group factory complex. Twenty thousand workers began to march towards the complex. As the numbers of protesters in the area swelled to 50,000 the security forces were simply overwhelmed; the Dhaka District Superintendent of Police said; "An additional 400 policemen stood guard in front of the major factories. We tried our best to disperse the crowd, but they were too many and too fierce.”
There are reports that some workers at the Hamim complex tried to defend the factory and clashed with the demonstrators as they approached (presumably reluctant to sacrifice their workplace to the greater cause - though whether these workers were garment workers or factory security and/or management personnel is unknown). The approaching protesters were said to be angry that these workers had failed to join the weekend protests over the killing of two garment workers shot by cops - and that the factory owners had, unlike other bosses, continued operating since the shootings.
The workers split into smaller groups and stormed the complex at around 10.15am. They sprinkled the buildings with petrol; a sweater factory, three garment factories, two washing factories, two fabric storehouses... over 8,000 machines, a huge quantity of readymade garments, fabrics, three buses, two pickup vans, two microbuses and one
|
, can come up with a plan for a new downtown stadium.
Anthony Precourt, the CEO of Precourt Sports Ventures and the chairman of Crew SC, said he intends to explore concurrent paths towards a stadium in both markets -- a plan that has the support of Major League Soccer.
However, Precourt told ESPN FC in an exclusive interview that "we're going to need to see a dramatic change" in attendance and other factors to keep the team in Columbus.
Precourt has been frustrated at the team's inability to increase revenue streams in terms of overall attendance, sponsorship and season tickets. With one week to go in the regular season, Crew SC's attendance ranks 20th out of 22 teams.
Precourt also has grown weary of playing games at aging MAPFRE Stadium, a no-frills venue about four miles north of downtown that opened in 1999 as MLS's first soccer-specific stadium.
"Despite our investments and efforts, the current course is not sustainable," Precourt said in a statement. "This club has ambition to be a standard bearer in MLS, therefore we have no choice but to expand and explore all of our options.
"This includes a possible move to Austin, which is the largest metropolitan area in North America without a major league sports franchise. Soccer is the world's game, and with Austin's growing presence as an international city, combined with its strong multicultural foundation, MLS in Austin could be an ideal fit."
MLS backed Precourt's plan to explore his options, with the club's statement including commissioner Don Garber calling Columbus' situation "particularly concerning."
"Despite PSV's significant investments and improvements on and off the field, Columbus Crew SC is near the bottom of the league in all business metrics and the club's stadium is no longer competitive with other venues across MLS," Garber said.
"The league is very reluctant to allow teams to relocate, but based on these factors, we support PSV's efforts to explore options outside of Columbus, including Austin, provided they find a suitable stadium location."
At a news conference on Tuesday, Precourt said three potential stadium sites have been identified in Columbus, but he declined to comment on them.
"We are not asking for public tax dollars, and we are not asking either city to build a stadium for us," he said.
Columbus Crew SC is considering relocating the team to Austin, Texas, where it could play at Myers Stadium.
Precourt purchased the team from previous owners Hunt Sports Group in 2013. According to the Columbus Dispatch, he paid a premium price of $68 million for the team because he intended to move it, but the purchase agreement contained a promise to keep the team in Columbus for at least 10 years.
However, that agreement critically included an out clause in case Precourt wanted to move the team to Austin.
The possible move to Austin would involve playing in a temporary stadium for two seasons until a new stadium is completed in around 2021. The Dispatch reported that a deal to host home games at the University of Texas is "all but done" for 2019, though Precourt later said no deal was done. MLS would have to approve any stadium plan.
University of Texas athletic director Mike Perrin told the Austin American-Statesman that the school was open to working with MLS to play at the 20,000-capacity Myers Stadium, the home of the Longhorns' soccer and track teams. Columbus played a pair of preseason friendlies at the venue in 2015.
Columbus mayor Andrew Ginther said a meeting with Precourt and club officials to find a way to keep the team in Columbus did not yield results.
"Unfortunately, we did not receive full engagement from the team's ownership," the mayor said in a statement. "We were surprised to learn of their decision in this way. Losing the Crew to another city would be a huge disappointment to their loyal and growing fan base in Columbus."
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said a potential move was "exciting news because Major League Soccer would be a huge success in Austin, and the Crew would find tons of support. There is a lot of benefit that being in Austin would give a team, too -- though not public funding of a stadium.''
Precourt said he has engaged Columbus civic and business leaders for the last four and a half years, talks that he described as "extensive, exhaustive." In early 2016 those talks focused on the difficulties that Crew SC was having in attaining revenue targets that are in line with its peers.
The Dispatch and Sports Illustrated both reported that a consortium of local businessmen have also been trying to buy the team, but Precourt had rejected all offers to sell even a partial stake to local investors.
"We met with ownership a month ago to discuss their stadium study and plans and ideas for a new stadium in Columbus," Alex Fischer, the president and CEO of the Columbus Partnership, a group of 60 Columbus business leaders and CEOs, told SI.com.
"Those conversations turned up the fact that ownership had been in extensive conversations over the last number of months with leaders in Austin about a possible new stadium and moving the team there."
Austin is not among the 12 locations vying to win one of four expansion slots from MLS, but in August the league registered two trademarks for club names -- Austin Athletic and Austin FC.
Also in August, the second-tier USL announced plans to bring soccer back to the city with a team that will play at a 5,000-seat venue at the Circuit of The Americas racetrack, where Barcelona opened a training academy this year.
The Austin Aztex played in the USL from 2008-2010 before moving and evolving into current MLS club Orlando City. A new Aztex team, which was affiliated with Crew SC, stopped playing in 2015 after struggling to draw fans to a number of high school football stadiums.
Jeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreyCarlisle.As we pointed out yesterday, the idea that the US pays a lot in taxes in objectively false on a global basis. Americans pay relatively little compared to most countries.
Now from Deutsche Bank is a chart that shows the US doesn't spend very much, either, at least compared to other major developed nations.
Duetsche Bank
A couple of interesting things to note.
One is that Germany is usually considered a model of austerity and restraint, and it spends way more than the US does.
The other thing that's surprising is that Japan is usually considered a model of reckless profligacy--and it spends less as a share of GDP than the US does.
A couple of other interesting charts from the report include this one, which shows that pre-crisis, our spending to GDP was pretty stable (not exploding at all).
Deutsche Bank
On the other hand, it is true that healthcare spending has grown fairly significantly as a category of government spending.
Duetsche Bank
SEE ALSO: Krugman: The deficit is basically solved >New Jersey Governor Chris Christie waves to the crowd from the Dallas Cowboys sidelines before an NFC divisional round playoff game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2015, in Green Bay.
GREEN BAY, Wis. - Time ran out on the Cowboys' improbable season Sunday in the divisional round of the NFC playoffs. The Packers showed why they were the best home team in the NFL this season, coming from behind and advancing to the NFC Championship game.
Here are my thoughts on the Cowboys falling 26-21 at Lambeau Field.
1.) It's hard to determine what's actually a catch in the NFL any more. That sure looked like Dez Bryant came down with the ball at the one-yard line late in the fourth quarter. But like the Calvin Johnson play in 2010, the refs overturned it. It was as impressive of a play as you'll see a receiver make. But it didn't count. With that said, Aaron Rodgers might have orchestrated a game-winning drive anyway. I guess we'll never know.
Dez Bryant: "All I know is I had possession of the ball coming down. That's possession, right? One, two, reach. That's possession."
Jason Garrett: "Obviously, it was ruled a catch. It looked to me like he had three feet down."
Jeremy Mincey: "It's one of them things, it's unfortunate. Personally, I thought Stevie Wonder could've seen that."
2.) What an incredible season. As disappointing as the loss is, there's no reason for anyone in the Cowboys organization to hang their heads. If nothing else, this group showed that things have changed. They entered the season as a team most thought would only win seven or eight games. They'll likely enter next season as a Super Bowl contender. Take care of some offseason business and this team could be a lot better defensively. The offense is already elite.
"As a leader of this team, I don't know that I've been more proud of a football team and a group of men, coaches and players, the way they have approached a year and given it their all," Jason Witten said. "We emptied the bucket every Sunday."
3.) Tony Romo won't win MVP. It'll likely go to Aaron Rodgers. The Green Bay fans even chanted it as No. 12 head to the locker room Sunday evening. But what a season by the Cowboys QB. He was again brilliant on Sunday. Romo finished 15 of 19 passing with no turnovers and a 143.6 rating. He out-played Rodgers for the most the day and certainly played good enough to give the Cowboys a win.
"When things didn't go our way, he kept battling back," Jason Garrett said. "When people hit him he kept battling back. He made critical throws throughout this ball game and gave us a great chance to win it at the end."
4.) It'll be lost in the outcome, but hats need to go off to the Cowboys defense. No one outside of the the guys in the locker room expected much from them this year and they exceeded expectations by a wide margin. It was an impressive year for guys like Jeremy Mincey, Tyrone Crawford, Orlando Scandrick, Anthony Hitchens and a bunch of others. And the unit should be much improved next season.
"We got a bright future ahead," Mincey said. "We got a group of tough men. I promise you that we'll come back even stronger this upcoming season. There's a lot of heart in here. Our mission is not done."
5.) As the Packers were running out the clock, I began thinking about some of the memorable moments from this season. Feel free to share some of yours in the comments section. I thought about Terrance Williams' third-down catch in Seattle, Romo finding Williams for the game-winner against Detroit, Romo to Witten on fourth and 6 vs. Detroit, Garrett going for it on several fourth downs late in the season, the onside kick vs. Washington, Dez vs. Jacksonville, Dez vs. Washington, Garrett getting the Gatorade bath after clinching the division, and how electric AT&T Stadium was for the wild card game.
Follow Jon Machota on Twitter:@jonmachota
FULL COWBOYS COVERAGE
COLUMNS
Gosselin: In the biggest game of his life, Tony Romo might have thrown his best pass
Cowlishaw: Cowboys season ends with lousy referee explanation, controversy
Sturm: It should have been a catch; but here's what else lost the game for Cowboys
Moore: Opportunity lost: Cowboys reflect with anger, disgust, disappointment
REACTION
Cowboys spawn another debate that will continue for ages in loss; 'You feel like we let it slip away'
Cowboys defense with no answers for a gimpy Packers QB Aaron Rodgers: 'We just didn't do it'
Poll: Whom should be blamed for the Cowboys' loss to the Packers?
Jason Witten 'pretty much in shock' to end season on'sour' note
5 thoughts: No reason for Cowboys to hang heads; hard to determine what's a catch
National reaction: Tweets reveal national displeasure with reversed Dez Bryant catch in fourth quarter
What Dez Bryant, Cowboys said on Twitter following season ending defeat in Green Bay
Jeremy Mincey: Packers were not as tough as Cowboys Sunday in Green Bay
THE PLAY
Was it a catch? Controversial Dez Bryant play reversed
Referee Gene Steratore explains thought process on reversed Dez Bryant catch
Mike Pereira, Joe Buck smartly nail coverage of Dez Bryant's non-catch
Cowboys VP Stephen Jones says Competition Committee discusses call that overturned Dez Bryant reception more than any other
NFL Competition Committee likely to debate controversial Dez Bryant non-catch
LOOKING AT NEXT YEAR
Contract conundrum: Dallas Cowboys under contract for next season, free agents who could possibly walk
What's next for Cowboys? Jerry Jones says changes are coming
Dez Bryant and DeMarco Murray weigh in on their future with Cowboys
CHRIS CHRISTIE, JIMMY JOHNSON AND THE PRO BOWL
Chris Christie angry at Dez Bryant catch being overturned, gives plan for orange sweater
Jimmy Johnson: Jerry Jones is 'the best salesman I've known in my life'
Cowboys coaching staff gets Pro Bowl trip as consolation prize for loss to Packers
FROM THE GAME
Cowboys' Tony Romo played Sunday despite torn ligaments in finger
How did calf injury affecting Aaron Rodgers? Watch him try to jog during game vs. Cowboys
Packers' Clay Matthews with cheap late hit on Tony Romo
Injury report: Cowboys' Rolando McClain leaves game; Church hobbled
Two Cowboys defenders had tough days against Aaron Rodgers
Aaron Rodgers uses a 'New York Bozo' call against the Cowboys
PHOTOS
Photos: Dez Bryant's reactions to reversal; Cowboys fan arrested in loss to Packers
Cowboys tailgating pics: Wrestling with Packers fans; shot-ski, brrr-raving the cold“You can’t just think about your own agency, or your own goals,” Mr. Paulson said. “You have to please both sides of the aisle, while making sure you’re not outshining other officials, and persuading employees who don’t have to obey your orders. And you have to adjust to having a boss, the president, instead of being the boss. It takes a lot of humility.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s picks might have an easier time making the transition than others. Rex W. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil and the choice for secretary of state, is among the nominees who have spent their careers involved in the day-to-day operations of complicated firms that span continents.
“Tillerson has basically been a politician for the last 20 years; he’s just been doing it for the nation of Exxon,” said Paul H. O’Neill, who became Treasury secretary during Mr. Bush’s first term after leading the aluminum company Alcoa. “He’s negotiated with foreign governments, he’s had more than 80,000 employees. You don’t run a company that size by telling people what to do. You learn how to persuade them to follow your vision, to accommodate all kinds of different agendas and personalities.”
Other cabinet secretaries have spent their careers mostly as investors, not as direct managers. Hedge fund and private equity professionals like Steven T. Mnuchin, likely to be the next Treasury secretary; Betsy DeVos, who has been tapped as education secretary; and Wilbur L. Ross, the expected commerce secretary, have largely devoted their lives to buying and selling companies. And so there are questions about how well they will make the shift to jobs that demand a day-to-day focus on the smallest details of governance.
Mr. Ross, whose confirmation hearing was held on Wednesday, presents a fascinating test subject. As an acquirer of steel mills, coal mines and other heavy industries, he has amassed a personal fortune worth billions. “Over the years, I’ve had businesses that actually operated in some 23 countries,” Mr. Ross said at the hearing. “We have been on the ground in all of the major trading partners of this country.”
Usually, when Mr. Ross buys a new company, he follows a pretty successful script: He shows up, says a few words and then hands operations to professional managers who know how to run things — and who know he will fire them if they fail.
However, when Mr. Ross takes the oath of office, that script will change. He will be whisked off to the executive wing of the Commerce Department and walked past long rows of barren offices. (The furniture of political appointees is removed during each presidential transition, and — spoiler alert — it often takes weeks for new desks and bookcases to arrive.) If he can find enough chairs, he might call a meeting of the few employees milling around (his deputies and key department heads need senatorial approval, which might take a few months). He will be handed dozens of binders explaining how his department does everything from monitor weather satellites to administer patents, and admonished to study up. (Congress loves humiliating cabinet members who haven’t done their homework, and explaining that you are an excellent delegator, alas, fails to impress on Capitol Hill.)The last few days I am a happy owner of a BlackBerry Playbook. The device was offered to me by RIM (thanks to Luca Filigheddu) in order to port Pop Corny to it. To tell you the truth I never owned a Blackberry device before, not to mention develop for it. It was a totally new experience, where I had no idea what to expect.
It turns out RIM has done an awesome job with Playbook and probably with its upcoming phones (just speculating I don’t know for sure). The system is based on the QNX operating system and it has strong support for standards and open libraries. I found myself right at home with it! I am going to come back with more details about the process (probably with an altdevblogaday article), but by cutting the long story short, I was able to port the engine with only native code (no java glue code like on Android) with OpenGL, OpenAL (even ALUT), freetype, etc all coming bundled with the system.
Below are my done, and to do check lists:
Implemented
Compile and run on the device
Video output with OpenGL ES
Sound through OpenAL
Input handling
Handling of application “thump-nailing” and suspension according to the Playbook application life cycle
Opening urls to Facebook and twitter
Unimplemented
Native dialog window handler
In app purchases
All the above were implemented in just 2 days…
(edit: The game is now available on AppWorld. Get it HERE)Yesterday, Pottermore shared an interview with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them production designer Stuart Craig. Craig previously worked on the Harry Potter films and is responsible for bringing much of the magical world to life. He also worked on the creation of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort.
In the interview, Craig discussed the creation of MACUSA for Fantastic Beasts, which we have seen featured in the recently released trailer.
Above you, in this 750-foot-high building; there are no floors. There’s just a giant cathedral-like space with hundreds and hundreds of windows. The first things you’ll see, probably, are the phoenixes. They’re forty-foot [sic] high! Big gilded phoenix sculptures, covered in gold leaf. They’re rather splendid, actually. They’re the work of our principle sculptor, Bryn Court.
Craig also spoke further about the Salem memorial that was created for the space.
In the middle of this vast space, there’s a huge memorial to the witches of Salem. J.K. Rowling wrote it into the script. The witches in the memorial are bronze sculptures, slightly larger than life. They stand in amongst the crowd, if you can imagine, so people can walk through the memorial and right by the witches.
Pottermore further states that
every statue represents someone who lost their life during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
It certainly all sounds very magical, and we love the amount of detail and care that goes into the production of these films. We can’t wait to see it on the big screen!
What do you make of the statue, as seen on Pottermore? Do you like learning more about the set design in the lead-up to the film? Let us know in the comments!Cotton For My Shroud – Film showing London 26 May
Date for your diary – book now!
You are invited to a unique free screening of this award-winning film (India, 2011, 75 min), together with a Q&A session with the directors, Nandan Saxena and Kavita Bahl with John Hilary, Executive Director of War on Want.
The film raises the issue about Monsanto's drive to market GM seeds and establish a monopoly in the seed market.
Date: Tuesday 26th of May 2015
Time: Doors open at 7.00 Screening at 7.15 and the programme finishes at 9.30pm
Venue: First Floor, Conference Centre, Garden Court Chambers, 57-60 Lincoln Inn Field, London WC2A 3LJ
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrZpjbcGXK0
This is a story about cotton farmers in the Vidarbha region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. The film investigates how Monsanto, in collusion with the government and politicians, promoted genetically modified Bt Cotton field trials amongst farmers. This was accompanied by propaganda about high yields and reduction in pesticide use.
Vulnerable farmers were enticed to take out loans in order to pay for the GM seeds and the exorbitant prices of pesticides and fertilisers. They found themselves trapped in heavy debt to the money lenders on the one side, with cotton merchants manipulating prices downwards on the other.
With poor yields and high costs, many farmers found themselves with a mountain of debt that they could never hope to repay. In despair, the only way out they could see was to put an end to their lives by drinking pesticide, leaving behind widows and orphans.
A quarter of million farmers have committed suicide in India. If we had a comparable number of middle class professionals committing suicide, the world would not be silent. The film depicts a heartless world where capital and its sibling debt kills daily.
Book your place with Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cotton-for-my-shroud-screening-plus-qa-with-film-directors-tickets-16753726848State of the Crusade
Metrics in Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
You, the players, are agents of chaos (even the Space Marines).
You are free electrons in the neatly designed world that the designers create, and you rarely behave as expected. By giving you guys more freedom, they enhance the portion of the game design process that they cannot control. Although it makes the game more fun, it makes their jobs way harder. Each new feature introduces more complexity in the game.
But they are smart. They don’t go in blind! Like Tzeentch, they monitor your puny conflicts, using what they call metrics.
A metric can be anything measurable. Metrics include scores like numbers of kills, deaths or rescues, and it can be specific behaviours like classes and weapons choice, communication, or experience progression. There is no need to say that all those metrics adds up to create huge and bloated databases.
Here is where I come in. I am a PHD student in evolutionary biology (some sort of Magos Biologis) with a speciality on social animal behaviour (soon to be the leading expert on the Tyranids taxon). Evolutionary sciences offer centuries of scientific findings on interactions among individuals and their environment. My statistical background and scientific conceptualisation will squeeze the most out of the highly diverse metrics that the Eternal Crusade team monitor. My goal is to come up with predictions on player behaviour to give the necessary information to enlighten the design decisions from patch to patch.
Here are a couple of miscellaneous descriptive statistics in Eternal Crusade.
As of now, more than 25,000 matches have been played. One player played 1,977 matches. On average, a player kills 12.8 opponents, dies 10.8 times per match (see figure 1). 1.5% of players fail to kill any opponents and only 0.5% manage to stay alive the entire match. On average, a player rescues 1.05 teammates and executes 1.4 opponents per match.
Figure 1: Histogram of kills per match (left-hand side)
and deaths per match (right-hand side)
The Bolter is by far the most used weapon, followed by the Power Sword and the Chain Sword (see figure 2). The Quad Gun had a spike in popularity since its accuracy was increased during April 14th patch. Note that Psychic Power kills are underestimated since the poison lasted a certain time and the kills can be attributed to another weapons. Around 34 % of kills are done with melee weapons.
Figure 2: Frequency of weapons (%) used to fight
Any multiplayer game can be approached as an ever-changing ecosystem. Nothing is really fixed. In my point of view, classes or factions are “species”, maps are “habitat” and fighting to capture a control point is only a struggle between individuals to secure a resource of interest. Being in constant evolution, some changes (tweaks) create unexpected outcomes in the game.
For example, the Mark of Nurgle sure did his part in breaking the balance. The “mutation” of the Mark Of Nurgle overpowered the Traitor Assault (see k/d ratio; top part of figure 3) and the class invaded the population i.e. became more frequent at the expense of the Traitor class (middle part of figure 3). Traitor Assault stayed popular long after the nerf of the Mark Of Nurgle on the April 14th patch, even though our monitoring of the Kill/death ratio clearly indicates a drop in his over-poweredness. It even correlated with a largely tilted winning frequency in favour to the Chaos Space Marine faction (bottom part of figure 3). I’ll draw your attention on the fact that the most common classes – Traitor and Tactical – are generalists with a wider range of options. Specialist classes like support classes have a smaller niche in the current systems and it will be very interesting to see what will happen with a specialist-oriented faction (Eldar).
Figure 3: Kill/Death ratio (up), class frequency (middle) and frequency of winning (bottom) from March 18th to April 21th.
As you know, Marines have a short lifespan and we estimate that they die on average 1 minute 28 seconds after spawning (way shorter than a mayfly). Survival chances are better in the Fortress Harkus map (see figure 4). We did not see any difference in lifespan for the classes or faction. My prediction is that future stealth classes will survive longer. They will move slower and it is known that slower-paced organisms have longer lifespan! The oldest marine that has ever “lived” lasted a little more than 21 minutes while playing a havoc class. Beware, like in many species, Marines are often victim of teammates. 4.9% of kills is from friendly fire, and 65.2% of players killed at least one teammate. One player killed a grand total of 1 opponent and 13 teammates in one match.
Figure 4: Survival odds through time of Marines for different maps.
Beyond descriptive figures, a statistical analysis of in-game metrics can have a predictive power.
As with species, we expect factions to respond differently to their environment. The winning odds are different depending on your factions or on whether you are the attacker of the defender of the territories (see figure 5). A logistic regression (binomial generalized linear model) emphasizes a higher effect of kills on the winning odds when defending (GLM, estimate= 3.065, p<0.001) than in attacking (GLM, estimate= 1.229, p<0.001). It makes sense because attackers must capture control points to win, while defenders fend off attackers by killing them. Rescues, on the other hand, are an attacker strategy because it is more significantly correlated with winning for attackers (GLM, estimate= 1.383, p<0.001) than for defenders (GLM, estimate= 0.068, p<0.661), maybe because the latters usually spawn closer to the action. There is also a significant correlation between the amount of executions and the odds of winning only for the defender team (GLM, estimate= 1.603, p<0.001). The strategic advantage of executions is unclear, and that correlation may only mean that winning defender teams have more occasions (more free time) to execute opponents. Finally, teams that communicate more win more often (GLM, estimate= 0.258, p=0.002). The Black Bolt Defense map is the easiest to attack on, and our hypothesis is that the higher number of control points (4) makes it easier to capture and hold many points (see figure 5).
Figure 5: Proportion of matches won by Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines in different maps.
Teams that win capture points sooner in the match than teams that lose (see figure 6; boxplots show the four quartiles – 25% of data − distribution). Timing and strategies are therefore capital for attackers and there is no time to lose. In the Thug of war game mode, don’t expect to win if you don’t capture the first control point in the first 15 minutes or so. In the domination game mode, conclusions are harder to find since any control point can be captured at any time, and since criteria for winning is different. Interestingly, we observe that some teams are able to capture all the four points very quickly (less than 5 minutes). In the Fortress mode, half of the matches last longer than the regular 25 minutes (see figure 7) because the second point (the one that determines the win) is often captured during the time extension (see figure 6).
Figure 6: Distribution of the moments the attacker team captures a new control point.
Figure 7: Distribution of durations of match based on game mode.
We also monitor predation (kills) and cooperation (rescues) events, and where they take place. Both are unevenly distributed in space and further analysis should point out to map elements and structure that actually promote kills and/or rescues, or that favour a specific class and/or weapon. Can you guess the map by looking at where players die?
Figure 8: Spatial distribution of kills in different maps.
Social interactions are common to all multiplayer games, and Eternal Crusade displays many interesting layers of social interactions. Such social interactions can be mapped in networks to study the resulting social structure. Each node is a player and each arrow is an interaction (rescues or kills) between two players. Some teams are more tightly connected than others (see the Space Marine rescues network; left-hand side of figure 9) and some players are key in uniting teammates (see the player CSM11 in Chaos Space Marine rescues network; right-hand side of figure 9). I hypothesize that the social structure of a team drives its success and that a player in a center position should progress faster.
Figure 9: Network of social interactions in a match. The space marines defended and won.
In conclusion, since my whole PHD thesis will be on the evolution of group behaviour, I will strongly suggest you to keep on fighting and stay close to your friends.
Finally, as an evolutionary biologist, I put my money on the Tyranids. The Hive Mind and their reproductive system allowing the selection of morphs enable the whole race to respond to natural selection way faster than any other factions or races.
Julien Céré
PHD Student / Stats Guy
www.eternalcrusade.com Warhammer 40,000: Eternal CrusadeDeferred Sales Trust Defers Capital Gains
Anyone can defer capital gains taxes indefinitely using a Deferred Sales Trust.
Your first question might be, “what is a Deferred Sales Trust?” Good question!
First of all, a Deferred Sales Trust (aka, DST), is the intent of Internal Revenue Code Sec. 453. However, when reading Sec. 453 one will not find the words Deferred Sales Trust within the code. What one will find is Installment Sale Method and Installment Sale. The IRC defines an installment sale as “…a sale of property where you receive at least one payment after the tax year of the sale.” IRS Form 6252 is used to file installment sale income, disposition, gain, all things related to the installment sale.
Additionally, with the Private Letter Ruling (PLR) 200944002 issued in 2009, the IRS validated the Deferred Sales Trust as a compliment to, or alternative for, a 1031 exchange.
Under normal circumstances there are 4 ways to be paid when selling a property.
Cash out
Owner finance
1031 Exchange
Installment sale
Each has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Some disadvantages include:
a cash sale results in immediate capital gains consequences, or
the 1031 exchange goes awry and the proceeds become a taxable event, or
the income stream from owner financing ends when the buyer pays off the loan early, or
the buyer defaults on the installment agreement and you’re back to square one.
There is, however, another option brokers and Commercial Real Estate (CRE) professionals need to be aware of. The Deferred Sales Trust. The DST bridges the gap between selling the property and sheltering the capital gains from it. The DST defers capital gains and other taxation on the sale. This deferral can be for as long as the seller chooses. Literally, the tax consequences of the sale can be deferred indefinitely. While Sec. 453 applies to any appreciable asset (e.g. jewelry, securities, livestock, timber, real estate, etc.), it is best employed when applied to one’s primary residence, a vacation home, or a commercial property. Commercial properties can include residential rental property like houses, duplexes, and apartment buildings. Commercial real estate of any kind is the perfect application for a DST.
The DST enhances all 4 methods of one’s property sale. Some advantages include:
defer capital gains by investing 100% of the sale’s proceeds from within the DST, or
protecting against a taxable event in case a 1031 can’t be completed within the 6 months, or
deferring income taxes from an installment sale by sheltering it through the DST, and
giving the owner flexibility and decision-making time…time to assess all avenues of investment opportunities and just plain relax after the sale is consummated.
Regardless of one’s motivation for selling appreciable assets, the DST can provide peace of mind. The DST can convert appreciated property of any kind, or a business that a person literally could not afford to sell, into an income stream that offers tax deferral and estate liquidity. The DST shelters the proceeds of the sale indefinitely, allows for time to thoughtfully consider how your money should now work for you, and ultimately gives you total control. In today’s economy, what more could you ask for?
So, sell your asset and pay capital gains and other associated taxes today, or defer capital gains with the Deferred Sales Trust.
My vote? Let the IRS wait for theirs.
For more information about the Deferred Sales Trust, contact us at:
972-893-9081 to speak with a representative, or
email [email protected]
Deferred Sales Trust(Getty Images)
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New Delhi: Star Indian batsman and former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that Pakistani pacer Shoaib Akhtar was the toughest bowler that he had ever faced in his 13-year long career.
Dhoni has faced a battery of fast bowlers from around the world, but he rated the Pakistani fast bowler as the best ever, "All the fast bowlers are quite difficult, with the limited technique I had, it was very difficult to face the fast bowlers. Still, if I had to pick one, I would pick Shoaib Akhtar. Very simple reason, he was quick, he was fast, he could bowl a yorker, he could bowl a bouncer but you never expected a beamer, he was a bit unpredictable, he was fun to play against," said Dhoni.
He was speaking at the Virat Kohli charity dinner on Monday, which was attended by the whole Indian team.
Dhoni was also asked about the Duckworth-Lewis system, which is expected to play a big part in the tournament with rain interrupting many of the matches.
Indian wicketkeeper was at his witty best, when asked if he understands the D/L system or not,
"I don't think even ICC understands the D/L method," replied the Jharkhand batsman with a smile.
Dhoni was also earlier critical of the DRS system, saying "If you see the deviations in DRS, there are quite a few deviations. Even the makers agree that can happen. Now you have to also take into account whether it was given not out or out. If it was given out it needs to touch the stump [for the decision to remain out]; if it was not out it needs to hit half the stump [to be given out]. That itself makes the variable too big. In cricket every inch, every millimetre, matters."
"DRS should not be the umpires' decision justification system. It should be giving the right decision. Like in tennis you don't say the umpire called it out and half the ball has to pitch inside the line. It has to be plain and simple. You don't have to keep too many things in consideration. You either say, 'This is DRS, doesn't matter whether it is given out or not out, if half the ball is hitting the stumps, you are out.' Irrespective of the decision. Now, for example, you take DRS, in an lbw decision, what changes everything is whether it was given in favour or not. It can mean a margin of one inch overall, and that is very big." Dhoni had said.
Dhoni didn't bat against Pakistan, but he is likely to play a key role in India's Champions Trophy campaign with captain Virat Kohli relying on him to play the role of a finisher, and also be the guiding force for the lower middle-order. Dhoni hasn't been in the best of forms coming into the tournament but Kohli and the team think-tank retaining faith in him.
First Published: June 7, 2017, 12:37 PM ISTA Post By: James Brandon
Over the past couple of years I’ve become a huge advocate for making the switch to back button focus. It was one of the most revolutionary changes I ever made to how I take pictures. It seems like such a small thing, yet it’s such a huge difference in the way your camera works. I honestly don’t know why this isn’t the standard setting on all cameras because after getting acclimated to this setting, I honestly can’t understand the meaning for or use of the ‘shutter half way down’ method.
No More Switching Your Lens To Manual Focus
This little advantage takes some getting used to, mainly because for the first few weeks after switching to BBF you
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and Labrador. That Bible translation project, which is still ongoing, is owned by the Naskapi Nation Development Corporation, but was begun by the corporation in conjunction with St. John’s Anglican Church, Kawawachikamach, Que. It also received considerable support from outside sources such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, Jancewicz says.
The Oji-Cree project was one of the first priorities of the new Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of Mishamikoweesh. It had been talked about for some time, but did not begin to take concrete form until a meeting in early June, 2014, only days after the establishment of the spiritual ministry, Mamakwa says.
Until now, Oji-Cree-speaking people have had to use hymnals and prayer books in Cree, Mamakwa says. That means they’re hard to understand for Oji-Cree speakers, especially younger people.
“Ever since I can remember, it’s other people’s books with the Cree translation that we have been using all this time in our worship services,” Mamakwa says. “We want something in our own language…It’s our God-given language, and we use it every day…We’d like to use it in our worship services, too.”
Mamakwa says she hopes more people will come to services if they’re able to hear them in their own language.
These texts are also often sorely out of date, because they haven’t been revised to keep up with changes made to the English versions over the past few hundred years. For example, she says, the version of the Book of Common Prayer used in Mishamikoweesh is a Cree translation, made in the 1800s, of the 1662 edition.
“We’re stuck with a 1662 prayer book,” she says.
In fall 2014, Mamakwa invited Bill and his wife, Norma Jean, also of Wycliffe Bible Translators, to help her set up the project. A committee of elders, leaders and community members in Kingfisher Lake, Ont., was formed to pick the translation team and support it. In January 2015, the team began training, and by July of that year, their translation work had begun.
Translating the Bible, of course, is no mean feat, and complete translations can take several decades. Because of this, project leaders decided they would need to prioritize, focusing first on the readings from the gospels and epistles in the Prayer Book lectionary. The first draft of these passages—nearly 2,500 verses as of press time—is now finished, Jancewicz says.
Mishamikoweesh clergy have already started using freshly translated passages in their services—to appreciative congregations, say Mamakwa and the Rev. Ruth Kitchekesik, of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Kingfisher Lake, and co-ordinator of the team.
“There was a young person who was in church on Sunday, and she said, ‘It was so good to hear the gospel in my own language,’ ” Kitchekesik says.
To complete the entire New Testament might take another eight or nine years, although timelines for such projects can be hard to estimate, Jancewicz says.
The team of translators all work in Kingfisher Lake; two are working full-time on the project; the rest have other jobs and do the work when they can. The Jancewiczes live in southern Ontario, but visit a few times a year to help the team, Mamakwa says. They’ve also organized two translation workshops, which have been very helpful, she says. Wycliffe Bible Translators also hopes to have two of its own full-time translators working on the project starting sometime in 2017, Jancewicz says.
There are several stages involved in translating a biblical passage. The Indigenous translators are each assigned sections of an English Bible to translate into Oji-Cree. As they translate, they check their translations with one another, and also with community members to make sure they sound natural. Jancewicz and other project helpers who know Greek and other biblical languages then check these translations against the Bible as it was originally written.
Asked how she finds the work, Kitchekesik says, “It’s interesting. It’s exciting. And it’s very stressful sometimes.” One of the stresses, she says, is trying to translate words for which Oji-Cree has no equivalent—palm tree, camel and shepherd, for example.
Aboriginal Bible translators might try different ways of tackling tricky cases like these, Jancewicz says. They may make up new words, like “sheep-caretaker,” or they might simply borrow the original words without trying to translate them, as English does with words like “apostle” (from the Greek apostolos) and “angel” (from the Greek angelos).
The Oji-Cree word for God is kishemanito, literally “Great Spirit.”
The total cost of the project, organizers say, is hard to estimate, especially given that no one knows how long it will take. A number of organizations are supporting it financially, including the Anglican Healing Fund, the Anglican Foundation, Wycliffe Bible Translators Canada and Wycliffe Bible Translators U.S.A. The Canadian Bible Society, Jancewicz says, has provided computers and other equipment.
National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald says the ability for people to read Scripture in their own language is critical for their spiritual well-being.
“It is hard to overstate the importance of the Oji-Cree translation process,” he says. “Beyond this very special group of Christians, it is a vital sign that Indigenous languages can and are moving in a positive direction. This is very good news.”
An earlier version of this story did not identify Silas Nabinicaboo as a deacon.Nightmares are one of the more loathsome aspects of the human condition. But there is a science behind these terrifying visions. And there are actually a few simple ways to keep the bad dreams away.
What are nightmares?
Nightmares are, of course, a kind of dream — a very nasty kind of dream.
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Scientists who study dreams, what are called oneirologists, aren't entirely sure where dreams originate in the brain or if a single point can be isolated. What they've discovered, however, is that 75% of all dreams elicit negative emotions, or contain some kind of negative content (which is disappointingly high if you ask me). And every once in awhile that content gets a bit too dark and disturbing, jolting us awake with a pounding heart.
Indeed, nightmares are often described as a series of frightening images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that spontaneously (and uncontrollably) arise during sleep. People can experience any number of emotions during a bad dream, including sadness, depression, anger, guilt — and especially feelings of fear and anxiety.
Nightmares also tend to be very realistic, something that gives them that added bit of spice. They often feature disturbing imagery or themes that are so awful and terrifying that they force us awake. These feelings tend to linger, often making it hard to fall back asleep.
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The content of nightmares varies widely from person to person, but there are some common themes. Perhaps the most archetypal nightmare is the one in which we're not able to run fast enough while we're being chased. Other common nightmares include falling, or revisiting a traumatic event. Children tend to have dreams in which they are chased by an animal or a fantasy figure.
A nightmare, like any other kind of dream, can last for a few minutes, or drag on for upwards of 20 minutes. And because REM periods get longer as the night progresses, most nightmares happen in the early morning.
Clinically speaking, virtually everyone experiences a nightmare from time to time, and they are considered completely normal. They are most common in children, and typically peak in frequency from age three to eight. Around 5 to 10% of adults have nightmares at least once a month or more.
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It's worth noting that nightmares are different from night terrors, which tend to happen early in the night are are primarily experienced as feelings.
What causes them?
Most oneirologists theorize that dreams are epiphenomenon of consciousness and sleep, and that they don't serve any kind of purpose.
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But some evolutionary psychologists, including Antti Revonsuo, believe that dreams — and especially nightmares — may actually serve an evolutionary purpose. His contention is that nightmares are a kind of "threat simulation" that prepares people for the perils of the real world — or at least the threats that were faced by our ancestors.
By priming dreamers with these negative experiences, Revonsuo says we're put into a kind of rehearsal for real life. People who dream, he argues, have that extra bit of experience — even if it is fictional. And interestingly, he argues that nightmares are as bad as they are in order to help us cope with more realistic adversity.
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Evolutionary psychology aside, the most proximate cause of nightmares is not known. Neuroscientists still need to develop a more sophisticated model of consciousness and the dream-state to make this sort of determination. What they do know, however, is that high frequency nightmares tend to run in the family, which could indicate a possible genetic link.
Now, while we don't necessarily know the exact mechanics of why bad dreams happen, we do know that they can be triggered by emotional and physiological factors.
People who are ill or in a fever tend to experience nightmares more than usual, as do individuals who are experiencing withdrawal symptoms from drugs. Some antidepressants and blood pressure medications have been known to cause them as well.
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And it seems the old adage is true: Going to bed soon after eating will heighten your chance of having a nightmare owing to an increase in metabolism — a signal to your brain to be more active.
Bad dreams can also be triggered by sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome.
There are also the stresses of daily life to consider. Nightmares tend to happen during transitional or tumultuous periods in our lives — like changing a job, moving, a pregnancy, or financial concerns. They can also be triggered by more serious events, such as the loss of a loved one, a serious accident, or witnessing a traumatic event.
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And indeed, it is well established that people suffering from the effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild head injuries have more nightmares than average. In fact, the heightened frequency of nightmares in these individuals can result in a chronic condition.
Not surprisingly, nightmares are often experienced by returning war veterans, first response workers (police, paramedics, and firefighters) and patients both preparing for and recovering from surgeries.
Are there any possible treatments?
For most people, nightmares don't happen frequently enough to pose a problem. We get them, and move on. But for some people, they happen often enough to pose a definite health risk — a condition that can result in depression and increased anxiety. It is recommended that people who suffer from chronic nightmares go see their doctor as there are a number of treatments available.
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One technique that's increasingly being used is "imagery rehearsal treatment" where individuals are encouraged to alter the endings of their nightmares while they're awake. It's a form of cognitive therapy in which people can create an alternative, less distressing outcome to their dreams. Follow-up studies have shown that these kinds of therapies are effective, with upwards of 70% of people claiming to have experienced benefits (including people with PTSD and insomnia).
Similarly, chronic bad dreamers are told to write down the details of their nightmare, or to draw or paint them. They're also encouraged to talk in fantasy to the characters of their dreams. And in all cases, they are told to imagine a more pleasant ending.
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Failing that, there are also pharmaceuticals that can help. The most effective drug is called prazosin, which is used extensively to help patients with PTSD. The drug is also typically used to treat high blood pressure, anxiety, and panic disorders.
And lastly, there are some simple (and commonsense) things you can do to stave of nightmares, including relaxation techniques (like yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises), physical exercise, and ensuring that your bedroom is a relaxed and stress-free environment. It's also recommended that no food, alcohol, caffeine, or nicotine be taken before bed.
Pleasant dreams, everyone!
Other sources: International Association for the Study of Dreams, American Sleep Association, National Center for PTSD, Medline Plus.
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Top image: CREATISTA/Shutterstock. Inset image: "The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli, 1781.GREENVIEW, Mo. — Lake area citizens gathered together to discuss an Article 5 Convention of the States on Sunday, July 19 at the Bank of Versailles in Greenview. The meeting was conducted as a forum by the Lake Area Chapter of Concerned Women for America (CWA) Missouri.
A proposed Convention of the States (SCR21) passed in the Missouri Senate by a vote of 26-5. Time ran out before SCR21 could be brought up for a vote in the house. SCR21 submits application to Congress for the calling of Article V Convention of the States to propose certain amendments to the U.S. Constitution which place limits on the federal government.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Is it time for a Convention of the States? Click to take our poll
Missouri State Director for the Convention of States Keith Carmichael spoke for the convention, and Ray Calzone, a Director for Missouri First, spoke against. After the two presented, there was an opportunity to ask questions.
“The idea for a Convention of the States is gaining in popularity with those who are concerned for the future of our country, under a federal government that’s increasingly bloated, corrupt, reckless and invasive. We don’t have to make up something new,” Carmichael said. “We have a constitutional option. We can call a Convention of the States to return the country to its original vision of a limited federal government that is of, by and for the people. “
“The federal government has overreached its constitutionally-established boundaries and has its hands in almost every area of our lives,” Carmichael said. In his power point presentation he shared a photo of his five-year old granddaughter saying, “Our children and grandchildren will inherit a bankrupt nation run by an unaccountable bureaucracy if we don’t do something soon.”
Carmichael explained that the solution was in Article V of the United States Constitution. This allows us to call a Convention of States to restrict the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, effectively returning the citizens’ rightful power over the ruling elite.
Carmichael encouraged forum attendees that if all worked together, the state legislators and American citizens could restore the checks and balances on federal power that were put in place by the founding fathers to protect our liberty from the abuses in Washington D.C.
Calzone then communicated the opposing view. He argued by presenting a scenario in which delegates disregarded the original issue, and rewrote the Constitution in other ways, thus changing the entire American system of government.
But according to Carmichael, there have been more than 400 applications from state legislatures for an Article V convention in the history of the Republic, and no such convention has ever been called because there has never been an application from two-thirds of the states for a single subject. In addition, according to Carmichael, there is a huge amount of historic precedent that limits interstate conventions to a ‘particular subject.’
The ratification of any proposed amendment requires the approval of 38 states. It only takes 13 states to vote “no” to defeat any proposed amendment. Proponents also say that improper changes to the process could be legally challenged by state legislators, and there has never been a runaway convention.
Calzone presented several other actions the members of the Missouri General Assembly could take now to rein in federal government. Calzone explained that he doesn’t trust politicians, because as a rule, “politicians are corrupt,” and therefore the Article V Convention of the States process would be corrupt. “If we could write something that would limit the convention to an exact subject, with exact rules on how they can vote, and what they can talk about, it might be worth looking at,” Calzone said.
CWA opposed the call for a convention of the states during the Missouri General Assembly 2015 session, yet some of the group’s members are keeping an open mind. CWA holds these forums across the state of Missouri to give the people a chance to learn about the movement, and formulate their own opinion.
A call to action
Ehlen encourages citizens to contact their state representative and state senator to express to them how they feel about a convention to the states, so that when they go back in session in 2016 they will have heard from their constituents.
The Lake Area Chapter invites local citizens to join them in this fight to bring biblical values to all levels of public policy. Men, women, teens and children are all welcome to attend these Christ centered educational meetings.
For more about CWA visit cwfa.org or call the Missouri CWA State Director Bev Ehlen at 314 608-0168.I wanted a really easy way to stream content from my phone to my TV (MotoGP video pass and YouTube videos specifically). The Chromecast makes it very easy. I plugged the unit into the HDMI input on my TV and plugged its USB tail into the USB input on my TV. (The device is pretty light, but I used a zip tie through opening on my TV to help support it just so I didn't put any stress on the HDMI or USB ports. I'm withholding one star because the USB tail is so short. It only just reached my USB port; any farther and I would have had to get a USB extension cable.) The device walks you through set up and it's very easy, just a few steps. Download the Chromecast app from the Play store, enter a code, connect to your Wifi network, choose a security setting and you're up and running. When I open the YouTube app on my phone, a little icon appears in the player to "cast" it to the TV, and it just a few seconds the video plays on my TV instead of my phone. Sometimes it takes a few moments to get the full HD version of a video streaming but usually it's pretty quick. The Chromecast app has some additional Chromecast-compatible apps that you can use. I haven't explored them, since I really just wanted to do two things. Streaming MotoGP video pass: (Skip this section if you're not interested in this.) The MotoGP app on Android doesn't support Chromecast natively; however, there is a simple workaround. Just go to the MotoGP site in the Chrome browser and login to your MotoGP account. Select a video and tap to play. A "cast" icon will appear on the video player container. Tap the cast icon and the video will be sent to the Chromecast unit and will play on your TV. Hooray! I find that live video streams are little more difficult to get an uninterrupted 1080p version (sometimes the video pauses for a few seconds then resume, sometimes the quality downgrades in order to keep playing). I don't experience this nearly as much with the non-live video streams. So, I think it may be on MotoGP servers' end. I'm really happy with the easy set up and use of the Chromecast. I have a Roku on my primary TV, but couldn't justify the cost of another one for a second TV and for such a limited purpose. The Chromecast offers such great value; however. And it's so easy to use and works really well that I think I'm actually going to buy one for my primary TV, as well. (The YouTube channel on Roku is unreliable, not playing HD when HD is available, and only supports one account, and a few other issues. Plus, then I can watch MotoGP on my main TV, too!) I would 100% recommend to a friend. I think these would make great gifts, too--provided your gift recipient has an Android device.
Read moreA Saskatoon man says the black tarp he used to cover a piece of public art at the corner of 33rd Street and Avenue C is an improvement over the original display.
Luke Coupal calls the public art installation at the corner of Avenue C North and 33rd Street West "unsightly". (CBC) "It's literally two compressed bales of garbage," said Luke Coupal, who's lived in the neighbourhood for the past decade.
"For anyone who has seen this piece of artwork, you'll agree instantly that this is not achieving the objective of beautifying the city and improving the commercial area," he said.
After receiving no response after several complaints to his city councillor, Coupal covered the art on Sunday with a black tarp. He also tacked up a sign that read "Our tax dollars are for keeping garbage OFF the streets".
The tarp and sign were both gone within 24 hours.
Artist's intent
'Found Compressions One and Two" sits at the corner of 33rd Street West and Avenue C North. Together, the bales weigh 875 kg, and contain plastic bags and containers compressed by Loraas Recycling. (CBC) The artist, Keeley Haftner, had initially placed a small plaque beside the installation, explaining the pieces were a collaboration with Loraas Recycle, to bring attention to waste management. On Tuesday morning, that plaque was also gone.
"I can't say [Coupal's reaction] is completely negative, although it is certainly extreme," said Haftner. She noted she worked at Loraas Recycling for six months before producing the piece. Her plaque also included a link to a blog featuring interviews with fellow recycling workers, inviting public comments.
Haftner admitted she did not receive any feedback online about the installation,
It was her first paid public project, winning just over $4,000 in a grant from the City of Saskatoon's " Placemaker Mike Cochrane said the temporary recycling installation needs to move out of Mayfair, to another location. (CBC) " program last year.
Residents question location
"I understand what she's trying to do," said Mike Cochrane, who owns a drugstore nearby. "She has the right to make art but at the same time this is recycling. It shouldn't have been here as long as it's been here."
"If she'd been complaining about negligent dog owners, does that mean we'd have a pile of dog feces here at the moment?"
Both Haftner and the chair of the Visual Arts Placement Jury told CBC the piece was originally intended for the River Landing area. However, another temporary work was already in place there. Instead, city officials and the jury offered Haftner the spot at 33rd Street West and Avenue C North.
"The question of beauty has been brought up a lot in this debate, which is a really provocative and sometimes problematic conversation," she said. "I don't think all work that is made in a public setting should necessarily be made with the mandate of making a space more beautiful."
Planning and development officials at the City of Saskatoon tell CBC the exhibit's Mayfair location will be revisited at the jury's next meeting on May 5.
Replay the Saskatoon Morning live chat below.A COUNTDOWN clock hangs over the desks in the open-plan political headquarters of Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, who hopes to be Argentina’s next president. It tells skinny-jeaned campaign workers how many days, hours and minutes there are “until change”. The clock will hit zero on August 9th, when political parties hold primaries to select their presidential candidates. Then, presumably, it will be reset for the first round of the election itself, to be held on October 25th.
The primaries are less momentous than the clock suggests. There is little suspense about who will win. Mr Macri (pictured, left) is way ahead of rivals to be the candidate of Cambiemos (“Let’s change”), an electoral front that consists of his Republican Proposal and two other parties. The other main contender for the presidency is likely to be Daniel Scioli (pictured, right), the governor of Buenos Aires province. He is the only candidate from the Front for Victory (FPV), the party of Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
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Even so, the primaries matter. If pollsters’ guesses are correct, the presidential election is a two-horse race. Sergio Massa, a charismatic congressman from the Justicialist Party who was ahead in the polls a year ago, is far behind now. Ms Fernández, after months of prevarication, has thrown her support behind Mr Scioli, who was Argentina’s vice-president when her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, was president. The primaries are thus likely to show that Argentines face a choice between the continuity that Mr Scioli represents and the change that Mr Macri promises.
Unlike the rowdy presidential primaries in the United States, Argentina’s “simultaneous open obligatory primaries” (PASO) are not an exercise in intra-party democracy. Ms Fernández, who introduced the system in 2009, called it at the time “the most important political reform” since democracy was restored in 1983. There is little evidence for that. None of the candidates faces a serious challenge from within his own electoral coalition. Argentina’s interior and transport minister, Florencio Randazzo, an ally of Ms Fernández, might have posed a threat to Mr Scioli. Mr Scioli extinguished it by choosing the president’s closest (non-family) confidant, Carlos Zannini, to be his running mate. Ms Fernández duly persuaded Mr Randazzo to withdraw his candidacy.
The real point of PASO voting, many analysts think, is to spare politicians nasty surprises in a country where opinion polls are unreliable. Ms Fernández introduced it after her party was routed in mid-term elections. Voters have to take part. They choose which party’s primary to vote in, and that indicates which candidate they are likely to support in the later election. In primaries held before the last presidential ballot, in 2011, the FPV’s contest (between Ms Fernández and a host of others) attracted more voters than that of any other party. She went on to win by a landslide. “In the absence of credible surveys, the PASO elections are a true thermometer for what each candidate’s chances are going into October,” says Juan Cruz Diaz of Cefeidas, a research group.
That has not stopped pollsters from making their own predictions. The only point of agreement is that this year’s presidential contest will be closer than the last one. Aresco, an Argentine polling group, expects Mr Scioli to win in the first round; IPSOS predicts that Mr Macri will prevail in a run-off on November 22nd.
The election is shaping up as a referendum on kirchnerismo, the brand of Peronist populism practised by Kirchner, who became president in 2003, and by his wife, who succeeded him. Mr Macri, a scion of a business family, built his centre-right party from scratch by opposing everything the Kirchners stand for. He promises to restore independence to institutions that Ms Fernández has co-opted, including the judiciary and the statistics agency, to remove trade barriers and currency controls that she imposed in 2011 and to quell inflation. He would probably try to reach agreement with holders of foreign debt, on which Argentina has defaulted.
Mr Scioli is building his campaign around voters among whom Ms Fernández still exerts Evita-like charm. Her image is all over his campaign adverts and billboards. Although inflation is high and the economy is shrinking, a large proportion of Argentina’s 40m citizens benefits from Ms Fernández’s lavish spending on subsidies, benefits and government jobs (see chart). By choosing Mr Zannini to be his running mate, Mr Scioli has greatly improved his chances of holding on to their support.
Yet the divide between Mr Scioli and Mr Macri is not as stark as it first appears. Even before the primaries, Mr Macri has started moving toward the political centre. He says he has no plans to privatise the money-losing state airline or YPF, a big oil company that Ms Fernández nationalised in 2012. Welfare schemes are an “earned right”, Mr Macri declares. His chief of staff says he will not cut subsidies deeply or lay off government workers en masse. The change candidate has mainly changed his own mind, sneer his opponents.
Mr Scioli avoids that risk by saying as little as possible. His friends say he cosies up to Ms Fernández only out of political necessity; in office he will be his own man. After August 9th Argentines will be able to make a better guess about who will take office as president in December. Just what sort of leader he will turn out to be will become clear when he starts governing.Self-proclaimed “executive transvestite” and Victoria and Abdul star Eddie Izzard is back doing stand-up, which can only mean one thing. That’s right: it’s bad news for Steve.
If you know your Izzard, you know Steve is a frequent character in his work: He turns up on the Starship Enterprise, as a migrating bird, one of the Corinthians who finally pluck up the courage to reply to St. Paul, a Dalek, a contestant on gameshow Whose Pig Is This?, and even on the moon. In fact he’s such a staple of Eddie’s stand-up, someone’s made a Steve playlist on YouTube.
So it was no surprise that Eddie’s favorite stooge popped up during his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night (June 13).
Eddie was there to talk about his new tour and brilliantly titled book Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens. Though in true Eddie style, the conversation took more than a few diversions — covering topics such as human sacrifice, starting out as a street performer, politics, and performing comedy in four different languages.
Needless to say, things didn’t look good for Steve:
Eddie’s latest stand-up world tour starts today (June 14) in New York, with dates in Washington DC, Phoenix, Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston later this month.
Will you be catching one of Eddie’s shows?BOSTON - Governor-elect Charlie Baker would not support expanding the state's anti-discrimination laws to add protection for transgender people in public places, such as restaurants or theaters.
Baker, a Republican, does support an existing law that protects transgender people from discrimination in employment and housing. But he said Monday that he does not favor a bill that is expected to come before the legislature next session to add a prohibition against discrimination in places of "public accommodation."
"No one's been able to explain to me how the public accommodation piece would actually work in practice," Baker said. "Schools, hospitals, other organizations have all expressed what I believe to be legitimate concerns about that law."
The bill has been debated in the state legislature before but never passed. Critics derisively dubbed it the "bathroom bill" arguing that it would allow a man who is transgender to use a women's rest room. The bill raised concerns about whether someone born male would have access to places like girls' school locker rooms. Supporters say the bill would prevent, for example, someone being denied service at a restaurant for being transgender.
In 2012, the legislature passed a bill adding non-discrimination protection for transgender people in employment, housing, credit, education and similar areas. But a mention of public accommodations got stripped out during the debate.
During his 2010 campaign, Baker opposed the bill and referred to it at the time as the "bathroom bill," even though his then-running mate Richard Tisei, who is gay, supported it.
On Monday, speaking to a reporter after an event at Fenway Community Health Center, which specializes in health care for gay and lesbian people, Baker said he supports the version that was signed into law, but not the expansion. "Frankly, neither does the legislature, which has never moved to act on this over the course of the past several years," Baker said.
Attorney General-elect Maura Healey told The Republican/MassLive.com in a recent interview that she believes the state's public accommodation law needs to be updated to include gender identity. Healey said she would "strongly support" a change and hopes to see action from the legislature. Healey will be the nation's first openly gay attorney general.
Baker's stop at Fenway Community Health Center was part of his transition efforts. Since his election in November, Baker has been visiting a variety of organizations, talking to private and government officials. He takes office Jan. 8.
Fenway Health provides health care targeted at people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and serves as a general community health center. It provides specialized services such as testing and treatment for HIV/AIDS and alternative insemination, as well as primary care, behavioral health care and dental care. In fiscal year 2013, it had more than 21,000 patients. It also has an affiliated research institute. The center provides care regardless of ability to pay.
Since 2010, the center has gotten around $35 million in state money, according to a database of state spending. Most of that is in reimbursements for treating Medicaid patients, though some comes from grants, to pay for social services or for other purposes like research. It also gets money from the federal and city governments and from private and corporate donations.
Baker met with top officials at the health center. He said they discussed a variety of issues around health care, particularly as it relates to populations who do not have access to adequate primary care.
Asked about maintaining funding for community health centers and organizations that provide care focused on HIV or AIDS, Baker said he has "been a little careful" about making budget-related promises since his administration expects to inherit a deficit. "But I certainly am a big believer in primary care, and I'm a big believer in community health centers and always have been," Baker said.
Carl Sciortino, executive director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and a former Democratic state representative, attended the meeting and said they discussed ways to improve HIV prevention, the challenges facing people with HIV and challenges of primary care access generally. Sciortino said Baker seems to have "a very open mind," and it was a "very positive conversation."
Baker has generally been more liberal than many Republicans on social issues, particularly relating to gay rights. He supports gay marriage. During his campaign, he released a video featuring his brother, who is gay, talking about coming out to Baker. Lieutenant Governor-elect Karyn Polito opposed gay marriage on multiple occasions in the state legislature but now supports it.
Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the non-profit Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, said Baker supported gay marriage back in 2003-2004, when it was first being debated in Massachusetts and has generally supported equality. At the same time, she said some gay rights activists are worried about whether Baker will fund priorities for the gay community and whether he will be "too hands off" in keeping government out of issues like non-discrimination policy.
"I'm genuinely hopeful he'll be open-minded and listen to us and support us on many issues, but we just don't know yet what effect or influence the right wing of the party will have on him," Isaacson said.
The Massachusetts Republican Party passed an anti-gay marriage plank as part of its platform in February.NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gets drug tested and he's apparently not toking.
"I am randomly tested and I'm happy to say I am clean," Goodell joked when asked about marijuana testing in the league.
Pot continues to be a hot topic this week with both Sunday's Super Bowl teams -- the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks -- hailing from states where the sale of weed for those 21 or older is legal. Goodell said at his annual state of the league briefing that the NFL has no current plans to remove marijuana from its banned list.
"It is still and illegal substance on a national basis," Goodell said. "It's something that is part to the collective bargaining agreement with the players. It is questionable as to the positive impacts (of weed), in face of the very strong evidence of the negative effects including addictions and other issues. We will continue to follow the the medical research. Our experts right now aren't not indicating changing our policy in any way. We are not actively considering it."
Goodell added that if there's more scientific evidence that pot is harmful or beneficial for medical use, the league would consider taking it off the banned list.
Vernon Davis goes right at Goodell
Among those questioning Goodell was San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis. CSN Bay Area's Matt Maiocco details the testy exchange between the commish and Davis, who was representing Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback.
Davis: "Hey, Roger, Vernon Davis here, tight end for the San Francisco 49ers." Goodell: "I know who you are, Vernon. I’m glad to have you here." Davis: "Thanks, Roger. I appreciate it, buddy. I'm writing for MMQB. "Roger, we play one of America’s most dangerous and most lucrative games. But, still, we have to fight for health benefits. We have to jump through (hoops) for it. Why doesn’t the NFL offer free health care for life, especially for those suffering from brain injury?" Goodell: "Vernon, first off, we had lots of discussions about that in the collective bargaining process. We went back and improved a lot of our health benefits, both for former players and for current players, to the point where I think the health benefits that are provided to current NFL players are the best in the world. And so I’m proud of what we’ve been able to do with the union in approving those benefits. "We also still have a lot of work to do for former players. The cost of trying to provide health care for every player that’s ever played in the league was discussed with the union. It was determined that these changes were the best changes. And that’s what we negotiated. We’re all proud of the efforts that we made. We’ll continue to make more efforts and do a better job, particularly with our former players in providing them opportunities and to give them the proper health care. "And our programs, as an example, the 88 Plan for anyone who has dementia or any other kind of neurological disorder, that’s there for the players and their families for lifetime. So we have programs that are addressing those issues that we’ve created, or the owners have created, on their own. And we also have several of them that were created with the union.”
Goodell: league made missteps on playoff tix
Goodell said the league made "mistakes" that put some playoff games in danger of not selling out.
The Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts and Cincinnati Bengals had trouble selling out their respective first-round games, nearly leading to a local TV blackout in each market. After the league extended the blackout deadline and team sponsors stepped up to purchase
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On the opening night of the annual (and hugely popular) “Midsummer Fantasy Renaissance Faire,” GreenWolf will attempt a “once-only, dangerous publicity stunt” that will see him worm his way out of being burned at the stake.
GreenWolf is the general manager for the faire and its official magician.
OK, here’s what’s going to happen:
GreenWolf will be suspended on a 6-foot high platform, chained to the stake.
A medieval-style system will slowly lower a flaming torch toward a pile of gasoline-soaked logs and tinder at the bottom of the stake.
GreenWolf will have about two minutes to escape the 100 feet of chain, locks and rope, and get down from the stake, before the whole thing goes up in flames.
Hopefully it won’t look anything like this:
GreenWolf’s stunt next month is born out of his love of magic tricks, a passion that began when he was 10 years old, watching magician Jeff McBride performing on television.
At age 14, GreenWolf became involved with Renaissance fairs, performing in various fairs across Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.
He has been named the Best Solo Variety Act for Renaissance fairs in the U.S. for five years in a row.
In late 2010, he was contacted by the owner of the Midsummer Magic Renaissance Faire in Oxford, who offered him the opportunity to build a renaissance fair from the ground up, GreenWolf said.
The magician said the fiery stake stunt is something he’s been thinking about trying for 10 years — but he couldn’t do it due to his waist line.
Then he started getting into shape.
“I was 135 pounds heavier two years ago,” he said.
Shedding the weight was a personal milestone — and now he wants to set another personal best with the “burned at the stake” escape stunt.
Preparation
To successfully execute the trick, GreenWolf is undergoing intense physical preparation.
In one practice trick, called “Gasp,” Greenwolf was bound by 165 of rope, with a plastic bag tied over his head. The goal: escape from the ropes before losing consciousness.
Knowing how to escape and how to build endurance through physical conditioning is the best way to prepare for the stunt, Greenwolf said.
A team of 10 to 15 people will be working with GreenWolf, standing with fire extinguishers and water near the stake if something goes wrong. However, the danger level for this stunt remains very high.
It takes about five to 10 seconds for someone to reach him from the ground, Greenwolf said. Therefore, a great deal of safety preparation has been made to ensure the protection of GreenWolf and the audience.
In an article published Wednesday night on the New Haven Register website, the Ansonia fire marshal said he has to look into GreenWolf’s stunt.
Spectators will be kept a safe distance from the stakes, and an ambulance and full EMT staff will be on duty.
“The truth of it is, there’s always going to be a couple of people that want to see something go wrong,” GreenWolf said. “Harry Houdini used to say ‘I have become comfortable with the fact that there are people who want to watch me die, but there are so many more people who want to watch me live,’ and that’s the same concept.”
Whether he survives, GreenWolf hopes his audience will walk away from his performance with a sense of inspiration — the theme, naturally, of this year’s festival.
“It sounds so cliche, but anything is possible,” GreenWolf said. “There are no limits, and if you put a limit on yourself, it’s your self-doing. Nobody else is going to put that limit on you. If you let anyone else put limits on you, then you’re destined for a life of failure.”
Click for more info.Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO style
The Sims 3 Pets expansion pack has entered a gaming world that's changed dramatically since Sims 2's Pets came around. Pet breeding and caretaking games have been around for ages, but now Facebook games, mobile apps, and even Second Life have opened up the world of casual pet-themed games to even more people. It may seem like Sims 3 Pets will be able to tap into this market easily, but the world of pet gaming is far more diverse than it seems, and the same people addicted to the current pet care games may be disappointed by what Sims 3 Pets has to offer.
Don't get me wrong, I love The Sims 3 and the latest expansion has been incredibly fun, like the equally creative and engaging expansions before it. They've changed a lot of the pet design and care mechanics since The Sims 2, where the dogs and cats available were little more than objects in a larger household, like furry furniture.
By contrast, the newest animal additions to the world of The Sims 3 are worlds apart. Now pets (including cats, dogs, and horses) are literally members of the family: They can be controlled like human Sims, they can have good and bad personal relationships, they can learn skills, they can be given traits from creation or trained with new ones during gameplay. Pet creation is also significantly more flexible than it was in The Sims 2, allowing for both small and large breeds with an incredibly detailed coat and shape customization interface. The only real limit I've found with the customization options is that leg length cannot be controlled, which means that breeds like Munchkins, Corgis, and even toy and teacup breeds won't look as accurate as more conventionally shaped breeds.
Most important for many, though, is that these pets can be bred, passing on physical features and traits to their offspring. That's the heart of the massive breedables industry in Second Life, which is generating substantial revenue for creators and lucky breeders alike, as well as microtransaction-riddled games like PetVille and Pocket Frogs. Hamlet speculated a couple weeks ago that much of this SL market would be drawn to the new Pets expansion, and while I agree that's true, I don't believe that it will last. Here's why:On the Principles of Economic Principles
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A couple of weeks ago the American Enterprise Institute, in one of its weekend e-mailings, featured as its “Quote of the Week” a quip from Ezra Klein:
“There’s nothing more dangerous than somebody who’s just taken their first economics class.” — Ezra Klein, in a podcast conversation with AEI President Arthur C. Brooks
I’ve not listened to the podcast, but my guess is that what Klein is getting at here is what the typical pundit suggests whenever he or she (which is frequent) expresses the same thought – namely, that the world is far more complex than ECON 101 makes it out to be and, therefore, real-world policy proposals cannot be adequately analyzed and decided upon with basic economics.
As I say, I’ve not listened to the podcast; this thought might not be what Klein himself is expressing. But this thought is one that is indeed widely expressed. This thought is frequently thrown at me and other advocates of laissez-faire, such as when protectionists allege that our endorsement of unilateral free trade ignores “market imperfections” and other “complexities” that aren’t discussed in econ-principles courses. Ditto for our opposition to minimum-wage legislation. (“Don’t you know that real-world markets aren’t as perfect as they are in ECON 101 textbooks?!”) Ditto, indeed, for almost every endorsement issued by an economist for laissez-faire policies.
It’s this thought that I wish here to discuss.
This thought – that serious discussions of real-world policies often require more than knowledge of a freshman-level economics course – can be interpreted to be trivially true. If we’re interested in understanding, explaining, and predicting many of the details of how people will react to changes in policy – and in tracing out the details of the consequences of these likely reactions – then of course knowledge of economics beyond that which is conveyed in an intro-econ course is necessary, as is knowledge of other disciplines and of particular institutions. Similarly, if we want to understand more fully many observed business practices – for example, the reason that automobile dealerships so often locate nearby each other, or the reason that so many fast-food restaurants are franchisees – then knowledge beyond principles-of-economics is necessary. No one can doubt the usefulness of such more-advanced knowledge.
But it does not follow – from the above rather trite, if true, concession – that a knowledge of only principles of economics is “dangerous.” My strong sense, from having carefully observed public-policy making and public-policy discussion for nearly 40 years now, is that what is dangerous is a lack of knowledge of principles of economics. The problem is not that most politicians and pundits take economic principles too literally; the problem is that most politicians and pundits are utterly ignorant even of these principles.
The typical politician does not oppose free trade because he took an advanced econ course and learned there that, under just the right combination of real-world circumstances, an optimally imposed tariff can be justified on economic grounds. No. The typical politician opposes free trade because he doesn’t understand the first thing about economics. He doesn’t understand that the purpose of trade – any trade, [be it intranational or international] – is to enrich people as consumers and not to enrich people as producers. He doesn’t understand that exports are a cost and that imports are a benefit; he thinks that it’s the other way ’round. He doesn’t understand that the specific jobs lost to imports are not the only employment consequences of trade; he doesn’t understand that trade also ‘creates’ jobs in the domestic economy. He doesn’t understand that domestic producers protected by government from competition have diminished, rather than intensified, incentives to improve efficiencies of their operations. He, in short, doesn’t understand the first damn thing about the economics of trade. And nor do most of his constituents. If these constituents understood basic economics and basic economics only, they would better understand that this politician’s policies are economically harmful and that his policy statements are malarky.
The typical politician doesn’t support minimum-wage legislation because she has concluded, after careful study, that employers of low-skilled workers have sufficient amounts of monopsony power in the labor market (as well as monopoly power in their output markets) to nullify the prediction of basic supply-and-demand analysis and, instead, to create real-world conditions that enable a scientifically set minimum wage actually to improve the welfare of most low-skilled workers without reducing the employment prospects of any of them. No. She supports minimum-wage legislation because she believes that raising the minimum wage will result simply in all low-skilled workers getting the stipulated pay raise without any negative consequences befalling these workers. And most of her constituents – even those low-skilled workers whose jobs are put at risk by the minimum wage – share her economically uninformed belief.
In both of the above cases (and these are only two examples of many), economically destructive policies win favor largely because people do not understand economic principles. Public policy would be improved far more if more people learned only basic economic principles than if those people who now know only basic economic principles learned also more advanced economics.
It’s called economic “principles” for a good reason: what is taught in a good economic-principles course are the principles of the operation of an economy guided by market prices. These principles are just that – principles – because they describe the underlying logic of market economies and, as such, are a reliable guide for understanding the economy (and government interventions into the economy) in most real-world cases. It’s true that reality sometimes serves up unusual combinations of events that render a knowledge only of economic principles misleading. But economic principles would be anti-principles if they did not on most occasions – as a rule – as a matter of course – with a solid, if rebuttal, presumption – give reliable and useful insight into how real-world economies actually operate.
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The claim that I see many people (mostly on the political left) making is something like the following: “Oh, principles of economics is too simplistic. Reality is so complex that, when one learns advanced economics, the policy prescriptions that a student takes from his or her principles course are typically shown to be faulty. Here are some examples. The Minimum wage: Econ principles show that it destroys jobs for low-skilled workers, but advanced economics shows that it can be good for those workers. FDA regulation: Econ principles show that it prevents consumers from gaining access to pharmaceuticals that can benefit consumers, but advanced economics shows that such regulation can be good for consumers. Workplace-safety regulation: Econ principles show that competition for workers obliges firms to supply optimal levels of safety, but advanced economics shows why this conclusion is mistaken.”
If claims such as these are generally true, then what is being taught as economic principles would be anti-principles. If claims such as these are generally true, then what is being taught as economic principles would be, at best, simplifications of reality so extreme that they misinform students rather than inform them. If claims such as these are generally true, then the typical econ-principles student should demand a refund of his or her tuition and compensation for being defrauded by his or her college.
But, instead, if what is taught in (good) principles of economics classes (such as I am sure are featured at George Mason University) is in fact solid principles of economics, then principles-of-economics students are better informed about reality at the end of the semester than they were at the semester’s start. Such students can use these principles as a generally reliable, if not infallible, guide to understand reality and to predict the general consequences of typical government interventions such as price controls and trade restrictions.
Put differently, suppose that the knowledge conveyed to students of, say, good introductory physics courses were analogous to the knowledge of what people who disparage principles of economics believe is conveyed to students of introductory economics course. In that case, then the likes of Newton’s Laws of Motion and Boyle’s Law would be downright misleading when used to understand most instances of observed reality. Of course, in reality these basic laws of physics are not misleading, although they also are understood not to reveal all relevant details of the reality that they are used to describe. In contrast, many critics of principles of economics – being unable to discredit these principles as such (Do you really not believe that a rise in the price of Rome apples relative to the price of Macintosh apples will increase consumers’ demand for Macintosh apples?) – insist, ignorantly, that these principles are too weak and general to supply a solid grounding for assessing policy proposals.
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And in the above I ignored a related question – namely, how valuable for policy analysis is the information and knowledge conveyed in advanced economics courses. (By and large, I think the answer is ‘not very’ – at least not for economics courses beyond solid intermediate ones.)
CommentsThe rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.
Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.
A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements, only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted.
The decision followed a warning from Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, that the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a "pseudo-image" of a child.
Dowty told the Guardian she raised concerns with the Metropolitan police five years ago over plans to use similar scanners in an anti-knife campaign, and when the Department for Transport began a similar trial in 2006 on the Heathrow Express rail service from Paddington station.
"They do not have the legal power to use full body scanners in this way," said Dowty, adding there was an exemption in the 1978 law to cover the "prevention and detection of crime" but the purpose had to be more specific than the "trawling exercise" now being considered.
A Manchester airport spokesman said their trial had started in December, but only with passengers over 18 until the legal situation with children was clarified. So far 500 people have taken part on a voluntary basis with positive feedback from nearly all those involved.
Passengers also pass through a metal detector before they can board their plane. Airport officials say the scanner image is only seen by a single security officer in a remote location before it is deleted.
A Department for Transport spokesman said: "We understand the concerns expressed about privacy in relation to the deployment of body scanners. It is vital staff are properly trained and we are developing a code of practice to ensure these concerns are properly taken into account. Existing safeguards also mean those operating scanners are separated from the device, so unable to see the person to whom the image relates, and these anonymous images are deleted immediately."
But Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, had concerns over the "instant" introduction of scanners: "Where are the government assurances that electronic strip-searching is to be used in a lawful and proportionate and sensitive manner based on rational criteria rather than racial or religious bias?" she said.
Her concerns were echoed by Simon Davies of Privacy International who said he was sceptical of the privacy safeguards being used in the United States. Although the American system insists on the deletion of the images, he believed scans of celebrities or of people with unusual or freakish body profiles would prove an "irresistible pull" for some employees.
The disclosures came as Downing Street insisted British intelligence information that the Detroit plane suspect tried to contact radical Islamists while a student in London was passed on to the US.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's name was included in a dossier of people believed to have made attempts to deal with extremists, but he was not singled out as a particular risk, Brown's spokesman said.
President Barack Obama has criticised US intelligence agencies for failing to piece together information about the 23-year-old that should have stopped him boarding the flight.
Brown's spokesman said "There was security information about this individual's activities and that was shared with the US authorities."Pittsburgh received the second highest grade in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality among seven cities in Pennsylvania, according to a report released Wednesday by the Human Rights Campaign.
Pittsburgh scored a 90 out of a possible 100, which is based on the city’s non-discrimination laws, relationship recognition, employment policies, law enforcement and municipal leadership on matters of equality.
Ted Martin, executive director of LGBT advocacy group Equality Pennsylvania, said the score is something to be proud of, especially because it shows Pittsburgh is ahead of other regions.
“If, for example, you go into Westmoreland County or Washington County, or to the south, or Beaver County or Butler County, you’re not protected [as a member of the LGBT community] in the same ways you are in Pittsburgh,” Martin said. “That’s one thing that the state is not doing and that’s one thing Pittsburgh is leading in, and that’s a remarkable thing.”
The average score for the seven cities – Allentown, Erie, Harrisburg, New Hope, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and University Park – is 80. The average for the 353 cities assessed across the United States is 59.
Martin said the state as a whole is lagging behind in LGBT treatment.
“There are no LGBT-specific hate crime protections in Pennsylvania (statewide), no LGBT-specific bullying crimes in Pennsylvania,” Martin said. “That stands us out from most of our northeastern neighbors, and that is something that Pennsylvanians in general should be concerned about.”
Philadelphia recorded a perfect 100. Martin said a perfect score can be attained by Pittsburgh if small steps are taken.
“There’s some work around the police department that’s going on. I think that’s certainly important,” Martin said. “There’s a little bit more liaison they could be doing with the community through a possible liaison in the mayor’s office, for example. But all of those things are very doable.”
Martin said even though Pennsylvania has plenty to improve, Equality PA is having more success in the legislature as of late.
“We’ve moved forward on non-discrimination this past session of the legislature further than ever before,” Martin said. “Highest number of co-sponsors of the legislation, bipartisan support, highest number of Republicans to sign on board, highest number of corporations to come out publicly in support of the legislation.”Aaron Ramsey returned to Cardiff with two fine goals as Arsenal won in the Welsh capital to move seven points clear at the Premier League summit.
Ramsey teed up Jack Wilshere to hit the bar, before nodding the opener against his old club from Mesut Ozil's cross.
In-form Gunners Arsenal have now won 10 of their last 12 Premier League games and continue to hold the division's best away record
Fraizer Campbell almost equalised for Cardiff with a header that Wojciech Szczesny kept out with a crucial save.
Arsenal made it two when Ozil set up Mathieu Flamini to slam home and Ramsey drilled a third after a slick attack.
Wales international Ramsey joined Arsenal from Cardiff in 2008, when just 17. He refused to celebrate his goals, which were applauded by sections of the home crowd, and some Cardiff fans joined their Arsenal counterparts in singing Ramsey's name late on.
He responded by tapping both hands against his head - known by Cardiff supporters as the Ayatollah - following an impressive display.
The result gives Arsenal breathing space above their title rivals, with none of Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City or Manchester United playing until Sunday.
Media playback is not supported on this device Arsenal were dominant - Wenger
Cardiff now sit just one place above the relegation zone but arrived buoyed by a their latest impressive home result following victories over Manchester City and Swansea.
Arsenal, however, presented arguably the toughest test of their maiden Premier League season to date and it was immediately clear why.
With only a minute on the clock, Ramsey fed Wilshere and the England midfielder's curling strike from 20 yards came back off the woodwork as he looked to add to a against Marseille.
The hosts went close as Campbell headed wide from a Kevin Theophile-Catherine cross and Jordon Mutch later hooked off target following Peter Whittingham's free-kick, yet those were rare forays forward.
Arsenal might have taken the lead through Olivier Giroud, but the Frenchman stopped playing in anticipation of an offside flag that never arrived, enabling Steven Caulker to block his eventual shot.
Media playback is not supported on this device Ramsey grateful for Cardiff fans' respect
They made amends when Ozil crossed from the left for an on-rushing and unmarked Ramsey to direct a clinical header past David Marshall.
Arsenal continued to probe and Giroud found Ramsey to fire wide prior to half-time, and it was roles reversed after the break as Ramsey picked out Giroud and his shot was cleared off the line by Ben Marshall.
That reprieve seemed to rejuvenate Cardiff, their supporters responding in kind, and it needed a magnificent low one-handed save by Szczesny to stop Campbell's header from an Andrew Taylor cross.
With Malky Mackay's side pushing hard to draw level, they were leaving themselves exposed to counter-attacks and Arsenal capitalised with a crunching first-time finish by substitute Flamini from Ozil's cute pass.
They confirmed victory when Peter Odemwingie lost possession and Theo Walcott, another substitute, raced away before squaring for Ramsey to convert his 13th goal in all competitions this season.Background checks for all sales including personal sales, required training to own a gun with required yearly retraining, limit on certain ammunition and magazine capacities, required extended insurance coverage to cover those that you accidentally shoot/kill, illegal to carry in public for personal protection in all states.
Hardcore 2nd amendment supporters love to pull sections of the 2nd amendment out of context, reword/purposely misinterpret it to benefit themselves while refusing to think of anyone else so I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to do the same.
That being said, none of these are unconstitutional or even infringing on the 2nd amendment because they aren't preventing anyone from owning a gun (other than felons with the background checks).
Refusing to do background checks for sales is a big one. I personally know a felon who was bragging to me about buying a gun at a gun show, and having the guy at the booth meet him outside so it's a "personal sale" and he wouldn't have to do a background check.
Required training is obvious. There are so many idiots who own guns, some so dumb they don't even understand what having a round chambered means. "Look, I pulled out the magazine, there's no way it's loaded now." So many people just trying to be a badass. Wanna feel like a real badass? How about actually learning the ins and outs of your gun, and actually knowing how to use it and disarm it?
Having to purchase specialty gun owners insurance with higher premiums because owning a gun makes you at higher risk for injury to yourself and other people (accidental or purposely) will make people think twice about pulling that gun out to brag to all your friends while you guys are drinking. It will help to reinforce the ideal that yes, owning a gun is a big deal and a big responsibility. People pay higher insurance costs for fast cars for the same reason.
Limiting magazine capacities limits potential deaths during a mass shooting. Oh they have two magazines instead of one? It takes a few seconds to reload plus affords victims the possibility of you causing a jam and giving them even more time to run/seek cover.
Illegal to carry in public for personal protection. It doesn't take a genius to see how many people like to use a gun to feel like a big boy. Oh hey, that guy cut me off, I'm gonna wave my gun at him and threaten to kill him. Fuck that, I'm just going to start shooting because road rage. Shit, I accidentally shot my wife trying to pull my gun out of my center console in my truck. There are times when having a gun is just plain a bad idea, like when a person is angry, when they are drunk, or when they are just plain in a careless, forgetful mood. Having a gun at all times guarantees you will also have it at a time when you shouldn't.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that anywhere within the second amendment does it mention the right to carry a gun in public. Sure, people interpret it that way because that's what they want it to say, but does it actually say that? It only describes owning guns, it doesn't describe or mention anything about carrying a gun through town and into businesses and restaurants and places where people are drinking. It's not unconstitutional to ask for it to stop.
I can think of many more proposals, maybe some better than others, but I'm sick of typing on my phone.On "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert, Sanders said Donald Trump's supporters have a right to be angry but have wrongly embraced the Republican candidate's "false message." | AP Photo Sanders: Trump supporters ‘have a right be angry’
Bernie Sanders has slammed Donald Trump as “xenophobic” and “racist,” but the Vermont senator sympathizes — to a degree — with the billionaire businessman’s angry supporters.
“You have a right to be angry when we are the only major country on earth that doesn't provide paid family and medical leave, when we have more people living in poverty today than almost any other time in the history of this country,” Sanders told “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.
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Trump has embraced the notion that he’s angry with the way the country is being run, and Sanders conceded that many of the Republican presidential candidate's supporters are understandably responding to that part of his message. Many are working more hours for lower wages and question the America their kids will grow up in, he said.
“But I think what they have done is responded to Trump's false message, which suggests that if we keep Muslims out of this country or if we keep scapegoating Latinos or Mexicans, that somehow our country becomes better,” said Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. “I think that's a false solution.”
Voters can be angry, Sanders stressed, but they must also be pragmatic. “People have a right to be angry. But what we need to be is rational in figuring out how we address the problems and not simply scapegoating minorities,” he concluded.
Eliza Collins contributed to this report.The 2015 Charlotte Hornets that emerged from the shit-cocoon of fall 2014 were easily my favorite team to watch last season. But it wasn’t because they were fun. They weren’t any fun at all. They were thoroughly unfun. Their incapacitating defense was matched only by their incapacitative offense. The team’s offense generated the opposite of spacing, which I guess means the team itself was antimatter. They turned Pyrrhic victories into an art form. Last season, the team won an overtime game with a final score of 80-71, the lowest-scoring overtime game in the 60 years of the NBA’s shot clock era. The Hornets were deeply, intrinsically flawed, but for a very brief period, they managed to stay afloat by playing unlike anyone else in the league. They were the misshapen, unsolvable Rubik’s Cube that lodged itself in my heart. But after this past weekend and yesterday’s news, I’m going to go ahead and throw it in the trash. This year’s Hornets are going to be bad, and not the kind of bad I’ve come to love and admire.
With about 46 seconds remaining in the first half during Saturday’s preseason game against the Orlando Magic, Hornets wing Michael Kidd-Gilchrist separated his shoulder as he was fouled while moving around his defender. He was diagnosed with a torn labrum, and the surgery will force him to miss the next six months, cruelly slotting his earliest return right around the start of the postseason, which the Hornets are almost assuredly not reaching.
This will be the third consecutive season in which Kidd-Gilchrist misses more games than the last. In his first three seasons, he’s missed an average of 17 games a season. If you like to connect dots, you might find yourself, like I did, relating MKG’s string of unfortunate events to his stylistic forebear and fellow Charlotte basketball great. Gerald Wallace, in his six full seasons in Charlotte, averaged 14 missed games per season, with injuries from concussions to broken ribs to partially collapsed lungs. Like Kidd-Gilchrist, Wallace’s distinct kind of brilliance had already been lost in the margins as a result of playing on awful teams in Charlotte. The succession of untimely injuries only added to his obscurity. Yet even though Wallace is widely considered the best player to play for the Charlotte franchise, he never had the monumental on/off impact that Kidd-Gilchrist has.
Maybe you’ve seen the numbers. Last season, among Hornets who played at least 30 games for the team last season, only MKG and Cody Zeller logged a positive net rating, and Kidd-Gilchrist’s was more than double Zeller’s. As Yahoo’s Dan Devine pointed out in his MKG reaction yesterday:
When MKG was off the court, though, Charlotte got outscored by a whopping 333 points in just under 2,400 minutes, an average of 7.7 points-per-100. In effect, then, having MKG in the lineup was the difference between the Hornets performing like the 55-win Memphis Grizzlies and the worst-season-in-franchise-history Los Angeles Lakers.
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is the team’s best and most important player. Full stop — no need to throw the word “arguably” in that sentence, which only serves as a slight hedge to appease those who might balk at MKG’s uninspiring per-game numbers. A team’s top scorer isn’t always the team’s top player. This goes for all teams, but especially a team as lopsided as the Hornets, who managed to be one of the three worst offenses in the league while playing top-five defense since the start of 2015. You don’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, I think is the saying.
Yes, MKG isn’t a very good offensive player in the traditional sense, but it would’ve been fun (maybe — again, we’re talking about the Hornets) to see how he would be deployed with their current rotation. As I noted in an NBA draft preview about the “shifting inequalities” of the league, there is finally room for Kidd-Gilchrist to be utilized as the player he is rather than the player certain positional archetypes require him to be. He will never be a good 3-point shooter. Hell, he might never be any kind of 3-point shooter — he had zero attempts last season. But he was excellent with his cuts to the rim and became a solid enough midrange shooter to keep a defender at least within an acre of him. With the additions of first-rounder Frank Kaminsky and Spencer Hawes, both excellent perimeter shooters and passers for their size, it would’ve been nice to see how the Hornets deployed MKG in a sort of inverted offense. Alas. Charlotte will have to thumb through its entire roster — Jeremys Lin and Lamb, P.J. Hairston, Aaron Harrison, Elliot Williams, and others — for someone who will stick at the shooting guard position.
Patrick Smith/Getty Images
But how this injury affects the team’s offense isn’t the issue here. Kidd-Gilchrist is one of the rare defensive geniuses in the league, capable of ostensibly running point on the defensive end. Hornets head coach Steve Clifford rebuilt a defense that played with a mob mentality, and as MKG told Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer, “I’m the leader of that. I’m starting to understand how important I am to this team at the defensive end. Being all tied together is so important.”
One of the main ways this interconnectedness revealed itself was in Charlotte’s defensive rebounding philosophy. At 79.3 percent, the Hornets had far and away the best defensive rebounding percentage in the league, which was entirely by design. In the Hornets system, all five players are committed to securing the board. No leaking out — the defensive possession doesn’t end until the ball is secured. Kidd-Gilchrist is a fantastic rebounder for his position, but, as with everything else he does, his impact on the defensive glass isn’t measured by the numbers he himself accumulates. When Kidd-Gilchrist was on the floor, the Hornets were able to secure 82.4 percent of all available defensive rebounds, nearly three percentage points higher than their already league-leading rate on the season.
True to their name, the Hornets swarmed the interior last season, opting to let their opponents kill them from midrange. Charlotte allowed the fifth-fewest shot attempts in the restricted area in 2015 while also denying short corner 3s. With a boulder like Al Jefferson in the middle and a cadre of young bigs around him, it’s easy and sensible to pack the paint to prevent easy baskets around the rim. But the team’s ability to accomplish that in addition to patrolling the corners demands a player like Kidd-Gilchrist, who can control the defensive tide as it ebbs and flows from the interior to the closeout on the perimeter.
Of all the Hornets’ defensive tandems that played at least 450 minutes together last season, the best two were Kidd-Gilchrist and Bismack Biyombo (92.3 defensive rating) and Kidd-Gilchrist and Gerald Henderson (95.1 defensive rating). Neither of those guys is on the roster this year. In fact, with Kidd-Gilchrist slated to miss the entire year, there might not be a single plus defender on the entire roster outside of Nicolas Batum, whose defense was always overrated to begin with.
Please note that Kidd-Gilchrist finished ninth in Defensive Player of the Year voting last season and couldn’t get a single first-place vote. We’re about to see just how much a single player can affect a defense. What does it look like when the main adhesive keeping a cast of unremarkable defenders is stripped away? The heart says catastrophe.So we’d probably better comment on Willie Rennie’s personal attack yesterday. It was hardly surprising, and indeed a little flattering that the leader of a formerly-major political party would take time out of his day to send out a press release excoriating little old us and our insignificant wee blog, but it’s still a tad disappointing to see a senior politician happy to tell so many lies in a few short sentences.
We’ll skip through it quickly, then move on with our lives.
“Using the death British servicemen, who aren’t able to answer for themselves, to further political ends, is a deplorable act.”
Clearly typing in a bit of a hurry, there, Willie. But the political end we’re trying to serve is to stop any more Scottish soldiers being killed in an utterly pointless military engagement in a country where we have absolutely no legitimate business, and we don’t consider that “deplorable” in the least. What we consider deplorable is being part of a party who voted to send our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, fathers and mothers over there to die for nothing in the first place.
We were not invited into Afghanistan. However much we might despise whoever was running the country, it’s not up to us to go charging in there and changing their government for them at the end of a gun. Indeed, invading a sovereign nation for the purpose of regime change – which is precisely what we did in both Afghanistan and Iraq, despite unprecedented protests from millions who took to the streets to voice their objections – is expressly forbidden by international law.
When we leave Afghanistan the Taliban will return, largely undamaged. We will have wasted hundreds of British lives, thousands of Afghan lives, and billions of pounds, and all we’ll have to show for it is the pile of dead bodies.
“These narrow nationalists are trying to portray the English as warmongers who don’t care about lives lost in battle.”
This is a despicable comment, which is not justified by anything on the image. It made no mention of “the English” whatsoever, and none was implied – Westminster MPs of all four British nationalities voted for the Afghanistan invasion. But if those MPs cared about our soldiers’ lives they wouldn’t send them into harm’s way for nothing, and then weep crocodile tears for them afterwards.
“These brave servicemen died for their country, not for narrow nationalists trying to serve their political
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I used to like flavors like this a lot more, but I think the more I have been vaping, they have started to wear me down. It’s just such a rich and heavy flavor that it begins to get a little off-putting to me after a while.
That is basically the reason I liked it the least out of these last 5 – quite simply, I just didn’t vape it as much as the other ones because it was a touch too rich for me.
It’s funny because I just saw my friend yesterday who I had given a bunch of Indigo juice to last week, and he mentioned to me out of the blue that he was starting to get a little sick of them too.
This one is not bad by ANY stretch. In fact if you are into high quality tobacco vapes, this one is totally worth a look. A lot of people might rate this one higher than I did. For me, I just couldn’t vape it as much as some other juices this week.
Read the full review
Yaeliq: Bazooka Bubble Gum Review
Coming in at #4 this week is Yaeliq’s Bazooka Bubble Gum. Here’s what he says about it:
One of the most sellers in israel – very fun vape
I’ve had this bottle sitting untouched in my review box since last summer. I picked it up in a sample pack, and frankly was not interested in even tasting it because I just didn’t think it sounded that good. I’m not a big gum fan to begin with, and I can’t really think of a lot of bubble gum flavored stuff I have ever liked.
I finally decided to pull it out and review it this week because I noticed he had it on his Steal of a Deal for March, so you can currently get a 100ml bottle for $10.
As low as my expectations were for this juice, I was equally shocked by just how good it actually is. First of all, it tastes EXACTLY like Bazooka Joe gum. The inhale has a slight strawberry tone to it, but the exhale is just thick and full of bubble gum flavor and it leaves a gum taste in your mouth that makes it seem as though you were actually just chewing it. For a guy who doesn’t particularly care for bubble gum, I can say that this is a near perfect juice.
It vapes amazingly well – I have mine at 21mg, and I’m pretty happy with it there. The vapor production is superb at 50/50. There are no awkward flavors at all, and it burns great. All around, this is a totally perfect juice. In fact, outside of this week’s winner, I vaped this juice probably the most out of anything, much to my own surprise.
Right now you can get a 100ml bottle of this stuff for $10 and I can confirm that it is an amazingly good deal. Even if you don’t think you would be crazy for a bubble gum flavored juice, this one still might be worth a shot at this price. He definitely made me a believer. I think on a different week this juice could have easily took first place. It was just a particularly competitive week with some really good juices to follow.
Read the full review
#3 Cyclops Vapor: Poseidon
Our 3rd place winner this week is Poseidon from Cyclops Vapor. Here’s what they say about it:
Our Poseidon premium eLiquid provides vapers with a crisp, delicious fruity flavor combination, pulling together elements from some of the worlds most succulent melon types. This special 65/35 VG/PG blend pulls together delicate hints of fruits and melons, offering a satisfying decadence akin to the sea when it as at its calmest.
This was my first juice from Cyclops Vapor, and they have definitely made me a believer. The clarity of flavor on this vape was probably the best of the week. It really is crisp as they describe, and they keep the flavor full, succulent and juicy without it becoming too “heavy”. I reviewed Hobbes’ Blood a couple weeks ago and I believe it actually won the juice battle that week. Hobbes’ Blood is more of a watermelon vape, where in this vape, it definitely has a lot of melon flavor, but doesn’t really taste like any particular kind of melon. The flavor was also a lot crisper and slightly less heavy than Hobbes’ Blood – so for me, I actually think I prefer this one.
The only reason I really didn’t vape it more throughout the week was because I only have it at 6mg, and it didn’t quite hit hard enough for me. That said, I was still pretty impressed by how well it did perform at that level, but it still wasn’t enough for me to want to vape this one consistently throughout the week.
I put this one ahead of Yaeliq which I vaped much more because I am confident that if I got this at a stronger nic level, I would have vaped it a TON more and might be nearly done with the bottle before.
The clarity of the flavor and the outright delicousness of this juice made it a total winner for me. I am definitely looking forward to trying this one in a heavier nic level, and it is very highly recommended.
Read the full review
#2 Seduce Juice: Snake Venom
Our runner up this week is Snake Venom by Seduce Juice. Here’s what they say about it:
Snake Venom – A delightful creamy and crisp peach vape with notes of coconut. Very similar to snake oil in character, with juicy peaches transposed for the pear.
I tried this juice a few months back and never got around to reviewing it. After picking up a second bottle, I finally decided to throw it into the mix. Man, this is really a good juice. The peach is nice and light, yet still peachy and the level of cream is absolutely perfect on both the inhale and the exhale. The flavor is balanced amazingly well so that it basically tastes exactly the same from the inhale to the aftertaste, which I absolutely love.
At 12mg, my bottle was hitting extremely well for me and producing some very nice, thick clouds.
While they didn’t have the clarity of flavor and crispness that Cyclops had, the overall flavor profile and balance on this juice is absolutely spot on and basically perfect for long-term vaping. It’s got a nice amount of richness, but not too rich and a nice amount of sweetness, but not too sweet. This makes it so that you won’t get burned out on it quickly. In fact, I vaped through my entire bottle within a day and didn’t even realize it until I squeezed out the last drop.
If I would have had more, I probably would have been vaping it even more throughout the week. This one is an absolute must-try. It’s great as a dessert vape and it’s great as a fruit vape, and personally I think this is easily all day vaping material.
Read the full review
#1 Vapor4Life: WOW Smilin Tobacco
This week’s winner is WOW Smilin Tobacco by Vapor4Life. Here’s what they say about it:
Sick of tobacco e-juices that fail to give you the satisfaction of a real cigarette? After over a year of development and continuous tweaking, we have created the most realistic cigarette tasting e-liquid on the market today. The Smilin Tobacco WOW Vapor E-Juice flavor is the only e-juice on the market that gives you the true flavor of an actual cigarette.
Prior to this, I had only tried one other juice from V4L ever, and I didn’t have a great experience, so my expectations were tempered going into it.
As soon as I smelled it in the bottle, I became a LOT more interested. It’s got a very light brown/mustard kind of color and smells exactly like the smell you get when you crack open a fresh pack of cigarettes. That nice, raw tobacco smell. I’ve never had a juice that actually smells so much like actual cigarette tobacco.
As soon as I started vaping it, I instantly became a believer. I have tried a crazy amount of tobacco vapes, and of course one of the big questions is always – does it actually taste like a cigarette? In almost every case, you are never going to get a juice that really vapes just like a cig. I have found a couple that I think are really good substitutes, but nothing comes close to this one.
From start to finish, this vape really reminds me of smoking a cig. It’s got a great tobacco flavor that actually tastes dead-on like cigarette tobacco. It has smoke notes running throughout it from start to finish that really help give you that authentic cig feel. Even the vapor left in the air is somewhat reminiscent of the smell of cigarette smoke. I vaped a bunch of this in my car yesterday and I was amazed that it was actually starting to smell kind of like cigs in my car for the first time in a very long time.
Quite simply, I have not had a vape yet that was as close to actually smoking a real cig as this one. I had several other people try it and they also felt the same way. I haven’t been able to put this one down all week. I’ve been using it heavily in my Vapor Zeus, that I got along with it, and it really provides a vaping experience that is very close to actually smoking. This juice also does extremely well in drippers – the flavor is even better and more accurate.
All around, I can see myself using this one as a go-to juice for whenever I really want to feel like I’m actually smoking. It does the job better than any juice I’ve ever tried, and it’s not even close. This would also be excellent for people just starting to vape and trying to quit cigs. There’s nothing I’ve tried that will get you closer to the real thing. I absolutely love this juice and it’s a must try if you have ever wanted a juice that could bring you a vaping experience close to actual smoking.
Read the full review
The Bottom Line
This was a great vaping week for me because I had a lot of truly excellent juices to choose from, so I always had something tasty loaded up in my atty. The top 5 were all very close. I think Indigo Express is a great all around juice and while it was a little heavy for me, I’m sure there are many who would disagree. Yaeliq’s Bubble Gum was by far the best value of the pack and I highly recommend getting 100ml of it for $10 while that option is still available. Amazing flavor, amazing value. I was really impressed with the overall clarity of flavor on Poseidon – it might have been the best tasting overall juice this week and was absolutely gushing with flavor – while still being light enough to vape a ton of it without getting burnout. Snake Venom is simply a must-try juice. I am sure a lot of people have already made this one their all-day-vape, and I could see myself vaping a lot more of it in the future because it is just an outstanding juice that could have easily won on a less competitive week. Smilin Tobacco, while maybe not the most intricate or best tasting flavor this week did something that I have never seen another juice do yet – and that is accurately imitate the flavor and performance of a cigarette. Flavor aside, sometimes we just want to SMOKE, and that is exactly where this juice excels. I am sure I will be a fan of Smilin Tobacco for a long time – this is for sure another must try.
I have a lot more stuff on tap for next week so stay tuned and vape on.The healthcare industry has been actively exploring the use of cryptocurrency technology and not the cryptocurrencies itself. While there are a select few places in the world where one can pay for their treatment with Bitcoin, Abid Hospital in Pakistan has become the first Asian healthcare provider to accept cryptocurrency payments.
According to local media reports, the Blue Area, Islamabad-based Abid Hospital has announced the acceptance of PakCoin, a region-specific cryptocurrency created along the lines of Bitcoin. The relatively new hospital started in 2015 has been known for its technology adoption. The multispecialty hospital, offering round the clock healthcare services including emergency room and critical care has also decided to offer an additional discount for those opting to pay with PakCoin.
Healthcare is one of the most expensive services around the world. While Asian countries are known for their inexpensive and efficient healthcare systems, the costs are still high according to local standards. In such a scenario, any discount is good for the patients. The 20 % discount makes Abid Hospital an attractive option for patients. It will also help drive the adoption of PakCoin among the visitors.
Abid Hospital is not new to discount offerings. The institution has been offering 50% discount on frequently used services like the OPD (Out- Patient Department) and lab tests. Also, the hospital has special packages for Islamabad’s police and traffic police, with a discount rate of 20%. The same is also applicable for admitted, in-patients as well.
PakCoin holds the distinction of being the country’s first cryptocurrency. It is based on Litecoin and can be used not only in Pakistan but across the world. The creators of PakCoin have fixed the total supply of the digital currency at 182 million tokens, out of which 10 percent is already pre-mined. The cryptocurrency platform is also planning to give away 50 PakCoin tokens each to over 150,000 people in the coming days.
The popularity of PakCoin is currently increasing within the country as many people continue to adopt the digital currency and soon it may emerge as a leading virtual currency in Asia. Like Abid Hospital many other healthcare services providers may also join forces and do something similar, driving adoption even further.
Ref: PakWired | Image: NewsBTCWith a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care — expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed “fiscal cliff,” the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party’s agenda.
For 40 years the party’s principal sources of energy and money — liberal activists, government-employees unions — have advocated expanding government’s domestic reach by raising taxes and contracting its foreign reach by cutting defense. Obama’s four years as one of the most liberal senators and his four presidential years indicate that he agrees. Like other occasionally numerate but prudently reticent liberals, he surely understands that the entitlement state he favors requires raising taxes on the cohort that has most of the nation’s money — the middle class.
Mitt Romney as candidate and others before and since have suggested increasing revenue by capping income tax deductions. This would increase that tax’s progressivity, without raising rates that would dampen incentives. Obama’s compromise may be: Let’s do both. Remember the story of when the British Admiralty sought six new battleships, the Treasury proposed four, so they compromised on eight.
Those proposing higher taxes on the wealthy note that when the income tax began in 1913, the top rate was 7 percent. But in 1917, war brought a 67 percent rate. Between 1925 and 1931, the rate was 24 percent or 25 percent, but in only five of the subsequent 80 years — 1988-92 — was the top rate lower than it is today.
Republicans, however, respond that because lower rates reduce incentives to distort economic decisions, they promote growth by enhancing efficiency. Hence restoration of the higher rates would be a giant step away from, and might effectively doom, pro-growth tax reform. Furthermore, restoration of the Clinton-era top rate of 39.6 percent would occur in the very different Obama era of regulatory excesses and Obamacare taxes. Hence Republicans rightly resist higher rates.
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Given liberals’ fixation with the affluent paying their “fair share,” it might seem peculiar that they are so vehemently against Paul Ryan’s “premium support” proposal for Medicare. Their recoil is, however, essential to the liberal project.
Ryan’s supposedly radical idea is that people should shop for health insurance, with government subsidizing purchases by the less affluent. This would introduce what soon will be inevitable — means testing, a.k.a. progressivity. But liberals reject it with a word, the incantation of which suffices, they think, as an argument — “voucher.”
This is peculiar because perhaps the most successful federal program of the 20th century was essentially a voucher program. The purpose of the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act — a.k.a. the G.I. Bill of Rights — was to facilitate demobilization by helping men and women acquire educations and buy houses — and hence form families. The government did not build universities or houses. It, in effect, gave individuals conditional cash — vouchers — by helping to pay for home loans and college tuition.
Liberals’ strenuous objection to vouchers is that vouchers, as the functional equivalent of cash, empower individuals to make choices. It is the business of the liberals’ administrative state, staffed by experts, to make choices for inexpert individuals. This is why, while Democrats in Washington are working to reduce the portion of Americans’ private income that is disposed of by private choices, two tentacles of the Democratic Party — the Indiana and Louisiana teachers unions — are in their states’ courts waging futile fights against school choice programs, lest thousands of low- and moderate-income parents be as empowered as millions of demobilized servicemen were.
Washington’s contentiousness about the “cliff” is producing a blizzard of numbers. The argument, however, is not about this or that tax rate but about the nature of the American regime. When the Republican House majority acts as though it has a mind — and a mandate — of its own, this is not Washington being “dysfunctional,” it is the separation of powers functioning as the Founders intended. Their system requires concurrent congressional majorities — one in the Senate, with its unique constituencies and electoral rhythms, another in the House, with its constituencies and rhythms. And at least 219 of the 234 House Republicans won in November by margins larger than Obama’s national margin.
[email protected] copyright EPA Image caption Armed soldiers raided the toy distributor's warehouses
Venezuelan authorities have arrested two toy company executives and seized almost four million toys, which they say they will distribute to the poor.
Officials accused the company of hoarding toys and hiking prices in the run-up to Christmas.
Last week, the government issued an order to retailers to reduce prices on a range of goods by 30%.
Business owners say the order is a populist political move, and pushing them towards bankruptcy.
Venezuela's consumer protection agency, Sundde, said toy distributor Kreisel had stockpiled the goods and was reselling them at a margin of up to 50,000%.
"Our children are sacred, we will not let you rob them of Christmas," it said in a tweet, along with photos and video of thousands of boxes of toys.
Image copyright Twitter Image caption "Our children are sacred, we will not let them rob you of Christmas."
In total, 3,821,926 toys were seized from two warehouses, and would be sold at low prices, it said.
William Contreras, head of Sundde, said Kreisel had claimed the toys were old or discontinued. The agency also posted photos of the two executives being marched from the premises by a squad of heavily armed soldiers.
This is not the first time Venezuela has ordered price cuts on retailers, or mobilised armed units to enforce it.
In late 2013, the country introduced laws allowing the government to fix prices and dictate profit margins.
The same legislation limited profits to 30% - the amount often discounted in the compulsory "adjustments" enforced by Sundde at hundreds of retailers in the past week.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Police surround reporter Vladimir Hernandez and order him to stop filming in a supermarket where shoppers have been queuing for 12 hours
The same measures have been used to fix the prices of basic products such as flour, meat and bread - but supply is limited in a country where many people go hungry.
A jar of Nutella - a luxury item - can cost half the monthly minimum wage.
The Venezuelan government is becoming increasingly unpopular as the country's economic crisis grows.
The nation is rich in oil, but international oil prices have fallen in recent years.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that inflation - the rate at which prices go up - will hit 2,000% next year.
Venezuela is ready to issue new, higher-value notes to deal with the problem - but rising prices are still squeezing many ordinary citizens.Owner Daniel Snyder’s Redskins are once again struggling in the offseason. (AP Photo/Mark Tenally)
In his weekly online chat, Thomas Boswell was asked about fellow Post columnist Barry Svrluga’s column Sunday that argues that, as long as Daniel Snyder owns the Redskins, the team can only dream about making real and lasting progress. Boswell concedes Washington’s football owner is terrible, but he says fans need only look north to the Baltimore Orioles to find a path to success despite a meddlesome owner.
I agree with the major point that Snyder has been a very bad owner. And a bad owner is a significant and constant weight on a franchise every year. Snyder FEELS like the dark cloud that hung over the Orioles for 14 straight losing seasons — the cloud named Peter Angelos. They’re very different people but similar in their ability to undermine, and sometimes almost single-handedly destroy the outcome that they are trying to achieve. (And both spent/wasted a lot of money on players trying to achieve it.)
But, at least for fans who got some pleasure out of the team’s 9-7 and 8-7-1 seasons the last two years, it’s important to understand that the sports world is FULL of poor-to-awful owners. And many teams have won despite their owners. In fact, sometimes second or third-rate owners, like Angelos and Snyder, make decisions that end up being good for bizarre or even incorrect reasons.
[Redskins’ Jay Gruden signed a two-year extension. And it doesn’t matter.]
How did the O’s get better? General Manager Dan Duquette and Manager Buck Showalter were both out of the jobs they were suited to hold. Their reputations were in a poor place, not because of their characters which are excellent, but just because they’d left their last jobs with a “knock” on them. Dan reportedly wasn’t a good people person, or good at dealing with the media members in a tough media market (Boston). Buck was supposedly wound too tight, etc. Buck took over a 69-93 team. Since then, in the last five years, the Orioles have won more games than any team in the American League. (I wish I had time to double-check that. I’m almost sure its right. Editor’s note: I checked it, Boz is right. O’s have the most victories by any AL team the past five seasons.) They’ve been to the playoffs three times and reached the American League Championship Series once. It’s not easy to win 93, 85, 96, 81 and 89 in a row.
Did Angelos become a better owner? I doubt it. He stumbled into key people who were available. They helped add talent and change the clubhouse culture into one of the best in the game. No team gets more out of its talent than the O’s.
The Redskins may have stumbled into a pretty good coach in Jay Gruden and, for a while, it looked like they’d hit the Exacta with Scot McCloughan as a GM, too. Snyder and the Redskins got them both because they were VERY available. Had to give Gruden a five-year contract just to get an unproven head coach to take the notorious Redskins job. Scot had well-publicized demons and was totally available. Of all the things that have happened in the last week, the one that concerns me most be far is how McCloughan comes out of all this in terms of health. Wish him the best.
“Daniel Snyder is a poor-to-bad owner” and “The Redskins Will Never Again Have a Run of Good Teams” are not statements that necessarily go together. You can’t be a worse sports owner than Jeffrey Loria and he managed to complete the snuffing of the Expos in Montreal, then “traded them” for the Marlins in ’03 just in time to win a World Series.
As I’ve said before, it’s important to look hard at owners and evaluate them accurately. But the quality of the owner and the W-L record of the team — while connected — are not indivisible. Thank heavens.
[Wait, are the Redskins trying to use their franchise tag of Kirk Cousins to sell tickets?]
Extending Gruden has to help the Redskins’ chances of extending Cousins to a long-term deal because Gruden believed in him and stood up for him. It’s still very shaky. But I’d move the Redskins’ chances back up from an ugly 30-70, where I had them last week, to 50-50!
Sometimes crazy teams, like the Redskins, stagger into useful decisions for crazy reasons. Would they have extended Gruden if things hadn’t gone so nuts the last several weeks with McVay leaving at least a year sooner than expected and nobody with a “name” wanting to come to fill coaching vacancies? Would they have extended Gruden now if they hadn’t been getting so much nationwide bad PR about Cousins and about McCloughan not being at the combine for personal reasons? Maybe, maybe not. I tend to think they did the right thing — extend Gruden — for goofy reasons (OMG, we have to do SOMETHING.) That’s good for Gruden, good for the team, good for the fans.
Come back in a few years and we’ll see how it’s all played out. But, for NOW, I’m a lot more interested what happens to the Capitals and Wizards over the next few months than to the Redskins.
It’s March. Not August. The Redskins are mighty good at stealing attention from others when they are, right now, the fourth best major pro team in town out of four. In fact, it looks like there is now even a significant gap from the Wiz back to the Redskins.
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Redskins (with Cousins, McCloughlin, DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon all up in the air.).HuK Profile Blog Joined March 2010 Canada 1591 Posts #1
I am sorry it seems I have lost what you gave to me on the last day I was in Europe. You will have to excuse me, I was not in the best of shape and like many things seem to have misplaced it or it fell from its proper place in my pocket near my heart. I will try to be extremely vague in this post saying only this, if you my dear fan would be so kind to indulge me in this little game I want to play. If it is right by you, I would love to send you something in return for my insult for losing this thing you have left me; but be wary liars and thieves. If you contact me or post here with falsehood about how you left me something and try to trick or steal, I have blessing by those with power on this site for punishment to come swiftly to all those who would lie in the face of right and good I try to bring with this blog.
Other then that this blog will generally by my thanks to all those in Finland that showed me, my teammates, and friends kindness and warmth in a land so cold and distant to us all. Also to generally all fans even if you cheer for wretched things such as Idra or others... Thank you all for being so supportive for all of us, I can not speak for others; but for me without my fans and their support I would be nowhere near where I am today.
Love
Chris
PS: Also mysterious fan I would like to settle a bet if you would help me do so, female or male?
Dear Fan,I am sorry it seems I have lost what you gave to me on the last day I was in Europe. You will have to excuse me, I was not in the best of shape and like many things seem to have misplaced it or it fell from its proper place in my pocket near my heart. I will try to be extremely vague in this post saying only this, if you my dear fan would be so kind to indulge me in this little game I want to play. If it is right by you, I would love to send you something in return for my insult for losing this thing you have left me; but be wary liars and thieves. If you contact me or post here with falsehood about how you left me something and try to trick or steal, I have blessing by those with power on this site for punishment to come swiftly to all those who would lie in the face of right and good I try to bring with this blog.Other then that this blog will generally by my thanks to all those in Finland that showed me, my teammates, and friends kindness and warmth in a land so cold and distant to us all. Also to generally all fans even if you cheer for wretched things such as Idra or others...Thank you all for being so supportive for all of us, I can not speak for others; but for me without my fans and their support I would be nowhere near where I am today.LoveChrisPS: Also mysterious fan I would like to settle a bet if you would help me do so, female or male? Progamer Live like a God or die like a Slave 11:11Detail of a miniature of the storming of Corunna by Broadas, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 207r
The stunning images in the Talbot Shrewsbury Book (Royal MS 15 E. vi) are not the only treasure hidden between its covers (see our earlier post about the manuscript). Its contents are a unique collection of fifteen texts in French, compiled for a very important patron, the future Queen of England. Their subjects range from history to romance to military strategy - the common theme throughout is the art of chivalry. This was a fitting subject for a military commander such as John Talbot, the 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, who commissioned the work and presented it to Margaret of Anjou, future wife of Henry VI, probably on her arrival in Rouen in March 1445 on her way to England. Whether or not the young Margaret found the military manuals and statutes of the Order of the Garter as entertaining as the tales of Alexander and the romance of the Swan Knight, this was certainly a wedding gift to be treasured and passed on to future generations. Sadly, her only son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, but this manuscript was certainly in the Royal library in the reign of Charles II, two centuries later, and remained in the Royal collection until its donation to the British Museum (now, of course, the British Library).
Stories of heroes and heroines of the past, both real and imaginary, in the form of chansons de geste (troubadour’s songs) and chivalric romances, fill two thirds of the volume. These are followed by more didactic texts in the form of chronicles, instructional manuals and statutes. Each text begins on a new folio in a separate gathering, and were all joined together in a single volume, with a list of contents on the verso of the first folio.
Two of the greatest heroes of the past are the subject of the first six texts in the collection:
Detail of a miniature of Alexander encountering blemmyae, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 21v
Alexander the Great
Le Livre de la Conqueste du Roy Alexandre is a French translation of the legend of Alexander, in which he is portrayed as the ultimate hero who conquers the known world, does battle with flying dragons, meets Amazonian women and horned men, and is lowered into the sea in a cask. Included here are tales of his childhood and legendary education by Aristotle, the murder of his mother, Olympias, and details of his successors. There are 81 colourful miniatures illustrating Alexander’s legendary exploits. The one above shows him meeting the Blemmyae, men-monsters with their heads in their chests.
Detail of a miniature of Charlemagne and four kings, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 25r
Charlemagne
The next five tales are set in the time of Charlemagne, the great military hero and Holy Roman emperor, whose reign provides the background to a huge epic cycle involving a plethora of subsidiary characters. The first four texts are in the form of chansons de geste and the fifth is a prose romance.
Simon de Pouille relates the events in the war between Charlemagne and Christian Jerusalem on the one side and Jonas of Babylon, on the other. Simon, one of the emperor’s companions, is sent as an envoy to the Saracen leader, a task fraught with difficulties.
Aspremont tells of Charlemagne’s campaigns in Italy. Aspremont is one of the peaks in the southern Appenines though which the army advances on the way to Rome.
Detail of a miniature of Charlemagne and Fierabras with the relics, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 70r
Fierebras is the tale of Charlemagne’s battles with the Saracens and of the encounter between his army and Fierebras of Alexander, in which the Crown of Thorns and other relics are recaptured for the Christians.
Ogier le Danois links the tales of Charlemagne with Arthurian legends, as common characters and places are introduced. Ogier, the Danish hero and enemy of Charlemagne, marries an English princess and becomes King of England, bearing a son by Morgan le Fee while he is shipwrecked on Avalon.
Detail of a miniature of Charlemagne at a table; and Aymon's sons on Bayard, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 155r
Quatre fils Aimon or Le livre de Renault de Montauban tells the story of four brothers who flee from persecution by Charlemagne, going on a crusade on Bayard, the magic horse. Renault eventually becomes a stonemason at the cathedral in Cologne and after his death his body develops miraculous properties.
Other romances
Two prose romances of Anglo-Norman origin and a chanson follow:
Pontus et Sidoine, adapted from the French version of the Anglo-Norman romance, King Horn, tells the story of the son of the King of Galicia and the daughter of the King of Brittany and their love for one another. A tale of chivalry as well as a moral treatise, it glorifies peace as a worthy aim for all, even knights and soldiers.
Detail of a miniature of Guy of Warwick as a courtier and pilgrim, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 227r
Le Romant de Guy de Warwik et d’Heraud d’Ardenne was one of the most popular romances in medieval England, judging from the number of copies that survive in both French and Middle English, mostly in verse. There are, however, only two known copies in French prose, of which this is one. Guy is an English knight who falls in love with a lady of high standing and must prove himself worthy to win her hand. He is taught chivalry by his foster-father, Heraud, and embarks on a series of successful adventures, but later comes to regret his violent past and goes on a crusade, then retires to a hermitage.
Miniature of a knight in a boat drawn by a swan; miniature of a mother in bed, with seven children in a cradle, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 273r
The last romance in the collection is a chanson called Lystoire du chevalier au Cygne, an abridged version of part of the vast Crusade cycle. The tale of the seven children turned to swans and of Hélias, the swan knight, was linked to the legendary origins of Godefroi de Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade (1096), who became the first ruler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Didactic texts
The remaining third of the manuscript (from folio 293 onwards) contains texts which are more didactic in nature, perhaps intended for the instruction of Margaret of Anjou or of her future sons and heirs. There are three works on chivalry and warfare, an instructional manual for kings and princes, a chronicle and statutes.
Larbre des batailles is a treatise on war and the laws of battle, written for a wide audience in the style of a scholastic dialogue; a question is posed, both sides are debated and a conclusion follows.
Le gouvernement des roys et des princes is translated from Gilles de Rome’s De regimine principium, the Mirror of Princes, an influential text which interpreted (sometimes loosely) and promoted Aristotle’s political and moral philosophy to a medieval audience. It combined practical advice with philosophical guidance for rulers.
Detail of a miniature of Aubert and Ide, Robert the Devil, and Charlemagne, from Poems and Romances (the 'Talbot Shrewsbury book'), France (Rouen), c. 1445, Royal 15 E. vi, f. 363r
Chroniques de Normandie is a history of the region from the 8th century to 1217. It begins in the time of the legendary Aubert and his son Robert le D
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and appropriate tips)
Eppendorf tubes (500ul, 1.5ml)
PCR tubes (200ul) + caps (if not attached)
Multi-format tube rack
Waste bin
Gloves
What are those things?
Taq polymerase
A highly thermostable polymerase enzyme (a molecular machine for assembling long chains of nucleic acids) isolated from (and named after) the Thermus aquaticus bacterium; an extremophile that is capable of thriving in high temperature environments (favouring 70°C, but tolerating anything between 60-80°C). Polymerase drives the elongation or extension process of PCR. In the late 1980s, it was discovered that polymerase isolated from Thermus aquaticus could actually withstand the temperatures involved in the annealing step where DNA is melted into its two strands. The polymerase was refined and mass produced for commercial sale; now PCR could be completed without re-adding a polymerase at the end of every cycle!
Taq buffer
PCR buffers attempt to maintain optimal conditions for the activity of polymerases during PCR. Various ingredients can chelate ions that are required for enzymatic activity to reduce degradation of reagents, and unwanted reactions.
Template DNA
Your already extracted and purified DNA sample that contains some sequence that you desire to amplify.
dNTP Mix
Named so as deoxynucleoside triphosphate doesn’t roll off the tongue so well. dNTP mix is essentially a grab bag of the four nucleotides. During the elongation cycle of PCR, polymerases utilize free dNTPs to synthesize new chains of nucleic acids to create complementing strands.
Primers
A pair of short sequences ( 15-30bp ) of nucleic acids designed to complement two ends of a target subsequence of interest on your template DNA. Good primers are 40-60% GC-content, have similar annealing temperatures and should not be self-complementary, or complementary to another primer in the mix.
HPLC-grade water
High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is a technique to identify and separate individual components of a mixture. HPLC-grade water is deionized, filtered, UV-filtered and in general, pretty fucking clean. The goal is to prevent contamination of reagents with nucleases.
How do I make the PCR happen?
Pre-prep
Gather equipment, ensure your reagents are not depleted, check whether someone has stolen the power lead for the thermal cycler
Place tube racks in freezer to keep them cold (this helps maintain the integrity of reagents)
Collect HPLC water (if necessary) and run through UV crosslinker to denature any residual proteins
Prep
Retrieve tube racks from freezer
Move dNTPs, primers and template from ice box onto tube rack to thaw, it is essential that these are returned to the ice box as soon as possible once fully thawed
NEVER allow Taq Polymerase to reach room temperature.
Ensure reagents have fully thawed to avoid aspirating solutes of incorrect concentrations.
Briefly vortex and centrifuge (a few seconds at ~ 5-10Krpm ) Taq buffer and dNTP mix
The buffer must be vortexed to ensure its components are mixed thoroughly.
Prepare a working dNTP mix (if required)
dNTP mix is often shipped at a high concentration ( 100mM ) and in such cases must be diluted to a more practical “working mix” before it is practical to pipette into PCR tubes. This also prevents having to repeatedly freeze-thaw your master mix.
Calculate the volume of master dNTP mix required to create a more practical solution; say 250ul at a concentration of 2mM :
required to create a more practical solution; say at a concentration of : Aspirate and dispense the solvent first (it is easier to pipette a small volume into a larger one). For our 250ul working mix that contains 5ul of the master mix, we must dispsense 245ul of HPLC water into a 1.5ml Eppendorf tube.
working mix that contains of the master mix, we must dispsense of into a Eppendorf tube. Vortex and centrifuge the dNTP mix briefly if you have not already done so
briefly if you have not already done so Add 5ul of master mix to the new working mix tube
of master mix to the new working mix tube Aspirate and dispense repeatedly and carefully to wash the pipette tip and mix the new solution
Return the 100mM master mix and new suitably labelled 2mM working mix to the ice box
Preparing the PCR tubes
Lay out the necessary number of required PCR tubes on a cold rack
Calculate all necessary dilutions before you begin pipetting (consider your protocol parameters; reaction size, desired dilutions of template, primer and dNTP mix): dNTPs
Primers (forward and reverse)
Although the protocol specification requires a final concentration of between 0.1-1.0uM of each primer, it seems that in general (your mileage will vary), people tend to add excess to give a final concentration up to 2uM. For example 2ul of a 50uM ( 50pmoles/ul ) working primer solution. Template
you begin pipetting (consider your protocol parameters; reaction size, desired dilutions of template, primer and dNTP mix): Remove Taq Buffer from ice box and pipette the volume required by your protocol (my protocol stated 10ul ) into all tubes, return the temperature-sensitive Taq Buffer to ice (or the freezer) as soon as possible
It is highly recommended that Taq Buffer is the reagent to be added first. As a buffer, it is responsible for preventing unwanted enzymatic activity such as denaturing (or early annealing) of template DNA and primers.
The rest of the reagents can be added in no particular order, with the exception of Taq Polymerase, which comes later: dNTPs Primers (ensure both forward and reverse primers are added) Template DNA
, which comes later: For each tube, sum the volumes of its reagents (don’t forget the polymerase, which is not yet in the tube) and subtract this total from the target volume required by your protocol (again, here, 50ul )
) Add those amounts of HPLC water (the volume to add may differ between tubes if differing volumes of primer or template were added) to bring up the total volume of each sample tube to the target volume (less the polymerase)
(the volume to add may differ between tubes if differing volumes of primer or template were added) to bring up the total volume of each sample tube to the target volume (less the polymerase) Ready (switch on and program) the thermal cycler before adding Taq Polymerase (reactions begin as soon as it is added, albeit at room temperature)
(reactions begin as soon as it is added, albeit at room temperature) Remove Taq Polymerase from ice, vortex gently and centrifuge briefly to remove excess from the walls of its tube 5
from ice, vortex gently and centrifuge briefly to remove excess from the walls of its tube Add between 0.5–2.0 units of polymerase per 50ul reaction, our protocol recommended 1.25u, I added slightly more to make it easier to aspirate with a pipette, return to ice (or freezer) as soon as possible
of polymerase per reaction, our protocol recommended, I added slightly more to make it easier to aspirate with a pipette, return to ice (or freezer) as soon as possible Seal PCR tubes (close lids or seal caps6)
Thermal Cycling
Load tubes into thermal cycler immediately (your reaction has begun!)
If you are feeling particularly prepared, you could preheat the lid of your cycler to ensure the hot-start PCR begins more quickly.
Ensure lid is as tight as possible (if it has a lid that needs manual tightening to push the heated block 7 against the tops of tubes)
against the tops of tubes) Load and check program schedule (does it have a sensible run time? Has someone in your lab accidentally sabotaged it in the last five minutes?)
Ensure there is an infinite store step at less than 5°C following the end of the final cycle of your program. Unless you want all of your work destroyed at room temperature. This is especially important if you are running PCR before going home for 12 hours.
Run program!
Watch in horror as you allow the machines to take over everything and probably ruin your experiment
What do I do now?
PCR product must be kept in the fridge or freezer
Verify fragments of the expected size (or anything at all) were amplified with gel electrophoresis
How do I fuck it up?
There are a multitude of ways that PCR can fail. Due to the number of reagents required in each tube, and lots of pipetting it is quite trivial to make a mistake. Helpfully, it is typically not possible to establish the cause and the process must be repeated. Lots of attention to detail is required, especially if there is more than one template, or more than one set of primers that make up individual reactions.Highly talented and extremely outspoken Anjunabeats producer, Mat Zo is always one to let fans know that his love making music comes first. Taking to twitter, Mat Zo publicly announced the royalties that he received for the entirety of his first studio album, “Damage Control,” which summed up to be a measly $2800. Mat makes it clear through additional tweets that what he cares about most; more than torrenting, concert attendance, and royalties, is that his music is being heard. As a result, he’s announced that all future releases will be made available for free. Mat Zo fans rejoice!! The first of these free releases is his tune entitled “Oldskool Trip,” which encompasses a very retro, disco-like vibe that keeps a looped vocal sample with a hint of an awesome traditional house vibe.
I’m releasing music for free from now on. Here is my first release under the new system. https://t.co/8T3ZeeygEa — Zo from Kill The Zo (@Mat_Zo_MRSA) April 14, 2014
Im not asking for anything, just download it and enjoy it! — Zo from Kill The Zo (@Mat_Zo_MRSA) April 14, 2014LOS ANGELES -- An appellate court caught in an extraordinary legal snafu refused Friday to consider Donald Sterling's request to block the $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer but said he could file it again.
In a purely procedural move, Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas withdrew his final statement of decision in the probate case between Sterling and his estranged wife Shelly Sterling over the impending sale of the team.
"The petition is denied without prejudice to re-filing at the appropriate time in that presently there is nothing for this court to review," said the three-judge appellate panel in a ruling issued late Friday.
Lawyers for Donald Sterling say a judge prematurely finalized his ruling so the sale of the Clips can be completed without chance of appeal. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
The reason was a series of miscommunications between the judge and the lawyers for Donald Sterling, who had asked on Thursday for more time to file objections to his ruling. Having heard no response by noon Friday, they filed their request for a writ of mandate overturning the judge's decision. But three hours later, Levanas withdrew his decision and gave them until next Wednesday to file their objections, said Stephen Smith, a member of Shelly Sterling's legal team.
The end result is that Friday's events were a dress rehearsal for a legal drama likely to be concluded next week. Donald Sterling's lawyers will file their objections. The judge will write his final statement of decision with or without changes and the lawyers will then go to the appellate court, Smith said.
He acknowledged it was all quite confusing.
"This case certainly has a lot of moving parts," Smith said.
Earlier, when Donald Sterling's writ request was filed, Ballmer's lawyer quickly denounced the move.
Lawyers for Sterling had asked the Second District Court of Appeal to stay Levanas' ruling that cleared the way for the sale. They said the judge prematurely finalized his ruling so the sale can be completed without a chance to appeal.
Sterling's appellate lawyers said in their request for a writ of mandate that if the sale goes through, "Donald will have lost a unique and irretrievable asset: a `trophy asset' coveted by high net worth individuals around the world -- one of thirty NBA franchises in the country, and one that under Donald's thirty-year ownership has recently become one of the most successful."
The main complaint of the appellants is the judge's decision to allow the sale to go forward with no time for an appeal. He used a section of law that bars a stay of his decision. Given that provision, it was unclear if the appeal would have any effect. The sale could conceivably go forward while the appeal makes its way through the courts.
Adam Streisand, the attorney for Ballmer, said in a statement: "We won this trial because Donald Sterling is on an egotistical crusade to destroy the Clippers if he can't keep the team, and he can't. We will win the appeal for the very same reason."
A spokesman for the attorneys representing Shelly Sterling issued a statement similarly attacking Donald Sterling's motives.
"Donald's petition for writ of mandate is another desperate act by a desperate man," the statement said. "The decision by Judge... Levanas -- after three weeks of trial -- is a correct decision on the law and the undisputed evidence. Donald will do anything to kill the record-shattering $2B sale of the Clippers. His petition is frivolous."
The appellate lawyers who filed the writ petition late Friday afternoon acknowledged that Donald Sterling has a public image problem.
"Admittedly, in light of recent events, Donald Sterling does not cut a sympathetic figure," his appellate lawyers wrote. "But the issues raised by the trial court's decision here impact more than just him, and involve core issues of probate law and the right to appellate review."
Shelly Sterling negotiated the record sale after the NBA banned the 80-year-old billionaire for making offensive remarks about blacks.
"The nature of the trial court's order all but guarantees that this court will never review this matter by appeal," the lawyers said. "lf the sale of the Clippers is not stayed, the team is likely to be sold before any appeal could be brought or decided, rendering Donald's appeal rights hollow. This is a textbook example of irreparable harm, and cries out for writ relief."
The writ filed by the Donald Sterling legal team demanded an immediate stay of the judge's ruling. It said that in the absence of a stay, the sale could go forward immediately. It noted that the NBA plans to meet on Aug. 15 to approve the sale.
Addressing the ruling by Levanas, the document said his action "was unreasonable, arbitrary, a prejudicial abuse of discretion, and manifestly against the law."
The 39-page filing challenged the opinions of two doctors who examined Donald Sterling and who said he had the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease, rendering him incompetent to handle his own business affairs.
The filing said the examinations were "insufficient to support a determination of incapacity" and said Shelly Sterling improperly removed her estranged husband as a trustee of the Sterling family trust.HiPCO SWCNTs were purchased from Unidym (Lot # R1794) and (6,5)-enriched SWCNTs (Lot #MKBV6100V) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich, respectively, and were extensively washed before use. Bombolitin II (BLT2 structure NH 2 -SKITDILAKLGKVLAHV-COOH) was purchased as synthesized from MIT Koch Integrative Center. The following were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich: picric acid moistened with water ≥98%, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) (MW = 31,000–50,000 98–99% hydrolysed), potassium chloride, HEPES and Tris-buffer. Carmel spinach hybrid Spinacia oleracea and Fafard Professional all-purpose blend potting soil were purchased from David’s Garden Seeds and Amazon Inc., respectively. Picric acid used in the reaction was prepared from a stock solution of saturated picric acid moistened with water ≥98%. This was then diluted with deionized (DI) water providing the final concentration of picric acid solution used. Dopamine was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich and diluted with DI water before use. (GT) 15 ssDNA was purchased from IDT (USA) and used as is.
Plant growth.
Carmel spinach (Spinacia oleracea) hybrid seeds purchased from David’s Garden Seeds were planted in Fafard Professional all-purpose blend potting soil. Seeds were planted half an inch deep into soil of a standard six-cell seeding tray, with each cell measuring 1.5 in × 2.3 in × 3 in. The seeding tray was then placed in a light chamber for germination. The germinated plants were then moved to a Conviron Adaptis 1000 growth chamber under 200 μmol m−2 s−1 light levels, maintaining a 60–90% relative humidity (RH), with day- and night-time temperatures of 22 °C and 18 °C, respectively. Plants were allowed to mature to three weeks of age within the chamber before experimental use.
P-SWCNT, B-SWCNT and (GT) 15 -SWCNT preparation.
For the preparation of P-SWCNTs, SWCNTs were first suspended in a 2 wt% sodium cholate (SC) aqueous solution. 1 mg ml−1 Unidym SWCNTs were added to 40 ml 2 wt% SC in water and were sonicated with a 1/8′′ inch probe tip at 40% amplitude (∼12W) for 1 h in an ice bath. The resulting solution was centrifuged at 12,800g for 1 h to remove unsuspended SWCNT aggregates and catalyst particles. The 2 wt % of PVA solution was then added at a 1:1 v/v ratio with the SC-SWCNTs and the mixture was placed in a 12–14 kD MWCO dialysis bag and dialysed against water for 24 h to remove free SC and allow PVA to self-assemble on the nanotube surface.
B-SWCNTs were prepared as described elsewhere13. Briefly, SWCNTs and Bombolitin were mixed in a 2:1 mass ratio in 20 mM Tris and 100 mM NaCl (pH = 7.6). The mixture was sonicated using a 1/8′′ inch probe tip sonicator for 10 min. The resulting B-SWCNT solution was centrifuged at 11,000g for 40 min and the pellet was removed. (GT) 15 -SWCNTs were prepared as previously described by Kruss et al. 17 using (6,5)-enriched SWCNTs.
Infiltration of leaves with SWCNTs.
Carmel spinach hybrid plants at three weeks old, with healthy leaves, were selected. The plants were prepared by first gently rinsing the roots with 10 mM KCl buffer and wrapping the roots in buffer-moistened cheese cloth to keep the plants hydrated, before transplanting the plant into a small 50 ml beaker. 1:1 Aliquots of P-SWCNTs and B-SWCNTs were prepared by mixing P-SWCNTs or B-SWCNTs, respectively, and HEPES buffer (30 mM, pH 7.4). A leaf from the plant was then infiltrated as in Huang and colleagues41. A 1 ml needleless syringe was used infiltrate the SWCNT solution with gentle pressure at several areas on the abaxial side of the leaf lamina, with P-SWCNTs on the left side of the midrib and B-SWCNTs on the right side of the midrib to ensure no mixing of SWCNTs. Care was taken during infiltration to ensure no physical damage was sustained by the leaves. The underside of the leaf was then thoroughly rinsed with water to ensure that there were no SWCNTs on the surface of the leaf. Plants were allowed to sit for 30 min before imaging.
Picric acid detection via root uptake.
Laboratory demonstration. For the laboratory demonstration of standoff detection of nitroaromatics via root uptake, a whole spinach plant was prepared as described earlier and set up as shown in Fig. 2a. An FEL 0900 nm long-pass filter was purchased from Thorlab Inc and placed in front of a Princeton Instruments OMA V InGaAs detector, equipped with a Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 60 mm f/2.8D lens. The nIR fluorescence intensity of embedded SWCNTs under laser excitation (785 nm, 15 mW) was monitored throughout the experiment at a distance of 0.85 m. Picric acid (400 μM) was introduced via a pipette at the start of the experiment, and the nIR fluorescence of both B-SWCNTs and P-SWCNTs (bright-field images seen in Fig. 2b) were monitored at 1-minute intervals for >80 min.
Minaturized system with Raspberry Pi. A Raspberry Pi equipped with a f = 3.6 mm 1/2.7′′ CCD detector with infrared filters removed (SainSmart Infrared Night Vision Surveillance Camera, Kansas, USA) was used. To detect nIR emission from the SWCNT sensors embedded within the living plant (under laser excitation (785 nm, 15 mW)), an FEL 0900 long-pass filter (ThorLabs Inc.) was placed in front of the camera lens, and images were collected at 6 s exposure at ISO 800. The RaspberryPi was WiFi enabled to allow for images to be sent in real time to the user’s smartphone.
Dopamine detection via root uptake.
A leaf of a healthy spinach plant was selected and infiltrated with (GT) 15 -SWCNTs using the protocol previously described. For spectrometry of leaves with infiltrated SWNTs, the Axiovision Zeiss inverted microscope (Zeiss, Axiovert 200), 20× objective was coupled to an InGaAs array detector (OMA V, Princeton Instruments) through an Acton SP-2500 spectrograph (Princeton Instruments). Infiltrated SWCNTs were excited with a 785 nm Invictus photodiode laser (Kaiser) through the leaf lamina. 100 μM of dopamine solution was introduced to the roots and spectra were acquired at a frame rate of 1 frame min−1, at a 2 s exposure time.
Picric acid detection via cuticle uptake.
A spinach leaf was infiltrated with B-SWCNTs and P-SWCNTs as previously described and gently held by double-sided tape on the adaxial side while the leaf abaxial side was exposed to 785 nm laser excitation, in a similar set-up as shown in Fig. 2a. 0.2 ml of 400 μM picric acid was deposited on the leaf surface, leading to droplet movement downwards by gravitational pull. The nIR fluorescence intensity of the leaf under laser excitation was monitored throughout the experiment with a Princeton Instruments OMA V detector, at a distance of 0.85 m.
Graphene growth and transfer onto PMMA.
Large-area monolayer graphene films were grown by a modified chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method (CVD-graphene; CVDG) on copper foils. Typically, a ∼4 cm2 (2 × 2 cm) Cu foil (Aldrich, 99.999%, 25 μm thick) was placed at the centre of a 1-inch-diameter fused quartz tube in a tube furnace. The furnace tube was evacuated and heated to 1,000 °C under a 30 sccm H 2 gas flow with a pressure of 610 mtorr. After annealing for 30 min, a CH 4 gas flow of 0.50 sccm was introduced and the temperature in the furnace tube was maintained for 15 min. The CH 4 gas flow was stopped after the growth period and the temperature maintained at 1,000 °C for another 5 min. The Cu foil was then cooled to room temperature under H 2 gas flow.
For the transfer of graphene onto PMMA (950PMMA A4, MicroChem), PMMA solution was spin-coated (3,000 r.p.m., 1 min) onto the CVDG/Cu foil (2 × 2 cm), supported on a glass substrate. After drying at room temperature for 10 min, the PMMA-coated CVDG/copper was annealed at 100 °C for 10 min, then removed and cooled to room temperature. The Cu foil was etched by Copper Etchant APS-100 (Transene) at 30 °C overnight with CVDG/PMMA film suspended in the etchant solution. The film was transferred from the solution using a Si/SiO 2 wafer and rinsed with Milli-Q water four times (10 min each time), before being suspended in Milli-Q water.
Graphene–PMMA transfer onto leaf surface and stomata aperture measurements.
Two wild-type species, Spinacia oleracea(spinach) and Spathilphyllum cochlearispathum (peace lily) were used. All experiments were conducted at 23 °C and 30% humidity, with plants being well watered. To transfer graphene on leaf surface, a drop of water was first deposited on the leaf, before graphene was gently introduced onto the water meniscus. Plants were left for 24 h to allow water to evaporate from the graphene-leaf surface. Images of stomata aperture were obtained in reflection mode using a 100× air objective (Zeiss, A-Plan 100×/0.8 M27). To induce stomata opening, plants were exposed to a 10 mW cm−2 white light lamp (Sinostar, FL-70W) for 2 h.
Pre-concentration calculations.
The degree of pre-concentration of picric acid in the leaf can be calculated by considering a typical mass balance equation relating the mass flow rate of inputs (m in ), outputs (m out ), generation (m gen ), consumption (m consump ) and accumulation (m acc ): We assume that the volatility of picric acid (BP > 300 °C) is sufficiently low such that it does not escape the plant via the stomata or leaf cuticle (that is, out = 0 mol min−1). There is also no picric acid generated by the natural biochemical processes of the Spinacia oleracea plant. We assume that the rate of decomposition or consumption is much lower (half-life of TNT is approximately 20 h in the aquatic Myriophyllum spicatum plant42) than the rate of uptake through the roots— that is, where m in may be regarded as a function of [picric acid] in soil, root permeability and flow rate into the roots.
Schneider and coworkers10 reported that the plant root concentration of nitroaromatics at short times upon exposure to 100 mg kg−1 DW (Dry Weight) soil was approximately 1 mg kg−1 DW, corresponding to a permeability of approximately 0.01 (that is, permeability ratio). Furthermore, the permeability ratio is dependent on the concentration of nitroaromatics in the soil—at low concentrations of 1 mg kg−1 nitroaromatics in soil, the permeability ratio in the roots becomes 0.5. They also reported that the concentration of nitroaromatics in the leaves and stems amounted to approximately 20% of the corresponding root concentration in the plants investigated (for example, kale, bush beans, lettuce, radish). At long times of more than seven days, it is known that plants can significantly bioaccumulate explosive compounds. Thompson et al. 43 reported that leaf tissues contained 97 mg kg−1 of RDX (trimethylenenitramine) at 7 days (versus 19 mg kg−1) after exposure to 10 mg l−1 of RDX. Plant extractions also resulted in mass balances that averaged 79.7% recovery from the soil. Similarly, Pennington and Brannon44 reported that when grown in soil contaminated with 58 mg kg−1 RDX, lettuce was found to contain 1,200 mg kg−1 of RDX, demonstrating accumulation of nitroaromatic compounds in plants.
Using an approximate maximum flow rate up the plant of 1.6 ml min−1, and a [picric acid] of 400 μM (or approximately 90 mg kg−1 water), the accumulation rate in the roots (permeability ratio 0.01) can be estimated to be 0.0064 μmol min−1, and correspondingly the accumulation rate in the leaf is estimated to be 1.28 nmol min−1. Using a soil nitroaromatic concentration of 1 mg kg−1, DW soil (root permeability ratio 0.5) would yield an approximate accumulation rate of 0.7 nmol min−1. We note, however, that this value is only an estimate and strongly depends upon the permeability of nitroaromatics through the roots, which is dependent upon the species, age of the plant, and hydration or weather conditions.For 29 years, diehard Hanshin Tigers fans have waited for the club add to its lone Japan Series title, won in 1985, and for a while it looked like 2014 might mark the end of the drought.
Hanshin had failed to claim the Central League pennant but opened the postseason by winning six out of seven games — the lone non-victory being a tie — to take an early lead in the Japan Series.
Then the wheels fell off.
The Tigers lost four straight close games and saw the title finally slip away on a ruling of runner’s interference against Tsuyoshi Nishioka, as the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks took the crown. Fans of both teams have debated that call (which, incidentally, looked like the right, though rarely made, one) in the days since an entertaining series produced a clunker of an ending.
Not that any of that counts for much now. The Hawks are champions, and the Tigers have an October disappointment to add to Japan Series defeats in 2003 and 2005, as well as 2011’s unceremonious exit from the Central League Climax Series First Stage.
“The ultimate goal was to win the championship,” outfielder Matt Murton said after Game 5 of this year’s Japanese Fall Classic.
But the Tigers came up short, and now they have to regroup. Though that could take some time after one of the most frustrating finishes many of them have experienced.
The Tigers had led the series 1-0 entering Game 2 at Koshien Stadium. They lost that contest and were then beaten in Game 3 in Fukuoka. Facing a 2-1 deficit, Hanshin’s focus shifted to winning one of the next two in order to take the momentum, and the series, back home.
All they took from Fukuoka, however, were the memories of two heartbreaking defeats.
“I wanted to get it back to Koshien again,” Tigers manager Yutaka Wada said. “Softbank was just too strong.”
Hanshin lost Game 4 on Akira Nakamura’s sayonara three-run homer in the 10th, and lost in even more excruciating circumstances in Game 5.
The Tigers were down a run and facing their final two outs of the season when Nishioka strode to the plate in the ninth with the bases full of Hanshin players. A well-hit ball to the outfield would’ve tied the game, and the Tigers might’ve taken the lead on a base knock.
Instead, Nishioka hit a grounder to first that Kenji Akashi fielded and rifled back home for the second out of the inning. Things got hairy when catcher Toru Hosokawa threw back to first in an attempt to complete the double play. The Tigers thought they were still alive when the ball squirted past Akashi at first as Nishioka crossed the bag. But Nishioka was called out for interference, having run slightly outside the lane, to the infield side, ending the game and the series.
“Just very disappointing to have it finish the way it did,” Murton said, summing up his feelings in the immediate aftermath. “It is what it is. The Hawks had a tremendous year. You can’t take anything away from them. They played really well throughout the entire series.
“It was a dogfight. It was going to be very difficult for us to come back in that series, but I believed, and I know our team did, that we still had an opportunity.”
The goal for the Tigers when they reconvene in February will be to win the CL pennant and ultimately the Japan Series, no different than any other season.
Despite their disappointment at this defeat, there are positives to take into 2015, when the club will celebrate its 80-year anniversary.
For starters, Randy Messenger, the CL leader in wins (13), strikeouts (226), innings pitched (208⅓) and strikeout rate (9.76) should be back and probably joined by CL batting champion Murton (.338) and RBI leader Mauro Gomez (109).
Pitcher Shintaro Fujinami will be a year further along in his development, and left-hander Atsushi Nomi should be a prime candidate for a rebound campaign after a down year in 2013.
The Tigers are also rumored to be among the teams in the hunt for the services of Chiba Lotte Marines lefty Yoshihisa Naruse, who last week announced his intention to exercise his free-agency option. The club has also been linked to former Seibu Lions shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima, who could become a replacement for Takashi Toritani, an on-base machine who could pursue a career in the majors next season.
The Tigers fell short in frustrating fashion this year, but after they get over the disappointment, it’s a good bet the team will be hungry for another chance to finish the job.
“Of course,” Messenger said about trying to make it back in 2015. “That’s what you play for. You don’t play to lose. You play to win.”The climax was playing out like another Edward Jones Dome nightmare, the home team on the verge of surrendering what was left of a once-healthy advantage and suffering another disheartening defeat.
Like everyone in the stadium Sunday, not to mention millions of television viewers, St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher could see the way this one was heading, what with his win-starved team clinging to a two-point lead and about to punt the ball back to the Seattle Seahawks and their red-hot quarterback, Russell Wilson, from deep in its own territory with just under three minutes remaining.
It was the perfect time for a stunning plot twist -- and who better to provide one than The 'Stache?
In January of 2000, Fisher brought us The Music City Miracle, giving his Tennessee Titans an unfathomable playoff victory over the Buffalo Bills.
Last May, Fisher electrified the Rams' unsuspecting draft room -- and made an historic move no one saw coming -- when he selected Michael Sam, who was bidding to become the NFL's first openly gay player.
At Sunday's pivotal moment, as is his custom, Fisher kept even his closest confidantes in the dark. When he sent in the fake-punt call on fourth-and-3 from the Rams' 18, only a dozen others were in on the audacious ploy: special teams coach John Fassel and the 11 men in the huddle.
Music City Miracle, meet the St. Louis Surprise.
Punter Johnny Hekker took the snap, waited for Benny Cunningham to flash open on the left and delivered a short pass that the running back caught and turned into an 18-yard gain. The Rams (2-4) would get another first down and kill the clock -- though not until sweating out a Tre Mason fumble and ensuing scrum -- to close out a 28-26 victory over the defending Super Bowl champs.
It's not too much of a stretch to say that the Rams, who've struggled in the wake of quarterback Sam Bradford's second torn ACL in less than a year, might have salvaged their season by upsetting the Seahawks (3-3). Having blown leads of 21 (to the Dallas Cowboys) and 14 (to the San Francisco 49ers) in their previous two home games, the notion of squandering a 21-3 edge to Seattle was one that Fisher couldn't stomach.
In fact, before the Rams ran their first-down play from their own 11 on that final possession, Fisher approached Fassel and told him to "make sure (Hekker's) ready" because a fake punt might be in the works on fourth down.
"They had such momentum," Fisher explained on his drive home from the Dome, his voice a mixture of relief and excitement. "And look -- Russell Wilson's really good. We had them down, and he took it over. So no, we wanted no part of him at the end."
Wilson, in the wake of a wild week that featured the stunning trade of playmaker Percy Harvin to the New York Jets and a broken foot suffered by fullback Derrick Coleman in pregame warmups, was superlative in the second half, finishing with 313 passing yards and 106 rushing yards on seven carries. Game manager? Yeah, right.
St. Louis, riding with a pair of former third-stringers in the backfield -- quarterback Austin Davis (18 of 21, 152 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions) and Mason (18 carries, 85 yards, one TD) -- needed a full-squad effort to prevail.
And, amazingly, the fake punt wasn't even St. Louis' most impressive special-teams stunt. That came midway through the second quarter when the Seahawks, trailing 14-3, punted from their own 49 -- and the Rams countered with a well-rehearsed ensemble performance that turned deception into an art form.
With Jon Ryan's high punt sailing toward the right (from the Rams' perspective) sideline, return man Tavon Austin and nine other Rams drifted to the left to set up a phantom runback. As Austin pretended to wait for a ball that was headed to the opposite hash mark, the Seahawks dutifully followed, buying the ruse even as he fell backward for effect, presumably gunning for that Oscar nomination.
Meanwhile, Rams
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party brought in $82 million last month, only slightly behind Mrs. Clinton’s $90 million, and ended with $74 million on hand, suggesting he might now have the resources to compete with Mrs. Clinton in the closing stretch of the campaign.
“She’s been doing this for 20 years,” said Steven Mnuchin, a New York investor who is Mr. Trump’s finance chairman. “We’ve been doing it for two months.” More than two-thirds of the $64 million had come online, Mr. Mnuchin said.Tours & Events
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and State & Local Government.This screenshot from a video posted on Facebook shows what a appears to be teenagers approaching a homeless man to attack him in Bakersfield, Calif.
Police have arrested a 14-year-old California boy in connection with an attack on a homeless man.
The attack was caught on video and gained a lot of attention last week via social media.
Police Sgt. Ryan Kroeker said the boy was arrested Friday night on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.
Kroeker said the boy attends Centennial High School.
There are several videos police are investigating: The one showing someone throwing an object into the head of a homeless man, apparently unprovoked, and a couple more that appear to show teenagers beating up another boy.
Kroeker said the arrest is in connection with the assault on the homeless man, and they're still trying to identify everyone involved in making those videos.Garth Whalen, 52, was charged with burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle and criminal damage. View Full Caption Flickr/chicagozen; Chicago Police Department
COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — A 52-year-old man took a stranger's boat for a drunken joy ride through Burhnam Harbor this weekend after he found the keys inside the boat's cabin, prosecutors said.
Garth Whalen, 52, was arrested about 6 p.m. Sunday after police received multiple calls about a boat speeding through Burnham Harbor and crashing into docked boats in the South Loop harbor, Assistant State's Attorney Erin Antonietti said during a bond hearing Monday.
Whalen had broken into the locked boat earlier that afternoon and found the keys inside the cabin, prosecutors said.
He proceeded to cruise through the harbor, crashing into five boats, according to police. Antonietti said four of the vessels were unoccupied at the time; a dog was inside the fifth.
When a police boat pulled over Whalen and officers boarded the vessel, Antonietti said, it was taking on water due to excessive damage from the crashes. The boat — which is owned by a suburban Winnetka man who doesn't know Whalen — is valued at more than $300,000, authorities said.
According to an arrest report, Whalen smelled like alcohol and told police, "It's not my boat. I didn't do anything." Whalen then told the officers he wasn't driving, the report said, but police found no one else on board.
After Whalen was arrested in the 1500 block of South Lynn White Drive, he was charged with burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle, operating a boat under the influence of alcohol and five counts of criminal damage to property.
Cook County Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. on Monday ordered Whalen held in lieu of $100,000 bail.
Police said Whalen has been previously convicted of driving under the influence.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:An amazing thing happened after the news about Sony and North Korea broke: an anonymous Twitter account managed to convince many of the most prominent mainstream media outlets in the US that it was the official voice of North Korea. Articles in the Washington Post, Fox News, Slate, and Newsweek (as well as one Reuters tweet) quoted the parody account as if it were real. The repeated goof speaks volumes about the way the West perceives North Korea, and how you should read news that comes out of the country.
The account, @DPRK_News, claims to be the "Official News feed of Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" and based in Pyongyang. It tweets what would appear, on the surface, to be a series of headlines and photos from North Korea state media.
In fact, the headlines are parodies (in the media's defense, the parodies are quite good, and even the real North Korean state media is frequently absurd and over-the-top). The account is run by two guys, Derrick and Patrick, who write at the legal blog Popehat and are most definitely not North Korean official spokesmen.
Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un returns from martial arts training and meditation atop Mount Paektu, to defend people against Japanese aggression — DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) October 13, 2014
U.S. African peoples decry aggression of high-handed and racist police. DPRK police embrace Kim Il-Sung thought, to cheers of citizens. — DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) December 19, 2014
Derrick and Patrick have been manning it since 2009. On Tuesday, they gave an interview with Newsweek, in which they discuss duping other outlets in previous episodes. That's what makes this parody really impressive: people keep falling for it — despite the fact that some of these tweets are a little over the top, even for North Korea:
American newspaper declares Kim Jong-Un greatest North Korean alive! http://t.co/YEoEtiGJMy — DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) December 23, 2014
RODONG SINMUN: Gangster fat man George R.R. Martin must be punished for showing of pornographic anti-DPRK cinema! — DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) December 22, 2014
This isn't to knock anyone for mistaking @DPRK_News as real; these things happen. Rather, the interesting question is why this particular hoax ends up tricking people time and time again.
It may come down to the fact that the real North Korean state media is really, truly weird. It regularly calls the US things like an "arch criminal," "empire of devils," and a "toothless wolf." It threatened to "mercilessly destroy" Seth Rogen after The Interview's trailer was released and brags about the "epochal miracles" taking place in deeply impoverished North Korea. It's part-and-parcel of the overall message it gives to the North Korean public: America is out to get us, but the great North Korean people, led by the Kim regime, will prevail. That message makes sense with North Korea, but from outside it looks plainly ridiculous.
Derrick and Patrick managed to nail this tone. Though Patrick says he based it on Soviet propaganda rather than the pure North Korean stuff, Derrick combs through the Korean Central News Agency (North Korea's actual English-language propaganda outlet) archives for inspiration. They've managed to incorporate a lot of the hallmarks of KCNA's writing in the account. From the tone down to the details, like regularly quoting state newspaper Rodong Sinmun, the parody sounds a lot like the original.
In other words: North Korean state media is so over-the-top that it's hard to parody well it without ending up sounding pretty damn similar. This makes it much, much easier for Westerners — journalists included — to swallow the most insane statements that purportedly come from North Korea as fact. As a news consumer, you should be skeptical of stories about North Korea that seem too ridiculous to be true. Especially when they're really, really ridiculous:Support Your Local Yoga Teacher
I feel fortunate—really fortunate. Decades ago, I got to study with yoga luminaries such as Donna Farhi, Judith Hanson Lasater, Elise Miller, Angela Farmer, Aadil Palkhivala, the late Mary Dunn and many others at a time when 20 students was the average size for a workshop. From these teachers I’ve learned more than I can possibly quantify or express. For years, when traveling teachers came to my town—or within 300 miles of my town—I’d do everything possible to be there, soaking in every shred of new information. Much of the time it was way more than I could take in in a weekend, but I absorbed what I could and was extremely grateful for it.
Sometimes I’d apply the exciting, new tidbits to my classes right away. Other things I learned would seep into my cells over time only to be expressed in unexpected ways months, or even years, later.
On the irregular occasions when I’m invited to guest teach an eager, new-to-me bunch of students, I always hope by the end of a workshop that I’ve been able to help these students see their practice anew. I hope that like my teachers before me, I’ve shared skills and ideas that will integrate over the years. But most of all, I hope that students at my workshops will appreciate anew their local teachers, the ones who inspire them day in and day out, the teachers who show up several times a week to create not only a safe space for practice, but a community of like-minded friends whose constancy can provide roots for our over-stressed lives.
What Your Local Yoga Teacher Does that a Traveling Teacher Can’t
As wonderful as it is to learn new perspectives from the more widely known luminaries of yoga, it is your local yoga teacher that provides your day-to-day foundation that helps you meet the ups and downs of your daily life with a measure of grace. It is your local teacher who’s willing to show up and teach whoever comes—whether it’s five students or 20. Your local yoga teacher quietly invests in her own learning, knowing there’s a good chance she’ll never earn back all the money she’s spent on training. Your local yoga teacher creates the space for you to decompress from a stressful day of work. Her classes provide a reliable respite to carry you challenging times.
It’s actually easier to be a traveling workshop teacher than it is to be a local yoga teacher. The discomforts inherent in traveling notwithstanding, it’s much easier to get up in front of a bunch of unfamiliar faces and sound fresh and exciting than it is to surprise those who know you well. Plus being a guest gives you the automatic appearance of elevated status. If you’re from somewhere else, you must have information that a local teacher couldn’t possibly know, right? You’ve probably heard the phrase that you can’t be a celebrity in your hometown. Well, that’s true, and in some ways it’s probably a good thing, especially where yoga is concerned. Celebrity and yoga don’t always mix in the healthiest of ways.
It always shocks me when people take notes in my workshops, something that never happens in my weekly classes. This is probably because workshop participants are hearing my particular ways of communicating, instructions and jokes for the first time. Not so for my regular students. They’ve heard it all many times, and then some.
So it is for these students, the ones who have come to my classes for decades, that I continue to learn. It is these brilliant beings who bless the sanghas that have formed around my classes that motivate me to look beyond my familiar. Their presence shines a light on the things I say in class that are just tired, old verbal habits. These students drive me to explore new territory—sometimes to change the words I use, or to play with my sequencing or to not talk at all, allowing them to find their own yoga in the silence. It is these students, the ones who have taught me so much, that inspire me to keep learning.
Please do go to workshops when they happen. Take notes. Enjoy the infusion of new energy and inspiration. But remember your local yoga teacher, the person that’s here for you every week. Honor the teacher whose constancy provides the stable foundation for your own transformation.Retirees are expected to donate about $6.6 trillion in cash and $1.4 trillion in volunteer services during the next 20 years as baby boomers retire, according to a report released today.
People give at higher rates after they retire, so extended life spans mean people are in their prime donor years longer than in previous eras, and that is good news for nonprofits smart enough to capture the attention of such donors.
The study, conducted by consulting company Age Wave in partnership with Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management, also found that baby boomers are 49 percent more likely than their parents’ generation to make an effort to find out how nonprofits use their money before they decide to donate, and 44 percent of them want to direct how their charitable gifts are used, compared with only 15 percent of their parents’ generation.
That should do more than pique the interest of fundraisers, said Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist and the founder of Age Wave, a consulting, marketing, and research company focused on aging.
"This is a big boon for philanthropy, but it’s not business as usual," said Dr. Dychtwald. "Boomers overwhelmingly want to make an impact on the world, and just writing a check doesn’t turn them on. They want to get back from their giving."
Nonprofit officials hoping to capture the attention, dollars, and time of these donors are going to have to be open to their demands for more information and more involvement, he said.
Nonprofits should also keep in mind the wealth of professional experience that boomers possess, said Pamela Wise, a Merrill Lynch financial adviser to retirees.
While retirees volunteer less than other age groups, charities would be smart to figure out ways to increase their involvement, because once they do commit their time, they end up volunteering more total hours than any other age group, according to the report.
"Retirees are awesome, because here you’ve got a mature, experienced labor market with time and resources who want to get engaged," she said.
Giving Expertise
Kim Griffith, who retired as a vice president of Freddie Mac in February, is one such donor. He said that he gives thousands of dollars a year to charity, but he counts his work as a volunteer as his most important contribution.
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With decades of experience working on affordable housing, Mr. Griffith in his retirement is ramping up his volunteer time with the Transitional Housing Corporation, where he serves as board chairman. The nonprofit helps families in the Washington area who are homeless or at risk of losing their housing.
He also serves on the board of Enterprise Community Investment, a national organization that seeks to provide stable housing options.
Mr. Griffith told The Chronicle that his goal is to use his expertise to relieve the stress so many low-income families face because they can’t find an affordable place to live.
"If I can help do that, I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something," he said. "I can’t tell you how much I’d get out of that; it’s hard to put into words."
Religion Wanes
When compared to their parents’ generation, boomers are giving less money and volunteer time to religious and spiritual organizations. However, they are still much more inclined to support religious groups than millennials and Generation Xers, of whom only about a third are giving money to religious and spiritual nonprofits. Even fewer are volunteering with such groups.
Among current retirees who give money or goods to charities, slightly more than half, or 53 percent, donated to religious or spiritual nonprofits in the last year, compared to 31 percent who gave to poverty relief and 26 percent who gave to disaster-aid groups. Only 19 percent gave to educational institutions.
In the case of several causes, boomers’ behavior is nearer to their parents’ generation: Few are volunteering at animal-rights and environmental groups or giving money to human-rights charities, compared with millennials, who are giving more time and money to those causes than other generations. Those types of nonprofits may end up with a robust group of givers decades from now.
More Generous Gender
Retired women are more likely than retired men to contribute both money and volunteer time to charity, with 81 percent of retired women giving money compared with 71 percent of retired men and 29 percent of retired women volunteering versus 22 percent of men.
"Engagement and giving go hand-in-hand for women," said Ms. Wise. "So nonprofits need to drive a vision that will appeal to them."
Ms. Wise said nonprofits should figure out what types of opportunities they can offer potential women boomers well before they try to cultivate them. That way, she said, a fundraiser can present a well thought out way to involve the donor in the charity’s efforts.
Women are also more likely than men to define success in retirement by how generous they are versus how wealthy they are, the survey showed. More women than men are likely to say retirement is the best time in life to give back, and they are more likely than men to say they derive more happiness from helping others than from spending money on themselves.
Regardless of gender, said Ms. Wise and Dr. Dychtwald, nonprofits should be thinking constantly about how to attract the boomer generation of donors. Otherwise, they will be missing out on an eye-popping level of support.
"The rising up of this demographic mass with more money and free time than we’ve ever seen is revolutionary," said Dr. Dychtwald. "It’s not just ‘where might we want to play golf’ but ‘how can we help people in need.’ "
The study, Giving in Retirement: America’s Longevity Bonus, included more than 3,600 respondents at all income levels and looked at giving trends across generations and genders.Bernie Sanders’ campaign said that US voters are increasingly doubtful about the viability of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
© REUTERS / Craig Lassig/Jay LaPrete Faced With Choosing Between Clinton and Trump, Virginia Woman Chooses Death
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — US voters are increasingly doubtful about the viability of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, her challenger US Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign said in a statement.
"In the past three weeks voters in Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon respectfully disagreed with Secretary Clinton," Sanders’ spokesperson Michael Briggs stated on Thursday. "We expect voters in the remaining eight contests also will disagree. And with every national and state poll showing Sen. Sanders doing much, much better than Secretary Clinton against Donald Trump, it is clear that millions of Americans have growing doubts about the Clinton campaign."
Earlier on Thursday, Clinton said in a media interview that she will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for the US presidency in November’s general election.
A national poll released on Thursday revealed that Clinton has fallen more than five points behind Trump nationally among likely voters.
In recent months, dozens of nationwide polls have shown a double-digit lead by Clinton gradually shrinking, with Trump having eliminated his rival candidates for the Republican nomination.* Nurse’s soothing voice helped stabilize them emotionally
* Concern about miners’ emotional health after initial joy
By Terry Wade
COPIAPO, Chile, Oct 15 (Reuters) - The 33 Chilean miners rescued after two months trapped in what could have become their underground tomb now face a challenging recovery from emotional trauma that could take weeks or months to unfold.
“Various miners are in a very delicate state from a psychological standpoint,” said Health Minister Jaime Manalich. “They will have nightmares and feel anguish. They are going to have a very difficult time adapting to a normal life.”
The miners said despair began to set during the first 17 days following the cave-in at the San Jose mine in northern Chile’s remote Atacama Desert — a time when they could not be certain a search was even being mounted.
Their spirits rose when they heard drills approaching their dark, dank refuge — only to suffer an emotional crash when they realized at least one drill had missed them by just yards.
Once search teams made contact with the men through a narrow bore hole, they were able to communicate with psychologists by way of video conference while still underground. This small shaft became their lifeline for physical and mental sustenance.
But the accounts from the miners’ darkest days are just starting to emerge.
“There should be concern about their psychological adjustment over time, particularly after the joy of the reunion period,” said John Fairbank, a psychiatry professor at the Duke University Medical Center.
After 69 days fearing that the walls of their cavern prison might give way, the men were carried to the surface in a capsule hoisted through a painstakingly-drilled escape shaft. They were physically healthy, for the most part, and were expected to be released soon from the hospital where they have been cared for since Wednesday.
Some of the miners are expected to receive book or movie deals to recount the story of one of the world’s most impressive search and rescue operations — which required unprecedented engineering feats to fetch the miners from more than 200 stories below ground.
If a movie is made, an actress will be needed to play the health care worker whom the miners credited for keeping them mentally stable. They said the soothing voice of nurse Marcela Zuniga calmed them over a makeshift telephone for weeks on end.
“For the three weeks I was the only woman to talk with the miners, and it surprised me when they told psychologists they dreamed about my voice at night,” Zuniga, a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length black hair and silver eye shadow, said.
“We gained their trust by sending down things they asked for, even if it was a nail clipper,” she added. “There was a big discussion about whether we should give them cigarettes. Ultimately, we did. We rationed them to 11 a day so they wouldn’t smoke too much.”
But the ground team refused to send chocolates to the trapped men in a bid to keep their weight down so they could fit into the narrow capsule that would lift them to safety. (Reporting by Terry Wade, writing by Hugh Bronstein, editing by Jackie Frank)By LYLE BRENNAN
PUBLISHED: 15:45 GMT, 14 April 2012 | UPDATED: 15:45 GMT, 14 April 2012
When it slammed into the surface of Earth, there was little sign of the beauty that lay inside.
But cutting the Fukang meteorite open yielded a breathtaking sight.
Within the rock, translucent golden crystals of a mineral called olivine gleamed among a silvery honeycomb of nickel-iron.
Cosmic wonder: Marvin Killgore of the Arizona Meteorite Laboratory lets the sun shine through a polished slice of the Fukang rock Cosmic wonder: Marvin Killgore of the Arizona Meteorite Laboratory lets the sun shine through a polished slice of the Fukang rock
The rare meteorite weighed about the same as a hatchback when it was discovered in 2000, in the Gobi Desert in China’s Xinjiang Province.
It has since been divided into slices which give the effect of stained glass when the sun shines through them.
An anonymous collector holds the largest portion, which weighs 925lb. in 2008, this piece was expected to fetch $2million (£1.26million) at auction at Bonham’s in New York – but it remained unsold.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2129747/The-beautiful-mysterious-Fukang-pallasite-meteorite.html#ixzz1xxGEGnk3
AdvertisementsFaulkner County Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland said the FBI agreed to the request from his office and the Conway Police Department Wednesday afternoon. A judge on Tuesday agreed to postpone the trial of 18-year-old Hunter Drexler so prosecutors could ask the FBI for help. Drexler's trial was moved from next week to June 27.
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The FBI has agreed to help an Arkansas prosecutor unlock an iPhone and iPod that belong to two teenagers accused of killing a couple, reports the Associated Press. The move comes days after the FBI announced that it had unlocked the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone.Hiland said the FBI agreed to help less than a day after the initial request was made. "We always appreciate their cooperation and willingness to help their local law enforcement partners," Hiland said. Patrick Benca, Drexler's attorney, said he was notified the FBI agreed to help and that he was "not concerned about anything on that phone."The prosecuting attorney said that they had heard the FBI had been able to unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone and wanted to see if they could help, according to the Los Angeles Times Drexler, along with 15-year-old Justin Staton, are accused of killing Robert and Patricia Cogdell last July. The couple raised Staton as their grandson. After the two teens were arrested in Texas and brought to Arkansas shortly after the shootings, prosecutors gained possession of Drexler's iPhone. Last week, Staton's defense attorney was ordered to hand over his iPod, which was in the defense attorney's evidence locker.Prosecutors argue that Staton had indicated on phone calls that he had used his iPod to communicate about the murders and that further evidence might be on the device. It’s unclear which iPhone and iPod the suspects used and which iOS version they’re running.An FBI official told the LA Times that the FBI is unlikely use the tool that was used to unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone for criminal prosecutions because the method could be discovered during a trial. Furthermore, the method used to unlock that phone might not work with other phones, according to the official.“In a criminal case, if the FBI uses a technique, there’s going to be questions about divulging that technique or chain of custody to the defense," Eric Crocker, Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney, told the LA Times. "So my instinct is this might be something different.”Last week, shortly after the Department of Justice said that it discovered a "possible method" for unlocking the San Bernardino shooter's device, it was reported that the FBI enlisted Israeli firm Cellebrite to unlock it.The Qatari emir is due to address the nation after confirming that he will step down and transfer power to his heir apparent.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani is due to speak on Tuesday at 8:00 am local time (0500 GMT).
A day earlier, he met royals and prominent members of the Qatari society where he announced plans for a transition to his son, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Sheikh Tamim, 33, has been groomed for the position since 2003, when his elder brother stepped aside.
Sheikh Hamad has been in power since 1995, during which Qatar has evolved into an important player on the regional and international political scenes.
Abdullah al-Athbah, the managing editor of Al Arab newspaper, earlier told Al Jazeera that he did not expect to see a change in policy after the succession.
"The heir apparent has been very close to his father and Sheikh Jassim," he said, referring to Qatar's prime minister. "I don't think there will be a big change in policy, foreign or domestic."
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is the second son of the emir and Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser.
Tuesday was declared a public holiday in Qatar.
The Qatari Emiri Diwan announced it would receive citizens on Tuesday and on Wednesday to pledge allegiance to Sheikh Tamim as the new emir of Qatar.
The British-educated Sheikh Tamim is deputy commander of the armed forces and head of the National Olympic Committee. He also chairs the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee which is in charge of hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup.At some point, most science fiction readers come across the “Big Three” authors from its so-called Golden Age: Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Over the course of his lifetime, Clarke witnessed the birth of the space age, and helped push science fiction from a nascent literary movement into a modern vision for humanity’s future with grounded, realistic stories that drew on science and technology—themes that are more relevant than ever today, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
When Clarke began writing science fiction in the late 1930s, the genre was on the cusp of a major transformation. Up to that point, science fiction stories appeared in cheap pulp magazines, and were often sensational tales featuring murderous robots, outlandish planets, and swashbuckling adventure. As Clarke entered the field, the trend of scientific realism was on the rise, pushed along by editors like John W. Campbell, who ran the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. Clarke, whose writing was grounded in a firm sense reality, found himself at home in this burgeoning movement. His vision for the future set the mold for his many literary heirs, including Alastair Reynolds, James S.A. Corey, and Allen M. Steele.
Born in Minehead, Somerset on December 16th, 1917, Clarke discovered science fiction at a young age, which began his lifelong obsession with space and humanity’s place in it. He built his own telescopes, served as a radar officer during World War II, and in the late 1930s, began writing stories of his own. Clarke funneled his interests in physics and mathematics into his fiction, creating characters who embarked on missions that readers could easily imagine taking place just years away.
His longer works, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama, Fountains of Paradise, and Childhood’s End, begin with simple, straightforward events—like the discovery of an alien monolith, the arrival of an extrasolar object, or the arrival of an alien spacecraft—and lead characters on remarkable, transformative journeys.
Clarke infused those journeys with plausible technology and recognizable settings, but also explored profound, transcendental notions about our place in the universe. He coined the frequently-quoted saying “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” His work often suggested that humanity is just one minuscule part of the cosmos—that there’s so much we still don’t know that could change the way we perceive the world forever.
In his 1951 short story The Sentinel, the discovery of an alien artifact on the moon leads to the realization that humans aren’t alone in the universe. In his 1953 story The Nine Billion Names of God, a group of monks use a supercomputer to fulfill their mission to list all of God’s names, believing that something incredible will happen when they do. Its conclusion leads to one of the genre’s most awe-inspiring closing lines: “Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”
While Clarke was often profound, he could also be witty. In 1958’s Who’s There?, he sets up a thrilling, claustrophobic tale where an astronaut is sent into space to retrieve a wayward satellite, only to feel something moving around in his suit. After accidentally knocking himself unconscious, he awakens back onboard the space station to discover that the station’s resident cat had been using his space suit as a home for her kittens.
A century after his birth, our understanding of the universe around us has continually and drastically changed; we’ve discovered vast numbers of planets and solar systems throughout the cosmos, as well as new discoveries and surprises closer to home. Through his hundreds of short stories and novels, Clarke paved the way for his successors to process the vast size and utter strangeness of this new terrain and explore one of science fiction’s most defining questions: what is humanity’s place in the universe?A major renovation of an old house is one of life's more daunting challenges. As of January, when the new building code kicks in, the job may get a whole lot tougher for Vancouver homeowners.
Additions to the building code include a host of requirements designed to enhance accessibility for the disabled and to make houses more energy efficient. The revised building code was supposed to be implemented in July but has been pushed back to Jan. 1, 2015.
In the spring, there was a surge in development applications for single-family homes, as people anticipated the new code. Homeowners and builders have a few more months, unless opponents can convince the city to reconsider some of the changes.
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Groups opposed to it are arguing that it will make renovations prohibitively expensive, adding to affordability problems and increasing the number of demolitions.
Once the code is implemented, a major renovation of a single– or two-family house will trigger a review of guardrail safety and width of staircases. Assuming it's a drafty old house, a major renovation may also require building envelope air sealing and upgrades to the thickness of walls and attic to meet energy efficiency requirements. As well, new homes more than 583 sq. ft. will require a bathroom on the main floor with a low-barrier shower. And of course, for new houses, there is the requirement that made Vancouver the subject of a mocking piece last year in The Economist: that all round door knobs are to be banned, replaced with easier-to-operate lever handles. Those are just some of the new changes.
"If someone wants to do a serious renovation, to bring their house into contemporary usage – that's the kind of thing that could potentially require the whole house to be upgraded to the building code," says long-time heritage advocate Anthony Norfolk.
"They could push it as far as saying everything has to be rain screened, if you're over the threshold. It would drive wholesale demolition. I think that's a distinct risk, unless someone takes a firm line.
"I'm hearing from people who are wringing their hands, individuals in the design community, the heritage community. It's really something that we've got to get organized on. We're watching with concern."
Critics cite impracticalities and potentially self-defeating results. They are pushing for exemptions from rules that make house renovations almost impossible, and that threaten historic housing stock. For example, old character houses can survive demolition if they are relocated or redeveloped as multifamily units. However, once a house is made into strata units, or moved from its original location, under the building code, it's treated as a new house. Bringing an old house up to code is a monstrous task that can strip the character and negate any profit margin.
And renovations to an old house, they argue, don't make sense. Attempting to seal an old house from drafts is not only contrary to what has kept the house standing for 100 years, it's not even energy efficient. The existing building code has long been criticized for overly sealing a new building so that it rots from the inside. Old houses have stood for so long, they argue, precisely because they are drafty – they breathe.
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Robert Lemon, architect and former city heritage planner, points to three-storey stucco walk-ups in Kerrisdale and the West End that have no overhang, and have stood for decades without rotting. Why didn't they join the list of leaky – or rotting – condos?
"I think that if someone was to do a thorough investigation, you'd find a significant amount of leaking is from rot within, because these buildings can't breathe," says Mr. Lemon. "That's why historic buildings, any existing building, breathes naturally through window frames, walls, electrical outlets, which is what you want. You don't want to trap moisture."
There's something to be said for old-house technology. In his own 80-year-old home, he changed two of the single-paned windows with double-glazed windows when he did a renovation. Over the years, the new windows are the only ones that have required replacing.
"The historic windows aren't perfect, but they have served a perfectly adequate function for the past 80 years," he says. "There are blinds, drapes, awnings, many elements that have been used historically to create a better envelope without the house being completely sealed.
"I'm from back east, and you have storm windows in the winter and you take them off in the summer."
Hazel Borys, an electrical engineer with an MBA in finance, is partner in a Winnipeg-based urban planning firm that helps cities throughout North America rewrite the red tape to make the development process leaner. Her company, PlaceMakers, aims to create healthier, more walkable cities that aren't dependent on the car.
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Ms. Borys lives in a 100-year-old Winnipeg house with three porches, which in the summer, are like built-in air conditioners, she says.
"But I guarantee you, if I retrofit the house to be fully energy efficient, I won't live without an air conditioner any more. What is that gaining me in megawatt hours and BTUs? It probably isn't.
"In a place as temperate as Vancouver, once you hermetically seal a building, you've gotten yourself nowhere fast."
As the city wraps homeowners deeper in red tape with additions to its building code, there is a movement afoot called Lean Urbanism that attempts to streamline bylaws. The idea is that red tape is getting in the way of small projects and taking control out of the hands of the average resident.
"Lean urbanism has said, 'Let's cut through that red tape and write really simple development bylaws, and simple building codes, that would allow a walkable, livable high-return urbanism to happen as a matter of right," says Ms. Borys. "We've had too much bureaucracy. We're not even creating neighbourhoods that people love and that are good for our health, the environment or the economy. So we're asking, 'What can we do to reverse that?"
She says that, while Vancouver is respected for its urban planning, these additions to the bylaw could backfire.
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"One of the least successful parts of Vancouver is its lack of affordability.
"This litany of retrofits sounds like it will make affordability an even bigger problem.
"It sounds like a very well intentioned initial idea to help people with special needs, which is essential and important, but that monoculture response is the sort of gold plating of any sort of city planning that ends up having a lot of unintended consequences," she says.
As well, several critics believe it may further threaten the city's already diminishing stock of old character houses. The city has enacted a plan to better protect heritage, and to deter demolitions of pre-1940 houses. However, the
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their geographical location. This is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.
Under this bill, each Border Patrol drone would log 6,240 hours of flight time per year. That would be a drastic increase from the Obama years. According to a 2014 report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, four drones flown by Border Patrol logged a combined total of only 5,102 hours that year.
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Not only does constantly flying drones near the border jeopardize basic privacy rights, it also takes an insane amount of money. The same December 2014 report found that Border Patrol’s drone program cost a whopping $12,255 per flight hour. That means, if the Building America’s Trust Act is passed, the government would spend $76.47 million per year, per drone at the border.
The bill’s overzealous surveillance proposals don’t stop with drones, however. Cornyn and company also propose a minimum of 95,000 manned flights by the Border Patrol’s Air and Marine Operations at the border, per year. Additionally, the bill includes the use of facial recognition software to detect threats at the border and would require the scanning of social media accounts of anyone who applies for a visa.
Cornyn, in a video supporting the bill, makes it sound like border officials are currently handcuffed by burdensome regulations and left helpless on the technological front. But in reality, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) already have an obscene amount of surveillance discretion at the border, particularly when it comes to mobile devices. Current policy allows ICE and DHS to search cell phones, tablets, laptops and other mobile devices, without even a lick of suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. Perhaps most troubling, these rules apply to both citizens and noncitizens alike.
That power has only grown in recent years, as law enforcement has been given more discretion at the border. Under current law, ICE and Border Patrol are allowed to conduct searches at the border, without any proof of a crime or probable cause. As Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR.) has put it, this creates a “legal Bermuda Triangle” where expectations of privacy cease to exist. In 2015, immigration officials searched the devices of 8,503 arriving travelers. That number jumped to 19,033 the following year. By February of this year, the Trump administration had already searched the devices of incoming travelers nearly 5,000 times.
Supporters of the bill are touting it as a way to increase border security, and prevent the perceived flow of drugs and criminals into the country. But the data reveals that there is in no need of these drastic precautions. A study by the Sentencing Project found that violent crime in the U.S. plummeted during periods of higher illegal immigration. This should not be surprising given that immigrants—including those who are most likely to be undocumented—are less likely to commit crime than native born citizens.
The risk of immigrants committing a terrorist act is also miniscule. A study by the Cato Institute used data from nine different sources found that, from 1975 to 2015, the chance of an American being murdered in a terrorist attack by an illegal immigrant was just one in 10.9 billion per year.
Even if illegal immigration did threaten national security, the number of people entering the U.S. illegally has hit its lowest numbers since 1970. This decline has more to do with Mexico’s improving economy than it does with strict border enforcement, which has very little evidence of actually deterring illegal immigration. Some experts even say that stricter border enforcement has made things worse.
Between 1986 to 2010, the U.S. spent $34.6 billion on Border Patrol agents, fencing, and military technology, yet none of these efforts affected the number of people crossing illegally. Immigrants responded to the ramped up surveillance by avoiding the cities, opting instead to cross through the dangerous mountains and deserts. Others sought help from Coyotes—human smugglers who charge hefty fees and sometimes use their clients as drug mules. Once they arrived, many who would have otherwise returned home after a few years decided to stay permanently just to avoid a dangerous and expensive trip back, increasing the number of America’s undocumented population.
Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas observed that America has a longstanding history of projecting whatever fears it has onto the border. Anxiety and misunderstanding does not make for sensible legislation. There’s no reason to trust the Building America’s Trust Act.
Dan King is an advocate for Young Voices and a journalist residing in Arlington, Virginia. He writes about free speech, mass surveillance, civil liberties and LGBT issues. He can be found on Twitter @Kinger_Liberty.
Sam Peak is an advocate for Young Voices living in Alexandria, Virginia. He writes about immigration, taxes, and regulations. He can be found on Twitter @Tiger_Speak.Patton Oswalt Explains How Pop Culture Gets Grieving All Wrong
Enlarge this image toggle caption Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
When it comes to depictions of grief, comedian Patton Oswalt says pop culture failed him. Just look at super heroes, he says — their motivation is often rooted in loss that "leads them to travel the world learning martial arts and doing CrossFit and getting really cut," Oswalt says. "And that's not been my experience."
Oswalt experienced his own tragic loss on April 21, 2016, when his wife, writer Michelle McNamara, died unexpectedly, leaving behind Oswalt, and their young daughter, Alice.
"When you lose someone you tend to eat Wheat Thins for breakfast and rewatch The Princess Bride about 80 times and not sleep all that well," Oswalt says. "So I don't know when the push-ups are going to show up in my grieving process."
Less than a year after McNamara's death, Oswalt won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album and his first Emmy award for his Netflix standup special Talking for Clapping. In his acceptance speech, he said he wanted to share his award with two people: "One of them, my daughter, Alice, is waiting at home. The other one is waiting somewhere else — I hope."
Oswalt — who also starred in the sitcom The King of Queens and the animated movie Ratatouille -- has now returned to the stand-up stage. He recently headlined two shows in Washington, D.C., and he sat down to talk about how he handled a year that was professionally one of his best and personally his absolute worst.
Interview Highlights
Enlarge this image toggle caption Charley Gallay/Getty Images for LACMA Charley Gallay/Getty Images for LACMA
On never knowing how much other people are going through
One thing that I've learned since what happened to me happened is: You don't know the kind of pain and loss other people may have gone through — even close friends and acquaintances.... In really awful science fiction terms it is like putting on the sunglasses in They Live and then seeing the world for what it really is. Do you know what I mean? Obviously I knew there was loss and death and depression, but you can only sympathize so far until it directly happens to you.
On why he's gone back to stand-up
I think the reason that I'm still doing stand-up is because — before the movies and television and before the books — stand-up is what brought me into this world where I get to link up with way more creative, way more intelligent people than I am ever going to be. And to cut that off, it felt like an insult to Michelle.
Especially because the person that I was before I met Michelle was very, you know, I think I was an OK comedian — I don't think I was very deep and vulnerable. And then after falling in love with her, she led me to being secure enough to open myself up on stage. So then to completely reject that would have felt very, very insulting to her.
On how it's cathartic for him to know he's helping other people
When I initially started talking about it on Facebook people reached out to me and said, Oh that really, really helped me. And it really helped me to get over my grief — like I take part in a grief group. Helping other people out who are going through this — this is a very selfish thing — but it helps me out....
My goal, as always, is I want to be funny and I want to get laughs. But laughter I think can loosen up a lot of poison that has kind of settled into your muscles and your soul — not to get too Oprah about it. And maybe incidentally I'm helping someone out with their grief. But I'm not going onstage and sitting in a chair and going: Let's talk, everyone. I'm wandering around, and griping about Trump, and movies, and life, and getting older.
On not buying Batman's backstory
Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down in front of him when he was 9 and he travels the world and becomes this amazing [crime fighter].... That's ridiculous — he would have grown up to have been Gotham City's most annoying slam poet. That's what Bruce Wayne would have been. He would have been up there reading his horrible poems.
On why the second year after a loss may be even harder than the first
At least in 2016 I had three months and 21 days of Michelle being in there. And now this is a year where there is no Michelle — and, like, that's it. So when January first dawned it felt like a cell door slamming behind me like: You are now in this awful world where you don't even have a memory of her being a part of this year....
There's that famous line from Magnolia... I'm through with the past.... Well, the past isn't through with you. And that is exactly what this is. You know, you can say you're through with grief all you want, but grief will let you know when it's done.
On whether he's disappointed people who expected him to be funny
Sorry for bumming you out. I'm very sorry. Go walk for half an hour; it will flood you with endorphins.... What am I saying?! You're NPR listeners. You're used to being bummed out. Now let's cut to some sad jazz. Stay tuned: We're going to talk about things to do with sorghum. It's sorghum season!
Radio producer Jinae West and digital producer Beth Novey contributed to this report.Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-06 15:32:55|Editor: Yang Yi
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XICHANG, Sichuan Province, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- New, ultra-accurate rubidium atomic clocks on board two BeiDou-3 satellites launched into space Sunday have greatly improved the accuracy of the system.
The two satellites are equipped with more reliable rubidium atomic timekeepers than those in previous BeiDou satellites. According to Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the satellite system, their stability was as high as E-14. "It means only one second of deviation in 3 million years," he said.
Important payloads of the navigation satellites, atomic clocks are the workhorses which synchronize the signals that allow satnav receivers to triangulate their position on Earth.
"The stability of the new-generation clocks has been improved by 10 times, compared with those carried by BeiDou-2 satellites," said Qu Yongsheng from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation fifth research institute, Xi'an branch, developer of the clocks.
Qu said this new technology has raised the positioning accuracy of the BeiDou-3 to 2.5 - 5 meters from 10 meters in the past.
Named after the Chinese term the Big Dipper constellation, the BeiDou project was formally initiated in 1994, began to serve China in 2000 and was expanded across the Asia-Pacific region at the end of 2012.
BeiDou is intended to become a global positioning and navigation system by around 2020.The National Association of Evangelicals recently issued a new resolution on capital punishment recognizing Christians who work to abolish the death penalty.
The new statement is not a call to abolish the death penalty altogether but it flags both social and theological concerns and affirms the growing movement of evangelicals who are against the death penalty.
This may not sound like breaking news, especially after Pope Francis's charismatic call to Congress to abolish the death penalty last month. But here's why the NAE's announcement is a big deal. In addition to being distinguished by a personal relationship with Jesus and a high view of Scripture, evangelicals have provided an unwavering political base and a solid theological backbone for the death penalty in America -- until now.
The NAE represents some 10 million Christians, one of the largest faith groups in the country -- with over 45,000 congregations from nearly 40 different denominations. And it's pro-death penalty position has not changed since 1973.
While evangelicals have been champions for life on abortion, we've been the cheerleaders for death when it comes to execution. Over 85 percent of executions in the last 40 years have been in the Bible belt. As death penalty scholar and death row chaplain Dale Recinella puts it, "The Bible belt has become the death belt." The death penalty has succeeded in America, not in spite of Christians, but because of us.
The word "evangelical" comes from the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον and it means "good news." At the center of this "good news" is a belief that no one is beyond redemption.
We sing songs like "Amazing Grace" that insist on God's power to save sinners. We have doctrines stating that Jesus died so that we might be spared death. The Scripture we love so much is filled with murderers who were given a second chance -- leaders like Moses, David, Saul of Tarsus. The Bible would be much shorter without grace. But for far too long we've missed the fact that every time we execute someone we undermine the very message of God's redeeming love.
We can see this even in recent executions like Kelly Gissendaner who was executed just last month in Georgia. Gissendaner embraced her Christian faith behind bars, earned her theological degree, reconciled with her kids, became an exemplary model of rehabilitation loved deeply by prisoners and guards alike. She shared the good news of God's love with dozens in prison and had the support of hundreds of pastors and tens of thousands of people, including Pope Francis.
Still, Gissendaner was executed by lethal injection in the state of Georgia by a governor who shares her Christian faith. As Gissendaner died, she sang "Amazing Grace." Among the last words to come from her lips were: "How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me."
With the statement of the NAE, I believe we got one step closer to the end of the death penalty. Grace has a foot in the door of evangelicalism. The new resolution is one small step for the NAE, but it is one giant leap for abolition.
Last year, death sentences hit a 40-year low, and the number of executions were the lowest they've been in 20 years. A new Gallup poll shows that opposition for the death penalty is the highest it's been in 43 years, around the time the NAE wrote its original pro-death statement in 1973. Among those whose support for the death penalty is fading are white evangelicals.
Perhaps it's no coincidence that two of the NAE Board members leading the charge against the death penalty are young Latinos -- Gabriel Salguero and Samuel Rodriguez, Jr. -- providing promising signs that just as America is changing, so is evangelicalism. Six months ahead of the NAE, the National Latino Evangelical Coalition unanimously passed an unambiguous call to abolish the death penalty.
But here's more good news. Recent studies show that the evangelicals who are for the death penalty are aging out. While younger evangelicals may not agree on all the hot topics, such as sexuality, the death penalty is a no-brainer for many. A recent Barna study showed that millennial Christians are overwhelmingly against capital punishment. And they are against it -- not in spite of their faith, but because of their faith. They cannot reconcile execution with Jesus who said, "Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy." Of Americans as a whole, only 5 percent say they think Jesus supports the death penalty.
While many of us would have loved the NAE to go a little further and issue an unambiguous call to abolish the death penalty, it is remarkable that the resolution names the inherent flaws in the contemporary practice of the death penalty, things like "eyewitness error, coerced confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, racial disparities, incompetent counsel, inadequate instruction to juries, judges who override juries that do not vote for the death penalty and improper sentencing of those who lack the mental capacity to understand their crime."
So, yes, I am proud of the NAE for affirming those evangelicals among us who are fueled by our faith to abolish the death penalty. I will feel even prouder when we actually end it, especially if evangelicals are on the front lines of this pro-life movement.
A generation from now, I sure hope that a post-death-penalty world looks back and sees Christians standing on the side of life... in the name of the executed and risen Christ.Anti-War Class Action Lawsuit Gets Final Approval
Vodak Class Action Lawsuit
Great News!
Yesterday, November 7, 2012, the Judge presiding over the Vodak class action civil rights lawsuit granted the motion for final approval of the class action settlement and approved an award for our attorneys’ fees and costs. You can find the motion for final approval of the class claims here.
What’s Next?
On January 7, 2013, the City of Chicago is obligated to provide the Claims Administrator with the money to fund the class members’ settlement awards.
Class members should receive their settlement checks in the mail from the Claims Administrator within 30 days thereafter. (Note, if your address has changed since you submitted your claims forms, you need to contact the Claims Administrator to ensure you get your settlement award).
Class members must deposit or otherwise cash their settlement checks before April 6, 2013 or the money will go back to the City of Chicago.
If you do not get your check by February 7, 2013, please contact the Claims Administrator at www.chicagoantiwarprotestsettlement.com or at:
Vodak v. City of Chicago Claims Administrator
c/o Class Action Administration, Inc.
PO Box 6848
Broomfield, CO 80021
Telephone (toll-free): 1(877)926-4750The Government is resorting to desperate measures to try to mask the extent of their failure on teacher recruitment. They have:
o Stripped out undergraduate trainees from their target number for trainees, so that the target appears lower overall.
o Included Teach First trainees for the first time in the number of postgraduate trainees recruited, to give the appearance that they have hit a higher percentage of their target than the year before – this is not the case.
o Refused in Parliamentary written answers to publish the combined target for both undergraduate and postgraduate trainees for 2015/16, which would allow the data to be comparable to previous years, claiming that the information is “not available”. Yet, the target for the following year has already been published.
o At the last minute, brought forwards the publication of the data to the week before it was originally scheduled.
New analysis shows that for every year under the Tories the number of trainee teachers recruited has fallen. The total number of trainees recruited for 2015/16 is now 7,000 fewer than for 2009/10.Despite this, the Tories are intentionally misleading the public, claiming that the number increased in the last year.
Lucy Powell MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said:
“This is desperate stuff from a Government that is storing up huge problems for our schools with their failure on teacher recruitment and retention. Whilst half of all schools had unfilled positions at the start of this year, it is obvious to both parents and school leaders that the situation is extremely serious, and yet Ministers are now trying to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. All the while, standards are being threatened as schools are forced to turn to unqualified staff, temporary supply teachers, non-specialists, and larger class sizes to cope with the chronic shortages in the profession.
Ensuring that there are enough excellent teachers in our schools is fundamental to ensuring that all children get a great education. The Government’s failure on this extremely basic issue is risking the education of our young people.”Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday that "terrorists" were applauding his US counterpart Donald Trump for launching a missile strike on an airbase of his Syrian government ally.
But he backed calls for an independent inquiry into a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northwestern Syria on Tuesday that Trump blamed on the Damascus regime.
"This man who is now in office in America claimed that he wanted to fight terrorism but today all terrorists in Syria are celebrating the US attack," Rouhani said in a speech aired by state television.
"Why have you attacked the Syrian army which is at war with terrorists? Under what law or authority did you launch your missiles at this independent country?"
Iran and Russia are the closest allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
They have provided him with military support not only against jihadists like the Islamic State group and former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham Front that are targeted by a US-led coalition but also against other rebels they deem "terrorists" too.
Satellite image released of Syrian air-strike target
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Both governments have defended their Damascus ally against Western allegations that it carried out a chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun on Tuesday, killing dozens of civilians.
Rouhani called for "an independent commission" by "impartial countries" into the claims.
"According to the United Nations, the Syrian government does not possess chemical weapons," he said.
Rouhani was referring to the UN-supervised destruction of the Damascus regime's chemical arsenal under a 2013 agreement between Washington and Moscow.
On Friday, hours after the US missile strike, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Western allegations were "bogus".
Syrian army spokesman on US attack
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He likened them to the claims that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction which premised the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 but which later turned out to be baseless.
It comes after US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told reporters that he plans to announce additional economic sanctions aimed at Syria in the near future.
"We expect that those (sanctions) will continue to have an important effect on preventing people from doing business with them," Mnuchin said on Friday.
"These sanctions are very important and we will use them the maximum effect."
US Ambassador Nikki Haley has delivered a warning at an emergency session of the UN Security Council.
"The United States took a very measured step last night," Haley told the council.
"We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary."
Turnbull Government backs US strike in Syria US strike fallout: Syria's future hangs in the balance Putin calls US strikes on Syria illegal
Haley said the strike destroyed an air field from which Washington believes Damascus launched the attack on rebel-held Khan Sheikhun, where 86 people including 27 children died this week.
"We were fully justified in doing so," she said.
Russia accuses US
The United States did not seek Security Council authorisation for the military action that followed days of global outrage at images of dead children from the suspected sarin gas attack.
It was Trump's biggest military decision since taking office and marked a dramatic escalation in American involvement in Syria's protracted war.
"The United States attacked the territory of sovereign Syria," Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told the council, denouncing a "flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression."A protester carries an upside down American flag in a protest against Donald Trump in New York on Nov. 9. (Photo: Julie Jacobson/AP) More
As progressives search for the next step in a world where Republicans will control the White House, both chambers of Congress and the majority of statehouses and governor’s mansions, the nascent anti-Trump resistance movement has been doing civil disobedience outside Trump Tower, pushing for bipartisan congressional investigations into Russian election meddling and itching to expose his Cabinet nominees’ conflicts of interest with the hope of sinking one — or perhaps even two or three — of them. Green Party-led recount pushes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin drew national attention but in the end had little impact, other than to recertify Trump’s win, and Democratic efforts to urge Republican electors to vote their conscience, not their party, similarly sputtered.
Still, the liberal resistance to Trumpism has only started to gear up for what will probably be a series of epic battles around touchstone issues of race, immigration, health care and authoritarianism itself. Trump is weighted down by a 43 percent approval rating, making him the least popular newly elected president in the past half century. As the liberal-left works to organize in this environment, it confronts a set of opportunities, as well as tough questions about the path forward: Who should be the leaders of this resistance? Which strategies and tactics should they employ? What organizations and institutions could prove to be the savviest and most influential in curbing Trump’s authoritarian tendencies?
Jo Walter of Bremerton, Wash., wears a large Donald Trump head as she protests Electoral College voting on Dec. 19 in Olympia, Wash. (Photo: Elaine Thompson/AP) More
The answers will have implications not just for politics but also for the entire country during the coming Trump era. And the paths forward are in part illustrated by America’s rich history of political resistance on the left and the right — a legacy that’s both fraught and inspiring, filled with blinking yellow lights and solid-green guideposts. The resistance leaders will have at least four modes of viable dissent as they seek to launch a robust movement that can block some of the most feared aspects of Trump’s agenda.
Direct action. Though conservatives typically decry antiwar and other street demonstrations as emblems of a time defined by left-wing excesses that contravened political norms and moral behavior, the nonviolent mass protests of the 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s offer clues to potent models of political and cultural dissent. Nonviolent marches helped pressure elected leaders to overturn segregation in the South and expand legal rights and social protections for women. Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations made it harder for policymakers to prosecute the war with the free hand they sought. President Ronald Reagan’s refusal to recognize the threat of HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis provoked mass protests, which pricked the country’s conscience and ultimately led to more funding for research and better treatments.
The biggest demonstration in Boston’s history happened on Vietnam Moratorium Day in 1969 as an estimated 100,000 people shouted that they wanted the Vietnam War ended “Now!” (Photo: Paul Connell/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) MoreMichael O'Neill hopes the Qatar game will be the ideal warm-up before facing Romania
Northern Ireland will take on 2022 World Cup hosts Qatar in a friendly at Crewe Alexandra on 31 May.
The fixture at Gresty Road in England will be used by Northern Ireland as preparation for the Euro 2016 qualifier against Romania in Belfast on 13 June.
"This match will help us retain our focus as a squad as we prepare for the crucial match against Romania," said Northern Ireland boss Michael O'Neill.
There has been controversy over Qatar's suitability to host the World Cup.
Qatar was awarded the 2022 tournament in 2010, and Fifa subsequently cleared it of corruption in the bidding process despite a series of allegations.
Northern Ireland's remaining Euro 2016 Group F qualifiers Finland (home) Sunday, 29 March 2015 Romania (home) Saturday, 13 June 2015 Faroe Islands (away) Friday, 4 September 2015 Hungary (home) Monday, 7 September 2015 Greece (home) Thursday, 8 October 2015 Finland (away) Sunday, 11 October 2015
However, a Fifa taskforce has recommended that the tournament should take place in November and December because of summer temperatures in the Gulf state, which can exceed 40C.
June temperatures in Crewe average a slightly more manageable 19C.
Northern Ireland are also hoping to set up a friendly meeting with Wales as they attempt to hone their squad in the British off-season.
The current focus is on a friendly against Scotland at Hampden Park on 25 March followed by a European Championship qualifier with Finland at Windsor Park four days later.
O'Neill's team sit second in Group F after an impressive start to the campaign, with three victories in their four qualifiers.
The only defeat came against leaders Romania in November and Northern Ireland are well placed to secure a spot in next year's finals in France.While speaking at a South Carolina town hall last week, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said gun laws to protect lives isn’t necessary just like it isn’t necessary to pass fencing laws to keep kids from drowning. There’s one problem: he actually did pass a pool fencing law as Florida governor to help prevent kids from drowning.
“Tragedies… a child drowned in a pool and the impulse is to pass a law that puts fencing around pools,” said Bush. “Well, it may not change it. Or you have a car accident and the impulse is to pass a law that deals with that unique event.”
“And the cumulative effect of this is, in some cases, you don’t solve the problem by passing the law, and you’re imposing on large numbers of people burdens that make it harder for our economy to grow, make it hard to protect liberty.”
Bush’s Florida pool bill passed in the Florida legislature by a 109-8 vote in 2000. The law itself isn’t bad. It was a good move. However, Bush could have used a better example to push his pro-gun agenda. It’s true that stronger gun laws won’t completely eradicate gun violence, but it will surely have a strong effect in tapering the violence.
It’s crazy, but this is the kind of logic we can expect from someone who said “stuff happens” when it comes to mass shootings.
For more on this story, visit Addicting Info “Against Gun Laws, Jeb! Says You Don’t Pass Laws To Prevent Drowning Either, Even Though He Did”Here it is! Fluttershy's House as a Cuckoo Clock! Fluttershy comes out every hour and says YAY! 5 times - every 2 seconds for 10 seconds while Pinkie Pie joyfully swings below 24 hours a day!!! It is a real working cuckoo clock. It is over 18 inches tall!EBAY : [link] VIDEO : [link] UPDATE : Due to popular demand she now says YAY!Sorry, but this one is not going to be cheap because I spent A LOT of time on this one but if you are looking for some really "over the top" pony stuff then look no further! Be the envy of every brony that comes to your house!Okay, so first off, this project took forever!! I hate painting and I am not very good at it and this was by far the most painting I have done. I also had to bypass the electronics of the clock and create my own and then I had to make a few versions of each pony before I got the weight right so Fluttershy could come out and go back inside and so Pinkie would swing properly. There was a lot of design that went into this one on top of everything else but I wanted to make something truly unique. I love it. The pictures don't do it justice and the video and sound are lousy because I was in a hurry - sorry.Anyway, it was made by me out of clay, paint, blood, sweat and tears.Commissions are : OPENby Brett Stevens on July 17, 2012
Giving up is a popular idea. Rock bands laud the collapse, political writers urge us on toward it, and popular sentiment is of a “throw the bastards out” mentality.
It will always be popular to say that what we have is broken and needs to be overthrown. First of all, this is an emotionally and visually satisfying image: a clean start, a removal of all the bad. Second, as a distant possibility, this is a socially safe opinion to have, in that it will rarely require action.
Destruction of the existing order is tempting because it is the ultimate group activity. You can unite people easily on nothing more than discontent, and when they’re discontented, they want to hear something that sounds like a total, final and powerful solution.
Of course, this is appearance and not reality. Destroying one system of government most commonly entails its replacement with something that is almost completely the same, just in the hands of new masters with their ideological concerns first and foremost.
Two hilarious examples are France and Russia. The French overthrew their monarchy in favor of a bloody people’s regime that quickly turned imperial with Napoleon. Similarly, the Bolsheviks overthrew their monarchy and soon had imperial leaders like Josef Stalin. In both cases, the new regime was more abusive than the old and less effective, but created by popular demand.
It will be the same with overthrowing our current governments. Unless someone has a clear concept of how to create a society on a totally different model, we will follow one of the existing ways of running a civilization. That will be either monarchy, socialism, the open-air bazaar that is both third world oligarchy and globalism, or a purely anarchistic local warlord system like much of the developing world.
People like to insist that revolution is the only option because it allows them to continue the fiction that they are oppressed, which requires that (a) they be innocent and (b) there be an oppressor, which conveniently explains away all their failings. This is pure pretense emerging from our glorious simian heritage; even monkeys learn early on that it’s better to look good in public than to be right.
Saying that we should destroy our existing civilization is equivalent to a command to drop the reins now, and stop struggling, because the end is not only inevitable but good. It’s akin to saying we should give up now and plan for the future, which in the hands of your average human translates to “do whatever it is you want and ignore the future.”
What is needed instead is to give up on the instance of our system that exists. We have a basically good idea, but this cycle got corrupted, so we need to re-discover the principles underlying our society, both abstract stated principles like ideals, and unstated organic principles like our concept of nation.
The “new” and “revolutionary” is a distraction. The current version of our society is rotted because it is misinterpreting our values. The solution is not to throw everything out and start over, but to re-interpret those values in a sane way and re-build from within.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.As oil prices continue to slide in search for a market-set equilibrium in a post-OPEC world, companies such as Husky Energy Inc. are remaking themselves to withstand the new environment for as long as it takes, while squeezing every advantage they can get. And if that means looking to greener pastures outside Alberta, then so be it.
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‘It is self-evident to everybody that we are into uncharted territory and the old rules of OPEC calling the shots are no longer valid,’ says Husky CEO.
Continue reading.
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As Ghosh put it in a call with analysts Tuesday: “We have to consider jurisdictional competitiveness, if Alberta gets out of step with other regions, investment will move.”
At the start of the oil price collapse, the fixes by Canadian oil companies were all about the low hanging fruit — investment cuts, layoffs, dividend cuts, squeezing suppliers.
Today, with the price crash stretching into a second year, it’s about managing to the fullest to build resilience at all price levels. To that end, Husky, which has operations across Canada, in the East Coast, in Asia and in the United States, is picking projects that make money at the most conservative oil price assumptions, transitioning the company away from higher-cost to lower-cost production, shuffling money to higher-return regions, and eliminating oil discounts where possible.
The shift is evident in Husky’s investment plans for next year, announced Tuesday.
Spending will be trimmed to about $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion in 2016, from $3.1 billion in 2015, and from $5.1 billion in 2014; the break-even oil price used for planning purposes is being pushed down to sub-US$40 West Texas Intermediate, from the mid-US$50s last year; more cash is going to production that requires low sustaining capital, like thermal heavy oil projects in Saskatchewan.
Meanwhile, Husky is in discussion to sell some of its crown jewels, including part of its midstream business (pipelines and oil tanks in the Lloydmister area) and royalty lands that produce 2,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day across British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Proceeds will be used to reduce debt.
They are a big step for the long-established Alberta company, majority owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, so focused in the past on growing and diversifying and returning cash to shareholders.
But new times call for new measures, and Ghosh believes OPEC is history. And even if it isn’t, he argues, it’s the only sensible assumption companies like Husky can make. The cartel initiated a price war against North American producers in late 2014 that slashed oil prices by two-thirds. On Friday, when OPEC members met to review their strategy, they decided to keep pumping at record levels in a saturated market, convinced they will push competitors out of business, while deepening discord within.
“It’s self-evident to everybody that we are into uncharted territory and the old rules of OPEC calling the shots are no longer valid,” Ghosh said. “We must change the business structurally such that the requirements of the business for sustaining capital keep going down.”
It’s unfortunate that Alberta, which should have benefited from OPEC’s demise due to its massive oil reserves, has lost attractiveness as an oil investment destination.
With the new NDP government raising corporate taxes, implementing a controversial
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law” in pursuit of a “rainbow utopia.”
Repeating the Religious Right line that Justices Ruth Bader Kingsburg and Elena Kagan should have recused themselves from the case because they have officiated legal same-sex marriages, Farris suggested setting up a “tribunal” to review recusal motions for Supreme Court justices. If such a body existed, Farris insisted, the marriage decision “would have gone 4-3 in the other direction.”
As it is, he said, the Supreme Court just threw the entire institution of the courts out the window: “I have a hard time imagining myself standing before the Supreme Court and saying ‘your honor’ or ‘Justice.’ They’re politicians in black robes, they’re acting as a legislature. And the entire institution of our courts and our judiciary and respect for the law all have been thrown away by the Supreme Court of the United States in pursuit of this rainbow utopia. It’s crazy.”
Farris also discussed ways for churches to avoid public accommodation laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, implying that churches will be forced to perform weddings for gay or lesbian couples. (In reality, churches are not forced to perform marriages they disagree with.)
“If a church gets attacked legally on this basis, they should fight, they should defend,” he said, adding that “it’s far, far better to be in trouble with a gay rights group in court than it is to be in trouble with Almighty God for participating in evil.”This is a video of a prototype of C.elegans swimming locomotion simulation for the OpenWorm project.
The worm body, including a 1-to-1 mapping of all muscle cells was constructed by Andrey Palyanov, the Sibernetic engine that runs the fluid mechanics of the environment and worm body was developed by Andrey Palyanov and Sergey Khayrulin. The scripting layer that issues muscle contractions was coded by Mike Vella.
Immediate next steps will be plugging muscle cell electrophysiology into the model using spiking models for C. elegans muscle cells optimised by Mike Vella against experimental data, and comparing C. elegans locomotion patterns to experimental recordings.
As if this was not exciting enough we are also progressing towards hooking up the worm simulation in Geppetto. This will allow us not only to run the simulation but also to let people play and interact with it from their browsers.
The ultimate scientific goal of OpenWorm is, obviously, plugging the entire worm brain (302 neurons) into this model to test hypotheses and understand more about how behaviour is generated.
Exciting times ahead!Washington (CNN) The conservative House Freedom Caucus said Wednesday it is supporting a plan aimed at bridging the internal Republican Party divide between moderates and conservatives on health care reform.
The proposal would give states the chance to apply for waivers that could gut several core Obamacare insurance reforms that protect consumers with pre-existing conditions, including requiring insurers are required to cover certain benefits and remove the ban on allowing carriers to charge more based on a person's health history.
The Freedom Caucus backing could remove a major obstacle to passing a bill that repeals much of the Affordable Care Act, giving House Republicans and President Donald Trump a major victory that has escaped them over the past two months. But there is no guarantee GOP moderates will go along and the bill faces an uphill climb in the Senate.
The amendment unveiled Tuesday was negotiated between Rep. Tom MacArthur, a New Jersey moderate, and conservative House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of North Carolina.
The Freedom Caucus made public its support of the proposal in a statement Wednesday.
"While the revised version still does not fully repeal Obamacare, we are prepared to support it to keep our promise to the American people to lower healthcare costs," the caucus said in their statement.
The proposal was intended to appeal to the Freedom Caucus members -- who have long advocated states need more flexibility to drive down insurance premiums -- but the amendment also includes a provision that guarantees members of Congress and their staffs would still get the Obamacare regulatory protections that could be gutted for other consumers. That optics of that weren't sitting well on Capitol Hill just hours after the amendment was unveiled even though multiple House GOP aides said that including the provision was necessary in order to comply with a special set of Senate rules.
According to a senior GOP aide, leaders were already promising Wednesday morning that once the health care bill as passed, members of Congress would vote separately to ensure that members wouldn't be exempted from the new rules, but it's a rocky start for an amendment that was intended to get Republicans back on track to repeal and replace Obamacare.
McArthur's office responded to the criticism of special treatment in a statement: "Congressman MacArthur does not believe members of Congress or their staff should receive special treatment and is working with House leadership to make absolutely clear that members of Congress and staff are subject to the same rules, provisions, and protections as all other Americans."
The exemption issue isn't the only problem with the new amendment, however. There are still questions of whether the amendment will actually get Republican leaders any closer to passing their health care bill.
One Republican aide who has worked closely on the health care bill said "this probably is not the silver bullet everyone's been looking for."
While conservative group Club For Growth came out in support of the amendment Wednesday morning, there are major questions as to whether the new changes get moderates any closer to supporting House leadership's bill.
Moderates already had concerns that previous versions did not do enough to protect poorer, sicker and older Americans. Experts warn that the MacArthur amendment could allow insurers to charger those consumers more.
But some Republicans -- all of whom were already supporting a previous version of the health care bill -- were sounding optimistic Wednesday morning that the amendment was at the very least progress.
"We clearly had a very productive dialogue led by Tom MacArthur and Mark Meadows over the break and you could just sense the movement and the desire to get something done," said Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican. "We're not there yet, but we're awfully close."
Rep. Mark Walker, the leader of the Republican Study Committee, said that while leadership didn't put a "concrete timeline" on when a vote on the health care bill would happen he said "I do believe there will be a vote on this by early next week."
During the GOP conference meeting Wednesday morning, members said that Republican Whip Steve Scalise announced that the whip team would begin counting votes this week to see if the amendment was moving the ball.Business barometer falls as political uncertainty looms
Business confidence among companies operating in Cambodia has dropped to its lowest level in years on the perceived decline in political stability and anxiety over next year’s general elections, and will likely cool investor appetite for the foreseeable future, according to a new survey by ANZ Royal Bank.
The ANZ Royal Business Confidence Index, a benchmark that takes its data from businesses surveyed across the industry, agriculture and services sectors, rated overall business confidence in Cambodia at 76 out of 100, down seven points compared to last year’s survey.
“The overall score of business confidence for the next 12 months dropped to the lowest point of all waves of the study,” according to the report, which has been published annually since 2014.
“The decline of overall confidence could derive from the increasing competition in the market, perceived political instability and the uncertainty of the coming elections, deterring business from investments in the near term,” it added.
The overall drop in confidence was weighted heavily by two-thirds of businesses surveyed, primarily small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), reporting that they expected lower volumes of revenue growth compared to previous years, with the exception of the agricultural sector, which showed renewed vigour.
Large-scale businesses, which raised the same concerns as SMEs, however reported little change in confidence, something the report attributed to well-established business planning.
While the survey noted that there were some positive indicators in expected turnover and business growth due to ongoing performance that secures room for future expansion, these points were muted by political concerns. Companies also reported that they did not foresee expanding existing investments to scale up potential on fears of a loss of consumer sentiment.
However, key drivers for business growth largely remained the same with regards to access to a low-cost labour force and improved tax-collection initiatives that were perceived as levelling the playing field by targeting those that garnered unfair advantages by underpaying their obligations.
Corruption once again remained the key issue for businesses, while a lack of infrastructure, quality of education and the high cost of utilities that incur a heavy cost for operations were also a concern for those surveyed.
David Totten, director of Emerging Markets Consulting, said that while the report showed that the majority of barriers had been reduced significantly, it was hard to reconcile the overall drop in confidence, especially among the SME sector.
“The interesting question is, therefore, what the reasons for their lower confidence and income and growth expectations are, relative to larger corporations?” he said yesterday.
“Economic policymakers in many countries strive for a robust SME sector to generate economic growth. So, based on this data, a downturn in SME confidence is not a positive indicator.”
David Van, local managing director of the Bower Group Asia, said that downturn in confidence should be expected as long as pre-election jitters prevail.
“It’s been common practice in Cambodia that during every preelectoral cycle, businesses, whether local or foreign, tend to go at a slower pace as the public is watching with concern the tension rising, [with] public protests in the past and expected in the upcoming electoral period,” he said.
The report also noted that since the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was launched in late 2015, businesses perceived that the regional economic bloc’s inclusive impacts, with cross-border benefits, and increased risk from competition, had failed to materialise as anticipated.
Van said that while the AEC had been hyped by governments as promoting a more liberal trade environment, it has not served as the game changer it was billed as.
“It’s well known also that only the more-developed ASEAN member states would benefit from the AEC concept of freer movement of goods and services, but less-developed member states with weak regulatory framework like Cambodia, Laos or Myanmar would still struggle hard,” he said.
Sophal Ear, an associate professor of world affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles, said that it was no surprise that politics have caused business sentiment to turn for the worse.
“It’s not just political uncertainty with the upcoming elections that has eroded high levels of business confidence,” he said. “It’s the arbitrary and capricious political environment in which no dissent will be brooked.”
He added that businesses “need customers who are happy and buying, not customers who are angry and afraid”.No matter how normal President Trump is when it comes to religion, the national media enjoy regularly jolting the public into a new anxiety with suggestions that the administration is about to send gays to mandatory conversion therapy.
Politico on Tuesday reported that the White House was set to sign a "highly controversial" executive order on religious freedom.
Of course when the media put "controversial" and "religious freedom" together, the subtext is: The Westboro Baptist Church is crafting policy.
The Democratic National Committee sent out a prophetic news blast with warnings about the order "allowing state-sponsored discrimination of the LGBT community."
The Human Rights Campaign shared Politico's story on social media, calling the order a "license to discriminate."
When the White House published the full order on Thursday, it said in effect that federal agencies should relax rules on leaders of tax-exempt religious institutions engaging in overtly political speech.
It said nothing about discrimination, gay or transgender issues.
But no matter. Mainstream Americans were properly shaken by the media into believing that Trump was on the verge of personally snatching up gay wedding cakes.
A similar episode played out in late January when the Washington Post's Josh Rogin caused a stir and reported that he was "told reliably there is a draft executive order on LGBT issues including adoption" circulating and that it "could allow federal employees to refuse to serve LGBT based on belief marriage is between man and woman or gender is immutable from birth."
For extra clarity, this was a draft.
There are likely lots of drafts that float around the Washington Post newsroom containing bad ideas, bad writing and that go unpublished, entirely ignored by the editor (most of them are Richard Cohen columns).
Orders signed by the president are no different. Many are drafted, very few make the cut.
The White House instead issued a statement saying that Trump "continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights" and that a 2014 order by former President Obama "which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact…"
That's a nice statement but regular people were already pumped with adrenaline by Rogin and other reporters who wanted to conjure up images of Vice President Mike Pence praying the gays away.
The New York Times last month ran an editorial saying that Trump's support for LGBT people has been "exposed" as a "fallacy," in part because his justice and education departments "withdrew [Obama-era] guidance issued to schools on the treatment of transgender students, signaling that it would no longer consider their rights to be protected under a 1972 civil rights law."
Average person: That sounds vague and scary!
And that was the Times' intention.
The guidelines issued by the Obama administration asked that public schools allow transgender students to use restroom facilities of their choice, based on the sex they feel they identify with.
Trump's administration nullified those guidelines on the grounds that the court system has not uniformly determined that a person's "sex" is a biological matter (as opposed to a feeling) and so the issue is best worked out by individual states, rather than by federal agency "guidelines" that aren't settled into law.
Average person: Oh, okay! Hold on while I cancel my subscription to the Times!
True, the Trump administration hasn't done anything to advance gay and transgender rights. But he didn't run on social issues and there's no indication he plans to change his mind now.
All evidence suggests Trump is fully indifferent to any policy areas that exercise the queer studies wing of the Democratic Party.
Asked immediately after the election what he thought of same-sex marriage, he said it's "fine."
During the 2016 campaign, he was asked on NBC's "Today" to comment on the dumb transgender bathroom controversy in North Carolina.
"Leave it the way it is right now," Trump said. "There have been very few problems the way it is. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble."
Anyone looking for a fight on LGBT issues won't find it in this administration.
Eddie Scarry is a media reporter for the Washington Examiner.Stocks surged Monday after Wall Street got its early Christmas present -- a bill that would cut taxes for many businesses and that could be signed by President Trump before the holiday.
The Dow climbed more than 200 points in early trading, or about 1%, and was above 24,850, a record high.
The Dow is up more than 25% in 2017, led by blue chips Boeing (BA), Caterpillar (CAT), Apple (AAPL), Visa (V), McDonald's (MCD) and Walmart (WMT). All those stocks have soared at least 40%.
And the Nasdaq, home to hot tech stocks like Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Google (GOOGL) owner Alphabet, topped 7,000 on Monday for the first time. It is up 30% this year.
The S&P 500 also rose by about 1% and hit an all-time high. All three indexes closed at records on Friday in anticipation of the release of the tax bill by Republican congressional leaders.
The biggest boost for Corporate America would be the slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. That could boost profits significantly for big banks, according to a report from Goldman Sachs.
Financial stocks, unsurprisingly, were among the biggest gainers Monday. JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC) each rose more than 1% shortly after the opening bell.
Businesses would also be charged a one-time low tax rate on foreign profits of 15%. That's an incentive for multinational firms to bring back cash sitting in lower-tax countries.
Related: Here's what is in the GOP's final tax plan
The hope is that this cash will be used to boost dividends and stock buybacks, build new plants in the United States and hire more workers.
The House is expected to vote on the tax bill Tuesday, and the Senate is expected to vote either Tuesday after the House or Wednesday. The bill is expected to pass on party lines.
Stocks have been rallying all year because of strong economic growth and hopes that President Trump would roll back regulations to help stimulate the economy.
Related: No bears here! Market on the verge of making history
Even though Trump's effort to repeal Obamacare failed in Congress, many investors had remained optimistic that Trump would strike a deal with lawmakers on taxes.
And that's one of the main reasons that the Dow is inching closer to the 25,000 milestone, after already having passed the 20,000, 21,000, 22,000, 23,000 and 24,000 levels this year.Flickr/Alexander Kachkaev
As OpenStreetMap grows, companies like Mapbox are a threat to the long reign of Google Maps. And that’s a good thing.
Maps may be a necessity of an empire, as Paul Ford writes on the rise of Google Maps in The New Republic this week, but whether that empire belongs wholly to Google is up for debate. Right now, the entire digital mapping industry is being re-mapped. Last week, Mapbox, a map development company based in Washington, D.C., announced that it has raised some $52.55 million in Series B funding, a sum CEO Eric Gunderson called the biggest ever for a mapping company. Mapbox doesn’t exactly make maps, though. It builds towers of software that organize sets of geo-spatial data for other kinds of businesses—real estate, transportation, agriculture, government, smartphone apps. Take, for example, the Foursquare app, which Mapbox powers:
It layers information about a variety of destinations, and what Foursquare users think about them, on top of a pre-existing street map. Mapbox builds the software that enables this “stack” of geo-spatial data sets.
Ditto for the interactive maps on the United Nations Development Program’s website, which charts thousands of U.N. projects and their funding in 177 countries. Mapbox’s tools helped build this:
What’s key here is the basemap underpinning the above examples. You can see its tiny attributions in the corners: OpenStreetMap (OSM). Though Mapbox uses a mix of open-source, public-domain, and proprietary sources to generate maps, it relies heavily on OSM data as the bedrock of many of its products. Founded in 2004 by Steve Coast, a British entrepreneur and cartographile, OSM is a totally free and open-source map of the world. Like Wikipedia, it is constantly being updated by a community of now more than two million members, who use GPS tools, satellite photographs, and their own local knowledge. Anyone can edit it. Many argue—and studies have shown—that the breadth of its team of contributors has given rise to data that is as good or even better than Google Maps. Community members verify new entries and correct mistakes. And anyone—including businesses—can use the OSM API to build their own maps. (Think of an API, as the New York Times once put it, as a “programmers-only side entrance” into the mapmaking machine.) OSM is not a household name like Google, but it may be soon. Google Maps defines the way we navigate from A to B, for free, and it does so extremely well. It also sells its API to its a number of businesses. As of 2012, Apple, Foursquare, Craigslist, and Wikipedia (to name just a few) all built their maps using the Google Maps API.
But today, none of those companies are using Google—partly because of how much Google started to charge for its services and data, and because of the limitations it draws around what companies can do with them. All four of the aforementioned companies moved to using OSM (partially, in Apple’s case) because it’s free, and often as good as Google. And because the value of proprietary map data is rapidly plummeting as OSM gets better and better.
A side-by-side comparison of Central Park in Google Maps (L) and OpenStreetMap (R).
The world-mapping empire Besides OSM, there are three other global data sets: Google, TomTom, and Nokia’s HERE. You know Google’s map-making empire very well. The company employs a small army of professional mappers, editors, developers, designers, and 3-D-camera-mounted-van drivers to build and maintain its digital map. TomTom and HERE have similar, if smaller, operations, and they sell their data to other companies like Google does. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... But it’s extremely costly to sustain these massive mapmaking operations through licensing schemes alone. Nokia is learning that lesson right now. The Finnish IT corporation purchased HERE, formerly known as Navteq, for more than $8 billion in 2007. Since then, HERE has aggressively competed to create digital maps as advanced as Google’s. But in April, Nokia announced that HERE was for sale. Bids from companies ranging from Uber to Microsoft to a suite of carmakers have rolled in around the $2 and $3 billion mark. It’s a lot of money, but compared to what Nokia originally paid for, it’s bargain-bin. That confirms what Mapbox seems to have known for a long time: that the value of proprietary map data is approaching zero. In large part, that’s because of free sources like OSM. It’s not the only way the geo-spatial landscape has rapidly evolved. “Ten years ago, maps were all about a navigation-use case,” writes Marc Prioleau, a location-based services expert who sits on Mapbox’s board of directors. “We looked at streets, addresses, POIs, maybe a little traffic. That's not true today. Today, it's about imagery, social media, real-time content, and much more. And three years from now, there will be only more data”—especially as location-based sensors increasingly populate the built environment. Mapbox’s suite of data-organizing services is flexible, customizable, and cheap—because they’re getting some of their most fundamental data for free. Google is not. According to some market research, the location-based-services industry will be worth some $40 billion by 2019. That’s what Mapbox is tapping into, and what its investors are betting huge chips on.
Slightly strange bedfellows Mapbox may be getting OSM data for free, but since its inception in 2010 it has made a point of collaborating extremely closely with the project. “We think of Mapbox as an OSM company,” says Gunderson. “We believe OSM is going to win.” The company tasks a number of staff members with editing and improving the map daily. It also hosts mapping parties and workshops, helps organize yearly conferences, and regularly submits donations. Shortly after Mapbox announced its fresh round of funding, it donated $20,000 to the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF.), the non-profit, volunteer-staffed entity that supports the project. “Geospatial data is a project that’s too big solve by a single commercial entity with a business model based on commercializing that data,” says Alex Barth, who heads data at Mapbox. “Open collaboration around global map data is the future of maps. That’s it.” But there are obvious tensions, particularly as more eyes turn to OSM as a profitable data set, and to Mapbox, as the most successful company yet to have turned a profit from it. Some—though not all—OSM members are wary of commercial entities coming into “productify” what is an open-source, community-driven project. OSM’s license states that all uses (private, commercial, government, humanitarian) of its data are equally permissible, so long as the user gives proper attribution, and shares back to the OSM community any improvements to the map that she makes public.
“There are people who spend hours and hours every week on OSM, as volunteers,” says Kate Chapman, a director of the board of OSMF. “Those individual contributions are what makes the map so rich and detailed, so you know, the idea that someone would be getting rich off their efforts—which is an oversimplification—but, you can imagine not everyone’s going to be OK with that.” These tensions bubbled up earlier this month in a meeting at State of the Map U.S., an OSM conference held in Manhattan. More than 800 gathered from the commercial, humanitarian, and government mapping worlds. Mapbox was highly engaged in the event, as a conference co-sponsor and with a number of employees giving talks—including Barth, who was particularly visible. In one discussion facilitated by Barth, conversation quickly turned to dissatisfaction shared by business leaders about the piece of OSM’s license that requires users to “share back” their improvements to the data. In some places, the legal verbiage is vague on how much and what kinds of data must be contributed back, which makes some businesses nervous that OSM s legally incompatible with their own data (i.e., user data). OSM members see the license as a way of keeping information truly open—and of preventing users from simply profiting from the data without contributing anything back. “This is really the thing that’ll allow [OpenStreetMap] to go really big.” Barth himself has advocated that OSM drops the “share-alike” provision entirely, or at the very least, that is provide clarifies what commercial users are and aren’t obliged to give back. “OSM IS really silo-ing itself, in a way that’s really hurtful to the project right now,” he says. In some ways, Barth sees the licensing issue as a final frontier on the road to an OSM revolution.
“This is the thing that’ll allow OSM to go really big,” he says. “And that’ll further the social agenda that it brings with it: We’re opening map data and making it available to a much broader audience.” Barth is intense, and his level of zeal for the “revolutionary” power of OSM can raise eyebrows. Mapbox is a corporation, after all, with more venture capital behind it than ever. It is directly competing with Google. Loosening the language or dropping certain pieces of the license would also mean greater profit for Mapbox, which many in the OSM community have been fast to point this out. “This is about money,” Steve Coast has written. “When you’re picking licenses you’re really picking business models.” But if other businesses model their approach to the OSM community after Mapbox’s high involvement, the outcome would be an even better map. One major drawback of OSM is that certain types of information are extremely tedious for volunteers to enter in, and so they’re just not there. For example, geocoding—attaching addresses to places on the map—is hard, time-consuming work, and most volunteer mappers, understandably, don’t want to spend time on it. At the same time, rich address data is crucial to fulfilling some of the most basic expectations of modern web maps. That’s an area where paid mapmakers—employees of companies invested in OSM’s accuracy—could help improve the project. Paid mapmakers could help improve OpenStreetMap. Chapman, for her part, is optimistic that there’s a way of balancing commercial-licensing concerns with protecting the mission of OSM. “The goal of OSM is to have a free map of the entire world,” she says. “If we’re not enabling a large variety of use cases, for legal or community reasons, then it’s hard to get to that place.” A free map of the world Mapbox is sure to gain more competitors that use OSM as heavily as it does. There already are others, some long-established: Esri, Telenav, Mapzen, Mapillary, and DigitalGlobe, to name a few*. More and more of the apps you use every day—apps that seek profit, and often, collect your data—will be generated in large part by OSM data. But OSM’s greatest strength will still lie in its ocean of contributors. That’s how it provides some of the world’s richest street and building data, minus the professional mappers and world-roving vans. If the OSM doesn’t depict the world as you know it, you, as an individual, have the right to fix the map so that it does. “[N]o one company should have a monopoly on place,” writes the mapper and self-proclaimed “ethical hacker” Serge Wroclawski. “Place is a shared resource, and when you give all that power to a single entity, you are giving them the power not only to tell you about your location, but to shape it.” Certainly, Google Maps has features OSM may never have (Street View, for example). It will still be the place many, many people go for navigational directions. But right now, the free map of the world has more business-minded eyes on it than ever before. If the community it is built upon treads carefully on its foundation and takes care to protect the map, OSM will only get better. And it will belong as much to you, and to its millions of contributors, as it does to any commercial entity. *This piece has been updated to include the names of other businesses already using OSM.Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our next movie from Eindhoven, Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Dave Hakkens shows us how his Precious Plastic recycling machines work and explains why he made the blueprints freely available online.
Hakkens' Precious Plastic project is a set of simple machines for recycling plastic and making new products locally.
He says he got the idea for the project after visiting plastic manufacturing companies and discovering that they were reluctant to use recycled plastic.
"We recycle just 10% [of waste plastic]," says Hakkens. "I wondered why we recycle so little so I investigated it. I went to all these companies and I realised that they don't really want to use recycled plastic. So I wanted to make my own tools so I could use recycled plastic locally."
The Precious Plastic machines include a plastic shredder, an extruder, an injection moulder and a rotation moulder, which Hakkens made using a combination of new custom-made components and reclaimed parts he found at a scrapyard.
"I made these machines based on industrial standards," says Hakkens. "But they are all made very simple so you can produce locally. Like a craftsman, you can start working with plastic."
Hakkens designed a range of products to be produced using the machines, including a rotation-moulded waste paper bin, an injection-moulded spinning top and an extruded plastic lamp.
However, he says the machines can be used to make a much wider variety of products.
"You can make whatever you want," he explains. "Everybody can use [the machines] to make whatever they want and set up their own production."
Like Hakkens' Phonebloks concept for a modular mobile phone, Precious Plastic is an open-source project and Hakkens hopes other designers will adapt and improve the machines over time.
"I developed these machines and I shared them on the internet," Hakkens says. "People can make them on the other side of the world and send some feedback and say, 'hey, maybe you can do this better'. In the end you'll have this set of machines and you can start a local recycling centre."Angel Yau: World’s Dumbest Partier (or more like The World’s Dumbest Show)
Posted by Pete Berg on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 11:35 am
A few years ago, my friends Angel Yau and Jon Katz went out to the famous Dimples karaoke bar in Burbank and decided to do some “drunk” karaoke. They went up on stage and sang the ABCs, and Angel pretended to be absolutely sloshed to the point that she “forgot” the words. But neither of them actually was drunk at all (Jon says “i was with [Angel] the entire night, we had one drink each…i believe it was after a pendleton center event”, referring to our Ithaca College program that set up the karaoke night). It was just a comedy routine, and a kinda poor acting performance at that, because Angel clearly is quite alert and not drunk at all. (And no matter how drunk you are, nobody would ever recite the alphabet in completely random order.)
Anyway, Jon posted the video on YouTube and called it “Drunk Girl Forgets the ABCs.” Then last year, some moron producer at TruTV found it and decided it would be just perfect for their “World’s Dumbest Partiers” clip show. Except, somehow, none of the producers (several rounds of them) realized that this video was completely fake.
Oh, and the best part is, the show brought on their panel of “comedians” to poke fun at the clip, and they didn’t manage to make a single funny comment. Jon says “its funny because the exact things angel and i were making fun of while doing that routine are exactly the things pointed out by these people.” Agreed!
Congrats, Jon and Angel, for not only pranking Dimples, but also the entire crew of this retarded TV series!
And here is the original, uncut performance:Calling them
Once you have had 10 phone calls, they will call you and arrange to meet in Nimbasa City. They will meet you outside the Ferris Wheel and talk to you there. After that, they will register themselves in your Xtransceiver, however they will only appear in certain areas randomly, the same areas as above, but not limited to a single tile.
As you call them, you will have many conversations about a variety of subjects. On the 30th call they'll tell you they want to meet at Nimbasa City where they'll ride the Ferris Wheel with you. Call them to total 50 times, in the 40th call they'll be 'SOUND ONLY', in the 50th call they'll be wearing their work clothes, and cut the line in a second or so.The range of the northern long-eared bat (in diagonal hatch-marks) and confirmed cases of white-nose syndrome (red), as of May 2014. (Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)
Snug and suspended in caves, Vermont's northern long-eared bats are sleeping through an important debate.
The question posed by wide-awake humans: Should those bats be listed as nationally "endangered" (presently at the brink of extinction) — or merely "threatened" (likely to approach that collapse in the near future)?
Should the hibernating bats care?
The northern long-eared bat, after all, has enjoyed full-on endangered status here in Vermont since 2010, when the full impact of a devastating fungal infection, known as white-nose syndrome, became apparent.
In these parts, plenty of folks cheer for the return of nocturnal insect-gobblers.
Elsewhere in the country, full protection of the bat runs up against timber and mining interests.
Those competing visions of the northern long-eared bat's future converge on Dec. 18 — the deadline established by the National Fish and Wildlife Service for public comment.
White-nose syndrome, since its discovery in a New York cave in 2006, reduced the bat's numbers in this state by about 95 percent, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department biologist Scott Darling said Thursday.
Evidence suggests the disease, which fatally rouses hibernating bats, remains a potent threat here and throughout the animal's considerable range, Darling added.
Populations remain vulnerable to collapse, from Quebec to central Alabama and, and west to Nebraska and the Dakotas.
"I have yet to see the data that would suggest otherwise," Darling said.
Last year, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service held the same view, and recommended a full "endangered" listing.
This year, the agency, acknowledging considerable push-back, postponed the procedure and re-opened the public-comment period.
The most vocal opposition has emerged from improbable places.
In a letter to the federal agency in mid-November, John Arway, president of the 12-state Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, wrote "While the numbers are significantly lower throughout most of New York, there is evidence that extirpation (extinction) in even the hardest hit state is not imminent."
Arway touted the region's ongoing conservation efforts as effective, but which "may be in jeopardy" due to the "potential regulatory burden" of an endangered listing for the northern long-eared bat.
Finally, Arway pledged his organization's support for a less-constraining "threatened" designation — as long as exemptions are in place to reduce "the inevitable conflicts with the millions of forest owners" throughout the range of the species and allowing natural resource agencies to focus on the cause of the decline."
Priorities
Did Vermont sign on to that letter?
Not really; nor did New Hampshire and Maine (last year, the three state's agencies endorsed the endangered listing).
Vermont wildlife biologist Darling's diplomatic answer: This fall's statement from the Northeast Association expressed the opinion of "a quorum" of states.
More explicitly, Darling worked with other Vermont officials in drafting a fresh letter to the federal government.
This one, signed by Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Deb Markowitz and mailed Thursday, further validates the endangered status of the bat in Vermont, and argues that nothing less than full protection will serve the species' survival:
•Unlike the little brown bat, which is also listed as endangered in Vermont, the northern long-eared bat's plummet shows no sign of slowing, according to the most recent data analysis.
•The recovery of northern long-eared bats will almost certainly depend on healthy populations in neighboring states, and careful management of forest habitat for summer nesting.
•Vermont's approaches to forest management for bats (maintaining tree diversity, dead and dying snags and water quality) have benefited fragile populations — as well as the human landowners.
The letter from Markowitz stops short of advocating for federal endangered status for northern long-eared bat (acronym: NLEB). But it makes the case for national unity: "The NLEB requires range-wide protection from all significant sources of mortality."
Other state's perceptions, Darling adds, might reasonably differ — particularly where white-nose syndrome is newer and hasn't yet exacted a massive toll on bats.
A northern long-eared bat perches in a cave in this undated photograph by New York-based wildlife biologist Al Hicks. (Photo: AL HICKS/ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
Foresters' concerns
Darling said foresters have successfully weathered "reasonable and practical" restrictions on logging
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anked Trump’s hand so hard that the US president was pulled forward—exactly the same way Trump once shook hands with US Supreme Court judge Neil Gorsuch.Andrew Mitchell was repeatedly denied entry on his bicycle to Downing Street by armed police officers more than a year before the so-called Plebgate incident in September 2012, prompting a formal complaint by No 10 to the Met.
A "restricted" letter from the head of security in the prime minister's office to the Met's diplomatic protection group in June 2011, released by No 10, warned that there was "no just reason" why Mitchell should have been prevented from entering Downing Street on his bike.
"I am writing formally to complain about the conduct of your officers who manage access into the rear of Downing Street at D11," John Groves, the head of security and business continuity in Downing Street, wrote in a letter on 7 June 2011 to Inspector Ken Russell of the Met's diplomatic protection group (DPG). Groves added: "I cannot see any just reason why access was refused."
The letter was seized on by supporters of Mitchell who claimed that early evidence of police heavy-handedness – 15 months before the so-called Plebgate confrontation in Downing Street in September 2012 – highlighted a pattern of behaviour and showed that Met officers had been spoiling for a fight.
Mitchell was forced to resign as chief whip in October 2012 a month after police officers claimed he had described them as "fucking plebs" when they refused to allow him to cycle through the main gates at Downing Street. The former minister, who reluctantly wheeled his bike through the side gates, admitted swearing in the presence of Toby Rowland, one of the officers on guard, who is now suing him for libel. But Mitchell strenuously denies having described police as "plebs".
Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, said: "The more we learn, the more there appears to have been a concerted effort over months to disrupt cabinet ministers entering Downing Street."
The No 10 letter was sent to the Met in June 2011 after what was described as a "handful of incidents" in which cabinet ministers, including Mitchell, had been denied access through the back entrance to Downing Street on Horse Guards Parade or had not been identified within a reasonable period of time.
Groves wrote in his letter to the Met: "This morning there were two further incidences where DPG officers refused access to a cabinet minister who was here to attend cabinet. In one incident Andrew Mitchell was, again, stopped from entering the L-shaped road [at the back of Downing Street] on his bicycle. According to this cabinet minister the police officer [name redacted] said that he did recognise who he [Andrew Mitchell] was but would not let him. No clear reason was given. You will no doubt wish to check your officer's account of this exchange but I cannot see any just reason why access was refused."
The incidents took place at the rear entrance to Downing Street in the early summer of 2011 when Mitchell was international development secretary, in contrast to the Plebgate incident which took place at the front gates in September 2012, by which time he was chief whip. But the Downing Street head of security said that cabinet ministers should be allowed unfettered access to both entrances to Downing Street.
Groves wrote to the Met: "As far as I am concerned, members of HM cabinet are entitled to unfettered access to Downing Street any time of day or night and at any entry point. Although they do not have a Downing Street photopass, their access should be facilitated in an efficient and expedient manner as is possible; not least as they are here to see the prime minister. I think it is entirely reasonable that your officers should be able to recognise the relatively small number who come in on foot or by vehicle without the aid of a protection team."
The release of the letter by No 10 follows the disclosure in the Sunday Times over the weekend that police officers agreed on the eve of the Plebgate incident to prevent Mitchell from cycling through the main gates. In an email to his superior on 18 September a DPG officer asked "for backing from his superiors when DPG officers were going to refuse him [permission] to use the main gates on future occasions, as was bound to happen". The email features in a lengthy dossier submitted by Mitchell to the high court for the libel action by Rowland, extracts of which were published in the Sunday Times, which also published extracts from the Downing Street letter.
The letter is likely to raise questions about the investigation by the cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood into the Downing Street confrontation. Heywood was criticised by some Tories after saying that he only examined CCTV footage of the incident and emails from an off-duty police officer who later admitted that he had falsely claimed to have witnessed the incident.
The letter will also raise questions about the claim by the Met that a legal order from 2008 meant that "no one may use the street unless they are authorised or directed by a police officer". This was cited by Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, in the CPS decision on the incident last November.
A CPS spokesperson said: "Police policy concerning use of the gates was considered by the CPS as part of the evidence provided by investigators in Operation Alice. Any questions on this policy itself should be directed to the police."
Sir Richard Ottaway, the Tory MP for Croydon South who is an ally of Mitchell's, said: "It is clear that there was a problem for a long time and it adds weight to the argument that this was a contrived row by the police. The best thing that could happen is that the Police Federation drop this libel action [by Toby Rowland] and bring the whole matter to a close."Neymar and Brazil were woeful vs. South Africa. Surely they will improve in their next game against Iraq.
Eight years ago, the men's Olympic football tournament was dealt a severe blow. Barcelona took legal steps to gain the right not to release Lionel Messi for the Beijing Games. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in their favour but the verdict came so late that Messi was already with his compatriots in the Far East and refused to come back.
Barcelona lost that battle back then, but the clubs had won the war. With the Olympic tournament not on the FIFA calendar, there is now no obligation on clubs to release players. It was a problem four years ago and a bigger one now. The London Games in 2012 started a few days earlier than the current Rio Olympics, meaning that there was less overlap with the European club season. This time around, it has become hard for teams to assemble squads -- so hard that at one point, Argentina even floated the idea of not participating.
For the Brazilian hosts, there is a big paradox here. The fact that the football tournament has become less important has made it even more important for Brazil. Their obligation to win the gold medal is all the stronger precisely because the opposition is so weak.
There are other reasons, of course. They are at home. Olympic gold is the only title missing from their trophy cabinet and their football is at an all-time low ebb. A recent survey, carried out before the shocking first-round elimination in the Copa America Centenario, pointed to the conclusion that more than 90 percent of Brazilians now have little interest in their national team. It's an extraordinary figure, which in all probability is the reverse of any survey that might have been taken before the humiliation of the 2014 World Cup.
Brazil, then, need to get their supporters back onside and a gold medal secured this summer would help, especially if it were to come with a thrilling style of football blending individual talent with modern collective ideas.
That was the hope when the team took the field in Brasilia for their debut game against South Africa, and it is this context that makes the outcome so disappointing -- not just the goalless draw, but the alarming poverty of Brazil's performance.
When measured against the hopes that had been created, the 0-0 draw was an icy bucket of water. The individual stars -- Neymar, especially, but also the young lions Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Barbosa -- were all off form, and the impressive collective play that had been promised was nowhere to be seen. Until they had a man sent off early in the second half, South Africa frequently moved the ball better than Brazil. After they were down to 10 men, the Africans were able to defend with only occasional moments of panic.
Will things warm up for Sunday's second group game against Iraq? It takes place on the same substandard pitch. There should be fewer big-night nerves; after all, it's often harsh to judge a team, especially the hosts, on their opening display. But those journalists who have been following Brazil's training sessions were mystified at how the work done in the buildup was not evident on the field at any point in Thursday night's curtain-raiser. As former Barcelona and England boss Terry Venables is fond of saying: sometimes the last thing learned becomes, under pressure, the first thing forgotten.
There will be more opportunities for the team to find its pattern, and more time for key members of the side to play their way into match fitness.
Aside from the occasional shot from range, Neymar's performance was a list of errors and one of the other overage players, attacking midfielder Renato Augusto, looked closer to 68 than 28. Has a move to China taken the edge off his fitness? And can he get himself into better condition in the course of the tournament? In the past few months he has become an important player for the senior national side, opening up the pitch with his range of passing and getting into the penalty area, where his size and aerial ability are useful to a team without an old-style centre forward. But against South Africa, he always looked off the pace.
Both he and his teammates have considerable room to improve over the next few days. Thursday's performance was so bad that 90 percent of the population would have been entitled to pay it little attention. The side are capable of much better, and it might be good for both the Rio Games, and the long-term future of the Brazilian national team, if they start to show it.
Tim Vickery covers South American football for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @Tim_Vickery.SHARE
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Police arrested a 28-year-old man after he allegedly assaulted a police officer in Chinatown.
Shortly after 8:30 p.m. Thursday, police said the suspect became disorderly after a security guard caught him trespassing on private property. During the confrontation, the suspect harassed the guard and a tenant who resides at the property.
Police arrived and the 28-year-old man allegedly punched one of the officers in the face. When they detained the suspect, officers searched him and found a syringe and a bag containing heroin and methamphetamine.
Police arrested the 28-year-old man on suspicion of assault of a law enforcement officer in the first degree, two counts of promotion of a dangerous drug in the third degree, drug paraphernalia, criminal trespassing in the first degree and two counts of harassment.
The officer who was assaulted by the suspect was treated and released at a nearby hospital.There is a growing prospect that the dispute which will bring Bus Éireann to a halt from next Monday could escalate and affect Dublin Bus as well as train services across the country.
Siptu and the National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU) said their members in Bus Éireann would stop work from Monday March 6th, the day management indicated it would implement 55 measures - mainly involving work practice changes and new efficiency initiatives - aimed at tackling the financial crisis at the company.
As things stand, school bus services operated by Bus Éireann will not be affected. However, Siptu said on Monday that members working in that sector could be balloted for industrial action.
Iarnród Éireann and Dublin Bus, which also form part of the State-owned CIÉ transport group, are not involved in the dispute.
Unions have told members in these companies that they should not engage in industrial action. However, unions recognise that members in Iarnród Éireann, which shares depot facilities with Bus Éireann in six or seven locations across the country,may opt not to pass any pickets.
The NBRU on Monday warned Dublin Bus management not to take any action - such as moving its vehicles away from the Broadstone depot in Dublin, where the Bus Éireann fleet is based in the capital - which could be “interpreted as a manoeuvre to frustrate Bus Éireann staff in their pursuance of a genuine trade dispute”.
If widespread strike action does take place across the transport sector next week, it will occur at the same time as planned nationwide industrial action by more than 30,000 nurses in a separate dispute with health service management.
Bus Éireann indicated in a letter to staff on Monday that it would not be proceeding, for the moment, with previous plans to target overtime rates, premium payments and shift allowances.
However, it maintained that changes to terms and conditions were essential. The company indicated it wanted further talks with unions on these issues.
NBRU general secretary Dermot O’Leary said the 55 measures which the company planned to implement from next week would, in themselves, have a major impact on his union’s members.
‘Far-reaching measures’
“The fact is that by informing staff that they are going to introduce far-reaching and financially impactful measures from next Monday without agreement, Bus Éireann has left us with no option but to inform the company that we will reactivate our previously notified strike action to coincide with the implementation of these measures.”
The 55 measures sought by Bus Éireann
Siptu sector organiser Willie Noone said the letter sent to staff outlined “an intention to proceed with a series of cuts at the company on Monday next which will automatically result in strike action by workers”.
“The letter is a plan to render Bus Éireann services unrecognisable, and massively curtail the public service the company currently provides.
“This level of cuts and the associated pay reductions already threatened have only bolstered our members’ resolve to resist this attack on the public services they provide.”
Minister for Transport Shane Ross on Monday encouraged the company and the staff “ to engage urgently in a constructive manner”.
“This is necessary to resolve this difficult industrial relations situation, which threatens to greatly inconvenience the travelling public, especially those in rural Ireland. ”
He said the National Transport Authority was conducting a needs assessment of the areas that would be affected by the closure of some existing Bus Éireann routes and would ensure continued public transport connectivity.
Bus Éireann also said on Monday it would begin the planned closure of some routes from next month.
It said the frequency of services on routes from Dublin to Galway and Limerick will be reduced.
The company said the X7 Dublin-Clonmel service will cease on March 12th, the 21 Athlone-Westport service will cease on April 16th and the 33 Dublin-Derry route will cease on May 28th.
“The number of daily services on Dublin-Limerick (X12), and Dublin-Galway (20/X20) will be reduced from March 12th.
“Any staff impacted by these announcements will be redeployed.”
In the letter to staff on Monday, Bus Éireann acting chief executive Ray Hernan said the financial situation continued to deteriorate at an accelerated rate.
“Operating losses at Bus Éireann increased to €1.5million in January, and if this run rate continues the company will be insolvent in May.
“Company management, with the approval of the board, therefore has no option but to implement changes to work practices that will result in immediate cost savings. This will also be a first step on our road to competitiveness.
“These work practice initiatives are only an initial step - further measures involving changes to terms and conditions are also essential.”
Mr Hernan said the company’s objective was not to become a low-cost operator. He said it was committed to protecting basic pay rates and enhancing these as circumstances allowed.
“Delivering greater efficiencies and commencing the process of restructuring is vital to modernising our work practices and making us more flexible. This will enable us to compete effectively and provide the services our customers both desire and deserve.”
Indefensible ‘inefficiencies’
Mr Hernan said some the the “inefficiencies” in Bus Éireann were indefensible. “Spending money on bus hire for example, because of the unavailability of a driver or vehicle, is a waste of financial resources and a glaring inefficiency that simply must stop.”
He said a previously announced review of Bus Éireann structures, which will be finalised by the end of March, is ongoing and was likely to result in job losses in some areas but present opportunities in others.RAWALPINDI (Web Desk) – The Adiala jail authorities on Friday rereleased Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi following the Lahore High Court orders. The high court had yesterday ordered Lakhvi’s release as the Punjab government badly failed to convince the LHC about his
RAWALPINDI (Web Desk) – The Adiala jail authorities on Friday rereleased Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi following the Lahore High Court orders.
The high court had yesterday ordered Lakhvi’s release as the Punjab government badly failed to convince the LHC about his detention.
Lakhvi, a central leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, is accused of being mastermind of the Mumbai attacks that killed at least 166 people in 2008.
On Thursday, Justice Muhammad Anwarul Haq passed the order and directed him to furnish two surety bonds of Rs 500,000 each for his release. The judge expressed dissatisfaction over the contentions of the Punjab government and set aside the fourth detention. The court adjourned the hearing till the last week of April for further arguments.
A law officer, on behalf of the Punjab government, presented the record of the sensitive reports prepared by the intelligence agencies about the activities of the petitioner. However, Advocate Raja Rizwan Abbasi told the court that the record presented by the government was not secret information as it was easily available on Internet.
The court held the information was not convincing/enough to keep the petitioner under detention.
In the previous hearing, the court had directed the Punjab government to submit ‘sensitive reports’ on Lakhvi to see why Lakhvi had been detained despite suspension of his detention orders.
On March 14, the Okara district coordination officer had issued detention orders of Lakvhi. The petitioner challenged the detention orders, but the court directed him to approach the Punjab Home Department. On the direction of the court, the petitioner submitted a presentation to the Punjab home secretary, but he upheld the 30-day detention orders issued by the Okara DCO.
Lakvhi filed another petition in the Lahore High Court and submitted that he had filed a representation before home secretary against his detention, but he rejected his request. He said his detention was illegal as he had been freed by the IHC and a person could not be detained beyond 90 days without obtaining an order from the provincial review board comprising judges of the high court.
The Indian government on Thursday expressed extreme disappointment after Lahore High Court ordered immediate release of 26/11 suspect Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, reported Indian media.
Saying that the release of Lakhvi was extremely disappointing, the Indian government asked Pakistan to ensure terrorists like him do not come out of jail.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra also criticised the neighbouring country and said Pakistan is not serious about combating terrorism.Why Saying 'We Knew This' Or 'Everybody Spies' In Response To NSA Revelations Is Wrong
from the we-didn't-know,-and-it's-not-the-same dept
To start with, it does not matter much whether knowledgeable people should have guessed the scale of NSA spying or not. That is probably the least relevant question one can ask about all this. It relies on an old and outdated understanding of a world that is simply no more.
Repeating the mantra “this is nothing new, all governments spy” may make the mostly DC-insider chorus who cling to it ever more tightly with each new leak feel better, and entrench their self-image as insiders. There are certainly psychological and financial rewards to acting and feeling like insiders. But it does nothing to change the fact that this chorus has completely missed the point of the tectonic shifts affecting them, and all governance: They aren’t the only insiders anymore.
The “nothing new here” people aren’t fully correct, even in the technical details. It’s true: spying by governments, including on their own citizens and on other governments, be they enemies, allies or frenenemies, is not new. It’s even expected. However, the scale of the spying, enabled by the shift to digital infrastructure, is certainly novel.
Context collapse is everywhere. It’s not just teenagers on Facebook whose ordinary adolescent boundary-testing actions are viewed by finger-wagging adults; it’s not just a variety of institutions that have found their internal communications meant for friendly eyes are exposed to the world; it’s not just academics whose scholarly studies are being dug up by various constituencies as fodder for outrage. It’s everywhere.
The outsiders are peeking in and moving in, and they are here to stay. If, as an institution, keeping your balance relies on outsiders staying outside while you talk in jargon and acronyms with your fellow insiders, it’s time to look for a safety net and a harness. A fall is coming, sooner or later. In this world, “this is what we have always done” is not going to cut it.
I obviously can't be quoted by name on this... and indeed, since this email is being read (Hi guys!), I can probably get fired just for sending it, but let me just stress how shocking these NSA revelations are.
Look, I'm not a shrinking violet. I work for DoD. I support much of the war on terror. Some of these assholes out there just need killing. And gathering info on them that allows us to schwhack them is okay with me.
But there is law. And my view is that you have two choices. Either you change the law openly, publicly, or if that is impossible and you consider violating the law imperative, then you make a claim of "exceptional illegality."
But the thing about the NSA revelations is that this isn't exceptional illegality. It is routine, somehow justified by legal opinions written by John Yoo-style hacks.
And worse, it is so routine that 29 y/o contractors have access to it.
Two of the most common responses from people (often in the press) who want to minimize the importance and the impact of the Snowden revelations about NSA surveillance are that (1) "there's nothing new" or "people knew this already" and (2) "everyone spies on everyone -- what's the big deal?" The latter one got some new life recently after it was revealed that Brazil had spied on US diplomats in the past. As you may remember, Brazil has been acting outraged in response to the revelations of US spying on Brazilians and Brazilian companies. However, both responses are simply not accurate.Zeynep Tufekci recently wrote a great piece over at Medium, in which she debunks these weak excuses, by pointing out that (1) while some people claim to have known, tons of people didn't -- and that's what's important and (2) the scale here is well beyond what was done in the past.As we discussed recently, the real "danger" of these leaks is that the US government can't get away with its hypocritical positions so easily any more, because the public (especially the non-US public) is demanding a response. And that makes a huge difference.Furthermore, she points out, the most amazing thing in all of this is that the NSA appears to havein place for how to deal with this situation. It's as if they just assumed that everything they did would remain secret. Basically, Tufekci points out, the NSAthe idea that"insiders" might know about this, but the great unwashed "outsiders" would never know.But that's changed. In a big way -- and that matters, because the "context collapse" can have massive implications:Meanwhile, there's a related article over at The Atlantic by James Fallows, in which he publishes an email from a Defense Department insider, which hopefully should put to rest the idea that everyone knew about this and that there's nothing "shocking" in the revelations. This is from an actual insider who argues the exact opposite, even as he supports many of the general actions:But, that insider notes, the stunning thing about the NSA revelations aren't that they exceeded what most people believed the law is, butrather than an "exceptional" case:The situation is stunning in many ways. To claim that "there's nothing new" or that "everyone spies" is to miss almost everything that's important about these revelations and the impact they are already having.
Filed Under: hypocrisy, impact, insiders, knowledge, nsa, nsa surveillance, outsiders, scalePresident Trump used his commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy to declare that he is the most maligned political leader in recorded civilization.
“No politician in history and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly,” Trump told the class of newly minted ensigns on a sunny day in New London, Connecticut.
The line jumped out from Trump’s speech, not because it’s a new complaint—Trump can usually be found griping in interviews and on Twitter—but because of the venue. Was this really the right place to complain about his feelings?
It’s tempting, and fun, to catalog Trump’s feeling constantly attacked as part of a pattern of fragile, childlike behavior alongside other reports about the President, such as aides wedging his name into memos as frequently as possible in order to keep him focused. Aaron James, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Irvine, has a different theory that seems more relevant in light of Trump’s grandstanding at the Coast Guard Academy.
“It’s one more way of being an asshole,” says James, whose 2012 book, Assholes: A Theory, and its 2016 follow-up, Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump, make him something of an expert on the anatomical insult.
“The asshole acts out of a firm sense that he is special, that normal rules of conduct do not apply to him,” James writes in his 2012 volume. “Indeed he will often himself feel indignant when questions about his conduct are raised. That, from, his point of view, may show he is not getting the respect he deserves.”
That description could apply to Trump’s business career as much as his political experience—indeed, in his 2012 book James cited Trump as a public figure widely considered to be an asshole—but since becoming President, Trump has emerged as a different sort of asshole in whom grandiosity and insecurity are constantly clashing, James says.
“I think you can have a kind of asshole who’s supremely smug and not necessarily vulnerable to the misunderstandings of other people,” he says. “Trump has in this weird way this ego and fragility. His sense of self-worth collapses so quickly. Then he has to reinforce conceptions of his greatness, and that puts him in this struggle to rationalize why he’s being treated so unfairly.“
There’s been no shortage of examples of this behavior recently, as Trump barreled past a first 100 days relatively light on accomplishments into a full-blown crisis over his firing of FBI Director James Comey. He insists all unflattering coverage of his administration is “fake news” or “fake media,” taunts the losers of congressional races, and passes out maps showing county-by-county results of last year’s election as if to suggest he won the popular vote (which he lost by nearly 3 million).
But it’s Trump’s frequent victim act that has James thinking that Trump will go down as more of a dunce than a successful autocrat. The decision to fire Comey, James says, was “dictatorial in the sense that he fires at will.” But with the emergence of Comey’s memorandum about his meeting with Trump, the White House’s reported assumption that Comey’s dismissal would be quickly smoothed over, and Trump’s publicly aired threat that he had taped his conversations with the former FBI chief, it’s looking more and more like a Wile E. Coyote scheme.
“He’s completely out of touch with the moment, just living in his constructed world of grievance,” James says.
However, James adds, the theory of Trump-as-asshole works for both the President’s detractors and supporters. The “haters and losers”—as Trump has sometimes referred to his critics—may be enthused by recent evidence, including a Quinnipiac University poll released last week in which “asshole” was one of the top results when respondents were asked to describe him with one word. But a significant chunk of his supporters latched on to him because they accepted a narrative that it would take someone of Trump’s reputation to correct the federal government, a phenomenon James compares to Thomas Hobbes’s theory that absolute monarchs were needed to prevent the naturally chaotic people of 17th-century Europe from plunging into eternal civil war.
“In a system chock-full of assholes, you need an even bigger asshole to bring them to order,” is how James describes that belief in Trump. “That’s not really panning out.”
Share this story!Donald Trump displays maps showing that his supporters occupied more acreage than Hillary Clinton’s. Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters
“We have a lot of people in the White House of Donald J. Trump who not only have been comfortable working for Hillary [Clinton], but they probably would have had a Cabinet post as well,” complains ousted White House aide Sebastian Gorka. “That is not sound, that is not what the American people voted for.” In point of fact, a White House staffed by people who would work for Hillary Clinton is precisely what the American people voted for. That is why 2.9 million more American people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.
The Electoral College has turned two of the last five Republican national-vote defeats into victories. The Republican Party has developed a very convoluted way of suppressing this strange reality. The larger part of their response consists of constant implicit or explicit equations of the election result with the will of the voting public. So frequently do Republican partisans depict their candidate as the conscious choice of the majority that they themselves forget the actual circumstances of his election.
The second, much smaller element involves justifying the Electoral College as a necessary brake against majority rule. On the rare occasions when the merits of the Electoral College do arise, Republicans will explain that the electoral vote system is the perfect expression of the Founders’ divine will, and changing to a national-vote system would create all manner of evils. Then, when they have satisfied their qualms about the creaky presidential voting apparatus, they revert to talking about the election as if it really was a national popular vote.
The second part, Electoral College defenses, are few and far between, largely because it is more pleasant to pretend that the president is elected by the electorate than to argue why he should not be. A precious example of the genre comes in the form of an op-ed by Josiah Peterson, titled “No, Jesse Jackson, the Electoral College Isn’t Racist,” in The Federalist — which at this point, lord help us, is probably one of the more prestigious conservative organs.
Jackson did not call the electoral college racist, but he did recently call for its abolition alongside the removal of Confederate memorials. The Electoral College does have both an origin and a contemporary effect connected to white supremacy. The origin is that the Founders agreed to create it in part to placate the demands of slaveholders. The contemporary aspect is that the Electoral College today happens to give disproportionate influence to states with a larger-than-average share of white voters.
Peterson disputes both these effects without showing any understanding of either. He argues, weirdly, that the “three-fifths clause” limited the influence of slaveholders, rather than magnifying it:
Southern states did effectively have more representation through the college than they might have had under a popular vote of all free persons. But the oft-maligned Three-Fifths Clause was designed to limit the influence of slave states in congressional apportionment. Since congressional apportionment determines the number of a state’s electors—one for each representative and senator in Congress—limiting Southern representation in Congress limited their representation in the Electoral College.
The three-fifths clause is relevant, but in exactly the opposite of the manner Peterson describes. The Founders debated the possibility of electing the president through a national vote. The popular vote had already been used successfully in some statewide elections for governor. But Southerners objected that they deserved a bonus for their slaves. A straight national vote would only count people who voted. Awarding points to blocs of states, which could be enhanced by their populations of enslaved people treated as property, would give those states more power.
Under a national vote, southern states “could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes,” argued James Madison. Southern states would lose influence under direct election, another southern delegate complained, because “her slaves will have no suffrage.” As Paul Finkelman concluded, “one of the central purposes of the electoral college … was to insure that the largest state, Virginia, would be able to elect the national president, and that the slave states would be able to use their slave population to influence the election of the president.”
The South’s argument was obviously completely preposterous. They wanted political representation for a class of people to whom they granted no political rights whatsoever. The slave states treated African-Americans as property rather than as people in every way except in political representation, a demand clearly driven by their desire to enjoy disproportionate influence in Congress and the presidency. The three-fifths clause might have been a politically necessary compromise in order to pass the Constitution, but Peterson’s notion that it was “designed to limit the influence of slave states” is utterly backwards.
Peterson goes on to inform his readers that this has been moot since “the abolition of slavery under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Slavery was in fact abolished by the 13th Amendment. (Source: Constitution of the United States of America.)
Peterson also disputes that the Electoral College gives disproportionate influence to heavily white states:
The idea that the college is racist today because it boosts the influence of predominantly white, rural states is also flawed. The college supports low-population states regardless of their racial makeup. While Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and Vermont are disproportionately white, the college also boosts Delaware, Washington DC, Alaska, Hawaii, and New Mexico, some of the most diverse regions of the country.
But he ignores the main impact of the Electoral College, which is to minimize the power of large segments of the country by packing them into uncompetitive states. The Electoral College’s main effect is to concentrate political influence in the hands of residents of a handful of swing states. That is precisely how Donald Trump managed to win the election while falling nearly 3 million votes short. His white working-class base was conveniently packed into a handful of states with the most clout.
That is not an anomaly. States that benefit from the Electoral College are whiter than average, which means the system gives white voters more influence over presidential elections. As Andrew Gelman and Pierre-Antoine Kremp calculate, “whites have 16 percent more power than blacks once the Electoral College is taken into consideration, 28 percent more power than Latinos, and 57 percent more power than those who fall into the ‘other’ category.” Peterson does not indicate anywhere that he is aware of this dynamic.
The most harrowing passage in Peterson’s column is the tagline, which states that he is “the author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Electoral College: Critical to Our Republic.’’’ Yes, the conservative pundit who lacks familiarity with basic questions like “what the three-fifths clause did” or “who benefits from the Electoral College?” or “which amendment abolished slavery?” is the author of a book defending the Electoral College.A Colorado Springs police officer was seriously injured in a crash on Saturday while escorting Vice President Pence's motorcade to the airport.
Colorado Springs Police Department said that the motorcycle officer has been taken to the hospital and is in "serious but stable condition." It was not immediately clear what caused the crash.
"Update: CSPD motorcycle officer is in serious but stable condition. He was supporting VP Pence motorcade. Keep him in your thoughts/prayers," CSPD tweeted.
Update: #CSPD motorcycle officer is in serious but stable condition. He was supporting VP Pence motorcade. Keep him in your thoughts/prayers — Springs Police (@CSPDPIO) June 24, 2017
Pence arrived in Colorado on Friday, where he spoke at the 40th-anniversary celebration for Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based Christian conservative group. The vice president also met with members of the Air Force and attended a fundraising event for Sen. Cory Gardner Cory Scott GardnerJon Stewart, 9/11 responders call on Congress to fund victim compensation program The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump Don’t look for House GOP to defy Trump on border wall MORE (R-Colo.).
Pence said in a tweet on Saturday that he had spoken with the wife of the injured police officer.
"Spoke to wife of injured Colorado Springs motorcycle officer. So relieved his injuries not life-threatening. Will keep him in our prayers," Pence wrote on Twitter.The people of Hawaii were not happy. King Kalakaua had reigned for eight years, but all it took was one trip around the world for him to decide that he needed a European-style coronation complete with all the pomp and circumstance—otherwise known as “no expense spared”—that the celebration would entail.
This ceremony, naturally, would also require new crowns for both the king and queen, ones that would be made in London and liberally encrusted with all the fine gems and diamonds that befit their station.
“At the time, the taxpayers of this country strenuously objected to the expenses of the coronation exercises, but their objections carried no weight and the expensive festivities went on,” the Daily Pacific Commercial Advertiser reported a decade later in 1893 (PDF).
The coronation might have been an excessive vanity play for a king who was already king, but Kalakaua was looking to the future in the purchase of the sparkling new his-and-her headpieces; the crowns were intended to live well beyond the ceremony and serve as something of a royal investment that could be passed down through generations of rulers.
Little did he know that they would only be worn once. The Hawaiian monarchy would soon fall and, as the dust of the coup settled, a plot against his gold crown would be uncovered.
But those were concerns for another day. Feb. 12, 1883 dawned with downpours that soon cleared up as the citizens of the country of Hawaii gathered to officially coronate King Kalakaua on the ninth anniversary of his reign.
The events of the day followed the standard coronation template. King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani processed onto the dais and took
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prohibited from lobbying to influence legislation.
Since its creation in January, Americans for Responsible Solutions has urged Congress to enact more robust firearms background checks — and used television advertisements, radio spots and robo-calls to mobilize supporters, sometimes through its 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm and sometimes with its super PAC.
Americans for Responsible Solutions backed the bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa. And after that bill failed to clear a Republican-led filibuster in April, Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, pledged to “use every means possible to make sure the constituents of these senators know that their elected representatives ignored them.”
Tax experts told the Center for Public Integrity that foundation donations to Giffords’ super PAC could be “very problematic.”
Nonprofits organized under Sec. 501(c)(3) “cannot spend one penny” on partisan campaign activity, said Cleta Mitchell, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Foley and Lardner LLP.
“You can’t give them money to do things that you can’t do,” she continued.
Political committees, such as super PACs, are “essentially radioactive” for 501(c)(3) nonprofits, added Marcus Owens, a lawyer at D.C.-based Caplin & Drysdale who previously headed the IRS’s exempt organization division.
Records show that the Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC refunded the Presbyterian and New England Congregational Church’s $250 donation on June 21. Julie Campbell, the church’s office manager, said that when the money came back, the congregation was told it was voluntarily returned because it came from a “house of worship.”
In response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity, Katie Hill, the communications director of Americans for Responsible Solutions, said the super PAC was in the process of refunding the other two nonprofits’ contributions.
“These are not illegal contributions for us to take, but it’s our understanding that the donations are not appropriate for the donors to make,” Hill wrote in an email. “Thus, we are processing refunds, which will be disclosed on our next report.”
Pam Baker, an accountant at the firm in Nashville, Tenn., that handles the Midler Family Foundation’s books, said her company was “researching it and will have to get back to you.”
(Update, Aug. 15, 2013, 4:27 p.m.: Ken Sunshine, Midler’s publicist, told USA Today that the singer’s donation through her foundation was “an accounting mistake” and that Midler has issued a personal check as a substitution.)
Rupa and Bharat B. Bhatt did not respond to requests for comment.
Bharat Bhatt is a businessman who once worked as the president and chief operating officer of GreenPoint Financial Corp. He currently serves on the New York Institute of Technology’s board of directors and is the board chairman of Kodiak Funding, LP, a Virginia-based financial company that specializes in real estate investing.
This is not the first time that a nonprofit has made a donation mistake in the super PAC arena.
Last year, Colorado Christian University donated $5,000 to the super PAC affiliated with Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, which it asked to be refunded when the Center for Public Integrity brought it to the school’s attention.
And the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore our Future accepted $100,000 from the Rod and Leslie Aycox Foundation in July 2011. That money, too, was ultimately returned.Techdirt Needs Your Help To Fight Encryption Fearmongering
from the please-support-us dept
@mmasnick Oh neat, an email from Mike, wonder what he and @techdirt are up to now...
... oh god pic.twitter.com/4dIaEFyJ2s — NSA Public Relations (@NSA_PR) February 25, 2016
In the summer of 2014, we ran a crowdfunding campaign to help support Techdirt, in order to do more in-depth reporting on the big net neutrality fight happening in Washington, DC (and, more broadly, around the globe). That campaign was successful beyond our wildest expectations, and allowed us to do much more thorough reporting (including bringing on Karl Bode to help cover these issues) on such an important issue. We ended up writing well over 300 articles since that campaign ended, and that initiative is still ongoing.Now, we're launching another crowdfunding campaign for an issue that's even more important:. And so I wanted to ask you to support us again in this new campaign. We literally cannot do this without you:As you almost certainly know, this battle has ramped up in the last few years -- first in response to the Snowden revelations, followed by a rush by many, including Apple, to better encrypt their services and devices. However, law enforcement and the intelligence communities are less than pleased about all of this, and have been pushing for backdoors and other legislative solutions. This is not new. They pushed for such things in the 1990s, in the original "Crypto Wars," and lost. But now they see a new opening to try again. In the last couple weeks, this issue has blown up even more, as the DOJ sought, and received, a court order directing Apple to effectively write special software to allow the FBI to hack into an iPhone to get around existing encryption and security features.And, it's not just about this current Apple fight. Or just the US. Congress is looking at this issue, and other governments are eagerly considering how they can use the US's efforts to serve their own wishes. And that's not to mention various other technologies and companies that have been impacted by this debate already.This is a big deal. It will impact how technology works and how you maintain your security and privacy going forward. It will impact what you get to do on your own devices, and what the government can force companies to do. And not just in the US. The rest of the world is watching closely how this battle plays out, to figure out what they might be able to get away with as well.And, frankly, most of the reporting is abysmal or, at the very least, confused. When the story of the Apple court order broke, most initial reports falsely stated that the court ordered Apple to "break the encryption" on its phones. We were the first site (and for a while, the only site) to post the actual court order and to discuss what it actually said.And this is a case where the specifics and the details matter... a lot. We want to be able to do a lot more reporting like this, really digging into the issues and explaining them in a way that everyone can understand and focus on the facts, rather than the fearmongering.But to do that, we need your support. Believe it or not, writing about the arcane details at the intersection of technology and policyattract big time advertisers. In fact, we've lost many advertisers due to our willingness to call out bad behavior by large companies.So, please support our campaign:As with the last campaign, the focus is in funding our ongoing reporting on this issue, but we also are hoping to do some creative experiments as well, to further expand the reach of that reporting. So, if we can reach our initial target of $20,000, we'll use some of that money to buy a large number of targeted ads in publications that are read by policymakers in DC (and their constituents), that link back to our reporting. For each $10,000 beyond that that we reach, we'll add another experiment in ways to have our reporting actually reach more people -- including policymakers, the public, and the press.If you supported us last time around (or in other ways, such as via our Techdirt Insider Shop ), I can't thank you enough for your support, and I hope that you found our reporting on net neutrality useful and valuable. If you haven't supported us in the past, please consider doing so now. We strive to not only do great reporting on these issues -- which means actually going beyond just the "he said, she said" versions to calling out blatant lies and hypocrisy when we see it -- but to also build a community here. That means we work extra hard to welcome in people to comment and discuss issues, and we try to avoid the practices adopted by many other sites to push people away. We don't do "paywalls." We don't demand that you turn off ad blockers. Hell, we let you turn ads off on the site. And we also do things like better protect you by still being one of only a few news sites that is fully HTTPS encrypted But all of that costs us. Calling out companies means that lots of companies don't want to advertise with us. The ability to turn off ads and only accept HTTPS ads means that our ad revenue is significantly limited. But we still think it's worth it, because focusing on building a better, more engaged community here, where you're welcome to participate, is really important to us. But it also means that, every so often, we may reach out for some help. And now is one of those times. So please consider supporting us.Oh, and if you need one last reason to support us... yesterday I emailed backers of the original campaign to give them a heads up about this, and look how someone reacted:
Filed Under: backdoors, crowdfunding, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, support, techdirtBy: |
One of the most infamous events in news history was the explosion of the Hindenburg Zeppelin at the end of its maiden voyage in 1937. The second most famous zeppelin was the Graf Zeppelin, which flew over 1,000,000 miles during its lifetime, including an around the world flight in 1929.
By today’s standards, that’s not very far. The average commercial jetliner travels 52 million miles in its lifetime or approximately 2,100 circumnavigations of the earth, 109 round trips to the Moon or one trip to Mars.
A Short History of Zeppelins
With a burgeoning airplane industry starting to hit its stride in the 1920s and 1930s, the use of zeppelins as commercial passenger conveyors ended. However, with recent advances in materials, science and engineering design and a plentiful supply of hydrogen and helium, the two primary gases used in blimps as well as the rise in the price of gasoline, zeppelins as commercial and passenger transportation may yet make a comeback.
The most well-known blimps these days are Good Year & Metlife but these represent the old school, having been around for decades. Following is a diagram of a typical “old style” blimp:
Goodyear Blimp (Image Courtesy www.goodyear.com)
New Zeppelin Passenger Services To Support New Mode of “Roving”
A company called Seymour Powell has designed what it calls the “Aircruise” or “Clipper of the Clouds” which is a “lighter than air” vehicle. The Aircruise has spacious areas for passengers including living, dining and relaxing areas (see video below). The designers believe traveling slowly will become popular and passengers will enjoy traveling long distances in luxury while viewing the world from the air.
Engineering the Spacious Aircruise
Passenger Zeppelins provide a more comfortable pace of travel and free people from the laborious task of airport travel. Passengers can fly over famous landmarks or cities, taking hours rather than seconds, while taking in these breathtaking views through windows that are much larger than an airplane’s.
Developing technical specifications for the aircraft was challenging. Lift for the ship is provided by the lightest gas (hydrogen) and engines are powered by hydrogen fuel cells. There are four external envelopes that serve as lifting bags with this design, providing a modicum of security should one of the envelopes rupture. The ship will use the most advanced materials available so that the strongest frames made of the lightest materials can be used to build the structure and provide stabilization.
Korea’s Samsung has stepped in to provide financial support so that Seymour Powell can further develop its concept.
The following video shows what life would be like inside a passenger zeppelin, including the relaxing pace of travel and passengers relishing beautiful vistas.
Zeppelins for Cargo, Payload, Freight Transport
The following image shows the Aeroscraft which is developing huge new zeppelins capable of carrying heavy loads.
The History of Passenger Zeppelins
For more information visit Airships.net here.
Related articles on IndustryTap:
References and related links:A botched field-goal attempt on Saturday’s opening drive could have set a miserable tone for the 49ers.
Instead, their offense rebounded with a long-sought rhythm, their linebacker crew keyed a defensive surge, and the 49ers’ overall confidence climbed after a 17-3 exhibition win over the Raiders at Candlestick Park.
“I thought it was crisp both by our first units offensively and defensively,” 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh said. “We wanted to see improvement, and that all happened because we had a really good week of practice.”
All that followed a really bad exhibition debut the previous week in New Orleans, where the 49ers endured a 24-3 defeat to the blitz-happy Saints.
“We improved from last week,” quarterback Alex Smith said. “But if we want to be the team we’re talking about being, we need to finish in the red zone, and we can’t turn over the ball. Those first few drives, we didn’t finish.”
The first drive covered 16 plays and reached the Raiders’ 2-yard line, but it ended so poorly, it could have lasting ramifications on punter Andy Lee’s status.
Lee, the holder on placekicks, injured his right hip on a 22-yard field-goal attempt that went askew once he fumbled the snap. He rolled right with the ball and fell hard on his hip after uncorking a desperation pass, which Rolando McClain intercepted.
Lee, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, had to be helped up after subsequent holds on extra-point attempts, and place-kicker David Akers later assumed punt duties. Harbaugh said he doesn’t think Lee’s injury is serious.
The 49ers’ defense is worth taking seriously. After denying Saints quarterback Drew Brees a first down in his three series in the exhibition opener, the 49ers stonewalled the Raiders, whose only points came on a fourth-quarter field goal.
Four-time Pro Bowl selection Patrick Willis shared the spotlight with his fellow linebackers, including his new wingman on the inside, NaVorro Bowman, who had two tackles and pressured Jason Campbell on a third-down incompletion in the Raiders’ first series.
“I saw really great play from the two inside backers — tremendous athleticism,” Harbaugh said. “I marvel at the way they play inside the box but can go sideline to sideline. All the linebackers flashed, too.”
Outside linebackers Parys Haralson and Ahmad Brooks made their presence felt. Haralson chased down Campbell for a fourth-down sack to cap a goal-line stand. Two plays earlier, Willis tracked down Campbell for a 1-yard loss at the 49ers’ 3-yard line.
Brooks continued his breakout preseason by knocking Campbell out of the game with a possible concussion, delivering a jarring hit coming at the end of Justin Smith’s fumble-forcing sack late in the second quarter.
Further aiding the defense’s cause were interceptions by cornerback Tarell Brown and safety Madieu Williams.
Offensively, sturdier blocking, some remarkable catches and highly productive runs made life a lot easier for Smith and his understudy, rookie Colin Kaepernick.
“It started with our offensive line, a reflection of how well the running backs did,” Harbaugh said. “Also, the way they handled the blitz pickup, that was a big improvement from last week, and we saw some of the same blitzes — the edge pressure and safety blitzes — right from the beginning.”
Asked the difference between the last game and Saturday’s, right tackle Anthony Davis said: “We played better.” Asked to elaborate, Davis replied: “We did our job.”
Smith completed 8 of 13 passes for 126 yards and a 61.7 passer rating. He didn’t get sacked, but he did end the second series with an interception by defensive end Matt Shaughnessy. Kaepernick was 6 of 8 for 52 yards with two sacks and a 91.7 rating.
Rookie running back Kendall Hunter had nine carries for 105 yards, including a 53-yard touchdown run 1:31 into the second half for the 49ers’ first touchdown of Harbaugh’s exhibition era.
Frank Gore had four carries for 21 yards on the first series before getting spelled by Hunter, Anthony Dixon and Xavier Omon, whose 5-yard touchdown run with 3:39 remaining capped the scoring.
The catch of the game came from Braylon Edwards, who dived to make a one-handed, sideline grab of Smith’s 32-yard pass at the Raiders’ 22-yard line. That set up a 23-yard field goal from Akers for a 3-0 lead.
For more on the 49ers, see Cam Inman’s Hot Read blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/49ers.If you’ve had a hard time following the latest in Melo’s free agency news, you aren’t alone. In fact, joining you is a plethora of professionals who report on Basketball for a living. Melo might even have reached a decision by the time you read this but to me buried beneath the story of where Melo is going is another story about, well,”the story” of how this has been reported. Stay with me, I’ll explain I mean.
Each day since the offseason officially began, journalists have reported dozens of stories from enigmatic & nebulous sources that have at one point linked Melo to each of the five major teams pursuing him: Lakers, Mavericks, Rockets, Bulls, and of course Knicks. The rush to break the news of Melo’s decision in conjunction with the frantic nature of social media has made following the story pretty exhausting. Unless he’s reached a decision by now, in all likelihood not even Melo probably knows where he’s going, so you have to ask yourself what stories are worth taking seriously.
A huge part of the excitement of the off season is precisely the merry-go-round of different leaks from “sources” that work fans into a frenzy when their team is linked to a free agent. It’s fun for fans from different cities to envision Melo wearing their city’s jersey, but I think we’ve crossed the line between sound journalism and flat-out theatre. The problem with relying on unnamed sources to fuel stories seen by millions over the globe is that once that story is proven false, those journalists are protected from any real accountability of errant journalism due to the fact that they were merely reporting what they heard. Yea they did their job but what happens next after that?
Say a journalist reports a story about a player going to a team that is based on a completely irrelevant source, like, I don’t know, lets just say a random tweet like this one:
UCLA fans: Kobe, Melo, and Kevin Love playing pickup ball at UCLA! Run to Westwood, all of us. — Jigs832 (@jigs832) July 6, 2014
Due to social media that small rumor quickly calcifies into hard news consumed by millions. What happens next is a chain reaction of unintended consequences that can steer a player’s negotiations into nowhere and force other teams to panic and make myopic decisions to counter that news, like Landry Fields and a ghastly $20M contract for example. If you think about it, this allows a journalist to unfairly interfere with the free agent process. There’s not much anybody can do about this, but it doesn’t make it right. Well I propose an answer to this that might even have a small impact on the rumor mill territory of sports journalism.
Today players are faced with an increasing amount of scrutiny due to advanced analytics and round-the-clock coverage that has put them under microscopes athletes have never been under before both. Journalists have never had more resources at their disposal to support their analysis, but what do us fans have to analyze those doing the reporting? This is why I think the next wave of basketball media should include a way to measure the accuracy of reporters. “Multiple”, “unnamed”, and “close” sources have completely gotten out of hand and its time to start holding accountable those who rely on these frivolous resources to pump out nonsense everyone else mistakes as real news; all while said journalist reaps the benefits of thousands of clicks on their “story” and raising their national profile in the sports media world.
Who are these sources? Is it a waiter a restaurant? Are they posts from message boards? Maybe it’s a team executive? Regardless of where its coming from, I don’t really care because anything that tows the line of putting pressure on a journalist to reveal a source is not something I would ever be interested in since it breaks journaslistic code. Rather, we should be keeping data on how accurate a journalist is when they break a story based from their personal sources at the end of every season. I even have a name for this stat: True Reporting %.
Wouldn’t it be fun to look at the True Reporting % of guys like Stephen A. Smith, Adrian Wojnarowksi, and Frank Isola? NBA reporting in today’s social media age has become a new wild frontier that’s probably full of more useless noise than it is of actual facts. Think of this effort as a sort of “Rate My Professor” for journalists except instead of arbitrary feedback, it will have data on how accurate a journalist when they break news before it actually happens. And it wouldn’t take much to keep track of this either. Heck, a simple thread on Reddit listing which journalist first breaks a story is probably good enough since we can always go back and see if it turned out to be true.
Here’s how I envision True Reporting % working. The next time a well know reporter claims they have a major news regarding a team or player’s roster movement such as a trade or free agent destination based on first hand knowledge or their sources, we simply log it in. So for example, if Chris Broussard says his sources tell him that LeBron is going to come back to Cleveland, we’ll mark that down now as a major reporting attempt and see if it’s good or rims out when LeBron actually signs with a team. If Broussard is right, then we’ll keep that in mind the next time he reports a story. If he’s wrong, maybe we’ll learn to take his next breaking news from sources with a huge grain of salt. At the end of the season we’ll be able to see which journalist have the highest true reporting % and which ones have the lowest. Journalists may eventually have second thoughts about reporting nonsense so liberally knowing their reporting attempts are being tallied. It also would reward lesser known journalists that have proven their stories are ones we should be listening to.
Sports journalism can be a cutthroat industry and just as competitive as the actual sports they cover. I’m sure many of them would scoff at the suggestion we tally up their stories and keep track of how reliable they are but that doesn’t mean the criticism they receive is fair. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the tweets they get from angry fans, but they are just doing their jobs by reporting what they hear and they shouldn’t be faulted for that. We are supposed to trust their judgment when they say their information is coming from an unnamed source, but it’s also our jobs as fans to add our own layer of scrutiny to these kinds of stories.
As of this writing, Melo has been said to being close to signing with Knicks after weekend to strongly considering the Lakers hours apart from each story. Perhaps we are another round or two away from Chicago and Houston being the leaders of signing Melo. Regardless of these stories, maybe the lesson learned is that we just shouldn’t take them seriously and overreact to news that is still pure speculation. As fans, that’s on us to use restraint and patience on taking in these stories, so let’s enjoy the summer and wait until Melo tells us where he’s actually going before we take someone else’s words over his.
Follow Richard Bertin on Twitter and check out his Knicks’ blog: “Starks Raving Mad”
Follow and Like Buckets Over Broadway on Twitter and Facebook.On Monday, congressman Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) introduced the controversial cybersecurity bill known as CISPA to the House for the third straight year.
Ruppersberger’s office shared a copy of the text with the Daily Dot. As it happens, this version of CISPA—an acronym for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act—is word-for-word the exact same one that passed the House in April 2013.
At the time, the Daily Dot published an explainer about what’s in the bill, why, and why anybody supports or hates it. Since the bill’s wording is identical, we’ve republished the majority of it below, tweaked to better reflect what the bill means in 2014, in the wake of the Sony hack and President Obama’s new cybersecurity proposal.
CISPA was officially reintroduced to the House of Representatives on Wednesday. You’ve most likely been seeing plenty of headlines about it, and there’s a decent chance that you realize that it’s kind of a big deal, but you’re not clear on why it’s so contentious or how it could actually affect you.
So, what is CISPA?
In its most basic terms, it’s a cybersecurity bill. It’s the federal government saying “American computer systems are being attacked every day, often by Chinese hackers, and we’re relatively helpless to stop it. We need stronger defenses.”
How does it work?
CISPA is based on the idea of “information-sharing.” You can trace that term back to 9/11, when analysis of the event found that government agencies like the CIA and FBI didn’t share their intelligence with each other. The Patriot Act, first passed in 2001, stressed better communication between federal law enforcement agencies.
In the case of a cyberattack, or offensive hack, CISPA would allow, say, the administrator of a network that’s responsible for a city’s power grid to let the the FBI take a peek to try and determine who the attacker is and what they’re doing.
That doesn’t sound so bad…
Except that means that any personal information you have on that network is now in the FBI’s hands. And there’s concern over just how easily a government agency can cry “cyberattack!” to justify accessing any private information it wants, without going through the usual process of getting a search warrant.
Recall, for instance, that the NSA’s tremendous online spy powers are supposed to be focused on spying on foreign terrorists, but that’s not always how it plays out. In 2013, Reuters uncovered that the National Security Agency will sometimes share evidence of severe crimes with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Since such evidence wouldn’t be admissible in court, the DEA then engages in what’s called “parallel construction” to make its own trail of evidence, since they already know what their suspect’s up to.
How serious are these cyberattacks, really?
That’s a major point of debate. Those in Washington who push for stronger cybersecurity have for years referred to an imminent “Digital Pearl Harbor” or “Cyber 9/11,” where attackers will derail our critical infrastructure (think power plants, or air traffic controls) without stronger laws. And, to be fair, the U.S. itself appears to have already carried out such an attack when it released the Stuxnet virus on Iran, seriously hampering that country’s nuclear research program.
On the other hand, some researchers have found that statistics on the frequency of cyberattacks against the U.S. tend to be misrepresented by the government and are vastly overblown.
Both Obama and Ruppersberger have invoked recent high-profile attacks, like the one on Sony Pictures Entertainment, as evidence that we need information-sharing legislation. But experts say that’s nonsense, and wouldn’t have helped Sony in the slightest.
So under CISPA, the government could claim there was a cybersecurity breach and spy on any website it wants?
It’s not that easy. As CISPA’s supporters repeatedly stress, information-sharing is voluntary. Any network would need to give permission for a federal agent to have access. Note, though, that means the network’s permission. Not yours.
Why would a network want to volunteer?
Pretty simple: It means the government helps out with its cybersecurity efforts, which can be a real burden. Facebook, for example, infamously initially supported CISPA.
If I admitted in an email that I stole a candy bar, and the Department of Justice sees it, am I going to jail?
No, it has to be big. There are a few extremely specific criteria that have to be met for the government to actually prosecute civilians based on information acquired through CISPA—stuff like child porn or intent to commit terrorism.
If I’m not a terrorist pedophile, do I have anything to hide?
Plenty argue that CISPA directly violates any modern interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which prevents “unreasonable searches and seizures” without a warrant. And to put it mildly, privacy advocates heavily contest the “what if I have nothing to hide?” argument. In short, you probably do have something to hide even if don’t realize it.
How is CISPA different from Obama’s proposal?
Obama’s proposal has several tenants, but both it and CISPA really stress information sharing. On one hand, privacy groups generally regard Obama’s version as similar, but with somewhat better user-privacy protections built in.
On the other hand, some groups, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, question why we’d need an information-sharing law at all. There are already little-used government information-sharing programs in place, and a large number of high-profile hacks would be prevented if the victim used just basic security measures.
Will CISPA pass the House?
It’s still early. CISPA passed the House in both 2012 and 2013, but was led by the one-two punch of the two ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee, Ruppersberger and former Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, who has since retired.
Ruppersberger’s office has so far declined to share if they’re getting enough promises to give the bill a chance. And It’s hard to imagine Obama signing a bill in 2015 that he openly disparaged and repeatedly promised to veto.
However, given his own proposal’s insistence on information-sharing, it’s definitely possible Obama would agree to a compromise. In previous years, he’d hoped that the Democrat-held Senate could find a cybersecurity bill more to his liking, but they couldn’t ever get anything to pass, much less something that the Republican House would. Now that Republicans control the Senate, too, Obama’s hands are more tied.
Photo via heipei/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)Tory peer accused of using'meaningless' comparisons to try to make his argument against the need to tackle global warming
Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, has been privately accused by the government's chief scientific adviser of making "incorrect" and "misleading" claims in his book on climate change.
The charge against Lawson, the country's most prominent global-warming sceptic, was made during an extraordinary and at times fractious exchange of letters between the men following a meeting over coffee at the Lords.
Sir John Beddington wrote to Lawson to tell him that his book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, had made "a number of points related to the underlying science of climate change that are incorrect or presented in a misleading way". An appendix to his letter accused Lawson of making "meaningless" comparisons to prove his thesis.
In response, Lawson wrote back to accuse Beddington of attempting to "trump" his arguments without evidence or quantification. He also confessed to being baffled by Beddington's criticisms, adding that the government adviser had committed a "gross misuse of language" in claiming that the Earth has warmed "dramatically" in the past 150 years.
Lawson, who is chairman of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, is the most prominent critic of the government's policies on climate change. While not denying that there is evidence of a change in the climate, he has announced himself unconvinced that it has been caused by greenhouse gases.
Lawson is set to represent the climate sceptics at a debate hosted by the Spectator magazine, entitled "The Global Warming Hysteria Is Over: Time for a Return to Sanity".
But Christian Hunt of the website Carbon Brief, who, along with investigations website Spinwatch, uncovered the letters, said they showed Lawson did not have a grasp of the science: "It is worrying that a prominent figure like Lord Lawson is seen as a credible commentator on this issue, when his understanding of appears so flawed."
"His climate-sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation claims a charitable aim 'to advance the public understanding of global warming', but they seem to spend most of their time casting doubt upon well-established science."
Speaking from his home in Gascony, Lawson denied to the Observer that he had been "upset" by Beddington's criticisms and said he had failed to find a single factual inaccuracy in his book, which was first published in 2008. "We got on well in personal terms, but it wasn't a meeting of minds," he said."I wasn't upset in the slightest, because I seem to recall that I thought that he had missed the point. "I am chiefly concerned with what is a sensible policy. I seem to recall that none of the things in that appendix really affected the question of what policy one should pursue. Moreover, so far as my book is concerned, he was … unable to find a single thing in it that was factually inaccurate."
Of his first meeting with Beddington, before their correspondence began, Lawson added: "He had been recently appointed and he seemed to me to be a reasonably sensible fellow, and I said come along and have a cup of coffee at the Lords and discuss this together."
Beddington's first letter to Lawson was written a month after their meeting last March. To Lawson's claim in his book that there has been no "further global warming since the turn of the century", Beddington wrote: "Short-term temperature trends are meaningless in the context of global warming."
To Lawson's claim that calculating average global temperature is not straightforward and data from the developing world and former Soviet Union were not reliable, Beddington claimed those issues were taken into account and warming could be seen in other ways, such as in the decrease of Arctic sea ice.
To Lawson's claims that urbanisation raises near-surface temperatures and might be responsible for the recording of global temperature rises, Beddington said it has been studied and found to have a "negligible effect".
And to Lawson's claim that "neither scientists nor politicians serve either the truth or the people by pretending to know more than they do", Beddington wrote: "It is clear from the scientific evidence … that the risks are real and, I believe, it is not going too far to say, potentially catastrophic in the absence of strong global action to reduce emissions."
A month later Lawson wrote back thanking him for his "very full response". But he warned Beddington, as a scientist, against the "journalistic" phrase "catastrophic climate change". He then described his use of statistics as arbitrary, and his facts as carefully selected.
A month later, Lawson again wrote to Beddington demanding that he write to the Guardian to deny a report that the civil servant had been highly critical of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Beddington refused, claiming he had not criticised Lawson and stood by his criticisms about those who rely on anecdotal evidence to disprove climate change.Despite the ridiculous amount of press the Atlanta Thrashers and Tampa Bay Lightning have received thus far, it's the return of the Dallas Stars that qualifies as the biggest team story in the league this season. If the Stars were an Eastern Conference team, the mainstream media would have turned this team into 2011's first vomit-inducing story of the season with constant coverage about "the turnaround" and "the brilliance of Joe Nieuwendyk" and "the resurrection of Marc Crawford". Instead, the media has subjected us to the same cliches using Thrashers or Lightning personnel.
Unable to gain any attention from the Eastern media, the Stars have done the next best thing: they've destroyed the best Eastern conference has to offer.
Below are the record splits the Stars have posted to this point.
GP Record Pts P/G P/82 Overall 46 28-13-5 61 1.326 109 vs. West 32 17-11-4 38 1.188 97 vs. East 14 11-2-1 23 1.643 135
The Stars have posted an 11-2-1 record against the East, the best split in the Western Conference. They've been strong against the west, but without that dominance against the East, the Stars would be in the midst of a three horse race in the Pacific, rather than leading it.
What about clear victories? We know that one-goal victories are often a function of luck, and clear victories are more meaningful in judging a team's true talent. Scott has been tracking clear victories, and the Stars splits are in the table below.
Clear Victories GP Record Total 19 11-8 vs. West 12 5-7 vs. East 7 6-1
The Stars have a losing record against the West when it comes to clear victories, but they're pasting the East. Their lone clear loss against an Eastern team was to the Maple Leafs.
Because the sample size is so small, it's possible these clear victories are a function of luck. Below are the Stars goal differential splits.
Goals GP GF GA GD GD/G Overall 46 135 120 15 0.326 vs. West 32 85 91 -6 -0.194 vs. East 14 50 29 21 1.5
The goal differentials mirror the clear victory standings - the Stars have a negative goal differential against the West, but they're pasting the East.
Scott mentioned the Stars possession woes in his game post last week:
...there are some warning signs that the Stars aren't as good as their record suggests. Through Christmas, they were getting bombed with the score close, earning only 46.1% of Fenwick events, which placed them 26th in the league. If there's something other than blind hatred making me think twice about Dallas, that's what it is.
To reinforce that, check out the Stars at the venerable, terrifying Gabe Desjardins' behindthenet.ca. Eliminate Jamie Langenbrunner from that list as he's been in New Jersey. Only Matt Niskanen has a positive Corsi.
Below is a table showing the shots splits thus far on the season
Shots GP SF SA SD Shots Pct SD/G Overall 46 1265 1438 -173 0.468 -3.8 vs. West 32 892 1009 -117 0.469 -3.7 vs. East 14 373 429 -56 0.465 -4.0
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can be stacked up to three times on one target. In this state, monsters or players take 40% additional damage per instance of Shock. Shock stacks additively with itself, for a maximum of 120% with a stack of three. The damage multiplier itself applies multiplicatively with your final damage, since it it increasing the damage the enemy takes, rather than the damage you deal.Chaos DamageChaos damage ignores energy shield, reducing life directly.Chaos damage isconsidered to be "elemental damage".ResistancesFire, Cold, Lightning, and Chaos damage each has its own resistance value (eg "Fire resistance") which is viewable in the character sheet. Resistances reduce damage taken (or increase damage if they are negative), and are capped at a maximum of 75% by default. This maximum can be modified by certain skills. There are penalties to resistances in higher difficulty levels. In Cruel difficulty, there is a -20% penalty to player resistances, and this increases to -60% in Merciless.Burning, Chilled, Frozen, and Shocked are collectively known asThe duration of the chilled, frozen, and shocked statuses is related to the amount of cold/lightning damage dealt:: 276ms per 1% max life dealt as lightning: 138ms per 1% max life dealt as cold: 100ms per 1% max life dealt as coldAll three are capped at considering 1/3 of max life - if you deal more than 1/3 max life as that element, the status ailment occurs as though you did exactly 1/3.The maximum unmodified durations are therefore:Shock: 9.2 secondsChill: 4.6 secondsFreeze: 3.33 secondsIf the duration would be less that 300ms, it's ignored entirely (the effect is not applied).For characters using Chaos Inoculation, these durations are calculated based on what the character's maximum life would be if they did not have Chaos Inoculation.When playing in a party, a monster's max life is treated as being the same as it would be in a single player game for the purposes of calculating these durations.Some skills grant Endurance (strength), Frenzy (dexterity), or Power (intelligence) charges.Each charge lasts a short duration before it disappears. Gaining a charge resets the duration of all accumulated charges.Endurance charges are related to the strength attribute and grant +5% physical damage reduction, and +5% to elemental resistances (fire, cold, and lightning) per charge.The physical damage reduction stacks with the damage reduction from armour, so that they are both applied at the same time. For example, if a monster deals 100 damage, and you have 10% DR from two endurance charges, and enough armour to prevent 30 of the 100 damage, the incoming damage would be reduced by 40.Frenzy charges are related to the dexterity attribute and grant +5% attack speed and +5% cast speed per charge.Power charges are related to the intelligence attribute and grant +50% critical strike chance per charge.By default characters can have a maximum number of 3 active charges of each type at one time. This maximum can be increased by certain passive skills.The maximum party size is 6 players.Monsters gain 50% extra life for each additional party member after the first. For example, against a party of 3 players, monsters have double life.The original life amount is used for the purposes of determining the length of stuns and status ailments from elemental damage - this means monsters will not be harder to stun/ignite/etc. when fighting in a party.Each player in a party after the first gives a +50% item quantity modifier on drops. So a party of three will see twice as many drops as a lone character.Increased Item Rarity & Quantity modifiers are only counted from the player who lands the killing blow.See the drop rates section above for more information about item rarity and quantity bonuses.Only party members that are nearby (roughly two screens) receive experience from a slain monster. If one member is in town or too far from the monster they get no XP. Monsters are still made harder by players elsewhere on the level but outside of XP range.Only the character landing the killing blow on an enemy will gain flask charges. The same is true for all +life and +mana gained "when you deal a killing blow" modifiers.Flasks have a +75% charge recovery bonus for each party member after the first. Last edited by Malice on Feb 23, 2013, 12:39:35 PM Posted by Malice
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
Areas
Instances
All areas in Path of Exile are instanced. When you enter an area, a new instance is created. Once you leave the area, the instance will remain in its current state for 15 minutes - if 15 minutes passes with no players entering the instance, it will be closed. Entering the same area again will create a new instance with a new randomly generated map.
Areas without side areas attached (any area with two or less exits) has a shorter timer, and will only last 8 minutes while empty.
Instances you create are private, and cannot be entered by other players unless they join your party. However, once a player has entered an instance, that instance remains associated with the player even if they leave the party. So it is possible to share an instance with non-party members in some circumstances.
The exception to this is towns, which are always public, and cut-throat leagues, where all instances are public - meaning anyone can enter your instances at any time.
Some areas have waypoints. Once activated (by clicking on the waypoint), waypoints allow you to travel instantly to any other waypoint you have activated.
Ctrl-clicking on a waypoint destination in the waypoint menu, or an area transition will bring up the instance management screen. This screen lists all available instances of the area you ctrl-clicked on, and the time remaining until they are closed. It also allows you to create new instances, and enter existing ones.
Using the instance management screen you can have more than once instance of the same area open at one time, and choose which available instance you want to enter. Last edited by Malice on Feb 12, 2013, 4:14:16 PM Posted by Malice
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
reserved Last edited by Malice on Nov 14, 2011, 1:09:43 AM Posted by Malice
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
Updated a whole bunch of stuff, added graphs for level scaling of experience. Posted by Malice
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
So if I wanted to maximise item rarity and quantity, I'd have to stack that on a character and get them to land all the killing blows on bosses to maximise loot? At least gaming this will be hard.
Also, regarding private instances: do you know if that applies to Cut-Throat? I want to make a clan on a cut-throat league where our only purpose is to annoy.
edit: thanks for posting this IRON MAN Last edited by Dreggon on Nov 14, 2011, 8:48:44 AM Posted by Dreggon
on on Quote this Post
Cut throat is the exception where all instances are public. The other feature of cut-throat is that characters drop their items when they die.
Added note about instances in cut-throat leagues not being private. Posted by Malice
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
Drop their items... do they drop ALL their items? Everything in inventory, everything equipped, and you only keep the things in your stash?
And where does the dead character go? Normal league? IRON MAN Posted by Dreggon
on on Quote this Post
" Dreggon
And where does the dead character go? Normal league? Drop their items... do they drop ALL their items? Everything in inventory, everything equipped, and you only keep the things in your stash?And where does the dead character go? Normal league?
If the character is in the Hardcore-Cut throat league, then yes. If the character is in Normal-Cut throat league, then the dead character restarts in town.
Based on the Leagues section on the site under Cut throat : " Slain characters drop all their items upon death.
I guess slain characters lose inventory and equipped items upon death. If the character is in the Hardcore-Cut throat league, then yes. If the character is in Normal-Cut throat league, then the dead character restarts in town.Based on the Leagues section on the site under Cut throat :I guess slain characters lose inventory and equipped items upon death. Greetings mortal, are you ready to die? Posted by Kahoder
on on Quote this PostMEME GRADUATE HANDBOOK
Academic Information for Graduate Students
Graduate Program in Computer Music and Multimedia (MEME)
Brown University
Department of Music
CONTENTS
I. The M.A. Degree
1.1 Tuition units.
1.2. Course requirements.
1.3. Master’s Thesis.
1.4. Qualifying Review.
1.5. Duration of Study.
1.6. Students with Prior Graduate Degrees.
2. The Ph.D. Degree
2.1. Prerequisites.
2.2. Tuition units and residency.
2.3. Duration of study.
2.4. Course requirements.
2.5. Selecting a Dissertation Committee.
2.6. Ph.D. qualifying examination: overview.
2.6.1 Selecting exam areas
2.6.2 Reading/Listening/Viewing List (due June 15 or earlier)
2.6.3 Qualifying Exam Proposal with Questions for Three Essays (due September 15 or earlier)
2.6.4 Essays (February 15 or earlier)
2.6.5 Oral Exam (March 15 or earlier)
2.7. Dissertation proposal and advancement to candidacy (May 15 or earlier)
2.8. Dissertation
2.9. Defense
The MEME Graduate Handbook is intended to help guide new and continuing students through their graduate studies in the MEME program (Computer Music and Multimedia)* *at Brown. It contains a mixture of rules, regulations, rationales, and advice. For clarification and additional information on policy, speak with the MEME Director of Graduate Studies (DGS). DGSs are responsible for all graduate-related issues and act as liaisons between graduate students and the Graduate School. DGSs are expected to send annual updates to graduate students informing them of their academic standing and expected progress and are the primary point of contact for students who may need to make special requests regarding deferred admission, travel, leaves of absence, etc. Additionally, each graduate student should meet regularly with the DGS to discuss goals, course planning, and progress.
The Student Affairs Officer in the Music Department administers the department’s graduate program and should be contacted first on administrative matters having to do with the Graduate School, such as regulations, forms and deadlines. The first part of this handbook is a summary of the regulations concerning degrees. The second part expands on the first, offering suggestions about each year of study, and explaining procedures governing evaluation, financial aid, and the qualifying examinations (prelims).
General information for graduate students is contained in the Catalogue of the University, the Catalogue of the Graduate School, and on line at the Graduate School website. You should consult these other sources of information as well as this handbook. The most up-to-date information is here in the MEME Graduate Handbook.
PART ONE: Degree Requirements
Overview of Requirements
The MEME doctoral program requires a minimum of thirteen courses, although most students take about twenty courses during their first three years of study. With the consultation of the student’s advisor, courses will be chosen in order to suit an individualized plan of study. Towards the end of the third year, the candidate will take a three-hour oral qualifying examination. Passing the qualifying examination authorizes the student to proceed to the doctoral dissertation, which is completed during the fourth and fifth years.
1. The M.A. Degree: Requirements
You are admitted to the graduate program with the expectation that you will be a full-time student. Most students will earn both the M.A. and Ph.D. An M.A. is awarded as an intermediate step during the second year of study provided you have completed eight courses, an approved master’s thesis, and passed the qualifying review.
1.1 Tuition units. For the M.A. the Graduate School requires a minimum of eight tuition units (eight courses), although students typically complete fourteen courses by the end of the second year (including independent studies). A Fellowship pays four tuition units per semester while a Teaching or Research Assistantship pays three tuition units per semester. (For explanations of Fellowships, Assistantships see below under Financial Aid.)
1.2. Course requirements. For the M.A. you must complete a minimum of eight approved semester courses with a grade of B or higher. (Courses with a mandatory S/NC grade option must be completed with a grade of S.) Required courses will include at least four graduate level seminars offered by MEME. Most students will take the general graduate composition/production seminars each semester during their first two years (MUSC 2230/2240 Seminar in Computer Music and Multimedia Composition, and MUSC 2280, Large-Scale Projects), plus one or more additional MEME seminars. The remaining courses may be chosen, with approval from your advisor, from any graduate or upper-level undergraduate courses at Brown or RISD (see RISD’s Digital Media listings).
1.3. Master’s Thesis. The thesis will be a substantial creative project and accompanying paper that must be approved by two faculty members. The project should demonstrate original ideas and techniques, with the form determined by the student (examples include, but are not limited to: audio/visual installation; electronic performance using interactive technology; new instrument design and performance; fixed media work; and hybrid combinations of the above). Professional documentation of your work (typically a CD, DVD, or website), along with a paper describing aesthetic concepts, background information and technical realization of the work is required. (The paper is typically 30-50 pages).
A detailed thesis proposal, typically 5-10 pages, must be submitted and approved by your main advisor the summer before the thesis will be completed (deadline June 15th). The proposal should include a summary of the project, a detailed aesthetic/artistic description and rationale, a detailed technical description including research needed to complete the project, and a detailed timeline. The typical timeline includes:
presentation of prototypes at the end of the third semester ongoing critiques of work-in-progress in the first half of the fourth semester a final project critique at least two weeks before the work is shown a final showing of the work by March 15 a completed first draft of the paper by April 5 a final copy of the paper by April 15 the completed thesis and all documentation approved and submitted to the Graduate School by May 1. Three copies: one to the graduate school, one to the Music Library, and one for MEME.
1.4. Qualifying Review. In the fourth semester, after a public presentation of the M.A. thesis project, each student will undergo a Qualifying Review and critique administered by a committee of at least two faculty members (including the co-directors of the Computer Music and Multimedia Program).
The committee will review reports by instructors, the student’s progress, samples of work completed at Brown, and the M.A. thesis. The committee will then meet with the student, which will give the student the opportunity to communicate with the committee. The goal of the meeting is to be retrospective as well as to discuss future directions including suggestions and possibilities for qualifying exam areas. Based on an evaluation of the student’s progress in the M.A. program, the committee will make a decision to either admit the student into the Ph.D. program or (rarely) determine that the student may not proceed in his or her studies and award a terminal M.A.
1.5. Duration of Study. Students are expected to complete the M.A. within four semesters of full-time study. Students who petition to have previous graduate work accepted may proceed more rapidly.
1.6. Students with Prior Graduate Degrees. Students entering with a master’s degree from another institution may petition to have up to eight graduate course credits transferred. If you have completed a master’s thesis similar to the one required by the MEME program, you may also petition to have your thesis accepted as part of your requirement towards earning Brown’s Ph.D. degree.
Students whose thesis is accepted and who transfer eight credits may be able to complete their Ph.D. in four years, instead of five, and will not receive the M.A. from Brown. These students will still meet the M.A. two-year course requirements, and they will begin preparing for their qualifying exam during their second year.
2. The Ph.D. Degree: Requirements
2.1. Prerequisites. You must complete all our M.A. requirements before entering the Ph.D. program.
2.2. Tuition units and residency. For the Ph.D. the Graduate School requires the payment of sixteen tuition units beyond the eight for the M.A. You must spend at least two semesters beyond the M.A. in full-time study in residence at Brown.
*2.3. Duration of study. *Most students should plan on five years of full-time study for the completion of the Ph.D. Some students entering with a master’s degree may proceed more rapidly. The Graduate School requires students to complete the dissertation no later than five years after advancement to candidacy.
2.4. Course requirements. Requirements for the Ph.D. include ongoing MEME composition seminars, independent study, and additional courses relevant for the Ph.D. thesis. Most students receiving the M.A. and Ph.D. take about eighteen courses, during three years of full-time coursework. The additional course credits needed to meet the graduate school’s requirement of twenty-four are counted when a student is researching and writing the dissertation. (See section eight for a schematic of typical course loads).
2.5. Selecting a Dissertation Committee. Soon after a student is admitted into the Ph.D. program (after completion of the M.A. at the end of the second year), it is time to select and meet with a dissertation advisor, who will be the student’s primary advisor and advocate, chairing the Dissertation Committee and guiding them through the process of the qualifying exam and the dissertation. The dissertation advisor must be a member of the Brown Music Department and must hold a doctorate degree. Students may choose any Music Department faculty member to be their dissertation advisor.
The student and dissertation advisor collaborate to assemble the Dissertation Committee, including the dissertation advisor and usually two or three additional professors chosen for their area of expertise. This advisory committee will typically see the student through the qualifying exam to the completion of the dissertation.
2.6. Ph.D. qualifying examination: overview. The qualifying exam comprises four distinct components:
A reading/listening/viewing list for study and research A qualifying exam proposal with questions / topics for three essays Three essays (History & Critical Theory, Technology, Analysis) An oral exam
Provided normal progress is made towards the degree, students will take the qualifying oral exam during the first half of the sixth semester (before March 15).
A detailed exam reading/listening/viewing list must be submitted to the student’s Dissertation Committee no later than nine months before the exam (June 15 or earlier). Subsequently, the full qualifying exam proposal must be submitted and approved no later than six months before the exam (September 15 or earlier).
2.6.1 Selecting exam areas
After completion of the M.A. thesis (end of the second year), a student will meet with the dissertation advisor to define three specialized areas for the qualifying exam. The selected exam areas should delimit fields pertaining to the student’s projected dissertation research, and should address these topics:
History & Critical Theory: One of these areas must address the history and critical theory of computer music and multimedia fields (in general and specifically as it relates to the work of the student). Technology: Another area must highlight technical aspects, including programming, software design, or other technological concerns (such as acoustics, electronics, digital signal processing, etc.). Analysis: The third area should reflect the specific artistic goals of the student, analyzing and discussing exemplary creative work that may be influential on the final dissertation project. That said, all three essays should point to the relevancy of research as it applies to creative work.
2.6.2 Reading/Listening/Viewing List (due June 15 or earlier)
The first stage of the qualifying exam process is the preparation of a reading/listening/viewing list based on the three chosen areas of specialization. Each student will create a core reading/listening/viewing list in consultation with his or her advisors. This list should be divided into the three areas designated for the qualifying exam, and may be composed of scholarly texts, musical scores, and audio-visual material. The list will be submitted to the Dissertation Committee along with a descriptive statement on the areas of study and the focus of inquiry.
2.6.3 Qualifying Exam Proposal with Questions for Three Essays (due September 15 or earlier)
The qualifying exam proposal comprises a set of questions the student will address for each of the three chosen areas of specialization. These questions directly lead to the essay writing, and so should be constructed as prompts for the research to follow. The reading/listening/viewing list for each area should be attached as a bibliography for each set of questions.
All members of the Dissertation Committee must accept the qualifying exam proposal, on a signature page (or sent electronically to the DGS), before you can proceed. The committee reserves the right to refuse to examine you in an area in which it feels insufficiently competent. Therefore, you should gain informal approval of an area before you begin to prepare yourself in it. In the rare instance where you wish to postpone the examination you must petition the Graduate Committee no later than the beginning of the sixth semester.
Once the set of questions is approved, the student will commence study, culminating in three essays.
2.6.4 Essays (February 15 or earlier)
Each essay begins with a set of questions it will address, and proceeds with a definition of the area and a review of relevant scholarship and creative work. In so doing, you outline the major intellectual, technical and aesthetic issues of the field. The essays should include your insights, thoughts, and analyses of critical problems facing each area. These essays, along with the bibliography, will be given to committee members at least one month before the oral exam. (The essays are typically 15-20 pages, not including a bibliography or images, and should be accompanied by audio/visual links to discussed work, when possible). It is advisable to have your main advisor read the essays and make comments before they are sent to the rest of the committee. Keep in mind that committee members will make suggestions and comments, and will want to see the rewrite at least one week before the exam.
2.6.5 Oral Exam (March 15 or earlier)
During the oral exam (up to three hours) the essays and bibliography will be used as a basis to center discussion. The student will have an opportunity to lead off with a short presentation (45 minutes), and must demonstrate understanding of his or her areas and the advances and debates within them. The advisory committee will review the student’s competence and knowledge in the areas where research is planned.
Upon completion of the exam, the committee will come to one of the following determinations: (a) the student has passed; or (b) the student must retake the exam. Students may retake the exam once. Upon passing the qualifying exam, the candidate may proceed to the dissertation.
2.7. Dissertation proposal and advancement to candidacy (May 15 or earlier)
After passing the Ph.D. qualifying examination, you will work with your dissertation advisor to develop a thesis proposal (you should have begun discussing your thesis topic in the previous year in preparation for the qualifying exam).
The detailed proposal must include:
a statement of artistic concept to be investigated a description of your Ph.D. project a review and bibliography of the relevant scholarly literature a description of the research methods you will use a projected timetable a discussion of the feasibility of the project a statement of its significance for the field.
The dissertation proposal is typically 10-20 pages.
The dissertation proposal should be circulated to the members of the student’s dissertation committee by May 15 of the sixth semester, and discussed with individual committee members. A file copy of the approved proposal will be signed by all members of the dissertation committee (email approval is acceptable) and will be provided to the Director of Graduate Studies of the Computer Music and Multimedia program. This is typically done by the end of the sixth semester.
Once the dissertation proposal is accepted, you are advanced to candidacy for the degree. At this point you have completed all of the requirements for the doctoral degree except the dissertation (ABD).
A dissertation proposal often undergoes some modification as the research progresses and you are in communication with your dissertation advisor. Any major change in topic or research method requires approval of a revised proposal. No dissertation will be accepted from a student who has not had a research proposal accepted.
2.8. Dissertation
The dissertation is an original work of art/music/performance (the dissertation “project”) that makes a substantial contribution to knowledge in the field; plus a detailed paper that describes the project’s overall concept, technical methods, historical/theoretical/artistic context, and a detailed analysis (the paper is typically 100-120 pages long). The dissertation project must be performed/shown in public well before the written portion is completed (by October 1 of the fifth year). A formal critique of the project takes place with all committee members present. Also note: A final formal critique of the finished work will take place no later than three weeks before the first public presentation.
For a commencement at the end of May, a first draft of the written thesis must be sent to the dissertation advisor for comments by February 1, with a final draft completed by March 1 and sent to the dissertation committee.
While the work on the dissertation is under way, a written progress report by the student is required each semester. The report should be sent to the DGS, who will send it to the dissertation advisor.
The Graduate School has a very specific set of rules regarding the format of the dissertation text and the procedures surrounding its submission. The paper must be accompanied by audio/visual documentation. (SeeGraduate School website for details).
NOTE: If you are in your fifth year, preparing your dissertation, you need only register for the non-credit-bearing course MUSC2990 -- Thesis Preparation -- in order to remain active, regardless of whether or not you are on campus or in the field doing research.
To summarize the important milestones in the dissertation:
Final formal critique at least 3 weeks prior to the first public presentation. This is for your committee members Public presentation by October 1 of the fifth year First draft of written thesis to primary advisor by February 1 of fifth year Final draft of written thesis to full dissertation committee by March 1 of fifth year Contact Music Student Affairs Officer second week of March to begin arranging defense Dissertation defense during the period of April 1 - April 6 (see below for details) Final version of written thesis, incorporating suggested revisions, to dissertation committee by April 15 All materials and paperworks submitted to the Graduate School by May 1
2.9. Defense
The dissertation defense is scheduled approximately four weeks after the committee receives the written dissertation, with the expectations that there will be some revisions required (April 1-6). A final version, incorporating suggested revisions, must be sent to the committee for approval by April 15. All materials and paperwork must be received by the Graduate School by May 1.
The defense is in the form of a one-hour artist’s talk, followed by questions and comments from members of the committee (60-90 minutes), followed by questions and comments from other audience members. The defense it typically open to the community.
In order that the defense paperwork can be properly prepared, three weeks prior to the defense date you will provide the following information to the department's Student Affairs Officer:
a list of previous degrees awarded, the institution(s) that conferred each degree, and the date the degree was awarded
date, time, building, and room number for the defense
official title of the dissertation
committee members names, differentiating your committee director (dissertation advisor) and the readers. (If members are not Brown affiliated, then also provide the name of their institution and department)
NOTE: Since the defense is often the one time that the entire dissertation committee is in one place together, we recommend that you bring three copies (on acid-free paper) of your properly formatted dissertation signature pages, so you can get the committee signatures
PART TWO: Normal 5-year timetable for progress towards the degree
(A 4-year timetable is possible with accepted master’s thesis and eight transfer credits. In which case, the student would begin at year 2, below).
Number of Courses Additional Requirements Year 1 Total of 8 M.A. Program Semester 1 4 Semester 2 4 Year 2 Total of 6 M.A. Program SUMMER M.A. Thesis Proposal approved by June 15. Semester 3 3 Draft showing of M.A. Thesis project by end of third semester Semester 4 3 M.A. Thesis project (March 15), Written thesis first draft (April 5) final draft (April 15). Graduate School deadline (May 1). Post thesis Qualifying Review & critique Year 3 Total of 6 Ph.D. Program, Meet with Thesis Advisor SUMMER Select dissertation advisor(s). Discuss preliminary dissertation topic, Identify 3 areas for Qualifying Exam, assemble committee. Submit reading list by June 15. Semester 5 3 Qualifying exam proposal approved by September 15. Semester 6 3 Completed essays sent to committee (February 15) Qualifying Exam (March 15) Write and submit dissertation proposal (May 15) Year 4 0 Ph.D. Program Semester 7 0 Dissertation Research Semester 8 0 Dissertation Research Year 5 - Ph.D. Program Semester 9 0 Dissertation Projects presented (Oct. 1) Semester 10 0 Dissertation - First draft for main advisor (Feb. 1). Final draft sent to committee (March 1). Dissertation defense (April 1-6). Final revised dissertation sent to committee for approval (April 15). Graduate School deadline to receive completed dissertation and signed paperwork (May 1)
The first year
MEME faculty jointly serve as advisors to first-year graduate students. (Your dissertation advisor assumes responsibility for advising you once you have advanced to that stage.) First-year students are awarded fellowships, in order to concentrate entirely on class work without job responsibilities.
Prior to or upon arrival at Brown you should consult with the MEME DGS about your program of courses so that you may register for the fall semester. The DGS will join you in assessing your strengths, your needs, and your goals. Your course work should lead to the knowledge in computer music/multimedia that will enable you to make an original and substantial contribution to the field in your doctoral dissertation. The DGS will help you make a rough plan of your course work for the next three years. During the first year you should:
- Take required MEME seminar courses.
- Take elective courses that will help you acquire new skills and develop critical thinking with a view toward developing three areas for the Ph.D. qualifying examination and the dissertation.
- Begin preliminary research for the M.A. thesis
- Summer after the first year: submit M.A. thesis proposal (June 15). Begin research and production for the M.A. thesis
The second year
At the beginning of the year you should meet with the DGS to discuss your progress and make plans for the future. Students will have an opportunity to teach and to get advanced and practical technical training through TAships. We encourage students to take advantage of the Sheridan Center, which offers workshops and advice for graduate students who are planning on a teaching career. Informal mentoring in your teaching practice also takes place when you are a teaching assistant.
Some of the things you must accomplish in your second year:
- Finish the M.A. course requirements
- Complete the M.A. thesis. (Project: March 15, written first draft: April 5, final draft: April 15)
- Choose your dissertation advisor and dissertation committee members
- Begin to do more independent work on areas leading to the qualifying examination
- Summer after the second year: submit reading list for Ph.D. qualifying exam (due June 15)
The third year
This year you will finish your course work, take your qualifying examinations, and prepare your dissertation proposal. Now is the time to take any remaining required courses, perhaps take an independent study course to help you prepare for your qualifying examination, or take courses outside the Music Department related to your dissertation research.
Working towards your qualifying exam includes:
- Submit Ph.D. qualifying examination proposal (due September 15)
- Receive approval from your dissertation committee for your qualifying exam proposal
- Study and research for qualifying exams, write the three exam essays
- Take the qualifying examination. You must take the examination no later than the middle of your sixth semester (usually March 15th). Your essays must be given to your committee members no later than one month before the exam.
After your qualifying exam:
- Submit the dissertation proposal (due May 15). Since your qualifying examinations will include your dissertation area, it will give you the opportunity to review the literature and study relevant topics for your thesis. The usual length of the proposal is 10 - 15 pages, excluding bibliography, discography, and filmography.
- Committee meeting to approve of the dissertation proposal
The fourth year
You will spend your fourth year doing dissertation research. You should be working primarily on your thesis creative project, but also keeping notes and starting to form an outline for the written component. Some students may want to travel to other research institutions during this year to gain additional expertise and/or access to specialized facilities. Keep in touch with your advisor during this time. A dissertation progress report is required after the end of each semester.
During your fourth year, you should:
- Complete the bulk of research and production for your thesis project.
- Write a detailed outline and complete several chapters of the written portion of your dissertation.
The fifth year
In the fifth year you will usually be supported with a Dissertation Fellowship, but you will not take any courses while you work on your dissertation. The fifth year is devoted to completing and showing your thesis project, and writing your dissertation.
The final steps towards your Ph.D. include:
- Critique process. Starting as early as the fourth year, the thesis project will be shown, in stages, for critique by other students and faculty. A final formal critique of the finished work will take place no later than three weeks before the first public presentation.
- Public presentation. The work must be presented in public no later than October 1 (earlier is better to give you more time for writing). If possible, all committee members should attend.
- First draft. Send a first draft of the written dissertation to your advisor before February 1. The committee should get a finished, edited copy of your thesis by March 1. This should be a very complete draft (not a “rough” draft), already seen by your primary advisor and possibly other committee members. Your committee members will make suggestions and suggest revisions. Keep in mind that committee members must be given adequate time to read the next (and hopefully, final) version of your dissertation, which will include revisions based on their feedback. We usually ask for comments back within two weeks of receiving the manuscript.
- Dissertation defense. The defense will take place 3-4 weeks after the thesis has been sent to the committee (April 1-7). The defense is in the form of a one-hour artist’s talk, followed by questions and comments from members of the committee (60-90 minutes), followed by questions and comments from other audience members. The defense it typically open to the community.
- To graduate in May, the final, revised copy of the dissertation must be sent to the committee by April 15. The Graduate School deadline to receive all signed paperwork and dissertation copies is May 1.
PART THREE: Evaluation and Advising
Evaluation
Acceptance by the Music Department and Graduate School implies that you have the potential for successful study at Brown. Thereafter the faculty offers you guidance and criticism to help you realize this potential.
Each year, at the end of the fall semester you will meet with the MEME faculty for an individual advising/evaluation meeting. As a result of the meeting you will receive oral and written evaluation indicating whether you are making satisfactory progress. Progress is judged by your coursework, artistic output, work as a TA (when applicable), and participation in MEME events. You are also expected to arrange public showings of your work and to seek professional opportunities to present at conferences and festivals.
Evaluation during the first year.
Any student who is not making satisfactory academic progress may be denied financial aid for the second year, or asked to leave the program at the end of the first year.
Evaluation during the second year (first year for students with prior accepted M.A. thesis).
Any student who is not making satisfactory academic progress in the M.A. program may be asked to work for an M.A. as the terminal degree. In such a case, any financial aid will cease after the second year.
Evaluation during the third year (second year for students with prior accepted M.A. thesis).
The qualifying examination is taken during the final semester of the third year.
Evaluation during the fourth and fifth year (ABD) (third
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because of the Zero Hour merge, distances himself from Shayera and Naomi.
Underworld Unleashed was a crossover meant to reinvigorate villains, and in some cases, tempt heroes. Neron, the devil himself, comes to tempt Katar with full control of his body, at the cost of his soul. He refuses, but Neron wasn’t just offering it to him. One of the reincarnations took him up on it, but Katar had killed him on the mental plane. Now that that incarnation lost the control of the body, no one had control. Every Hawk Avatar could speak at once, without control, driving Katar insane.
I couldn’t explain it better, which isn’t to say it’s not crazy. There is one important thing that will come up later though due to all this – the new Hawkgod version of Katar split with Shayera.
Hawkman suffered at this time from a relative abandonment of its support cast in favor of Katar being sullen and withdrawn. Post Zero Hour, Katar felt it would only hurt Shayera to be involved with his avatar war, so he kept himself at a distance. This was especially jarring since John Ostrander had just given them a “finally together” happy ending. The literal mashing together of Carter, Shiera, and Katar led to an interesting new ability (Natural wings, rather than a harness), but at the expense of anything resembling the Katar we loved in Hawkworld. This new Hawkman, rather than being a kind and caring, sensitive man, was too wrapped up in his own problems to attend to people around him.
Two years after Zero Hour this bizarre ride ended. With the help of Arion and the Martian Manhunter, Katar chose to enter the Hawk Avatar’s realm to try to come to terms with this new side of him, knowing that he would probably never return.
Of course he would, eventually, but during this time DC declared the character of Hawkman off limits. He was just too complicated, too much of a headache and nothing they did seemed to make it any better.
This forced Grant Morrison to invent his own version…
“Hahaha, nah – he’s an Angel! Not really, but don’t they look similar?”
When Morrison worked on JLA (1997-99) he wanted to introduce a new version of the character, unconnected other than the name, but was forbidden as DC, rightly, thought it was too complicated. As Wikipedia relates:
[Morrison] intended to create a new Hawkman with no links to the old characters. This new Hawkman, an Earth-bound angel of the “Eagle host” named Zauriel, was to be introduced into the JLA with issue #6 (June 1997). Morrison was denied permission to use the name “Hawkman” by DC editorial, which still considered it “radioactive”, due to the complex post-Crisis continuity problems with the character. In the Wizard JLA Special, Morrison made an appeal to the fanbase, “It’s a good name and it seems a shame to let it go to waste. We’re hoping that fans will figure ‘For God’s sake, let’s just call him Hawkman and get him in the Justice League as Hawkman,’ and the editors will relent. We’re hoping to start a campaign.” DC held firm, and the “Hawkman” name went unused for several more years.
So, while this character wasn’t callled Hawkman and had no connection to the previous continuity, the fact that his creation is so closely tied means Zauriel makes the list. He was still introduced and still joined the JLA, still had wings and used similar weapons. In fact, when he and Aquaman meet for the first time in the midst of a battle the former actually mistakes the latter for Katar.
If you’re interested in the character, he’s actually had a fairly interesting career and you can read more by following these links:
“Oh, you didn’t think we forgot about Hawkgirl did you?”
So, it was time for a new Hawkgirl!
Now, you may be thinking that I’m going to be talking about Shayera as she was the only one it seems to escape that nonsense with the Hawkgod, right? I mean, Sheira was merged with Carter and Katar so surely her tale is over, right? Right??
It’s like you haven’t been paying attention to how Hawk history works!
The new Hawkgirl we get is called Kendra Saunders. She’s actually a distant relation of the Sheira Hall, being the granddaughter of Sheira’s cousin Speed Saunders, but how she becomes Hawkgirl is actually rather messed up.
Kendra Saunders was a young woman who committed suicide. When her soul left her body, her great-aunt, Shiera Hall’s soul, entered it. Her grandfather, former OSS agent and globe-trotting adventurer Speed Saunders, recognized this change and encouraged his granddaughter to embrace her destiny as the “new” Hawkgirl.
From memory, whether it was the Hawkgod dying or the original merge during Zero Hour that freed Sheira’s soul for this was never clear but let’s just take it at face value for now.
Her eyes also changed colour – because that’s totally how souls work. One of the ongoing issues for the character was that she still believed herself to be Kendra – she had all of Kendra’s memories, after all, and very few of Sheira’s, aside from her fighting skills.
Still believing herself to be Kendra, she debuted as a hero using the original Hawkgirl’s equipment and set out in search of a being called the Fate-Child (actually her own reincarnated son, Hector Hall). This led to a meeting with the Justice Society and Kendra’s induction to that team.
See, she even tied win with all that madness I mentioned back in the Hector Hall section!
Fun fact, when she eventually did learn that her suicide attempt had been successful and that she was mistake as to ‘who’ she was, it was the pseudo-Hawk Zauriel who told her.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myelf because Kendra was about to play an important role in writing another Hawk chapter.
It was time for Hawkman to come back.
“OMG, NO! They’re all them – reincarnation explains everything!”
Before we could have Hawkman back we got a bunch of new information about this history, especially about how that whole curse of reincarnation had occurred down the line.
Much of Carter Hall’s post-Hawkworld history is fleshed out in the pages of DC’s JSA (1999-2006) and Hawkman (vol. 4) (2002). These two titles, penned to a great extent by writers David S. Goyer, Geoff Johns, and James Dale Robinson, examine Hall’s previous lives.
The expanded, post-Crisis and post-Hawkworld version of their origin goes as follows:
As prophesied by the wizard Nabu, a spacecraft lands in Egypt. Prince Khufu, Nabu, and the champion Teth-Adam search the desert, finally coming across the remains of a Thanagarian ship styled with a hawk-like motif. Nabu casts a spell translating the strange language of the female space traveler. Just before dying, she whispers the words, “Nth metal”, the name of the substance that powered the downed ship.
Teth-Adam lifts the ship back to Khufu’s palace, where it is studied inside the Temple of Horus at Erdu. The remaining Nth metal is examined, and its most obvious property proves to be its ability to negate gravity. The remaining sample from the ship is melted and used to create several remarkable devices, including a scarab which allows Khufu to fly, a deadly knife, and a battle glove referred to as the Claw of Horus. However, the metal also strengthens the souls of Khufu and Chay-Ara, binding them together in their love and imprinting them with the collective knowledge of Thanagar. Although the villainous priest Hath-Set murders the two with the knife of Nth metal, their souls live on in the mortal plane. They are reincarnated over many lifetimes, always finding true love in each other, but cursed to be repeatedly killed at the hands of a reincarnated Hath-Set.
Along with retconning the ‘ninth metal’ of those original stories to Nth metal from a down Thanagarian spaceship in ancient Egypt, DC identified a bunch of versions of Carter and Sheira (well, Khufu and Chay-Ara, technically) that had existed through history. Some of the, like Nighthawk and Cinnamon were actually existing DC characters who were co-opted into the Hawks history.
Some of the reincarnated identities of Khufu and Chay-Ara depicted in Hawkman (vol. 4) include but are not limited to:
Brian Kent (also known as the Silent Knight), alive during 5th century Britain, love of Lady Celia Penbrook;
Koenrad Von Grimm, the son of a blacksmith in 14th century Germany;
Captain John Smith of the 16th century Colony of Virginia;
Hannibal Hawkes, the Nighthawk, a gunfighter in the American Old West, love of Cinnamon;
Detective James Wright, a Pinkerton detective in the early 20th century, love of Sheila Carr.
It’s also posited that Katar and Shayera were just another set of reincarnations. I mean, if you’re already accepting reincarnation is it that crazy to believe people could be reborn on other planets. This was finally a way of tying it all together that made some sense.
This is interesting and all but how, I hear you ask, does it bring Hawkman back to life? Well, it involves Kendra travelling to Thanagar…
Years later, JSA member Hawkgirl (Kendra Saunders) was transported to a ravaged Thanagar by the High Priests of the Downsiders. Seeking a champion to stop the evil Onimar Synn from enslaving the planet, the priests used Kendra’s centuries-old connection to Hawkman to bring him back to the mortal plain.
Here’s the surprise though: despite the ritual taking place on Thanagar with Thanagarian priests the version of Hawkman who was summoned was Carter Hall! Now, he did change a bit – he was more muscular and had dark hair, like Katar, and he now had all of Katar’s memories too, but he was definitely Carter (well, kinda – see the Hawkman Special (2008) below.) It was essentially the mind of Carter in a reconstructed body of Katar, and that’s probably the most we could have hoped for.
It certainly caused issues with Kendra, who instead of having too many memories had too few.
She had all of Kendra’s memories, but almost none of Shiera’s. This created tension with Hawkman since he remembered all of their past lives together and believed they were destined for each other. Kendra had been presented as a very troubled young woman, haunted by the murder of her parents by a corrupt cop and confused by her jumble of memories and feelings.
She operated as Hawkman’s partner, but it was a long time before she began to actually admit her attraction to him.
The new team would set up show in St. Roch, Louisiana, and had a bunch of adventures over the years. They participated in the Rann-Thanagar War series, further mentioned below in the update on Shayera Hol, and generally ran around being heroes before their books were once again cancelled.
Shortly after this happened in 2007 it was stated that Katar Hol’s soul has passed on from the realm of limbo, as have his memories that existed in Carter’s mind. Despite this, Carter still existed in a reconstructed version of Katar Hol’s body and now thing really came of this.
The next big origin/history update – that was also ignored immediately after – would come in the Hawkman Special in 2008…
“Hey, you know what we need? Another Golden Eagle origin!”
Remember when I said that Fel Andar and Sharon Parker, the false Hawkman and Hawkwoman created to fill the continuity gap, had had a son? Well, the origin of Charley Parker was about to get tied with that and reveal that his real name was Ch’al Andar!
In Hawkman (vol. 4) #43, a new origin for Golden Eagle was introduced. Once an orphan in Midway City’s Sisters of Mercy orphanage, Charley Parker bounced around from different foster homes and orphanages for the better part of his youth, learning life’s hardships along the way. At sixteen, he became a drug courier for Mick Valdare, and was adopted by various foster families. Valdare paid these families handsomely, which allowed Parker, and by extension Valdare, to keep a low profile and to have a front if caught. Parker lived a rich and spoiled life full of fast cars, expensive clothes and beautiful women until he turned eighteen. Valdare fired him because he was no longer a minor (age of criminal responsibility). Parker, desolate, alone and without the luxuries he had grown accustomed to, considered suicide. Hawkman saved him and became a mentor for the young man. On the hero’s recommendation, Parker went to, and found a job opportunity with, Carter Hall, a museum curator and Hawkman’s secret identity. Parker accepted, and was soon exposed to other heroes, including Adam Strange and Hawkgirl.
Parker earned Hall’s trust when he defended Hawkgirl from the Shadow Thief. Hall revealed his secret identity, gave Parker a Thanagarian battle suit that had been discovered by Adam Strange, and began training him to be a hero. Parker, now known as Golden Eagle, finally felt he had a purpose in life. Carter Hall had to leave Earth and left Charley to his own devices. Parker eventually hooked up with the Titans West, but after that team disbanded, he returned to a slacker lifestyle, surfing and performing the occasional odd job to earn money. After discovering that renting out his services as a hero didn’t generate sufficient income, he retired the Golden Eagle identity. Deathstroke asked him to track down some missing Teen Titans members at the beginning of the “Titans Hunt” storyline. During this time, while fighting alongside Aqualad against the Wildebeest Society, Parker was choked to death.
So far so good, sounds a lot like the older versions combined, right?
Fortunately for Charley, his birth father, Fel Andar, had been monitoring his actions for the past several years. He arrived on the beach in a Thanagarian starship and used his advanced alien science to save Charley’s life. Fel and Charley spent a few short weeks together before Fel was recalled back to Thanagar. During that time however, Charley learned of his true heritage and gained a new suit of Thanagarian battle armor. This experience completely changed Charley’s demeanor. He regarded Fel Andar as a true Thanagarian, and now spurned the teachings of Carter Hall, believing him to be a mockery to Thanagarian tradition. Analyzing his new-battle armor, he began reverse engineering the technology and used it to begin construction on a custom-designed Thanagarian starcraft. It was his intent to one day leave Earth and journey to Thanagar to be with his father. A year after his resurrection, Charley began developing his skills as a businessman. He needed ready capitol with which to complete construction of his starship, and so he established Ethon Enterprises. Ethon Enterprises proved to be extremely successful, and within a short span of time, he owned several branch offices across the United States. Three years later, Charley learned that Carter Hall – the original Hawkman, had returned to Earth and was now living in St. Roch, Louisiana. Construction of his starship was nearly complete, but he refused to leave Earth before getting revenge upon Carter for staining the true Thanagarian heritage.
Charley/Ch’al was, as it sounds, going full supervillain.
When Carter Hall was seemingly killed in battle, Parker claimed the right to his legacy, becoming the new Hawkman. He managed to win the friendship of Kendra, and claimed to be the “true” Hawkman’s son (he considered Hall a “false Hawkman”). He showed Kendra a Thanagarian ship he had built using blueprints stored in his Golden Eagle armor, and asked her to follow him to Thanagar. When she refused both his proposal and sexual advances, Parker beat her and exposed the truth about his relationship with Hawkman. On the verge of killing Kendra and replacing her with a Thanagarian maiden, “more suited to his tastes,” Parker was confronted by a very much alive Carter Hall, who miraculously returned for a final showdown with his former protégé.
Naturally all the plans, origin and what not comes out in the fight and, also naturally, Carter smacks Golden Eagle down. After that Carter sent Parker, along with a recording of his confessions, to Thanagar to be judged for his crimes, and he’d only be seen a few more times/
He actually meets Fel Andar, who is now seeking forgiveness for his crimes, again during the Rann-Thanagar War, and while Charley/Ch’al plays a part in the story it’s pretty easy to ignore.
He pops up one last time during Countdown to Adventure (as part of the Countdown to Final Crisis) where he’s now leading Thanagarian troops and encounters Forerunner. She bests him in combat, takes him as her sex slave aboard her pirate ship by right of conquest, and then eventually lets him go to make his own way back to Thanagar.
“Wait, aren’t we forgetting a Hawkwoman..?”
You might be asking whatever happened to Shayera Hol in all of this? Well, she did make a few more appearances. After she split with the Hawkgod she became a cop on Earth before eventually returning to Thanagar. Later still:
Shayera met [the new Hawkgirl, Kendra Saunders, and the resurrected Carter Hall] during her final battle against Byth when the three Hawks, aided by Animal Man, defeated the Thanagarian criminal for good.
She actually also died, finally, during the Countdown to Infinite Crisis in 2005:
In the Rann-Thanagar War miniseries, Shayera Thal reappeared as a reinstated soldier of the Thanagarian Army, last seen fighting with the invasion force of Polara. She considered reborn Hawkman Carter Hall and Hawkgirl Kendra Saunders friends of Thanagar, but grew angry with their ally Adam Strange blaming Rannian science for the destruction of her birth world. Despite this, she reluctantly served alongside him as a comrade-in-arms during the war. Shayera was betrayed and murdered by Tamaranean Queen Komand’r. Her body was sent on a trajectory into Thanagar’s sun, Polaris, the heroes’ resting place in Thanagarian tradition.
“They’re back on another Earth, resurrected in a new Multiverse!”
Not to be confused with the pre-Crisis Earth-Two, this Earth-2 is the one that came about from the events of Infinite Crisis:
Earth-2 was one of fifty-one divergent realities that branched from the core New Earth reality during the recreation of the Multiverse shortly following the events of Infinite Crisis … The primary heroic group of Earth-2 is Justice Society Infinity, an amalgamation of the older Justice Society of America and Infinity Inc.
So, what do we know about this Hawkman?
Little is known of how this version of Carter Hall differs from his New Earth counterpart, but he was a member of the Justice Society of America and is now a reserve member of Justice Society Infinity. He was one of the members mobilized to hunt down Power Girl when she arrived on Earth-2 by mistake.
Oh, and the Hawkgirl of this world, Shiera Sanders, didn’t get any more attention. Her bio is basically identical to the above.
(Oh, and that’s not another Hawk in the bottom right of that pic – it’s the Earth-2 Northwind, who’s an associate of the Hawks but not part of this mess, really, although they were his godparents! You can read about the New Earth version here.)
“Hey, wouldn’t it be nutty if we’d been lying? Let’s hint at that!”
Proving that Hawkman’s history and continuity is a scab that DC just can not stop themselves picking, in 2008 they published a Hawkman Special that included the following complications:
Carter, returning to space to help during the Rann/Thanagar Holy War, is approached by the Demiurge, a nameless god who inspired Plato into describing his namesake. The Demiurge denounces the cycle of incarnation and rebirths of Khufu and Chay-Ara as lies, simple grafts of the alternate version of Carter and Shiera residing in the different worlds of the multiverse that existed before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. He tells Carter that there are “Six Aberrations” in total, including Hawkman, whose origins are muddled and damaged by the destruction and recreation of the universe. Carter was moderately impressed, until the Demiurge inexplicably began addressing him as Katar Hol. Nothing appears to have come of this though, and it has since been stated that these events were not as they seemed.
Yeah, so feel free to ignore this.
“Dead! Alive! Reincarnated! No longer reincarnating! WIND ELEMENTALS!”
We finally enter the swan song of the pre-Flashpoint Hawkman and Hawkgirl!
OK, so prior to these events a few things happened. Kendra dated Red Arrow, and following this Shiera Sanders’ soul left Kendra’s body and moved on to the afterlife. Shiera hoped her passing on will finally remove the curse of Hath-Set. Regardless, after breaking up with Red Arrow, Kendra actually ended up with Carter. Then then both were implied to die in Final Crisis but this was later revealed to not have happened.
Anyway! On to Blackest Night:
In Blackest Night #1, Kendra is shown having an argument with Hawkman over whether or not to visit Jean Loring’s grave with the Atom. As the two heroes quarrel, the reanimated corpses of Ralph and Sue Dibny, now members of the Black Lantern Corps, enter Hawkman’s sanctuary. The Black Lanterns attack, Sue impaling Hawkgirl on a spear. Ralph taunts Hawkman, telling him that Hawkgirl never loved him; a claim she refutes with her dying breath. Hawkman is killed shortly afterward, and both heroes are reanimated as Black Lanterns by Black Hand himself. It was also revealed in Green Lantern #46 that Khufu and Chay-ara’s bodies were taken from Earth by the Zamarons and placed in the violet central power battery. Their love is the source of the Star Sapphire’s powers. The pair receive black rings during the battle on Zamaron. Their escape from the central power battery causes widespread destruction on the planet, enough for the Star Sapphires to abandon the planet, and sets the Predator free; it does not seem to have affected the Star Sapphires’ powers.
In the final battle Hawkman and Hawkgirl are both resurrected by white light but there’s one big change – when Kendra takes off her mask she’s revealed to once again be Sheira! This seems to have corrected her reincarnation as she now remembers all her past lives and she and Carter joyfully reunite!
With the resurrection they have the benefit that they were no longer stuck in their cycle of reincarnation, which sounds nice until you realize what it means is that they can’t come back after they die anymore.
It gets crazier with Brightest Day:
In the Brightest Day crossover, Carter and Shiera follow Hath-Set, who has collected the bones from all of their past bodies, and created from them a portal to Hawkworld. While there, Carter is told by the Entity to “stop the Queen Khea” from leaving. While Hawkgirl is held by Hath-Set and his Queen Khea, Hawkman and his group of the panthera attack the Manhawks homeworld. Hawkman hears Hawkgirl’s cries and charges toward to rescue her. His arrival leads to a confrontation with Queen Khea, who turns out to be the mother of Shiera Hall. During the fight, Queen Khea controls his Nth metal mace and armor, and Hawkman is tied together with Hawkgirl. Queen Khea opens the gateway and enters the portal to the Zamaron homeworld. When she arrives on the Zamaron homeworld, Star Sapphire (Carol Ferris) frees them both to stop Queen Khea’s invasion. The two attack Queen Khea as Hawkgirl wants to face her, but the Predator Entity bonds with the Queen. Shiera and Carter manage to eventually separate both of them by stabbing Khea at the same time with weapons made of Zamaronian crystals. The bones of the past lives of Hawkman and Hawkgirl separate from the gateway, and, animated by the violet light of love, grab Khea and imprison her in the Zamaronian Central Power Battery. Shiera and Carter, with both of their missions accomplished and lives returned are teleported back to St. Roch by Carol. Carter and Shiera are interrupted by Deadman, whose white ring tells the two of them that they should lead separate lives. Carter refuses and says they are not going to live apart again, the ring responds “So be it” and unleashes a blast of white light that kills Hawkman and Hawkgirl, turning them into dust. Deadman orders the ring to resurrect both Hawkman and Hawkgirl, but the ring refuses, saying that Hawkman was brought back to life to overcome what held him back in his past life because he was essential in saving Earth. When the ‘Dark Avatar’, made his presence known, Hawkman and Hawkgirl are revealed to be part of the Elementals, guardians of the forest located in Star City. They were transformed by the Entity to become the element of air and protect the Star City forest from the ‘Dark Avatar’, which appears to be the Black Lantern version of the Swamp Thing. The Elementals are then fused with the body of Alec Holland in order for him to be transformed by the Entity into the new Swamp Thing and battle against the Dark Avatar. After the Dark Avatar is defeated, Swamp Thing appears to have brought the Elementals back to normal; however, as Hawkman looks around for Shiera, he discovers that she was not brought back like he was. He is later told by Swamp Thing that Shiera is everywhere, revealing that she was still the elemental of air. Afterward, Hawkman returns home yelling “Shiera!”
And on that, really odd not, the story of pre-Flashpoint Hawkman and Hawkgirl comes to a rather odd end!
“…actually, let’s just start from scratch, OK. Please?”
Finally, a complete and uncomplicated version! Kinda. Let’s run through all the players.
Hawkman
The new version of Hawkman is Katar Hol and from Thanagar but he calls himself Carter Hall on Earth where he works as an archaeologist. That said, at first he didn’t remember being an alien or any of this, and also he was wanted for murder on his home planet.
Issue #0 explains that Katar Hol was once a proud member of the Thanagarian race, adopted son of their king Thal Provis and lover to the princess Shayera Thal. Unlike other Thanagarians, he was a pacifist; desiring to find an end to centuries of war, he convinced the king to hold a peace conference. However the Daemonites took advantage of this to spread a deadly disease that quickly destroyed all Thanagarians’ wings and killed their king. The new ruler, son of Provis and Katar’s adoptive brother, Corsar, came to believe that only the Nth Metal could save them, but this desire for power sacrificed hundreds of lives, which was apparently rewarded when Katar was accidentally fused with it creating a full body armor and regenerating his wings. But seeing his brother’s increasing insanity, Katar refused to let the metal power be distributed, leading to fighting between them and the death of Corsar. Shayera then vows to hunt down Hawkman, also blaming him for her father’s death. He runs away in a stolen ship that ends up crashing on earth.
His debut series was complicated by the fact it was mostly arse and while he’s popped up a bunch – punching things in Justice League United and Futures End – there’s not been a lot of backstory beyond this. Oh, and he can store his armour in his body somehow now, which is cool?
Shayera Thal
Following DC’s 2011 relaunch, Shayera Thal is reimagined as a Supervillain. After erroneously believing her lover Katar Hol has killed her brother, Corsar, Shayera vows vengeance upon Hawkman. But after is discovered Corsar survived and was manipulating the situation Shayera betrays him and saves Katar life, sacrificing her own for it.
Kendra Munoz-Saunders
It’s worth noting this character’s history is taking place on Earth 2
Kendra Munoz-Saunders is a treasure hunter by profession. Because of her reputation, she was hired by the World Army for a particular project which resulted in the permanent grafting of wings to her back. Some time later, she met with the Flash in Europe. She was guided by a certain Fate as to where she might find him. Together, they went to Washington, D.C. and fought Grundy, without much success. They were later joined by Green Lantern, and subsequently by the Atom. They were only able to defeat Grundy when Green Lantern carried Grundy out of the Earth’s atmosphere, and stranded him on the moon. Despite his help against Grundy, the Atom, under orders from the World Army, tried to capture Hawkgirl, but she escaped with the help of the Flash. Green Lantern then returned to Earth after removing the danger of the nuclear missiles that the World Army launched under the advice of Terry Sloan. Unfortunately, he had run out of power, having been separated from the Earth for too long and exerting so much energy. He was saved by Hawkgirl, who caught him in mid-free fall. Hawkgirl then visited the penthouse apartment of Alan Scott who was still mourning over the death of his partner Sam. Hawkgirl’s detective skills allowed her to discover that Alan and Green Lantern were one and the same. She tried to convince him to join she and the Flash to form a team against the coming danger.
Finally, the New 52 version
So, currently DC are running the weekly Futures End series which is set five years in the future and will lead into the massive Convergence event in April and May. The latter series promises to revisit old versions and we recently saw this reality bending stuff interact with the New 52 Hawkman in Futures End #41.
OMG, is that the Hawksnarl coming back? Post-Flashpoint?!
This is the DC equivalent of “shit just got real, yo.” Personally I can’t wait to see where it goes!
…aaaaaand that’s all I’m going to write on it. They’re complicated but worse they’re not even good complicated. I like the characters and wish they were treated better but it’s a clusterfuck, an absolute omni-fucking-shambles.
As you can see, it’s sometimes confusing, but the right writer can make it all palatable. Hawkworld tends to be maligned because of the continuity mess it created, but it is personally my favorite incarnation of Hawkman and Hawkwoman, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to see comics of the 90s done right, at least while Ostrander or Truman is on the title.
Obviously not complete or definitive!
Naturally, like any big name DC characters, the Hawks have seen their fair share of alternate or imaginary versions. Other worlds, Elseworld stories, other media or whatever. Here are some of the best:
Anyway, I hope this was helpful! :)
Guides
WikisWe’ve all seen the dreamy underwear ads where male models show off their chiseled abs and their unnaturally tanned bodies. In this series, Jenny Francis and daily tabloid newspaper The Sun teamed up to show how real men compare to those popular campaigns.
Four brave men, regular readers of The Sun, stood alongside David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Freddie Ljungberg, and David Gandy to show off what a real life man would look like wearing the same exact underwear and standing in the same exact poses. With an adventurous spirit, these guys became real life models and the final results are both hilarious as well as empowering. The entertaining series is a reminder that people come in all different shapes and sizes and can be seen as inspiration to stop gunning for flawless and to find beauty in a real, non-photoshopped world.
The Sun website
via [The Photomag]THE odds of President Donald Trump being booted out of the White House leapt following the results of the midterm elections.
Let's take a look at whether the US President will be removed from office anytime soon...
Getty Images 3 Donald Trump could struggle to make it to the end of his first term, bookies have predicted
What is impeachment?
Impeachment is where a formal accusation of serious wrongdoing is lobbied against a sitting president or any other senior US official.
According to the United States Constitution, the House of Representatives can vote to impeach but it’s the Senate which actually tries the case.
The US constitution states a president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.
The process has to be started by the House of Representatives – currently controlled by Trump’s own party – and needs a simple majority to pass.
However impeachment does not necessarily result in removal from office – it is only a legal statement of charges.
A trial is set in the Senate and a two-thirds vote is necessary for removal – but in America’s history this milestone has never been reached.
Reuters 3 Donald Trump with President Obama after his victory over the Democrats in November 2016
Will Donald Trump be impeached?
In 2017, more than 890,000 people have signed a petition calling for Trump to be impeached, which sprung up almost immediately after he was inaugurated.
In February of that year, it emerged the Republican may have passed on highly classified information to Russian officials.
His decision to discuss classified information with the officials is technically still within the law, but he may have put American lives at risk and violated his oath of office by doing so.
Many also see claims he asked James Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn as an obstruction of justice.
Trump eventually fired Flynn on February 13 on grounds that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russians.
But just weeks later, Trump sensationally sacked Comey as head of the FBI, saying the director “wasn’t doing a good job”.
Comey then appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the FBI's investigation into the Trump administration.
Here he accused them of defaming him and telling lies about the agency.
But he declined to offer his opinion on whether Trump sought to obstruct justice by asking him to drop an investigation into the former national security adviser.
But Trump is working with a Republican-controlled Congress, which means he has more people backing him.
The majority of his party have remained loyal, despite a slump in approval ratings.
Calls for him to be impeached, however, continue to he heard from Trump's political opponents.
Newly elected congresswoman Rashida Tlaib yelled to of supporters “we’re going to impeach the motherf***er” shortly after being sworn in.
In a strange turn of events, the brother of dead Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar, is trying to raise £40 million in a bid to impeach the President.
Roberto launched the surprise GoFundMe campaign in the midst of a partial government shutdown.
The 71-year-old, also known as El Osito, wrote on the GoFundMe page: "I am the brother of a Latino hero, I have eliminated many people from power.... Trump will be impeached," TMZ reports.
The promotional poster also promises: "We, the people will impeach Donald Trump with Pablo Escobar's family holding dirty secrets of President Trump, his family and associates."
EPA 3 The make-up of both chambers of Congress impacts Trump's ability to govern
What are the odds of Donald Trump being impeached?
Following the Helsinki summit with Putin in July 2018, odds on Trump being impeached or resigning from office narrowed.
During the meeting with Russian President Putin, the US President appeared to accept the "powerful" denial of the Kremlin strongman over accusations that Moscow interfered in the 2016 US election.
Trump has since walked back those statements claiming he "misspoke."
These odds have since jumped following the trial of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's plea deal.
Since the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in midterm elections, the odds of Trump being impeached have shortened.
It would require a majority in the House of Representatives, which is now in the hands of Trump's opposition, to go to trial and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to make it happen.
After his former-lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes which were potentially damaging to Trump, the likelihood took another jump.
The president's ex-lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison on December 12 for his role in making illegal hush-money payments to women to help Trump's 2016 election campaign and lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.
Latest odds on Trumpeachment Odds as of December 16, 2018, taken from oddschecker.com Impeached by 2018 - 50/1 (2 per cent)
- 50/1 (2 per cent) Impeached by 2019 - 6/4 (40 per cent)
- 6/4 (40 per cent) Impeached by 2020 - 5/2 (28.6 per cent)
- 5/2 (28.6 per cent) Not impeached before 2021 - 4/5 (55.6 per cent)
MOST READ IN NEWS Exclusive DARK PAST Homeless man doused in water by rail staff KILLED man who splashed him with paint MOMO NO-NO Momo Challenge in 'Peppa Pig and Fortnite vids' as YouTube and Instagram slammed TREE OF TERROR Mum horrified to learn what the strange 'pods' were hanging from branches SUICIDE WARNING What is Momo and how can parents protect their children? say no no to momo Expert advice on how to keep children safe from online suicide game Momo MOMO SHOCK Creepy'suicide character' Momo told lad, 8, to'stab himself in neck'
Which presidents have been impeached before?
Only two presidents have been impeached, despite numerous threats.
The most recent was the 42nd president of the
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Acknowledgements We would like to thank M. Guha, G. Pierre-Louis and J. Livengood for providing critical feedback on the manuscript. We also thank V.K. Haftel for helpful discussions.
Author information Affiliations Fanuel Muindi & Joseph B. Keller are in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Fanuel Muindi
& Joseph B Keller Authors Search for Fanuel Muindi in: Nature Research journals •
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Google Scholar Competing interests The authors declare no competing financial interests. Corresponding author Correspondence to Fanuel Muindi.
Supplementary information PDF files 1. Supplementary Tables Supplementary Tables 1–4
Rights and permissions To obtain permission to re-use content from this article visit RightsLink.Hexen II is a dark fantasy first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software from 1996 to 1997, published by id Software and distributed by Activision. It was the third game in the Hexen/Heretic series, and the last in the Serpent Riders trilogy. It was made available on Steam on August 3, 2007.[1] Using a modified Quake engine, it featured single-player and multiplayer game modes, as well as four character classes to choose from, each with different abilities. These included the offensive Paladin, the defensive Crusader, the spell-casting Necromancer, and the stealthy Assassin.
Improvements from Hexen and Quake included destructible environments, mounted weapons, and unique level up abilities. Like its predecessor, Hexen II also used a hub system. These hubs were a number of interconnected levels; changes made in one level had effects in another. The Tome of Power artifact made a return from Heretic.
Gameplay [ edit ]
The gameplay of Hexen II is very similar to that of the original Hexen. Instead of three classes, Hexen II features four: Paladin, Crusader, Assassin, and Necromancer, each with their own unique weapons and play style.[2]
Hexen II also adds certain role-playing video game elements to the mix. Each character has a series of statistics which increase as they gain experience. This then causes the player character to grow in power as his or her HP and Mana increases.
Plot [ edit ]
Thyrion is a world that was enslaved by the Serpent Riders. The two previous games in the series documented the liberation of two other worlds, along with the death of their Serpent Rider overlords. Now, the oldest and most powerful of the three Serpent Rider brothers, Eidolon, must be defeated to free Thyrion. Eidolon is supported by his four generals, themselves a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. To confront each general, the player has to travel to four different continents, each possessing a distinct theme (Medieval European for Blackmarsh, Mesoamerican for Mazaera, Ancient Egyptian for Thysis, and Greco-Roman for Septimus). Then, finally, the player returns to Blackmarsh in order to confront Eidolon himself inside of his own dominion Cathedral.
Development [ edit ]
Hexen II was based on an enhanced version of the Quake engine.[2] Hexen II, by way of the Quake engine, uses OpenGL for 3D acceleration. However, due to the prevalence of 3dfx hardware at the time of release, the Windows version of the game installs an OpenGL ICD (opengl32.dll) designed specifically for 3dfx's hardware. This driver acts as a wrapper for the proprietary Glide API, and thus is only compatible with 3dfx hardware. Custom OpenGL drivers were also released by PowerVR and Rendition for running Hexen II with their respective (and also now defunct) products. Removal of the ICD allows the game to use the default OpenGL system library. Much of the music in this game is remixed versions of the soundtracks of Hexen and Heretic to match the hub themes.
Activision acquired the rights to publish versions of the game for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn.[2][3] They considered Lobotomy Software to produce the Saturn conversion and get it released by late 1997.[4] However neither ports were released.
Siege [ edit ]
A modification titled Siege was created and released by Raven Software in 1998 using updated QuakeWorld architecture, aptly dubbed "HexenWorld". The production concept was to eliminate a normal deathmatch environment in favor of a teamplay castle siege. The basic premise was to divide the players into two teams—attackers and defenders—with each side either assaulting or protecting the castle respectively. At the end of the time limit, whichever team controlled the crown was declared victorious. The mod featured appropriate objects used in the single-player portion of the game, namely catapults and ballistae. The classes, however, were drastically altered with new weapons and abilities, reflecting the departure from the normal deathmatch experience presented in HexenWorld.[5]
Source release [ edit ]
Following the tradition from Heretic and Hexen, Raven released the source code of the Hexen II engine on November 10, 2000. This time the source was released under the GNU General Public License, allowing source ports to be made to different platforms like Linux and the Dreamcast.[6]
Portal of Praevus [ edit ]
An expansion pack called Hexen II Mission Pack: Portal of Praevus was released on March 31, 1998. It features new levels, new enemies and a new playable character class, The Demoness. It focuses on the attempted resurrection of the three Serpent Riders by the evil wizard Praevus, and takes place in a fifth continent, Tulku, featuring a Sino-Tibetan setting. Unlike the original game, the expansion was not published by id Software, and as such is not currently available via digital re-releases.
The expansion features new quest items, new enemies, and new weapons for the Demoness. She is the only player class to have a ranged starting weapon (similar to the Mage class in the original Hexen), whereas all other characters start with melee weapons. It also introduced minor enhancements to the game engine, mostly related to user interface, level scripts, particle effects (rain or snow), and 3D objects. Portal of Praevus also features a secret (easter egg) skill level, with respawning monsters. The only released patch for the expansion added respawning of certain items (such as health and ammo) in Nightmare mode, so that it would be slightly easier for playing.
Reception [ edit ]
Reception Aggregate score Aggregator Score GameRankings 84.25% (Hexen II)[7]
65.25% (Portal of Praevus)[8] Review scores Publication Score Edge 8/10[9] GameSpot 7.3/10 (Hexen II)[10]
8.6/10 (Portal of Praevus)[11] IGN 7.8/10 (Hexen II)[12]
7.5/10 (Portal of Praevus) [13]
Because of the popularity of the original Hexen, the game was heavily anticipated. Upon its release, Hexen II received mixed to positive reviews. Edge praised the game for being different from other Quake engine-based games, highlighting its inventive and interactive levels, enemy variety, and artificial intelligence.[9] The magazine also credited the game's diversity of weapons and spells for offering different combat strategies.[9]
According to Erik Bethke, Hexen II was commercially unsuccessful, with sales slightly above 30,000 units.[14]WASHINGTON — When Michelle Obama said in her prime-time televised address to the Democratic National Convention on Monday night that the White House had been built by slaves, she was citing a little-discussed fact that dramatized her own African-American family’s place in history.
But the first lady’s assertion was met with derision and disbelief by some, who questioned whether it was true and said her choice to mention it amounted to an attempt to divide the country along racial lines.
There is little dispute among historians that slaves had a role in the building of the White House. According to the White House Historical Association’s website, planners had initially intended to import workers from Europe but had trouble recruiting any, so they “turned to African-American — enslaved and free — to provide the bulk of labor that built the White House, the United States Capitol, and other early government buildings.”In the recently published 2014 version of the World Bank index of the ease of doing business, Singapore retained the top spot, Hong Kong came second, followed by New Zealand and the U.S.
Japan ranked 27th, a far cry from the days when it placed around 10th. By contrast, South Korea, which had previously been in the 20th-29th range, placed seventh -- a remarkable advance in ranking.
Among the component indicators used to compile the overall index, Japan ranked top in "resolving insolvency," but took the 140th place (down from the 133rd in the previous survey) in "paying taxes." It placed 120th (down from the 113th) in "starting a business."
As one of the criteria making up the "starting a business" indicator, the survey measures the time, in days, required to get a local limited-liability company up and running. New Zealand topped the list at half a day. It takes 2.5 days noted for Singapore and Hong Kong, and five days in the U.S. In Japan, the survey indicated, as many as 22 days are needed.
It is very worrying that Japan has not shown substantial improvement in areas of the survey where it performs weakly. The world's attention is on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the "third arrow" of Abenomics. This survey suggests there is a lot of room left for deregulation in Japan.
Regional bias
Abenomics is often said to have led the domestic economy to pick up, but signs of a recovery have yet to spread through all regions. Some areas have been left behind.
I recently visited Osaka. People there talk about how they see Japan's regional economies going. Economic conditions, they say, are getting a little better in Hokkaido, Tohoku and Okinawa, which they note owes much to the expansion of public-works spending. In Tokyo, securities companies and real estate businesses are enjoying brisk sales. And the Tokai and Kyushu regions -- home to many automobile businesses -- there is robust performance thanks to the weak yen.
Meanwhile, in the Kinki area, which encompasses Osaka, Kyoto and their surrounding prefectures, they note that economic activity, though better than last year, is still weak. As they see it, although the decline in the yen's value helped lift earnings at electronics companies, a lack of exportable products has kept them from growing, making it hard for them to undergo a broader-based business recovery.
An Osaka taxi driver said, "There is little feeling that things have become better than last year."
The Bank of Japan's December Tankan survey indicated that the business sentiment diffusion index at companies of all sizes in every industry stood at plus eight. By region, the index was 15 for Hokkaido, 12 for Tohoku,10 for Tokai, 11 for Kyushu and 18 for Okinawa. It was 2 for Kinki. The index is calculated by subtracting the percentage of companies that feel business conditions are unfavorable from those that believe they are good.
The latest Tankan survey suggests the Japanese economy is not yet on solid ground. The weaker yen and higher asset values driven by the "first arrow" of Abenomics, which refers to the BOJ's unprecedented quantitative and qualitative monetary loosening, help. As does the direct effects of the "second arrow" -- hefty fiscal stimulus. But that is not enough.
I took part in the Japanese-German Forum that was held in Tokyo in late October. About 20 participants from Japan and Germany, such as politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders and academics, exchange views straightforwardly. It has been held alternatively in Berlin and Tokyo since the 1990s.
At this year's forum, I made a presentation about the macroeconomic policy Japan is currently implementing. The discussions over that matter were really impressive. Many participants from the German side showed concern about Abenomics, describing it as "risky" or "maybe unsustainable."
In the eyes of German participants, current Japanese policy looks like nothing more than the typical form of monetization of fiscal deficits that the Germans most hate. The government expands fiscal spending through massive debt issuance, while the central bank buys most of the government bonds to stem a rise in long-term interest rates.
Perilous level
The U.S. Federal Reserve in December decided to pare back its massive asset purchases, or "quantitative easing." If the tapering of asset purchases smoothly progresses, the monetary policy could be wound up as early as October this year. In that event, the Fed's total assets as a percentage of gross domestic product would stand around 26% at the end of this year.
The European Central Bank has been for some time moving forward with trimming its assets. Its ratio of assets to GDP were estimated at about 24% at the end of 2013.
Meanwhile, the BOJ has released its forecast that its total assets would come to 290 trillion yen ($2.74 trillion) at the end of 2014. If that scenario comes to pass, the ratio of its assets to GDP would rise to around 58%.
By international standards, the BOJ would become an extremely huge central bank in terms of asset sizes. The bulk of its assets are Japanese government bonds. The central bank intends to maintain the current policy stance until the year-on-year rate of increase in the consumer price index stably stays at or above 2%. There is even a possibility that the BOJ could take additional monetary easing policy measures.
Let's make a conservative assumption that, in and beyond 2015, the BOJ just increases its long-term government bond purchases by 50 trillion yen each year as it has been doing currently, while not raising short-term fund supplies. Even under this assumption, the BOJ's total amount of asset holdings as a share of GDP would exceed 100% in 2020.
This quantitative and qualitative monetary easing must be stopped before such a state of affairs comes into reality. An economic recovery that excessively depends on monetization of fiscal deficits and a cheap currency harbors intrinsic risks. It is vitally important to shift government policies toward making more use of private-sector dynamism, by pressing ahead with measures such as deregulatory reform.
Izuru Kato is president and chief economist at Totan Research.* Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.
GREENVILLE, S.C. — Former Gov. Rick Perry is joining a new group that plans to organize veterans in support of Ted Cruz's presidential campaign.
The group, a super PAC known as Keep the Promise to Veterans, will allow Perry to ramp up his involvement in Cruz's presidential effort after endorsing the U.S. senator from Texas last month. Perry, an Air Force veteran, has already recruited some supporters of his own to help with the super PAC: former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer and Taya Kyle, the widow of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle.
"As you know, Gov. Perry’s passionate about veterans' issues, and he wants to make sure that veterans issues do not get lost in the discourse and decided that getting involved this way would be an ideal way to keep veterans issues at the forefront," said Kathy Walt, the treasurer of the super PAC and a former chief of staff to Perry.
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Keep the Promise to Veterans was officially formed Thursday, according to records with the Federal Election Commission. It is listed as affiliated with three other pro-Cruz super PACs organized under the Keep the Promise umbrella.
"We are excited to welcome Governor Perry and Keep The Promise for Veterans to help elect Ted Cruz our next President," said a statement from Laura Barnett, a spokeswoman for one of the Keep the Promise super PACs. "Governor Perry’s voice on veterans issues will be a strong asset for Senator Cruz as the GOP nomination continues to unfold."
Over the past few weeks, Keep the Promise officials held meetings with Perry in Texas to discuss his role in their efforts, Barnett said. The meetings included Keep the Promise I president Kellyanne Conway, Keep the Promise PAC head David Barton and Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of Cruz megadonor Robert Mercer.
It was not immediately clear who plans to fund Keep the Promise to Veterans, but the Keep the Promise network is flush with cash: It entered 2016 with almost $30 million in the bank. Walt said no money had been deposited in the Keep the Promise to Veterans' account as of Friday morning.
The creation of the group comes with just over a week to go until the first-in-the-South primary here in the Palmetto State, home to a large military and veteran population. Perry has said he plans to stump for Cruz in the state ahead of the Feb. 20 nominating contest.
Keep the Promise to Veterans was first reported by Bloomberg Politics.
The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one.By Michael Milstein
El Niño exerted powerful effects around the globe in the last year, eroding California beaches; driving drought in northern South America, Africa and Asia; and bringing record rain to the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southern South America. In the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast, however, the California Current Ecosystem was already unsettled by an unusual pattern of warming popularly known as “The Blob.”
New research based on ocean models and near real-time data from autonomous gliders indicates that the “The Blob” and El Niño together strongly depressed productivity off the West Coast, with The Blob driving most of the impact.
The research published in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters by scientists from NOAA Fisheries, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and University of California, Santa Cruz is among the first to assess the marine effects of the 2015-2016 El Niño off the West Coast of the United States.
“Last year there was a lot of speculation about the consequences of ‘The Blob’ and El Niño battling it out off the U.S. West Coast,” said lead author Michael Jacox, of UC Santa Cruz and NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “We found that off California El Niño turned out to be much weaker than expected. The Blob continued to be a dominant force, and the two of them together had strongly negative impacts on marine productivity.”
“Now, both The Blob and El Niño are on their way out, but in their wake lies a heavily disrupted ecosystem,” Jacox said.
Unusually warm ocean temperatures that took on the name, The Blob, began affecting waters off the West Coast in late 2013. Warm conditions – whether driven by the Blob or El Niño – slow the flow of nutrients from the deep ocean, reducing the productivity of coastal ecosystems. Temperatures close to 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) above average also led to sightings of warm-water species far to the north of their typical range and likely contributed to the largest harmful algal bloom ever recorded on the West Coast last year.
“These past years have been extremely unusual off the California coast, with humpback whales closer to shore, pelagic red crabs washing up on the beaches of central California, and sportfish in higher numbers in southern California,” said Elliott Hazen of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, a coauthor of the paper. “This paper reveals how broad scale warming influences the biology directly off our shores.”
The research paper describes real-time monitoring of the California Current Ecosystem with the latest technology, including autonomous gliders that track undersea conditions along the West Coast. “This work reflects technological advances that now let us rapidly assess the effects of major climate disruptions and project their impacts on the ecosystem,” Jacox said.
Separate but related research recently published in Scientific Reports identifies the optimal conditions for productivity in the California Current off the West Coast, which will help assess the future effects of climate change or climate variability such as El Niño. The research was authored by the same scientists at UC Santa Cruz and NOAA Fisheries.
“Wind has a ‘goldilocks effect’ on productivity in the California Current,” Hazen said. “If wind is too weak, nutrients limit productivity, and if wind is too strong, productivity is moved offshore or lost to the deep ocean. Understanding how wind and nutrients drive productivity provides context for events like the Blob and El Niño, so we can better understand how the ecosystem is likely to respond.”
Both papers emphasize the importance of closely monitoring West Coast marine ecosystems for the impacts of a changing climate. Although the tropical signals of El Niño were strong, the drivers – called “teleconnections” – that usually carry the El Niño pattern from the tropics to the West Coast were not as effective as in previous strong El Niños.
“Not all El Niños evolve in the same way in the tropics, nor are their impacts the same off our coast,” said Steven Bograd, a research scientist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and coauthor of both papers. “Local conditions, in this case from the Blob, can modulate the way our ecosystem responds to these large scale climate events.”
For more information: https://swfsc.noaa.gov/
— Michael Milstein is a public affairs officer at NOAA Fisheries. This post originally appeared on the NOAA Fisheries website.Presage is an intelligent predictive text entry system.
Presage (formerly known as Soothsayer) generates predictions by modelling natural language as a combination of redundant information sources. Presage computes probabilities for words which are most likely to be entered next by merging predictions generated by the different predictive algorithms. Presage’s modular and extensible architecture allows its language model to be extended and customized to utilize statistical, syntactic, and semantic predictive algorithms.
A predictive text entry system attempts to improve the ease and speed of textual input by predicting words. Word prediction consists in computing which word tokens or word completions are most likely to be entered next. The system analyses the text already entered and combines the information thus extracted with other information sources to calculate the set of most probable tokens.
A typical presage-based application would display the set of most probable tokens (i.e. a list of suggestions) to the user and automatically enter the desired token after the user selects it. If the list of suggestions does not contain the desired word, the user continues entering text until the correct suggestion is offered or until the user is done entering text.
Presage is fundamentally different from predictive input technologies commonly found on mobile phones, which might more accurately be described as ‘disambiguating text entry’ rather than ‘predictive text entry’ systems.
Such systems do not try to guess what the user intends to write in the future, only to determine what they most-likely intend to write in the present, given their past input.
Presage, on the other hand, actively predicts the what the user intends to write, and only reverts to word completion mode if the prediction did not contain the desired token.
Presage is free software. It is distributed under the term of the General Public License.A rough arrest caught on cell phone video outside of a pharmacy in Murrieta is causing controversy. Annette Arreola reports live for Today in LA on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016. (Published Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016)
In a caught on camera confrontation that led to the arrest of a 22-year-old outside a Murrieta CVS, a witness says the video she shot shows what she considers excessive force used by the officers as they tried to detain the man.
Though officers said amid the multiple struggles with the man, one officer suffered a broken hand, Murrieta police said in a news release.
The woman, who wished to not be identified, can be heard in the video saying, "Oh my God," as officers and the man struggled.
On Tuesday at 8:45 p.m., Murrieta police patrolling near the 2500 block of Hancock Ave. was called over to the CVS by a witness who thought the 22-year-old man was on drugs.
Man Released After Rough Arrest in Officer Confrontation
Police released new surveillance video of what led up to the confrontation and the rough arrest of a 22-year-old man that was caught on camera. Robert Kovacik reports for the NBC4 News at 11 on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016. (Published Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016)
Police released new surveillance video on Wednesday "in an effort to inform the public of the events of what led up to the altercation," Murrieta police said on their Facebook page, along with the two videos taken from inside the CVS.
The footage shows an officer approaching Rojo, who was allegedly tearing into medical supplies and possibly ingesting them, police said.
The man, later identified by authorities as Alejandro Rojo, was inside of the store.
As the officer approached the man, the video shows the two fighting near the doors of the CVS, and Rojo was accused of grabbing for the officer's gun.
Rojo and the officer broke apart, and Rojo tried running from the store, police said.
As the officer chased Rojo from the store, another fight broke out during which officers said Rojo again tried to grab for the officer's gun.
Rough Arrest Claims After Police Confrontation Caught on Camera
Cell phone video shows officers hitting and kicking a suspect who appears to be resisting arrest in Murrieta. Tony Shin reports for the NBC4 News at 6 on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016. (Published Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2016)
More officers arrived and used "multiple force techniques" to stop the man, police said.
The witness says she saw two officers kicking Rojo while taking him into custody.
"He got Tasered as well," the woman said. "And then there was another officer kicking him in the groin area as well."
The video shows officers using batons to strike Rojo.
The witness also said that while the man was struggling with officers, she believes there was a better way to handle him.
"It was excessive force," she said. "And it was not necessary. It was uncalled for."
The officer who suffered a broken hand and Rojo were both taken to a hospital.
Rojo was released from jail on Wednesday night and did not provide a comment on camera to NBC4.
"He's not a bad kid," said his father, Arturo Rojo. "I did not raise my kid to be like that. It hurts me. What did they want to do? What did they want to try to do?"
Rojo was booked on suspicion of trying to disarm a police officer, resisting a police officer causing injury, obstructing a police officer causing injury, battery on a police officer with injury, and retail property trespassing. Murrieta police said he was also to be booked on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs pending lab results.
Murrieta Police Department does not deploy body cameras.
None of the officers involved in the confrontation have not been placed on administrative leave, Murrieta police said.Some children dream of being pirates, astronauts or football stars. I wanted to be a comic book artist for a living.
I took those dreams so seriously I collected three art degrees before my college career wrapped. I’ve yet to earn a nickel for drawing Iron Man, Thor or The Fantastic Four, but I busy myself by sketching Hulk faces on restaurant place mats. Just ask my boys.
So the annual Free Comic Book Day is more than enough to stir thoughts of what might have been. It’s also a time to give thanks to an art form which led to my current career.
The May 3, 2014 event lets more than 2,000 participating comic book specialty shops across the US, Canada and worldwide to give away 4.6 million comics to kids and adults who come to their comic shop. Select a number of titles including Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, DC’s The New 52: Futures End, Spongebob, Archie, Hello Kitty, Power Rangers, Transformers vs. GI Joe and more.
Some stores also will hold special events like costume contests, store-wide sales, raffles, creator and artist signings and photos with costumed heroes.
Don’t take my word for it. Let Stan “The Man” Lee say it best about Free Comic Book Day.
As a boy I focused on the artistic side of these colorful caped crusaders, captured by giants like John Byrne and John Romita, Jr.. All the while, those stories were teaching me the wonders of the written word. Years later, I can mourn how my art career never took off. One look at the illustration above may tell you why. Those comic book stories apparently took root in me all the same. Now, I make a living with words, and I couldn’t be happier.
It’s easy to be cynical about the current comic book realm. Publishers kill off beloved characters, and you know it’s just a matter of time before they come back in some fashion. And one look at my boys’ playroom shows the marketing muscle behind those superhero movie franchises.
If a caped crusader can help a few children fall in love with reading, or even ignite a writing spark in a future journalist/blogger, than that cynicism isn’t so important.The Journey of a thousand miles
begins with one step
- lao tzu -
Leaving the comfort of home, friends, and family to travel thousands of miles to a strange land is one of the toughest choices you can make. Embarking on this type of journey requires a natural curiosity to experience new places, courage, confidence,..... and knowledge. While you may be able to supply the first three, the fourth element is very difficult if you've never been to Korea or taught ESL abroad.
The main goal of Canadian Connection is to supply you with the knowledge and information that will give you peace of mind, as well as the ongoing support that will make your year in Asia worthwhile. My decision to start this company originated from a desire to assist others in having the same great experience I had during my 3 years in Korea. After choosing our agency, we will be with you every step of the way, from the first interview to your arrival at the new school and during your year there. Let us help you take that first step……There are plenty of bands whose merchandising habits I find bloated annoying–Kiss and The Misfits, to name a couple. But man, I’ll rock Motörhead ANYTHING. I have a Warpig pendant dangling from my rearview mirror. So who cares if they’re making masks, or… video games?
That’s right — in honor of the band’s 40th anniversary, Global Merchandising and Haemimont Gaming have teamed up to create “Motörhead Through The Ages”, an expansion pack to the STEAM video game Victor Vran (those aren’t the actual graphics in the photo up there, promise).
According to the game’s press release:
The Motörhead game will consist of new game environments that have not been seen in the original game. Traverse war-torn landscapes and cities, Wild-West-inspired landscapes and the Dark Ages Castle where the Queen of the Damned resides, all heavily inspired by and based on Motörhead`s history, lyrics and general attitude. Motörhead define the themes of the game as Victor faces evils relevant to our own world – religious fanatics, corrupt politicians and power-hungry oppressive rulers. During these quests he will be supported not only by the newly designed Motör-Weapons, -Powers and -Skills, but also a soundtrack with over a dozen tracks, partly never heard before!
Interesting! Obviously, this is not Lemmy’s first foray into gaming. I like that they didn’t just make it a game where you fight the Warpig or the Bomber, either — it seems like they’re taking the band’s lyrics to heart.
That said, it’ll be interesting to see who goes for this. I don’t normally consider the Venn diagram of the rabid Motörhead fanbase and the STEAM game fanbase to meet that much in the middle. But who knows? Maybe it’ll be so fun that everyone will drop what they’re doing and get it. Now if only they’d release an app to add Lemmy’s mustache and warts to your photos…
Motörhead’s new album, Bad Magic, comes out August 28th, but you can listen to some new tracks here. The band’s on tour as well, so go here for dates.TORONTO – Experience? Cashing in on natural talent? Health? The hunt continues for the mysterious “it” that explains the materialization of Michael Saunders’ 2016 campaign; a season that has led his manager to admit on more than one occasion that he had no idea Saunders was this good.
And know what? Maybe he isn’t this good. Maybe Saunders can’t keep it going. Maybe he can’t continue to be one of the most productive left-handed hitters in the majors – third in the American League in OPS among outfielders going into Tuesday’s game, behind Mike Trout and Jackie Bradley Jr. But know this, too: If the native of Victoria, B.C., emerges as the winner of the AL’s Final Vote competition for a spot in next week’s all-star game in San Diego, he will continue to demonstrate one trait not even he could have believed he possessed: An exquisite sense of timing.
“I knew what was inside me,” Saunders said Tuesday. “There’s been glimpses of it, and I think those glimpses are what got me here.”
Oft-injured, Saunders spent the best Canadian baseball summer in over 20 years playing in just nine games after a freak knee injury sustained in an informal workout on the eve of spring training. Nice way to make an impression on the team that just traded for you. This spring, he was effectively traded to the Cincinnati Reds for Jay Bruce by the new Blue Jays administration … but the deal fell through because of concerns about one of the player’s medicals. Yet here he is, putting up career numbers in his final year before free agency, watching the numerals on his 2017 salary rise every day like some sort of National Debt Clock because he will be part of what is the worst free-agent class in recent memory. Timing, baby! It’s everything, as
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). The treaty-making process of 1760-61, ended with the Burying the Hatchet ceremony (1761).
The treaties were only formally recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada once they were enshrined in Section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982. The first Treaty Day occurred the year after the Supreme Court upheld the Peace Treaty of 1752 signed by Jean-Baptiste Cope and Governor Peregrine Hopson. Since that time there have been numerous judicial decisions that have upheld the other treaties in the Supreme Court, the most recognized being the Donald Marshall case.
Tripartite Forum [ edit ]
In 1997, the Miꞌkmaq–Nova Scotia–Canada Tripartite Forum was established.
On August 31, 2010, the governments of Canada and Nova Scotia signed a historic agreement with the Miꞌkmaq Nation, establishing a process whereby the federal government must consult with the Miꞌkmaq Grand Council before engaging in any activities or projects that affect the Miꞌkmaq in Nova Scotia. This covers most, if not all, actions these governments might take within that jurisdiction. This is the first such collaborative agreement in Canadian history including all the First Nations within an entire province.[59]
Miꞌkmaq Kinaꞌ matnewey [ edit ]
The Nova Scotia government and the Miꞌkmaq community have made the Miꞌkmaq Kinaꞌ matnewey, which is the most successful First Nation Education Program in Canada.[60][61] In 1982, the first Miꞌkmaq-operated school opened in Nova Scotia. By 1997, all Miꞌkmaq on reserves were given the responsibility for their own education. There are now 11 band-run schools in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia now has the highest rate of retention of aboriginal students in schools in the country. More than half the teachers are Miꞌkmaq. From 2011 to 2012 there was a 25% increase in Miꞌkmaq students going to university. Atlantic Canada has the highest rate of aboriginal students attending university in the country.[66]
Truth and Reconciliation Commission [ edit ]
In 2005, Nova Scotian Miꞌkmaq Nora Bernard led the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history, representing an estimated 79,000 survivors of the Canadian Indian residential school system. The Government of Canada settled the lawsuit for upwards of CA$5 billion.[67]
On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an apology to the residential school survivors.
In the fall of 2011, there was an Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission that travelled to various communities in Atlantic Canada, who were all served by the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School. For 37 years (1930-1967), 10% of Miꞌkmaq children attended the institution.
Miꞌkmaq of Newfoundland [ edit ]
Celebrations [ edit ]
In the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, October is celebrated as Miꞌkmaq History Month. The entire Miꞌkmaq Nation celebrates Treaty Day annually on October 1. This was date when the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1752 was signed by Jean-Baptiste Cope of Shubenacadie and the king's representative. It was stated that the natives would be given gifts annually,"as long as they continued in Peace."[70]
Religion, Spirituality, and Tradition [ edit ]
A dancer in the Miꞌkmaq celebration
Current Forms of Miꞌkmaq Faith [ edit ]
Some Miꞌkmaq people practice the Catholic faith, some only practice traditional Miꞌkmaq religion; but many have adopted both religions due to the compatibility between Christianity and traditional Miꞌkmaq faith.[71] Ethnologist Angela Robinson provides an in-depth study of both Traditionalist and Miꞌkmaw Catholic beliefs and practices in her monograph, Tán Teli-Ktlamsitasit (Ways of Believing): Míkmaw Religion in Eskasoni, 2005.
Oral Traditions in Miꞌkmaq Culture [ edit ]
The Miꞌkmaq people had very little in the way of physical recording and storytelling; petroglyphs, while used, are believed to have been extremely rare. In addition, it is not believed that pre-contact Miꞌkmaq had any form of written language. As such, almost all of Miꞌkmaq traditions were passed down orally, primarily via storytelling. There were traditionally three levels of oral traditions: religious myths, legends, and folklore.
Myths are used to tell the stories of the earliest possible time, of things that are religiously and spiritually significant. This includes Miꞌkmaq creation stories, and myths which account for the organization of the world and society; for instance, how men and women were created and why they are different from one another. Myths are powerful symbolically, and are the expression of how things came to be and should be. The most well known Miꞌkmaq myth is that of Glooscap.
are used to tell the stories of the earliest possible time, of things that are religiously and spiritually significant. This includes Miꞌkmaq creation stories, and myths which account for the organization of the world and society; for instance, how men and women were created and why they are different from one another. Myths are powerful symbolically, and are the expression of how things came to be and should be. The most well known Miꞌkmaq myth is that of Glooscap. Legends are oral traditions related to particular places. Legends can involve the recent or distant past, but are most important in linking people and specific places in the land.
are oral traditions related to particular places. Legends can involve the recent or distant past, but are most important in linking people and specific places in the land. Folktales are fictitious stories that involve all the people. These traditional tales are used to give moral or social lessons to youth, or are told for amusement about the way people are. Good storytellers are highly prized by the Miꞌkmaq,[72] as they provide important teachings that shape who a person grows to be, and they are sources of great entertainment. A good story was, and is, an experience often treasured by Miꞌkmaq children.
There is one myth explaining that the Miꞌkmaq once believed that evil and wickedness among men is what causes them to kill each other. This causes great sorrow to the creator-sun-god, who weeps tears that become rains sufficient to trigger a deluge. The people attempt to survive the flood by traveling in bark canoes, but only a single old man and woman survive to populate the earth.[73]
Spiritual Sites [ edit ]
One spiritual capital of the Miꞌkmaq nation is Mniku, the gathering place of the Míkmaq Grand Council or Santé Mawiómi, Chapel Island in Bras d'Or Lake of Nova Scotia. The island is also the site of the St. Anne Mission, an important pilgrimage site for the Miꞌkmaq (Robinson 2005). The island has been declared a historic site.[74]
First Nation subdivisions [ edit ]
Miꞌkmaw names in the following table are spelled according to several orthographies. The Miꞌkmaw orthographies in use are Míkmaw pictographs, the orthography of Silas Tertius Rand, the Pacifique orthography, and the most recent Smith-Francis orthography. The latter has been adopted throughout Nova Scotia and in most Miꞌkmaw communities.
Demographics [ edit ]
Year Population Verification 1500 4,500 Estimation 1600 3,000 Estimation 1700 2,000 Estimation 1750 3,000[77] Estimation 1800 3,100 Estimation 1900 4,000 Census 1940 5,000 Census 1960 6,000 Census 1972 10,000 Census 1998 15,000 SIL 2006 20,000 Census
The pre-contact population is estimated at 3,000–30,000.[78] In 1616, Father Biard believed the Miꞌkmaq population to be in excess of 3,000, but he remarked that, because of European diseases, there had been large population losses during the 16th century. Smallpox and other endemic European infectious diseases, to which the Miꞌkmaq had no immunity, wars and alcoholism led to a further decline of the native population. It reached its lowest point in the middle of the 17th century. Then the numbers grew slightly again, before becoming apparently stable during the 19th century. During the 20th century, the population was on the rise again. The average growth from 1965 to 1970 was about 2.5%.
Commemorations [ edit ]
The Miꞌkmaq people have been commemorated in numerous ways, including HMCS Micmac (R10), and place names such as Lake Micmac, and the Mic Mac Mall.[79]
Notable Miꞌkmaq [ edit ]
Academics [ edit ]
Activists [ edit ]
Artists [ edit ]
Athletes [ edit ]
Military [ edit ]
Other [ edit ]
Maps [ edit ]
Maps showing the approximate locations of areas occupied by members of the Wabanaki Confederacy (from north to south):
Maliseet, Passamaquoddy
Eastern Abenaki (Penobscot, Kennebec, Arosaguntacook, Pigwacket/Pequawket)
Western Abenaki (Arsigantegok, Missisquoi, Cowasuck, Sokoki, Pennacook
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
18th–19th centuries [ edit ]
Documentary film [ edit ]Morale Profile Joined August 2010 Sweden 1005 Posts #2 SICK! very much looking forward to this!
Daria Profile Blog Joined August 2010 Australia 488 Posts Last Edited: 2011-04-06 09:52:14 #3 nice!! will be tuning in to this!
edit: nvm! didn't see it in the desc. daria[e]
namedplayer Profile Joined June 2010 844 Posts #4 lol torch the caster You know what I'm talking about
Golgotha Profile Blog Joined January 2011 Korea (South) 8283 Posts Last Edited: 2011-04-06 10:13:34 #5
anyways, this is awesome! gomtv is letting you do this?
wow just checked out the MLG vids you guys did. great work with the production and getting these interviews. always great questions. looking forward to your success torch is a good caster.anyways, this is awesome! gomtv is letting you do this?wow just checked out the MLG vids you guys did. great work with the production and getting these interviews. always great questions. looking forward to your success
Tommylew Profile Blog Joined March 2010 Wales 2716 Posts #6 this should be so much fun, lets hope a good showing by the world all stars!!!
How come HuK, Jinro and haypro wont be involved if they are all in Korea at the moment? Live and Let Die!
kAra Profile Joined September 2004 Germany 1197 Posts #7 great, gotta remember to tune in mada mada dane
csa_andrew Profile Joined July 2010 United States 330 Posts Last Edited: 2011-04-06 10:22:00 #8 HuK and HayPro were just at MLG Dallas, and Jinro stays at the OGS House I believe. So its just the actual World Allstars that are staying at the gomTV foreigner house and yes we will be working with gomTV to bring you guys a lot more events like this!
eviltomahawk Profile Blog Joined August 2010 United States 10876 Posts #9 World All-Stars is looking Zerg heavy, with some big-name Protoss players thrown in there too. I'm a bit scared for them since they lack a Terran player, which could hurt their team depth. However, All their players still look scary nonetheless. Too bad Jinro couldn't tag along to bolster their numbers. ㅇㅅㅌㅅ
readme Profile Joined March 2010 Austria 76 Posts #10 )
and i love seeing torch casting pretty late announcement :/ cant wait for this, looks like the Korean scene is merging with the world scene, im pretty sure World Allstars can take thisand i love seeing torch casting The Legend of Zelda 4 ever =)
deL Profile Blog Joined March 2009 Australia 5540 Posts #11 WTF is that world all-stars logo haha. Should be fun either way, pity there is no prize with the calibre of players involved! Gaming videos for fun ~ http://www.youtube.com/user/WijLopenLos
searcher Profile Blog Joined May 2009 277 Posts #12 Awesome! Why have the players decided to remain in Korea for so long (or have the matches already been played)?
elementz Profile Joined October 2010 United States 244 Posts #13 They are there till the end of the GSLWC because thats what the tickets gom got them are for. this mah s#$%$
Adebisi Profile Blog Joined June 2010 Canada 1620 Posts #14 No prize and foreigner terrans is kinda sad, only having to deal with 2 races kinda diminishes the value of the format, but should be really cool nonetheless!
sc14s Profile Joined March 2011 United States 3506 Posts #15
GL to CSN just a showmatch, good for a free showmatch imoGL to CSN
Gator Profile Blog Joined February 2011 United States 2250 Posts #16 wowowow so awesome! TSM
Mephiztopheles1 Profile Blog Joined December 2010 1112 Posts #17
Thanks for this showmatch Oh awesome, fits perfectly with my schedule as long as there are no delays, will make sure to tune in!Thanks for this showmatch
BenKen Profile Joined August 2009 United States 860 Posts #18 This looks fun! Thanks for putting this together. I'll definitely have to catch the VODs since I'm on my way to work at that time. I deadlift for Aiur
dkream Profile Joined March 2011 Canada 36 Posts #19 prolly wont feature mvp and nestea... but hopefully will see losira... who else is in IM?
csa_andrew Profile Joined July 2010 United States 330 Posts Last Edited: 2011-04-06 22:49:45 #20 you never know, if the Koreans start loosing who they will bring out
1 2 3 4 5 47 48 49 Next AllMichelle Zilio, CTV News
A new survey shows the federal Conservatives and Liberals in a virtual tie, with the NDP surging, five months out from the scheduled federal election this October.
The Nanos poll shows the Conservatives with a numeric lead at 32.9 per cent of support among poll respondents, and the Liberals trailing at 31.3 per cent. And while the NDP came in at 25.2 per cent, their numbers have been trending up since February, according to pollster Nik Nanos.
"The latest Nanos tracking has pretty well a dead heat between Conservatives and the Liberals," pollster Nik Nanos told CTV News. "The New Democrats are trending up and they're at 25 per cent, which is actually quite good for Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats."
In the 2011 federal election, the NDP hit 31 per cent nationally.
Nanos says there are a number of factors playing into the NDP's rise.
"First of all, Tom Mulcair's doing better on the preferred prime minister front, although he still trails the other two party leaders. And more Canadians would consider voting New Democrat now than a year ago, which means the New Democrats are basically on the political radar," said Nanos.
But the kicker will be the effect of the NDP rise on the Liberal and Conservatives numbers. According to Nanos, a New Democrat surge usually benefits the Conservatives, as it splits the progressive vote between the Liberals and the NDP.
"If there's no clear challenger to (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper, then what we'll see is the non-Harper universe divided."
Tight regional races
The race between the three major federal parties is also tight in Canada’s key regional battlegrounds.
Ontario:
The poll shows the Conservatives with the advantage in Ontario, at 39.3 per cent. The Liberals came in at 35.7 per cent, with the NDP lagging behind at 19 per cent.
"For the Tories, Ontario is the most important battleground. Their majority last time was made in Ontario," said Nanos.
Quebec:
The poll shows a tight race between the Liberals and NDP, at 33.5 per cent and 30.6 per cent respectively. The Conservatives sit at 17.7 per cent in the province, which, according to Nanos, means they will likely keep their existing seats and maybe pick up a couple more in the election, tentatively set for Oct. 19.
"We've got to watch what happens in Quebec because there's a significant amount of volatility there," said Nanos.
Meanwhile, the Bloc Quebecois sits at 14.4 per cent.
British Columbia:
There’s also a two-way battle between the Liberals and NDP in B.C. The parties sit within less than a percentage point of one another – 31.8 per cent for the Liberals and 31.1 for the NDP. The Conservatives came in at 26.5 per cent.
But for Nanos, the story out of B.C. is the rise of the Green Party, which is seeing 10.6 per cent of support among poll respondents – significantly higher than its showing in other regions.
"The upside for the Greens is that it seems that their support in British Columbia is concentrated on the Island of Vancouver, which means that it could actually be efficient at generating a couple seats for (leader) Elizabeth May. Perhaps she'll have some company in the House of Commons if this trend holds up," said Nanos.
And the Conservatives carry a strong lead in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, at 43 per cent, and Alberta, at 53.3 per cent.
The weekly Nanos poll provides a snapshot of where the federal parties sit. The results are based on random live telephone interviews with 1,000 Canadians, using a four-week average of 250 respondents each week. The polling period ended May 14, and is accurate 3.1 percentage points, plus or minus, 19 times out of 20.By Jodie Van Horn
We'd never argue that 2017 was a great year, but some really great things did happen!
Here are 50 ways (yes, 50!) that clean energy kept winning in 2017 despite Trump's attempts to roll back the country's progress.
1. The Republican Mayor Championing 100% Renewable Energy in Louisiana
Republican Mayor Greg Lemons made his small town of Abita Springs the first municipality in Louisiana to commit to 100% clean energy. Mayor Lemons said his 100% renewable energy vision for Abita Springs, which has a population of 2,900, aligns with the conservative values of his community—and it has made him a trailblazer across Louisiana.
2. Madison and Abita Springs Committed to 100% Clean Energy on the Same Day!
On March 21, Madison, Wisconsin and Abita Springs, Louisiana became the 24th and 25th cities in the country to commit to 100% clean energy. Last year, more than 70% of voters in Madison cast ballots supporting Hillary Clinton, while in St. Tammany Parish, where Abita Springs is located, more than 70% of voters supported Donald Trump. They agree on one thing, at least—the need for 100% clean energy.
3. Solar Created Even More Jobs Across America
A new report released this year by The Solar Foundation showed that in 2016, the number of solar jobs increased in 44 of the 50 states, and more than 260,000 Americans now work in solar. In several major metro areas, the solar workforce grew by 50% or more. The New York Times ran a major piece in April, which pretty much sums it up: Today's Energy Jobs Are in Solar, Not Coal.
4. Chicago Committed to Power All Municipal Buildings with 100% Renewable Energy by 2025
In April, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that by 2025, all 900-plus buildings operated by the city, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, Chicago Housing Authority and City Colleges will be powered entirely by renewable sources. In 2016, those buildings used nearly 1.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity—equal to the energy needed to power about 295,000 homes.
5. U.S. Mayors Announced New National Drive for 100% Clean Energy
Mayors from across the U.S. teamed up with the Ready for 100 campaign to announce Mayors for 100% Clean Energy, a new effort to engage and recruit mayors to endorse a goal of transitioning to 100% renewable energy in cities across the country.
6. 100% Clean Energy at the People's Climate March
A contingent of 100% clean energy activists representing communities from coast to coast joined hundreds of thousands of people marching in the People's Climate March in Washington, DC on April 29.
7. Atlanta Committed to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy
Atlanta became the largest city in the South to commit to running entirely on clean energy. The city then took it to the people to learn through a series of #CommunityConversations why Atlanta is #ReadyFor100. Atlantans are helping shape the plan, set to be released next year—and they've even got some superhero support.
8. More Companies Bought Into 100% Clean Energy
Around the world, a record number of big corporations, ranging from Anheuser-Busch to Kellogg, committed to going all-in on 100% clean energy. Collectively, their energy footprint is greater than all energy consumed in the state of New York. Corporate demand for renewable energy is helping drive a shift away from fossil fuels and bringing more renewable energy online. Google declared it now buys enough wind to cover 100% of its energy use.
9. Even Puppies Love 100% Clean Energy
And what's more uplifting than puppies?
10. Entire Town of Hanover Voted Unanimously for 100%
At a town meeting on May 9, residents of Hanover, New Hampshire voted to get off of all fossil fuels by 2050. This is the first community in the country to adopt a goal of 100% clean, renewable energy voted on and approved by the residents of the community.
11. Clean Energy Spiked In California and Texas
In California and Texas this year, clean energy like wind and solar set new records for energy generation. On May 13, renewable energy supplied 67% of all power in California. And wind broke records across the country, especially in Texas where 54% of grid electricity came from wind at one point on Oct. 27, breaking a previous 50% record set on March 23.
12. A Movement of Mayors Across Florida
Florida mayors are leading the way towards 100% clean, renewable energy. More than 40 mayors from across Florida have joined Mayors for 100% Clean Energy, the most of any state in the country. Although the Sunshine State gets less than half a percent of its power from the sun, Floridians beat back previous utility-backed efforts to limit solar energy in the state. Now clean energy advocates and dozens of mayors say they deserve better.
13. Pueblo, Colorado Committed to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy
The city of Pueblo, Colorado committed to running entirely on renewable energy by 2035. City council is now exploring options for how they can cut ties with an uncooperative utility, protect low income rate payers, and move to 100% clean energy for all.
14. A Mother's Clean Energy Vision for Her City
On Mother's Day, Mayor Heidi Harmon of San Luis Obispo, California, who is also a proud mom of two, shared her vision for 100% clean energy in her community. Citing the safety and health threats that climate change and pollution will pose to children, Mayor Harmon sees a solution: transitioning San Luis Obispo to run on 100% clean energy.
15. Oregonians Committed to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy
On the same day that Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, the Portland City Council and Multnomah County Commission voted to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050. Thanks to organizations like Verde and Opal, these commitments also represent a strong commitment to racial and economic justice and will ensure that communities of color and low income communities define, lead, and share the economic, social, and environmental benefits of a renewable energy transition.
16. Energy Experts Agreed: 100% Renewable Energy is Possible
In a global survey, more than 70% of the world's energy experts agreed that powering the globe with 100% renewable resources is achievable.
17. Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto to Trump: the Steel City Will Move to 100% Clean Energy
Just hours after Donald Trump claimed to represent the voters of Pittsburgh in his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, Mayor Bill Peduto announced his support for a goal of powering Pittsburgh entirely with clean and renewable energy by 2035.
18. Edmonds and Whatcom County Were the First Washington Commitments to 100% Clean Energy
In June, the city of Edmonds became the first community in the state of Washington to commit to 100% clean, renewable energy. Edmonds set the goal of achieving a 100% transition by 2025 shortly after the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in June. Whatcom County became the sixth county in the country to move towards 100% renewable energy.
19. Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina Is a Clean Energy Champ
Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Steve Benjamin, Co-Chair of Mayors for 100% Clean Energy, is #ReadyFor100. Mayor Benjamin's leadership paved the way for Columbia to commit to 100% clean, renewable energy in June. As a local and national leader, Mayor Benjamin is sharing his vision far and wide.
20. Wind is Winning Across America
Wind power reached new heights in 2017! Earlier this year, American Electric Power announced that it would make a $4.5 billion investment in the nation's largest wind energy project, and local advocates like Nancy Moran spoke out in support. The wind farm will provide power in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, and is expected to save customers $7 billion over the next 25 years. In Texas, wind power became a bigger source of electricity than coal.
21. U.S. Conference of Mayors Approved Historic 100% Clean Energy Resolution, Proving That Mayors Are #ReadyFor100
The 85th U.S. Conference of Mayors approved a resolution establishing support from the nation's biggest cities for an equitable and just transition to 100% clean energy by 2035. Clean energy activists celebrated the mayors' vote by taking part in an aerial art action on the beach. Is your mayor signed onto Mayors for 100% Clean Energy?
22. One of the Country's Biggest Bus Fleets Will Be 100% Electric by 2030
This summer, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), voted to transition its fleet of more than 2,200 buses to zero emission electric buses by 2030. Transitioning to all electric buses will help improve air quality, fight climate change, enhance social equity and improve rider experience. Additionally, with policies that encourage local manufacturing, the transition can create good local jobs in disadvantaged communities. Congratulations to the Sierra Club's My Generation campaign and local partners in Los Angeles who worked hard to achieve this major victory.
23. Orlando's 100% Clean Energy Commitment is Already Having an Impact
In August Orlando became the largest city in Florida to commit to 100% renewable energy. The city plans to stop using fossil fuels by 2050. Orlando's commitment to clean energy is already having an impact: Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer indicated that the city's 100% renewable energy goal is a key factor in determining who will become the next CEO of their city-owned utility.
24. The Path to 100% Clean Energy Is Saving Hawai'i Money
The Hawai'i House of Representatives found this year that Hawai'i residents have already saved over a quarter of a billion dollars as a result of the state's progress toward achieving its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. The state called on other states and the federal government to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, citing that it makes economic sense today. Hawai'i has a detailed plan to hit its goal five years ahead of schedule.
25. Faith Leaders Asked Boise's Mayor to Endorse a 100% Clean Energy Future
Boise Faith Leaders representing 20 different faith communities delivered a letter to Mayor Dave Bieter to urge him to support a goal to make Boise the first city in Idaho to commit to 100% clean energy. The Idaho chapter of the Sierra Club has been building grassroots support and asking Mayor Dave Bieter to commit to a 100% clean energy goal.
26. In the Coal-Dependent State of Utah, 100% Is Trending
In a state that still gets nearly 70% of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, municipalities have begun to say "no more." This year, Summit County and Moab, Utah committed to transition to 100% clean, renewable energy. Salt Lake City, which is also in the 100% club, released Climate Positive 2040, a plan to achieve its goal to run on clean energy by 2032, reduce carbon pollution, and take the lead on climate action.
27. 100% Clean Energy Unleashed in Capitals
U.S. lawmakers introduced bills in both the Senate and House of Representatives this year that would move the entire country to 100% renewable energy. Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders announced their landmark "100x50" act with community leaders in April. And clean energy supporters from California to Massachusetts have been pushing state lawmakers adopt 100% renewable energy, but many of these efforts are still in progress.
28. 150 Mayors for 100% Clean Energy
The Sierra Club's Mayors for 100% Clean Energy initiative reached a major milestone: 150 mayors from across the country signed onto the campaign and pledged to power their communities with 100% clean, renewable energy. Civic leaders from across the country are stepping up to make it known that they care about the health of their residents and the strength of their local economy by advocating for 100% clean, renewable energy.
29. Local Clean Energy Advocates Rallied for Community Choice
In support of a clean energy future for California, community members rallied in September to protect Community Choice energy programs, like Alameda County's East Bay Community Energy. Community Choice gives cities and counties the chance to take control of their electric power supply and offer renewable energy to residents and businesses.
30. North Carolina Counties Went All-In On Renewable Energy
While cities across the country continue to commit to 100% clean energy, some North Carolina communities are going even bigger. Orange County and Buncombe County, North Carolina this year became some of the first counties in the country to commit to 100% clean, renewable energy.
31. Pueblo's Movement for Energy Justice Featured in Sierra Magazine Profile
In a profile published in Sierra, Michael Tannahill's story reveals the connections between economic and environmental justice—and highlights why the community of Pueblo, Colorado is pushing back hard against high utility costs and dirty fuels to get to 100% clean energy.
32. Portland's Commitment to 100% Clean Energy Pushed Portland General Electric (PGE) to Invest in Renewables
PGE acknowledged that Portland and surrounding Multnomah County's 100% renewable energy goals are shaping its future energy investments. After the Oregon Public Utility Commission rejected PGE's proposal to expand a gas-fired power station in August, PGE issued a proposal to develop renewable energy and energy storage.
33. St. Louis Became the Largest Midwest City to Commit to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy
On Oct. 27, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen unanimously approved the city's commitment to transition to 100% by 2035. St. Louis, a longtime coal capital home to Arch Coal and Peabody Energy, represents the largest city in Missouri and across the Midwest to establish a goal of transitioning entirely to clean, renewable energy. The city will develop a plan by December 2018 to meet the goal and conduct a transparent and inclusive stakeholder process. This includes community members and representatives from organizations representing labor, faith, social justice, environmental justice, frontline communities and those most impacted by our current energy systems, among others.
34. In Cleveland, the Community Wants Clean Energy for Everyone
Through a series of Community Dialogues in Cleveland, Ohio, Ready for 100 organizer Jocelyn Travis has been helping residents of "the Rock and Roll Capital of the World" envision a 100% clean energy transition in their city. The Dialogues have helped Cleveland's diverse communities connect with each other, learn about clean energy solutions, and build a movement for a healthy and just clean energy transition.
35. Community Choice Can Help San Diego Reach Its 100% Clean Energy Goal
A City of San Diego study released this year determined that Community Choice Energy can help San Diego achieve its goal of 100% clean energy at a cost competitive rate with the local utility. San Diego is the largest city in the country to have adopted a legally binding 100% renewable energy goal, which the city plans to achieve by 2035. San Diego's Republican Mayor, Kevin Faulconer, is a co-chair of Mayors for 100% Clean Energy.
36. 100% Clean Energy Won Big on Election Day
Across the country, from East Lansing, Michigan to St. Petersburg, Florida, 100% clean energy champions won big on Election Day, reaffirming that local communities want more clean energy!
37. U.S. Climate Leadership is All About Local
During the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, U.S. cities and mayors joined other local leaders to stand behind the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Mayors affirmed #WeAreStillIn by doubling down on local support for bold climate action. The aggregate climate actions of We Are Still In signatories and other non-federal U.S. actors are being quantified through America's Pledge, an initiative spearheaded by UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change Michael Bloomberg and California Gov. Jerry Brown.
38. The Sierras Went All-In On Renewable Energy
South Lake Tahoe, Nevada City and Truckee, California all committed to 100% clean, renewable energy this year, leading the way for other communities across the Sierras. Mountain towns in the West have been leading a move to clean energy to save their snow and the tourist industry.
39. Ready for 100 Released 2nd Annual Case Studies Report
The Ready for 100 campaign released a new report in English and Spanish highlighting 10 cities across the U.S. that have committed to 100% renewable energy and the steps they are taking to get there. Featured cities span from coast to coast, and include tiny towns and large metropolises. This is the second case studies report issued by Ready for 100, following a 2016 release.
40. What Do an Eagle Scout, a Colonel, and a Utility Company Have in Common?
They all support 100% renewable energy! Community members packed a town hall in Breckenridge, Colorado, in support of the town adopting a goal to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2035. Testimony included fifth-grade Boy Scout Eli Larson, who stated, "If this global warming keeps up, we might not even have a winter." And a U.S. Colonel testified that there was a mandate from the community to go renewable. Six Colorado cities in total have committed to 100%, including Nederland and Lafayette this year. An Xcel Energy spokesperson acknowledged that the utility would do everything it can to help cities achieve their goals.
41. Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski is #ReadyFor100
Since Salt Lake City committed to 100% renewable energy last year, Mayor Jackie Biskupski has been on a mission to get other mayors on board. A co-chair of Mayors for 100% Clean Energy, Mayor Biskupski has rallied support for 100% everywhere from Twitter to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
42. Two Massachusetts Cities Committed to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy
Cambridge and Amherst, Massachusetts passed resolutions in 2017 committing to 100% clean, renewable energy. As the first municipalities to do so in Massachusetts, the cities are leading the way in the Bay State.
43. Ameren Missouri Proposed Wind to Help Meet St. Louis's 100% Clean Energy Goal
Ameren Missouri, the utility serving St. Louis, acted right away on the city's 100% clean energy commitment, which passed in October. The utility has invested $1 billion in wind projects and now wants to create a Renewable Choice Program for customers that would give cities and companies the option to buy wind energy.
44. TOAD the Wet Sprocket Took Ready for 100 on Tour
TOAD the Wet Sprocket went on tour with a cause this summer. Promoting the Ready for 100 campaign at tour stops across the country, the alternative rock band encouraged fans to join the campaign and support 100% renewable energy!
45. Coastal California Cities Embraced 100%
This year, the cities of Santa Barbara, Monterey, Solana Beach, Chula Vista and Goleta, California all made commitments to transitioning to 100% clean, renewable energy. To date, 14 cities across California have committed to running entirely to clean energy.
46. Scotland Will Reach 100% Renewable Energy By 2020
The Scottish government confirmed the country is on track to get all of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. Scotland hit its 2020 emission targets five years early and has gone from delivering 10% to 60% of its electricity consumption from renewable sources over the past 15 years. For the first six
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not lining up quickly enough.Setlist / Recap / Full Show Stream & Download | Yusuf Islam @ Chicago Theater 12/9/14
Though remembered primarily for his tenure as Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam has continued recording music since dropping the name, creating a string of often-political records since the early 90s that still spotlight the songwriter’s skill and craft. The singer is currently on his first tour in 35 years, with Chicago being his fourth stop.
Yusuf’s performance at Chicago Theatre encompassed the entirety of his influential career, combining a large number of Cat Stevens songs with newer material and covers throughout a massive, two-set concert that featured surprise-guests Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Matthew Sweeney.
Yusuf performed with a five-piece backing band offering guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and more, the singer performing on acoustic guitar and piano throughout. The stage setup consisted of an old, western station behind the band and a sign labeled “Chicago,” playing into the “Peace Train…Late Again” tour name.
Opening with classic Teaser And The Firecat track “The Wind,” Yusuf continued to cover both well known and lesser-known tracks from all of Cat Stevens’ discography.
Though Yusuf covered classics such as “Wild World” and “Moonshadow,” he managed to sneak a “Foreigner Suite” snippet into newer track “Heaven/Where True Love Goes,” surprisingly acknowledging his critically panned Foreigner.
An obvious set highlight came in the form of two covers, Procol Harum’s “The Devil Came From Kansas” and Lead Belly’s “Take This Hammer,” both featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy on vocals. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Matthew Sweeney, who contributed guitar for the show, have previously recorded as Superwolf and both contributed to Yusuf’s latest record, Tell ‘Em I’m Gone.
Other covers throughout the night included Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man,” Edgar Winter’s “Dying To Live,” “You Are My Sunshine” and Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night.”
Check out the lengthy 29-song setlist and some (regrettably, awful) videos below.
The Stream
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Set 1:
1. The Wind
2. Here Comes My Baby
3. The First Cut Is The Deepest
4. Thinking ‘Bout You
5. Sitting
6. Maybe You’re Right
7. Where Do The Children Play?
8. I Love My Dog
9. I Was Raised In Babylon
10. (Remember The Days Of The) Old Schoolyard
11. People Get Ready (Curtis Mayfield cover)
12. If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out
Set 2:
13. Big Boss Man (Jimmy Reed cover)
14. Trouble
15. Oh Very young
16. Dying To Live (Edgar Winter cover)
17. Moonshadow
18. You Are My Sunshine (Jimmie Davis cover)
19. Heaven/Where True Love Goes
20. Wild World
21. The Devil Came From Kansas (Procol Harum cover featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy)
22. Take This Hammer (Lead Belly cover featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy)
23. Another Saturday Night (Sam Cooke cover)
24. Peace Train
25. Father And Son
Encore:
26. Editing Floor Blues
27. Miles From Nowhere
28. Morning Has Broken
29. All Kinds Of RosesThe changes will take effect when the new print edition of the Stylebook is published on June 1.
Previewing the new edition at the ACES conference, Standards Editor Thomas Kent highlighted a few of the added entries, including the shortest Stylebook item, ‘L,’ now acceptable when referring to the Chicago Transit Authority train system.
The 2016 AP Stylebook will include more than 240 new and modified entries, some of which have already been released to AP Stylebook Online subscribers. Some of the additions presented at the meeting include:
prostitute – Avoid terms like child, underage or teenage prostitute, except in quotations or in referring to criminal charges that may use these terms. The phrasing can suggest that a child is voluntarily trading sex for money. Minors are not able to consent. exponential growth – Used when something has grown by increasing amounts. For instance, a population might increase by 5 percent from 1980 to 1990, 10 percent from 1990 to 2000 and 15 percent from 2000 to 2010. Not simply a synonym for a large increase. accident, crash – Generally acceptable for automobile and other collisions and wrecks. However, when negligence is claimed or proven, avoid accident, which can be read by some as a term exonerating the person responsible. In such cases, use crash, collision or other terms. See collide, collision. L – The name of the Chicago train system. Not El. mezcal – Clear liquor from Mexico made from a variety of agave plants. Uniqlo– A Japanese retailer of casual wear. normcore– A fashion trend that combines “normal” and “hardcore” and is characterized by unpretentious, unisex, average dressing.
The AP Stylebook is the definitive resource for journalists and a must-have reference for writers, editors students and professionals. It provides fundamental guidelines for spelling, language, punctuation, usage and journalistic style.‘Emotional’ is an understatement when describing the win. There is a picture out there somewhere of me clutching my drumsticks, eyes closed, and an ear-to-ear smile. I could have floated home (or to Skyline). The magic of the Cup.
Something else occurred to me Wednesday night as I watched the magic unfold. To this point, I’ve been pretty indifferent to joining MLS. I’ll support this club regardless. For me, higher tickets prices and tighter restrictions on supporters aren’t exactly a selling point. But watching Wednesday it hit me: we could be playing these clubs every week. David Villa, Kaka, Schweinsteiger all at Nippert. And that’s not to mention whoever FCC brings in. Who knows what names would wear the Orange and Blue? Plus the chance to show off this city at a whole other level!
So now you’ve got me. I am officially excited for the prospect of MLS. Let’s have that bid Don. Tell Newport to get the shovels ready (trigger warning...that’s an entirely different blog post).Close
Would you give up your personal information for a cookie?
That's a question recently asked by artist Risa Puno, who conducted an experiment offering people a cookie in exchange for their personal data. This data included names, addresses, driver's license numbers, mother's maiden names, social security numbers and even fingerprints.
What's most shocking about this experiment is that 380 people willingly gave up their data for one of Puno's cookies, which she decorated with logos of social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
"It is crazy what people were willing to give me," says Puno.
The experiment was a simple one. Puno baked 700 cookies with flavors such as "Chocolate Chili Fleur de Sel" and "Pink Pistachio Peppercorn." Then she attended an arts festival in Brooklyn, NY, and offered cookies to attendees for those willing to give up personal details about themselves.
In all, 380 people turned over their data willingly, just for a cookie, with 117 giving Puno their fingerprints and 162 giving up their social security numbers. More than half of the participants posed for photos for Puno.
Puno had each participant sign a lengthy document, written in small text, similar to the terms and conditions sites on Facebook and Twitter. Most people signed away their data without a second thought. Some asked what Puno would do with the information, but she did not reply.
Some participants even gave Puno more data than she asked for.
"That to me was baffling," she said. "If I were thinking about giving away my information, I wasn't giving away more than I had to."
Some didn't even eat the cookie, but traded their personal information for photos with it. The Instagram-decorated cookies were particularly popular with photographers, so much so, that Puno traded photos of them for fingerprints, the last four digits of social security numbers and driver's license numbers.
So now that Puno has the personal data of 380 people, what's she going to do with it? Although she could easily use it any way she saw fit, as those who handed it over signed a legally binding agreement, she reports that she's considering destroying it.
Although people say they value their privacy, there's clearly a price they can put on it, and if that price is just a cookie, at least in this art performance experiment, then that price is relatively low.
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Augustus Wood, a PhD student at the U. of Illinois, speaks at the black student solidarity rally on the University of Illinois main quad on Nov. 18. (Photo: Photo: Sunny Ture)
An anonymous Facebook page called Illini White Student Union, created after black students from the University of Illinois held a rally Wednesday, reportedly characterized the Black Lives Matter movement as an act of “terrorism” and called for the monitoring of African-American students who attended, leaving many feeling unsafe at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
“I expect some degree of backlash whenever black students … get together and demand their human rights,” said Karen Olowu, a member of Black Students for Revolution, which organized the rally. “I was surprised by the degree and the swiftness, and how toxic it was.”
The rally featured speakers, poets and hip-hop artists expressing solidarity with protesters at the University of Missouri.
The Facebook page read, “A new page for white students of University of Illinois students to be able to form a community and discuss our own issues as well as be able to organize against the terrorism we have been facing from Black Lives Matter activists on campus,” according to The Daily Illini.
Though taken down, another iteration — without that post — soon appeared.
Imgur
“Whoever wrote the page did not go to the rally because it was not a #BlackLivesMatter event. … But what they did see were over 100 black people together screaming revolution and talking about ending racial oppression,” said Augustus Wood, a PhD student and member of Black Students for Revolution.
University of Illinois’ Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson described the page as “extremely disturbing” in a statement to the student body.
“We recognize the right to free speech, and we encourage you to exercise that right when you see examples of racism, discrimination or intimidation on our campus,” Wilson said. “We must have a safe environment for everyone – where people can gather and express concerns without fear.”
Several minutes after Wilson wrote to members of the campus community, Jeff Christensen, chief of police at the University of Illinois Police Department, also wrote a statement. He said in part, “We know that incidents like this create a sense of fear and shake your confidence in the safety of our campus. Please know there are many resources on campus to ensure your safety and to address incidences of bias and discrimination.”
Black Students for Revolution were not satisfied with the administration response. A statement released on Friday and obtained by USA TODAY College says that “this “Illini White Student Union” has adopted the same racial terrorist tactics that groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council utilized to intimidate and kill black people during the Civil Rights Movement. However, the university positioned black student safety at the periphery as it has done many times before.”
Campus spokeswoman Robin Kaler told USA TODAY College that the act of creating the page specifically designed to intimidate others is “disturbing and cowardly.
“We recognize that passions run deep on all sides of many issues, but actions like this are senseless and hurtful, and do nothing to foster meaningful dialogue.”
Though the initial page was taken down three hours after administration contacted Facebook, another page is up. Kaler said she has been working with Facebook to address the matter.
“It does make me pause now when I’m walking between classes that members of the student body at the university think like this,” Olowu says.
USA TODAY College attempted to reach out to the Illini White Student Union but received no response.
Walbert Castillo is a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student and former USA TODAY College correspondent.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1jd3bSmLast month during E3, Nintendo held its first World Championship in more than a decade. We got a chance to speak with its winner, John Goldberg A.K.A. John Numbers about the event. John is familiar with the competitive video games scene as a competitive Smash Bros. player, but flying to Los Angeles to play modern and classic Nintendo games on stage was a whole different experience.
Where did the name John Numbers come from?
Before I got into the Smash community, I basically used John followed by a few numbers for Internet aliases. I did the same thing when I first got into the Brawl competitive community one year after its released. A few years in people were just like, “Hey John. John 12346 sounds stupid. How about John Numbers.” And eventually it just stuck.
Where was your head during Metroid Prime: Federation Force’s Blast Ball mode?
Blast ball I was very nervous about. We got to practice backstage and I actually lost both of the practice times I played. I was like, “Oh no, I’m going to get sent to the losers.” But it turned out I went commando when we played for real. I ended up getting two out of the three goals that we needed to win.
Where was your head during Mario Kart 8?
There was nothing amazing about Mario Kart 8. I used villager and the crowd seemed to like that. I used my normal load out – Villager, Blue Falcon, Slick, and Flower Glider. That’s a three acceleration, 4.5 speed build, and I did pretty well.
Where was your head during Balloon Fight?
Cosmo ended up winning that. At that point I was really upset because Egoraptor? We weren’t expecting him to get as far as he did. He himself said he didn’t even expect to get that far. He was just there to have a good time. And he actually got a really high score in balloon fight. Cosmo beat it by only a few thousand points.
Where was your head during Super Smash Bros.?
The four remaining players played Smash Bros., and you can imagine how happy I was when that came up. The only games we knew about going in were Splatoon and Zelda. I was like “Oh my god,” I was laughing when it came up. My plus one was shouting at me from the audience because he’s also a competitive Smash player. I was very relieved. In the end I dominated it.
Where was your head during Mario Maker?
The retro games we had no way of knowing what would show up, so with Super Metroid and Balloon fight we thought, “Okay, that’s what they are.” But on the modern side, we basically knew Mario Kart would come up. We knew Smash would come up, especially since the DLC just dropped. For the final game, I actually didn’t think it would be Mario Maker. But when I saw the three retro games were deliberately trying not to be Mario, I was like, “Okay, it’s going to be Mario Maker.” It was so fun. The funnest nonsense going into that.
Did Nintendo offer any coaching or ask you not to use profanity?
It didn’t matter. We didn’t get talk the whole time, but they didn’t tell us anything like that. I swore a few times during the event.
Game Informer: Yeah, we saw.
Oh, you saw me during Mario Maker mouth, “I f***ed up”? But, no they just told us where to walk during the event. And they put us back stage so we could practice Blast Ball.
Was it uncomfortable to be blindfolded on stage in front of an audience?
Actually no, because they were pumping in smooth jazz into the headphones, and that incidentally is my favorite genre second to video game music, so I was just sitting there tapping my hands on my lap like an idiot. I was listening for audience reaction so that’s all I could hear with the headphones on, but I couldn’t get anything meaningful out of it.
Did you go back and watch Cosmo’s performance during Mario Maker?
I’m actually a very big 2D Mario buff. I have a lot of experience with pretty much every 2D Mario game. I was going in pretty hard on that. I said, “What happened Cosmo? You were doing so well on the first and third levels?” To see him just perform like that? It was a letdown honestly. I was hoping it would be a good match, but he only got into the pipe as I killed Bowser. I got a chance to talk to him and he didn’t choke or anything. He just wasn’t familiar with the mechanics, that’s all.
What was going through your head when you won?
At the end of the final level when I killed Bowser, I actually didn’t expect that to be the end of the level. I thought they were going to throw some bait and switch at me and make me do more levels, especially considering how many tricks there were in the first three levels.
When I won, I was really excited. I’m a little introverted, so I don’t do a very good job of physically showing my emotions very well, but I was extremely excited, don’t worry about that. It just didn’t look like I was.
For more from John on meeting Miyamoto and whether or not he has seen The Wizard, head to page two.
What was it like meeting Shigeru Miyamoto?
When I won, I was like “Oh boy a trophy,” and I was being snarky because I knew I was getting a trophy – they said so on twitter. But it wouldn’t be any fun without some surprises, so here’s a guest: Miyamoto. And oh my gosh, I was star struck when that happened. I was floating there and I shook his hand. I was overjoyed to meet the man. I shook his hand and basically said thank you for all of the games and experience you’ve provided for us over the years. I’ve had a good time gaming with Nintendo. And he said thank you. He more or less understood what I said.
What are you doing with your 3DS and your trophy?
I was a little annoyed Cosmo got a 3DS, too. My prize was a 3DS and trophy, but he got a 3DS, too. The 3DS I’m going to keep for a very long time, at least for sentimental purposes. I might sell it one day, I probably won’t, but you never know. It might be worth a lot in the future. I’m more likely to sell the trophy because that thing doesn’t even have my name on it (laughs). It’s just a really heavy, 25 lb trophy. I think it’s made of lead.
What kind of preparation did you do leading up to the tournament?
I didn’t do anything special to prepare, honestly Except for when they mentioned Zelda would be a game, then obviously I started practicing Zelda because I have no experience with Zelda games. We didn’t know what the challenge would be so I found an any percent run guide with the fastest route possible without the screen scrolling trick and I practiced it a little bit. I had beat it once or twice and then they said, “You just have to beat the first boss.” I was so mad when that happened.
I played Splatoon, too, but I didn’t do that because I was practicing. I did that because I enjoy playing Splatoon. I love that game.
What did you think of Reggie Fils-Aime’s Smash Bros. performance?
I don’t want to say anything too damaging here. It seems like Reggie was deliberately playing badly, but I don’t know – I don’t think it’s possible to play that badly on purpose. I don’t have any comments on it. He spends 16 hours a day managing a company.
What is the hardest specific section from any Mario game?
That stupid part in… I think it’s world C of Super Mario Bros. 2 from Japan, Lost Levels in America. That stupid part where you have to get through a fire bar and there are two edgy blocks that don’t let you do it easily.
There aren’t that many hard moments in Mario, honestly. The hardest I would say is finding star coins in Super Luigi U is really difficult.
Do you play non-Nintendo games?
As far as that, I don’t really play that many. I play 2D fighters on Xbox 360. I play Ultra Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and I play Skullgirls. At one point or another I would actually enter tournaments for all three, and I did pretty well. I beat basically everyone who was not a known name, but eventually I got beaten by people who knew what they are doing. But the fact that I am better than the randoms is pretty nice. I also have Sonic ’06 and Generations and that’s my whole 360 library.
Did you go to E3?
No. They said they would give us a free ticket, but the plane ride back and hotel would be on us to stay a few extra days. That was the only disappointment of this event – that I didn’t get to hang around for E3. It’s not a big deal, though.
Is Yoshi’s Island for the SNES a Mario game?
I consider it a Mario game. I understand Yoshi has made his own niche for himself at this point, but that it still a Mario game. I’m not sure about Yoshi ‘s Island DS, or Yoshi’s New Island, but the one on SNES is definitely a Mario game.
Have you seen The Wizard?
No, actually. I’m going to watch it. I saw the Super Mario Bros. movie. I like that move. It’s a bad Maro movie, but it’s a really good movie, in my opinion. It was hilarious, honestly. It’s like how Paper Mario Sticker Star is a really bad Paper Mario game, but it’s still a really good game.
For more from John Numbers, check out our interview with him in the upcoming issue of the magazine.Submitted by Lorelei McFly via CopBlock.org,
One of the biggest lies our government tells us is that it wages the War on Drugs to keep us safe. More than 40 years after it was started, we know that it has been a colossally-expensive epic failure on its stated goals, was intentionally designed to further disenfranchise marginalized groups, and has become a full-fledged assault on our civil liberties.
Even with all the billions of tax dollars it spends each year, and all the flashy photo ops of seized drugs stacked on tables, the Drug Enforcement Agency only stops 1% of the illegal drug supply from being distributed in America, according to the video below. Not only is law enforcement pathetically inept at stemming the flow of drugs, they are active participants in the illicit drug trade at both the federal and local level:
That drug prohibition causes far more harm than it supposedly prevents would not even be a question of debate were it not for the fact that so many people’s livelihoods now depend on waging it. The ugly unspoken truth is that the War on Drugs is a massive jobs and funding program for law enforcement that is operated under the guise of saving people from the evils of substance abuse.
State-Sanctioned Theft
Everything we do is suspect, and everything we own is subject to seizure— take cash for an example. The saying used to be that “cash is king,’ however these days it’s “cash is criminal” since cash transactions and even withdrawing or carrying “large amounts,” basically more than a few dollars, of your own money is now considered an indication of criminal activity (see here). Section 31 U.S.C. 5103 states, “United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues,” so why does the government that prints that same money have such a problem with its citizens using it?
How Cash Became Criminal
Cash transactions are anonymous, so it is assumed that people who make cash transactions are trying to avoid leaving records of their activities. And if any aspect of your life is not a traceable, verifiable open book for the government, obviously you must be hiding something. Never mind that the case is often that people simply find using cash allows them to manage their finances more responsibly without risking overdraft or interest fees, or are making a purchase that requires cash, such as buying a used car, or that they simply do not have access to bank accounts due to low income or poor credit history.
According to the FDIC, “7.7 percent (1 in 13) of households in the United States were unbanked in 2013. This proportion represented approximately 16.7 million adults.” 20.0 percent of U.S. households, approximately 50.9 million adults, were underbanked in 2013, “meaning that they had a bank account but also used alternative financial services (AFS) outside of the banking system,” such as money orders, check cashing, remittances, payday loans, refund anticipation loans, rent-to-own services, pawn shops, or auto title loans.
The FDIC report also states “In many cases, financial life events, such as job loss, significant income loss or a new job, appear to be important reasons why households leave or enter the banking system.” The documentary Spent: Looking for Change, highlights the struggles of the unbanked and underbanked using the personal stories of several individuals.
While using cash out of preference or necessity is a perfectly legal activity, it is politically expedient for law enforcement agencies to pretend otherwise because they have incentives to do so. Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement agencies to take money, cars, houses, and other property that they suspect of being purchased with the proceeds from criminal activity or of being used in connection with criminal activity. The agencies then either keep or sell the property and use it or the proceeds for their own purposes. It’s such a huge cash cow for law enforcement that in 2014, the amount federal agencies netted through civil asset forfeiture, $5 billion, exceeded the amount Americans lost through burglaries, $3.5 billion. The actual amount seized is even higher than this, since this figure does not include the amounts taken by state and local law enforcement agencies.
Taking money from bad guys, sounds great, right? Oh, there’s a catch. Cops don’t have to actually prove you committed any crime. They don’t even have to charge you with one. You, on the other hand, need to go to court and jump through whatever hoops the government requires to prove your innocence and get your property back. See How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church for a recent example of how police use civil forfeiture to knowingly steal from innocent citizens who have no involvement in the drug trade.
Cops and prosecutors also intimidate people into giving up their property by threatening to pursue criminal charges if they try get it back.From Taken, New Yorker Magazine’s investigation into one Texas town’s massively corrupt civil asset forfeiture program:
“The eye-opening event was pulling those files,” Guillory told me. One of the first cases that caught his attention was titled State of Texas vs. One Gold Crucifix. The police had confiscated a simple gold cross that a woman wore around her neck after pulling her over for a minor traffic violation. No contraband was reported, no criminal charges were filed, and no traffic ticket was issued. That’s how it went in dozens more cases involving cash, cars, and jewelry. A number of files contained slips of paper of a sort he’d never seen before. These were roadside property waivers, improvised by the district attorney, which threatened criminal charges unless drivers agreed to hand over valuables.
Law enforcement agencies say this is a vital tactic for battling drug kingpins and vast criminal enterprises, but the typical value of property seized tends to be low, victimizing citizens who usually have the least resources, and the least ability to fight back.
The Institute for Justice, an organization at the forefront of the battle against abusive forfeiture practices, “was able to obtain property-level forfeiture data for 2012 from 10 states, allowing median property values to be calculated. In those states, the median value of forfeited property ranged from $451 in Minnesota to $2,048 in Utah, not much more than an American’s average annual cell phone bill.”
Meanwhile what happens to the criminal masterminds who actually are involved in nefarious activities on a grand scale? They get a slap on the wrist. From the Rolling Stone article,Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke:
[Assistant Attorney General] Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who’s ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a“record” financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank. The banks’ laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC’s Mexican branches and “deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”
The article continues:
Even more shocking, the Justice Department’s response to learning about all of this was to do exactly the same thing that the HSBC executives did in the first place to get themselves in trouble – they took money to look the other way. And not only did they sell out to drug dealers, they sold out cheap. You’ll hear bragging this week by the Obama administration that they wrested a record penalty from HSBC, but it’s a joke. Some of the penalties involved will literally make you laugh out loud. This is from Breuer’s announcement: As a result of the government’s investigation, HSBC has... “clawed back” deferred compensation bonuses given to some of its most senior U.S. anti-money laundering and compliance officers, and agreed to partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior officials during the five-year period of the deferred prosecution agreement. Wow. So the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s the punishment? The government’s negotiators couldn’t hold firm on forcing HSBC officials to completely wait to receive their ill-gotten bonuses? They had to settle on making them “partially” wait? Every honest prosecutor in America has to be puking his guts out at such bargaining tactics. What was the Justice Department’s opening offer – asking executives to restrict their Caribbean vacation time to nine weeks a year?
However there is some good news! Last year Montana and New Mexico passed reform measures that require a criminal conviction before assets can be stolen by state agents, and Nebraska just did, too. Of course, several cities in New Mexico refuse to abide by the law andare now being sued by the Institute for Justice as a result, but it’s still progress, right? Also, the Department of Justice announced last year that it was drastically scaling back its equitable-sharing program, which state and local agencies have used to undermine local ordinances restricting forfeiture activities. Well, the impact wasn’t really as big as they first made it out to be, and that doesn’t matter anyway because DOJ already reinstated the program last month.Raising A White Child As A Black Parent In An Age of White Guilt Hysteria and Self-Flagellation
Oliver Campbell Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 15, 2017
A Response to ‘Are We Raising Racists?’
This piece is written as a counter opinion to Jennifer Harvey’s Op-Ed in the New York Times.
As I write, my 14-year-old niece is sitting next to me playing the new Legend of Zelda on my TV. It’s Spring Break and she’s done with her chores, studies, and responsibilities. I figured why not let her have some fun with the new thing everyone is talking about. She’s giggling like mad, being a teenager and having fun. She’s completely engrossed herself into the Legend of Zelda lately, and has decorated her bedroom in Zelda memorabilia and more. As a parent I find myself partially annoyed, and simultaneously happy at watching her develop her interests and grow into a person with her own tastes, likes, and dislikes. However, our interests have grown even closer as video game fans. We spend time talking about how games work and why, what is new and hot and what is not. On the surface most people would probably say that we are as different as they come. I’m a fairly fit middle-aged black male and she’s a fairly slim pale white female. That is where the majority of our differences come to an end. Every time I turn around, I’ll hear her using a manner of speech that is strikingly similar to mine, or she’ll gesture in a way that no one could mistake as not being an imitation of how I emote. I can’t help but find myself flooded with memories of her being such a small child that I took under my wing years ago.
My wife and I took on the responsibility of helping raise my niece when her single father asked for help. We’ve raised and mentored her through the most critical parts of her early childhood and now teen years, and it just gets better with time. Parenting her has been the biggest and most difficult challenge of my life, but also the most rewarding. What makes it all come together is that we don’t spend our time viewing each other through a racial lens. We look at each other as the family that we are.
I can’t remember how many times I’ve picked up this kid and tucked her into bed after she’s nodded off on the couch, or how many times she’s woken up with nightmares and come to wake me up to make her feel better. I can’t tell you how many days I’ve spent coddling a sick child, covered in eczema patches or running an awful fever from the flu. The worry that comes from things like “Does she need to get new glasses this year”, to “I want her to have good grades” is a feeling that almost every parent can identify with. What I can tell you is that race was the last thing on my mind during those moments, because they’re all things that can affect nearly any child regardless of their skin color.
When I speak with friends and family, they tend to be surprised at how easy of a time I have when it comes to raising her, especially with the overt racial differences. I simply tell them, “We just talk about being human. The race part doesn’t matter as much as you think.”
I’ve spent time teaching her about my life and what I’ve learned, what it was like growing up poor, and even experiencing homelessness. She’s seen the schools that I attended, and the places that I spent my childhood in. I’ve told her about the things that I’ve seen, and all the mistakes that I’ve made and why. I’ve given her the context of what kind of life I’ve lived, and why I make the decisions that I do and why I have the beliefs that I have. I teach through informing her of what people do and why they do those things, even if I don’t agree with them.
I’ve taught her about the dangers of different kinds of extremist behavior, how people can jump to wild conclusions when they’re afraid, and the horrors that come when people focus so hard on race that they completely and utterly forget that we are all people. Some of the most difficult moments I’ve had in raising this now young woman were the ones where I would teach her about historical moments where race issues were front and center. Times like when I taught her about the Los Angeles Riots in the 90’s, explained the racial tension that occurred in the United States during the Vietnam War, or why people fell into a panic during the aftermath of 9/11 before her birth. They weren’t negative moments, but they were opportunities when I was able to better illustrate how people can be when fear takes hold and ignorance runs rampant. Even with all of that history, the one thing that I utterly refuse to do is tell her that she should hate herself for being born as something that she didn’t ask to be:
Being born white.
It seems like every other day, I turn around and see another article or a video where an utterly self-hating pundit with untold amounts of white guilt insists that ‘white people’ are the cause of all the world’s ills. Even now, there are people writing articles and opinion pieces that spend their time cramming self-hatred down their children’s throats. It has to stop. You’re not solving the problem; You’re perpetuating it.
I suppose I have to posit the question; Why would you tell your child that they are the cause of everything wrong in the world? That is not parenting from a place of love and affection; that is parenting from a place of hatred and division.
I’ve heard it said many times before, but I now truly understand what is meant when people say that children are ‘innocent’; They are clean-slates. They come into the world without bias and they wait for input from us. The adult that a child will grow into will be a stark reflection of what was put into them. They are like sponges, hungry for information and understanding. They love to learn and take all the knowledge that is offered to them. With this in mind, it is disturbingly easy for a child’s mind to be corrupted by ill-guided and misinformed messaging. The kind of message that could cause them problems for a long, long time.
This doesn’t mean that discussion of race doesn’t have a place in the home, or in education. It’s important for children to learn about the time that came before them and the different horrors that have happened throughout history, so that we might not repeat them. We don’t teach that lesson by holding them accountable for the things that they didn’t do. We teach them these lessons by taking the time to point out what happened and why, highlighting the errors and mistakes that people made, and giving them positive messaging that inspires them to do better. We should not fill them with guilt, but fill them with the idea of hope and drive to create a better community around them. You do this by starting with a foundation made of respect for all human beings no
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its details, click the Settings tab, and then click the Rename tab. You might have to wait for DNS to get updated.
You may also set additional records. Online checker MXToolBox is useful to verify your domain is set up properly and gives advice on several points.
Note that DNS propagation can be a bit slow, but after a while (often 1 hour) you will be able to access PEPS from https://example.com.
Note: After you have finished configuring PEPS, if you can't send or receive email from external domains, double check your A and MX records. If they aren't set correctly, you will not be able to send or receive email from domains other than your own.
Step 5 — Setting up SSL Certificates
You will still have an invalid SSL certificate warning from your browser.
It's now time to set up SSL certificates. If you don't already have SSL certificates you can buy them from a provider or even set up a free SSL certificate for non-commercial purposes.
The How To Install an SSL Certificate from a Commercial Certificate Authority article explains everything about SSL certificates, including how to purchase one.
Be sure to copy both the key and certificate named server.key and server.crt in the /etc/peps/ directory.
Prepare them on your local computer, and copy the files to your server by running from the directory that contains the certificates:
scp server.key server.crt your_server_ip :/etc/peps/
where your_server_ip is the IP address of your Droplet.
When done, check that your browser can access https://example.com without SSL errors.
Step 6 — Testing
To create more users, log in as the admin user with admin as the username and with the password you created in Step 3: Logging in for the First Time. The admin user can create email accounts for your domain. Go to the PEPS Admin Manual to learn how.
First, try to send and receive email between two different users within your domain. For example, try sending an email from [email protected] to [email protected]. If that is successful, try having sammy respond to admin to make sure the reverse operation succeeds.
Now, send an email to an account outside of your domain. If this fails, your A and MX records have not been configured correctly. Go back to Step 4: Setting Up Your Domain. Don't forget to test receiving email from a user outside your domain as well.
Conclusion
Congratulations! You now have an instance of PEPS running on a DigitalOcean Droplet. You can send messages, share files, and more (by running plugins such as chat) securely.
There are several manuals available:
User Manual
Admin Manual
More documentation for developers wanting to use the PEPS API or for operators regarding backup and more are available from the project wiki on GitHub.
Also visit the PEPS Facebook page for the latest news about PEPS.With the awesome conclusion of the global finals of the first season of this year’s World Championship Series, we thought this was as good a time as any to offer a detailed update on our current thought processes and how we’re approaching balance going forward.
More Action throughout the Game
We strongly believe that this is the main direction the game should go. More action means more diversity, which makes the game more challenging to play and more fun to watch.
Back when Medivac drops were easy to stop, PvT was often a long macro buildup with little action, and a few large battles determined the winner. Nowadays, there are more drops happening, and every game plays out very differently. Different games range from the Protoss player perfectly stopping everything to the Terran player pulling off awesome drops to both players taking it to the late game, and everything in-between.
We feel that this diversity of outcomes makes for a better late game. Sure, sometimes a Protoss player amasses a large army of High Templar, Colossi, and Tempests, and against a well-defended opponent there are few options for harassment. But action-filled games are less predictable and reach the max-army endgame less often. When there is a huge maxed-out push, it’s the culmination of all the harassment and skirmishes that came before it.
Change the Game to Promote Skill
The Warp Prism change we tested last week is a good example of a tweak that benefits players who are amazing at multitasking, while having little effect on the game below the pro level. For an eSport game like SC2, we want more things in the game that separate out the very best from the average, not less.
We can look to INnoVation as a case where what we’re talking about is currently working quite well. His strategies are not very different from those of most other Terran players, but his Widow Mine usage is incomparably better. When we watch his TvZ games, we see a crystal clear difference between the usefulness of the unit and the skill of the player.
Units Currently Being Discussed
Some units will always be more central to specific strategies and/or matchups than others, so we’d rather those units be fun to watch and challenging to use.
We’re currently seeing a lot of discussion about:
Void Ray We’re seeing a lot of Void Ray play in PvZ, but Protoss is still not statistically overpowered. Zerg all-ins aren’t the only counter, as we see many PvZ matches last into the mid- and late-game, ending in a Zerg victory, despite the usage of Void Rays. Void Rays are much better than they used to be, but we don’t think this is a bad thing. Stargate used to be almost unusable, and now it’s quite important. We also see a lot of Robo and Templar play. All tech options are viable now throughout the course of the game. We don’t currently have any plans to nerf Void Rays.
Widow Mine Widow Mines are currently overshadowing units such as Siege Tanks and Thors, but their use doesn’t correlate distinctly with wins over Protoss or Zerg opponents. So our question here becomes “is this a good thing that Widow Mines have replaced Siege Tanks as the primary splash damage units?” We believe the answer is yes. When you see an army of Marines and tanks clash with a Zerg army, you pretty much know who will come out ahead, even before the battle. When you see an army of Marines and Widow Mines, it comes down to the skill of the players in that specific battle. The current design of Widow Mines rewards both players who are skilled at using them and opposing players who are skilled at defeating them. It doesn’t look like Siege Tanks have disappeared. They’re critical in TvT, and in TvZ they’re key to playing a safe early/mid game. Additionally, Terran Mech also has potential. As long as Widow Mines reward skilled players and Terran can’t legitimately be said to be better than the other races, we don’t plan to adjust this unit.
Casual observers often take a new or unexpected tactic or strategy that gains widespread use and just label it “OP”. In addition to Void Rays and Widow Mines, PartinG’s Immortal Sentry all-in got this treatment. Because it was a new strategy and it was working for PartinG, it was dismissed as OP. At the time, even other Protoss players at the highest level weren’t having as much success with the Immortal Sentry all-in after Zerg players had seen it for a week or two. We prefer to analyze a new strategy and ask:
Is this actually making the game more fun?
What would happen if we nerfed this powerful unit?
Would a proposed change make the game more or less stale?
Balance Testing Plan
We have two main goals for testing. First is making sure that we are dealing with units/strategies that are making gameplay stale. For example, we’re looking carefully at Swarm Host + mass defenses play. Our second goal is locating a race that is playing weaker than the other two, and improving it in ways that are fun for the game.
It’s important to note that we like trying out changes in balance test maps that are more aggressive than we might intend to implement in the live game. This is better than theorycrafting and gathering theorycrafted feedback. The more we experiment in real gameplay, the more we learn. We’re constantly reaching out to as many pro players and casters as we can, and we’re willing to try out changes that sound cool in testing.
As always, we believe everything can be improved. We’re very thankful that you share your thoughts with us.Gaza boat to be named 'audacity of hope'
Rashid Khalidi, a friend of President Obama's active in Palestinian causes, has signed an appeal for funds to send to Gaza an aid ship that would be named after the president's best-selling book, "The Audacity of Hope."
A group calling itself U.S. Boat to Gaza is seeking $370,000 in the next month to send the ship in an effort to thwart the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian enclave controlled by the militant group Hamas.
A number of other prominent individuals are listed as support the appeal, including Angela Y. Davis and Alice Walker.
"We turn to you to help make the U.S. boat, The Audacity of Hope, a reality. We must raise at least $370,000 in the next month," the appeal says. "These funds will be used to purchase a boat large enough for 40-60 people, secure a crew, and cover the licensing and registering of the boat. In addition, the funds will subsidize some other costs of sending a U.S. delegation.... From the deck of The Audacity of Hope, we will be in a powerful and unique position to challenge U.S. foreign policy and affirm the universal obligation to uphold human rights and international law."
The group claims it has already received individual donations for as much as $10,000.
Khalidi, a Columbia University professor, briefly became the subject of controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign when the McCain camp tried to make an issue of what it asserted were Obama's suspect friendships. The news of Khalidi's involvement in the boat has already led the National Review to call for a Justice Department probe of the academic for providing material support of a terror group.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment. In response to an e-mail asking whether the appeal is embarrassing to the president, Khalidi said that he was not aware the boat would be named after Obama's book when he agreed to add his name to the list of sponsors.
"But if the name is a problem for the administration, it can simply insist publicly that Israel lift the siege: end of problem, end of embarrassment," he wrote, "That of course would require it to respond to the systematic mendacity of those in Congress and elsewhere who support the siege, and indeed whatever else the Israeli government does."
Khalidi added: "I signed because the siege/blockade of Gaza, which is effectively supported by the United States, is a disgrace. I support the idea because it may cause the media to pay attention to the effective imprisonment and collective punishment of 1.5 million people who by the admission of Israeli officials, are being subjected to this ordeal in order to bring down their government. As the Goldstone Report suggested, this may rise to the level of a war crime, in which our country is complicit. That is truly embarrassing."The new city council is not wasting any time in making good on their campaign promises, and then some.
On January 6, at the behest of Mayor Trish Spencer, they will consider repealing ordinances the former council adopted just two weeks ago that approved the Del Monte Warehouse residential and commercial project. In addition, Vice Mayor Frank Matarrese and Councilmembers Jim Oddie and Tony Daysog are going to introduce new agenda items ranging from traffic impacts and pedestrian safety to parks and wetlands.
No matter one’s position on these issues or what is passed, the new council’s bold leadership is a change welcomed by those who felt the former council merely responded to staff direction.
The plan for rehabbing the historic Del Monte building on the corner of Buena Vista Avenue and Sherman Street has taken shape over the past year, after developer Tim Lewis purchased the property in bankruptcy court from the previous owner. The current plan, which changed last month, calls for at least 380 residential units.
At two December council meetings, many expressed support for developing the Del Monte building but felt “the project should be vetted by the current council,” said Mayor Spencer. In a four to one vote with Daysog dissenting, the former council moved ahead anyway. Utilizing the 30-day window in which to repeal the action, Mayor Spencer has agendized it.
The Del Monte project has become a lightning rod for traffic concerns. It comes on the heels of other housing projects that had been on the shelf, but have now either been approved or are in process along Clement Avenue, Buena Vista Avenue, at Alameda Landing and Alameda Point.
Councilmember Daysog is asking for the city to draft a comprehensive citywide traffic and transit plan, saying that the recent Transportation Demand Management plans for Alameda Point and the Del Monte Warehouse are vague cafeteria-style transit and traffic solutions that “offer no over-arching, council-driven framework for indicating which transit plan is associated with what goal and outcome.”
Councilmember Oddie is calling for staff to study suggestions that might provide relief for traffic on Island Drive, including a later start time for Lincoln Middle School. He also wants a flashing pedestrian crosswalk at two intersections on Mecartney Road.
When it comes to parks and open space, Vice Mayor Matarrese and Councilmember Oddie are making their mark right out of the gate.
Councilmember Oddie is requesting that city staff prepare a report on the feasibility of funding wetland creation at Alameda Point through the formation of a Wetland Mitigation Bank. Such banks are used to raise funds for wetlands by selling mitigation credits to developers elsewhere in the region. If feasible, sizable areas of the Northwest Territories along the Oakland Estuary and the west side of the Seaplane Lagoon could become self-funded wetland projects.
Vice Mayor Matarrese wants to direct city staff to prepare a work plan for steps the city can take to support the East Bay Regional Park District’s effort to acquire the surplus federal property near Crab Cove for parkland expansion and to stop the federal government from using eminent domain on McKay Avenue. He is hoping to set up a council and park district liaison committee to help establish a good working relationship that will maximize the limited resources available for Alameda parklands.
The Crab Cove issue galvanized the community and is credited in part for the election results last month. “I’ve listened, and now I’m ready to lead,” said Matarrese. “Working with the park district will reap great rewards for our city.”
The full meeting agenda can be read on the city’s website or at city hall. The meeting will be broadcast live on Comcast cable channel 15 and AT&T cable channel 99 and webcast live on the city’s website.
Originally published in Alameda SunAziz Ansari's Show Gives Me Pause About Being An Indian Dad In America
Enlarge this image toggle caption Greg Allen/Invision/AP Greg Allen/Invision/AP
Aziz Ansari and I both look Indian, but there is a difference of day and night in our upbringing. He was born in an American hospital, and I was born 10,000 miles away in a small hospital in Lucknow, India. He grew up in America, and I moved to America when I was 30. He is a comedian, and I couldn't have dreamed of choosing comedy as a career growing up in India. According to my parents, it is not a respectable enough profession.
The relationship of parents and children in Indian families is one of the subjects in Ansari's new show, Master of None. I quite liked the episode in which his real parents play his TV parents. I was touched by Ansari's tribute, on his Facebook page, about how much he enjoyed working with his parents and how much they have sacrificed so he could have the amazing life he has — and his admission that in the past he hasn't always been the best son. "I felt like a total piece of garbage for all the times I haven't visited my parents," he confessed.
This made me wonder about my own relationship with my parents and my relationship with my daughter, who is 6 years old — and the inevitable clash of American and Indian values.
The other day, my daughter was doing something in her room and I asked out of curiosity what she was doing. Her response left me speechless.
She said, "It's not your business."
It wasn't her intent to hurt my feelings. She just wanted some privacy. I wondered how my parents, who still live in India, would react if I'd said the same thing to them.
First of all, I cannot imagine uttering those words to them. Telling them that what I do is not their business is not just saying they don't need to know what I am up to. Those words echo a larger and deeper meaning — I'm excluding them from my life; they shouldn't worry about me and my well-being.
If I said "it's not your business" to my parents, this would be the highest degree of insult to them. Their life's hard work, sufferings and efforts to raise me would crumble in one instant. My parents, like most parents in India, were heavily invested in their kids. They often said, "Our only property is our kids," which sometimes bothered me. I often felt obligated to live their dreams, choose the career they wanted. I understood they wanted us to have a better life than theirs, but there were times I felt suffocated.
My wife is an American who grew up in rural Pennsylvania. She loves her parents, and her parents love her. But when I first came to the States, I remember how my wife would call her mother and her mother would sometimes say, "Can you call me later? I'm watching my favorite show right now." My Indian mind couldn't fathom that a television show can be more important to a mother than her daughter.
Meanwhile, hardly a day goes by when my mother doesn't call me from India to ask if I have eaten well.
I know my daughter is too young to understand how I felt when she said "it's not your business" to me.
I also know that although I grew up in India and have Indian values, I am raising my kid in America. She goes to an American public school, has American friends and watches American TV. I want her to be an independent woman, but I also want her to have some of the values I grew up with. It is a difficult balance.
American parents are more oriented toward developing independence in their children. The reverse is true in India. My wife left her home when she was just 18. My parents were hugely upset when I wanted to move out of their house at age 30.
As I try to make sense out of all these differences, I must admit that Aziz Ansari's comments about his parents were reassuring to me. I would like my daughter to grow up feeling the same way about her parents as Ansari now feels about his.
Maybe I should ask if he could talk to my daughter.
Deepak Singh is a writer living in Ann Arbor, Mich. He tweets as @deepakwriter.A pair of competing bills have been offered in the House and Senate today which seek to authorize the new US war against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. The bills were introduced by Sen. Bill Nelson (D – FL) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R – VA), respectively.
The Nelson bill limits the war’s duration to three years, and also rules out any use of ground troops. The Wolf bill does not forbid any use of ground troops, nor does it have a time limit attached.
Obama insisted on Sunday that he doesn’t believe he needs a Congressional authorization for the war, and already has the “authorization that I need to protect the American people.” The White House is, however, expressing hope they can get some sort of “buy in” from Congress for the war, so long as it doesn’t asset any actual authority or limit the war’s escalation in any way.
President Obama is planning a Wednesday address to lay out more of the details of his planned escalation of the war, and is invited Congressional leaders to meet with him on Tuesday to get a preview.
The White House is also pushing Congress to agree to their previous demands to create a $5 billion “fund” that would train and equip “international partners” in the war, along with providing aid to Syria’s neighbors to cope with the growing refugee crisis. This is, of course, above and beyond the costs of the war itself.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzChristy Clark aims to have reached out to Linda Kayfish, who apparently has no record of that
Sister, of a man who took his own life after being fired by the province, speaks out as Clark resigns
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Linda Kayfish is no longer waiting for a face-to-face apology from former Premier Christy Clark.
Kayfish is the sister of Roderick MacIsaac. He’s the health researcher who took his own life after being fired, without cause, nearly five years ago. She says she was watching Clark’s news conference yesterday when she was asked about a potential meeting between the two.
The news conference was the first time Clark had spoken to the media following last week’s announcement that she is resigning as both leader of the BC Liberals and as MLA.
When the BC election writ was dropped, Clark offered to meet with Kayfish, but after admitting she hasn’t met with her yet, Clark was pressed about it again.
“Are you going to reach out to her again before you leave at the end of the week?”
“I have asked her for meetings several times, but she hasn’t accepted.”
However, Kayfish says she has no record of Clark or anyone from her staff reaching out to her. “No. There’s no messages. I was actually astonished that she said the things they did. I would like to know if we could do an FOI to see all of the times they tried to reach out.”
Kayfish says she’s still demanding accountability from those who knew her brother did nothing wrong, but she’s no longer expecting anything from Clark. “No, I wouldn’t expect anything from her now. This is something that’s beyond her. They’ve had five and a half years to figure out what was going on and come up with answers for us.”
When Clark was asked if she plans to reach out again before her last day as BC Liberal leader on Friday, she said, “I am done with public life.”
A month before he killed himself, MacIsaac was cleared of any wrongdoing, but no one told him that. An earlier report from the provincial ombudsman found the firings to be flawed and rushed.
Kayfish says she’s now hoping Premier John Horgan will help her find the answers she’s been seeking since losing her brother in December of 2012.The Lord of the Rings, see This article is about the East Yorkshire village. For the location in, see Wetwang (Middle-earth)
Wetwang is a Yorkshire Wolds village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is situated 6 miles (9.7 km) west of Driffield on the A166 road.
According to the 2011 UK census, Wetwang parish had a population of 761,[1] an increase on the 2001 UK census figure of 672.[2]
St Nicholas Church, Wetwang
St Nicholas' Church is of Norman origin and was restored between 1845–1902. In 1966, the church was designated a Grade II* listed building and is now recorded in the National Heritage List for England, maintained by Historic England.[3] It is on the Sykes Churches Trail devised by the East Yorkshire Churches Group.[4]
The village is known for its Iron Age chariot burial cemetery at Wetwang Slack,[5] and was previously known for its black swans after which the village pub, the Black Swan, is named.[6]
The village is recorded in the Domesday Book as Wetuuangha. There are two interpretations of the name, one from the Old Norse vaett-vangr, 'field for the trial of a legal action'. Another theory is that it was the "Wet Field" compared to the nearby dry field at Driffield.[7] It has been noted on lists of unusual place names.[8][9]
It has been hypothesised that the unlocated Romano-British town of Delgovicia is located at Wetwang.[10]
Public transport [ edit ]
Until 1950, the village was served by Wetwang railway station, on the Malton to Driffield Line, but this line has closed.[11] The village is now served by an infrequent East Yorkshire Motor Services bus.[12]
Honorary mayor [ edit ]
Its name (defined in The Meaning of Liff as meaning "a moist penis"[13]) often attracts mirth, even from Richard Whiteley of the Channel 4 quiz show Countdown; he held the honorary title Mayor of Wetwang from 1998 until his death in 2005.[14] On 25 June 2006, local weather forecaster Paul Hudson from BBC Look North was invested as Whiteley's successor.[15]
References [ edit ]
Gazetteer — A–Z of Towns Villages and Hamlets. East Riding of Yorkshire Council. 2006. p. 11.About This Game
Description
Game Features
Challenging Gameplay
Level Editor with workshop integration
Play user created levels
Achievements
Leaderboards
Cloud saves (cross platform)
Jumping
Full Gamepad Support (Xbox 360 tested)
Auto Save System (Continue on level you quit on)
A Bar
Booze Powerups (Dont drink & drive kids)
Varied Level Design
Jumper Jape is a skill-based hardcore platformer game. The game is about getting from one side of the screen to the other without dying. This might sound easy enough but a single touch from a spike will instantly kill you and send you back to the start of the level.All levels consists of a single static screen filled with hazards. If you think you have what it takes, give it your best shot. This game is not to be considered easy.The story is told with the help of signs placed in the levels and it progresses as you complete levels and get further. If you rather just focus on the gameplay you can ignore the story all together, the choice is yours.The recommended input method is a good gamepad/controller but keyboard works just as well if you prefer it.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------As many of you know, we recently published an article related to GAW Miners, and the SEC inquiry that has been launched to investigate GAW, Paybase, etc. Since that time, Josh Garza has reached out to me. To be fair, I asked if he would be willing to answer legitimate questions about what is happening with his companies, Paycoin, etc. and provide proof to back up any claims. He has agreed.
What Do You Want to Know About GAW Miners?
While I have a list of questions that I would like answered, I also know that I cannot possibly hope to cover everything that needs to be answered. So, I am turning to the community to help me. By crowd sourcing this, I hope to get a comprehensive list of questions to send, which will, hopefully, result in honest responses from the GAW Miners, it’s related companies, and the CEO.
Please, try to keep these questions as civil as possible. If your question involves an accusation, try to also provide us with documentation, screenshots, or other evidence to support those accusations.
As we are using Google Forms for this, you can submit evidence by uploading it to Google Drive, an image upload service, or some other cloud storage provider. Then give contact form access to view it, and/or provide a link to the files in the form.
Otherwise, please email any evidence directly to me at contact form, with the title “Evidence for GAW Question” and include the response you used in the form so I can easily connect the two.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- No blanket immunity deal was offered to Blackwater guards for their statements regarding a shootout in Iraq last month that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, two senior State Department officials told CNN Tuesday.
However, some kind of limited immunity was apparently offered by State Department investigators when they questioned the Blackwater personnel apparently involved in the shootings, the officials said.
CNN previously reported the guards were promised their statements would not be used against them in a criminal prosecution as long as the statements were true.
ABC News reported that it had obtained the text of the deal, which showed the guards were given "use immunity" in exchange for detailing what happened during the incident on September 16.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday that while he could not talk about the specifics of the Blackwater case, the kind of immunity being reported in the media were limited protections.
"The Department of State cannot immunize an individual from federal criminal prosecution," he told reporters in the daily briefing, repeating the phrase several times.
He also said that those limited protections "would not preclude a successful criminal prosecution," and suggested that the State Department would not have asked the Justice Department and FBI to become involved "in a case that they could not potentially successfully prosecute."
One of the senior State Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to speak on the matter, said the department's Diplomatic Security branch does not have the right or ability to offer blanket immunity and did not do anything that would inhibit prosecutors if charges are to be pursued.
"We want to see anyone who violated laws or broke rules held accountable," the official said. "Nothing that was done prevents anyone from being prosecuted if they broke the law.
"It's a gross distortion of understanding of the situation to say that anyone at State attempted to shield any of these individuals," the official added.
One of the officials said the investigators were acting under authority of case law that allows government employees to make statements that will then not be used against them in criminal proceedings.
Monday, McCormack said whatever arrangements were made were not sanctioned by the senior management of the State Department.
Another spokesman said the working-level Diplomatic Security officials in Iraq followed orders and their actions would need to have been cleared by Washington.
The decision on whether to prosecute the guards involved in the shooting is in the hands of the Justice Department now because the FBI has taken over the investigation. Watch to see whether Blackwater is off the hook »
McCormack said he is not aware of any requirement that the State Department consult with the Justice Department before offering limited immunity to anyone.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment, as did Blackwater.
Monday, the officials speaking on the matter said that even if some kind of limited immunity deal were made, it would not mean that charges would never be brought against those involved in the shooting.
North Carolina-based contractor Blackwater USA says its guards came under fire while protecting a State Department convoy and acted properly in self-defense, but Iraqi authorities have called the killings "premeditated murder."
The prospect of immunity had elicited angry reactions from Democrats.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, earlier on Tuesday accused the Bush "amnesty administration" of letting its allies, including security contractors in Iraq, shirk responsibility for their actions.
"In this administration, accountability goes by the boards," Leahy said. "That seems to be a central tenet in the Bush administration -- that no one from their team should be held accountable, if accountability can be avoided.
Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament is considering a draft bill that would require security companies operating in the country to obey Iraqi laws with no immunity, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Tuesday.
"All security companies operating in Iraq, those affiliated with them and non-Iraqi parties they have a contract with, are subject to Iraqi civil and penal laws," al-Dabbagh said. "There will be no immunity."
The draft bill would also subject security companies to Iraqi laws concerning visas, residency, taxes and customs, al-Dabbagh explained.
The law apparently would not be retroactive, but would address only violations that occur after its passage.
Until then, private contractors in Iraq apparently are still governed by the Coalition Provisional Authority's code for Iraq, set up in the early days of the U.S. occupation. The code stated that all non-Iraqi entities working in the country were subject to the jurisdiction of their sending countries and "immune from Iraqi legal process."
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure last month that would punish contractors working in a war zone if they committed an act that would be considered a crime under U.S. law.
The Senate is considering its own version of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. E-mail to a friend
CNN's Jomana Karadsheh and Elise Labott contributed to this report.
All About Blackwater USAThe cartels, on the other hand, are pushing a renewable commodity with a fairly inelastic demand curve. The GAO says they brought in $23 billion in 2007, and it's possible that they'll do even better this year. Cocaine use skyrocketed during the 80s recession, and the decline of the Mexican economy and a rise in unemployment will make the drug business even more attractive to Mexico's poor.
Of course, plenty of the cartels' income is being spent on things like zoo animals, but what's left over still buys a lot of guns—a lot of guns. More importantly, it buys skills. In the 90s, the Gulf Cartel began employing rogue School of the Americas-trained Mexican and Guatemalan special forces members as bodyguards. Known as "Los Zetas," by 2004 they had predictably taken over leadership of the cartel. Los Zetas operate with a degree of tactical sophistication that the Mexican federal government, quite frankly, can't match. In the United States, a drug raid is a SWAT team kicking down the door of a crack house. In Mexico, it increasingly tends to be a hours-long infantry battle in somewhere like downtown Tijuana, with Mexican soldiers retreating under fire from grenade launchers and.50-caliber machineguns.
Right now Mexico has 45,000 troops bolstering the police in the drug war. The United States is helping to prop up the Calderón administration with money and surplus military equipment through the Mérida Initiative or "Plan Mexico," along with training from FBI and DEA advisors (who knows what other government agencies are doing down there, but it's not likely to be pleasant). Whether this support will be enough remains to be seen, but it's doubtful. $1.6 billion is a drop in the bucket in a conflict of this scale.
His nuclear option is to call for overt intervention by the United States military. That would be political suicide for him and probably Obama too. If military action is authorized, it would probably be limited to something quiet initially, like employing the US expertise in blasting SUVs with Predator drones. Targeted killings can only accomplish so much, though. If the situation escalates, the United States could easily face a worst-case scenario: being caught up in a de facto civil war in the urban slums of Mexico.
The cartels are already the new cultural heroes of Mexico. If they're aggressive enough to face down US military intervention, it would give them further legitimacy in the eyes of a people with a long memory. A US armed response below the Rio Grande, viewed as an invasion by a poor and angry population, could easily make Iraq look like a good idea. The cartels, or at least cartel members, could become the nucleus of an heavily-armed insurgency not only familiar with, but able to blend into, the interior of the United States. Not to mention the implications of millions of refugees pouring north across the border.
Admittedly, this is an unlikely scenario, but stranger things have happened. At the very least, Mexico has the potential to become the foreign policy focus of the Obama administration, eclipsing Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully Obama and Calderón can craft a solution that brings narco-violence back down to nuisance levels. If not, though, things look grim for Mexico, and with it the United States, if only by virtue of proximity.
To get back on topic, decapitations are still all the rage south of the border. In September, 11 human heads were apparently burnt as ritual offerings to Santa Muerte, a folk deity that the cartels have adopted as their patron saint (giving us awesome shoes and evocative terms like "narco-cultist"). Mexican soldiers have also started to lose their heads. While an alarmist might be tempted to draw a connection between the tactics of the cartels and Al-Qaeda, it's probably safer to assume that it's an example of convergent evolution. Decapitation is just scary, and these guys are into that.Geht mit gutem Beispiel voran: Petra Köpping, seit 2014 Sächsische Staatsministerin für Gleichstellung und Integration (Bild: Ronald Bonss)
12. Oktober 2015, 15:04h,
Sachsens Integrationsministerin Petra Köpping (SPD) und ihr Mann beherbergen in ihrem Haus bei Leipzig zwei junge Männer aus Syrien.
Die beiden 20 und 27 Jahre alten Flüchtlinge waren bis Ende September in der Dresdner Zeltstadt untergebracht, berichtet die "Bild"-Zeitung. Dort seien sie jedoch aufgrund ihres Schwulseins verbal und körperlich bedroht worden. Der Dresdner CSD-Verein griff ein und konnte insgesamt sieben homosexuelle Flüchtlinge an Privatpersonen vermitteln.
"Ich habe wie viele andere in Deutschland in einer Notsituation geholfen", erklärte Köpping dem Boulevardblatt. "Menschen sollten füreinander da sein." Die SPD-Politikerin organisierte zudem einen ehrenamtlichen Sprachunterricht für die beiden jungen Asylbewerber: "Deutschkenntnisse sind die erste Voraussetzung für Integration", so Köpping. "Es ist wichtig, sich verständlich zu machen und selbst zu verstehen, wo man ist und welche Regeln gelten." (cw)Not long after Amazon introduced its media-friendly Kindle Fire HD, Barnes & Noble has announced Nook Video, a service for streaming and downloading video. The bookseller has signed deals with HBO, Starz, Viacom, Warner Bros., Disney, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, with other partners to be announced later. It's touting The Avengers, Breaking Bad, and The Daily Show among the content it will be offering when it launches this fall in the US and a few months later in the UK. Nook Tablets already include access to Netflix and Hulu, but this marks a larger move into the multimedia market.
When the service launches, customers will be asked to use a dedicated video app, which will sync content through the Nook Cloud that's currently used for reading material. Barnes & Noble is also building in support for UltraViolet, giving customers who buy a DVD or Blu-ray access to a digital copy
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Investigator Kenneth Wainstein describes a lack of oversight by UNC while outlining his investigation into academic issues and athletics. Wainstein was presenting his findings during a 2014 press conference held by UNC.
The enforcement staff’s response laid the blame for the failure to shut down the classes on academic and athletic officials. Former longtime athletic director Dick Baddour drew a mention for doing little, the NCAA said, when the former head of the athletes’ tutoring program, Robert Mercer, and a former senior associate athletic director, John Blanchard, raised questions about the classes a decade ago.
“Because of Dick Baddour’s, former athletics director’s, hands-off management approach, Mercer and Blanchard also did not receive support from the athletics department on this issue,” the response said. “Institutional leaders chose not to act.”
Baddour, who retired in 2011, could not be immediately reached.
Case grinds on
The records represent the typical back-and-forth between universities and NCAA officials in infractions cases, though this has been one of the more protracted investigations in the NCAA’s history.
The infraction committee’s hearing Friday is closed to the public, and it’s unlikely any information about what took place will become public before a decision on any punishment is reached later.
The hearing will determine whether the NCAA has the legal grounds under its regulations to pursue a case against UNC regarding the fake classes. The committee is also expected to decide whether it can consider key information from the most extensive investigation into the scandal – Wainstein’s 131-page report, which was released in October 2014.
That report found 18 years of fake classes – most of them created by Deborah Crowder, a longtime office manager in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies. More than 3,100 students took at least one of the classes, with athletes making up roughly half of that group despite representing less than 4 percent of the student body.
Football and men’s basketball players were the two top beneficiaries of the classes by sport. The classes had no instruction and only required a paper to be submitted to obtain a high grade. They began as independent studies, but Crowder in 1999 began disguising them as lecture classes to get around a limit on how many independent studies a student could take.
Her boss, department chairman Julius Nyang’oro, continued the classes for two more years after Crowder retired in 2009, at the request of an academic counselor for the football team. They weren’t exposed until The News & Observer obtained a transcript for a former star football player in August 2011.
The case could end if the committee finds the NCAA lacks procedural grounds; if not, the case would proceed to an infractions hearing sometime late this year or in early 2017.
SHARE COPY LINK Louis Bissette tells reporter Dan Kane that he believes UNC could have acted "sooner and stronger" to do a thorough investigation of the academic scandal.With four goals in 11 Bundesliga appearances already this season, Liverpool loanee Divock Origi has hit the ground running at Wolfsburg. Bundesliga.com caught up with the Belgium international to discuss life in Germany’s top flight, playing with Mario Gomez, and his personal goals for the months ahead.
bundesliga.com: Divock Origi, you only came to Wolfsburg on deadline day of the summer transfer window and it hasn’t taken you much time to adapt. How did you manage to integrate so quickly into the team?
Origi: It's not the first time that I've moved to another country. At the age of 15, I switched from my native Belgium to France to Lille and had to learn a new language there. Then I went to England. In Liverpool, it helped me a lot that I had a German coach in Jürgen Klopp, who brought me a bit closer to German culture. I am also a very open type and always try hard to work. That attitude is appreciated in Germany.
Watch: Origi was on target in a six-goal thriller between Wolfsburg and Hertha!
bundesliga.com: Together with Daniel Didavi, you’re Wolfsburg’s top scorer with four goals. Your coach believes you can score at least 10-12 goals. What is your objective?
Origi: I have a personal goal of how many goals I want to score, but I’ll keep that to myself (laughs).
bundesliga.com: Are you satisfied with your current tally and your performances in the first 11 games?
Origi: I always try to set very high goals and raise the bar very high. I'm never 100 per cent satisfied with myself after a game. I always want to improve.
bundesliga.com: After your Bundesliga debut you revealed that you can play anywhere in attack. In the first few games, you played as a striker. Now, after the return of Mario Gomez, you’re playing on the right wing. Which position do you prefer?
Origi: Just as I said at the beginning of the season, I can play in any position in attack. In the future, I see myself as a No. 9. Playing on the wing is certainly good for my development, though. It’s always important to be able to play in different positions. My first game on the right wing went very well. In the 3-3 draw against Hertha, I scored a goal and set one up.
bundesliga.com: What are your personal objectives with Wolfsburg until the end of the season? A relegation battle is certainly not on your mind, right?
Origi: On a personal level, I want to develop – always go that step further. I realise that I’m getting better and better. For me it’s positive that I scored my last four goals from different positions. Furthermore, I want to be an important part of the team. I know that the team spirit is getting better and better and we’re believing in ourselves more and more as a team.
bundesliga.com: You’re only 22 and have already played in three top European leagues [France, England and Germany]. How would you characterise the leagues? Where is the Bundesliga?
Origi: In France, the technical side of the game is slightly more pronounced than in the Bundesliga. Here in Germany, it is more about attack, it is a bit more physical and there are plenty of stars in the league. In England, it’s a bit more physical than in Germany and there are of course a lot of high-profile players. They’re three top leagues, and I’m happy to be playing in Germany at the moment. I’m pleasantly surprised by the Bundesliga.
Origi and Liverpool head coach Jürgen Klopp spent two seasons together before the Belgian's loan move to Wolfsburg. - © imago
bundesliga.com: In what way are you surprised by the Bundesliga?
Origi: Let's put it this way: I like the soul of the league. Football is a way of life here, there are fantastic fans and great stadiums. The atmosphere is unique. The league is very well organised. That impressed me a lot.
Watch: Origi scored his an injury-time equaliser against Schalke on Matchday 10!
bundesliga.com: Wolfsburg almost made it a Bundesliga record eight successive draws, but then won at home against Freiburg on Matchday 12. Have you ever experienced seven draws in a row in your career?
Divock Origi: No, I’ve never seen so many draws before. There were mixed feelings. Getting a point is usually not a bad result, but obviously we wanted to win those games. It was not enough overall, but I think the team has now taken another step forwards. Fortunately, we finally won against Freiburg.
bundesliga.com: How important was your coach during this phase? Martin Schmidt always talked about the strength of the team and spoke of an unbeaten run of games, not of a winless run. He said the team should be hard to beat.
Origi: Exactly, that was the point. It was a difficult situation for us. In addition, we had some very tough away games in Munich [2-2] in Schalke [1-1] and in Leverkusen [2-2]. We showed character in these games. In some games, we just lacked that bit of luck. The team has taken the positives from that run and we are now on the right track.
bundesliga.com: How is your relationship with Mario Gomez on and off the pitch?
Origi: Mario Gomez has proven in the past that he’s a great striker who can score many goals. You can see every day in training that he has a lot of experience. I'm glad he's playing for Wolfsburg. Of course, he knows where the goal is and the whole team benefits from his abilities, me included.
bundesliga.com: There are still four games left before the winter break. On Sunday, you go up against Borussia Mönchengladbach. Then you’ve got Hamburg, RB Leipzig and Cologne. How many points should you be aiming for from those games?
Origi: We need to be ambitious. I think we can get some good results. We’re playing against top teams, but we have the quality, too. Of course, I can’t say how many points we'll get in the run-up to Christmas, but we want the maximum and we'll do anything for it.
bundesliga.com: At Wolfsburg, you wear the No.14 shirt, which was also worn by your compatriot Kevin de Bruyne. Was it intentional to take his number?
Origi: Actually, my favourite number is 27, but that was already taken [by Max Arnold] - as was No.17 [Felix Uduokhai] and No.27 [Paul-Georges Ntep]. So then the club offered me the number 14. But they only told me later that it was Kevin de Bruyne’s old number. Kevin is a completely different player to me, but it's good to be able to wear "his" number.
bundesliga.com: Together with de Bruyne you’ve qualified for the World Cup with Belgium. Many experts see Belgium as a hot favourite. What do you think?
Origi: Obviously we have a lot of quality in the squad. Unlike the previous World Cup, all the players have four years of experience and all play at a very high level in Europe’s top leagues. Some players have gone up a level. We can definitely go to Russia feeling very confident. But I can’t say if we will win it or not. We’ve got a decent chance.
bundesliga.com: When did you last talk to Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp?
Origi: I spoke to Jürgen Klopp for the last time shortly before my move to Wolfsburg, but I'm in close contact with the club.
bundesliga.com: Wolfsburg has loaned you for a season from Liverpool, but you might want to stay even longer. Can you imagine playing for Wolfsburg next season?
Origi: Yes, sure. Anything can happen in football. The agreement is for the loan to expire at the end of the season. Then I’ll return to Liverpool because I have a good relationship with the club and also with the fans. But as I said, you never know what will happen. Right now, I am very happy at Wolfsburg and I’m developing well. It’s a great fit.
Divock Origi was speaking to Alexander Barklage
Click here for more Wolfsburg news and features!DM was associated with an increased risk of TB regardless of study design and population. People with DM may be important targets for interventions such as active case finding and treatment of latent TB and efforts to diagnose, detect, and treat DM may have a beneficial impact on TB control.
We searched the PubMed and EMBASE databases to identify observational studies that had reported an age-adjusted quantitative estimate of the association between DM and active TB disease. The search yielded 13 observational studies (n = 1,786,212 participants) with 17,698 TB cases. Random effects meta-analysis of cohort studies showed that DM was associated with an increased risk of TB (relative risk = 3.11, 95% CI 2.27–4.26). Case-control studies were heterogeneous and odds ratios ranged from 1.16 to 7.83. Subgroup analyses showed that effect estimates were higher in non-North American studies.
Several studies have suggested that diabetes mellitus (DM) increases the risk of active tuberculosis (TB). The rising prevalence of DM in TB-endemic areas may adversely affect TB control. We conducted a systematic review and a meta-analysis of observational studies assessing the association of DM and TB in order to summarize the existing evidence and to assess methodological quality of the studies.
Funding: CYJ is supported by a departmental grant from the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. The department had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2008 Jeon and Murray. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
However, the estimate of this impact is based on three cohort studies from Asia; other studies suggest that the extent of the impact due to diabetes may vary by region and ethnicity. In populations where diabetes affects the risk of tuberculosis to a similar or greater extent, global tuberculosis control might benefit from active case finding and treatment of dormant tuberculosis in people with diabetes and from increased efforts to diagnose and treat diabetes.
These findings support the idea that diabetes increases the risk of tuberculosis, a biologically plausible idea because, in experimental and clinical studies, diabetes was found to impair the immune responses needed to control bacterial infections. The 3-fold increased risk of tuberculosis associated with diabetes that the meta-analysis reveals suggests that diabetes may already be responsible for more than 10% of tuberculosis cases in countries such as India and China, a figure that will likely increase as diabetes becomes more common.
From their search of electronic databases, the researchers found 13 observational studies (nonexperimental investigations that record individual characteristics and health outcomes without trying to influence them in any way) that had examined whether diabetes mellitus increases the risk of active tuberculosis. Diabetes was positively associated with tuberculosis in all but one study, but the estimates of how much diabetes increases the risk of developing active tuberculosis were highly variable, ranging from no effect to an increased risk of nearly 8-fold in one study. The variability may represent true differences between the study populations, as higher increases in risk due to diabetes was found in studies conducted outside of North America, including Central America, Europe, and Asia; or it may reflect differences in how well each study was done. This variability meant that the researchers could not include all of the studies in their meta-analysis. However, the three prospective cohort studies (studies that follow a group of individuals with potential risk factors for a disease over time to see if they develop that disease) that they had identified in their systematic review had more consistent effects estimates, and were included in the meta-analysis. This meta-analysis showed that, compared to people without diabetes, people with diabetes had a 3-fold increased risk of developing active tuberculosis.
Despite this control strategy, tuberculosis remains a major health problem in many countries. To reduce the annual number of new tuberculosis cases (incidence) and the number of people with tuberculosis (prevalence) in such countries, it may be necessary to identify and target factors that increase an individual's risk of developing active tuberculosis. One possible risk factor for tuberculosis is diabetes, a condition characterized by high blood sugar levels and long-term complications involving the circulation, eyes and kidneys, and the body's ability to fight infection. 180 million people currently have diabetes, but this number is expected to double by 2030. Low- to middle-income countries (for example, India and China) have the highest burden of tuberculosis and are experiencing the fastest increase in diabetes prevalence. If diabetes does increase the risk of developing active tuberculosis, this overlap between the diabetes and tuberculosis epidemics could adversely affect global tuberculosis control efforts. In this study, the researchers undertake a systematic review (a search using specific criteria to identify relevant research studies, which are then appraised) and a random effects meta-analysis (a type of statistical analysis that pools the results of several studies) to learn more about the association between diabetes and tuberculosis.
Every year, 8.8 million people develop active tuberculosis and 1.6 million people die from this highly contagious infection that usually affects the lungs. Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, bacteria that are spread through the air when people with active tuberculosis cough or sneeze. Most infected people never become ill—a third of the world's population is actually infected with M. tuberculosis—because the human immune system usually contains the infection. However, the bacteria remain dormant within the body and can cause disease many years later if host immunity declines because of increasing age or because of other medical conditions such as HIV infection. Active tuberculosis can be cured by taking a combination of several antibiotics every day for at least six months, and current control efforts concentrate on prompt detection and carefully monitored treatment of people with active tuberculosis to prevent further transmission of the bacteria.
Despite the availability of effective therapy, tuberculosis (TB) continues to infect an estimated one-third of the world's population, to cause disease in 8.8 million people per year, and to kill 1.6 million of those afflicted [ 1 ]. Current TB control measures focus on the prompt detection and treatment of those with infectious forms of the disease to prevent further transmission of the organism. Despite the enormous success of this strategy in TB control, the persistence of TB in many parts of the world suggests the need to expand control efforts to identify and address the individual and social determinants of the disease. Since the early part of the 20th century, clinicians have observed an association between diabetes mellitus (DM) and TB, although they were often unable to determine whether DM caused TB or whether TB led to the clinical manifestations of DM [ 2 – 6 ]. Furthermore, these reports did not address the issues of confounding and selection bias. More recently, multiple rigorous epidemiological studies investigating the relationship have demonstrated that DM is indeed positively associated with TB [ 7 – 11 ]. While the investigators suggested that the association reflects the effect of DM on TB, some controversy over the directionality of the association remains due to observations that TB disease induces temporary hyperglycemia, which resolves with treatment [ 12, 13 ]. A causal link between DM and TB does not bode well for the future, as the global burden of DM is expected to rise from an estimated 180 million prevalent cases currently to a predicted 366 million by 2030 [ 14 ]. Experts have raised concerns about the merging epidemics of DM and TB [ 15 – 17 ], especially in low- to middle-income countries, such as India and China, that are experiencing the fastest increase in DM prevalence [ 18 ] and the highest burden of TB in the world [ 19 ]. Given the public health implications of a causal link between DM and TB, there is a clear need for a systematic assessment of the association in the medical literature. We undertook a systematic review to qualitatively and quantitatively summarize the existing evidence for the association between DM and TB, to examine the heterogeneity underlying the different studies, and to evaluate the methodological quality of the studies. As our aim was to summarize the effect of DM on TB, we did not include studies that investigated the reverse association.
We assessed publication bias using the Begg test and Egger test [ 26, 27 ]. Statistical procedures were carried out using R version 2.5.1 [ 28 ]. 95% CI of the I 2 value was computed using the “heterogi” module in STATA version 10 [ 29 ].
We explored possible effect modification by age by examining the three studies that reported results by age groups [ 7, 9, 25 ]. For this analysis, we graphed the stratum-specific estimates in a forest plot, and tested for heterogeneity of the effects within each study by the Q-test and I 2 value. We also performed meta-regression within each study in which we regressed the log-transformed RRs by the mid-points of the age-bands. For the unbound age group, ≥ 60 y, we added half the range of the neighboring age-band, or 5 y, to the cutoff. We computed the factor reduction in RR with 10 y increases in age, and reported the p-value for significance of trend.
In order to identify possible sources of heterogeneity and to assess the effect of study quality on the reported effect estimates, we performed sensitivity analyses in which we compared pooled effect estimates for subgroups categorized by background TB incidence, geographical region, underlying medical conditions of the population under study, and the following quality-associated variables: time of assessment of DM in relation to TB diagnosis, method of DM assessment (self-report or medical records versus laboratory tests), method of TB assessment (microbiologically confirmed versus other), adjustment for important potential confounders, and the potential duplication of data on the same individuals. To determine whether the effect estimates varied significantly by the above-mentioned factors, we performed univariate meta-regressions, in which we regressed the study-specific log-transformed relative risks (RRs) by the variables representing the study characteristics, weighting the studies by the inverse of the sum of within-study and between-study variance for all studies within the comparison. For background TB incidence, we created an ordinal variable, 1 representing < 10/100,000 person-years to 3 representing ≥ 100/100,000 person-years. Coefficients of meta-regression represent differences in log-transformed RRs between the subgroups; we tested the significance of these coefficients by Student t-test, and significance was set at p < 0.10. We considered studies to be of higher quality if they specified that DM be diagnosed prior to the time of TB diagnosis; used blood glucose tests for diagnosis of DM; used a microbiological definition of TB; adjusted for at least age and sex; were cohort, nested case-control, or population-based case-control studies; or did not have the potential for duplication of data. As the average background incidence rate of TB did not exceed 2 per 100 person-years in any of the of the case-control studies that had not employed incidence density sampling, we assumed TB to be sufficiently rare that the odds ratios would estimate the risk ratios [ 24 ], and that it would therefore be valid to compute summary RR in the sensitivity analyses regardless of the measure of association and design of the study.
We separated the studies by study design and assessed heterogeneity of effect estimates within each group of studies using the Cochrane Q test for heterogeneity [ 21 ] and the I 2 statistic described by Higgins et al. [ 22 ]. We determined the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the I 2 values using the test-based methods [ 22 ]. We performed meta-analysis for computation of a summary estimate only for the study design (i.e., cohort) that did not show significant heterogeneity. Effect estimates of other study designs were not summarized due to significant heterogeneity. For those studies that reported age, sex, race, or region stratum-specific effects, we calculated an overall adjusted effect estimate for the study using the inverse-variance weighting method, then included this summary estimate in the meta-analyses and sensitivity analyses. We decided a priori to use the Dersimonian and Laird random effects method to pool the effect estimates across studies for the meta-analyses, because the underlying true effect of DM would be expected to vary with regard to underlying TB susceptibility and the severity of DM, and because it would yield conservative 95% confidence intervals [ 23 ].
The two investigators (CJ, MM) independently read the papers and extracted information on the year and country of the study, background TB incidence, study population, study design, number of exposed/unexposed people or cases/controls, definitions and assessment of DM and TB, statistical methods, effect estimates and their standard errors, adjustment and stratification factors, response rates, the timing of diagnosis of DM relative to that of TB, and the potential duplication of data on the same individuals. Differences were resolved by consensus. For the studies that did not directly report the background TB incidence, we obtained data for the closest matching year and state (or country) made available by public databases (WHO global tuberculosis database, http://www.who.int/globalatlas/dataQuery/ ; CDC Wonder, http://wonder.cdc.gov/TB-v2005.html ).
We searched the PubMed database from 1965 to March 2007 and the EMBASE database from 1974 to March 2007 for studies of the association between DM and TB disease; our search strategy is detailed in Box 1. We also hand-searched bibliographies of retrieved papers for additional references and contacted experts in the field for any unpublished studies. Since we speculated that studies that examined the association between DM and TB may not have referred to the term “diabetes” in the title or abstract, we also searched for studies that examined any risk factors for active TB. We restricted our analysis to human studies, and placed no restrictions on language. We included studies if they were peer-reviewed reports of cohort, case-control, or cross-sectional studies that either presented or allowed computation of a quantitative effect estimate of the relationship between DM and active TB and that controlled for possible confounding by age or age groups. We also included studies that compared prevalence or incidence of DM or TB of an observed population to a general population as long as they had performed stratification or standardization by age groups. We excluded studies if they were any of the following: case studies and reviews; studies among children; studies that did not provide effect estimates in odds ratios, rate ratios, or risk ratios, or did not allow the computation of such; studies that did not adjust for age; studies that employed different methods for assessing TB among individuals with and without DM or for assessing DM among TB patients and controls; studies that investigated the reverse association of the impact of TB disease or TB treatment on DM; anonymous reports; and duplicate reports on previously published studies.
We conducted our systematic review according to the guidelines set forth by the Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) group for reporting of systematic reviews of observational studies (see Text S2 for the MOOSE Checklist) [ 20 ].
Results
We identified and screened 3,701 papers by titles and abstracts; of these, 3,378 were excluded because they did not study risk factors for TB, were studies among children, were case reports, reviews, or studies of TB treatment outcome (Figure 1). Of the remaining 323 articles, 232 studies were excluded because they did not report on the association between DM and TB, and 56 studies were excluded because they were review articles (12) or ecological studies (2); studied the clinical manifestations of TB in people with diabetes (11); studied the association of DM and TB treatment outcome (6); assessed latent, relapsed, clustered, or drug-resistant TB as the outcome (6); studied the reverse association of the effect of TB on DM (5); had no comparison group (5); were case reports (3); did not give a quantitative effect estimate (3); had collapsed DM and other chronic diseases into a single covariate (2); or was a study that had been reported elsewhere (1). We contacted the authors of four papers that reported including DM in a multivariate analysis but that did not provide the adjusted effect estimate for DM; we included the papers of the two authors who responded and provided these adjusted estimates [30,31]. Further exclusion of studies that did not adjust for age (11), studies that used a general population as the comparison group for TB incidence or DM prevalence without standardization by age (9), and studies that used different methods for ascertaining TB in the people with diabetes and control group (2), left 13 eligible studies. These included three prospective cohort studies [7,30,32], eight case-control studies [8,11,31–37], and two studies for which study design could not be classified as either cohort or case control, as TB case accrual occurred prospectively while the distribution of diabetes in the population was assessed during a different time period after baseline [9,25]. The studies were set in Canada (1), India (1), Mexico (1), Russia (1), South Korea (1), Taiwan (1), the UK (1), and the US (6), and were all reported in English and conducted in the last 15 y. Two of the cohort studies were among renal transplant patients [30,32], and three of the case-control studies were hospital-based or based on discharge records [8,11,35]. The studies are summarized in Table 1.
Figure 2 summarizes the adjusted effect estimates of the 13 studies categorized by the study design. We found substantial heterogeneity of effect estimates from studies within each study design; between-study variance accounted for 39% of the total variance among cohort studies, 68% of the total variance among case-control studies, and 99% of the total variance in the remaining two studies. Despite this heterogeneity, the forest plot shows that DM is positively associated with TB regardless of study design, with the exception of the study by Dyck et al. [25]. DM was associated with a 3.11-fold (95% CI 2.27–4.26) increased risk of TB in the cohort studies. Of note, the study conducted within a nontransplant population provided greater weight (63%) to the summary estimate than the other two cohort studies combined. The effect estimates in the remaining studies were heterogeneous and varied from a RR of 0.99 to 7.83.
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 2. Forest Plot of the 13 Studies That Quantitatively Assessed the Association between Diabetes and Active Tuberculosis by Study Designs Size of the square is proportional to the precision of the study-specific effect estimates, and the bars indicate the corresponding 95% CIs. Arrows indicate that the bars are truncated to fit the plot. The diamond is centered on the summary RR of the cohorts studies, and the width indicates the corresponding 95% CI. *Other: The studies by Ponce-de-Leon et al. [7] and Dyck et al. [25] were not specified as prospective cohort or case-control. TB case accrual occurred prospectively, while the underlying distribution of diabetes was determined during a different time period after baseline. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050152.g002
Table 2 shows that there is an increased risk of active TB among people with diabetes regardless of background incidence, study region, or underlying medical conditions in the cohort. In the sensitivity analyses, we noticed that the strength of association increased from a RR of 1.87 to a RR of 3.32 as background TB incidence of the study population increased from < 10/100,000 person-years to ≥ 100/100,000 person-years, but the trend was not significant (trend p = 0.229). Effect estimates were heterogeneous within each category of background TB incidence (I2 = 60%, 98%, and 76% from highest to lowest background TB incidence category).
We also found that the associations of DM and TB in the study populations from Central America [9], Europe [33,37], and Asia [7,30,32] (RR CentralAm = 6.00, RR Europe =4.40, RR Asia = 3.11) were higher than those of North American studies [8,11,33,34–36] (RR NA = 1.46) (meta-regression p CentralAm = 0.006, p Europe = 0.004, p Asia = 0.03). Among North American studies, the pooled estimate of the relative risks for Hispanics from two studies [8,11] was higher (RR = 2.69) than that of non-Hispanics from the same study [8] and other North American studies (RR = 1.23) (meta-regression p = 0.060) (Table 2).
In general, stratification of the studies by quality-associated variables did not reduce the heterogeneity of effect estimates. Nonetheless, DM remained positively associated with TB in all strata. Studies that explicitly reported that DM was diagnosed prior to TB showed stronger associations (RR = 2.73) [7,31–34] than those that did not establish the temporal order of DM and TB diagnosis (RR = 2.10) [8,9,11,25,30,35–37], although the difference was not significant (meta-regression p = 0.483). Associations were stronger in studies that classified DM exposure through empirical testing (RR = 3.89) [7,9,32,34] rather than medical records (RR = 1.61) (meta-regression p = 0.051) [8,11,25,30,31,33]; and in those that confirmed TB status using microbiological diagnosis (RR = 4.91) [7,9,35,37] than in the studies that did not confirm by microbiological tests (RR = 1.66) (meta-regression p = 0.015) [8,11,25,30–34,36]. Among case-control studies, those that were nested in a clearly identifiable population or were population-based also reported stronger associations (RR = 3.36) [31,33,34,37] than those that used hospital based controls (RR = 1.62) [8,11,37], but the difference was not significant (meta-regression p = 0.321). Studies that had adjusted for smoking showed stronger associations (RR = 4.40) [33,37], while studies in which an individual may have contributed more than one observation to the data revealed weaker associations (RR = 1.62) [8,11]. Although these results suggest that higher-quality studies gave stronger estimates of association, we also found that the association was weaker in studies that adjusted for socioeconomic status (RR = 1.66) (Table 2) [8,11,37].
Figure 3 presents the summary measures of the association between DM and TB by age group based on the data from the three studies that presented age-stratified RRs. The plots from Kim et al. [7] and Ponce-de-Leon et al. [9] demonstrate stronger associations of DM and TB under the age of 40 y and declining RR with increasing age in age groups over 40 y (trend p Kim = 0.014, p Ponce-de-Leon = 0.184). Each 10 y increase in age was associated with a 0.6-fold reduction in magnitude of association in the study by Kim et al. [7]. This trend was not apparent in the study by Dyck et al. (Figure 3) [25].
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 3. Forest Plot of Age-Specific Association between Diabetes and Active Tuberculosis from Kim et al. [ Forest Plot of Age-Specific Association between Diabetes and Active Tuberculosis from Kim et al. [ 7 ], Ponce-de-Leon et al. [ 9 ], and Dyck et al. [ 25 Size of the square is proportional to the precision of the study-specific effect estimates, and the bars indicate 95% CI of the effect estimates. Arrows indicate that the bars are truncated to fit the plot. *Meta-regression: Factor reduction in RR with 10 y increase in age; p-values are given for test of linear trend. HR, hazard ratio. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050152.g003
Both the Egger test and Begg test for publication bias were insignificant (p = 0.37, p = 0.14).Description
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A group of hard-line conservatives threatened to upend the Republican race to succeed outgoing House Speaker John A. Boehner, announcing on Wednesday it will throw its support behind a little-known Florida lawmaker to become the next speaker.
The House Freedom Caucus’s backing of Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) ahead of a crucial internal party vote Thursday deeply complicates Majority Leader Kevin O. McCarthy’s bid to succeed Boehner. The group counts enough members — about 40 — to deny McCarthy the majority of the whole House he would need to claim the speaker’s chair.
But in an opening for the California Republican, caucus members said Wednesday that the endorsement is binding on members only for Thursday’s party vote and that it would not necessarily apply to the decisive Oct. 29 floor vote.
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Regardless, the endorsement gives the caucus tremendous leverage to force McCarthy or any other candidate into adopting procedural changes and policy positions favored by conservatives ahead of the decisive floor vote.
“We want rules, policy, process,” said Rep. Dave Brat, the Virginia Republican who ousted ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a 2014 primary. “We want that on paper ahead of time.”
In a statement announcing their endorsement, the Freedom Caucus said “our constituents will simply not accept a continuation of the status quo” and that “under the present circumstances and without significant changes to Conference leadership and process, [Webster] would be best equipped to earn back the trust of the American people.”
In a brief interview Wednesday, McCarthy said he was not concerned about the endorsement.
“I look forward to being able to get their votes,” he said. “My door is always open. Every voice needs to be heard. I’m very confident we’ll all get back together.”
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